Ordinary Miracles (21 page)

‘You should do some more teaching. You were great.’

‘Thanks. Maybe I will when I’ve sorted things out a bit.’

He squeezes my hand. ‘Thanks Jazz. You helped me a lot.’
He gets up to leave.

‘Maybe see you in Tahiti sometime,’ I smile after him.

He’s so different now from the insecure, defensive young
man I met all those years ago. Just a little help, a little trust,
that’s all he needed.

The bus is getting close to town now. I’m ravenous. I’m
going to go into a café and have fried egg and tomato and
baked
beans and piles of chips. I’m not going to let despair
land splat in my mind this afternoon – like tomato sauce after
a misjudged thump.

It seems to me the best thing I can do this afternoon is try
to swim with the current.

Just swim along and not think much at all.

I’d forgotten gin can
make your face numb, but my face
feels rather numb now. I’ve somehow become attached to
the Atlanta Delegation who are attending an international
conference on industrial waste. One of them – a woman
called April – approached me when I was sending a text message. She wanted to know where she and some of her
fellow delegates could hear live traditional music in Dublin.

I’m frequently approached by strangers. If I stand for any
length of time in a public place someone is sure to tell me that
their son’s girlfriend has become pregnant or that their dog has strayed. Only this afternoon I had a long conversation
with a woman in a café who seemed to think I could help get
her daughter into PR. A distressed young man even grabbed
my hand once on the Bakerloo Line. As he did this he told
me that it was his birthday, only everyone seemed to have
forgotten this fact. Given my own sensitivity on the subject of birthdays, I did not pull my hand away. I knew that birthdays
were only part of his problem but I didn’t dare broach all
the others.

The sweat gathered between our palms as the train sped
through Finchley Road, Swiss Cottage and St John’s Wood.
I decided the terminus of my empathy would be Baker Street.
I got off at Baker Street. Only he did too. As he followed me
along the platform I wondered what on earth he wanted from
me. Whereas he had seemed sad before, suddenly he seemed
sinister. I ran up the escalator and into the street. I hailed a
taxi and slumped into it with relief.

Back at the hotel Bruce informed me that I had made a
serious error of judgement. He said London was not a place
in which to hold a stranger’s hand. He said he didn’t believe
it was the man’s birthday anyway. He said the man had
probably made that bit up because he knew a sucker when
he saw one.

In comparison to that man the Atlanta Delegation seem a
very carefree bunch. In fact it would be fair to say I need them
much more than they need me. I need an excuse to delay my
return to Charlie’s house and the Atlanta Delegation have
provided it. Since I saw that strange woman in Charlie’s bed
this morning I’ve felt I have no home.

When April asked me about where to hear live traditional
music, I said I’d show her and her friends the way to a
particular pub. I said I was about to head in that direction
anyway. Actually I wasn’t about to head in that direction. I
had no direction in mind.

When we reached the pub the Atlanta Delegation asked
me to join them. And so here I am four gin and tonics later,
disorientated and talking with a slight
Gone With the Wind
drawl. It’s almost impossible to hear what anyone is saying
because of the crowd and traditional music. This is just as
well because for the last ten minutes I’ve been telling a man called William – I know this from his badge – about my
visualised life in the Mediterranean. He nods every so often.
Occasionally he cranes forward and I have to bellow words
such as ‘Alpes Maritimes’ into his ear.

I’m sitting on a tall stool. A bearded German man beside
me is standing. He’s cradling his half-pint of Guinness rever
entially as he listens to the fiddles and bodhrán. It is clear that he feels himself to be part of some mystical experience. He’s
poised and waiting for it to happen. It probably will too.

Tonight I wish I was from Stuttgart or Atlanta and visiting this place for the first time. I wish I was legitimately foreign
and didn’t just feel that way.

I also feel knackered. I made many phone calls today and saw numerous flats. The cheap ones were full of lino and the
fetid lingerings of grilled lamb chops. ‘And this is the kitchen,’
the owners usually said with bravado – pointing towards a
forlorn corner of the sitting room in which a cooker and
sink seemed to cower. I don’t know why I bothered to look
at them, because the despondency of the hallways said quite
enough.

