The Final Word

You hear it on the radio: some transmission made decades before, a fragment of a conversation, picked up as your ship travels it’s now uncharted path. “I’ll see you soon, put the kettle on,”  then  laughter and a silence which is eternal. “What was this life, and who were they?” you ask yourself, now on some mission and in a distant galaxy, sent out to explore the universe decades ago, before the Earth was hit by meteorites.

“Life on other planets. I hope so” was all you could think of at the time, as you turned to look at Greg, the captain on this now unrecorded voyage. “Shall I make a note of it” you ask, but he just shakes his head: the answer is in his lack of interest.

What’s the point? There’s no one left who we can talk to, and nothing but these fragments of conversation bouncing round in space and prodding at our spent emotions: brief relics of a vanished world, heard on this voyaging craft which travels now without reference points or purpose.

“Can’t beat the view” you say, trying to keep it light, but routine sapped magic from the flight some years before and silence has become the known companion. Now galaxies pass by unremarked  by two souls lost in travelling , robbed of home and context by that catastrophe which destroyed their home in mid-evolution.

“What does it mean” you ask yourself, but mute indifference has no answer. At some unspecified hour, you accept, if you don’t die before the event, some black hole or other matter will swallow this last evidence of man and his ambitions, and suns will rise and planets form without comment or exclamation from a lost life-form now become particle in space

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Awkward Hello’s

Here I was, or there, or even here and there.  Well, OK. On a towpath, walking back quite early in the morning after sampling the local brand of fresh air, lightly seasoned with diesel fumes and a sprinkling of cement dust from some roadworks when I spot a lone lady walking towards me at a current range of approximately two-hundred yards,

I do not like this happening: in the country life is simple, as you pass her by you would say, “Vegetables failing again Doris” or “Hi there, how’s your Mum” and with complete strangers a simple, “Bit chilly eh?”  and onwards you would go with, in my case, my mind firmly fixed on a plate of scrambled eggs and some decent conversation with my much loved goldfish, Jacinta: in London things are more complex.

A claxon sounds on the bridge and all senses and instincts go to action stations. “Keep it light, Keeeeep it Light, no panicking among the nerve-endings paleeeese” says our noble leader, who speaks from somewhere in the centre of the brain. Now the range is only 150 yards and you can see she is wearing a nice blue dress, tucked in at the waist with a matching belt. Some reckless molecules from the waist region suggests you say, “Lovely dress if I many say so, and worth discussing over breakfast,”  while remaining out of slapping distance in case your invitation is declined.

Ninety yards and time for sensible suggestions only if we may. Heart rate rising slightly, and a sense of unease evident in thickening neck symptoms.  “Eye contact and a brisk but courteous nod” suggests someone from the earlobes, while other canny folk say, notice something interesting on the other side of  the river and walk past without comment.

Almost too late for strategy meeting now as we approach the twenty-five yard mark. No more suggestions seem forthcoming and a glassy grin, rich in unease and discomfort floods across your face and you open and close your mouth weakly in the manner learned from Jacinta,  who has no wardrobe to speak of, the shameless hussy.

The lady looks at you and is clearly alarmed by evidence of palpitations and mouth flapping, together with some head-nodding to show that, strangers we may be, but we are all companions in the world village apart from some rough-necks on the Ukraine border, a number of folk in the middle east, and other places where head nodding may result in execution.

Still for better or worse, apart from her moving as near to the fence as possible to maximise distance, the moment is over, and a pleasing absence of humans is evident between you and the gate you are seeking. Now all that matters are the eggs and the prayer that you hope to never meet her again.Botched first meetings are always made worse by the clumsy efforts to explain them on re- meeting.

For example, you meet her three days later, and she is getting as near the fence as possible, and quickening the pace. You serve towards her and raise your arm to demonstrate there is nothing to worry about. “I say” you gush, “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you the other day, I was………” Sliding sideways she just manages to get past you and scuttles on at speed. You have managed to create an “incident” from poor planning and your clumsy efforts to put her at ease: there is no manual for what to do on the third meeting.

Bottled Emotions

Things could have been worse for “Threadbare” Jo, and how often is that true:  his morale was protected by his poor understanding of his situation, but even he knew he lived in an affection free zone. Thus it was that our Jo, walked into “The Shop of Love” to see if, emotionally at least,  he could re-equip his circumstances and experience a moment of living in the promised land.

