Everytime You say Goodbye, I Cry a Little.

“…Saying goodbye? What do I know about it? When you have served for several years with men who have often saved your life and likewise you have saved theirs…” Dave was slurring his words.

“If I can say goodbye to them, just walk away and neither of us looks back, nor sees each other again. Yet…still carry them about in my heart,” he thumped his chest. “Then I’m sure I can say goodbye to you with very little remorse you bitch…”

“Stop it!” Toni screamed.

He staggered slightly. “You have barely touched the surface of my conscience. There is no comparison; we have done so little together! Yes! That is how I measure my friendship! By what we have done or not done…” he paused. The anger and hurt continued to pour out of him.

“And what else can a man give or offer but his life? It is the only fucking thing he owns, and how we struggle to preserve it! So to say goodbye to you and your friends!” he thumped the table, “Who I have only scratched the surface with…or talked of our lonely lives and mumbled about dreary days, and made snide comments behind each other’s backs. How can I relate to them? Tell me!” he shouted at her. “They have not sensed or felt the nearness of death! Not smelled the rotting corpses nor seen the headless bodies of slaughtered children! That is the magnitude of my thoughts! And you ask me if I can say goodbye? You’re fucking mad!”

Toni held his arm tightly.

“Oh Dave…I never thought. I never knew…” she stammered. Tears welled in her eyes and trickled down her cheeks. He pulled loose and staggered away.

“Dave please listen to me!”

His pace quickened. Out into the night he stormed, ignoring her pleas. She ran after him for a short way but then stopped. His hands deep in his pockets, head down, he stumbled off into the night.

“Dave please!” she shouted, “Ring me tomorrow…” Her voice trailed off into the dimly lit street. She went back into the house.

He had been deep in thought when he arrived, but brightened up when Toni suggested opening the vodka, and for a couple of hours they had chatted about the possibility of going away for a few days down to Granada.

By about six o’clock Dave was starting to show signs of agitation. He had become more animated. She must have sensed a change in mood, but could not put her finger on what had caused it. She poured him a drink and lit him a cigarette.
“Are you hungry?” she asked.
“No” he replied abruptly.
“Would you like to go for a walk?”
“Not really.”
“Shall we invite John and Pam over?”

“For fuck’s sake no! What is it about you?”

She looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“If I sneeze you get me a tissue. If I stand up you adjust the cushions. You pour my drinks, you comb my hair, and you adjust my tie. Constantly farting and fucking around and its starting to get on my nerves.”

“Stop being so bloody hammy!”

“Christ! When I go for a piss I’m reaching the point whereby I’m thinking you might rush in, shake my peg, and start zipping my fly.”

“Oh! Fuck off you pleb! You ought to think yourself lucky.”

“Fuck off is that all you ever say? Fuck off! Fuck off! Fuck off!” he mimicked her, pulling a screwed up face.

“You’re behaving like a bored child, stop it.” She walked out of the kitchen. He followed her.

“Listen, I’ve got to tell you something…I’m going away…”

It seemed to sink in slowly. She turned around.

“Going away! What do you mean?” he stood there swaying, trying to formulate the words. His mouth numb, like Novocain.

“I’m going away…I’ve got to leave…I can’t stay…”

She looked at him, thoughtfully.

“What are you trying to say Dave that we’re finished? Is that what it is…is that what all this is about?”

He was silent, thinking of his next move. He’d stumbled this far and now he held back, searching, fumbling for the words, like a drunk trying to find the keyhole…

It was raining when Dave left Toni’s that night and staggered towards Kemp Town. He needed the cool wind. Time to think. Rain and mist blew in off the sea, shrouding the buildings, and creating grey orbs of light that seemed to hang from the tall lampposts, like strings of imitation pearls.

He had met Toni at a club. She had gone there with a couple of girlfriends and somehow in all the noise and pulsing music, and flashing lights, and smiling people, she had found herself facing him. Dave was dancing alone. Not violently, not leaping around. But with a smooth gentleness that caught the rhythm. She moved well. They just danced and smiled at each other. The expressions and movement and gyrations she gave him were comforting, and somehow he just sensed that she was fine. They left the dance floor together, after she had indicated to him to come with her, and they went upstairs where it was possible to talk.

“I hope you don’t think I do this sort of thing all the time.”

He shook his head. “No it’s okay…I don’t mind as long as you don’t ask me if I come here often.”

“What would you say if I did?”

“Oh probably something like only in the mating season.’

