The paint was called Moonflower. It was blue; slate, a slash of sinless morning sky over an Usk meadow in May; clean, covering; sharp as the line between yellow fields of rape and unrelenting sky, perfect, cloudless sky, morning sky, border sky. When it was wet, nearer slate, the blue on a herald's shield, it moved quickly, tongued out by a twist of sheepskin roller, a sticky phhllrrr forward; a faint brrrrrnnn when he pulled back. He worked quickly.

This had been his office once. He'd commandeered half of their lounge, filled it with an old, bloated, civil-service desk rubbed clean of bored scratchings, blue Quink, black Black Swan, the Friday slips, burns, of Passing Clouds, Senior Service, and once, rare, but once, the faint musk and drip of a coupling - she moved on to work in Whitehall, he went back to his empty wife. A man polished it, "Couldn't get a better desk than this if you tried, sir! History is that, Sir! Solid is that. Better 'ope where you sit's as solid!"

The wall had been hidden. A map of Lundy Island, a book-cover, a woman he'd. - three women, none of them the character he sold, nor parts thereof, but she was all of them - and pictures - a seaside tenement; a cottage on a hill, home to a murderer; a pier, alive with light-music, oom-pah-pah adverts, a grey cold sea, shingle and seabirds, and old people walking, and lovers - oh, lovers, and once, once - he had stuck up his wall with Blue-Tac; another mistake.

He'd removed them, his pictures, deck-chairs, people - leaving the blue mess - come in their little cars, driven down from Basingstoke, sat on the shingle, and remembered the war. A boy looked sideways at a woman in a towel.

And newspaper cuttings; the Sunday Times, rape again, words, and another, three paragraphs, a woman who had made it up. All blue-tacked, ruining the original magnolia; not white, not cream, not yellow or fawn; a loaming, anagram for nothing, magnolia. They covered with so much of it that it came very cheap.

He had removed them, had tried to, these pictures, his cuttings, and the blue-tac, the errors that stuck to his wall; and his wife had come home, their children unhappy and said, "Jesus! It's awful. What the hell have you done?"

His furniture was old. Heavy, solid, real. He had dragged it to the centre of the room, a barricade, and piled it with books, pictures, a bird, a Kingfisher, photographs of an island holiday. The wall was wretched now, exposed, stumped, pocked with grey-blue, a mess; lack of planning, lack of care, leaving him with so much more to do; not even a simple loaming could deal with this. It was too far gone. It was scarred; flawed.

He used steel-wool, soap, foaming Brillo pads, dripping dirty pink bubbles down the wall like a lung-shot man. And he found that as the Blue-Tac went, so did the loaming, the thin surface, leaving the raw plaster, more leprosy than small-pox. And he prayed that his wife would not come home early. And he worked even quicker; eager to remove. To rinse, to wipe and dry.

At some point he switched on the TV and drank beer.

The wall was dirty, so the writer, with water, an unforgiving bleach, tried to clean it, and he smeared and mixed a raised distemper, the dirt, the dyes, until all were equally bled into the others. He called that clean, and drank more beer while it dried. Then he heard, O, for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention.

The writer heard the words of courtiers, but as he poured blubs of Moonflower into a tray he thought of film scripts, Ghostbuster slime. With the dripping roller, he flacked a diagonal of blue-grey across the wall, his hands speckling finely with a spray of that Usk sky, morning sky, the pressure on the pregnant sheepskin too much and the carpet, between the newspaper cracks, now a finer blue, blues in blue, blue on blue, all to be covered up later.

Then, the writer, keen to get on with things, tried vertical strokes, italic strokes, too much paint, too little, and as he did, he heard something about a King who once was sat with baser men, and something about the courses of his youth. Then, as he bent again for paint, for some dark reason the writer thought of woad. Then he took aluminium steps for extra height, but as he reached up, he heard, "Never was such a sudden scholar made; Never came reformation in a flood." This made him smile, but as his mouth widened, a poor stroke darkened the ceiling's white and he cursed, angry at himself, and stepped down.

He worked very quickly now, angrily; with an ulcered heat in his belly, the mocking television, the voices, music, beer; an eagerness to have the wall covered, wondering when the phone would ring, what time his wife would be home.

And the writer painted over cracks, the shadow of his first book, with broad brush-strokes, quickly, madly; his crudeness, repetition, the slapped thicknesses hiding his lack of skill. And the wall became blue, at least a coat. But the television burred still, burned still, as he swigged at his Budweiser and tried not to hear. And he heard, he heard - Pistol, Nim, Quickly, and then three traitors trapp'd - and all the time, all the time, all the time, the words mocked him. The writer rushed. He slapped, slathered, covered his wall, covered the loaming, covered the scars, painted the pock-marks where his book had been, three women, some cuttings, an island, a house.

He rushed; but the TV war rushed faster. And then the speeches came, and even he knew the speeches; of breeches and bodies and once more! once more! into things, with Englishmen, Welshmen at the quick; broadswords bloody - and Brannagh; a wild King Harry, sure Harry, God's Harry. And the writer felt so wretched, so feeble, so small and so trivial; and he worked faster, his glasses now coloured as he blue-blued another wall, slap-slapped more sky, and drank his beer, and spilled things, and cried he was so God-met.

A tall man walks into the room.

He hits me, high on my face. Something hot comes out of my nose. He leaves.

It is a white room, light, bright light, like there's something out there, the sun, swelling, trying to get in.

A fat man comes into the room. I'm scared. He walks behind me. There's a bang on my head, a flash of black. He stays behind me. I want to cry. I think I can feel him coming closer. I think he has a drill in his hand, a little one, a battery one, and the drill will touch me from behind, cut into my neck. There's a bang on my head, a flash of black.

I hear footsteps, small; small feet clip-clopping in the corridor, red shoes, shiny. I hear shiny red shoes.

A little girl comes into the room. I'm scared, I'm sad. She is white, all white except for shiny red shoes which click-clack, clop-clop. She comes to me. She tilts her head sideways, looks up my nose. I have no tongue. If I had a tongue I would try to say something.

She doesn't like me but she 's scared. She smiles, then she spits. If I had a tongue I would say something. She leaves.

The tall man and the fat man walk into the room.

Over now.

Alex Keegan

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