This was no sleazy joint where women leaving the gentle slopes of youth might squeeze one last ingénue pose out for the camera, or men with more desire than aura were old enough to cause unsettled comments when they entered a nightclub. No, this was a shop offering the ultimate in  emotional experience, if only for a while or possibly just a moment , captured in a corked bottle which could be opened and enjoyed within the privacy of your own home or space. Every hue and shade of feeling, from joy through to despair, ( a surprisingly good seller),  was on offer.

Samual Sackly, who liked to weep while others smiled,  and could be found walking inconsolably through the gardens of historic homes  crying, as he held a tender flower in his hand saying,  “You will die. All  of them will die” which was true, but not for several months, given that it was early Spring, used to purchase a deliciously soul-bleaching bottle of Melacholia to heighten the experience before he set off on his adventure.

Joseph Leek just wanted “Love.” The nice old fashioned sort which we enjoyed before sensibility barged into the frame and made strong men weep just by looking at a cloud-tipped view while music soaked them with a sense of loss. “I’m after Love” said “Threadbare” and the attendant nodded sympathetically. He saw every kind of ill-fitting decision, or no decision at all, walk through the door. Here, as I said, they did not offer the physical experience of being loved, but just the essence of it, in every shade and strength of expression, so you could return home, make an egg sandwich and, quite literally, take the cork out of the bottle.

Now at last, as the yolk spilled down his cheek in the splendid isolation afforded by the lack of a phone in his rented room, his emotion of choice flooded the space around him, bathing him in sweet recognition until, sated by the brief sense of acceptance and celebration, he  slumped down on his bed and recalled those days when people cared and loved without recourse to manuals or instructions. That lost era  before  works like,  “How To Live The Natural Way,”  were to be found in the homes of aesthetes everywhere.

Testing the Boundaries

Malcolm Vexley, or, as he liked to remind those careless of rank, Sir Malcolm Vexley, was a business tycoon of standing who enjoyed what he modestly described as “A position of note in the city.”

I had no immediate knowledge of the man, I was an office junior in the department which existed for no other purpose than to organise his diary, and mediate between those competing for his time. “The modest exercise of power is more telling than a crude demonstration of strength” he used to say and I can vouch for that. He was one of those people who could make an entire district shake merely by moving his little finger so when his eyes fell on me in passing and he said I needed to go to his tailor and obtain a replacement tie, something to do with accidents and coffee, I just nodded and walked off as if I knew where his tailor was.

Once he was out of sight, I asked my department senior for the address and set out to obtain the required item; presenting it to him about forty five minutes after his request. That marked the beginning of a relationship where I became his errand runner of choice, and thus to the occasion when I was told to “Obtain some truffle chocolates “and take them to his wife: apparently it was her birthday.

His wife was about twenty-five years younger than him and had enjoyed a successful career in modelling, some of it involving clothing, until Sir Malcolm rescued her from a life of pitiless self-promotion and settled her in his town house sited in the better half of Mayfair.

An hour later I was at her door, chocolates in hand and a card carefully written by myself, wishing her the very best of days. She answered the door nearly dressed in some silk robe styled with a Chinese print, and a glass of something inspiring in her hand. “Come in, come in” she said, and her look invited no disagreement. I was young and inexperienced so a woman of her background, age and connections was difficult to argue with. Another hour later there I was, but now slightly tiddly, lost in her admiring gaze and with a departing sense of life’s imperatives.

“I am so bored Alfie. Boooored I tell you. Entertain me please” she said and I endeavoured to do so, sure that diverting his wife for an hour would only gain me credit with my employer.

Two glasses later and suddenly she moved over and settled on my lap saying, “Do you know what love is Alfie” and, if I did not, she seemed determined to demonstrate the subtleties of emotion by moving her lips to mine in a telling display of physical generosity. Panic filled me, only partly dimmed by the fact that her gown now opened to reveal a body which had been the subject of a million daydreams, albeit some years ago, and after a short period of kissing she led me without pity up the stairs and into the marital bed.

