Let's Start Again

Charity said, 'Tell me, how did you two meet?' I sniffed, more through instinct than a need to shift any blockage. We had been through this – and many other such questions – so we knew our roles. This was the one that she would answer, whoever the question was actually directed at. She was always much better at the details and dates than I was. She also didn’t like how I’d spin one of our romantic memories to get a couple of laughs. I suppose I understand why now.

Anyway, this time she had decided it was my turn to tell the tale. Perhaps it was because I was obviously losing interest in the conversation. Maybe she was feeling under-appreciated. I sometimes wonder if she wanted all of this to happen and figured this was the easiest way to bring it about. Whatever her reasons though, it was my turn to perform that day.

We’d arrived at the pub with a few friends earlier on who had brought Charity with them. Our friends had never been to London before and they hadn’t believed me when I told them about there being a tree in a pub, so we were tucked in a booth in Waxy’s.

Obviously not won over by the novelty or the generic 90’s indie, they had left an hour ago. They were muttering about the London Eye, or something equally irrelevant to a Londoner, and Charity had asked if we wanted another drink. She was meeting people later on but didn’t have time to go home. I didn’t think anything of it at the time; she seemed nice and we had nothing to do ourselves.

So that was how I found myself between two beautiful women, flip-sides of the same coin. Or maybe just opposite ends of the spectrum. Charity had short hair then, messy as always, with golden spires flaring off from the sides of her head. Her blue eyes were flecked with slabs of deep brown, as if freshly dug from the earth. In the gloom of the pub her freckles made her face look like a vein of gems waiting to be discovered. I remember she wore hardly any make up as well, and that she laughed easily.

On the other side of the table we had been together for around four years. She had long black hair which was growing more elegant, yet severe, with every year. She had made her pale skin immaculate as always and was serene and reserved. I had valued that in her, orbiting around it until I could bring my own momentum under control. Sometimes people change you just by being who they are.

I was engrossed by the dissection of a soggy beer mat but I felt their eyes on me. I looked up into the pause I was meant to be filling and saw both looking at me expectantly. Her very slightly raised eyebrows, an expression I had come to know quite well, indicated that I was holding them up.

I cleared my throat and began the story of our lives together from the beginnings. ‘The thing is that she met me before I met her.’ I caught Charity’s eye as she gave a wry smile and graciously took my bait.

‘So just how did you manage that?’ she asked. A smirk remained; a deposit on laughter to come.
‘Well I met her at a festival, through some mutual friends. She met me at a party two weeks before that.’

‘And did she?’

‘Allegedly, although I continue to deny everything.’ There was the first laugh, a warm cadence against the thrum of the pub.

‘He was drunk.’ This raised another laugh, although I could see that this was a moment when the comedy of the reminiscence escaped her. ‘We spent a couple of hours in the garden at this party. He told me everything about himself: where he was born; what growing up was like; his time at university; how he worked in a bar but was studying for his masters; everything he could think of. He even told me that the moonlight was beautiful in my hair.’ Charity gave a less than eponymous snort at the last.

She pouted: ‘He was very sweet back then actually. I knew he was wasted, but everyone else was pulling something. He was just talking, and I was interested.’

It seemed to me that my only hope was to wrest the conversation back on to my terms. For the sake of my dignity you understand, I declared defiantly, ‘The only problem was the next day I couldn’t even remember whose party it was!’ One of my desired results was achieved in that the snort emerged from its chrysalis a newborn chuckle. On the other side of the table the response was less favourable. ‘Of course I did exactly the same thing at the festival, but I remembered it that time...’

A new song started blaring out from the speaker in the corner. Its opening seconds were enough to send a shudder of familiar distaste down my back but this habitual chagrin was, for once, relegated as she grabbed my arm with both hands and told Charity how much we both loved this song. ‘They played at the festival, you remember?’

Perhaps some more thought should have gone into my reply but a sharp, 'Ha!’ – and with a nod to Charity, ‘It’s bollocks' – escaped my lips before I could think.

Something in her hardened up at that. Although perhaps it would be better to say calcified, and that this was finally the moment that the scales on her skin became visible. Unwittingly, I had broken a covenant, unaware that I was so bound.

A thin-lipped smile carved tight lines in her face that I swear remain to this very day. Her alabaster visage was suddenly and completely composed into something new. I remember feeling a strange dizzy feeling start at the top of my spine which rushed up into my skull pushing all the thoughts out. My instincts were ahead of the conversation and had witnessed something awful. It would take me some time to understand exactly what.

Her voice was quiet and sharp, cutting through the background noise with the gift only women seem to possess: ‘Really? But you said you loved it.’

‘Maybe four years ago, but it sounds so old now.’

‘Old. Stale, perhaps?’

‘Sure.’ Tentatively I continued, ‘some things just don’t stand the test of time.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Youth?’ Charity chuckled, but her gaze was fixed on me.

‘Bloody typical. Are you enjoying this then?’ There was a slight waver in her voice as things started to slow down. The dizzy rush was cascading down my spine, the blood in my body scattering to extremities, my ears drumming the beat of being out of control.

