Tollesbury Time Forever (26 page)

I couldn’t see you when you were awake, Simon. I just couldn’t. I just didn’t want to cause you any harm. They always said you were so fragile and I was scared I would make things worse.

 
It is so good to see you outside of all those circumstances. Just me and you at Mo’s on a Saturday morning is just so, well, normal.”

“Buy why now? Why are you seeing me now?”

“I spoke to one of the nurses when I got your note, one that I trust. She said she had never seen you so well. And I just couldn’t resist.”

“But I thought I had lost you, Julia.”

“Lost me?”

“Yes, lost you.”

“But you could never have lost me, Simon.”

“Why not?”

“Because you never owned me.”

I looked at her for that was all I wanted to do.

“You can’t lose what you don’t own, Simon. Love is not about possessing another but about sharing them with the world for the time you are both fortunate enough to be around. People talk of loss as if it is a tragic and terrible thing. The fact that some people feel they own others is what is tragic and terrible. People pass through your life and then pass on.

But when someone loves you, truly loves you, they will be all around you all the time, whether you know it or not.”

Julia put her red lips to her white mug and took a luscious sip.

“And now you see why I am here.”

She took my hand in her hers and traced the lines on palm with the very tip of her fingers.

BLAM is love!

Clonk.

Clonk.

Another coffee for myself and a tea for my wife. Earl Grey. Posh.

So Julia had maintained a distant vigil over me throughout all these years. Just a step away but my wife still. And there I had been, oblivious, rudderless and entirely unaware of the anchor that held me fast when I was apt to wander.

“I just didn’t realise,” I said at last. “I thought you had wanted nothing to do with me. I just didn’t realise.”

“Simon, I married you because I loved you.”

I sought refuge in the wavy stream of steam that wafted from the mug before me. Droplets formed on my forehead as I gazed into my mug. And tears were not far from my eyes.

“When I got your note, it came as quite a shock. I suppose I felt comfortable loving you from a distance, making sure, as far as I could, that you were ok. I have a friend, Penny, who is a nurse. She works at Blackwater. You must know her.”

I nodded.

“Well Penny keeps me up to date with how things are going with you, whether you are in hospital or at home, that sort of thing. All the records are kept on their computer system. I’m not sure she is really supposed to tell me as much she does, but friends are friends.”

And then Julia proceeded to tell me during the course of the morning just what she had been through since the day I stepped out of that car, feeling so sorry for myself.

And it humbled me indeed.

“Of course, it wasn’t all wonderful. I despised you before you left and I hated you when you eventually did leave. It was the drinking that I could neither stand nor understand. Whenever you woke up, or came into the house, the first thing you did was go to the fridge for beer or cider or whatever it
was you needed. Then after that, you may have said hello to me or stood limp whilst I hugged you. I lost you to alcohol, Simon, not to anything else.”

After we separated Julia had continued to live in the house in Tiptree that we had shared together. She had been barely into her early twenties and was in the position of having a young child with a learning disability, bills to pay and a wayward husband forever oscillated between the psychiatric hospital, The King’s Head and his mother's.

It was true. All of it was true.

“I’m sorry. I can see all that now. I have hardly had a drink since I left hospital this time round - well not what I would call a drink.”

Julia smiled. God, I love it when she smiles.

“I know. It’s ok. Carrie, the barmaid in The King's Head keeps me up to date. I have my little spies everywhere you know!”

Julia winked. God, I love it when she winks.

I sipped some more of my coffee.

“Carrie Caseby is my finest spy. Pretty, yet intelligent. I always say to her if she learned to cook I would probably marry her myself!”

“But, you’re married to me.”

“Yes, I am, Simon. Yes, I am.”

And there followed one of those natural pauses for which sighs were made.

“I couldn’t carry on using all my energy up hating you and despising you, so I made a conscious decision to let all that go. It was literally as simple as that. I was sitting at home one evening eating chocolate and thought to myself - ‘I’m just going to be nice to everybody I meet’. And that was that. I did favours for people expecting nothing in return. I gave money to every charity that asked it of me. I volunteered at school fetes and I picked up other people’s rubbish when they dropped it on the floor. I read a book on Buddhism and realised that what I was doing didn’t need a title. It was just about being good to people. And I guess that was what kept me in love with you, Simon.”

Mo was beginning to hover around a little and I sensed she wanted to shut up shop for the day. Julia caught her glance and nodded at her, held up her hand as if to indicate five minutes, and fixed her blue-eyed gaze back upon me.

“So, Simon. You said in your note that a change had come to you. I’m intrigued. Do tell.”

Where was I to start? Not at the beginning, surely - for that would take ages.

“Well,” I began, as the Mo Clock ticked, “I saw an old man called The Walrus and he introduced me to some children who read me stories and poems and sang me songs that taught me how I should be living my life. And since then, I have tried to live my life that way. I feel so much better for it and so much more makes sense to me. But then I realised that my life isn’t just about me. It’s about you, you and…”

“Now I need to interrupt you two lovebirds I’m afraid. Mo needs to close up and get home before the hubby wakes up to an empty plate. And that, my friends, is not a pretty sight, I can tell you!”

“Ok, Mo darling. We will leave you to it. Text me later if you want to pop round for something to eat.”

“Will do, my dear. Now hoppit, both of you!”

And so there we were outside Mo’s Café, my wife and I.

My wife and I.

