ST Vasectomy Clinic - 14

St John Hughes - 'I feel as if I'm in free fall.'

Over a period of time, first becoming apparent with the advent of middle-age, although germinating much earlier, in childhood, perhaps during the first stirrings of the topsoil of his existence, St John had gathered a plethora of deeply ingrained personal issues. Compounded by the various routine and accepted forms of suppression; work, marriage, the endless pressure to conform, achieve and behave like an accomplished citizen of the world. 

He was yet to acknowledge these issues, the environment St John grew up in precluded vulnerability, the era predated introspection. Indeed the ‘issues’ now presented themselves to him as a sudden and unfathomable urge to escape.

Since birth, he had been destined to be high functioning. He was bright-minded, an only child with an attentive, loving mother, a wealthy but strict father and the best schooling available. It seemed as if the gods had given generously with both hands and held the doors to conventional success open wide for him. From a young age, his handsome good looks could turn anyone; tall and strong, St John had taken to and excelled at academic studies while maintaining a sporty and confident demeanor. Before his sixteenth birthday, he’d established himself as a main character; he was the team captain, the prefect, the star pupil, the heartthrob, wherever he went he was known and admired. 

He thrived at medical school. It wasn’t the case that he was the best student but he was one of the best and somehow he managed to combine his studies with late night socialising, extracurricular activities, parties, girlfriends, all while being a reasonably good guy.

The years rolled by, busy years, fully booked diaries with little time to percolate on his personal achievements. The swim of life carried him along on its tide and he barely had the bandwidth to digest personal tragedies like the death of his father and the mental evaporation of his mother which followed shortly after. The hardening of his marriage which had slowly baked, becoming stale and pale, lukewarm and brittle.

By the time he reached his fifties he had gathered a coating of psychological lichen, the sort which sporolates readily in damp conditions between layers of continuous restraint. Being a deeply private and proud man, built from old fashioned fibers rather than flimsy fluff so commonly found in the stuffing of modern folk; he would never have entertained the idea of talking things through, of seeing someone or taking an extended holiday to relax and catch up with himself. His only release was getting outside for long walks during the weekend.

Sunday afternoon was his regular walking slot, a couple of hours, perhaps three, not necessarily fast walking but a steady pace with a few stops on the way to take in the surroundings. St John enjoyed observing the world around him, both natural and man-made. His route varied slightly but the first half a mile was always the same, he walked along a path adjacent to a paddock where the same horse always grazed. For most of the path there was a thick hedge that separated the animal from the walkers but at the end was a gate where they could interact. 

Over time he got to know the horse and the horse got to know him and to expect his arrival since they sometimes shared an apple, an Egremont Russet being their favourite variety.

The beast was an unusual colour, the hue of Welsh slate with a slight brown tinge, what a horse enthusiast might call “Grullo”. Rarely the horse allowed St John to touch it although he often made an attempt, his hands longed to touch the warm, velvety fur. Usually it lifted its massive head and intercepted his reach with its reactive mouth while its soft nose searched for the scent of an apple. 

This horse was a very good listener, that was really the basis of their relationship, it was an accidental, equine counsellor. The animal stood for some time with him, solid on four legs, listening quietly and responding to St John’s thoughtful mutterings with a shake of the head and an intelligent, though detached expression. 

‘And she’s the one,’ St John mumbled as he stood with his hand on the top of the fence looking down at the long tufts of grass along the fenceline. ‘She’s the one who might save me. That’s what I feel. I don’t know where all this has come from, it’s happened so fast. I’ve just got to escape this, this hole, before all my air runs out. If I stay I’ll die, that’s what I feel, one way or another my situation is terminal.’

St John looked down at the horse’s hooves, studying the bend of its ankle. He’d always been fascinated by anatomy and sometimes wished he’d gone into veterinary medicine, since there were so many bodies to study. 

‘But will she save me, is she willing to throw her young life to an older man and in turn throw him a life buoy?’ He shook his head. ‘You know, it’s possible I am just imagining the entire thing. I am facing deep water, black bottomless water. And this bloody baby, it just doesn’t feel real, surely it’s nothing but a phantom. However much I try to imagine it, I just can’t.’

The horse nodded several times and flicked away its coarse, crinkly fringe. St John carried on, leaning on the rough wood of the fence and talking quite freely but in a low voice just in case anyone was nearby. ‘It’s not even the case that I want something sexual from her, it’s much deeper than that. You see things change when you get older, a man changes his priorities, his obsessions are altered and much less….well, debauched one might say but they are still obsessions….more so in fact.’ 

The horse had heard enough, it turned around slowly and walked away in the opposite direction, flicking its tail. St John found that his boots had sunk a little way down into the sticky mud. He placed his hands on top of the wooden gate and released his feet and then clutched onto the surrounding shrubbery to balance himself as he walked over the muddiest part of the path. Why is it so bloody muddy? He asked himself and it occurred to him that others must be stopping in the exact same place to interact with his equine friend and this realisation hurt him a little.

The weekends had become testing for St John; his wife Cece was, in his opinion, becoming increasingly neurotic and generally obsessional about the baby. He found the atmosphere at home intolerably stifling and his lone Sunday walk had become essential to his welfare. Unlike most people he missed work, in particular he missed seeing Nina, his colleague. By Sunday evening he felt desperate to see her face, hear her voice. He wondered what she might be doing and imagined her doing all sorts of very ordinary things and for reasons he didn’t really understand, this excited him. Nina food shopping, Nina doing laundry, washing up, brushing her teeth.

Occasionally he would find himself smiling, or worse still Cece would catch him smiling and demand to know the source of his amusement but the inside of his head was a private place. Of course he couldn’t tell her the truth so he would say the first silly thing which came into his mind but it wouldn’t wash with her. She would give him a lingering look of suspicion, an unsolicited laser which cut deep into his conscience. 

There was something about Nina which made St John feel excited about the world again. He’d only known her for eighteen months and to begin with she had barely made any impact on him. She had come across as very dutiful, quite plain and boring, often so quiet in the workplace that she was almost invisible. Cece had described her as a safe pair of hands but gradually, day by day, her presence had wormed its way into St John’s head. Internally she seemed so strong, there was something about her which gave him such a feeling of space and opportunity. As yet there was nothing to fill that space except his own thoughts, thoughts about her, sometimes bizarre, unfathomable, the frequency of them verged on unhealthy.  

St John knew that on Monday morning as soon as he laid eyes on her he would feel instantly satisfied. He would be keen to see what she was wearing, to hear about what sort of weekend she’d had. It was as if these moments in time when she was nearby acted like studs in his consciousness, they pinned him down, centred him back to somewhere deep in the past, to a place of purity, before it all began. In the interval periods he felt increasingly frayed and depleted until he saw her again and she became like his charging point. He couldn’t explain it to himself and this made it all the more fascinating. 

She was so ordinary, so inoffensive, like a smooth, clean pebble with clear skin and glossy hair, an honest uncomplicated voice, like a tuning fork to break up and dissipate all the conflict inside St John’s mind. And her innocent brown eyes with so many miles of opportunity stretched out before them. Even the way she dressed was unobtrusive yet attractive, smart but plain. She clearly didn’t agonise over her appearance like Cece did and she had a wonderful smell, fresh and young but at the same time safe and traditional, it reminded him ever so slightly of his mother.