I mumbled something ineffectual, trying to avert the nascent conflict but it was now clear that this wasn’t my performance after all. Her eyes were moistening as quickly as the fog of incomprehension gathered in my mind.

She let the silence hang, with Charity looking out of place, until I said, ‘I didn’t mean anything by it.’

As the unspoken period closed off my sentence the first tear escaped. In its wake, the first imperfection of this balanced visage was the hint of blood-flushed skin under the make-up. The first tear opened the channel for more and slowly a single crevasse of pinked skin pierced her face.

She choked out, ‘Maybe you should have then. You used to be happy about telling this story. I remember when you didn’t find it so fucking funny.’ She started grabbing at her bag, throwing her phone and purse into it violently. She gave her damp face a savage brushing with a tissue, dabbed the last remnants of tears from her eyes, and started to leave the pub.

I called after her, telling her to wait and that she was overreacting. I looked sheepishly over at Charity whilst gathering my things. She smiled sympathetically back at me and told me not to worry about it. ‘These things happen sometimes,’ she said, ‘and if it helps I thought you were very sweet; it’s obvious you love her. And that song is dated anyway!’

A lupine grin slid onto my face as I slid out from under the table and offered her my hand. ‘It’s been a pleasure, we’ll have to do this again sometime when, well, you know...’ She nodded sagely and took my hand before I took off into the evening in search of her.

* * *

Well perhaps this next is obvious, but the reconciliation did not go entirely according to plan. Love had little to do with it; the details were everything, and miasmic – expressions, words and a plethora of other forgotten minutiae had congealed over time into a tangled mess that we could not break free from. Our own chrysalis had become a tomb.

As quickly as everything had started in that muddy field years ago, it ended. The irony that we closed with the same song wasn’t lost on me. We shouted at each other, beat surfaces where we could not strike flesh and flung barbs to spite the other.

Deep down I knew that we had grown apart and that this was for the best. Where before she had been my port in the storm - the anchor of my maturity – she was now just an anchor. For all my jokes at her expense she was holding me back, which I resented her for. She knew this as well, and she hated that I resented her, I guess.

One thing I was always grateful for, though, was that neither of us were jealous. Sure, we tried to hurt each other at the end, but our frustrations all came from each other. She could have told me I was playing up for Charity’s benefit because she was new and beautiful. Maybe she would have been right too. But she didn’t, and I didn’t. I didn’t ask what she was doing after we had ended it either.

These things always sound so much clearer than they feel. Actually saying it makes it seem so simple, almost painless. I know it was right that we split up, but I wish it had happened differently. I wish one of us had been kind enough to let the other go earlier.

The thing is, now all I can remember are particular events. I could tell you in a flash how she would have reacted to something back then, know without asking if she would have liked someone, or enjoyed a film. It was a bit like having two sides to my own personality instead of another person there. I suppose you could call that security, I felt it was a waste of time.

I can remember when we went to Bruges and had awful meals every night but couldn’t stop laughing. I remember how she’d cried for hours the day we saw a dog get killed by a car. I’ve forgotten a hundred nights we spent at home, but not when we watched Fargo and she didn’t find the wood-chipper at all amusing. That really bugged me, she’d laugh at Tarantino.

She never concealed her hard edges either, even when people thought her cold. I can remember the time some drunk started an argument with me on the night bus and she just stepped over and slapped him in the face, hard. The guy fell on the floor and sat there in stunned silence, then got off at the next stop without a word.

I remember the mixture of shame and pride I felt at that. I couldn’t talk to her for the rest of the journey because a bolus of emotion was pushing at my throat, my stomach churning. She thought I was angry at her. In the end I realised I had been scared, because I knew I didn’t have it in me to do what she did. I never told her that.

* * *

I trail off and refocus on the people sitting at the table. I’m suddenly acutely self-conscious about the length of time I was talking.

‘You do realise that wasn’t about Charity, don’t you? That was about Hope.’ Mark looks confused, waiting to see how I respond. Maybe he’s waiting to see if she’s about to lose her temper at my rambling answer.

‘Perhaps. Why don’t you tell him then?’ I look over at Charity for help. Her hair has grown longer over the last two years, but no less wild.

‘Oh no you don’t!’ Her grin is large and sincere as she returns the buck I less than graciously passed her. ‘You started this one, you can finish it.’

‘Thank you, darling, for the support, as ever.’

She leans over and kisses me on the cheek before getting up, saying, ‘I know you have problems with simple questions, but Mark doesn’t. So how about you try that one again whilst I get some drinks?’ She doesn’t wait for an answer and heads to the bar.

I suppose it was my fault; I was the one who pointed out that we were sitting in the place we had first met and Mark had asked. I had told him about the first time I met her, it’s just that she only had a minor part to play. The problem is that once I start explaining something I have to explain it all, even if it’s completely irrelevant. Maybe it’s a matter of taste.

I sigh and drain the last of my beer before looking over at Charity’s brother and saying, ‘how about I tell you about the second time we met?’