I remember the melancholy settling over me then, as it settled over me now. There was comfort in it,… nature's anaesthetic for a heart suddenly torn open. From the beginning I had been seeking the resolution of things beyond my control, and rather than solve anything I seemed only to have witnessed the disintegration of everything I had built, down to the very foundations of my life. And now there came the additional sting, the knowledge I had also trailed misery through the life of someone whose quiet presence I had always held in the very highest regard.
I put Joni Mitchel on the player and listened for a while, then went up to my room, drew the curtains and slid beneath the covers fully clothed. I listened to the final plaintive tracks coming from downstairs, before drifting gradually into sleep. And as I drifted, I dreamed a presence. A warm body curled against my back,… the stillness of it, the caress of hair against my neck,… and I dared not move for fear of hastening its departure.
I should have telephoned Rachel by now, I thought, asked how things had gone, asked where she was and when I might expect to see her again. I might have added that I loved her,… that I would always love her, but the telephone lay in my jacket pocket, switched off, it's battery fading. It was better to let it go. I imagined lithe arms around my waist, now,.. soft hands crossing upon my chest, taking me and pulling me gently away. I felt a hot breath curling around my neck, and then a voice came out of the darkness. "Love me," it said. "Love Eleanor."
Chapter 38
It was a Friday evening towards the end of the year when I drove out of Derby's gates for the last time. And as I made my way down Bridgeman street, the bulky silhouette of the factory seemed to melt into the darkness, making it possible to imagine the bulldozers had already swept it away.
The thought did not trouble me as much as I had once believed it might, and I could more easily accept that the Derby's I carried in my head, like my marriage, had ceased to exist a long time ago. It's just that there's something in me that always makes me want to hang on, something that makes me want to believe things will come good in the end. I was wrong. Only in our heads do things remain the same. All things must change. We move on. We survive. And then the things we think that are right for us might actually be holding us back, when it’s actually the realisation of our worst fears that can open the doors that will lead us on.
I did not go directly home but found myself taking a detour by Langholm Avenue, the Midget delivering me once more to the house where Rachel has lived in memory all my life. That evening, the curtains were parted, the lights were on, and inside I saw a middle aged chap, holding a baby. He was bobbing it gently up and down and the child was drifting off to sleep. They seemed alien, encapsulated by the light and intruding so rudely in my past like that, but of course a generation had come and gone since I'd first passed that way, and it was me who had no business there any more.
All my life, there has been no other place like Langholm Avenue, but that evening I saw it for what it was: just another street in a provincial town, going to seed; scarred pavements and old houses shouting out the idiosyncratic improvements of the last quarter of a century: plastic windows, satellite dishes, block paved drives and bulging conservatories. I did not stop but cruised by slowly, absorbing this mysterious transformation, and the final dissolving of all my dreams into reality.
I paused at the junction to let the traffic clear, and while I waited I gave the dials a tap. They were old dials, silver on black-crackle, telling me an antiquated tale of volts and oil pressure. It had been a long road, the road from Langholm avenue, but after it all I discovered the pressure, the pulse of my life, was stronger than when my journey had begun.
I glanced back in the mirror at the lights of Langholm Avenue. They were quivering with vibration, the whole scene appearing to blur out of existence as I played upon the throttle. There were no regrets, no sense of time having been wasted wallowing in the uselessness of nostalgia. On the contrary, sometimes, it is important for us to look back, to pause a while and truly focus on our past, for it's only then we see our lives in some sort of context,… only then we can discern the emotional landscape that has shaped us.
And we are shaped by those we love, though quite helpless in our choices,… . helpless also if those we love choose not to love us in return. I've known the power of such a love, stood paralysed while it swept away all reason, and I've experienced its echoes fresh from a time when all else has been forgotten. I was shaped by it once, but shaped anew in learning to finally to let it go.
Slowly, I made the turn, heading up through town in the direction of Arkwright Street, and home. I felt okay, strangely comforted by the melancholic grumble of the engine. Or was it hope? Rachel was gone, I knew that, and Carol was looking for more than I could give. But Eleanor had yet to return her key and one of these days, she would be waiting. You might say I was wrong to hope, but sometimes in life, as in love, the most we have to go on,…
Is a feeling.
