chapter twelve: samizdat

The sky was growing darker and the road beckoned. Lit with embers of fire the late hour turned the western horizon the colour of blood. I didn't know how long I could just sit there and take it. The black clouds matched my moods. With more time to think, to scheme, and to plan my introspection took on a deeper hue. With more time to sit around and drink the morbid edge allowed me to roll around in maudlin sentimentality. I began to blame everyone but myself. Well now, to be fair, I did blame myself. But only because it was so fucking obvious who was to blame. In as much as any one person can ever be blamed for the break up of a relationship that only ever involved two people then certainly I was to blame. Two people? Well, arithmetic never was my strong point. I also blamed myself because it was such a selfish thing to do. Nobody can interfere in the blame when you take all the credit for yourself. It feels so gloriously painful and there's the added bonus of martyrdom too. Neat, huh? I'd fall asleep where I lay slumped in front of the screen and wake at seven on the dot. Old habits.
Most nights, well, almost every night, I'd sit at the computer with the headphones on and a bottle of vodka in the ice bucket. I'd sit and trawl the porn sites, the MP3 download sites, the online pharmacies and write those emails that I'd never send. Some of them were so convincing, so heartfelt and emotional they even moved me the next day when I re-read them. Then I'd send the whole turgid sorry mess to the folder I had created to chart my anguish. I wanted to send them to her, these missives, but I guess I knew what would happen only too well. Dissident literature, bound for the flames. But I kept writing them just the same.
This went on for weeks. It was proper summer by then. Normally I’d have been enthused by the sporting calendar that charts the progress of the sun as it climbs steadily higher across the sky. The cricket and the flat racing season herald the approach of warmer weather. As football fades the horses and the cricketers would normally have me in front of the telly or down the bookies. But then? The Derby came and went and I was none the wiser. Who won the recent one day series? Who knew? Not me; I neither knew nor cared. The only concession I made to the season was that I had promised to only ever drink during the night. Now the nights were shrinking fast. I kept my promise.
I began by walking in the park. Then I tried jogging. It didn't kill me. Then I remembered the gym. I retrieved my kit from the back of the wardrobe and renewed the membership. I got fit. I ate salad, rice and fish; drank water. I joined the yoga class. When I woke up in the morning during those brief days my head was clear and my thought processes in order. I stopped taking the pills.
Then I decided it might be a good idea to open some of those official looking letters that had been piling up. Then I discovered that I'd been sacked. Then I started drinking again. Then I started thinking again; unhealthy thoughts. Crazy mad schemes. Unworkable, undoable, unworthy ideas crowded my head. The doctor re-jigged my meds. It really screwed up my head. I couldn't think properly. I could hardly drink properly. Days went missing. Summer turned to autumn. Some days I'd wake up bruised and sore with no idea of how, where, what, why or precisely when. Blood under my fingernails. Was it blood? Whose? The year was sliding out of control.
There was an appeal. When I turned up the union rep took one look at me and phoned his boss. They decide to proceed in my absence. I went home and fell asleep. It was close to eighty nine degrees outside but when I woke up, hours later, in the dark, it was cold. I needed to get warm, fast. For some reason all I could think of was the heater in the courtesy car. The heater would keep me warm. So I went down to the garage and sat in the car with the engine running and the heater on full. A breeze was enough to unbalance the ageing mechanism and the garage door slid down and almost closed. The postman discovered me next morning and the ambulance crew were less than sympathetic. Para-suicide they called it; low down on the roll of honour. The empty vodka bottle and the blister packs of pills were circumstantial. They’d been there for days, weeks maybe. I tried to explain but nobody was listening.
I got home days later after a short spell on out-patients and a dalliance with phenothiazines. I now had an appointment to see a psychiatrist. Well, it’s promotion of a kind. Psychologists! Fucking Noddy career that. But they wanted a social worker to call as well. A social worker! The social worker called, I think, but I was so out of my mind on vodka, vimto and chlorpromazine that I couldn't remember the conversation two minutes later. But I remembered her name alright. She'd given me a card. It was still blu-tac’d to the side of the monitor weeks later. Caroline. Caroline Merton. That was just so unfair; guaranteed to set me off, wasn't it? I sought refuge in my usual remedy. At the local offy the woman apologised because they’d run out of the standard bottle of Smirnoff. She did, however, have a 1.5 litre version of something called Samizdat for the same price.
At some point a letter arrived telling me that the social worker would not be returning after the ‘incident’ during her most recent visit. Social services would not be pressing charges but I was advised that staff can refuse to work with clients whom they feel to be dangerous. They reserve the right to inform the police. Fuck. I had no idea what ‘incident’ they were referring to but gradually the support network of the caring professions dropped off.
