At Least Remember
It’s the collar of his jacket that makes me notice him first. It’s just the type of jacket Chris used to wear; practical, warm, almost like the ones everyone else on the bus is wearing, but not quite; the collar is a contrasting shade of blue. His dark hair is streaked with silver at the nape of his neck, but then so it could be, by now. And that’s all I can see; collar, neck, thick wavy hair. So why am I so sure – well almost sure – that the man three rows in front of me is Chris?
Eleven years have passed; it’ll be twelve next autumn. But the tilt of his head wouldn’t have changed, as if he keeps his right ear cocked, alert, while he reads his paper.
There’s no reason why he couldn’t be on the number seven from Fulton at 5.30 on a Tuesday afternoon. He could have moved back north to the area where we both have our roots. And even people who own a car sometimes have to catch the bus. It might be in the garage for repairs.
I catch a glimpse of his hands turning the pages but it’s too quick for me to see them clearly. I remember square finger-tips, a haze of dark hair – warm, strong hands that held mine in the cinema, over restaurant tables, walking to the shops. My fingers curl in my lap, enclosed in gloves, unable to keep warm on their own these days.
The bus shakes to a standstill, brakes hissing, and a passenger rises from a seat further forward, and gets off. Dare I move to get a better view? It would mean disturbing the woman next to me in the aisle seat, with her laptop case and Tesco carrier bag on her knees. No. I can’t stand up and then sit down again.
I look down at my half-finished crossword, but my eyes are drawn again to the back of his head. If I was a little closer I’m sure I would smell the mixture of coconut shampoo, tea tree shaving balm and something else that was simply the smell of Chris.
He puts down his paper and takes a phone out, the screen lighting up as he swipes it with his thumb. I remember a tray of freshly baked buns, with a thumb print in the centre of the icing on each one.
“Why?” I’d asked.
“Couldn’t resist,” he’d said.
Just there, tapping at the screen, the thumb I licked the icing from is spelling out a message. If it really is the same thumb, the message will be brief, to the point, with perfect spelling and punctuation, but with an element of surprise. It might rhyme, it might be signed “William Shakespeare,” it might say “I love you more today than squirrels love nuts.”
Because that’s what used to happen and thumbs don’t change.
If only he would call someone. People usually glare at other passengers who talk on the phone, but I enjoy the half conversations I hear, the stories they tell, the glimpses into other lives. If he would just give someone a ring I’d know for sure. I’d hear the clear, deep voice, the Lancashire vowels not quite neutralised by university in Bristol or work in London, the warm sound of a chuckle just below the surface. The voice which still sounded warm and cheerful as it said “but it’s just not the right time for me now.” My stomach tightens at the memory.
I turn to the window and wipe away the condensation. While I’ve been in the past, we’ve come through the Oldcastle Estate and we’re going past the country park. Fewer lights here and the sunset has faded to indigo. I can see my pale, blurred reflection, tired curls drooping from under my bobble hat.
I look down, take a deep breath, peer forward to see his reflection, but the window ahead is misty, echoing just a shadow of hair and a generic profile, maybe an ear if I use my imagination and squint. A right ear that would stick out a little more than the left one, an ear which was once pierced and wore a little bead of jet, but where the piercing had already almost closed the last time I kissed it, because he’d taken the earring out for job interviews.
He stands up. He’s just the right height; the right height to rest his chin on my head, to rest my head against his shoulder as we dance. As he turns I’ll see his face. But then the two people in front of me stand up too, blocking my view. The aisle is a wall of coats, rucksacks, a baby in a sling. I clutch the slippery chrome of the rail along the top of the seat. The flurry of people clears. He’s gone. The bus lurches forward.
❦ ❦ ❦
It's Thursday now and I was delayed at work so I’m on the 5.30 bus again instead of the usual 4.30. Well not really delayed, but it’ll be nice to come in to a tidy office in the morning. I’m sitting at the front, so all I need to do is casually turn round and scan the faces on the seats behind. But I don’t. What if he’s looking up and sees me? What if he doesn’t recognise me? And if he does, what happens then? I sit staring at the book in my lap, looking through the blurred words to a square little room in a university hall of residence, two students sharing a single chair and a copy of the Complete Metaphysical Poets, me on his lap, his arm round my waist.
Take heed of loving me,
At least remember, I forbade it thee.
We’re coming up to the stop where he got off two days ago. I still don’t know whether he’s on the bus. I close the book and put it in my bag, zip my coat up to the top, pull my hat over my ears and stand up. And there he is in the aisle ahead of me, same jacket as Tuesday, small white earphones no doubt feeding the sound of some obscure indie band into a head containing an encyclopaedia of 90s music. I shuffle towards the door. There are two other people between me and him. I follow them down the step and onto the pavement, linger a little to allow some distance, and start to follow him, speeding up when he turns into a side street.
There’s a parade of shops here, lights still on at the newsagents and the fried chicken shop. If he goes into one or the other I’ll stop and admire the dresses on the second-hand mannequins in the charity shop window. But he carries on, hands in his jacket pockets, head up, feet moving to the beat of the music. He spots that the traffic lights have changed to red on the pelican crossing, breaks into a jog and dashes across. I’m too late and must press the button and wait for the green man to glow again. By the time I’m across the road he has rounded another corner. I’m just in time to see him turn into the front garden of a 1930s semi. I watch him unlock the door and go in, but I’m too far back to hear if anyone calls a greeting.
