Link 2

You find some odd people wandering around in the tunnels of the London Underground. It’s warm down there, and so people who have no homes, or no money to heat the homes they have, for the price of a cheap ticket they can travel around all day. Unhappy I can only think, but fairly cozy. It’s the kind of thing I notice. You see them standing around down there, looking at their boots. During busy hours invisible pickpockets slip in, slip out, rubbing shoulders with the crowd, and the ‘no-one-yet’ status of youngsters makes them act-up from time to time, unsettling and scaring quiet travelers. You know it’s often said, ‘no one gets lost on the underground’, and I’ve thought about that, because down there you see drunks wandering around blind to where they’ve been or where they’re going. But it’s the lost who corner you in your seat, who somehow seem to surround you while you await your train, catching you off-guard with that ‘Hey Joe, guess who’s here?’ look they have, just busting with intimate details of a life gone wrong.

They test us.

"Are you lost, son?", asked the old woman, and I thought I’d found one.

Well, I was lost. The station at Newton’s a busy place, three lines in and three lines out, and as far as I could see the destination of Kenmere was nowhere displayed. That’s where I had to be - in about forty minutes if I was to catch my movie. I dithered as travelers hurried by - rushing one way, stopping, about to go back, hesitating again. I was just about ready to give-up. Finding my way around anywhere has never been strong with me, and coming to Kenmere Plaza from out of town, well, the underground seemed like a maze.

I’d come to a standstill when she spoke. I suppose I projected the look of the lost fairly well, shoulders slumped and anxious, when I said, "I need to get to Kenmere pretty quick", telling her briefly it was to catch a film.

I looked as deep into her eyes as she’d allow, to see was anyone home.

"Oh, Kenmere", she said, apparently as concerned as I was, touching her bottom lip with her index-finger, the worn voice gently shaking as she spoke.

"Hmm, let’s see".

Lifting a shiny maroon handbag, creased and dulled with use, she foraged around inside, saying she had a map somewhere.

She was more frail than my grandmother had been, dressed in the style of the day, with a kind of beige mackintosh with trench-coat pretensions - belt less though, and unbuttoned in the underground warmth. But she reminded me of her, probably through this concern for a stranger. Her hair was much grayer, shorter, just about shoulder length, carefully curled away from her face, and I could see she was completely preoccupied with my little problem. If someone were suddenly to have asked her name, just like that, you could imagine she’d have to think about it.

"You need to change at Stone", she said, kindly allowing me to keep the little network-map, and she looked up into my face, pointing to the little red dot that marked my station, smiling. It was a worried kind of smile. Maybe she’d formed a poor opinion of my chances - she seemed to be asking did I understand this dot was where I had to be. Well anyway, within a minute she headed-out as I headed-in, and as we parted she was looking pleased with herself - and someone was very much at home behind those eyes.

"You’d better hurry-on son - that’s your train coming in!", she warned, and I found myself wondering a little about her, the way we all do, how her days had unfolded for her. I wondered what it was like being an old lady on the homestretch of life. Then I ran for it, slipping into a carriage as the doors banged-to behind me.

Stone was on a stretch of over ground line, surfacing just before you hit town, with only the one track in and out. Waiting in the mild weather, watching the warm breeze push and play among the leaves on the trees outside - masses of reds and yellows yielding autumn flame - I was kind of calm within my anxiety. A few types wandered restlessly backwards and forwards, and instinctively I sauntered along the platform and stood to one side. That’s how I am. It’s how most artists are to some extent. Even at school my desk was in the far left-hand corner, or the far right, always. Later on, studying technique at evening class, I’d go a full-hour early for the first couple of lessons, drop my old briefcase on a back-corner desk, then wait in the coffee-place till time.

