Of course I wasn’t there when she got bleeped. I was working, and got the message later. After the operation had been done in fact. I was in London looking after the apartment and Percy, and flat out against a deadline again.
The operation took place on a Tuesday evening, and when I called the hospital that night, they told me everything was fine. I phoned again on Wednesday, and the prognosis was excellent. She phoned me herself on Thursday morning and sounded great. I know I should have visited her, but I was busy. You see, she was in Bedfordshire, and I wasn’t.
If everyone hadn’t been telling me how successful the op had been, I’d have gone up. But they kept saying that she was doing well, so I didn’t arrange to visit until Sunday morning.
By then I’d sold my car, and another friend of Lou’s was driving up, and had offered me a lift.
Listen. I’ve thought about it a million times since. I should have gone before, but I never thought that anything really bad was going to happen.
She was Louise, see. And Louise always survived.
Wrong.
I was boiling an egg for breakfast and waiting for the guy to arrive that Sunday morning when the call from the hospital came.
She was starting to reject they said, and I should prepare for the worst. I turned off the gas under the saucepan as soon as I put down the receiver, and the egg was still there when I left the place finally, weeks later. It was kind of like a reminder of what I’d done. Or hadn’t done, as the case may be.
But the worst was still to come.
When the guy with the car arrived I told him what was happening, and we drove up in silence.
He didn’t come into the hospital with me. Just sat in the car outside and I went in alone.
She was bad. Dying. I took one look at her, and I knew. Then to my eternal shame, I left.
But eternity is a long time, and I was going to learn that the worst way.
I went back to her friend in the car and we went. We stopped at the first boozer that was open and I had several large ones.
She died at half past nine that night, and I wasn’t with her. Just call me bastard. I do it all the time.
I should have gone to see her before. I should have stayed with her when she was dying. But I didn’t have the bottle.
So I never had a proper, last conversation with her. And when I think of all the times we’d talked in the past, that’s one of the things I regret most. That we didn’t talk after the operation. And after she died, I’d have given my right arm to talk to her for just a few minutes.
Stick around.
That was five years ago, and like I say, it gets worse.
The day she died, part of me died too, and try as I might, I can’t resurrect that part, and as the fifth anniversary of her death got closer, more and more I found myself at three or four in the morning, sitting dead drunk in my living room, crying my eyes out, playing her favourite records and contemplating doing my wrists with a razor blade.
I’d moved, of course. I could have stayed at Louise’s place, but couldn’t handle it. So I’d found a place of my own. I was alone by then. Even poor old Percy had died. He’d lasted a year or two, but no cat can live for ever, and in the end the vet said that it would be kinder to have him put down. I cried then too. Like I say, I’ve cried a lot over those five years, but who are the tears for? Me or Louise?
Shit, but I hated being on my own. And I’d been involved in some disastrous relationships since she died.
Relationships? That’s not exactly the word I’d use to describe them. More like disgusting little detours into my worst nightmares. But after a while, any comfort seemed better than none, even if, as certainly as night follows day, they ended in disaster.
And then, shortly after the fifth anniversary of Louise’s death, I met Julia.
Jules, she called herself. Which was fair enough. She could’ve called herself exactly what she wanted as far as I was concerned.
I met Jules at a publishing party. I was pissed as usual. I usually was in those days.
She was standing at the drinks table and I wandered over to get a refill.
‘Hello,’ she said.
“Lo,’ I said back. She was blonde, with long, thick hair, a little black dress and high heels. She looked all right. Better than all right as a matter of fact. But the state I was in, Alsatians looked attractive.
‘My name’s Jules,’ she said, and stuck out her mitten.
I had a cigarette in one hand, and a glass of appalling red wine in the other, so none to spare. ‘Paul,’ I replied, and spilled my drink down her front.
‘Clumsy,’ she said, but didn’t appear to take umbrage. That was certainly a point in her favour.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m pissed.’
‘So I noticed.’
‘I’ll pay to have your dress cleaned.’
‘Don’t worry about it. It’ll go through the wash.’
‘Good attitude. Fancy a drink?’
‘I’ve got one.’
‘No. Not here. Somewhere else.’
‘Are you trying to pick me up?’
‘Not if you don’t want me to.’
‘I might be here with someone.’
Same old same-old. ‘Well if you are,’ I said. ‘Just say so.’
‘Well I’m not.’
‘Right. That’s got that sorted. Do you want a drink then?’
‘Are you always so aggressive?’
‘Yes. No. Dunno.’
‘Where would we go?’
‘There’s a club I know around the corner. Gerry’s. It’s all right.’
‘All right then.’
So that was that. On the way to the club and over a few drinks, until we got slung out at closing time which was about 2 a.m., I told her what I did, and she told me that she worked for an agency which handled film and TV writers. So we were brother and sister under the media skin. What larks!
When we finally left the place, I was totally gone, and she wasn’t far behind. We stood together in Dean Street and a decision that was to shape the rest of our lives was made.
‘Wanna come back to my place?’ I mumbled.
‘Where’s that?’
‘Stockwell.’ She’d already intimated that she lived somewhere west of Shepherd’s Bush.
She hesitated. She knew what it meant if she came. And so did I.
A cab turned out of Old Compton Street, heading our way, with its amber ‘For Hire’ light burning.
‘Okay,’ she said, and the die was cast.
I hailed the taxi, gave him my address and we both tumbled in.
We got back to my place, went in, I made coffee in a sort of embarrassed silence, we drank it, and went to bed.
Now normally, these sort of late, one-night-stands with strangers end up in total grief. But this one was different. In bed we fitted together well, and we both enjoyed it.
The last thing I remember before falling asleep was Jules kissing me and saying, ‘That was great. I haven’t had so much fun in years.’
And truth to tell, nor had I.
When I woke up it was light. The rising sun slanted through the gaps in the curtains and lay brightly on the duvet. Jules was fast asleep next to me, curled up like a kitten, and Louise was standing at the foot of the bed.
I mean she was there. Really there. Three dimensional and displacing the air. You see, however much you love someone, and however well you know them, when they’ve gone, sometimes it’s hard to remember what they looked like.
Thousands of times I’ve tried to place her in my new flat, but I only have four images of her that remain with me always. And none of them are particularly pleasant.
The first two are from the place we shared, and both are after she got sick.