The next day, or some day, I woke up and there was a woman in the bedroom getting dressed to leave.
‘Jake’ll be here at twelve’, she said, very matter-of-fact. ‘And you better have that fucking money!’ I closed my eyes and when I opened them I was just about aware that someone else had come into the room. Jake, I guessed. Whoever it was had a kitchen knife in their hand. It wasn't even one of mine so I guessed burglary wasn't a motive. Jake looked a bit awkward so I did my best to make him feel at home.
'Fancy a drink then, Jake?'
After a few vodkas we were best mates. Down the ‘Prince’ he passed me some pills, told me to call him next time I needed sorting. Better than a health Visitor. Cheaper then the chemist.
‘Don’t worry ‘bout that bitch, mate, he said. 'You don’t owe me nothing’.
He went into his pocket.
‘Got something here for you’.
He'd got a business card printed. Black. All back. His contact details were embossed on its glossy surface.
‘Just like my car’, I told him. The memory roused me to share my thoughts.
‘Hey, that’s just like my car!’ I told everybody in the pub.
'You don't have that car no more, sweetheart', the barmaid reminded me.
'You crashed the fucker, remember?''
Ironic. I couldn’t remember but everybody was determined not to let me forget. I was a local celebrity for weeks. Got the local media round doing interviews at the pub, signed autographs for kids, got drinks bought me every time I retold the story.
‘Local Man Defies the Odds’
‘Miracle Man’
I liked that one. A fading front page photo was yellowing beside the optics.
Jake thought the whole thing was wonderful.
‘Cars don’t kill people’, he told me, giggling. ‘Lovers do’.
Then he leant further across the table to whisper some intelligence.
‘I heard it on a documentary on BBC2!’
He tapped his nose to indicate conspiracy but missed and fell over. He got up, patted me on the side of the face and staggered out the door. I called out to him.
‘See you in showbiz’.
'Kids these days', I turned and addressed the barmaid. 'Just can't take a drink. Another Smirnoff, please. Make it a large one'.
I never saw Jake again. Not even on the telly.
By then I wasn't sleeping too well; hadn't slept properly for what seemed like a month. If I'd kept a record as advised by numerous medical staff I'd have realised that it was closer to six weeks. But no, not since that horrendous phone call, the subsequent series of emails and texts had I enjoyed a dreamless sleep.
'But I love you, Caroline!'
She sobbed by way of reply.
'And I love you too, honey, but can't you see what it's doing to us?', she beseeched.
'It's just not working and there's the time, the distance....and all the other daily routine and it just gets in the way...I'm sorry. I'm so sorry'.
An email arrived the next day. She'd probably been crafting it overnight.
‘sweetheart...
I'm pretty sure from my point of view this is the best way forward. As I said last evening the minuses for me in our relationship finally outweigh the pluses. Mostly I find myself unable to re-connect with you as closely as before. It's difficult to recover the feelings of trust and commitment and warm, happy confidence that I had. I do believe that sooner or later you will call a halt to our relationship again and I have been unable to get over that conviction no matter how much you tell me otherwise. So obviously I'm putting up big barriers to forestall the hurt and barriers have no place in a relationship. Then there's the question of support which I mentioned this morning too. You said in your defence that I've never asked for your support and that's true but that's not because I didn't want to, it's because I wasn't sure you would give me it. I am as you might have noticed a worrier and I can't help it, I get quite anxious about many things most of them completely unimportant. But I feel unable to discuss these things with you because I think your reaction might be dismissive or at worse hurtful.
That's about it for how I feel and all. I haven't come to this decision lightly or quickly. But I think it's right, certainly for me it is. I can't see a way past these negative feelings that I have, where can a relationship go with these sort of doubts? And it's all compounded by the distance and the difficulty of getting to see each other. It's inconceivable to even imagine me moving up north with the faultlines as I see them between us. So I think it's time to say that's it, that's enough and farewell. I'm so very sorry about it all. I'll miss you. Love... Cx’
But I wouldn't let it go. Then there was that visit from the police. They were quite sympathetic. The female officer kept calling me ‘Sir’ and her mate called me Doctor as soon as he’d checked his notes. Then she started too and I called them officer or constable and nobody felt able to break out of the labelling process.
They helpfully pointed out that under section 2 of the 1997 Act the maximum penalty (where there is no fear of violence) was a fine of £5,000.
‘Yeh’, said her mate, ‘or you could go to jail for six months’.
I told them I’d rather have an ASBO for the purposes of street cred but they didn’t crack a smile.
'Then there’s the non-harassment order of course', he went on.