The train was a while coming. A couple of expresses thundered past and disappeared, swallowed-up by the tunnel-mouth a few hundred yards away to the right, booming-off deep into the underground maze. The light was fading already, and I began worrying a bit. I’d been there about ten minutes, listening to the noisy station clock dwindle time away - but it seemed much longer. I had the kind of feeling I always have, when I’m sure something’s gone wrong. It’s like I’ll never get home, or to wherever I happen to be heading, that whoever might be waiting for me will give-up and turn away.

I was going to miss my movie.

Well that was no big deal, although I have a pressure to be where I’m supposed to be, even if I’m late. Which I usually am. I found the little red dot on the map marked Stone and checked the connections again, looking for any uneven scheduling, when some heels I’d been vaguely aware of clicked to a stop by my side.

"Can you help me?", asked a quiet voice, "I’m pretty lost around here".

Saying "that makes two of us" would not have been helpful, and so opening the map fully I asked where she was going.

"I need to get to Hall Lane - Kenmere Place is nearest, I think".

The first thing I noticed was all that yellow hair, making a frame for a pretty face that hadn’t seen much of the hot summer, and she had this hopeless look in her eyes. They were somewhere in the colour range between blue and green, and they were honest eyes as well. Whoever looked through them was making it pretty obvious this stranger was lost and worried.

So I told her it was all okay.

"You need to get a train here to Kenmere Platza", I said, before telling her what I’d just discovered myself, with the kind of authority it seemed she needed - that all trains from Stone go there, and one was about due, a minute away. You could hear it in the distance. And I knew Hall Lane and gave her directions. It was pretty near the station.

She’d wandered near the platform’s edge by the time the train came in, but I stepped inside just ahead of her. "We’re heading for the same place" I said, turning, looking again into her pale face, "and so where I get off, that’s your stop!".

She gave a weak smile, and I wondered was she okay. Her luggage was giving her a problem and I wanted to help, but I thought, well, I didn’t want to seem a pest, and I went right on down the carriage for much the same reason - so she could sit as near or as far as she wanted. But she was a lovely woman, and I’d have liked to have been beside her, just sitting and talking, as most men would I suppose. She would have been used to men and all that.

I picked-up an abandoned tabloid and looked over the photographs. Someone had won a bundle of money, and under a top-line of having a good-time with some friends before buying big houses for her family and her mum and dad, there was a shot of a woman with her nose pressed right against the lens, deliriously happy. How d’ you go on from there, I wondered? I was thinking about happiness, about life not being just a good time, having an imaginary chat with the girl with yellow hair about it. Would that be a good line? She was sitting just inside the doors, legs twisted to one side to hang onto her case, and while I couldn’t look at her directly, I was aware of no one else.

Saying life was not about having a good time - maybe that wasn’t such a good hello. You wanted to hold the girl’s hand and be serious in an altogether different way, and I smiled inwardly. That was the general direction, anyway. And although it was September, with the subterranean train rattling and thundering along, I felt the hopeful flutter young men supposedly feel only in spring.

I knew a few jokes about that one.

There was no one at the kiosk in Kenmere, and so I picked-up a few things for the cinema, just a drink and a few plain biscuits. The programme would’ve started but I still might catch the whole film - Taxi Driver. I’d seen it plenty of times, but the beginning always got to me and I wouldn’t go in if I’d missed it. I was looking for some images of forewarning. The local council wanted something for a push against kids and drugs, and I knew I’d find some fresh ideas there. Anyway, I’d skipped past the girl, still right at the bottom of the escalator, heading upwards-and-out two steps a time, when about halfway there was quite a noise below. Looking around I saw she’d stumbled, was lying at the foot of the stairs, obviously distressed.

Her luggage was still traveling up, and the challenge of small boys, getting down an up escalator, that was a bit of a problem with the suitcase. Even so, when I got to her she hadn’t moved. Her hair was like a yellow veil, concealing her face as she supported herself with both hands - she was trying to push herself up but couldn’t make it.

"Here, let me help you", I said, kneeling beside her.

