50 Reasons to Say Goodbye (23 page)

I stand bemused; I shake my head. I vaguely consider following.

But a new feeling grips me. I just can't be bothered.

I can't be bothered fighting my way through the crowd, can't be bothered playing the cruising game, can't be bothered chatting this guy up all night in the vague hope that
…
That what? That we'll spend a night together? Or maybe a week; maybe even a year? But where's the point in that? What's the point if you just don't believe anymore?

So, I get to go home alone.

I frown at the screen.

I try to remember.

As I read the mail it slowly comes back.

Dear Mark.

Do you remember me, the sax man from Chicago?

Do you still have this email address?

If you do, I'm sorry it has been so long.

I never did get back to France last year. I got a job with a great jazz band, Chicago Belle. We toured all over the States, spent lots of time in New York and Los Angeles. How anyone can live their whole lives in such unfriendly environments, architecturally speaking, is beyond me.

I lost your email address, and then, I admit it, I forgot about you.

Anyway, it all finally came to an end, and I moved, guess where to? Nice!

I have some friends here who are putting me up. We're going to busk all summer and then see what happens.

I wonder if you're still here. I was copying my old address book into one of those new electronic things someone gave me for Christmas and I came across your email address, and I thought, I wonder?

So did you meet the man of your dreams? I didn't.

I had a relationship with a singer in New York but it all went horribly wrong. Maybe I'll tell you about it all one day.

So, if you do get this, and you are still in the south of France, then drop me a line. I suppose that's a lot of “ifs”. You probably won't even see this.

All the best.

Steve.

PS. It has been what, two years? So I've joined a more recent photo.

As you can see I've given up on any pretence of having hair.

Still some find that sexy. Don't they?

I lean towards the screen. I peer at the photo. The same familiar grin, I actually remember it from the previous photo.

I smile at the smiling face, and then I catch myself. “For God's sake,” I say out loud. “You don't even know him.”

We are sitting in a restaurant. Until today we have only swapped emails. I have seen photos of him, his full smiling lips, his brown eyes. I know the shape of his life and the shape of his mouth when he plays the sax. I have read his prose so I feel that I know some of his dreams and his terrors.

The rest I have imagined: these shoulders, the smile, the glint in the eye. And I have imagined the future, the feeling of his arms around me, the tenderness of the kiss and the joy of drinking coffee on a cold sunny morning while he plays saxophone in a nearby room.

Right now he is here, opposite me. And this time – finally – he is exactly as I imagined him.

“You are exactly as I imagined,” he says smiling coyly.

“Did you ever see that Woody Allen film?” I ask. “The one where
…
”

I'm thinking of the one where Woody goes on a blind date, where the girl opens the door, and he asks if they can get the first kiss over and done with straight away, to avoid further embarrassment.

He knows which film I mean before I say it, and he understands why I'm mentioning it. He leans towards me. “I think he was right,” he says.

I am terrified. A kiss can be so revealing, so disappointing, so grounding. A single kiss has the power to destroy a dream, but the kiss, that first kiss, is perfect.

The second is at the end of the evening.

My heart is swollen to bursting point with joy. All feelings of loneliness and abandon, all images of the meanness of existence have gone. The future holds only
promise.

Four hours of astounding, immediate intimacy, of finishing each other's phrases, of roaring with laughter at our jokes and then looking around the restaurant at the surprised faces, and then laughing again like guilty children.

We stand in the chill night air. A spring breeze is blowing in from the sea, swirling my hair and filling our nostrils with iodine, promise of distant places and voyages to come.

I want him to walk with me, to stick to me, to sleep with me, but I also want him to resist, to respect the first-ness of this meeting. It has taken that long.

He leans in; the wind is pushed from between us. His lips touch mine, slowly, gently, respectfully, and I shiver from cold and sheer pleasure. My body is a tingling mass of cells, electrified and crying out for more. We hug and I feel the broadness of his shoulders, the softness of his jacket, and he's gone. I am left alone, slightly drunk, but warm with satisfaction and hope.

