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Cinders

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Marylebone Platform 5: Departure

It was Jane that they called. He had listed her as the emergency contact; she wasn’t sure whether it was out of habit, some muscle memory from when they were married, or because there wasn’t anyone else. Nobody that had stuck around at least. 

She’d known that he was having the surgery. He’d asked to meet up and she’d agreed to a coffee at 31 Below, listened as he’d talked about things she didn’t really understand; enlarged prostate, strictures, bladder neck incisions. He’d made light of it at first – pretty sexy, right? – but she knew him well enough, behind the bullish bluster and bravado, to see that he was scared. And alone. That part was also unsaid but she sensed it and realised that he was trying to draw her into this, trying to lean on what they were before to help him get through it. 

They had argued. Paul had told her that the surgery meant that he wouldn’t be able to have children. Some more medial jargon she didn’t understand. At first she thought that he was expressing some remorse about the thing he’d always denied her – or, at the very least, the thing they’d never been able to agree on. It’s not the right time. I’m not sure if I’m ready. It’ll change our lives so much. Then he said it. I always thought I’d be a dad and now I won’t. It wasn’t remorse for what they might have lost, just regret for something denied to him alone, something he could have had with her but had always pushed away. 

She had wanted to scream at him. She sat stirring a spoon in her coffee, watching frothed milk spin around the cup until the urge to yell incoherently at him subsided, her anger dissipating in the swirling foam. “Why are you telling me this, Paul?”, she said finally.

“I thought you should know. I thought I owed you that,” he said.

“You owed me that?” Jane was incredulous. “Of all the things you might owe me, Paul, this is really the least of them.” He started to try to speak but Jane continued, cutting across him. “You owed me not fucking some old college friend at The Landmark on a regular basis. The fucking Landmark. Was she really that classy? Couldn’t you have taken her to the King’s Cross Premier Inn and saved some money on your infidelity? It might have been better for her. They have a good night guarantee and I can’t believe you would be as reliable as them in that promise.” Her voice was raised slightly now but controlled. A couple on the next table had paused their conversation, listening but pretending not to listen.

“Jane, just let me…”

“No, Paul, I won’t just let you. You owed me ten years of marriage and a series of broken promises about having a child. You owed me missed appointments at the IVF clinic. You owed me not being too proud to wank into a pot so they could test whether it was you or me that was ‘the problem’. So you don’t get to call me out of the blue and start acting all ‘poor me’ because you’ve got to have an op that’s going to stop your juices flowing.”

“It’s retrograde…”

“You’re not listening. I don’t care what it is. I’m sorry you have to have whatever it is that you have to have but I don’t really care. I’m done caring about you – for you – Paul and I want no part of this, whatever this is supposed to be.” Jane had left him sitting there, leaving the cafe in a rush, seat scraped back across the floor, coat flung on as she walked out. The chill of the outside air had felt like a slap around her face as she pulled open the door and her anger cooled as quickly as it had risen, leaving her feeling numb, suddenly exposed. She paused in the doorway. What did he want from her? She left without looking back.

The hospital was off Wellbeck Street. Jane thought about hailing a cab but it would be jammed at this time of day and she wasn’t far from Picadilly Circus so she jostled her way through the tourist throng to the tube station. As she came up the escalators at Marylebone she was briefly overwhelmed with a flood of memories, a sudden sense of anxiety which surprised her. She passed the flower stall which had been their meeting place in the early days, when everything was blooming, and slowed slightly, thought about stopping to pick up some tulips. Those were the ones he’d always picked out for her. It’s urgent, Mrs Roberts, your husband is in the high dependancy unit and we’d strongly advise you to come. She quickened her pace and left the station.

The hospital reception was calm and quiet, a smiling woman, glassed pushed back onto her forehead, looked up from a computer as Jane approached. She listened as Jane explained why she was there, gradually allowing the smile to soften on her face to something more neutral. She picked up a phone and spoke quickly, reassured Jane that someone would be right down to take care of her. After a few minutes a nurse arrived and took Jane up to a different floor, briskly escorting her down a corridor until they reached a set of signs for high dependency and intensive care.She ushered Jane into a small waiting room, pale pastel shades, a box of tissues discretely placed on a side table, and said that someone would come soon. They would keep her updated. Please wait.