I heard her say very quietly, "I think I’m going to be okay now", but she didn’t even try to move.

The quiet of her voice was weakness.

I put my arm around her back, under her shoulders, and she struggled to her feet, leaning easily against me. We made our way to a bench, and then I brought her case over, and the shoe she’d shed in the fall.

Crouching before her I held it for her to slip her foot in, looking up to see how she was. Her cheeks were wet, and leaning forward she began to cry, maybe in frustration, both hands covering her face.

"I’m sorry", she said. "Anyway, thanks for helping me - I’ll be fine now".

I said she didn’t look fine to me, and asked was anything was the matter.

"Are you feeling unwell? Do you need a doctor?".

She didn’t answer, and when I asked again she took an envelope from her pocket and opened it, pointing out the heading. It was a letter of admission to the hospital in Hall Lane.

"That’s where I need to get", she said, "and I’m very late. I’m afraid I caught the wrong train".

Looking over the letter I told her not to worry, that getting the wrong train was a pretty popular pastime with most people, and a stifled little giggle brought an end to her tears. She should have been at Park Head Hospital over an hour ago, and I said I’d better call them, say she was unwell and needed an ambulance.

"Look", I said, "I’m going nowhere special. I’ll wait till they come".

She was going to decline, I could tell that. As I say, you get some odd people cruising the underground, and though I looked okay in my zip-up jacket and slacks, you never can tell. So I did some magic on her. I said quietly, "Beth, why not let me help you?", and when she looked up I pointed to her envelope.

"I guess they wouldn’t send Beth’s letter to anyone other than Beth", I confessed, and when she smiled I went on with it.

"It is you, Beth, isn’t it?".

"Oh, I’m Beth all right", she said".

Well that was okay, and so I rang from the call-box.

Hall Lane was no more than the toss of a coin away, and a pair of paramedics skipped down the escalator within minutes, friendly, serious, full of questions. They looked at the letter. One went back for the stretcher while the other checked her over. I said what had happened, how she’d fallen, was too weak to get up, had been looking pale quite a while.

She didn’t speak at all, and I followed along behind with the suitcase. Outside in Kenmere Way passers-by were standing around watching, as you’d expect, hoping to see something they could report back home. When one of the paramedics said, "Quickly now!", as I leaned in with the case, I just got in, and as they pulled away I was wondering how it would all work out.

I’d had a dream some months before, and it’d stayed with me, about being invited to take the lead in a great play, because the chosen actor had gone missing. It was one of those kind of dreams, really crazy. We were identical, and the idea was that no one should know I wasn’t him. Not even the lovely girl playing the feminine lead, who in real life was his lover. It was a pretty complicated situation. Anyway, I was in love with someone else, and the heroine kept wanting us to kiss and touch between takes in direction, saying the parts were just made for us. It was very difficult. I kept thinking of my girl, because I really loved her, even though I had no actual image of anyone in the dream - and I wondered could I stay true, as I surely wanted to, under all the pressure. But the really big problem was my script had been lost, and the first performance was only hours away. Not only did I have to improvise - someone kept saying "the words’ll fall right into your mouth right on cue!" - but I had to make the loves scenes super-real or this girl was going to be hurt, because she ‘knew’ the man looking at her was crazy about her.

There seemed to be some kind of continuation, I was thinking, when a young nurse at Park Head, taking details of what happened at the station, asked who I was. I said I was just a friend bringing her in, that I’d known her a while and she’d never told me what was wrong. It seemed fair enough.

Could she tell me the problem?

She was flicking though her notebook, in the process of saying it would be a breach of confidence to tell me anything, when a staff-nurse stepped out of the tiny side-ward.

"You can go and see her now", she said, "but make it brief please". Beth was over-tired and I shouldn’t keep her talking.

