The stories she told me during our long two days of conversations formed what I was now going to use to remind myself why people wanted to go on, people in far worse situations than me, people who didn't have a choice. I didn't have a choice, but I wasn't fighting I was drifting. One way or the other, the time to make a stand was coming. Life was in the balance. I was drowsy, and of course I fell asleep.
I was transported into that wondrous dimension, so incredible. Why did I want to put a stop to all this?
This time there was no railway station⦠things were moving on!
The river in front of me on that hot summer's day was a slow moving sheet of dark glass reflecting the sky with its few clouds. I was shaded by the willow trees overhanging a small wooden jetty. This peaceful idyll was a hidden treasure secreted away from the busy high street by a row of Georgian buildings. One of them turned out to be a quaint pub with a beer garden. This beautiful old building had a long back garden ending at the tranquil jetty next to the river where I was fortunate enough to be sitting at peace.
I was holding a partly drunk pint of the most delicious beer I'd ever tasted in my life. It had an intoxicating aroma, beautiful taste, silky smooth, and just the alcohol level I imagined. This universe was the most delightful place. I could even feel tiny creatures walking in the grass several inches away from my hands such was the sensitive connection I had with all things in this other world. I was sitting on a step with my bare feet on a jetty overlooking a perfect summer river.
A shadow from behind alerted me to a presence. It was the shadow of a schoolgirl with a briefcase and a smile from Heaven. Jennifer had arrived. She sat next to me holding a small glass of lager which surprised me because we always build images of people in our own truth. She leaned against me in an affectionate way arousing warm sensations deep in the fibres of my being. She placed the briefcase on the jetty and released it from her grasp. She was free from this permanent attachment for the first time since Iâd encountered her. For some reason I imagined she never loosened a grip on it, also I imagined she didn't drink.
When she released her grasp on the damn thing there was an air of the forthcoming. It was not dissimilar from a market trader setting out a stall of mysterious goods. I wondered what could possibly be in the damned thing. She leaned across and kissed me softly on the cheek. Next her lips very slowly sought mine, and then I experienced the wonderful soft sensuality of her kiss. This was starting to become much more passionate than anything before, and I was drowning in sensations. There was a noise, or was it a vibration coming from some mysterious place I couldn't locate. I was scanning around to see what was causing the sound. Jennifer had stopped kissing me and was pointing along the jetty. This strange sensation of noise emanated from inside the battered briefcase.
“Paul, I think it's time for your first history lesson,” Jennifer said, and smiled her brightest smile.
I didn't like my intimate moment being spoilt by a briefcase, or whatever was making the noise inside it. She leaned across, picked it up and placed it between us. I was curious about the contents of this important object. She flicked the catch and pulled it open. What I'd expected to see were books and the paraphernalia of education, but instead the case held absolutely nothing! I couldn't believe after all the build up it was empty. Something told me I should look further, so I stared into it for quite some time, discovering nothing. Full of puzzlement I looked up at Jennifer, a question on my lips.
“What am I supposed to see in there?”
“Look harder and you will see what could be the road to truth” Jennifer replied. All very mysterious I thought. So I looked again, this time much harder, and it remained a black empty space. No, something was different this time. I was making my first big discovery about this universe. I was not looking down into blackness. I was standing in a black auditorium. Whether it was circular or square I do not know, it wasn't the blackness of a pit or an unlit room painted in the blackest of paints. No it was a different black with a tantalising non-description of its limits. Oddness abounded. Dark as it was, the space held a feeling of illumination. The source of this became a shock as I looked upwards.
To my astonished surprise the sky was still above me, the same sky as by the river. I was standing in the same place though obviously much smaller, or was I the same and the area around me much larger? I don't know but I was in the briefcase. The room was probably the size of the large church and I was starting to wonder how I'd get out, or was I trapped down here? Looking up again, there above me was Jennifer smiling into the case. I was just wondering if she was several times bigger than me, or twice several times bigger than me, when a voice to my right shocked me.
“You must be Paul? You've come here to access memories.” All very modern I thought. Especially as I was wearing tweed, and even with mobile phones the impression of this place was of a much older society. In terms of our universe we would be somewhere in the 1950s. Access memories were from another time, a universe apart.
What stood in front of me was a pixie. I think it was a pixie, I'm not too sure about this, never having seen a pixie in my life, but this wondrous creature in front of me was definitely a pixie. She was divine with the face of a pixie. You just know these things. She wasn't tiny which came as a definite surprise to me.
“I'm Hysandrabopel, you're access code.”
“Can I just call you pixie? You don't look like an access code to me,” I said.