She smiled wistfully. They didn’t speak for a while. He thought it was because of the weak joke.

The beat stopped, and overhead the lights came on. At that moment her girlfriends saw her and came over. “Oh this is where you’re hiding?” they said smiling broadly. They talked for a while among themselves and Dave sat there saying very little. Eventually she turned to him and in a quiet voice asked him if he would walk her home.

“Yes of course… I would love to” he replied, sounding cheerful and slightly relieved. He was pleased she had taken the initiative, because up to that point he had been uncertain as to how there meeting could progress beyond a few dances and a chat, without him sounding bullish, and that was the last thing he wanted.

She said goodnight to her girlfriends, and promised to meet them at lunchtime in the Windmill pub the following day. Once more they smiled and winked, and stared with big eyes at each other and Toni shook her head slightly, as if to indicate ‘No not now and must go.’

Outside Dave walked beside her in silence, preoccupied in thought.

She knew several things about him, that he was reasonably well travelled and that he spoke a number of languages, mainly Spanish that he had learned from his father, and also Italian from his mother, which was a lie. For some reason he had spurted out that he also spoke Arabic, which was even a bigger lie. He must have sounded like a schoolboy showing off on his first date. Trying to sound cool and grown up, and so well travelled.

The easiness of the conversation didn’t seem to warrant in depth thought, which was probably just as well considering. Sometimes smiles and gestures can replace words. How else do foreigners meet if they do not speak each other’s language?

When Fletcher Christian had rowed ashore from the Bounty did he just simply grunt when he wanted sex, or did he point at a women and give several pelvic thrusts? Dave coughed politely at the thought, and was just going to ask her if she had seen the film…particularly the version with Marlon Brando and Charles Laughton…When she said, “How come you speak three other languages yet say so little?” she looked inquisitively at him…Three languages?

He looked up startled, having briefly forgotten he’d mentioned such a thing… and thought that if he used a diversionary tactic by picking out a constellation of stars at that moment, it might save him. Over to his right the Great Bear lurked, fading fast in the early morning sky.

“Well sometimes…sometimes I do talk,” he said clearing his throat.

“But not to me…?” She smiled, eyes wide and looked directly into his face.

“Do you live far?” he blurted, “Not that I wish to get rid of you I hasten to add, I was just wondering,” he smiled weakly.

“No just down there towards Hove…off the sea front…about twenty minutes steady walk. I share a place with some girlfriends from Uni.”

She nodded in the direction and continued,

“I’ve got one and a half years left of my degree at Sussex still to do.”

“Oh! I see an intellectual…” he grinned knowingly, but knew nothing really.

“ No…not at all.” She said almost laughingly… “My mother sees absolutely no benefits in education at all. She would have preferred me to stay by her side and help her with her businesses.”

“Are you studying anything worthwhile?” he asked.

“Well, its English Litrature in actuality, but it’s all worthwhile really, don’t you agree?”

“I suppose I do, it’s just that I come from a family where education never entered daily conversation. There were very few books in our house. So in rather an odd way we have both been discouraged but on different grounds.” he felt a little awkward and completely uneducated.

“Thank you for the dancing by the way,' he said, switching direction once more, 'you do it well… It made me sort of glow inside to see you. You are…” Dave selected the word carefully, “Attractive.” Her beautiful face was radiant in the morning light.

“Oh you do speak then?” she said light heartedly. He grinned, like a Cheshire cat.

“It’s just that I’ve not been back to England for a long time…and somehow speaking openly is proving quite difficult…I’ve been talking a form of pigeon English and Arabic for months on end…and all that and well you know…I'm staying with my sister and I spend more time in my room...it's just... ” he was rambling.

They sat on a bench, Dave stopped talking. They watched the tiny, silver moon, hanging way above their heads. People walked quietly by, some arm in arm, other’s laughing gently, conspiratorially, secret thoughts passing under turquoise skies.

By the derelict West Pier a group of people had lit a fire by the edge of the water and were stood around it laughing. In the cooled, morning air, their shadows, illuminated by the fire, danced on the steel girders.

“You’ve been away then…you were saying,” her voice tapering off.

“Yes … to a funny place where palm trees grow.”

“Were there any piggy-wigs stood around with rings in the end of their noses…?”

It felt such a relief to laugh. He could feel himself relaxing.

“I’m just used to silence that’s all? I guess the past few years in the desert have done it to me really…although I could speak some of the language in rather an odd fashion, I seldom did. The politics of the country are complex…so conversation was restricted…I had an Arabic driver who was very silent, very peaceful. His family had lived in the desert all of their lives. We would drive from dawn till dusk on certain days and not say anything…”

Toni was smiling at him listening intently.

