“Regret nothing,” you told me. But I am full of regret, and the wish that I could somehow have done things differently. This regret seduces me, is irresisitible and relentless in its persuasion.
I run things round my head daily, hourly, minute by minute by second by infinitely small fragments of time. I turn it and look at it from every angle, but it never comes out any different.
“What are you waiting for?” was another thing you used to say. What was I waiting for? For the moment that never came? The moment it would be right? The moment I could speak the truth? What was it that I was waiting for, that never arrived? The thing that would have let me say, “I love you.”
I’m walking across the grass in Piccadilly Gardens, walking from Portland Street, past the concrete wall, the crush of my feet causing the scent of the grass to rise up and fill my nostrils. I’m walking down Moseley Street, past fast food outlets with the waft of hot scorched cardboard, past the banks, the closed sandwich shop with its pickled fruit in the window, past the uniform shop, the Art Gallery; the smell of the street is metallic, dry and dusty, but the scent of the grass stays with me, reminding me.
I reach the library, the vents at street level by the Town Hall extension pumping out the old musty smell of books, of leather bindings slowly being eaten away, the sweet acidic tang of decay. I feel it bite against my tongue, the taste of the smell, a pillow of air, fat in my mouth.
I skirt round the library and stop, facing Oxford Road, looking towards The Cornerhouse. I can’t move, people surge around me like water dividing round a rock, flowing on, pouring away. I’m looking towards The Cornerhouse and half expecting to see you walking in my direction, checking your watch, phone in your hand, your other hand firmly in the pocket of your blue chinos.
Is that how you were that day? I will never know. I didn’t stand here on that day hoping to see how it was you walked up from The Cornerhouse.
I was sitting in the park, looking at the sun through the rippling cover of a tree. I remember how the sun made coronas round the leaves as they moved in the breeze, now a bright spot, now a darkened patch. I remember the smell of the grass, freshly cut, crushed beneath the feet of passing people, as I sat with my back to the tree trunk, looking up at the sun through the rippling cover of its branches.
I wasn’t there to see you walk up from The Cornerhouse towards The Midland Hotel, heading for Peter Street. I didn’t see if you held your phone in your hand as you turned your wrist to check your watch, if your other hand was in its familiar place in the pocket of your blue chinos.
I was somewhere else. Always somewhere else. “What are you waiting for?” you said.
I came home late that afternoon, after my day spent lazing in the park with my walkman on, my copy of City Life, my book because you can never take too much to read. I came home and then it was your turn to be somewhere else.
I’m standing here now, looking at the place you were. Thoughts tripping through my head. Still wondering, like Nick Cook on Crimewatch UK, my questions run dispssionately through my mind. Did you meet someone that day, as you walked up from The Cornerhouse, one hand in the pocket of your chinos, the other hand holding your phone, as you checked your watch in that familiar movement? Did someone greet you there in the street? Did you go somewhere together? Some pub down a side street, somewhere we used to go together? Were you tempted to stray, so strongly you could not resist, so strongly you missed the meeting you were supposed to have? Did you meet someone else and leave me behind?
I didn’t know to wonder those things as you continued to be somewhere else that night. What was I waiting for? I have wondered them many times since, though. Just as I have wondered whether you simply started to walk and kept on walking. I wondered briefly whether you stayed on the train from the Crescent and down to the airport, until I saw the cctv at Oxford Road Station. You walked, hand in pocket, it had to be you, you walking, down Station Approach to The Cornerhouse.
What happened to you then, as I sat not so very far away in Peel Park, turning the pages of my book? Did you turn right instead of left? Away from Peter Street and your meeting with a client in the Life Café? Did you instead walk down Oxford Road, catch a bus, go south of the city? Were you not walking at all, one hand in your pocket, the other holding your phone as you checked the time on your watch?
This is worse than a death. I grieve without a body. I mourn the lack of your presence without a grave.
I was somewhere else that day. Regretting nothing, not even aware that I was waiting for something. Not even aware that you had gone.
© J R Hargreaves 2003