“No, I'm not actually an access code, and I'm definitely not a pixie! I'm a real Lylybel, and I have your memories with me.”
“Memories of what, and why do I need to access them?” I asked.
“In a past life you lost your mind, all very careless, I'm here to help you find it. No more questions on with the show!”
She held out one delicate little hand holding a tubular silver cup. In her other hand she held what looked like a strange silver key. She was holding this by the working end with the loop up in the air. I was quite confused by this strange arcane paraphernalia.
“Are you saying you are holding my memories, and you do not remember them yourself?” I asked.
“I wouldn't want all your horrible memories or anybody else's I educate about their history. No, I only have happy memories of my life as a Lylybel, and all the ancient marvellous traditions such as Alssnurgwodging and the like, but the like is more fun,” she said with a giggle.
“Can I call you pixie?” I asked Hysandrabopel. I couldn't possibly remember her name or pronounce it as she'd done with a hiss and a rolled P. Also, though, she didn't know it. She was a pixie!
“If you're such a fool you can't pronounce things in Lylybel speak. I suppose you'll have to call me a silly name!” she said, frowning and smiling at the same time.
“Go on then, pixie, show me how it works,” I said, boldness bursting forwards. At least it might get me out of this black hole though there was no fear of entrapment at the time.
What followed was not what I expected. She took the key, which wasn't a key after all, and placed it ring end first into the small silver tube she was holding. On closer inspection everything about the key, this silver vessel, was incredible in its ornate design, very arcane, and by some unknown instinct I knew it was incredibly old. It could have been as old as mankind holding all memories from day one. She removed the key from the liquid, placed it in front of her mouth, pursed her lips in the manner of a film starlet at a photo shoot, and blew very softly for about ten seconds.
Bubbles, bubbles, more bubbles were produced by this delicate breeze. They were all individual bubbles, not sticking together, just dozens of beautiful glistening colourful baubles that floated around my head like orbiting planets. None of these orbiting entities seemed to burst of their own volition. On closer inspection some of the bubbles were opaque and cloudy, others delightfully translucent, glistening, tempting the finger to probe forward, thrusting to burst.
“Pick one, pick one, pick one, go on pick one, then burst it, you'll see, you'll get the hang of this. It's the most wonderful thing, easy history, very easy history. Memories especially constructed for the wilfully forgetful.”
I hadn't burst bubbles blown in this fashion since I was a child. It all seemed rather silly, and I don't know what it was going to achieve. I burst a big shiny one right in front of my face.
I was riding my bicycle on a country road in the sunshine, and it was 1968, June 16
th
, a Sunday. I was with a cycling group of eight people, one boy my age, all the others much older cyclists from the club. I knew what was going to follow the very next pedal stroke or the one after that. I realised in that instant the bubbles contained more than memories, they contained re-enactments. I was speaking to the boy next to me, Graham he was called. We were talking complete nonsense about girls, about what we would like to do to them, about what Cynthia so-and-so at school would allow you to touch. It was the conversation of teenage boys wanting to be far more sophisticated and worldly than they pretended to be, or in fact would ever become.
The strange thing about this past vision was if I was going to fall off in two miles I was going to fall off. It wasn't a matter of changing things, it was a matter of being there 100% with no control whatsoever, like living in a video rerun of your life. You can see all the mistakes and feel all the sensation and pain. Worst of all you can do absolutely nothing about it. You are nothing more than a passenger watching life as it was when you were full of joy riding a bike in 1968. So I had to lay back in real time, enjoy the day, see how far it went, and the worrying thought was,
Am I back here forever? Is my fate to relive the whole of my life from this point, again?
The ride was on a spectacular and rare beautiful English summer's day with quiet roads, no punctures, no tiredness, just a mini epic in the history of cycling. A day when perhaps some of the older men worried about work tomorrow, about their wife's health, about the finances, but a day on which young boys were racing along, wind in their hair, sun on their skin, a perfect day. I could feel⦠everything.
I remember the very day with great fondness. It was a day when we stopped on the riverbank, some of us swimming in a slow-moving river, others just lying in the sun taking in the rays and forgetting about the harder things in their lives. I experienced every second of it missing nothing. Another memory was that after we had dried off and eaten our sandwiches, we dozed in the sunshine. I'd been living this old memory for about an hour at least. I could feel the grass tickling my naked back as I laid there in the sun getting warm, and then I fell asleep.
I was woken from my sleep by a kiss on my lips. This kiss was much more applied than previous ones. I don't mean that in a technical sense like applying paint, I just mean at that moment it seemed to have a hidden passion I'd never noticed before. I was thinking this is strange being woken on my cycle ride by a kiss. There were no girls in the cycling club. It was one of the older men playing a terrible prank on me, an embarrassing prank that would have me blushing and squirming for hours, I remember it well.
