Out there
We’re reading in bed. Luke’s propped on an elbow with the sports pages from the weekend; I’m still deep in Ulysses.
“Have you ever thought about living somewhere other than London?”
“Where?” says Luke after such a long time I thought I’d imagined having spoken.
“This is what I’m asking you.” Another long pause. “Luke.”
“Give me an example.”
“Wherever appeals. Devon or Bristol or Yorkshire or Jersey. Aberdeen. The Outer Hebrides. Iceland, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland. Somewhere else.”
“No,” says Luke.
“Would you consider it?”
“Ulysses not going well?”
“Shut up.” I knock him on the head with it, losing my page, which isn’t a terrible outcome. “I don’t mean move now—though I could be convinced, if you wanted to.”
“Nah,” he says.
“That’s that, then, is it? ‘Nah.’ ”
“Yup.” He turns back to the paper.
I pick up Ulysses, weigh the huge heft of it on my palm. “You know, I never actively chose to live here — I came because that’s what everyone else did. But there isn’t any reason why I’m still here.”
“Bit harsh.”
“No, no, of course you’re why I stayed. But it’s not as though I, personally, need to be here. Think about it: if you wanted, or needed, to relocate, I could go tomorrow. It might actually be easier on the job front — I could be anything I wanted somewhere else, like a dinner lady in Cornwall, or a receptionist in Fife. A librarian in Gloucestershire. For example.”
“You could be those things here.” Luke throws me a glance, a vague and lazy imitation of an interested person.
I put the book down and uncurl my legs. “No, here it would be weird. Here I’d be seen as eccentric. London is great, but it’s exhausting…The work culture here is so ambitious. Okay: name one of our friends who just coasts along in a middle-of-the-road job.” Luke reconfigures the paper with much thrashing and rustling, then settles down and keeps reading. “Exactly. You can’t, because there isn’t one. It all has to be really interesting, or creative or meaningful or prestigious or well paid or ideally all those things. Even the ones who went into shitty grad internships are making serious money now.”
He turns to me with a serious, sympathetic furrow, places both hands on my shoulders and finds my eyes with his. “Claire. I’m going to be honest. I feel it’s time.” He takes a deep breath. “I think…I really think you should give up on Ulysses. It’s okay: I won’t judge you. You’ll feel so much better.”
It’s tempting. Things have got so desperate recently I’ve taken to stroking the spine of Moby Dick when I pass the bookshelves, craving the wide majesty of the ocean, and even the lengthy technical passages about whaling, which rationally I know I’ll hate but right now hold a raw, anorak-ish appeal.
“Where are you up to, anyway?” asks Luke.
“You made me lose my page. Two hundred and something.”
“What’s happening?”
“It’s hard to explain. There’s no real story per se.”
“Try me,” says Luke. “I’ve read it.”
“You have not.”
“I have! When I was in Sri Lanka.”
“The whole thing? You read it all?”
“Of course the whole thing! It’s a masterpiece. Honestly, though, if it’s too much for you, I promise I won’t judge. It’s a challenging read and maybe you’re not in the right frame of mind for it. You could try Dubliners. It’s more digestible.”
I claw the book back open, but even as I start reading again, my attention’s already wandering off to tiny windblown villages crouching by the sea.
Tube
On the last train, a woman grimly chomps her way through an entire bag of gummy bears. I’ve been there, my friend, I think, taking in her rumpled office-wear and sallow, tired skin.
Admin
It’s been two months since I renewed my driver’s license — only eight months late — and I still feel a fillip of pride whenever I remember this achievement.
Next stop, the dentist, I tell myself most days, but have yet to show any sign of following through.
Rhetoric
The buddleia has been variously described (over the course of today’s online research) as stubborn, self-sufficient, a rank opportunist, overbearing, dazzling, a nuisance, undemanding, charming, munificent, a home-wrecker, a butterfly bonanza.
Butterfly effect
When I was six and playing in the garden, a butterfly landed on my arm and remained there for ten proper — i.e. Mississippi — seconds. I held my breath as it flexed its wings, preparing us both for its imminent departure; for every (Mississippi) second it stayed, the more important and chosen I felt. But when it flapped away, and I ran inside to tell my mother, I found that the right words would not come, and so instead I kept quiet.
Trying
“Hello?”
“Mum, it’s Claire.” There’s a long silence.
“It came up as ‘unknown number.’ ” She sounds peeved to have been so easily duped.
“I know. You won’t answer my calls. I wanted to try and…Are you still angry with me?”
She sighs, which I take to be a good sign. Low-key resignation I can handle.
“I’m not angry. Hurt? Yes. Confused, about why you’d make a joke in such poor taste at my father’s funeral—”
“Okay, right: this is why I’m calling. I mean, I should say first it wasn’t strictly a joke, but—”
Another sigh. “I don’t have the energy for this at the moment.”
“Please wait — it wasn’t a joke, but neither was it meant to be a big thing at all. And I’m sorry about the timing: I agree it wasn’t perfect.”
“Is that an apology?”
“Yes.” I hold my breath. Could it be this simple?
She laughs. “Oh, well then, everything’s fine!”
“Mum…”
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Claire, really. That it’s okay to sling around accusations about my father, so long as it’s not at his funeral?”
I try to keep my tone level. “I really think you’re overreacting: if you’d heard it at the time, you’d have understood it wasn’t an accusation. It wasn’t meant to be a serious thing: I honestly thought everyone else knew what I was talking about.”
“Well, it sounds pretty serious to me. And, Claire, come on: you just apologized about the timing!”
“That isn’t— Stop twisting everything I say! Can you please fucking try and understand?”
She doesn’t speak, but I don’t know where to go from here.
“I think we should leave it there for now,” she says eventually. “I don’t think this is doing anyone much good.”
Tube
A few seats down, I spy the former love of my life. He’s gained some weight, and his clothes aren’t the best, but here comes that old familiar throb, regardless. I redirect my gaze to the floor and stare at the gray linoleum in a poetic, intense way, to suggest he couldn’t be further from my brilliant mind.