The Supermarket Dissolved As the Past
Echoed Through To the Present
Heidi James
& James Quinton
“Whatever our souls
are made of, his and mine are the same.” - Emily Bronte
I see myself - visible, present, and real in the grimy surface of the
train window. Time has me in its grip, everyday, the office,
meetings, lunches, dinners and a partner to find time to love.
But I am giving it the slip, for what measure of time is there but
memory and experience?
*
The two-tone shades on the bathroom walls are fading like my memories.
How did I end up here? Living in a rented house that is falling back
into its composites. In a job that will see me to the grave, with no
hope and a heavy heart, still craving and longing for a ghost from the
past.
*
Stopped at a station, families get on, get off. Someone is
waiting on the platform, hands limp like rags, face brushed flat by the
dirty light. A carrier bag floats like a spectre in the wind. The
train convulses and pulls down the track again, slowly accumulating
speed. The imposed geometry of the human landscape unfolds and
reveals its gentle collapse under the dreadful weight of time, the
train cutting through, keeping us in its speeding hollow, ageless and
free.
*
Looking into the bathroom mirror I barely recognise myself. My hair,
once long, strong and plentiful now short and receding like a battered
Suffolk coastline. My skin tired, pitted, wrinkled and rough. But my
eyes still stare back at me with a hint of a sparkle that is now absent
from the rest of me.
From a metal tap I run some lukewarm water into a pale blue basin. I
coat my face in shaving foam and hesitate before bringing the blunt
razor to my flesh.
*
I remember us, and the sick triumphalism of our new love, holding hands
and kissing in public. Lying on the grass in summer parks, drunk
on cheap wine, his hand heavy on my young breast, his quick fingers
teasing my expectant skin and the dark warmth of his mouth on my
face. My love, he was mine. Much of who I am is because of
him, because I was once his.
*
Time has stripped, disjointed and unsettled thoughts that I once
cherished. What I now have left is feelings. Feelings like the sun on
our backs as we lay on the park, or the rich smell of Mexican food and
the sweet smell of sugared pancakes drifting across a field full of
thousands of people. Back then time stood still. The future was
something we used to laugh about. But it catches up with you. The years
have fallen away for me. I’ve spent so much time telling myself that
something will happen, that I’ve stopped doing anything to make things
happen.
*
I saw the world through the false glow of his love for me. I have
the tapes he made me of bands he thought I would and should like,
flyers of gigs we went to, photos of him, the blue of his eyes reddened
by the harsh flash; but I remember that blue and the black of his
lashes, the red’s and gold’s in the captured in his hair and released
by the sun. It is always summer in my memory of him. He is
remembered as sensation – colour, taste and the drowsy smell of his
baby-like skin.
*
I dug through some boxes in the loft to find a shoebox that I had
sealed many years ago, trapping the past and my torn feelings inside.
Upon finding it, covered in dust and cobwebs, I just stared at it a
while, almost afraid of what it contained. But I put my apprehensions
aside and ripped away at brown tape that bound it. Inside, preserved
for over a decade, lay pictures, hand written notes, which we used to
leave for each other to find when we were apart, trinkets won from
arcade games machines and Valentine, Birthday and Christmas cards. I
lifted a card and opened it, she had written, ‘I will always love you’.
I closed my eyes, sighed and wondered what happened to that love?
*
I should have driven, but I need a drink. And time, time to find
the girl he loved in the weathered woman I am now. I am so afraid
of his disappointment. I’ll talk too much, afraid of his silence,
of him looking too deeply for too long. I wonder what he
remembers of me. If I am part of the history he tells new
acquaintances or if I am an absence in his new life. No-one
touches me now the way he did then, we were each others first and most
intense. My femininity was wonderful to him, the shallow curve of
my hip, the cup of my bottom, the gentled drag of my breasts were
incredible to his little boy hungers.
*
She was my first. I was aware, but in some ways, so unaware of
sexuality. At first we just used to hold hands – her palms soft and
reassuring in mine. Then we started kissing, our mouths complimenting
the other, fitting like an uncomplicated jigsaw. As we grew together
our kissing lasted longer and became deeper and our hands began to
explore a body that wasn’t ours, the excitement of my hands running
along her soft curves, my eyes watching her breasts heave as she
breathed. Alone in a bedroom, with parent’s downstairs watching evening
television and with younger siblings in a bedroom next door, we started
to go further, the warmth of her vagina fresh of my fingers. She was
leading me towards her heaven.