I opened my eyes on that riverbank and looked at a vision of glossy sunlit hair, the most striking thing being the vividness of the colours highlighted by the sunshine. I drew back and there was Jennifer, smiling. I think she knew the point she'd kissed me. She laughed, and smiled simply the most captivating smile I'd ever seen. I could also hear laughter from inside the briefcase. Jennifer leaned across and closed it.
“That's how a history lessons work around here. You pick a bubble and pop it. It's then you witness your past actions,” Jennifer said.
“How do I find the right bubbles to pop?” I asked.
“It's easy. You just learn to find the right one among the thousands. You'll catch on. It's quite interesting when you find how to work the system,” she replied.
“Are you not going to tell me how to search or going to help in any way? No hints to direct me?” I responded.
“No, never!” Only two words, I was to find my own way. When she said never it meant never, or did it?
After a few minutes chatting I walked up a pub garden to fetch more beers for me, and the person who was starting to become too important, enticing me to stay in what was not my universe. I looked back at Jennifer as I marched towards the bar. To my delight she was looking over her shoulder away from the river, and directly at me. A beer garden table was between me and the pub, I fell over it. It really hurt. I was in agony having winded myself and coughing a terrible cough. This total realism thing had its beautiful moments and until that incident I didn't realise it had any bad moments at all.
I was convinced I'd found a place where pain would never visit, and up to that point I was correct in my assumption. It bodes ill to assume too much.
I awoke in a world where pain was every day. I was coughing, and my arm hurt where I'd dragged at the tubes held by probing needles into my battered veins. I was in strange bed in a strange room in a hospital having more therapy.
It was a nightmare and I was awake⦠if only I could wake up from this!
My strange awakening in 1973 was becoming more than a nightmare scenario. I knew nothing but who would believe me? John Smith, for whatever his reason, failed to offer me a lift. He was keeping an eye on me, but not going to be my “bloody chauffeur” as I was informed. How could I find out what I'd been doing in the last two years and put it all together in time to save my sorry skin from these dangerous people?
I learnt little or next to nothing from my visit to Harry the Pocket's house. I'd learned I was a sex-crazed lunatic who was having too much of a good time with a violent gangster's wife! Sorry, he's a “businessman”. What didn't I know? Too much, that's what I didn't know! Why do they call Harry, Harry the pocket? Worst of all, what in God's name had I done with the stuff, whatever it looked like? And the final question in a long list of unknowns I was asking myself was where in hell's name is my other house?
I had no choice but to visit my sister Jane once again to find out if she had any clues about this other house. Jane hadn't mentioned it when I first asked if she had keys to my place though she was incredibly busy with a rather sorry sick chinchilla. The pressure was on at the veterinarians and she may have forgotten to mention I owned another house. Unlikely I know, but then I didn't know how good or bad my relationship with Jane was. Perhaps our relationship was incredibly fragile and she was doing something to help, but as little as possible. The bunch of keys for the flat had twice the number of keys I needed, and this I surmised meant I already possessed the keys for my other place but not the location.
If you remember 1973, taxi companies were thin on the ground. Telephones were equally spread out and often vandalised. The bus service on Sunday was pathetic. I tried a telephone box it was broken, I tried another and finally got through to one of the only two taxi firms in town. All booked up, it was a Sunday! There was a scabby mini cab firm. I rang four times, no one answered.
More walking was now the necessary evil, and my beautiful shoes made my feet sore. It was something I hadn't noticed at first. My clothes were all very well made, all cut with incredible style, and all my shoes appeared to be handmade of the finest quality. I was so stunned by my out of phase appearance in 1973 that what I was wearing other than the wrong underpants seemed of little concern. Looking round my flat I'd noticed that all my shoes were high quality with only one pair differing substantially. For some reason I owned a pair of very robust industrial looking brogues. These, though high quality, looked as if they were meant for the management visiting the factory floor. Brogues with built in steel toe caps. This in itself was a worry!
The shoes fitted like a glove, but shiny leather soles were definitely not for walking in. I had precious moments of time I didn't want to waste, stupidly thin shoes, and too much walking to do. I did have a wallet, however, which contained a substantial amount of money, in fact more money than most people earned in a month.
