Charlotte Street (39 page)

He said all that liked he’d practised it. Like he’d rehearsed the reasons at home until he could say them with no passion so that maybe they’d lose their meaning. Or maybe this was his story, the one he’d decided on, and he was sticking to it. I turned my head to look at him but still he stared straight ahead.

‘There were these cameras on the tables, these …’

‘Disposables?’

‘Disposables, yes. The idea was we’d all take pictures of each other and hand them in at the end. Nice way of letting the photographer go home early and saving a few quid. Anyway, I grabbed it and took a photo of us together. And then she wanted to dance. Some AC/DC thing came on; she said it was the best song ever written or something.’

I smiled.

‘“Back in Black”?’

He looked at me, askance.

‘I’m really not sure. I told her I hated it but she made me get up. And then later she looked at me and, I don’t know, it just felt right.’

God. I’d been looking at the photos. At the moments. I’d ignored the moments
after
each one – the moments I couldn’t see. Now I resented them, slightly: partly because they’d surprised me and partly because those moments belonged to Damien and not me.

‘So that was the beginning. That was how it started. Two people at a wedding.’

‘What did you chat about?’ I asked, and Damien stared at me.

‘Did you follow me that day?’ he said. ‘Did you follow me into the restaurant?’

‘I did.’

‘And you think that’s acceptable?’

I imagine I looked a little ashamed here. It’s hard to justify following someone. Difficult to admit everything started on a lie, or that trust was misplaced and abused.

We took a second; Damien reset.

‘I have a place in Bermondsey,’ he said. ‘We were there our first weekend together. It’s in an old factory, and—’

He paused.

‘But then you know all this.’

I smiled, embarrassed.

‘So anyway, we got talking about the world. I’d just been to Sarajevo for the film festival; she said she’d always wanted to go. She’d never really travelled. Grew up on a farm.’

A farm!

‘I told her about Bosnia … Croatia. She said they sounded incredible. I said maybe one day I’d take her to places like that. You know? Said I’d show her the world. We talked about that a lot.’

‘Sounds … like something people say,’ I said, and I shook my head. This seemed to jar with Damien, and I could understand why. He wasn’t used to his own weaknesses, exposed.

Quickly, he continued: ‘Then, we talked for a couple more hours, we kissed, I texted her, we met up, met up a
lot
, I broke her heart, I’m a dick, and that’s that.’

He clapped his hands to his knees and stood.

‘So there you go,’ he said. ‘That was your question answered, with a couple of juicy extras thrown in for free.’

‘It was big of you to meet with me,’ I said, and he nodded a no-thanks-necessary.

As he wrapped his possibly cashmere scarf round his neck again, he stopped and looked me in the eye.

‘So now you tell
me
something …’

In a flash it was clear this was why he’d come. He was curious, just like me.

‘Why did you want to do this? I mean, I thought maybe you were her brother, or a jealous ex, or perhaps her new bloke intent on, I dunno, revenge or extortion or blackmail or something?’

‘I met her one night on Charlotte Street,’ I said. ‘I found her camera afterwards. And I want to give it back to her.’

Damien looked up at the sky, laughed.

‘So you just fancy her?’

He laughed again. A colder laugh this time.

‘It’s … it’s difficult to explain … it’s …’

‘That’s sweet. It’s deliciously sad and pathetic and if you don’t mind my saying so, odd, too, but it’s sweet. Why can’t you just go to a bar? Or a wedding? Better still, a wedding she’s at. She seems up for it at weddings.’

I didn’t like this. He was trying to ruin it. Ruin her. He saw that I could see what he was doing.

‘Look, we didn’t end on good terms. For obvious reasons. And she changed her number, otherwise—’

He shrugged.

‘Email?’ I tried.

He shook his head and brought something out from his pocket.

‘Can I keep this?’ he said. It was the photo he’d taken from me that day.

Of course, I kept thinking. She was yours. And you took the shot!

But instead, I said, ‘It’s not really mine to give.’

Damien held the photo. He seemed to be considering what to do: whether to hand it over or just shove it back in his pocket.

‘Pub in Finchley,’ he said. ‘The Adelaide. That’s where this was taken. That was kind of our thing.’