*
Now, the woman I am is tiring, I am old hat, boring and thickened about
the waist by too many coupled dinners in an over-mortgaged dining
room. Then, I was exciting, fresh. We would make love
quietly in his bedroom at his mother’s while she made us supper to eat
in front of the telly, and fuck hard in toilets on trains, in bushes
and alleyways behind the rows of houses near my school. I sucked
the tender head of his cock while kneeling under a table at
MacDonald’s, his burger forgotten on the plastic tabletop. I
delighted in him and the alien solidity of his male body.
*
I dress in newly purchased clothes to cover a body that has surrendered
itself to age. I spent money that should have been used on loan
repayments for the new threads. For the hour we will spend together I
want her to see me looking as well as I think I now can. I want to
impress her. But new clothes can’t hide the story that is written
across my face. How I yearn now to be young and carefree once again. To
be in love, embracing each new dawn. On a summer’s day, like today,
years ago, we’d go to the heath and she’d take me in hand between the
overgrown gorse and ferns.
*
My stomach blistered when I turned from the dull contours of tins of
soup and beans in the supermarket straight into the placid beauty of
his face. Thank God I was alone, and with lipstick still fresh
from work. I pretended to be in a hurry, couldn’t speak, couldn’t
compose myself around his presence so shoved a business card at him, I
wonder now if I wanted to impress him with my business title, but then
I just wanted to get away and calm down.
*
I found myself absently walking the warm aisles of the supermarket
after I’d seen her, my eyes absorbing the colours as my mind pictured
us all those years ago.
She still looked the same. The confident walk, the kind face, the rich
dark hair, the slender figure, its all there; she’s just slightly
older; time has added a distinguished brush to her. She’s become
the woman I always thought she would become strong, independent and
full of life. Her voice was light, her eyes welcoming, but only
inviting me so far; did she give me her business card as a full stop to
end an unwelcome awkward moment? Will I become just a note in her
diary? As I walked the aisles I imagined her life now, her family - a
strong masculine husband, his features cut from stone, her children
healthily, intelligent, well behaved with good Christian names.
*
And he phoned. He phoned me at work, his voice solidified in the
network. I am lost. I am spinning a new future with him, I
am leaving my life and moving back with him and the girl I was.
We are having children and dogs and a garden that we dig. We are
making love in our own bed and listening to the moth like breathes of
our babies. I am stroking his hair as he sleeps. Yet when
we meet, it will be a drink, a deceitful lunch and a vacancy where once
we talked non-stop. He will have a beautiful girlfriend, a wife,
and children already perfect. He is just curious, I am longing.
*
In my badly decorated front room I sat perched on the edge of a sofa
that has seen better days. The curtains were closed letting through a
dull light, as outside the rain fell. It took me several tries at
calling. I’d dial the number but disconnect the call before it rang, my
nervous getting the better of me, I felt like a teenager, full of
butterflies and self-doubt. Finally I let it ring and she answered with
an expectant tone. Our conversation was once again brief, stilted
punctuated with pregnant pauses, but there was something, something
about that way our voices met along the telephone wire.
*
I could stay on the train; I could go back and never expose myself to
this. What am I doing opening myself up to humiliation, to his
scathing view, I should leave him with his vision of me when I left
him, finally, to go to University. Would he care? Is he
even there, is he coming or is he too backing out, picturing the tired
me that confronted him at the shop? I stay, too scared to move
too brave to run home. I’ll meet him, and kiss him just once
more. Then the adult realities will seep in and maybe I’ll even
realise I am better off where I am, comfortable and plump. I
thought love would last forever, that love was divine – unrestrained by
time, unseen like God but now I know I was wrong.
*
I find myself in film, moving slowly in sepia. The city and the
people walking alongside and towards me fade. Will she be there? Or am
I still living the dream of her returning to me after all these years?
My stomach ties it’s self in knots as I open the restaurant door and go
in.
The Last Time
James Quinton
I dipped a toe into the water; the temperature was just right. I slid
off my silk Japanese bathrobe and stepped into the tub and lowered my
body into the white bubble covered aqua. As I descended, the water
flooded in around me, the sensation of the liquid warmth covering my
skin. I flicked my hair behind me and tipped my head back and sighed.
As I lay there, the smell of green grass incense wafted through from
the living room. I had meant to put a stick or two on in here, in the
bathroom, to help me unwind, but the gentle fragrance drifting in was
pungency enough for it to work its magic. Breaking the water’s surface
with my right foot I perched it on the inside edge of the bath, the
sudden hotness of the skin blending with the cold ambience of the air,
producing a cool relaxing sensation.
As she drifted into an abated sleep she suddenly remembered something,
a thought, which caused her to abruptly sit up. Upon rising, with such
necessity, a sharp inundation of H2O decanted from her previously
submerged frame, and now, as she sat vertical, her mind unsettled,
beads of water cascaded along her skin, pulled by gravity, outlining
her exposed body, causing her to shiver.
