You said, ‘How are you going to recognize me at the train station?’
‘Of course I’ll be able to recognize you.’
‘Ahh, yes, it’ll be my lovely eyes.’ Teasing me for what I said on our only actual meeting. ‘I’ll fix them on you like a gorgon and draw you across the station concourse.’
‘Nooo — actually, it’d be your enormous, deformed ears.’
You gasped and slammed down the phone. As a joke. I think.
Now I’ve managed to work out which train is going to be yours, and after the anxious eight extra minutes’ wait, my limbs tingling with the anticipation, it has flashed up as “arrived” on the board, and I’m beginning to worry that I genuinely might not recognize you. And if I don’t recognize you immediately, you’re totally going to read it in my face, and that will be the end of everything.
As the passengers begin to flow through, first in small numbers, but now in an unmanageable surge, my eyes flit around for the sight of you. The sight of something familiar. Something I might be able to recall from that night three weeks ago.
I’m wondering whether I’ve built all this up too much. And of course I have. I mean, face-to-face there might be nothing between us, no chemistry, no low pub lighting to give a bit of atmosphere. Just the flattened dabs of black chewing gum on the platform, the squat coffee shop, offering the same old coffee since 1989, only this time in a cardboard cup with a plastic lid, exactly not quite like the posh coffee chains.
Still no sign. I look behind me, half-expecting to see you leaning against a wall, looking at me and tapping your foot in disappointment.
When it all comes down to it, what the hell am I doing, leaving myself open to all this?
But no, look: there you are. Bobbing along the platform, already looking at me, already smiling, half hidden behind a disordered group of students. That’s you. I totally would have recognized you. And nestled unselfconsciously in your hair, a pair of pink bunny ears hover over your face like exclamation marks.
‘Hello!’ you say, dropping your bag when you finally reach me and giving me a kiss on the cheek and an enthusiastic hug.
‘Hello,’ I say, and all of my mithering melts away with the warmth and ease of our greeting.
‘It’s so lovely to see you, finally,’ you say.
‘Yeah! You too,’ I say. ‘So, what’s with the ears?’
You frown and look at me non-comprehendingly.
‘Ears?’
Ah ha. I get you.
‘Oh, nothing,’ I say.
‘Right,’ you say, airily. ‘So, are we getting the bus then?’
You turn and bend down to pick up your bag.
A fluffy white bunny tail, elasticked to the back of your jeans.
No, I’m not going to mention it.
I’ve got a laugh smouldering in my chest all the way to the bus depot.
Urgent electric siren now sears my ears and seizes my brain, jolts me awake, and my heart pound-pounds and the sweat starts to prickle and emerge out on to the surface of my skin.
What’s—?
I look around for some sign about what I should do. What should I do?
The siren settles in, oppressive on my ears, redrawing the shape of my skull with each regular blare.
It’s punctuated now by the sound of urgent footsteps.
I see Sheila flash past my doorway and stop a short way along the corridor.
Then a male voice, buried among the echoes. Jef, I think. I can’t make out the words.
‘No,’ replies Sheila. ‘Yes, but it’s been opened. Have you got the key?’
Another Jefish sound from off down the corridor, and I see Sheila relax and stroll back up towards my room.
She notices me and stops half in and half out of my doorway.
‘Sorry about this,’ she calls, keeping an eye up the corridor. ‘People are always pushing on the alarmed door. It says it right there: “Alarmed door”. What do they think’s going to happen?’
‘I haven’t seen anyone around,’ I say.
‘No,’ she sighs, without surprise. ‘It’s a bloody nuisance. Everything’s on electrics. They say to you, Oh, it’s going to be a big improvement on what you had before, and the next thing you know the whole bloody place has been improved out of all usefulness.’
She keeps an eye out the door, and rolls her eyes to Jef as he strides past, flipping a small bunch of keys in and out of his hand.
The door is slammed shut, its echo rolling down the corridor, and the blare stops dead, leaving the ultrasonic imprint in my ears, and my heart racing.
Was it you who sent a gust of wind to open the alarmed door and assault my ears?
Sometimes I could be persuaded.
Calm now, calm.
Hzzzzzzzzzzz.
Ah, there. Old Faithful.
‘Thanks, lovey,’ Sheila says to Jef as he comes back past.
‘All right,’ he says.
‘It won’t be long before they’re putting the respirators on the same circuit as the coffee machine,’ she says, coming fully into the room. ‘And we’ll have a double-shot latte and a side-order of dead resident.’
She dumps herself in the visitors’ seat and strains to lift her foot up to her other thigh, pushing her finger inside her shoe to ease an ache.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, through a comfortable mouth, ‘I probably shouldn’t be talking like that to you, should I?’
I smile, more troubled by the presence of her foot. ‘Don’t worry about it. It’s good to see you care.’
‘Well, I do care. This is supposed to be a place of peace and tranquillity. But you still have to deal with all the efficiencies and management brainwaves like anywhere else. If you can’t escape the red tape here, you can’t escape it anywhere, can you?’
F
Feet
LYING ON THE SOFA, I cannot bring myself to speak.
Mum comes and lifts my legs and drops them back across her lap as she sits on the seat beside me.
A cartoon is on the telly with the sound down, but I’m not watching it.
I can see she’s found my card. Or the rattly collection of macaroni, sugar paper and glue that the stand-in teacher sent us all home with. Mum must have dug it out of the bin.
Happy Father’s Day.
Mum rubs my feet, carefully avoiding the ticklish areas. She looks sometimes across at my face.
‘Takeaway tonight, bab?’
I can’t answer.
Looking down at my foot, she says: ‘Looks like it’s just you and me then, foot. How are you feeling? Are you feeling sad?’
After a short pause, my foot nods sadly.
‘And how about you,’ she says, collecting up my other foot. ‘Are you sad too?’
It too is sad.
‘Oh dear,’ she says. ‘Oh dear.’ And she sits there, considering, while I clutch a cushion to my belly and look at the screen.
Long silence. Long, long silence, full of cartoon noises. Bullets and boings.
‘I tell you what,’ she says, addressing my big toe, ‘let’s have a talk about what you’ve done today. Let’s talk about your shoes. What shoes have you been in today?’
My foot thinks for a while and looks across the room, towards the door.
‘Your Hi-Tec Silver Shadows?’ she says. ‘Are they your favourite shoes?’
Foot nods.
‘And what about you?’ she asks the other foot. ‘Have you been wearing Hi-Tec Silver Shadows?’
The other foot nods too.
‘Of course you have. It’d be silly to wear something else, wouldn’t it? Then you’d be in odd shoes. Did you like wearing your Hi-Tec Silver Shadows?’