The sky was blue with clouds drifting in. I could smell rain in the air and I welcomed it. At times of deep emotion, the distraction of a physical reminder that this earth is greater than anything that may be troubling me has always done me good. Rain not only cleanses, but refocuses. Well, it does me, anyway. And we all need a little cleansing and refocusing at times, don’t we?

Julia stood beside me, shorter than me yet so much greater than I could ever be. There was a serenity about her that was absolutely golden. It would not have surprised me if a crowd had gathered to behold her. She was a part of all that was around me, as deep as the breeze, as upright as an old tree, as intangible as breath itself. I guess that is what they call love.

“So, Simon,” said Julia, moving close to me now and linking an arm through mine. “I must go. I have good deeds to do, don’t you know. I need to spread a little love. But I would very much like to see you again.”

I flinched from the physical contact. I could feel a heat in my cheeks and lowered my head for refuge. I was seven years old again - Gaynor Parkinshaw had lent me a pencil and blew me a kiss. She had been a massive Cliff Richard fan. It would never have worked.

“Ok,” was all I could manage.

I could see Julia smiling, looking at me with what I can only describe as passion and it almost melted me where I stood. If I was a Fab lolly, she was the sun. And had I stood there any longer, the only clue to my presence would have been a myriad of multi-coloured sprinkles and a little wooden stick.

“Not this Monday coming, but the Monday after, meet me outside the Tollesbury Scout Hut and we shall see what we shall see.”

“Ok.”

I was numb and would have been adjudged to be perhaps the worst actor ever had anyone been around to judge that sort of thing.

“About seven?”

“Ok.”

“Oh, and one more thing,” said Julia, coquettishly, as she departed.

“Yes?”

“You should know before our second date that I have a son. His name is Robbie. And he is wonderful.”

And away she floated.

Just across from Mo’s Café is a large supermarket. I went there very infrequently but thought I needed, ironically for me, to be around people following my time with Julia. I needed to know that what had just happened with Julia was real. A crotchety old woman bumping into me with her trolley would at least save me from having to pinch myself.

So Robbie is wonderful. I never doubted it for a moment. And Monday week, Julia is going to take me to the topper-most of the popper-most, to the tippest toppest of the skyest sky - a sky of diamonds of which Robbie would surely be one, shining, shining, shining. And the sky would be my sky and it would be Robbie’s sky and it would be Julia’s sky - the only firmament that truly mattered. And the earth below would but behold us in all our lovingest majesty. A holey moley trinity.

I walked into the supermarket with a deep urge for a simple meal. I hankered for a hunk o’ bread and a chunk o’ cheese. It was the country life and I was of the country. There was a history in me now that not only bubbled within my veins but lent me a sense of pride in where I once began. I was of this land and there are some things that will always sustain. Bread and cheese - food for the poor that makes a man rich.

I didn’t need a trolley and I didn’t need a basket. One hand held the bread and the other held the cheese, as was surely intended. I struggle with queues and with crowds to the extent I have fled in many a similar situation. The unpredictability of people has always frightened me. The doctors call it paranoia and state that it is a symptom of the illness with which they adjudge me to suffer. I know what frightens me. It is the unpredictability of people. But I possessed a strength these days that had long deserted me. So I stood in the shortest queue at the head of which was a kindly looking lady wearing a blue uniform and a name badge with three stars upon it.

Beside my queue were some machines that I had never seen before. There were four screens which people touched and scanned their food through before putting money or a card in a slot and walking off with their wares. Every now and then, my three-starred checkout lady would look over forlornly as the machines did their work. Was she picturing the four colleagues whom they had replaced and with whom she used to have a fag outside? Or was she staring off into fine space, really seeing nothing at all, a perfect nothingness?

Strange days, mama - strange days indeed.

To my left, in front of one of the magical screens, there was anger. My time in hospital over the years had heightened my senses in so many ways but had truly dulled them in others. When the nurses would pull their alarms, I would shut my eyes and wait for the noise to stop. Or if I was in my room, I would snuggle under my cold covers and force myself into an absent state.

But now, in the unreal world, just a few feet from me, there was a man from whom anger seeped. He held a lemon in his left hand. His other hand was balled into a fist.

“Fucking machines,” he muttered. “Fucking machines!”

Heads in my queue turned. I knew better and just looked down and listened. There are sometimes alarms that go off that only I can hear.

“Can I help you, sir?” came a voice more stern than compassionate.

I glanced up briefly in case I was being spoken to. It was not. The short, square woman that had spoken was looking up at the man with the lemon, her hands on her hips and her five-starred name badge gleaming.

“It’s this fucking machine. I’ve put this lemon on the thing loads of times and it won’t recognise it. These fucking things are supposed to make things easier aren’t they?”

“There’s no need to use that language, sir. I’m sure the other customers really don’t want to hear it.”

The man looked around, lowering people’s heads with the power of his questioning gaze.

“Really? They don’t seem too bothered to me.”

The five-starred woman reddened.

“Put the lemon on the scanner, if you please,” she began. “That’s it. Now you see those letters down the side of the screen, press the one that says ‘L-P.’ L is for lemon.”

“Oh!” said the man. “And are those stars on your badge for spelling?”

The woman reddened further. People were staring now, as people do.

“If you could please just press the L-P button on the screen, we can get this over with. That’s it. Thank you. Now, you have one lemon, so you need to press the number one.”

“I do have one lemon. Well counted,” replied the man. “And would P stand for Patronising?”