The third kiss is in the park – Albert Premier. The sky is grey, the grass is wet from recent rain. He has brought a gift, a CD, Cesaria Evoria, his favourite.

It's actually my current favourite as well; I already have it but I don't tell.

I have brought sandwiches – cheese and butter in thick baguettes.

Old people sit on the other benches. I look at them and fretfully realise that their presence means that we can't kiss.

When he leans towards me I forget them though. I can feel a crumb on his bottom lip. This time these aren't just mouths kissing but orifices probing and exploring. I can taste the butter in his mouth.

I want to stay in this embrace forever but I have to return to my job. Those who have noticed are staring. One old lady is smiling at us, her head held wistfully at an angle.

At work I stare straight through my computer screen, unable to maintain focus on the text before me. A colleague asks, “What's his name?”

I feel drugged, sensual, sleepy and strokeable – like a cat on a red armchair. I smile knowingly – I am desired by Steve.

The fourth is as I get into the car, and it's just a peck on the cheek.

A peck has no pretence; it says, I know you – I can just peck you on the cheek for no reason.

We drive along the coast to Agay where we sit at the base of the crumbling red cliffs. It is icy cold and he opens his coat and wraps it around me. His thick white jumper scratches my neck and his nose nuzzles into my hair.

We sit on a comfortable mattress of dried seaweed and stare at the sea and talk the rhythmic talk of lovers, words lapping as the waves roll in, phrases rolling around like tongues kissing, searching for the truest expression of self.

I know that today is the day; we both know. My overnight bag is in the old borrowed car; his saxophone is next to it.

“I'll play for you later,” he says. “We'll stop somewhere quiet.”

He smokes a cigarette and hands it to me; sharing that cigarette strikes me as intimate and wonderful.

Clouds fight their way towards us over the Alps. I push back against his chest, fold myself deeper into his being and a tiny tear squishes from the corner of my eye. It could just be the cold wind making my eyes water, but it isn't – it's the pain of letting myself hope.

We head along the coast road; waves are crashing against the rocks. The closed seaside towns seem desolate and beautiful.

At Fréjus we head up to the A8. As we thunder along the motorway it starts to drizzle. The car feels warm and safe and a silence falls upon us. To start with
it is a comfortable silence.

We are both thinking about the joy of being able to do this – being able to simply go away for a weekend with someone and feel so comfortable.

But tension eases into the air. The rain gets harder, the light outside dimmer.

By Marseilles I am feeling walled in by a deafening vacuum. I don't know what it means. I look at him for reassurance, he turns; he smiles. He is perfect.

My hand is resting on his leg. I have to lift it when he changes gear, rupture and reconciliation over and over.

I feel sick with some unknown sentiment – I analyse it for meaning, try to compare it with stress, pre-sex nerves, love, but none of them seem to fit.

I am overcome by an inexplicable sadness, not a weary maudlin sadness but something huge and profound. I don't know where it comes from.

He fumbles behind us, pulls a cassette from his bag, and slips it into the player. He fiddles with the controls and it starts. It's Cesaria Evoria.

He leans across and kisses me, then looks back at the road. I know that I am in love, real love, like I was with Hugo, all over again. Who would have thought it possible?

I wonder if this time it can last, and decide that it actually doesn't matter.

I think of the Buddhist meditation on death I read this morning. For the first time I understand that it is possible to be ready. “Oh little bird, if now is the moment then that is fine, for I have lived and loved and I am ready.”

I stretch, I smile at him and I feel his leg tense beneath my hand.

His expression changes muscle by muscle – I see it happen; see it ripple across his face. His forehead tightens, his eyes widen, his mouth drops.

It happens so slowly. I am torn between his face, so twisted, so distorted, so beautiful, and whatever he is seeing.

