London has haunted me from across the sea all my life.

Mostly stories of paradox and anticlimax. An expectation of grandeur, only to be winded stiffly in the gut by the cold hard truth of the mundane real world. There were so many such stories, out here in the southern hemisphere colonies, that as a consequence, visiting London was never on my list of goals to attain in life.

But fate had other plans: London was in my sights. I was to stay in some place called Hampton. And, as I stared out of the window from the dentists chair, a week before going to London, I noticed that the gray block of flats across the road was similarly named: Hampton Court Palace.

This court, was a three-decade-old 1970's square-cement-style block of flats. They were so down-trodden, they deserved being called flats. Washing clung desperately to the washing-line in the afternoon gale. I pondered how it came to be that so many worn out buildings are called 'Royal' this, or such-and-such 'Palace'.

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Suddenly I was brought back to reality by the most intense pain possible, as the dentist plucked the tooth from my mouth. Its dripping, bloody, rotten root leaving the taste of salty blood on my lip. Hands and feet instinctively withdrew into a desperate foetal position as the pain echoed inwardly, reaching, it seemed, to every part of my body, snapping my limbs inwards into an horrible sensation of whip-lashed numbness and agony.

As the fog drifted from my mind, and I came back to awareness again, I looked once more at the dirty block of flats outside the window. For three decades I had lived in a nondescript highly industrial coastal port in South Africa, with many such courts and palaces and especially chipped paint 'Royal Hotels', de facto booze retailers, to keep the working class at a sufficiently low level of alcohol induced mental stupor, fit for menial labor. Was London to be even more down to reality than this?

My bloody mouth healed, London arrived in my life for a brief 10 day visit. I had packed my warmest African clothes, expecting to have the proverbial balls frozen off. I had lived for most of my life in beach baggies, in an African bay that is warm enough to swim in all year round. A place where you never needed shoes.

And yet, my beach baggies were the only pants I wore for my 10 day visit to London, for contrary to the norm, England was joyfully experiencing what it optimistically called a heat wave.

My expectations were once more shattered, as I had been hoping to pick up some of that dreary and forlorn wet-winter's misery that one is supposed to experience in old European cities. I had hoped to write a deliciously droll poem or ten, or perhaps a melancholic short-story, inspired by the notoriously terrible English rain. I had been thwarted as I sweated for a day, in long pants, in order to wash my only pair of shorts. For some odd reason, I could buy ten pairs of shorts in South Africa, for the same price as one pair in London. So washing and sweating seemed more prudent.

But worse was to come. Many times I had heard tales of decrepit London squat-houses, infested with drug addicts, punks, and whores with scurvy sores. Dingy little places with prehistoric plumbing and piping and terrible caged-iron elevators from the pre-industrial era, that looked like they would plunge you into the pits of the city, and force you into a Dickinson world of nightmarish child-labor, or worse.

Like the stories of sado-masochist nightclubs frequented by politicians, lawyers, and accountants with Jekyllish personsalities. Muggers hiding behind whores were to be on every dingy alley-way, and criminal networks stretched back into the medieval past. Anti-gay bashing gangs were expected to leap out and confront me, and if I showed any signs of homophobia, they would beat me to a pulp with their studded handbags.

Somehow, London manages to turn expectations around. As I found out on arrival at Hampton Court Palace, that I was to be staying at the very awesome Palace of Henry the VIII. Dear grand old uncle Henry of many-headless-wife fame. I had recently found out that the infamous old rascal was in fact my ancestor. (And George Bush's too!). And strangely, it was my wife, with a very intact and beautiful head, who had pulled the strings for us to land with our bums in the Real Royal English Butter.

Sadly I have to confess that I never saw anything at all of the wet misery of London, the London of novelists, poets, and punk-rockers. It was a magical joy to get lost in the palace maze. Or, to wander the miles of gentle wooded fields, graced with tame deer, and real elegant white swans. The romance of the Royal Thames, was overwhelming and complete in its own. The palace grounds were so huge that it took three days of walking to find the golf course. And oddly, while being smack in the bottom of London itself, it is possible to not see a single sign of human habitat. For miles.

Despite the gnawing loneliness of being a stranger, in an alien world, I now felt at home, like I was wandering the vast African bushveld. I half expected to see a squatter camp, discreetly hiding beneath a tree. Instead a gentle surprise, revealed the tame eyes of innocently speckled English deer. Unhunted, undaunted, and unhaunted of the man-hunt.

The night before I left, I was descending the narrow English stairs, into the tiny depths of the vast palace, and it felt as though this was a land of history and mysterious ghostly pasts. Even this old palace was built in the times that the Portuguese were supposed to have first discovered South Africa.

