more duncan

Duncan had had this dream for a while – he wanted to cycle across the Alps to Spain. I thought he would never get it together, but one day he turned up on my doorstep in Nice with no warning. He was en route for Spain but had taken a little detour to say hello to me and he stayed for a while. It was lovely having him there. Reiner liked him too and we would go on little trips together to Cannes in Reiner’s old beaten up Renault Quatrelle.

We always thought Cannes was such a joke place. In the off season, it was full of rich old ladies trailing tiny dogs whose fur had been dyed pink or blue. We would park along the Croisette, deliberately bumping the huge cars as we left. Duncan drank quite a lot while he was with us, but it wasn’t really worrying or anything – it was what we all did. One day he said he was off to see his grandmother who lived nearby. He asked if we would look after his stuff for a while. He’d be back within the week to collect it, and then he’d be on his way to Spain.

After a month or so I began to get worried. Duncan was always vague – it was part of his charm, but every time I walked past his boxes and bags, I had this nagging feeling that I ought to do something. I really agonised over what I should do though. I knew how Duncan felt about his parents. I knew if I phoned them they would make a massive fuss – calling the police, and I was pretty sure Duncan wouldn’t want that. So I didn’t do anything, and the months went by, and his things stayed in the corner, and I worried some more, and when we moved to the villa we took it all with us.

I can’t remember how long it was before I heard – it might not even have been until the following summer when I was back in London. He called me one day. I was so relieved to hear his voice. He couldn’t actually explain what had happened. He said he remembered leaving Nice, and then he said the next thing he knew, he was on a bus in London, months later. No passport, no luggage, no memory, nothing. He thought it must have been a kind of breakdown or something.

We saw each other for a few more months but gradually it became clear to me that he wasn’t the same anymore. He drank more, and instead of being happy, funny, charming Duncan, he had changed. His eyes didn’t twinkle with mischief. He wasn’t so enthusiastic. All he seemed to care about was finishing the bottle and ordering another one.

I had no idea what to do. I went to see my college doctor. He was really nice. Although we laughed at the sandals and socks he wore, and the poster of Bobby Sands he had on the wall we knew he was only trying to make us feel welcome. I told him I had this friend who might be an alcoholic, and I asked what I could do – if there was a number I could ring or something – or if he could go along and see him perhaps. He told me there wasn’t anything anyone could do – it was up to Duncan. He suggested I try talking to him.

I did try – but I suppose I didn’t use the right words. We were in a restaurant. He looked at me with hard, glassy eyes and told me I was full of crap. He said there was absolutely no problem. I said he should take a look at himself in the mirror, and I was only trying help. He said he didn’t need any fucking help thank you, and then I lost my temper and said he could go and fuck himself in that case, and I walked out.

I didn’t see him for years after that. I kept in touch through Sam who would tell me from time to time what Duncan was up to. He spent some years doing research at an alternative energy place in Wales. Sam said he seemed ok when they spoke. He said Duncan would love me to get in touch but I was still sulking so I didn’t.

After my degree I was in London for a bit, then Germany, teaching, then back to England, juggling a baby and the weirdness of living in a little village. Sam was climbing up some corporate ladder and occasionally, he would drive out to pick me up in his company car. He was always slightly disappointed when I didn’t appreciate the finer points of his car. He would say “it’s an SRi” and I would say “oh good”.

We’d go to the theatre or something in London, and then he’d drive me back home again – just as friends – he was a nice person. Then he fell in love with a girl who was just on the point of leaving for Hong Kong. He got a transfer. They had babies too. I was invited to the wedding but I’d started hiding away by then so I made an excuse. The last time I heard he was something big in Vietnam. He did write, but I didn’t reply.

Then Duncan started writing to me – he’d got my address from Sam. He never gave up. I think it took a couple of years of letters before I wrote back. They were lovely letters. You could see it was the old Duncan again. He did manage to cycle to Spain across the Alps – and even more exotic places – all through North Africa.

He moved to Scotland, got married and had babies himself – two boys, like me. He became a world expert in something to do with computers, but he also founded an anarchist resource on the web, and started a band with a ridiculous name.

He emailed me photos – it looked like a lot of fun. He wore dresses on stage – great big flamboyant ones that dwarfed him. He sent me the CDs they made – it was punk samba fusion. Imagine Sid Vicious in Brazil on speed. The reviews on the backs of the cds were hilarious: “this is the worst thing I have ever heard”. The music was so bad it was good.

He told me funny tales of how they would try to ambush John Peel in ever more ingenious ways, so they could get him to listen to their stuff. They played all over the world – South America, Roskilde, the States. All the band members were pillars of society in their day jobs – one was a surgeon. They looked so happy in the photos.

In the mid-nineties a Sunday broadsheet did a double page article on him. It was horrible. They made out he was creating an internet-based terrorist network – threatening the fabric of our society. There was a big photo of him in it, and they said his house was worth a fortune. It wasn’t true at all but he nearly lost his job because of it. I phoned him to say how sorry I was.

We spoke a few times after that and emailed constantly. Once or twice we almost met, but then something always happened to upset our plans. Finally, in 2000, a friend was visiting from the States and she said she would love to go to Scotland so I rang Duncan and we went there for a weekend in December. I’d never been before – it was a beautiful city – much smaller than I’d expected.

Duncan met us at the station. I swear he was wearing the same coat he’d had in London. He looked perfect – as if everything had finally come right for him. He was still thin and wiry, but his features sat properly in his face. He looked comfortable in his own skin and his eyes sparkled even brighter than I had remembered.

He took us home. His house was perfect too – not grand, just a bit rambling, filled with books and old sofas and interesting things and two happy little boys. We met his wife and she couldn’t have been more welcoming. They’d been together for maybe ten years by then, and I have never seen a couple as happy as they so clearly were. He was still hopeless at stuff, rubbish with money, vague, funny, charming. She was kind and practical and generous and whenever she looked across at him you could see nothing but love in her eyes.

I was talking about him to T a few weeks ago. We were trying to work out if we knew anyone who had ever got past the first infatuation of love and onto something deeper; who’d managed not to sink into indifference and disdain and eventually divorce. I told T that Duncan and his wife were the only people I’d ever met who had called each other darling and sounded like they actually meant it. And honestly – it wasn’t until I was halfway through telling T all this that I remembered what happened next.

It was only a week after we’d left. His wife told me afterwards in a deadpan voice – she must have had to repeat the same story so many times. Duncan had suddenly become depressed. He’d spent a day or two in hospital where they’d put him on Prozac I think. They’d discharged him. He’d gone back home and then the next day she’d woken up and he wasn’t there. They found him that afternoon, in a river, three days before Christmas.

It was so sad. I never saw his wife again. I hope she understood it was a reaction to the Prozac. I hope she has forgiven him for what he did. When I remember the way she looked at him I think she probably has. And I am kind of glad that my first memory of him will always be that of someone who got everything right in the end.