I cupped a handful of water and splashed it over my face, as if to give
myself a wake up call, letting my conscience, my mind know not to
forget such things, although it had been a long day, a tiring day. As
soon as I got in all I wanted was a bite to eat, a bath and then bed.
But this one-dimensional frame of mind had pushed aside affairs that
should not have been sidelined. I reluctantly rose from my capacious
Victorian bathtub and stepped out onto the cold wooden floorboards. The
excess water rode down me towards the floor, soaking the area around my
feet, as the air drew breaths on my skin. I unfolded a large, fluffy
cream towel and began to dry myself, at first slowly, with long
pleasurable swabs, my hand in the cotton breaching my waterlogged pubic
hairs, but then as my mind calculated events and timing I rubbed with
more vigour until I felt dry enough to dress.
She wrapped herself back into her elegantly decorated robe and trotted
on tiptoes through her open plan flat to her bedroom. Flinging off her
robe she pulled herself into a pair of jeans that had lain crumbled in
a heap at the end of her bed. She caught her reflection in the window,
her breasts firm, and her stomach flat. From the window of her flat she
had the perfect view of the city skyline. She gazed out, once again
seemingly separated from her previous endeavours, staring longingly
over the panorama. She could see a city, a city that never slept,
forever lost in perpetual capitalist motion. Lights emanated from other
flats adjacent to hers; she could see the occupants sitting, walking,
relaxing in the comfort of their homes and material comfort of their
possessions. She wondered if they could see her, standing almost aloof,
top half bare. She backed away from the window and drew the blinds.
I snapped back to reality and hurriedly searched my wardrobe for a top,
anything, something causal. Finding a black long sleeved t-shirt I
pulled it over my skin, it hugged the dampness of my flesh, clinging to
me like a scared child. With myself dressed, I headed for
the hallway and checked my reflection in the oval ornate gold beaded
mirror. I looked far from my best, my hair hung tangled and unkempt, my
face makeup-less, showing my age, a frivolous and debauched few years
had finally caught up with me. I slipped on a pair on trainers, picked
up my car keys and left the warmth of my flat. I was going to be late,
but then again I was always late, always fashionably late.
She took the elevator to the walled in, security guarded ground floor
car park. Outside, amongst the moulded metal and rubber she found
herself gazing up at the night sky. The stars and the moon are the only
thing I can rely on, she thought as they shone down, the only thing in
my life that has always been constant. As she found her way to her car
she thought back to when it had all begun, a creeping, knowing smile
working its way across her face.
I drove out of the luminous city, past blocks of flats similar to my
own, past out of town shopping centres, past boarded up council houses
and brownfield industrial wastelands left vacant, as nature reclaimed
what was once hers. My mind, once again, started separating itself from
the here and now, my thoughts up there in the heavens. I ached for my
bed after such an exacting day; this was the last thing I needed, but
I’m a woman of my word, I have to be, I have to retain some sense of
self as I’ve lost so much else.
As she drove her car stereo was playing an album by the Doors, the
music sedative and seductive washing over her, blending with
inattentive cogitations. As the track L.A. Women reverberated around
her car she tapped her long-fingernailed digits on the steering wheel.
The cars that passed on the narrow, winding road, their head lights
dipped for the darkness, danced in front of eye pale blue eyes.
It didn’t take long to reach the forest, its dense wooded façade
merging with, and then encompassing, the agricultural landscape that
had preceded it. I knew this journey all to well, the drive here once
filling me with a carnal excitement. Soon, hidden by the night, a dirt
track, which last time had begun to overgrow in the humid, wet
springtime climate with ferns, nettles and bramble, would become
accessible.
She turned off the asphalted road onto the gravel path, the tyres of
the car crushing and casting up dust and soil into the air. As she
drove deeper and deeper into the forest, the trees became thicker and
thicker, blocking out any natural light that was gifted by the moon and
the stars. Turning from the straight track, her car entered a small
clearing where ahead a dim light illuminated the inside of a solitary
parked car. She parked a few metres away from the other vehicle,
avoiding eye contact with its driver.
It had started as something fun, something divergent, something, which
was uniquely ours. It had taken me from an embittered affinity with a
man I’d known since childhood to the edges of a liberated contentment.
But now, like everything that went before it, it had become repetitive,
the edge, the agitation and most significantly, the pleasure had gone.
It had all been replaced by an empty dull feeling, a lead weight of
ritual that was now beginning to tear me away from the fresh path that
I was walking, a path that I’d coveted for a long time. This, I now
decided, had to be, would be, the last time.
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