“Seas of sand, unmarked trails, shifting hills, pesky flies that would not leave me alone, but seldom seemed to bother him, and rarely did I hear him speak…And then as the sun went down he would point towards it, and simply say ‘Fire’…and that was on a good day! So you see…”

She laughed. He was pleased she was interested in him. They stood up and continued walking. The distant sky seemed to be propped up by the sea… a dark blue emptiness prowled.

“What’s your name? I forgot to ask.”

“Dave. And yours?”

“Toni.”

Behind him the first rays of sunlight brought warmth. The air was brilliant, sharp. He took long breaths and filled his lungs.

“Is the desert romantic? I mean I always think of Peter O’Toole and Lawrence of Arabia…”

There was idealism in her voice. He remembered some politician talking of ideals after being caught with his hand in the till, and they’re being a connection to the stars. He said we cannot ever reach them, but must simply profit by their presence, which of course he was doing.

For a second Dave felt poetical…searching for words that would capture the moment without sounding too sickly.

“I remember one day making a note of one solitary palm tree silhouetted on a very big horizon. It was just stood there, completely alone in the middle of a thousand miles of nothingness…and nobody really knew why this had happened… just before dawn on some mornings, I would feel the isolation of that tree…” Dave could hear himself. He thought,'Should I vomit now?'

“Is that what you like, isolation? A shiver seemed to run down her spine.

“Yes sometimes… It brings you down to size. It reduces the ego…weeks of vastness and silence would teach us all how to live.” Dave thought of his senior officer for an instant.

“It should really make people more modest…more aware of their mortality.”

He felt serious for a moment for no reason other than the mistakes this officer had made, the problems he had caused, and of course his foolish arrogance, which knew no limits other than death itself. He had always been in love with modesty and still was. He read that when Charles Darwin was coming towards the end of his life he talked of himself in terms of not being a great pioneer, but being just a small boy who had sat on the shore, and discovered a few shells. Yet…

“Look! Over there.” Toni pointed towards a man down by the water’s edge. He was half naked, his arms spread wide in a mock crucifixion. He was shouting, cursing. “Get back stupid water!” He then fell headlong into the waves, his arms up in the air. The sea like a wounded dog, licked his footprints.

She glanced at Dave out of the corner of her eye. “A crazed King Canute?” she said.

By now they had reached the end of the esplanade by Hove Lawns. They started walking up towards the town. The sun moved slowly above the rooftops. It promised to be a glorious day. Toni slipped her hand into Dave’s and rested her head on his shoulder. He said nothing but felt gladdened by what she had done. They stopped in front of Palmeira Square.

“I must leave you here” she said, 'it is time for the owl to say goodnight to the pussycat.'

He turned towards her.

“Shall we…see each other again?” he whispered.

An electric milk float went by on King’s Road. Milko!

“Yes I would like to very much.”

She stood on tiptoe and brushed her soft lips against his cheek. He ran the back of his hand slowly down her face and kissed her gently on the lips. He could smell her perfumed skin. Her fingers touched his neck ever so charmingly. Holding her he forgot for a moment, the sadness in the world. She stepped back. She fumbled in her bag for her purse and gave him a small card with her name and phone number on.

He looked at it. “Toni Jackson…”

“Ring me when you can and don’t leave it too long.” She smiled once more and blew him the faintest of kisses. He watched her cross the road.

“Soon Toni Jackson” he said “Soon…”

That afternoon Dave had told her that he wanted to go away, to go away and not come back. She had pleaded with him.

“But what about us? What about me…you just don’t care! Do you! You bastard. You…” she started crying. “You used me! That’s what you did…you’ve known all along!”

Dave was too drunk and did not hear her pleas. “No …I haven’t please…” he rubbed the back of his head trying to think of what to say.

“…I once lived in this town…I grew up in this town, and I lost everything I ever had in this town, everything I ever knew, in this town…” he looked at her sobbing. He knew she was trying to understand. Trying to grasp the enormity of his words. She searched his face and must have seen the sorrow written there.

“One day in my early twenties I got a phone call…it was a bright lovely day. A day when… when you could breathe the air it was so pure…fill your lungs with such goodness,” he swayed. She was looking at him waiting for the words.

“It is what led me to my present life…”

“Yes the life you never talk about!” she shouted.

“The secret you carry around with you like some dozy St Bernard dog!”