From the same author on Feedbooks
Love is a Perfect Place (1999) A short story by Michael Graeme - a twenty minute read: He scooped some water up and drank. It astonished him. It tasted like he imagined the most perfect water should taste, but it was a sensation spoiled by the queer fact that he wasn't thirsty even though he had walked for hours under a hot sun.
"Perhaps we don't need food,... or water," he said. "Only when it pleases us."
He looked around then at the land and he felt a chill. What manner of place was this? And what manner of being had he become?
* * *
The Enigma that was Carla Sinclair (2004) A short story by Michael Graeme (a 45 minute read):
I was not completely unhinged. She was just a computer program, a crude simulation - at best a never ending animated cartoon with only one character and no story line. But she was "something",... a hobby I suppose you might say. Other young men had hobbies, equally obscure, though perhaps more socially inclusive. They collected camera gear, they went fishing, raced cars or drank themselves stupid. Me? I coded in my bedroom. Same thing? Well, not quite. You see, while other people's hobbies took them out of themselves, mine enabled me to climb deeper inside.
* * *
Lively Custard (2004) Short Story - a 25 minute read: Rogue trees are popping up all over the little town of Frinton-cum-Hardy and the residents have begun speaking in metaphors so mixed and mangled, poor Armitage, connoisseur of all things bookish, finds he no longer understands his mother tongue. And if all that isn't enough his young protege, Jenny, from the Books Galore Emporeum is having "uncle trouble"!
* * *
A Moth on the Moon (2004) A twenty minute read, by Michael Graeme: Conspiracy theorists excepted, most people know the United States landed a man on the moon in 1969. What's less well known however, is that the British beat them to it, in 1947.
* * *
The Choices (2006) A fifteen minute read:
I am sitting here in the lounge-bar of the McKinley Arms Hotel, by the shores of Loch Lomond, and I am staring out into the twilight at my choices. I have been this way before many times and I always seem to go wrong at this point, so you must forgive what must seem like fastidious caution, but I simply have to get it right this time!
* * *
Escape From Paradise Island (2007) A 25 minute read by Michael Graeme: Crime doesn't pay. That's what they try to teach you in prison, and fair enough, I might even have left there one day determined to go straight except, suddenly, I was on an island in the China Sea, gazing at a beautiful girl in a yellow Bikini. So maybe it had been worth it after all. But careful now! You had to avoid thinking things like that because they'd a nasty habit of dissolving back into reality and you'd wake up right back in that stinking grey cell: five years of your life already erased, with another two to go, and all because you'd never been able to resist the puzzle of a pretty motor car!
* * *
Push Hands (2008) Phil and Penny were made for each other - the only problem is they are ma
rried to other people. When they meet at a Tai Chi class they quickly realise the depth of one another's loneliness and need for a sympathetic ear. Fearful of the consequences, they go to elaborate lengths to avoid each other but their paths begin to cross with chance-defying regularity, pulling them ever more deeply into one another's confidence. Is this evidence of a mysterious power at work, or should they simply have an affair? Middle aged and married for a long time, their apparently unavoidable relationship causes them to ask serious questions of the meaning of their lives and their marriages, and finally to demand that their families respect them for who they really are. But will their families recognise them? Can they even recognise themselves?
Push Hands is a full length novel, complete and free to download.
* * *
The Man Who Could Not Forget (2008) A Short Story by Michael Graeme (a fifteen minute read):
...I have a problem with my memory. It isn't that it ever fails me - quite the opposite in fact. Indeed, my recall of events from all but the earliest years of my life is truly photographic, so there was little doubt in my mind the woman before me now was the one who had stolen the book....
* * *
The Magician of Monkton Pier (2009) Short Story - a twenty five minute read.
Joshua is navigating his eco-boat, The Mattie Rat along a dark and stinking stretch of the old canal through Monkton - a city overwhelmed by gangs and gun toting Militias. Joshua's seen it all before: urban decay, corruption and the death of hope. Living on the water, and with no need for money, he's usually able to slip unnoticed through these town stretches and into the green beyond. But when he's tricked into picking up a pair of enigmatic hitchers, Joshua knows there's going to be trouble in Monkton. In spite of his best efforts, the wily old Waterman is about to become an accomplice in the biggest magical stunt of all time. And if the world no longer believes in magic, well, it only has itself to blame.