“Please me” she whimpered in a tone of menacing surrender, and I considered it reckless to refuse. I moved to kiss her once again: struggling with the awkwardness of foreplay with a lady now clearly uncoupled from sanity and unaware of a disturbance until a familiar voice said, “What is the meaning of this?” As I turned round I saw Sir Malcolm looking notably unsettled and in danger, I thought, of moving more than his little finger. “She loved the chocolates” I said, hoping to curry late favour with this man of note, but something in his manner suggested he had other things in mind.

Love In Hindsight

Those early years: the morning coffees taken when the day was full of promise vanished in a fog created by that sense I was not to be relied upon or trusted by any life I touched. Those words you said to me before you left me, “Where is your centre?” have never been answered. Doubt hates to be recognised but you saw it in me and gently left the room.

Those seminars where I apparently shone, master of the risk free insight, glib of phrase and careless of consequences proved the essence of what made me admired and a disaster. Beyond the telling phrase I lacked a strategy and the “Moment” proved to be all I could command.

Bravado is not courage, and making an entrance is not the same as walking with a purpose. I had no sense of moral worth but just of those pyrotechnics which prevent others gauging our inner life. Only you saw into that space they call a soul and stood by me for a time at least, but patience I discovered, is seldom more than finite, and so it proved with you. Your laughter and gentle tolerance gave way to disillusion: all I offered you was gestures, I have no faith in anything else, and then there were the girls.

Weak though I was, when faced with temptation, you forgave me twice, but each time less willingly. When you first looked in my eyes love poured from you and wonder lit up your face, but with each transgression, and with my failure to recognise truth, that light dimmed and then I saw you look more often over my shoulder than at me, at other possibilities where my crippled presence could not affect you.

That was thirty years ago. Now you live a thousand miles away smiling at faces I will never see; rich in experience I will never share, surrounded by a family I cannot touch. You live a life free of me. Your photograph is all I hold.

A Choice Of Direction

You lived creatively letting art define your life, fearless in your every day, walking the path I should have walked if I had courage in my veins; but I was a percentage man, careful always not to fail. I talked of art but lived by common sense and progressed cautiously toward an unmarked death.

At first you welcomed me, and drowned me with your kisses, opening yourself to me in pagan celebration sure that I, like you, was of the chosen few, who recognised the secret of life will only be discovered creatively. How we loved to swap observations, and nestle with each other by the fire and talk of love. I touched your skin and felt each brush of it to be a prayer. Your lips, for that short time, were mine to kiss and face to hold: wonder was our chemistry, and gold the colour which framed our life, for we had found eternity.

I lost my nerve at last, and talked of safe professions, a refuge from the fear that those who live to dream will pay a cost until, one day, that love I drank of so freely from your eyes shrank to a trickle of regret.

You painted like a girl possessed while I trained for my bar exams and we drifted on complicitly, avoiding the unspoken truth, that you were fearless and I was not. An agent came to see your work, sent there by a man of note, and the rest we know is history. You have created these forty years and I have not, but I read of you in magazines, and sometimes when silence fills my life, I take the portrait you made of me, a young man with a dream to chase, staring out courageously, for that was how you saw me then.

Life becomes your memories and in that place I love you still. I never speak your name out loud, and make no reference to your work but in that garden where we sat, innocent of encroaching truth, I sit, as so I often did, and feel your hand move through my hair.

The Price Of Bread

I am a man holding onto a faith in the story of his own destiny, so like a salmon following its instincts, I attempt the waterfall of life because that is our duty I understand!Apart from working, I get through my day, accepting my lot and looking for light in any situation: all good and bad, you know the score, and so it would have continued if something like connection had not lifted its skirt and flashed a beguiling glimpse of thigh at a man parched of every nuance of intimacy.

The conversation was innocuous enough: we both liked the same kind of bread, and she was the cashier at the shop where I purchased it. “Life on this planet would cease to be as we know it if they stopped making this bread” I told her, and, amazingly she replied, “I know. I love it too: the seeds, the texture and that maltiness.” Astonished by this shared passion I continued, “Even without butter it speaks to me. Just the texture and those seeds: yes. It’s so amazing,” Again she agreed.