I glance in front. I see the tunnel, I see the road works, I see the truck.

There is no safe place, the car is skidding now, sluing sideways, and I am emptying.

A vast chasm of death is opening before me and I feel angry and cheated and alone, but then, just before we pile into the truck, in those last few microseconds, amazingly, as though someone had added a few extra seconds to the frame just for this moment, he turns slowly away from the road, turns to look at me, and through the terror I see the love.

And strangely, it's not the love that we feel for each other, but the love for every one of them, for every hug and every kiss, for family for friends, for lovers, for every shared moment of joy. It is huge and profound and enveloping.

It sucks and tugs and pulls us in.

I climb out of my brother's car. “Will you be OK?” he asks me.

Brighton's sea sparkles with sunlight behind his head. I nod. “Sure!”

I force a smile. As I turn to face the street I hear him drive away. In truth I am possessed by terror: terror of the outside world, terror of how people other than nurses will react to the scar, the sling, the limp.

Terror of ever trying again to find happiness, of having to live when I thought it was all over and done with – of having to live with what-might-have-beens, of having to do all this again, when the end had turned out to be so easy, so relaxing, so beautiful.

I start to walk slowly up the hill towards the Laines.

It's a sunny day – blue skies, a gentle wind – but I can feel no joy. I feel scared and desperate and shaky. Tears are pushing behind my eyes, I squint to stop them coming out.

I walk past a multicoloured terrace of guesthouses.

On a balcony a carpenter works bare-chested; he is tanned and absorbed in his work. I pause for a moment to rest my leg and watch him sand the handrail.

As I start to walk again he stops and looks down at me.

He pauses, a gentle smile spreads slowly across his lips. His eyes are warm, compassionate. He winks, then slowly turns back and continues his sanding.

I gulp. I step sideways and lean on the wall beside me.

It is nothing but a smile from a stranger; but a smile is a smile, and a smile is a sign. A door has creaked open, and emotion is rushing through the crack.

Tears roll down my cheeks.

And I realise that I might be OK after all.

I don't know how I ended up in Brighton; I'm in a permanent state of surprise about it. Of course I know the events that took place, I remember the accident – or rather I remember the last time Steve looked into my eyes – before the grinding screeching wiped it all out. I remember it so vividly and with such a terrible aching pain that I feel as though my heart will stop every time I run the image through my mind.

As for the accident itself, I'm no longer sure what I remember or have dreamt, what I have been told or read in the newspaper clippings Owen, my brother, collected.

The headline I remember is, French M-Way Pile-Up. 27 dead, Hundreds Injured, but only one death mattered to me, and only one of the injuries. I know that could sound callous, but my heart just doesn't have space for anyone else's pain.

I know how I got from there to here as well, how I got from that unrecognisably deformed Fiat near Fréjus, to this sofa in Brighton. I know the mechanisms of humanity that dialled numbers, rushed people to the scene, cut me from the wreckage and drove us all, sirens screaming, to hospitals around the area.

Intellectually at least, I understand the unravelling of obligation, shared history and love that made Owen, my brother, leave his wife behind in Australia and fly half way around the world to sit holding my hand before scooping me up and bringing me here.

But it all seems so unexpected, so far from how things were supposed to be, that I am at a total loss to see how things will pan out, to see how things can
ever pan out again.

I had a life and a job and a new boyfriend. I was supposed to hear him play saxophone, supposed to spend a dirty weekend of sex and laughter before sitting at work on a Monday morning pretty much like any other, and trying not to fall asleep at my computer screen. That's all that was supposed to happen.

So I am surprised, and my surprise is confounded by just how familiar Brighton feels, just how like Eastbourne where I grew up, it is; by how normal it feels to be sitting in this bay window, in this seaside town and to be hearing the sash windows rattling behind me as a distant seagull screams. How obvious it seems, to be sitting here looking at Owen opposite reading The Guardian.