* * *
Crystal Says (2009) A twenty minute read: So, I'm standing in this crop circle, down in Wiltshire, England, and there's a girl dangling a crystal from the end of a chain. She's very pretty, so I'm thinking I'll have to find a way of overlooking the fact she's probably also some kind of crank if I want to take advantage of the situation here,...
* * *
Katie's Rescue (2009) A thirty minute read: It felt odd, driving into Raworth, because where I come from Raworth does not exist. I know that stretch of road, you see? It dips down to the river Warfe, crosses over by the old bridge, then rises up the dale on the other side. Ordinarily there's just a steep wooded ravine and a picturesque waterfall on the river but, like I said, on this occasion, there was also Raworth,...
* * *
The Summer of '83 (2009) Well, that's middle age for you: you either grow up, grow into it, accept its imperfections, its disappointments, and grow old grumbling at someone, or you ruin yourself on a mad fling with a girl half your age that you know won't last, and then you grow old alone and with only the walls to grumble at.
In the absence of any other alternatives, I know which of the two I prefer,... but what if there was a third alternative?
* * *
The Man Who Talked to Machines (2010) A short story from web-author Michael Graeme (a half hour read):
"You have to talk to them, counsel them, mesmerise them into stillness before you set foot anywhere near them. And, though I may not be considered wholly sane, at least I have a reputation for the way I talk to machines."
* * *
Pandora and Melanie (2010) A thirty minute read:- My dear Richard, I apologise for the delay in writing to you but it's only now I am beginning to come to terms with the implications of your discovery, and also the news of your collaboration with the woman known to you as Pandora,...
The author joins in with the doom and gloom and predicts the end of the world, but as you might expect, there's an upside to every situation.
* * *
Rosemary's Eyes (2010) A short story about life, and death: Rosemary was by the house, feeling her way among the delicate stems of a clematis, her light touch seeking the beauty of its tissue-thin blooms. She paused at our approach and looked towards me, her eyes passive, waiting. Then she reached out, inviting my embrace. And when she gathered me in her arms, she raised her lips to my ear and I felt her whispered words, hot and curling against my skin.
"Don't be afraid," she said. "Look into my eyes once more."
* * *
In Durleston Wood (2010) A middle aged romantic, Richard Hunter has hit the buffers. Divorced and estranged from his children, he trains as a teacher and takes up a post in his home village at his old Primary School. Never more than arm's length away from a nervous breakdown and hopelessly in love with his headmistress, Richard seeks solace in his boyhood haunt: Durleston Wood. But the wood now hides a secret, a mysterious woman kept hidden there as the apparent "property" of a villain - or so she tells him. As he learns more of her fate, and her plan to transfer her "ownership" to him, he tells himself this is the last thing he wants, while wondering if it isn't actually something he needs more than anything, that far from destroying him, rescuing her could be the one thing that stops him from going under.
This is a full length novel - not a taster or a teaser.
* * *
The Lavender and the Rose (2010) Matthew Rowan finds himself drawn to a secluded valley in the English Lake District where he meets Amanda, mistress of Cragside, a cottage nestled deep in a fold between high fells. On the surface it seems like the ideal refuge from a world gone mad, but what he doesn't know is that the house sits at the epicentre of a magnetic anomaly and has a reputation for playing strange tricks on the mind of anyone who sleeps there. There's also something peculiar about Amanda, who calls hersef Beatrice and leads a secretive life dressed entirely in Victorian costume. The Lavender and the Rose is an unusual love story, an erotic adventure, and a spiritual odyssey. It's also a psychological mystery whose resolution will require Matthew to question his understanding of the nature of human identity, and even reality itself.
* * *
The Singing Loch (2011) Scott Matthews, a disillusioned city worker, finds himself drawn into a bizarre corporate conspiracy. From the ruthless greed of '80's London, to the austere beauty of Western Scotland, Scott begins to unravel the threads of an enigma dating back centuries, while gradually falling under the spell of the mysterious and forbidden Singing Loch. Here he discovers love, enlightenment, and ultimately a truth more startling than legend.
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Food for the mind
The Road From Langholm Avenue Page 28