My Dinosaur Era Epilogue 2.0

 

mum died six weeks after our visit

abdominal aortic aneurysm

her neighbour found her 

sprawled out on the bathroom floor

they say it would have been really sudden

just lights out

 

I travelled up to the house with petula

michelle was already there

we hugged briefly

so light that it felt like a shadow

petula next to me

michelle looked at her, bemused

 

    michelle, this is petula, petula, my sister, michelle

 

    hello, nice to meet you

 

michelle looked at me

her eyes said

where the hell did she come from?

I smile, she shuffled me into the kitchen

petula sat on a sofa

 

    where the hell did she come from?

 

I laughed

 

    what’s so funny?

 

    your face, incredulous, like the impossible notion that I may have a woman in my life

 

    it’s not that she's a woman, tim, it’s that she seems normal

 

    you can tell that from just saying hello?

 

    no, I suppose not

 

    she is normal, well, as normal as me anyway

 

    how did you meet her?

 

I thought to try and answer honestly

how did I meet her?

I wanted to say that it’s a long story

 

    she’s a friend of ginny’s

 

    who’s ginny?

 

    my best friend for the last decade

 

    oh, right, maybe you’ve mentioned her before

 

I hadn’t

we are floating around in space

oblivious to each other

out of the same parents

diverging hard ever since

 

    she’s pretty

 

    yes, she is

    

    is petula her real name?

 

    I don’t actually know

 

    you’ve never asked?

 

    no

 

we stood in the kitchen drinking tea

the silence so deep

the house so devoid of spirit

five foot mum had filled the place

this giant house

with rooms I have never entered

that we didn’t even grow up in

a far cry from the housing association flat

the cement works one side

a mechanic clanking away on the other

the ferocious alsatian that guarded the alley

 

I said goodbye to michelle

she hugged petula this time

we sat in patrycja’s van

the engine off

the silence followed us

 

    are you ok, timmy?

 

    yeah, I think so, it’s different to when dad died

 

    why’s that?

 

maybe because this is the actual end, like when dad went, there was still mum and how her life would be after, but now this is it, there are no more chapters for them now

 

I started the engine

pulled away down a hedge lined road

turned left at the sign for brighton

we joined the main road

I looked over at petula

 

    can I ask you something?

 

    of course, timmy

 

    is petula your real name?

 

    you are funny

 

    why?

 

    what a time to ask

 

    oh right, yeah, I guess

 

    yes it is my real name

 

    not that it matters

 

the winter came

living in the van in england was cold

ginny took a leave of absence from work

the hotel glad of the wage relief throughout january

her and patrycja took the ferry back to bilbao

stayed a few days there

drove all the way down to near cadiz

 

they sent photos from their seventeen degree coast

we replied with ones of ours draped in snow

for a while, for months

I wondered if one day it would all end

that I might wake up on an unremarkable tuesday

to the news that someone else had died

that the van wasn’t coming back

or  that no one loved me anymore

 

those days never came

our odd way of living felt good

sometimes we would swap around a bit

me and ginny went to margate one weekend

she showed me where she used to live

we walked along sandy beaches

watched a cormorant spread its wings to dry

 

another time patrycja took petula away

with petula’s mum

a jolly down to dorset for her sixty fifth birthday

me and ginny back at the flat

sat up in bed reading books we had ignored

swapping out brandy coffees for the odd green tea

still going to the pub for a beer

though it stopped having the pull it once did

three pints and home

 

the flat was small when we were all together

we dreamed of buying a house

spread ourselves out a little more

some old higgledy-piggledy half wreck

one we could do up ourselves

 

I still thought of jane in these times

how she would have loved being here with us

offering everyone biscuits

making us laugh

with her refusal to engage with the modern world

 

each year on her birthday

me and ginny buy bourbon creams

we sit in the shelter that you could see

from her old window

 

a flask of coffee wedged between us

 

we salute the sea that you could see

from her old window

 

we munch on the biscuits

let the crumbs stick in our teeth

then slug coffee that washes them away

 

our gloved hands hold each other tight

as the wind blows through the old pier