I am past my prime, and just beginning to discover what chronic ill health means when mixed with declining vigour and a limited budget but a primal longing surfaced from inside me and, noticing she had no wedding ring, I asked her, “Are you married or involved in a long term relationship involving catering and moments of intimacy?” Her face changed colour somewhat, and  she became slightly “Arch” if you follow me. Clearly I had stepped outside that circle of generalities which define the conversational norms for casual acquaintances.

I’d had a sense of manners once: perhaps my mother had taught it to me, or I’d picked it up from watching films. I remember a Polish film about a man who is dying from a stab wound in his back, and spends his final moments holding the door to the Out-Patients department open at the local hospital saying “After you” to some lady suffering from a sprained wrist: “After you” turned out to be his final words. The film was in sub-titles and with music which made little sense to me but you get the idea. I learnt that, as a last resort, being polite prevents you from being barred from that club called “Casual Connections,” where I’d spent most of my social life.

“Being polite” was my last card in the pack, but this unknown lady, who shared a sense of the pleasure you could gain from a single slice of bread, offered up the promise of a new dawn and hinted that something deeper was still possible. Suddenly I was saying, “Are you married or cohabiting with a fellow human being, or possibly a hamster or a cat, with whom you share wardrobe space and a similar taste in television programmes?” Alright I agree the “Hamster or cat” bit might have been a little bit “Out there”, but that’s what comes from being a failed lawyer among other things. 

By now she was backing away from the till, and saying “One pound ninety-eight,” which was the price of this hallowed product. I said nothing more to her but offered up the correct change. At that point the manager, possibly seeing her discomfort, walked over and said, looking at her, “Is everything alright here,” and I said, “Fine, I was just reminding her that we didn’t know each other.” before turning to leave the shop. I wonder if they sell this bread anywhere else.

A Step Too Far

Things went slightly wrong at the wake for Geoff Weasley, and there are rumours I may have had something to do with it. His wife, or should we now be saying widow, Catherine, is a more than attractive women with a sympathetic and normally sunny outlook on life although, following her husband’s death in a car accident she’s seems a little out of sorts.

Well, putting my cards on the table, I am happy to state that I’ve got quite a “thing” for Catherine, always have had, and it affected me to see her “Off her game” if you follow me so I decided to pitch in and see if I could do something to raise her morale by offering her a future with promise in it. I walked up to her and said, “How many days have you scheduled in for the mourning process.”

To be fair, she looked a bit startled and said in her turn, “What’s it to you?” and I said, “I am going to propose to you as soon as the mourning period is over, and I was just wondering how long that would be.” People can be a little unpredictable but taking that into account I was still surprised when she burst into tears and then her brother, who was standing by her side when I started the conversation, went a bit red in the face and said, “You stupid B^&*^&d” and grabbed my arm in a manner bordering on aggressive.

Of course, with Catherine crying, people came over and someone asked, “What’s upset her” and my possible future brother-in-law said, “This stupid P%^$k just asked my sister to marry him” which in turn was heard by most of the room on account of the fact that he saw the need to shout rather than speak, which I thought was unnecessary.

Catherine seemed even more upset by his remark and her behaviour was becoming hysterical which made everyone in the room gather round us.

I’m one of those pedantic sorts who likes to keep his facts polished and in the right order so, in order to clarify the matter, I said, “I did not propose to her. I merely asked how long she would be in mourning so I could schedule in my marriage proposal at the correct time.”

Frank, who runs the pub where the event was held, came over and his face had also gone red. “That’s it. You’re banned.” He said, “I don’t want to see you in here again” which I thought a bit extreme unless, of course, he also has a bit of a thing for Catherine and didn’t like to see a rival coming up on the fence within yards of the finishing line so to speak.

Just to emphasise that I was the front-runner, I told him, “We’d be quite likely to hold our reception here as long as you manage to mind your P’s and Q’s” which I thought pretty conciliatory in the circumstances, because we all like a bit of extra business, but suddenly there was a lot of jostling and I found myself outside the pub door, which was firmly shut in my face leaving me unable to continue the conversation.

Perhaps I’ll have to start going to church again now, because I know she is a regular attendee and the vicar is already married which cuts back the serious opposition, although there is a time and place for everything and I’m not sure proposing to her in church would be the right thing. What do you think?