I would stop in a shop and buy something more suitable so I could move about with a bit more speed and much less style. Of course it was Sunday in August 1973, and the shops were all shuttered and in darkness so I had to think outside the box. I walked across to the park and found a group of loutish skateboarders. I purchased some quite new and very sweat-stained American basketball boots off a big taciturn mono symbolic boy who didn't have the appearance of a businessman, but when it came to negotiation, he was good! His business style was to grunt in non-comprehension every time I made an offer. He carried on grunting until the amount of money got ridiculous. Without a word he removed his star-spangled boots and took my money, enough to buy three good pairs. A least now I could run if I had to. I had a sneaking suspicion these sweaty objects would need wings! They had a definite need for a thorough fumigation. They stank like French cheese on a hot day, but beggars can't be choosers!
“You can wear these,” I said, giving the boy my handmade leather-soled loafers.
“Grandad shoes! I'll give âem to mi old man,” he mumbled. At least he could speak. I thought he might have been disabled. I suppose skateboarding in leather-soled loafers he was!
I hoped my sister would now be back at home on the farm. I prayed that I wouldn't bump into the aunties. The slow jog to the farm was three and a half miles in baseball boots and a suit. I think my body smelt worse than the pigs when I arrived.
On the way I'd stopped at another phone box and contacted the farm. I was lucky George answer the phone. “Where's Jane? I need to speak to her,” I'd asked.
He didn't know but had a good idea and would try to find out for me before I got there. To avoid the watchful and often vengeful eyes of my aunties he would meet me at the gateway to the main road in half an hour.
“I phoned the vet and he suggested Jane was visiting friends at the Red Wheel cafe up on the bypass,” George informed me. This greasy cafe was a usual Sunday stop for the guys after thrashing out a hundred or so miles around the valleys in the morning. Jane hadn't been out today. The veterinary emergency with the chinchilla continued, spoiling her day off.
My brother had phoned the cafe, and Jane was going to wait there for me. I would have to make my own way to the Red Wheel because George had told the aunties he was nipping out to look at some livestock for ten minutes. So George for all his farm management degree wasn't in charge of the day-to-day running of his own life. He may have controlled the farm animals but that's where any semblance of control ended, the two wily old vixens were holding him by the balls.
I knew in the eyes of the aunties George was still the wicked nine-year-old boy who liked mint imperials a little bit too much. He once felt the full wrath of Auntie Beattie after dipping into a bag of imperials without permission. The wicked old witch must have counted every single mint.
The Red Wheel cafe was another three mile hike, so as soon as I was on the main road through town I stuck my thumb out to attempt the impossible, hitching a lift. To my great surprise I could hear a car stopping before I'd even turned round, and to my even greater consternation it was a large 3.5 L Rover coupe. A grinning John Smith looked out wagging his finger in a “you're a naughty boy” gesture. He pulled the Rover into reverse and backed up about one hundred yards. I continued to stride out walking towards the Red Wheel pretending I hadn't noticed anything. John Smith idled along behind me, wanting me to suffer. On a personal level I just think he was having a laugh. It was John Smith after all. I know the town well and made for into a pedestrian alleyway. I didn't want him knowing where I was going. I'd slipped clear of the thug, or was it my one-time best friend?
The Red Wheel cafe sometimes looked a magical place with bright red and white outside lights flooding the car park. Shabby motorbikes glowed in the twilight of a day under this coloured illumination. Sometimes the whole car park glitters with chrome, and holds an oily odorous mechanical magic about it. Not today, however. It was a grey summer's day and the place look like shit. Inside on the cigarette burnt plastic floor a scarred jukebox was playing some Buddy Holly rubbish from some time in history, ancient history.
The whole cafe was ancient history. The plastic tables, the plastic chairs, the chrome-backed chairs at the bar, the Wurlitzer Jukebox, not the mighty bubble Wurlitzer, but a 1960 something crappy one built in Mexico for a price. The worst feature in that grease filled emporium of fatty foods and bad music was a constant low lying blue cloud of cigarette smoke. For somebody like me, a farm boy, this was choking on a good day. On a bad evening this cancerous fog burned your eyes making you cry. In fact the whole scene in there made me cry.
All this was interlaced with a smell of oil and fried food. I don't mean cooking oil I mean engine oil which oozed from those bloody marvels of modern transport rusting in the car park. They squirted more oil out of their old engines and fumes from the exhausts than heavy goods vehicles. Everyone seemed to have a layer of light oil on their lower legs and boots, girls included. Smoking full strength cigarettes without filters seemed to be the cool thing to do, and for some of them this would end their lives quicker than their dangerous motorbike riding.