'It has much the same effect except of course the ASBO is a civil offence in itself….'
I started to tell them that this wasn't going to cut me any slack with the local hoodies outside the Co-op on a Friday night but then she came back with her legal brain.
'Yes', she says,' yes, the ASBO is essentially non-criminal in character but then a breach of an ASBO is actually a criminal offence’.
‘So’, she says, leaning forward so that I could see too much of the expanse of black tights under her black skirt, ‘if you ignore a directive to, for example, stay away from a certain person or place at specified times then, yes, you’ll get a criminal record’.
‘It’s not worth it, mate’, he said and he too began leaning forward, mirroring her stance. I wanted to complain about the informal language and form of address but Christ, the bloke was trying to do me a favour.
It’s then that the stupidity of the whole sad, sorry situation got up off the floor where I thought I had it beat and breathing heavily and drawing itself up to its full height it leant back and kicked me hard in the side of the head. There were a few sparks of light flashing in my skull and I mumbled
‘No, not worth it’.
‘We’ve all been there’, she says, now with a hand on mine. The interface of law enforcement and human behaviour collided and the force of the collision brought a tear to my eye. ‘kinell. Crying in front of the police. That really was big time gangster behaviour.
The bloke put his pad away and they both shared a glance.
'Come on, Rachel', he said. 'Less paperwork this way'.
They closed the door quietly as they left, their radios chattering and squawking all the way to their car. I slouched against the wall and watched them pull out onto the main road and when they rounded the corner the act of closing my eyes forced more tears to fall. Fucking hell. Fifty next birthday and a girl’s got me in tears. And very nearly got me in bother with the law. So I stood there snivelling for a bit, wondering what she was doing just then, but not really wanting to know.
It was like that time we got round to talking about who had had the most sexual partners. She was getting a bit tired of the quips and innuendo. And despite my half-hearted yet still heartfelt protest that I truly appreciated the accumulated wisdom, technique and experience she'd had enough and snapped. Snapped like brittle knicker elastic. Snapped and hit me a stinging blow in the face.
‘Alright’, she said, ‘I’m going to give you a number’ and despite years of practice at avoiding football scores being broadcast in advance of Match of the Day by sticking my fingers in my ears she still managed to get her message across. She sat there patiently while I danced round the room chanting nonsense sounds to drown out her revelation. Then just as soon as I'd quit the antics and sat down, thinking I’d successfully stalled the numbers game, she very calmly and with no fanfare, warning or drum roll produced an A4 sheet of paper on which a number had been written in felt pen. I felt sick. She screwed up the paper and threw it at me and walked out of the room in tears.
I shuddered at the recollection and wiped away the last traces from my eyes. Never mind, plenty more where they came from. Later that night in bed I shut my eyes again to try to sleep. Sleep. What’s that? Gilmore has murdered sleep. There was no more space in my head for sleep.
The appeal was successful. Sort of. Excellent academic achievements. Ditto staff/student relations. The head of department had a word and I was offered (ie ordered) to attend some counselling and take a holiday. Well, that’s how I translated ‘garden leave’. And after that incident with the new student group and the power point presentation that consisted entirely of pictures I’d taken of me and her having sex he had to intervene. Of course when the pictures turned up on the web things got a bit heated and a student was suspended.
Then there were the mpegs. Oh, and the video clips. I was drooling over them for days. Well, drooling as in wanking. Same thing really. It’s still a sticky mess however you size it up. Funny how she looked so much more attractive. Because I couldn't have her. The doctor put me on anti-depressants. Yeah, anti-fucking-depressants. Me, R.D. bloody Laing's ideological fucking twin! It was part of the agreement with work apparently.
And there was the counselling. Well, that didn’t quite work out. The psychologist called it transference. Yeah, right. Well, I got my transfer…..straight to the surgery and no more counselling.
Desperate times. Desperate measures? I rationalised this a zillion times. Together the pair of us were magic. There were three people; there was me, there was her and then there was this other creation, the couple that we became when we were together. But it’s all over now. But I don’t want it to be over. I think the real problem was that I believed she still loved me. Oh, sure there was all that legal paraphernalia but that was just so much junk. It didn’t alter the basic facts of the case. The law has no jurisdiction over affairs of the heart. The law couldn't keep us apart. Not for ever.
In three hours I was back at the window watching the traffic again. The same cop car went by with my two mates in. This time though there was more urgency and the blue lights blinked and the siren ricocheted off the buildings. Somebody must really have had broken heart. And sure enough the doppelganger effect announced the passage of an ambulance as their two- tone tocsin bounced along the street in pursuit of the police car. Somebody call 999. I needed rescuing.