The curtains were drawn, and the bedside-lamp threw a soft pink blush through the room. I found myself walking tip-toe because of the stillness. But what was I doing there, I wondered, playing this part, a stranger among strangers with an unwritten script. Outside the nurses were whispering together, moving off towards other duties, other patients, and I felt the unreal feeling of an unwitting impostor, standing alone beside the sick-bed of an unknown woman. It was in my mind to turn and creep back out along the corridors, back out into the evening, when I looked at her.

She looked very fragile and white, was lying with her left cheek upon the pillow, facing my way with her eyes closed. In the hurry they’d given her some loose-fitting hospital night-clothes, and as she’d turned to sleep a shoulder had slipped out, partly covered by her yellow hair, and a little silver crucifix peeped through. I don’t know how to say it to make it real, but I was aware of nothing else, and the image etched itself in. She opened her eyes and saw me looking, bringing a kind of heightened reality - she was sleepy and weak but she tried to smile.

I had no doubt then why I was there. The script - we would learn that as we went along, as everyone must, even though our parts might finish before the end of some first act. But I was where I needed to be, and I sat down on the edge of the bed.

The quiet seclusion made it seem just like a dream, and I couldn’t stop watching her. You can do that sometimes in dreams. But they’ll take you down different paths once you to try to focus, once you try to hold an image that needs to rush by - I suppose it’s because what we see in dreams is very different from the interest bound-up in conscious observation. But this was not a dream. And between sleepily blinking she kept looking back at me, every time she opened her eyes, and for ages not a word was said. Maybe she was half asleep. Maybe she really was in a dream. Anyhow, I couldn’t turn away - and there we were, strangers who’d just met at Stone, in the hospital at Kenmere, somewhere in London, England, and a few moments among billions of years was passing by.

She didn’t even know my name.

Without looking away she said she was glad for the help.

"Ssshhh!", I whispered, an index-finger crossing my lips as though she were a naughty child, and I told her what nurse had said.

There had never been a moment like this in my life. In cinematic terms the shot was soft-focus while a sustained high note was held on the strings - it seems like that when I think of it now. Her right arm was limp against the sheet, and all my willpower just about stopped me taking her hand. But I had to go, and though probably I looked calm I wasn’t feeling very steady, when I asked, "Can I come and see you again?".

I said I knew I didn’t know her, but I’d like to see how she got on.

The strings suddenly fell mute, because this reply could shatter the spell.

The admission letter lay beside the lamp, and she reached out for it. I had the feeling I’d been dismissed. But handing me the envelope she said, "Here, take this - visiting times are in there". I smiled a bit too much while trying hard not to. That’s how men are. It felt more like me weak in bed, with Beth serenely looking down. Better get out while I’m still on cloud, I was thinking along those lines, saying I’d see her next day as I left.

"Oh", I said, stepping back softly, "My name is Jacob, by the way - a lot of my friends call me Jack".

But her eyes were closed already.

Something was wrong with her liver. She’d started feeling weak in the spring, sometime in May, her doctor referring her when a yellow tinge suffused her skin. At first the specialist was convinced she’d drunk heavily at sometime. That was not so. Further investigations suggested a virus in the system, destroying her liver. They were going to try to check it, then see if the liver would recover. She’d asked why others didn’t catch it. A million people could drink at the well where the virus hung out but it would only be attracted to one. That’s what they told her.

"Well", she said to me, "most of my life luck’s been with me".

I had to wait one afternoon while a group of doctors gathered around her bed. I walked backwards and forwards past her door, glancing in now and then - you can never tell with doctors, because they’re always trying to reassure the patient. But there was certainty in their attitude. They were looking at one another in agreement, nodding wisely the way they do.

It was a really odd time. We were still like strangers getting to know one another, unsure where we were heading but happily telling our stories as we went along. That afternoon she was quieter than usual. The conversation never really got started. I looked for signs of distress but there weren’t any. Anyway, I’d known her about a week, and already I knew she had an acceptance of what life set before her. She’d take on anything, no matter what. But there was no spark in her voice.