He shook his head… “You see I lost everything on that day…” his voice broke. “…My wife, my child…” tears ran down his cheeks. “Everything…” he murmured.

“Oh my god I’m so sorry…Dave please…” She rushed to hold him at that moment. Trying to take away the hurt, trying to make things good for him.

“From that day I’ve just wanted to die…but die in my own way. Not die slowly in front of those that knew me…not die of a broken heart…but die in some faraway place where nobody knew…I suppose I did die…something in here died…” he touched his chest. “But I kept going somehow…I kept going because I knew somebody had loved me…and that I was worth something in this world…”

“Oh! Dave, please, I didn’t know.” She was crying.

“So don’t talk to me about feelings you cow!”

“You seldom talk!” she screamed, “and when you do it pours out like venom. All the weeks I’ve known you. I knew deep down there was something. I kept thinking, hoping, praying that you would tell me what it was. Dave please don’t treat me like a fool…”

He was swaying. Drunk. Sipping neat vodka from the bottle.

“They talk about time healing. It’s bollocks! They give it too much credit. All those fucking do-gooders…doing their duty, but they weren’t really interested. They gave me drugs to make me sleep. They gave me drugs to block out the feelings that they could not deal with…and then they went home…” he sat down on a chair in the kitchen, his head swirling, held between his hands.

“They gave me money, the airline. They called it insurance money…but I called it blood money!”

“Dave, let me help you…” she held his hand.

“Fucking blood money,” he sobbed.

He left, shocked by his anger. What was he playing at? What was he afraid of, his feelings towards her, that maybe he was falling in love?

Love…what did he know of love?

Yes she was a beautiful and kind person. She lifted his spirit, gave him a vestige of hope in this sick and dispirited world.

He hadn’t talked about Helen or Karl his dead family for such a long time; he thought he had safely buried them under the mounds of the starey-eyed bodies of lifeless strangers.

He wanted to talk really, to talk and cry. To reassure her to tell her that she was a meaningful part of his life. Yet, when he opened his mouth the stupid alcohol had confused his brain, and it distorted what should have been a moment of tenderness. Instead it was frustration and fury that poured out against her because she didn’t get it. But how could she know? How could she know if he’d not told her?

Dave walked on Madeira Drive muttering to himself. He cut down across the pebbles to the breathing sea. “Oh fuck! Oh fuck! What have I done?” he felt wretched.

He sat by the water’s edge and shivered. The sea gently lapped the shingle. He tried to think of the water cleansing him, calming him, and releasing him from these troubles, like it had done to so many other lives before.

He fought against the shadows of death and weariness that were trying to steal over him.

There had been too much grief already, and now he just wanted to forget. He just wanted to put his crummy life into perspective, and not have to keep reliving his sickening bereavement, time and time again.

He did not want to risk the gains he had made by surrendering his well – being and placing it into the hands of somebody he hardly knew.

He thought he was cured, but he wasn’t.

He was afraid because of what Toni made him feel. She gave him her humanity wrapped in her clever innocence…a fresh-faced, smiling young woman weaving her sorcery, enjoying life, and she had done no wrong…but like some idiot he had become monstrous towards her for no real reason. Taking his feelings of guilt out of her because he was a coward who in some ways could not face up to what life offered, and like all cowards bullying techniques become a speciality to be used when threatened. It seemed strange to feel afraid of her.

He began thinking of the mountains in Wales where he had gone for specialist training, a rope belayed him to a rock as he stood on a small ledge overlooking the Snowdon Horseshoe. Beneath him and above him the rugged cliff face was shrouded in mist and fine rain, and his hands were blue with cold. He kept thinking one slip on the overhang and I’m finished. He fed the wet treacherous rope through his fingers trying to ignore the hundreds of feet he would fall down to the boulder covered floor of the valley if the rope slipped. He had to reach the top otherwise he would be returned to his unit, his career in tatters. The rain started sleeting.

Yet, as in life, ascending or descending, he was perpetually involved with challenging mists, and cold and hazardous overhangs were always part of this. He was afraid then.

His hands began shaking as he started to climb the face, trying frantically to adapt a sufficient single-mindedness to focus on the challenge of reaching the top. Groping for any handhold, any rock or crevice, whereby he could pull myself up, and all the time trying to remember the black and white instructional film they had been shown that morning in the canteen, “move one limb at a time, stand well back off the rock face, heels down, do not look down, do not use your knees to climb with, test all handholds.”

The wind blew a long mournful wail that bounced off the dark, wet walls, of the valley.

