Sunday, January 01, 2006

30 :

Over the weeks, slowly we fell in love. We didn’t want to. We tried not to. We were both shy. Scared. Fearful of letting down the defences. We feared the greatest thing we could ever have in our lives, because it could also be the worst thing in our lives. And we knew not which way the chips would fall. A chance that the dice could fall either way. Risk was always part of the game.

But there were times we built together. Futures. Mythologies. The names of future children were mentally formed in our minds, but these thoughts went unspoken for the fear.

Fear of everything falling apart, as often it does as soon as it is vocalised.

We drove down to the sea one summer day. It was the best day of my life. As far as summer days went it was disappointing. Cold, biting wind and occasional sleet.

But it was when I was happiest.

Happiness can last only a second, and then there’s the moment when you realise that you are happy, then that bubble bursts. I’d forgotten I was happy, because knowing that you are happy means the knowledge is infected by the acknowledgement of unhappiness. There is no love without hate. No joy without pain. No night without day. No fish without chips.

We parked on the seafront, next to a pebbled beach and some bungalows. Next to some beachside huts and a small, abandoned, pier. A hulk of steel, abandoned, burnt out, falling slowly into the sea. Askeleton of rust. We had to drive for a mile before we found a parking space. Sandwiched between an old, yellow rusted Volkswagen and a dull blue estate.

Space. We always need more space. Its what people need. There’s the right amount of space. Rooms are always too small. Overdrafts are always too big. Sleep is always too short. We’re always trying to find the right amount of space.

We explored the alleys and the lanes. We explored the amusement arcades. She sat bored eating vinegar-drowned chips or drinking £5 chocolate milkshakes whilst I looked at obscure CD’s in back rooms, and she dragged me round bookshops to gawp at faded paperbacks and cool kitsch clothes. She opened up art books and showed me vast reproductions of works I’d never seen before.

It was beautiful. And what was most beautiful was the thought that maybe this wasn’t temporary. Maybe this wasn’’t some passing fad. Maybe this might last.

We laughed into the rain and sat The Smallest Pub In The World for an hour. 6 seats and a bar. It was quite literally, a 14 foot alley, with a toilet and a door. We sheltered from the claws of wind in its doorways before running, laughing, falling over.

The world opened up before me in a way I had never seen before. It was as if life had suddenly become widescreen : I could see the big picture. She showed me the strange statues sat on the beachfront : the 10 foot marble doughnut, the black monolith with the precise 1:4:9 dimensions. I was tempted to bang rocks together and watch the moon.

We tiptoed in the sea when the sun came out from the clouds in the late afternoon. We stumbled on the pebbles and I picked one out at random and presented it to her as if it were a jewel of the highest carat.

I fell to one knee and offered her a jellied sweet as a wedding ring. I was naturally delighted that my offer of such was graciously accepted by my princess.

Snapshots from these moments still sit on her shelf now. In frames. The two of us eating candyfloss at the amusement arcade, our hair windswept like a rock video. An out of focus multi-coloured sugar jelly sweet on her wedding finger. My hand stretched out, focus set to 1 metre, because that’s the nearest we could get and my hand didn’t quite reach that far.

We chose the tackiest thing we could find, bought it, and framed it as high art.

A postcard of a traditional British seaside scene. A man with a hankerchief on his head, his moustache distended like a Dali, an expression of shock on his face as his fat, bloated wife admires the view, and he admires a view of his own. Saucy Seaside Smut.

With that kind of repression, I’m stunned anyone in this nation ever has sex. The English aren’t concieved. We’re manufactured in a factory outside Hull, where everyone is on temporary 3 month contracts. A country of shy glances, innuendo, and unspoken agreements.

The world, with its danger, its absurdity, its stupidity, became an amusement park of the ridiculous.

Of course it wasn’t perfect. Nothing can be. Even the best day of your life comes to an end. As the angry pancake of the sun set, as we drove back, to my rented flat, to my hired hovel, a strange sense came over me. Things could never really be the same again could they? With every day hat passes, you can never go back. You can never exercise the “System restore” option and bring things back the way they were yesterday. Or last year. Or three years ago.

She parked in the garage underneath my flat whilst I opened up upstairs. In the traditional manner, I’d brewed and presented a cup of tea for her (just the way she liked it) before she’d got the lift to the fourth floor. She opened the door I’d conveniently left open, and her smile exploded.

I learnt how to drink tea for her. Scented, spiced tea : Jasmine-flavoured magic in a cup. I became a magician and learnt how to conjour up

This has become routine. Love had almost felt... normal. The way things should be. Not some novelty to be cherished, as if it were a flower that blooms for a handful of hours every decade. We had all the time in the world.

Of course, these things never last, but we hope. It’s almost as if, by recognising that everything can die, that somehow our love begins to die from the moment it was born. But we hope for more. We hope for the lie drip-fed by television, of the true, sickening, perfect love.

It doesn’t exist. But this was a very convincing imitation.

Of course, as she slipped away the next day, to get ready for the inevitable work on the Monday morning, the dream fell, but I had something more.

About 40 minutes later, the phone rang. She was crying.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home