I’d brought some flowers and wanted her to know I hadn’t just picked the first bunch. There was a vase on the window-sill, and filling it at the hand-basin I said I’d thought of her in her dressing-gown and nightdresses, how the deep-blue shades suited her hair. Actually they made her hair look very lovely, brightening the yellow even more, but I couldn’t say that.

"When I saw these", I told her, indicating the scarlet fuchsias, "I thought they’d...".

"Come and sit near me", she said.

I remember her words - light as they were they were a sort of command. She was sitting on the edge of the bed.

"What’s the matter?".

She found my hand and meshed her fingers with mine, and turning quickly looked up at me and said, in her most matter-of-fact way, that she needed a transplant.

The pillow was right behind her, and I wanted our heads side-by-side upon it to say some things. But after a while all I said was maybe we should contact her family now.

She was a girl from the West Country, from a little Berthshire village, Flaxen, where she lived on a small farm with her father and three brothers. She was one of two music teachers there, and in a dwelling separate from the main quarters, along a short path overhung with aspens and silver birch, there she lived and taught alone, in the summer retreat her father built for her mother. Before coming to London she’d told them her problem and said her wish was to see it through herself. The family said that was okay because that’s how the family was. When her mother was dying she said how she couldn’t allow anyone to talk about what was happening. They were farming people and life and death was like rain and sunshine, like breakfast, birds in trees, like leaves.

"We come and we go, you know", she said, "and all that’s all right. We understand it. I told you how we are".

"They wouldn’t want you to go through this alone", I said, touching her cheek with the back of my hand, slipping my fingers back through her hair just a bit. It was the first time I’d ever touched her in that way. It was so natural I was almost unaware what I was doing.

But I wasn’t unaware.

"My father", she said reflectively, her cheek against my shoulder, "on the morning I left home, he said he’d be on the look-out for me pretty quickly, for me and my big case. When I said I hoped it wouldn’t be too long, after a while he said, ‘Your mother’s always with me, you know that Beth’. And I did. And I knew what he meant, that that was all true for him, and I told him he needn’t have said it".

Round about the hospital there were several flats in a stretch of terraced houses, owned by the hospital, with local shopping facilities at hand. Sometimes patients living outside the capital were temporarily discharged into them, waiting there for the right organ, or whatever was necessary for treatment to go ahead. She gave me the keys, and I took some time away from the studio to sort out the pantry, made the place homelike with some flowers, wild flowers from Kenmere Wood, and I hung a few paintings and installed a CD player, along with some of my collection.

The way the illness affected her she had periods of remission, and though there was a steady overall decline, sometimes she’d be okay for days. It was an unforgettable time. We still hardly knew one another, but the parts we were playing seemed to be written-out with the end of something in view. Sometimes we seemed to be on-stage. Beth would come into the room as though making an entrance in a play, and everything passing between us, however light it may have seemed, was meaningful, full of the searching and learning you sometimes get in plays. A kind of silent gladness - well that’s what I thought it was. Because I couldn’t even say to her, "Let’s go out. I’ll take you to the park - they make very nice tea over there", without feeling thankful for being with her.

The Promenade Concerts were coming to the end of their season, and I wanted us to go with her one evening. There was a programme, a piano recital by Markus Estori, playing Bartok and Beethoven - the concert was to finish with the complete Beethoven Bagatelles, and I knew she’d like that. But she was a bit concerned. She’d have to take her bleep in case the hospital called. How would the promenaders react if the last bagatelle was being played? I said if that happened she’d waken from surgery to find herself famous - I’d make sure of it.

This was one evening, not too many days after she’d moved into the flat, and a quietness settled over us. Through the small window, out over the rooftops of the houses below, the sun was disappearing behind the trees of Kenmere Wood, the last shafts of sunlight spreading across the evening sky. We were on the tiny little settee. There was only room for two. Inside the apartment the end of summer crept into corners, and the quietness was itself was like a sound - like children’s voices falling silent in an upstairs bedroom.