I could see Jane near the back along with Steve, who, despite his slimness, tattoos, greasy blonde hair and general leather clad nastiness, was a very well-educated civil engineer. On weekends he became Marlon Brando's “Johnny” from the movie
The Wild One
. This was the hard image Steve put across. He was a really nice guy behind the front, but with me being younger, allergic to grease and totally uninterested in any form of transport that didn't have seats, I was a pariah. From this standpoint I painted him with the same brush as everybody else, the stereotype brush giving broad strokes. All black dogs are dangerous aren't they?
Jane nodded to me in acknowledgement of my arrival pointing to a quiet table in a smoky distant corner where nobody sat because it was next to the toilets. Without asking she stopped on the way across to order Pepsi Cola for me and another hideously frothy espresso for her. Lucky for me our table was in the corner furthest away from the not so mighty Wurlitzer. It was one noisy bastard with rattling blown speakers. We could just hear ourselves while nobody else could.
The topic of our conversation was an exploration of what Jane knew. I, of course, didn't know what to ask and she might know something important but not think it vital. You can't answer if you don't know the question. I was starting to despair at the mask of disbelief coming down over people's faces when you informed them you couldn't remember anything from more than a few hours ago.
Everything back beyond that over bright Saturday morning for two years was a blank. It sounded preposterous even to me and I was suffering this living hell. What had I done to deserve this? Perhaps I didn't want to know the answer. My preoccupation was this memory problem might be physiological and something inside my head was slowly leaking. Soon the dam would burst and I'd die in seconds with the last moments of life full of unbearable head pains. But the fact remained, no matter what the cause, I was clueless.
“So, go on, little brother, what's the problem now?” Before I could reply she continued, “Before you say anything I do know you've talked with George. He's told me everything. You'd better not tell me lies, you little shit, or Steve will come over and⦔ She looked me straight in the eyes. I wasn't getting a word in and she placed a hand on my lips to hold me silent and continued. “If you really can't remember you've been working for those bloody gangsters we'd better get to the bottom of what they want from you pretty smartish, or you're in shit street!” Jane was straight to the point.
The conversation continued in this direction for some time, three Pepsi Colas, three frothy coffees, and at least an hour and a half of discussion, not wasted but not very informative. Jane knew why Harry the Pocket was called Harry the Pocket. She would tell me later. My sister also knew about Sam because she'd seen me out and about in my car with her. She was curious as to what I was doing with my girlfriend's mother. I couldn't answer.
“I saw you a few weeks ago parked up at the reservoir. All the windows were misted up. You were shagging her, weren't you?” Jane stared me down waiting for the look of guilt, waiting for colour to come into my face. She was to be disappointed and at the same time not disappointed. This was some thin veil of proof to Jane that I really was telling the truth. I knew nothing about a romantic visit to a reservoir car park. I think Jane was starting to believe.
She knew about my house, centre of town, a small two up two down with little front garden and a back yard leading into an alleyway. “Not a bad little spot,” she said. She also knew I'd had it modernised and it had a kitchen with a bathroom built above on the back. I was shocked to the core when she started to fully explain my dubious career. Jane knew I'd been dealing with hallucinogenic drugs and marijuana, but she didn't have a clue as to where I would hide anything, though she made an aggressive suggestion. Quite unpleasant!
She explained on the occasions we'd met up in the last two years she'd wasted her time trying to persuade me that I was being an idiot, leading a lifestyle that would lead me to prison or death at the hands of the very man I'm now trying to appease. Jane couldn't suggest what to do in my current situation. She did, however, suggest it was time I thought about getting out of the shitty business.
“Why didn't you tell me about the townhouse?”
“You only asked about the flat,” Jane replied, looking at me straight in the eye.
“You were testing me? You thought I was conning you?”
“Yes!” Jane grabbed my hand bending my little finger hard back. It hurt like hell.
“What the hell!”
“Just a taste of what liars get!” Jane had made her point.
I took a sip of Jane's coffee and it was disgusting. I decided I needed to know more about one of my dangerous anniversaries.
“Tell me about Harry Graves. What's this pocket thing?”
Jane outlined Harry the Pockets secret past and what a vile dangerous unscrupulous man he was behind the facade of “businessman”. She'd learned Harry's secrets from her best friend Louise Wilson, a trainee doctor, Rachel's daughter and sister of my former best friend Bob.
We lived in such a small nepotistic community where everyone thought they knew everyone else's darkest secrets. They certainly didn't know mine! Louise told my sister the shocking story after her mother Rachel suffered a hysterical rant about Harry Graves who wasn't Harry Graves at all. It all started when Louisa casually mentioned she knew Harry and his wife Miriam from the surgery where she worked during her studies.
Rachel had screamed at her, “You stupid girl! You should never help the rzezimieszek! He is evil, pure evil! He deserves to be ill and die!”