‘Pubs?’

He handed it back, shook off whatever he was about to say, and looked at me with disdain.

‘No, not pubs.’

I shrugged. I didn’t get it.

‘There’s something about you,’ he said, ‘that makes this acceptable. But you’re on thin ice here, you know that, right?’

I didn’t know what to say. So I said, ‘I like beginnings. I like the way things start. Because if they start well enough they can see you through to the end.’

‘But
everything
ends,’ said Damien.

Then, as collected himself together, got ready to go: ‘Why wouldn’t you give me the photo?’

‘I told you – it’s not mine to give.’

‘You didn’t give it back because this isn’t over for you,’ he said. ‘You’re not moving on. You haven’t.’

I could’ve watched him as he left, now, assured this had been dealt with, it was finished, it would not come back to haunt him. But there was something else – one little thing – that had been bothering me. And as he turned away and looked at the ground it just came out.

‘You said you don’t drive,’ I blurted, clumsily, ‘but in one of the pictures, there’s this car, and I sort of assumed—’

‘Facel Vega,’ he smiled. ‘Not mine.
Really
not mine. Slightly insulted you might think it was mine, actually.’

‘It’s a good car,’ I tried, but as you know, my experience is mainly limited to a Nissan Cherry covered in Calippos, plus no one on
Top Gear
ever calls anything ‘good’; you have to compare cars to horses, or tits.

‘No, I’m afraid I’ve been off the road for a little while. I was a little “happy” in my driving. Tried pleading Exceptional Hardship, but even with four PRCAs I couldn’t manage it.’

I pretended to know what that meant.

‘That big old thing is hers. It was her dad’s. She couldn’t let it go. She said it would be like letting him go.’

Now Damien did walk off, showing me his back, striding towards the edge of the park. But by the gates, he stopped, and thought for a second. I watched as he did, unsure of what I was supposed to do, suddenly aware I had no idea what to do with my arms, and then he turned, and cupped his hands around his mouth.

‘Jason!’ he called out. ‘Her name’s
Shona
!’

And then, with a nod, he returned to his world, and I remained in mine. And that would be the last time I would ever see Damien Anders Laskin.

‘The chakata fruit on the ground belongs to all, but the one on the tree is for she who can climb.’

Traditional Shona Tribe proverb, Zimbabwe

The last time I ever saw him, I had this idea.

It’s one that won’t go away. I’ve resisted telling you, because I fear it makes me sound pathetic and weedy. I watched that Julia Roberts film where she eats, prays and loves (I forget its name) and I’m a little terrified of turning into her.

At first I thought all it might take is a change in career. A teacher, maybe.
That’s
a job. That was Dad’s job.

Then I thought maybe I need to make my mark somehow and do something even more out of the ordinary. Have you heard of Phyllis Pearsall? She was very brilliant. In the 1920s and 30s she used to get up every day at 5 a.m. and go for an eighteen-mile walk through the streets of London, taking precise notes of where everything was and then stashing 23,000 individual street names in a shoebox under her bed.

I realise that you’re probably thinking she sounds mentally ill.

But that was the first London A-Z, and even though everyone she approached completely refused to publish it, she used to walk around with a wheelbarrow delivering
copies to all the WH Smiths. She only died in 1996, by which time she’d sold millions of editions and become pretty much my favourite Londoner ever. Do you ever feel like you’re not really
using
your life, the way someone like Phyllis Pearsall did? Like the everyday is too everyday and it’s time for the magic?

All of which has made me think: I want to make the thing that nearly happened happen.

For myself this time.

I don’t want to just rely on someone else to make it happen for me, because really, that’s how I got into this mess.

And I honestly think I can make this work.

I was thinking about it all last night and I woke up this morning thinking about it. All day I’ve thought about it and there comes a time when really, you should stop thinking about it, because really, you could be hit by a bus tomorrow. Instead, you should start making it happen.

Perhaps the first step is just deciding to.

Sx

I walked into the staff room and there he was, Mr Willis, holding court with his favourite red mug.

I had formed a childish insistence on calling everyone by their teacher names. It was rebellion by formality.