Jane closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on her breathing, forced her focus to the steady rise and fall of her chest and the sensation of air entering and leaving her body. She curled her toes in her shoes as if she was forcing them into the floor, felt the shape of the chair support her body, tried to notice all the places where it came into contact with her. Each time she took her attention away from the simple physicality of the chair her mind raced away.

It raced back through a series of memories of their time together; a slide show of moments set on fast forward, images tripping over themselves, just snap shots suggesting the essence of them. Running for the last train, him bounding on to it and wedging the door open so she could duck under his arm. Drinking cocktails in Soho, watching a hen party dance on the tables, Paul eventually joining them, laughing as they draped a feather boa around his neck. Walking through Regent’s Park in the Spring, late afternoon, arm in arm, listening to him talk about cricket. Walking the steps at the Town Hall on their wedding day, pretending not to notice a group of her friends scuttling in just before her having misjudged how long they’d stayed in the pub. Walking the aisle, the ridiculous wicket themed aisle, and seeing him standing at the other end, his eyes never leaving her as she walked down towards him. The flat in Willesden. Later, the house in a village, the one with the good schools they’d never need.

She gripped the arms of the chair, dug her nails into the fabric, stilled her thoughts again. If her mind raced she tried to keep it on the good stuff but each thread, when pulled, unravelled just as they had unravelled in the end. The thread she pulled the most ran back to the night she had realised, the night her stupidity had been revealed. He’d been away and, unusually, had picked up when she’d called him. They’d been rowing a lot recently so maybe he felt bad or maybe he was worried that she’d start to suspect. She could hear a noise in the background on the call, almost like static. I’m just running a shower. Just freshening up before meal with the team. When she thought about it later she figured that maybe he’d answered because he’d assumed that he was safe, his secret stashed in the shower, out of danger. But his secret, unknowingly, disclosed herself. Are you coming in to join me? Female voice. Flirtatious. Some laughter. Called loud enough to be heard over the falling water and called loud enough to be heard down the receiver of a phone.  

It was the consultant that came, flanked by the nurse that had brought her up before, holding a glass of water. He was in pale blue scrubs but had pulled the cap off his head and was holding it in one hand, playing it between his fingers and thumb. He introduced himself but Jane didn’t register the name, she was fixated on the glass of water and the restless motion of his fingers. Why would they bring a glass of water? He was speaking quietly but firmly, precisely. She caught him say “as his wife” and only then looked up.

“We split up,” she said, sadly. “We’re separated. Paul’s not my husband anymore, doctor. I don’t know… I don’t really understand why I’m here.”

“I’m so sorry, Mrs Roberts,” he said. “He has listed you as his wife in all his documentation. Including,” he paused. “Including as his next of kin.”

Jane looked at him again. “What are you saying?”

“I’m sorry but there was a complication in the surgery. Your husband, your ex-husband, is dead.”

Part five of the Marylebone set of stories. One to go. Obviously no happy ending for Paul but let’s see what awaits Jane.

This was another piece in my 26,000 words for Great Ormond Street Hospital (not the hospital referenced in this story) during July ’23. Fundraising details here.

Ashes

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Marylebone Platform 1: Arrival & Departure

The train slowed and stopped. Jane closed her eyes, hand resting on the bag on the seat next to her, listening as the driver announced that they were being held outside the station for a few minutes whilst he waited for a platform to clear. She had promised that she would do this for him. She had promised and she would fulfil that promise despite how it had all turned out. Despite the divorce, despite the deceit, despite the drift and damage of their separation. It was more than he deserved but she had long since concluded that she had been more than he deserved. She ran her hand across the top of the bag that contained the ashes of her dead ex-husband.