It was then when his life was in the balance he thought of what it had to offer him. He did battle with his fear and succeeded in his quest to overcome it, in the same way he thought, he will succeed in his love for Toni. Because in one sense it is only himself that opposes the relationship, and as with most things when it is a question of loving or perishing, a person will invariably chose love.

The night cleared. A lark, woken by the brightness of the moon, sang a melodious song into the heart of the night, whilst a bloodthirsty Sparrow Hawk sharpened its talons on a nearby tree.

When he got in his eldest sister was sitting in the kitchen listening to the radio.

“Hello love” she called.

“Hello Stella.” Dave called from the hallway. He was trying not to slur his words.

“You’re back early. Everything all right?”

“Yeah it’s fine I’m just a bit drunk that’s all…” he hung up his overcoat.

“Oh I see…not stopping at Toni’s tonight?”

He went into the kitchen; she was sat at the far end on a stool by the kettle.

“You look terrible love. Everything all right between you two?”

He sat down, his head lolled forward.

“Here let me make you some coffee.”

She stood and filled the kettle with water. He sat silently. On the radio the shipping forecast was being read.” …Visibility good. Winds north-westerly, light to moderate…Irish Sea, Shannon, Cromity…”

“It’s all over,” he blurted. “It’s finished.”

“What is love? You and Toni?” he nodded.

“Dave it will be all right you’ll see.”

She came over and put her arm round him cuddling him to her warm breast like she had all those years ago. “I know sweetheart, I know.”

They sat in silence and she held him like his mother, letting him cry, his shoulders shaking uncontrollably.

“Everything just poured out…and Toni was crying and I just wanted to hurt her and I don’t know why…”

“You’ve got to stop this drinking love. It’s no good. It will only harm you…” she patted and stroked his hair.

“Come on let me make some coffee.” She filled the kettle. He took a deep breath and managed to walk over to the sink. He splashed some cold water on his face and dried himself on the tea towel before sitting down.

He sat with Stella for an hour or so and then he went to bed exhausted.

At about noon the phone rang. He could hear Stella talking.

“Hello darling how are you today? Yes love he’s still in bed…shall I get him? No he didn’t say very much…but I could sense he was upset. Don’t worry… I will discuss things with him when he gets up. Yes love I will…goodbye.”

By early afternoon the sun had risen to its highest point. Toni was sitting at the far end of the beer garden in sunlight. She hadn’t seen Dave. She looked striking, a picture of tranquillity, her white simple clothes wrapped around a soft brown body.

She was sipping wine and glancing occasionally out to sea, and in that moment he felt lousy about so many things.

He knew that today all matters concerning their friendship had to be resolved. He cared about her and did not want to lose her. There were already so many catastrophes in his life and to throw away and disregard such love, would be such a foolish thing to do. He went over and sat down.

“Hello” he whispered. She gave him a tentative smile.

“Thank you for coming…” She spoke clearly and quietly. “I just felt that it was important that we at least speak to each other again if nothing else.”

“I see,” he said.

“What do you see Dave?” her voice was unsteady.
“What really is there between us that makes me come here to confess my love for you when I don’t even know what it is you want?”

He looked into her eyes and saw the pain. His eyes became damp with the struggle that welled up inside of him.

“I’m very sorry for what happened yesterday. I’ve hardly slept… thinking of you and seeing your tears, and wondering why I feel the way I do towards you…I did not wish you to be hurt by what I have said or done…”

“I don’t know what to do Dave…or what to think. You seem so distant at times and it makes me feel lonely. You’re making a mess out of your life, and for some perverse reason you’re forcing me to watch. And all I want to do is hang on to my dreams…hold you next to my heart…comfort you…”

Tears rolled slowly down his face. Her arms went around his shoulders and they embraced. She sobbed “…in the hope that I can help you…please don’t hurt me anymore…”

“I’m so scared at times…each day I struggle with the realisation that I am alone in the world…it just makes me sad that I have nobody…that I have lost all that went before…”

“Dave I don’t want you to leave me.” She cupped his face in her hands. “Please stay with me…I thought we could help each other…you could help me understand…if you go away now it would break my heart…”

Out at sea the waters were calm, ruffled only be a slight wind some way off the coast. Nothing moved. To the west a fishing boat lay motionless on the horizon. They held each other silently. Lost in thought. He was so, so pleased. The bleakness in his life was dissolving. All the cruelty he had known was melting under the warm sun. Everything was immensely beautiful, but immensely the same.