The brighter, nicer places tended to be flats I’d have to
share because I couldn’t afford them on my own. Some
already had people in them who assessed my suitability and
said they’d ring back. I don’t think they will ring back. I’m much older than most of them, though one girl – Bella – seemed quite taken with me. She had style, did Bella. She
was completely dressed in black and her sitting-room was an
unusual shade of pink. ‘Vaginal pink dearie,’ she said, when I
commented upon the décor. ‘I’ve got a bottle of wine open somewhere – let’s have some.’

I found Bella’s quirky self-assurance quite bracing, but I
doubt if I could hack it as her and Nigel’s flat-mate. Nigel
lives there too. The flat was quite big, so we could all have got
away from each other. But one would have had to live several
houses away to escape the sound from Nigel’s hi-fi. He was
playing it in his room as Bella and I spoke. The thud from
the bass sounded like a herd of wild beasts lumbering over
an African plain. Even with ear-plugs the vibrations would
have been unsettling.

‘Do you like parties?’ Bella asked me.

‘Sometimes. Why?’

‘We have loads of parties here. Great parties.’

‘Yes, I’m sure you do,’ I replied as I looked round the
large, almost old-fashioned sitting-room. Even the luxuriant
rubber plant was growing at a slightly tipsy angle – probably
the result of one vodka too many.

‘Give us a call if you’re interested. It would be nice to have
someone sensible about the place,’ Bella said as I left.

‘I’m not sure I am that sensible,’ I replied.

‘Well then, so much the better.’ And as she gave me an
indulgent smile I knew what Bella and I had in common was
a belief in our intrinsic oddness.

As I walked back to town – Bella’s flat was in a ‘central
location’ – I wondered why I found flat-hunting so scary. And then I realised it was because it raised the mysterious
issue of my sense of myself. It reminded me once again that
life holds many cracks that one can slip into. With just one little slip in resolve, for example, I could find myself in a
dreary room somewhere with only the smell of a long-gone
lamb chop for company. After a while it might begin to seem
quite natural to traipse through some despondent hallway,
possibly clutching a Burger King take-away because the murk
of the ancient cooker proved too much to face. Go on long
enough like that and you have a whole life. As the years went
by I’m pretty sure I’d buy a budgerigar.

The rent on that sad solo refuge would be a little more than
the cost of sharing Bella’s bright but acoustically challenging
vaginal pink flat. The flat where a whole new career as a
party animal beckoned and any budgerigar would probably
be let out of its cage. Let out of its cage to fly and crap
happily round the large rooms. Until one day it found an
open window and discovered that the cold winter streets of
central Dublin are no place for a budgie to be.

The chaotic fug of this Dublin pub is no place for me to be right now. Bruce and I used to come here occasionally
in happier days. We’d find a cosy corner and sit and hold
hands. The calm of our contentment seemed like a shield against a noisy, turbulent world. We were a couple. I was
a couple. The night now seems as abrasive as a non-rusted B
rillo pad in comparison.

The traditional musicians are taking a break and someone
has put on Eleanor McEvoy. As she starts singing ‘A Woman’s
Heart,’ I realise what I need. I need someone to take me away
from all this. I’ve had this feeling many times before and in
many places, but never with the same degree of urgency. I know that in
The Cinderella Complex
Colette Dowling wrote
‘…the deep wish to be taken care of by others is the chief
force holding women down today,’ but I don’t give a shit.
It seems to me everyone wants to be taken care of at times,
especially husbands. I’ve ironed quite enough shirts to know that. Pride is no contender against desperation. I know what
I must do.

I get up and push my way through the crowd. I lurch
desperately in the direction of the door where it’s quieter and take out my mobile.
I dial the number. I wait as it rings. It rings and
rings and rings, but no one answers.

Bruce isn’t there.

He should be there. It seems to me, standing, drunk and
desolate in that pub, that he may well have absented himself
on purpose. It seems to me that he somehow knew I’d find
myself
in extremis
at 10.30 p.m. and ask him to collect me. Ask him to rescue me and take me home. So he put on his coat and went out. It’s quite obvious that’s what he’s done.

I phone Susan. ‘Hello,’ she says, in a very chirpy voice.

‘Hello,’ I reply. I have to almost scream above the din.

‘Is that you, Jasmine?’ Her voice now sounds a bit dull and
disappointed.

‘Yes it is,’ I holler, then I pause, trying to ride the waves of
rejection and self-pity. I sway slightly as I do so. ‘Even Susan
doesn’t want to hear from me,’ I think miserably. ‘No one
cares. Not really.’