‘Course, it was a breakdown, you see,’ he was saying. ‘Couldn’t deal with it, but you know, this is an
inner city school
. There was a
Panorama
on …’

I caught Mrs Woollacombe’s eye and instinctively she went for her butterfly brooch, running her fingers over its wings for comfort. Her eyes darted nervously around to see who else had noticed me standing self-consciously in the doorway.

‘Everyone thinks we can do something better, but of course, when it came to it, he—’

‘Jason!’ said Miss Pitt (BSc) loudly and obviously, and I could see the others – the lab technician whose name I could never remember, and Mr Peterson, fresh from Loughborough and eager to revolutionise the world of barely-funded PE – trying to work out how they were going to get out of this one.

‘It wasn’t a breakdown,’ I said, in as friendly way as I could, although it was, of course, it undeniably was. ‘It was just a shock to the system. Which I needed, I think.’

‘Jason, no,’ said Mr Willis, spinning around, guilty and anxious. ‘I was just saying how hard it must be to—’

‘Yes, how hard it must be,’ said Mrs Woollacombe. ‘Particularly when you set out to do something and you failed at that, too. I mean, not failed, because you didn’t “fail”, but—’

‘It’s fine, everyone. It’s all fine.’

I sat down on the sofa, surrounded by years of coffee rings and sandwich stains. If the police ever did a DNA test on this sofa it would be ninety per cent disappointment.

‘So what else is going on?’ I said, lightly.

‘Gary’s sick again.’

‘Mr Dodd? Have you tried Ladbrokes?’

Good-natured laughter.

See? I could make jokes. I wasn’t going to have another breakdown, everyone! Because that’s where that conversation had been heading, hadn’t it? I’m a fully-functioning member of the team!

‘Well, it just means we’ve got to draw straws, you see,’ said Mrs Woollacombe, rolling her eyes.

‘Straws for what?’ I said.

‘Friday.’

‘What’s Friday?’

Here’s an interesting fact to share with your friends. I found it on the Internet, while Googling furiously the second I got home from Postman’s Park.

Shona is a Scottish form of Joan.

Okay, fair enough, not interesting exactly. But true.

So maybe she was Scottish. Maybe she grew up on a Scottish farm in Scotland, with Scottish people and a Scottish name.

Shona is also the name of a people and a language of Zimbabwe, but it seemed less likely she was Zimbabwean.

There’s the island of Eilean Shona, too, just off the West Coast of Scotland, with a population of just two, making it either the most romantic or depressing place possible.

And these were talking points, after all, in case I should bump into her one night. I nearly had, after all.

The Facel Vega. The night I saw it leaving the NCP on Poland Street and ducked out the way. If I’d looked closer, if I’d
been braver
…

Anyway, ‘Hey, isn’t Shona the name of a Zimbabwean people and language?’ I could finally say, if I did see her again, tapping the tobacco out of my pipe and looking urbane and sophisticated as I sat down beside her, sliding her Tango out of my way, uninvited but clearly welcome.

‘Yes,’ she would purr, in her soft Scottish brogue, perhaps blushing (nearly) imperceptibly at the confidence of a very slightly older man with a pipe, avoiding my eye lest she give too much away. ‘Indeed it is the language and name of the proud Shona folk, with whom I studied during my gap year and came to know as a wise and gracious people, as we fought side-by-side to vanquish the Western developers intent on their destruction.’

I would look unimpressed.

‘Does it not also mean “sweet” in the language of the Bengal?’ I would add, staring into the middle-distance, aloof, unattainable,
fascinating
, and she would lean forward, her chin on her hands, and say, ‘I did not know that …’

And then I’d tell her about my many cats, and she’d squeal, because she fucking
loves
cats.

It was weird, knowing her name. I mean, I always knew she’d probably have one. I don’t know anybody who doesn’t, and even if I did, I wouldn’t be able to name them.

But now that I knew what it was … she’d become real to me. Not just a girl in a moment. But a girl who right
this
moment
was
somewhere,
doing
something.

Damien had talked about her with affection and regret. Two things you wouldn’t do if she’d been a horrible person, or selfish, short-tempered, angry, arrogant, belligerent, wilful or cold. He’d talked about her like the one who’d got away, or the one he’d always regret; the one he’d never mean harm to.