Coollightofday

Walking through the wood, she came across an acquaintance crying on a bench. She asked to join her, eventually asking what her tears were for. Oh you know, came the reply, the crying things. She nodded. And under a bouquet of autumn sun and shade they sat. Doing the crying thing.

I know you have escaped me. But have you escaped? I am escaped, but is still too much other left? Did it follow you as you ran? So fast. You always ran so fast. Have you escaped? I don't know if I hope you have. But I wish you hadn't escaped me.

Autumn sun after autumn rain, the leaves damp, the air still cool.

Autumn dusk after autumn day, the swans chewing feathers on the gentle canal.

Autumn love after autumn fear, curled at home alone, not knowing why.

When did our days start slipping away? When did they become my days and your days? Until they were just days belonging to neither of us, same days, packed neatly in weeks, and months. And then years.

Until they returned. Not present days, but those long past days. Returning every day.

Getting up in the morning. He'd always been rubbish at it and age had withered him. What a choice. Curling your toes, cuddling your chin under the warm, affectionate duvet; or raising your carcass to face another catalogue of unwanted tasks. A wonder he had ever got up.

He found himself difficult. Forever changing his mind, his obsessions stripping pleasure like wallpaper. He was especially moody in the mornings, the sun too low to lighten his darkened room. And then there were his pleasures. Like river crossings, soon doubling back.

There are probably only about four things that really matter. Really, really matter. But what are they? Not the things that matter today; or yesterday; and certainly not tomorrow.

But what are they? What are they?

Love wasn't complex, mystical, elusive. It was banal, mundane, obvious, like air - hot air, cold air.

Yet this was its beauty. It was inevitable, always on the tips of our tongues, the thing you wanted to shout late at night when there was no-one left to listen. I love.

Now it was over, it was as if for every minute, hour, day, week, year he had neglected their relationship, he would have to suffer an equal measure the other side. Each minute demanded its reciprocal. A quid pro quo; but one where neglect was no match for loss.

Things seemed to be reversing. Still asleep, he used to think he'd got up and got on with the day. Now, walking through the park to work, he'd started to think that he wasn't up at all, but was still asleep. He blinked against the fear, morning closing in to shut his eyes.

No-one had warned him loneliness wasn't just about being alone. He had thought he could handle it if he still loved the things he'd always loved, things before her, things during. But slowly they were deserting him, as if she was coming back unseen to take them away one by one.

She took the overnight sleeper to Inverness.
And she cried.
She drove through autumn to Cornwall best.
And she cried.
She took a late flight to Berlin West.
And she cried.
He said it would last forever.
He lied.

Places tried their best. It wasn't their fault they reminded him of her. They put on a good show in the sliding September light, the orchard scented by fallen apples, hope hiding nervously in the woods. But it was no good. Places made him unhappy. They had no chance against people.

It had been a hard day. The things that were going to be hard had been hard. The things that were easy had been hard. The unexpected things had been especially hard. But it was okay if he could collapse into her arms as the sun set.

But their sun had already set.

On his Sunday morning run he passed two young boys dressed as Batman and Robin and a dog that would not move whatever its owner said, and a neighbour who smiled from so far away. It was just the rest that was the problem. Just the rest.

His happiness reminded him of how often he was unhappy. Like the brief lifting of pain or the sight of a smile rarely seen. Happiness fought its corner well, a butterfly in the rain. But was there a guarantee it would come again?

Summer leant like a lover towards autumn, and autumn nervously took its hand, eyes anxiously looking back. But summer was a fickle lover and autumn knew sadness, the fall of leaves, the drawing in of the day; and the loneliness that is lovely as it breaks your heart.

He'd always hated getting up. As a boy, his mother would say to him: 'once you're up, you won't think about bed again'. But she was wrong. He thought about it all morning, especially in double maths, and all afternoon on the wind-wracked rugby pitch.

He loved the evenings.

She always walked away from conversations feeling uneasy. She'd said too much or not said quite the right thing. Was there some code she didn't understood?

Or did she just not fit in? Yes, maybe that was it. She didn't fit in.

But how long had it been going on? How long?

"Do you miss her every moment of every day?"

"No, of course not. There was one evening when I was reading and my eyes were hurting and I realised I had on the wrong glasses. So I read the 100 pages again with the correct glasses. I didn't miss her then."

Love Story.

He got home late. Been out for dinner, fifty miles away. So tiring. Talking was so tiring. Listening was worse. Situations were tiring. They always seemed on the edge of collapse.

But next day he awoke alive. Invigorated by unwitting, unreliable humanity.

When he pushed open the door each evening, the sofa was bare. When he reached out his hand at night, she was no longer there. When he cried out in his sleep, no-one would care.

But as his thoughts marched angrily all day long, she was his despair.

Children returning to school, eyes bright, parents waving them off, eyes glad holidays are done. Him thinking of a dormitory 50 years ago, gently sobbing under the covers in late summer light, catching the same sound from the bed next door. The shedding of tears as term began.

Though he'd been home for three days, he was unable to shake off the unfamiliarity: the cold air of morning, the busy faces crossing the street, the quiet intent of the office. And back home, the curtains he drew anxiously against impending night. Had it always been there?

Arriving home after two weeks away, he couldn't remember what it was he usually did of an evening. Until he realised that this was because he didn't do anything of an evening, nothing that lasted, made an impression. So he wandered the flat, waiting for time to travel the clock.

He ate 2500 calories for dinner. But during the 2400s he got tired. That was the thing. You got tired. Of everything. And you felt you'd be tired forever. Life would sit on your eyelids and lower them towards the earth while the late night bats flew into eternity.

Lying in bed, waiting for night's stranger than others called sleep, she had the feeling, the lifetime feeling.

She was, simultaneously, profoundly in love with life; and profoundly unhappy with what it was doing to her.

You've got to admire 'worry'. Innocent in its early years, it slowly gets to grips with things, and by middle age has honed its craft such that by looming old age it has no peers, no distractions. It is pure. And rests on the lips of every dying breath.

Walking out the house at midnight, he saw a hedgehog dash the road towards next door's driveway.

"Don't go in there", he said to the hedgehog, "come round mine. I have a little risotto left. We can sit quietly together & not think about tomorrow."

The hedgehog seemed to pause.

My heart isn't broken, he thought. No way. It is in robust health. It lodges in my throat so I cannot swallow, reverberates in my ears until I want to scream, blinds my eyes on sun tired August nights. No, nothing broken. Everything intact. Overwhelmingly intact.