"What d’you think he meant, Beethoven, in the last bagatelle?", I asked.

She said it was a good question.

"It’s as though the end of anything brings fulfillment", she said. "Maybe he’s saying what’s there at the beginning will be unaltered by anything that may happen, between the beginning and the end - if you can accept it. The essence stays with you then".

The evening seeped on into the quiet room, like a flower opening at night. Her face was masked in shadow, the yellow hair catching what little light there was - the painting of a young woman lit by dawn or dusk, looking out into the world through eyes unseen, just the speck of reflection touch-in by the artist suggesting presence.

"What is it that comes between the beginning and the end?" I asked, "Because he certainly isn’t happy there".

She thought happiness was everywhere in the piece, that the obvious regret might be over anything - even this end to the composing of modest bagatelles, to which Beethoven never would return. But regardless of what it was actually about, she suggested everything was mixed-up with a happiness that had passed. "Time moves us on", she said, "and like everything else, even happiness comes to an end". After a moment she added, "That long middle section, although there isn’t a move from one note to the next untouched by the wistful mood, as the music swells the feeling of thanksgiving is resisting the sorrow - do you feel that?".

I hadn’t noticed. "But yes", I said, "something’s lost and he doesn’t complain. Then the power of the beginning returns - and as he well knew how, he’s triumphant".

My words drifted away. I was speaking as much to myself as Beth, and I turned towards her, to my left, where our shoulders were touching.

"Shall we go then", I asked, so aware of her beside me in the half-light, of the silence swallowing our words and remaining, reminding her Estori was to play the Bagatelles, that though sold-out there were bound to be returns.

"We wouldn’t have to wait too long", I said.

The dusk gathered-up my words, and rather than seeing I felt her turn towards me.

"Oh", she said, "waiting".

"Shall I go alone? I can catch a taxi back here, and then we can...".

"Waiting", she said again. "Jacob - I really don’t think we have time to wait".

"Oh"

It was all I could say.

After a moment she asked, "Will you do something for me?", and when into the darkness I said I’d do anything she wanted, she took my hand. "These buttons here - these tiny little buttons", she said, almost playfully, "just here", lifting my hand to her breast in the darkness, her voice the merest whisper. She said, "I’m tired, Jacob - and this dress is so new, the button-holes so tight".

Then with the playfulness almost gone, she said, "Will you help me unbutton them?".

I could manage that, but I wondered about it because of her illness, and with my mouth against hers I was trying to say something. I believe I was trying to say no. But I still couldn’t stop the unbuttoning. It would have been a bit like wandering starving into a banquet and refusing an invitation to sit down because your name wasn’t on the guest list. Although it wasn’t that simple, and anyway the weak protests I made met only with, "ssshhh!", and she giggled at me. I said something about it being okay for her to laugh, because she was a woman and didn’t know how it was; and when in the darkness she said, "Oh, is that so", we both laughed, and trapped by the scent of her hair I was quickly lost, as all are lost, in the timelessness of love’s garden.

The time was drawing near. When the alarm rang those darkening mornings I’d think it was the bleep going off, and waken with a terror new to me. I tried to think - was there anything in life like this waiting? All that came to mind were the soldiers in Owen’s poem, whose feet had brought them to the end of the world. But I had choice, and the only place for me was the beckoning no-man’s-land I gladly entered. Back at the studio I tried to work normally, but in everything I did there were traces of Beth. When St Mary Magdalene’s requested something I remembered the little ebony statue, ‘Alms’, the woman’s head bowed, the face of poverty hidden from view, the proffered hands reaching up, cupped in need and hope. I began work immediately, heavy lines with the broad nib angled and blunt-on for the periphery, picking-out inner detail with finer tools. It was finished in less that two hours, stepping away and returning to it only two or three times. But I brought the cupped hands together, and personalized the sketch with the little scar below my left thumbnail.