The portly outline of Grand old Uncle Henry, which normally hung in portraits on the wall, scared my eyeballs almost out of their sockets, as it stood at the foot of the stairs. My royal ancestor's ghost! What ghastly visions would assail me now!

As I froze in mid stride, I felt as though I had been transported into a Shakespearean drama, of blood-chilling proportions. I imagined Romeo's pain at having petty jealousy destroy perfect love. And Marc Antony, and Cleopatra dying with the asp at her breast. I felt Hamlet's curse, of having to avenge the death of his father and King. Especially the haunting scene when the dead king appears to Hamlet, beseeching him for vengeance. What did the ghost of Henry the VIIIth want with me? Just that day the tour guide showed us the spot where he beheaded one of his eight wives. I shivered in the warm night.

Henry, was a hat-stand. With relief and disappointment mixing in my soul, I walked past the furniture, noting how the coat on the hat-stand bulged in mocking imitation of the portrait on the wall. Even the hat was similar.

Its been five years since that visit to London. I have not seen my wife for two years. I do not know exactly where she is. Somewhere in New Zealand, maybe Australia by now. Her father murdered most of his family, and stole the family inheritance. Under threat of death, he will not allow my wife to see me or even speak to me. He is a common garden variety psychopath, typical of third world mercenaries, and one with substantial racist blood on his hands. Blood he can never clean.

I found out about his history while my wife and I were on separate continents, and told her about it on the phone, but he had tapped her conversations, and found out what I knew. All her contact details changed over night, and shortly afterwards the divorce papers arrived. I did not sign.

Out of fear she lives in learned helplessness on the other side of the world somewhere. Nobody believed her when she said her grandparents were being murdered. Not foolish I. Not at first. Like Hamlet, I stumble, hoping for something other than vengeance to avenge the death of the King. Like Macbeth, his ambitions know no limits. Like Juliet, my wife is lost to grief at the feuding. Like Antony, even firm resolve, is of no aid.

I wonder at the world. If it is all as macabre and droll as most people make it out to be. I wonder if things like romance, love and purity, have a place in this world of father-killers. I could track them down. Confront them. And then what? Have his blood on my hands? Her hatred in return.

I shower 3 times a day. Just to keep warm. Wash away the salty teared sins. Keep clean. Her father, even tried to force divorce on us. But I refused to sign without a court case, and she did not pitch up to court. Claiming her life was in danger. The lawyers hum and ha.

Its an on oddly anguished feeling to be married to someone you have not seen in two years. Someone who is literally on the other side of the world. To be suspended between deep blue love and the devil's wide open sea.

Abram and Sarah were lovers. Sarah was the most beautiful woman in the world, and when they entered the land of Pharaoh, they pretended not to be married, as Abram feared the other men would kill him and take Sarah. Such was the effect of her beauty.

Pharaoh married Sarah, but she confessed to Pharaoh of her love for Abram and what had happenned and why. And Pharaoh out of his conscience, sent Sarah back to Abram, and he also gave him wealth to protect the fidelity of his marriage, and the sanctity of his offspring. Sarah gave birth at age ninety for the first time. The first identity of Israeli-Egyptian relations, was based on profound fidelity in the face of rampant rapists. Millennia later, and with many variations on the theme of religion and love, still there is no lasting fix to the problem of the human condition.

The previous paragraph does not conclude my story. But, at least, it is a conclusion of sorts, where my story has none. I can feel the gap in my mouth where my missing tooth was. The dentist had proudly pronounced it the biggest he had ever seen, and asked if he could keep it. I do not go to the dentist any longer. Toothache is something to be enjoyed. For one day we will all be old and toothless, unable to fight back, having to take the pain as it comes. Having no choice but carry the burden of life. The soft solace of death. Wishing for the days of toothache. For the days when we had teeth to ache.

Abraham was the Father of Israel, and of Islam. Perhaps I should give up on fidelity. Perhaps I should seek another wife. I already have one, even if she is too scared to speak out. I wish she could let me know. Am I living a dream, or a nightmare? A mid-summers-nightmare. A lucid dream-world of love and loss and evil and hope. Or a droll world of meagre spirit, where love can be crushed so easily. Hamlet's ghost, haunts me, taunts me, taints my hating soul with its own indecision.

Is that a ghost which I see before me, with a dagger in his hand? My love, if I could clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I feel thy love still. Art thou, fatal vision, sensible to feeling as to site? Your dream kissed me awake on your birthday last night. Or art thou but A lover of the mind, a false creation, Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? I see thee yet, in form as palpable as the gentle night we met.

Whiles I threat, he lives:
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.

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