A Pair of Spectacles and a War Zone.
Story from this suggested title – If you have read one or two of my stories you know I like to connect them to a real historical event if I can –
The children are fascinated by the attic. They are drawn to it. This is where their father bundled all the things that would remind them of her. Her clothes, her make-up, her perfume, all hastily packed into boxes and thrown up here to be out of sight and mind. But of course it isn’t, is it?
I think he is wrong, but for all the best reasons; trying to shield them from the grief of their mother’s death. So today, he has gone fishing, and we have come up here together amongst the mess and the dust, and are carefully and gently going through the boxes, smoothing out her clothes, admiring her jewellery, smelling her perfume, looking at old photographs, and replacing everything in good order.
I am content in this house. I truly love Sarah and Adam, and I think they are coming to love me. The river of sadness that runs beneath the surface is unspoken, but I think it may be what drew us together, Tony and me. Does he love me? I don’t think so, but he loves that I care for his children, and that’s enough. It will do for me. Can anyone expect the real thing more than once?
. . . I did have it just that once, but rows had become the routine with us. Every morning something would spark into confrontation and complaint. That morning it started with my clothes, my clothes for God’s sake, at six thirty in the morning. Julia was dressed already, showered and smart, antiseptic with toothpaste and “Mountain Pine”. Back home in London it wasn’t like that – the chilly separateness. Then it was still two lovers, absorbed in the pleasure of touching and being together. I would be enjoying watching as she moved about the flat, her slim body in its old floppy nightshirt, the early morning sun catching the halo of fine blond hair on her tanned arms as we sat over breakfast. No hurry. Love seemed to be a presence there with us, something we could touch.
Where had it all gone wrong? The offer for Julia to transfer to her American office meant mega money, a flat in New York and freedom for me to give up journalism and finish my book. It was a gift she gave me gladly. Her face had glowed up at me, brown eyes alight. She had persuaded me. “Let’s go!”
Things soon went sour. Our six months in New York had sharpened away Julia’s soft edges. All I saw now seemed to be hard surfaces – in our flat, in our speech, in the new gloss of my lover. All she saw was a loser, hanging around half the day in her dressing gown. Not even the author’s rich velour one she had bought for me from Macey’s, a thin old brown towelling thing from home. I must have reeked of failure, and I was smoking again.
That morning she homed straight in again on the disaster that was me. She had started making timetables for my day. That I would not bear. How do we do it, all us intelligent, savvy people, not just wasting our lives slinging mud at each other, but slinging the same mud, over, and over, and over.
After she’d gone I crumpled into a chair licking my wounds and wondering how I could fill the time till I could decently walk away from the breakfast dishes and go out and find a bar and a drink. Then I noticed she had left her spectacles on the breakfast table. Her spectacles. She was a little vain about wearing them, my Julia, but she would be lost without them. The stock market prices scrolling through her computer screen would just be a meaningless blur. Something about those neat shiny little gold rimmed glasses brought her vividly into my mind. Not the cold Julia, the old Julia. I would shower, get dressed and go down to the office with them for her. She would be pleased. She would love me maybe, maybe …
Her mobile was only taking messages, so I left a brief one that I was on my way. I remember I whistled under my breath as I got ready. A long time since I’d whistled! I was still whistling when I bought the “New York Times” at the station. It got me some odd looks on the subway train, but I kept on just the same. It was a lovely morning, the sky was blue, why not get out and walk the last part of the way? I came out into the daylight. I stopped whistling.
There was no daylight. There was darkness, dust and hell on earth. We were not allowed to move forward, and people pushed and crushed from behind. A Police cordon held us back. Fire engines and Police cars shrieked and wailed. Vast flames and smoke, vile black smoke, poured from the twin towers. People were running everywhere, some screaming and hysterical, some just running, stunned and silent. People were stumbling and bleeding. Was she among them, or was she in there still? Julia.
A woman was holding me tight, tears making crazy patterns through her dust streaked face. She was shaking me and I realised I was screaming too, just screaming, nothing left in me but screaming fear. I was going to tell her I was sorry. I was going to tell my love everything would be different. I was going to be different. In the future.
I started to fight my way through the crowds. A grimey Cop pushed me back with a curse. Loud speakers shouted at us “Go back.” “Move back.” “There is nothing you can do.”
The woman who had grabbed me was trying to tell me what had happened. Aeroplanes had crashed. Two aeroplanes? How could two aeroplanes crash? Deliberate? How could it be deliberate? What terrorists? Who? Why? She had a husband in there somewhere she said, and three children at home. Together we had to turn away, supporting each other as best we could, speaking in disconnected sentences. Not in this world. This was not, could not be, the real world.
This was just an ordinary day, a bright, sunny, ordinary morning. Numbly I began the struggle to get home. Again and again my hand groped for the little round glass spectacles in my pocket. Julia. Over and over again I tried to recall the message I had left on her phone.
Had I said “I love you”? Had I said your name? . . .
The last of the boxes have been lovingly packed away again, and we have cried together and talked, I hope, a little bit of the pain away. Adam stops by the trap door.
“ What about this one Stephanie? We haven’t opened this one”
“Oh it’s just some old bits of mine, no need”.
No need.
I know what is in the box- an unworn velour dressing gown, a never to be finished novel, and a pair of gold rimmed spectacles.