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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…

I love you, would you marry me ?

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34. Slaveship – Josh Rouse

Ten years ago today (as featured at this link here in the 42) I was fortunate enough to marry my wonderful wife. We had been a couple for close on five years prior to getting married but I had known that we’d spend our lives together within a few short weeks of us getting together. When people had enigmatically responded “you’ll just know” to the how-can-I-tell-if-this-is-the-one question I’d never really understood it until, a little like magic, you do “just know”.

And the process of being married, of sharing your life, of being as much in love now as you were at the beginning, is all about uncovering new truth. New to you at least, it’s a path well trodden by those lucky enough to have experienced it. I was struck, in that spirit, by one of the readings that we had at our wedding. Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare, who knew a thing or two about love and writing, if not much about naming sonnets, is not an uncommon wedding reading. It kicks off by directly and playfully referencing the marriage service itself – the call to anyone knowing of any lawful impediment – before reflecting on the constant nature of love:

SONNET 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark, 
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 
Within his bending sickle’s compass come; 
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved. 

What struck me was how little I think I understood that sonnet ten years ago in comparison to now, how much richer and how much more valuable love is when it has been tested. Not tested in the sense of feelings becoming uncertain or wavering, quite the contrary – tested in the sense of life’s adversities being faced down by two people utterly unwavering in their commitment to each other.

My wife and I (to borrow a line guaranteed a cheer in any Groom’s wedding speech) have enjoyed a wonderful ten years together. We have laughed a lot, retained a shared love of many things (big American DVD box set dramas, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, country & western, wine), and respectfully disagreed on others (asparagus, football, the merits of video games, eating meat). We’ve raised – or started to raise at least – a smart, funny daughter who makes us proud every day. Even on her worst days. We’ve made a home in a house that, had you asked her ten years ago, my wife would have point blank refused to live in. We still haven’t plastered the artex ceilings. We have built and share a life.

We’ve also, inevitably, dealt with our fair share of stuff that you wouldn’t parcel up and label as fun. Surgery, job loss, more surgery, baby with bronchiolitis, buying the wrong house, madness, further surgery, the cancellation of Firefly, and a bunch of other surgery. Don’t get me wrong, this is just life and, by many, many yardsticks we’re very lucky. It’s just life – it’s just that sometimes there’s been so much of it all at the same time.

That’s when you understand “an ever-fixed mark, that looks on tempests, and is never shaken”. You don’t understand that stood atop the aisle surrounded by family and friends. Sure, you listen to the words and nod and smile but you don’t really get it. You get it when you’ve stood firm through a few tempests – if not quite to “the edge of doom”.

There’s a brilliant piece of literary criticism on Sonnet 116 dating back to 1936 from Tucker Brooke:

[In Sonnet 116] the chief pause in sense is after the twelfth line. Seventy-five per cent of the words are monosyllables; only three contain more syllables than two; none belong in any degree to the vocabulary of ‘poetic’ diction. There is nothing recondite, exotic, or metaphysical in the thought. There are three run-on lines, one pair of double-endings. There is nothing to remark about the rhyming except the happy blending of open and closed vowels, and of liquids, nasals, and stops; nothing to say about the harmony except to point out how the fluttering accents in the quatrains give place in the couplet to the emphatic march of the almost unrelieved iambic feet. In short, the poet has employed one hundred and ten of the simplest words in the language and the two simplest rhyme-schemes to produce a poem which has about it no strangeness whatever except the strangeness of perfection. (Brooke, p. 234)

I love this piece because it recognises entirely that the heart of the poem, its power and meaning, can not be pulled apart through an unpicking of the mechanics of the verse. Has about it no strangeness whatever except the strangeness of perfection. What a wonderful line. In exactly the same way I can not fully articulate the power and the meaning in my marriage through a straight articulation of the facts: we met, we got married, we bought a house, we had a child. There is a common thread running through those dry facts, a simple but strong stitch that binds them: love. The star to every wandering bark; the fixed point in the sky that guides our vessel home.

There isn’t an easy way to wrap ten years married, fifteen years together, in a single record. Shakespeare gets closer than a song – did I mention he knew a thing or two about love and writing – but this isn’t 42 poems, 42 years. The nearest thing through our time together to “our song”, I guess, is this mildly daft, quirky, fun, light-as-a-feather piece of pop that Josh Rouse put out on his fantastic “1972” album. I don’t think we necessarily both love it because we’re also mildly daft, quirky, fun and light-as-feathers, though at our best we are all of those things, but it does seem to carry some of the essence of what makes us tick as partners. We love some terribly serious and intellectual stuff too but, if I’m honest, putting on this record is far more likely to put a smile on our faces than breaking open “The Complete Works…” and having a quick read through of the Bard.

It remains a privilege each and every day to be married to the best person I know. This post is for her with all my love, always.
……

Citation:
Shakespeare, William. Sonnet 116. Ed. Amanda Mabillard. Shakespeare Online. 8 Dec. 2012. < http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/116detail.html >.

References:
Shakespeare, William. Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Ed. Tucker Brooke. London: Oxford UP: 1936.