The curtains in the house are drawn and lights are on upstairs and downstairs. There’s a child’s bike lying on its side on the front lawn. After a while it starts to rain. I put up my umbrella. I remember his huge green umbrella, more than big enough to shelter two people standing on the Clifton Suspension Bridge watching storm clouds surging over the Avon Gorge. A gust of wind blew it inside out and we ran laughing through the deluge to our favourite café.
“You alright, love?”
“What? Oh, yes, fine. Just realised I’ve got the wrong street.”
The dog-walker gives me an odd look and carries on, calling “G’night, then” over his shoulder. The dog looks back a few more times, as if it suspects something isn’t right.
I head back to the main road. It will be another half an hour in the rain till the next bus.
❦ ❦ ❦
It’s Monday morning. I feel jagged and frazzled. I needed two strong coffees instead of my normal Earl Grey just wake me up for work. I crashed out like a hibernating bear last night, after hardly sleeping since Thursday. My eyes itch and there’s a buzzing sound in my ears, or maybe in my head.
So what do I know?
He’s back here, living in Broadbridge and working in Fulton. Or maybe studying. If he’s gone back to college that would explain why he can’t afford to run a car. He’s married, or in some sort of serious relationship, and with at least one kid. This is all based on the bike in the garden. The bike looked like it would suit a child of about eight or nine, and it was pink, so the kid is a girl. But a child of that age would imply a long relationship, and I still have to believe he wasn’t ready for a serious relationship when he left me. Maybe it’s the woman’s daughter from a previous relationship, not his child at all.
I’ve never seen him on the bus in the morning. An earlier start than me would imply a job with long hours. A later start means he’s a student.
I didn’t seen him before last week. Perhaps he’s just moved back to the area, or only recently moved in to his girlfriend’s house on this bus route.
Do I know all this, or do I just hope it?
I’ve drawn a blank on Facebook and Twitter. No clues on the internet apart from the local newspaper article I’ve read a thousand times already over the years, from when he helped save a horse that was stuck in a bog, and his PhD thesis of course. Body and Soul : the transition between the sacred and the profane in the poetry of John Donne, 1590 to 1610.
Yesterday afternoon I was watching an old film where a detective is tracking a suspect through the streets. Suddenly there are two people wearing the same jacket. He follows the wrong one. But with this, it’s not about the jacket. It’s about intuition and instinct. There’s still a link there. I always knew we would meet again.
There’s a letter in my bag. I wrote several versions over the weekend. If I don’t see him on the bus in the next few days, I’ll put it through his door. Or maybe check the address and send it through the post. It’s not threatening, and there’s nothing to rouse jealousy or suspicion. I’ve signed it Sam, not Samantha, and it just asks if we could meet for coffee. I’ll order it for him, black with two sugars, and he’ll see I’ve not forgotten anything.
Not forgotten how my whole world revolved around him for four and a quarter years. How I followed him to university in Bristol without even considering courses elsewhere. How he made me feel our love was unique, that this was the love I’d been dreaming of and reading about all my life. How his green eyes gazed at me from beneath long dark lashes as we sat under the trees on Brandon Hill. How he waited until I almost had to drag him back to my room, so that the loss of my virginity seemed like my decision rather than his. How three weeks went by after he moved to London, endless empty weeks when I wrote every day – emails, real letters, text messages – and he sent the occasional cheery text explaining that the signal was really bad where he lived and he’d ring in a few days. I never called to leave a message because I couldn’t bear the sound of desperation in my voice.
I’ve not forgotten travelling to London on the overnight bus because that’s all I could afford, and standing outside the block of flats I’d been writing to for weeks, pressing the bell with a trembling thumb, needing to pee. Not forgotten how he suddenly leant out of a first floor window and said, “Hang on, I’ll come down,” so that in the end he dumped me outside, leaving me to walk back to the bus station with his words repeating like drops of molten lead in my head. “It was good while it lasted.”
My phone vibrates in my handbag. It’s Mum asking me to pick up a jar of coffee and a bunch of bananas on my way home this evening.
❦ ❦ ❦
At the end of the week the letter is still sitting in my bag. My stomach clenches every time I see it there, creased and crumpled, with a chocolate stain where a Kit Kat melted. Re-living the Bristol years has peeled off the scabs. The rawness of my pain since last week makes me realise how it must have been fading over the years. I’m sitting on the bus as usual, but not reading, not doing a crossword, not playing solitaire on my phone. There are bits of poetry circling in my head but I think I’m mixing up two poems. Something about a shrivelled heart, something about sweet, salt tears.
He’s there. In the same seat as the first time, but today I am one row nearer. It’s the 4.30 bus, so his appearance takes me by surprise. I swear he wasn’t there when I got on. Immediately I know exactly what I’m going to do to make him, at least, remember. I stand up right after the stop before his, walk to the front without looking round, head half turned away so he won’t see me. As the bus slows I grasp the pole, my palm damp inside my glove, determined not to sway or stumble. The doors slide open. I step down and walk two paces in the direction I know he will follow, then I turn, and I see his face, and he sees me. He responds to my silent gaze with a puzzled expression in his brown eyes, the way a stranger would, and walks on, his ear-phones leaking heavy metal.
After a varied career ranging from radio journalism to NHS complaints management, Veronica Swinburne is now devoting more time to writing. She has three novels in various stages of completion and several of her short stories have been published or recognised in competitions. She lives near Bolton with her cat, Lulu.
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