A Question Of Circumstances

Her stare challenged everything in sight: late twenties and a shaper of events, the answer to many situations lay filed in her experiences: she feared little but some aspects of emotion, and looked on those she knew as reference points. Unmarried and unattached, six years spent with a school-time love now consigned to memory, she had determined, if nothing else, that life was a matter of furnishings and dress.

All her friends were relatives, and home a concept more than place: protected by ability and a career of some significance she had moved to a new property. She had not met the owners yet, and there was no reason she would do so.

Thus the knock on her door was unexpected, and opened more from habit than intent to reveal a boy of around six looking up at her with an enquiring face. “Do you play the piano miss” he asked as if she already knew his name, and before she could control herself, she said “Yes” because music was a dormant passion in her life. “We’ve just got one from my gran, she’s dead” he told her by way of explanation, adding “Come and see”

Why she did we cannot say but there was an openness about him she could not bruise so she followed him to the flat below where , sure enough, a battered upright stood against the wall, lid raised and keyboard in full view. His mother poked her head round the kitchen door, a bit older than herself but not by much, and clearly on a different path and warm.

Both looked at her expectantly, uneasily it must be said, as she sat down and played one of her own compositions, written before her father lost his way and her parental home became a mausoleum. The boy started dancing by her stool and his mother said, “That’s really good” and so it may have been, but written in another time, when flowers bloomed and angels still wore white.

“What do you do?” the mother asked, and she replied, “I am a retail analyst for a large department store.” The mother was impressed, though in a baffled way. “But what about the music?” she asked and the young boy said, “Play some more,” but she replied, “I must get on, I’m sure you understand” and the mother said “Of course” and the boy just shook his head, for he was from that gentle place where flowers bloom and angels still wore white.

The Perfect Break

You could call it a meeting of minds: a moment when two souls found in each other’s company that a complex world could become simple, but that was all it was and everything. It was a holiday romance, a trick of circumstance where a lady taking a solitary vacation, “She needed a break to catch her breath,” and I, a cynical journalist who was trying to regain belief, collided through my enduring clumsiness: I spilled my coffee on her dress.

Away from there, we both had busy lives, lived out on different continents, and yet for much of the holiday “Paradise” seemed all there was. Nothing is permanent is it? Not in any life, moment or transient sense of tranquillity but for this brief time the everyday withdrew, granting us a glimpse of untouched majesties.

After our last evening meal and a couple of soothing drinks, as had become our habit, we moved to the front of the boat, stretching out beside each other so we could stare up at the sky and the amazing blanket of stars visible above us: everything was pristine, clear and deep. Like the sea beneath us, the sky above seemed infinite, and we, like innocents, lay beneath its stillness. News had ceased to matter and only the gentle rocking of the boat spoke of a moving world.

Beyond the reach of gossip we lay wrapped in this velvet and wondrous infinity and she moved and touched my hand. She shone for me then and I dared to think she might love me more openly: soon the warmth coaxed us to sleep awhile on the deck: our fingers played together like children, talking in unwritten code. It was the nearest I would get to being at peace with myself and my circumstance.

We were two people, freed to explore the whimsies of life in a place known only to ourselves, without anxiety and shielded from daily concerns by bonds of unspoken intensity. Silence was ours to treasure, only broken when she said “Do you have a photograph of yourself?” and I said “No” “OK. Let me take one then” she said and lifting up her camera.

Against the rules I asked her “Nothing to worry about is there. Nothing I can help you with,” and she said “No.” We drank some more in silence, tonic water mainly, she didn’t much like alcohol, and then she said. “Off to bed.”

“Before you go” I said, “May I take your picture; sometime in the future I might want company.” Some light came on within her as she waited for me to capture her image, then we went our separate ways. It was a romance built on the denial of intimacy, and yet for all that, as my head lay on the pillow, I fell into that special sleep which only happiness bestows. Even now she remains the spring of the simplest and most noble emotions I ever experienced.

Shortly after breakfast with the ship now moored in harbour, and as we finished a snack of toast and eggs a waiter arrived to say her taxi was waiting. She rose to leave: I knew she disliked drama and suppressed it as much as possible, though her eyes said everything, and so, as she stepped back from the table, she smiled and said, “Don’t break anything” which was our secret joke. She walked off then, as if it were the start of a normal day: I never saw or heard from her again. Did I mention she was married?