Paul had always loved cricket. Promise me, if I go first, promise me that you’ll scatter my ashes at Lord’s. That had been this thing she’d signed up to. All their other promises to each other had been peeled away over the years, exposed as empty, but she could still hold true to this one. She had never really understood the appeal, if she was honest. She’d even misunderstood when he’d first asked her, assuming he was looking for some kind of salvation and wanted to go to Lourdes. He’d laughed at her and asked why she thought he’d believe in all that musty old religious nonsense. She’d silently weighed pointing out that the MCC seemed to have more than its share of musty nonsense in its own rituals and uniforms and adherence to baffling, unwritten codes and principle, but had decided the resulting argument wasn’t worth it. He took all of that stuff very seriously and didn’t appreciate it when she poked fun at it. He hadn’t spoken to her for several hours that time he tried to explain field positions to her and she kept referring to silly point as what’s-the-point and suggested that it’d be more fun if the positions were more literal. People in the slips would have to wear slips, people at gully would have to be in a gully. She was about to explain how deep extra cover would work when he stormed out of the room shouting that she wasn’t taking it seriously.

She felt now that’d she’d indulged it more than she should. If she’d known how it would play out – which, in cricketing terms, was very much a rain-stopped-play conclusion – then she would’ve said no to more things. When they got married he’d arranged for wickets to be placed at either end of the aisle and all of the ushers were dressed in their best whites. She had half expected to arrive to see him waiting, padded up, bat in hand, as if she was going to send down a yorker, try to sneak one under him for a surprise dismissal. All the surprises were to come though. And they were all to come from him.

He had saved the rest of the cricket references for his speech. The importance of a long partnership at the crease, how she was a great catch, how he’d been bowled over, hit for six, that kind of thing. At the time she had enjoyed it, laughing along with the rest of their family and friends. It was genuine. He had loved her, she was sure that part was real. The opening partnership was strong and secure but it had been a shock how quickly their middle order had collapsed. 

The train moved forwards again, its initial lurch prompting Jane to open her eyes. She watched a departing train pass on the adjacent track, saw her face, translucent, appear momentarily in the glass as a reflection. She glanced at her phone, checked how she looked using the camera as a makeshift mirror. There were a couple of strands of grey hair that she made a mental note to sort out but, save some fine lines across her forehead, she thought time had been kind. Smiling she wondered if she’d left one of the filters on the camera and she was kidding herself but, after checking, was reassured that the face staring back at her wasn’t subject to any technological support or softening. Could pass for thirty two. Okay, maybe thirty five. Her real age didn’t bother her other than the sense that biology was going to eventually time her out of the thing that she’d always wanted from Paul; the thing that he had stubbornly resisted. Is it too late at forty one?

She left the train and strode, almost marched, down platform one as if she wanted to dispense with this final promise as quickly as possible. There were too many memories around Marylebone and she didn’t want to be blindsided by nostalgia, didn’t want to be reminded of the better parts of him, of them together. She was done with regret and just wanted it to be done. Lift a finger in the air, declare him out. It was busy on the station, there was a crowd milling around the departure boards waiting for platform confirmations and a steady ebb and flow from the mainline concourse through to the tube barriers. She didn’t pause. Paul had always loved this station; he’d stand and stare at the vaulted roof, sunlight streaming through the glass panels picking out the cherry red pillars until she’d pull at his arm, impatiently, and encourage him to move. They had met here but thinking about that served no purpose now. 

Outside the station it was quieter and she walked up past the small park in Dorset Square. She vaguely remembered that there might be a shorter route the other way, picking through backstreets, but she didn’t properly remember it and decided to take the main road. Wandering aimlessly around these streets was another thing they had done together. Back then she could afford to get lost with him, now she was on her own and knew exactly where she wanted to go. The traffic noise rose from a low, intermittent thrum to a constant pulse as she turned left onto Gloucester Place. Black cabs passed on both sides of the street and she momentarily considered flagging one down to save time. She checked her phone again. It was half one and her guided tour was booked for two so she’d just be waiting around at the ground if she didn’t walk.

The tour was something Paul had always wanted them to do together but she had always refused, it had seemed a waste of money on something that held no interest for her. Well, now we are going to take the tour. Sit in the dressing rooms. See the Ashes urn. Walk through the Long Room. Step on to the outfield. She hadn’t really thought through how she would manage the scattering. How or where. The place he would have liked, she assumed, would have been on the pitch itself but she didn’t imagine that she’d be allowed to just pull out her own makeshift ashes urn and start sprinkling powdery remains everywhere. Even powdery remains that really, really liked cricket. So where? The closer she got to the ground the more it bothered her. Perhaps this whole idea, like so many of his ideas, was ridiculous and she should have just discretely scattered him at the local cricket club. There was a large oak tree by the boundary rope that would have been perfect if you overlooked the fact that it was also quite a popular spot for dog’s to relieve themselves. Actually that makes it even more perfect.

