flashback

Recent events had summoned up the presence of N, even though it was twenty years since she had seen him.  The lottery of their days together. When, upon waking, she would never know which N she would be sharing her life with. That feeling in the pit of the stomach, akin, she imagined, to a soldier awaiting battle. Anything might be round the corner. Death. Boredom. Laughter. Victory. Later, once the relationship had come to its inevitable messy end, she found herself laughing at the theories of why women remained with an abusive partner. Most veered towards the Freudian analysis that they were seeking out a forum to explore their own weaknesses. Few seemed to recognise the truth that to her was obvious. That if you love someone you have no choice but to experience your life through theirs. When, of a late afternoon, perhaps, on a day which had been destined for battle, she found herself transformed, turned into a warrior, defending herself or him or them or some principle which would always be disposable, minor. As though having walked through the mirror into an emergency version of herself, one reserved for meteorite attacks or fending off crocodiles or defending her babies. She later accepted that this journey she was going on with N was one that demanded she too participate in the abuse, she too learn to cross the line into the world of the uncivil. When he grabbed her hair at a party, perhaps, yanking it back, accusing her of having looked at another man, the petty grammar of jealousy, the greatest challenge was not the pain or the despair, it was the struggle to resist joining in the game, to scream back at him. It was her refusal to play the game he provoked that was the greatest betrayal, the only betrayal. N's accusations were never serious in themselves; they were a tactic, a way for him to cope with the tragic stress he was burdened with, night and day. When the stress became to much he would attack. It was not a defence of him to understand this; there was no defence. But love doesn't care about defence. All love wants to do is share. She thought. And through the act of sharing there grew the dream, the fruitless dream, of overcoming. The dream of the dawn when she would awake and it would be like they had been washed up on the shore after the shipwreck. They would get up and walk. They would look around them, realising that they had reached safety, everything was alright now. The sea had been tamed.  N had left her in the end. In his account of what had occurred, she became the one who was unhinged. He became the wronged party. Their lives had veered apart. As though all that anxiety had counted for nothing. She had forgotten what it was like to wake in the small house with that feeling there, nestled in the bed, a quiet fear which lay concealed, under the blanket. Waiting to emerge in the hours that would follow if the spirit moved him.  Only now had it returned. And although he was gone, so far gone that he might as well be dead, it was like he was back. Watching her.  +++

on this day

I did all those London things. Woke up late. Hungover. Quasi jump-out-the-window. Not quite. Not really. Get out. Feel better. Drink coffee in an important office. Feel connnected in a disconnected office. Sniff out openings. Feel dirty for wanting to sniff out openings when all you really want to do is catch up with someone who happens to work in an important office. Relatively important. It's all relative. Experience an awkward British hug. Go to another office. Name drop a bit. Demonstrate some intelligence. Feel the carpet moving under my feet. Go home. Sleep. Go out. Drink. Connect. Get the tube. The pub I went to is one I used to live right next to. In Brixton. For years it never changed and now it's been redone. Kind of tastefully. I went there with N and H on a particular night. The night of the day that the death of SK was revealed. A day of stunned sense. Sense not having been negated by what in other cases might have been a senseless action. Stunned, because even if it was not such a surprise, after all, after all that people knew and didn't know, after all that had been written, death still comes as a jolt. A winding. Breath taken out of sails. And we drunk in the pub in the same place if not the same table as I drunk tonight, and we were not yet sad, though at some point, later that night maybe, we would be possessed of a sadness we didn't know we could possess. But that came later. At that point we were, if anything, frustrated. Even irritated. As though one of us had given up the fight. Although it's never quite as simple as that, is it? As though we had been left behind, whilst the other moved down the fast lane, leaving nothing but tail lights, as red as ever, to be chased. And there I am, a decade and more later, still chasing. Catching up. Ever closer. Doing all those London things. Which are only beats. In a story which is being imagined in the mind of someone who's never been here; never tasted beer; never talked in a pub; never known refurbishment.