As we were stepping out of the underground at Kenmere, sometime towards the end of November, the bleep was ringing in her handbag. I thought of Owen again. I called a passing taxi but she wouldn’t let me in. She put her hand on my shoulder, whispering, "Jack, please, I just couldn’t bear it! Let me go alone, darling - come and see me this evening".

I was not like her family - all I could think of was never seeing her again, because I knew it could be that way. But I smiled and said okay it wasn’t a problem. I’d see her later. I even managed to act like she might be going off to have a hair-do or something.

The operation was in the early hours of the following morning, after we’d silently held hands through the evening visit, and apparently the surgery went smoothly enough. That’s what they said. They’d told us the chances were slightly above fifty-fifty, what it pretty-well always was, although somehow they gave us the idea most people came through it. Her progress went both ways. At one time it was down to just five percent, because they couldn’t stem the internal bleeding. But then it crept up towards sixty, then seventy, and when she opened her eyes, three days later, they spoke about an eighty percent chance of survival.

She was on a ventilator so we couldn’t speak. I said it was just like that first evening, when we’d sat inspecting at one another. But I combed and brushed her hair and entwined it with the stem of a red rose. There was a day nurse, a little Canadian girl with a voice as soft as a sigh, Rachel, and she came back and forth to the lectern at the foot of the bed, entering monitor-reading variations on the chart spread-out there. She was like a helmsman bringing the ship to harbour through stormy waters.

Intensive care with Beth was an exercise in seeming relaxed while anxiety raged within. I didn’t speak much because I was warned not to - she’d instinctively try to reply, and the ventilator would bother her. But there isn’t much anyone could talk about anyway. You just have to wait. This was about nature. After all the surgery and drugs you still had to wait on that.

I caught a heavy cold and was told not to go in. Everyday for a week I wrote, sent flowers and things, and a sketch of her with the rose in her hair, lying back on several pillows minus the ventilator, wearing the nightdress I liked most. But things started to go wrong. The wound became infected, had to be opened and restitched, which they said was pretty routine. But a sudden acute rejection brought the chances right down. I rang all day till they told me to stop it. I was probably driving them all crazy. They took my number and would let me know.

She’d made arrangements before surgery, I realized, because three men were standing outside the curtains drawn around her bed when I looked in. The situation was critical and getting worse they’d said, and I’d come straight away. They were tall men, square shouldered, uncomfortable in the suits they wore, and two of the three had Beth’s yellow hair. When the curtains parted her father came out. He was big like them, but the yellow hair had turned grey.

I stood watching, wondering should I go in, when they put their arms around one another’s shoulders, touching heads in the middle, weeping. I didn’t know what to do, but when Rachel came worriedly towards me I raised an index-finger to my lips, shook my head and signaled ‘no’ with my other hand.

Well, really I’ve never been sure whether I ought to have stayed, but the truth is I knew right then I couldn’t have shared my feelings with strangers. In the following days I discovered grief takes a while, and I wandered around dry-eyed but dazed. The loneliness was intense but that was okay. I’m a bit like that anyhow. I tried to paint and sketch her. But it was too soon. I didn’t know what to do, how to be. I was sleeping eight hours and waking-up exhausted. Then her letter came. I keep it in my wallet, wrapped within the underground map the old lady gave me, where the little red dot marks the trysting place at Stone.

She’d been certain she was going to die. She’d worried about me because of that. Coming close - perhaps that was something she ought to have avoided. (Had she been there I’d have asked how she arrived at the pain of denial being more tolerable than the pain of loss - but you know women). Anyway, she said there was nothing she could do about it because, "I’d never met anyone like you".

"It wasn’t long, but those mid-September days were the most precious and golden of my life, and spending them, and all the time that followed with you - some people become lost in life looking for days like that, and never find them".

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