Perhaps it would be enough for him to be close to the ground? Within the vicinity of cricket’s spiritual home, if not entirely inside it. She was at the entrance now, wrought iron gates between stone pillars. She paused to read an inscription next to the gate: “To the memory of William Gilbert Grace. The great cricketer. 1848-1915. These gates were erected: The MCC and other friends and admirers.” She composed a brief accompanying eulogy to Paul in her head: “To the memory of Paul James Roberts. The great deceiver. 1982-2023. There’ll be no gates for you, no admirers, and we’re no longer friends.” It was longer than he deserved. “Paul. Goodbye you unfaithful bastard.” Better.

Jane took the tour. She had paid for it and decided that it might be interesting. They hadn’t come here together so there was no danger of any fond, residual memories spinning her emotional compass away from its set position of resenting him and their time together. She knew, in reality, it was more complicated than that but, for today, just wanted the surety in casting him as the villain. She hadn’t been surprised that there was a bag check, she’d had enough savvy to predict that and prepare. Paul had been decanted into a thermos flask for his final journey. The security guard had seemed happy enough to give it a brief shake and wave her through. 

She didn’t enjoy it. She was out numbered by middle aged men, all of whom had decided to wear chunky cricket jumpers over an assorted assemblage of pastel shaded polo shirts. Most of them had a lot to say about the ground, the current state of English cricket, the current state of the country, and all spent too much time laughing at their own jokes. She kept quiet and stayed towards the back of the group, looking for an opportunity to leave Paul to his final resting place. The tour had paused and the guide was gesturing up at the roof of one of the stands. Jane looked up to where he was pointing and saw a weather vane, it appeared to be a depiction of Father Time or, to Jane’s eyes, Death, removing a bail from some cricket stumps. The sun glinted off the tip of his scythe. 

Is it too late at forty one? She stared at the weather vane for a few moments, felt her heart beat quicken, a sick feeling in her stomach. She closed her eyes, felt the breeze on her face and focussed on her pulse, the chatter of the rest of the ground fading out of her hearing as she thought about her breath rising and falling in her chest. She felt still. She didn’t know the answer to her own question but she resolved to stop asking it and find out.

Jane left the tour group and, on her way out of the ground, left her bag, and Paul, behind in the toilets. He hadn’t said where at Lord’s he wanted to be and whilst she knew that an unattended bag would possibly end up being destroyed she also realised that she didn’t care anymore. She had fulfilled the last promise she would ever make him.

She checked the time. They wouldn’t see her today but she could make an appointment. She knew she could call but something in her wanted to see it again, wanted to check that it was still there. If she hurried she might be able to reach the clinic before it closed.

Next piece for July’s GOSH fundraiser – details here. I have sketched out an overall six part story for this, of which this is part one, so will see how it pans out over the next week.

Apologies to any cricket fans for abuse of terminology…

All My Friends: Richard

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I am here and it already feels like a mistake. I’d had other options this weekend. They were all good. Number one: Bodger’s stag in St Tropez, second marriage but new fiancée seemingly more open minded than the outgoing Mrs Bodger and so less likely to break down in tears at her own wedding at the reveal in the best man’s speech that her husband had paid to snort a line of coke laid out perfectly in the cleft of some stripper’s arse. Number two: invite to meet Jacinda’s parents down at Sandbanks, two days of making polite small talk with her old man about yields and the best shirt makers on Jermyn Street as the foreplay for two nights of teasing his daughter out of her perfectly pressed clothes and seeing if everyone would still make eye contact over breakfast after they’d heard their pride and joy squealing at me to go deeper, go harder, through their shockingly thin walls for such an expensive house. Number three: boss had invited me to join him for golf and then drinks at some private member’s club he belonged to, promised to fast track me in to both; I can’t stand the prick but I need his contacts and network.

It could just be the coke making me a bit paranoid but I’m not feeling much warmth from my former comrades. Even when I tell them what else I could have been up to this weekend. I stop short of suggesting they should be grateful that I’m here, it’s not like I was crass about it. I suppose it’s a little sobering for them to face into their relative failure in life, funny how we could all exit the same University at the same moment but on such different trajectories. Some of us were always headed upwards. It’s going to be a long night so I retreat to the bathroom to do another line. It will at least speed everything up and make Neil and Jon’s dreadful musical choices a bit more bearable. Will remind me what it was I saw in Clare all those years ago as well. She still looks at me like she’ll dance to my tune so I might as well salvage something from the night even if it’s just a nostalgia fuck.

The coke brings a clarity, a sharpness, to the scene. I can feel palpable resentment from Jon as I start talking to Clare just as I can practically see her sense of conflict between wanting to believe this time will be different and remembering all the times I let her down before. I thought perhaps the intervening years would have given her distance enough to see through my tricks but, instead, they seem to have offered up new opportunity. We haven’t been in touch and the space means that part of me is unknown to her now. I fill that space with the version of me she wants to hear, the version she’s secretly been carrying around for the last ten years, the version that regrets ever letting her go and has come to the realisation that she’s the great, lost love of my life. It’s so easy I almost don’t go through with it. I used to like it when it was a challenge getting her into bed.

Upstairs I realise I’ve misplaced my phone, I was fishing around for it to see if she was up for a few candid photos. She always drew the line at that when we first knew each other, said she couldn’t just turn up at Boots and ask for that set of prints. I couldn’t tell her that you didn’t go to Boots – there were places you sent those kind of pictures – as it would blow my cover, reveal me as the sort of person that did this a lot rather than the constructed person who had never done this sort of thing before but only wanted to now because it felt so special with you. Only you. I must have left my phone downstairs. It was too late to retrieve it. I could hear Clare undressing in the bedroom and I’d necked a couple of viagra tablets – the only downside of my cocaine habit was a literal downside downstairs but it was easy enough to coax some life back into the beast with a little additional pharmaceutical help. I went back into the bedroom, my fully saluting cock leading the way.

……

It wasn’t even Clare that found the body. She’d sat outside, early in the morning, for an hour or so until Neil had woken up on the sofa. The two of them had talked for a while, half heartedly clearing up the detritus from the night before. Joanna had joined them, then Jon, then Lizzie, and finally Jason, nursing a hangover forged in the fires of hell. The six of them had talked quietly for a while, lamenting the fact that Gina hadn’t showed, kicking around memories from a time when early morning reconstructions of the night before had been a regular occurrence. Lizzie had found Richard’s phone, distracted from making another round of tea by the urgent, vibrating buzz of a missed call and then repeated voice mail prods. Joanna had volunteered to rouse him in case the call was important. Clare shook her head, smiled wryly, told them all that she knew she was stupid, knew that she should have learned. Joanna rested her hand on Clare’s arm in reassurance and set off with the phone. All of them hit the stairs a minute later when they heard her shouting.

Later the police found the powder and the pills. Even later the coroner recorded it as misadventure. The funeral was the last time any of them saw each other again.

 

Go on and make a joyful sound

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40. For A Dancer – Linda Ronstadt & Emmylou Harris

As I’m closing in on the end (of writing about 42 records of personal significance, not “the end”) then I thought I should lighten up proceedings by sticking together a few words about death. You know, just to take the edge off all those pieces about depression and anxiety and all that laugh out loud fare. If there are a set of recurring themes in my writing then uncertainty is certainly one of them – this, however, is one point of certainty: we’re all going to die.

The irony, of course, in thinking about death is that it quickly becomes thinking about life. It’s reasonable when confronted with mortality to give some urgent thought to how you’ve lived, how best to spend the time left, and to wonder what it’s all about. That hoary old chestnut. Nothing like a midlife crisis to bring on a sudden search for meaning.

In some respects my chosen position on a couple of things, namely a belief that this is all there is, no second chances, no afterlife, and that there isn’t a higher, guiding force in the universe, can lead to some on-the-face-of-it bleak conclusions. The point-of-it-all may well be that there is no point. Particles reacting and colliding predictably, governed by the immutable laws of physics, but the major events in your life governed arbitrarily; order and chaos, humans with free will running amok amid those immutable rules. I think the tension between the two is important – there has to be a belief that you’re the master of your own destiny else you either give up or write everything off to fate or surrender yourself to something ineffable. At the same time there’s too much evidence of chaos to ignore: planes crash, people blow themselves up on trains, maniacs run into schools with automatic weapons. Tell the innocents in each of those scenarios that they were masters of their own destiny.

So, in my version, perhaps meaning is found in those moments of balance between the chaos and order; in control whilst things are out of control. Perhaps it’s more an acceptance that things are out of control and the prospect of that is so terrifying that it’s at the heart of that loose conglomeration of neuroses and mental health issues that I like to wrap up as “my problems”. Wiser people than me have grappled with it. The broad consensus, secular position seems to be that fully experiencing the individual moments of life, being very present in those moments, is probably as good as it gets, probably as much as there is. Teenage Fanclub’s “Ain’t That Enough” (number 26 previously in this series of posts) and Po Girl’s “Take The Long Way” (number 31) cover this territory far more eloquently than I have here.

Jackson Browne’s “For A Dancer” fits within that family of songs albeit it’s the only one of the three that ponders life through the lens of death. The version of the song that I know is the one on Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris’ “Western Wall: The Tucson Sessions” album which, in turn, I’d come to via their brilliant collaborations with Dolly Parton. In truth this is more or less a solo Ronstadt record with Harris adding harmonies (is there any less selfish singer than Emmylou Harris ?) and given the news that she won’t sing again having being diagnosed with Parkinson’s it has acquired further poignancy for me. Chaos up to its arbitrary tricks again.

The song is sung from the perspective of someone saying goodbye at a funeral and reflecting on what it all means: I can’t help feeling stupid standing ‘round, crying as they ease you down. My direct experience of such events is, fortunately, very limited but in all cases Browne / Ronstadt’s next line rings true in spirit to me: ‘cause I know that you’d rather we were dancing, dancing our sorrow away, no matter what fate chooses to play.

The solemnity and sorrow of each occasion was no real reflection of the life that had passed and that we were mourning. That’s not to say that there isn’t and wasn’t value in soberly giving respect to the loss of loved ones but there seems to me to be a difference between that ceremony and the one that the dead might choose for themselves. Do we mourn for ourselves, for the space in ourselves left by the one that is gone ? Speaking on behalf of my future dead self then I’d far rather everyone was dancing. Not some sombre shuffle either: give it your best Jagger strut and, aging limbs allowing, pull a star jump and remember me.

The dancing in “For A Dancer”, of course, doesn’t have to be literal, it’s just a metaphor for living. Browne extends it to wonderful effect in laying down advice from the dead to those left behind:

Just do the steps that you’ve been shown
By everyone you’ve ever known
Until the dance becomes your very own
No matter how close to yours another’s steps have grown
In the end there is one dance you’ll do alone

There’s no belief here in certainty (pay attention to the open sky, you never know what will be coming down) but you’d best meet the chaos as well as you can (keep a fire burning in your eye). There’s also something stirring and deeply moving in the unflinching lack of sentimentality in the song’s overall message:

Perhaps a better world is drawing near
And just as easily it could all disappear
Along with whatever meaning you might have found
Don’t let the uncertainty turn you around
(The world keeps turning around and around)
Go on and make a joyful sound

Essentially we’re in the same place, with the same conclusion, as “Ain’t That Enough” and “Take The Long Way”. This is it. Experience it, savour it, try to enjoy it and maybe, just maybe, there doesn’t have to be a point to it all. Embrace the chaos.

So you can play this song at my funeral during the sad bit before everyone gets drunk and strikes some poses on the dance floor. It’s about as close to anything in a four minute pop song that gets at the big one: what’s it all about ?

Into a dancer you have grown
From a seed somebody else has thrown
Go ahead and throw some seeds of your own
And somewhere between the time you arrive and the time you go
May lie a reason you were alive but you’ll never know.