Imagined Slights

by James Lovegrove

  Here Harold paused, giving me an opportunity to take in what he had been saying so far and prepare myself for what was coming, which, judging by the ironic purse of his lips, was going to be harder still to swallow. I don't think he appreciated how immune I had become to his fictions and fabrications. Neither his savagely altered appearance nor his insistence that this story, of all his stories, was true gave me any reason to suspect that I wasn't just being spun another yarn. I'd decided to hear him out because I thought it would be good for him to get whatever was plaguing him off his chest and because I hoped that this unburdening would be a stepping stone to getting at the real problem, the real reason why he looked and spoke like a soul in torment. I'd also decided that when he was done I would bundle him into a taxi and get him to a hospital. Even if his spirit was beyond repair, his body could be mended.

  Harold drew a deep breath and sent it hissing out through his nostrils. "I was coming up through Streatham when it happened. At first I didn't know what was going on. I felt it all around me, like something vast and unseen turning over in its sleep, but I'd no idea what it was. The sky rumbled like a jet was passing overhead, though one wasn't, and the air turned a different colour, darkening several shades. The street I was walking down was busy, full of mid-morning shoppers and pedestrians, and for a few seconds, while this 'shift' was taking place, while the city twitched and stirred and scratched its nose, everyone paused and looked up and around and at each other like there was something they were supposed to be communicating, some thought, some vital piece of information they were supposed to be sharing. And then the rumble faded and the light brightened again and, the moment now past, everyone dropped their heads again and carried on with their lives. A few children, for no apparent reason, started crying. A dog that was barking fell silent. That was it. Nothing else was different. Yet I knew - knew - that things had changed. Ever so slightly, but perceptibly. And I started walking again, warily now, glancing around me in every direction, hoping to find what was new about the city, what London had done to itself.

  "It didn't take long. I hadn't gone more than half a mile when I came across a street I didn't recognise. I said I knew London as well as a husband knows his wife, didn't I?"

  "'Knows the body of his wife,' were your precise words."

  "Right. Well, imagine you discovered a mole - no, a tattoo, an old faded tattoo on your wife's right buttock that wasn't there before, couldn't have been there or else you'd have noticed."

  My bachelor status made it difficult to empathise with the metaphor, but dutifully I made the imaginative leap. "OK."

  "Same thing," said Harold. "What I found was a street that I would be willing to swear on the Bible, the Talmud and the Koran hadn't existed before that odd moment, that 'shift', occurred. Leading off a road I'd been down dozens of times before: a new, perfectly ordinary-looking, perhaps somewhat seedy little street. One that appeared to have been there for ages, for as long as all the other streets around it, at least a century, perhaps longer, but a new street all the same.

  "Well, what would you have done? You'd have investigated, wouldn't you? And that's what I did. I wasn't scared. I was curious, and part of that curiosity was fear, but not enough of it to make me turn and walk away, as I should have done. Things would have been so much better if I'd simply turned and walked away. But then we don't do that when we're confronted with a mystery, do we? And it was also a challenge. A stretch of road I'd never been down before, a virgin piece of the city just begging for me to trample all over it - how could I resist? Me, who's known London so intimately for so long? How could I not walk down those fresh pavements and make my knowledge complete?

  "The most peculiar thing about that street was it felt and smelled and sounded just like any other street. Radios were playing, and there were cars parked along the kerbs and net curtains in the windows of the houses, and people had done different things to their houses, whitewashed them, pebbledashed them, had paved over their front gardens, made little glades out of their front gardens, or not bothered at all with their front gardens and let the weeds grow up and the low front walls crumble and sag. Lives had been lived there on that street. Children had been born, old people had died. Dogs had filled the gutters with their droppings. The street had a history - and yet less than quarter of an hour ago it hadn't existed.

  "And that wasn't all. At the end I came to a pair of huge wrought-iron gates, topped with spikes, wide open. And beyond them was the park.

  "I couldn't tell how large the park was when I first stepped through the gates. It was as big as I could see, it stretched in every direction to the horizon, but there were trees and low hills that made it hard to make out exactly how far it extended. It was larger than Hyde Park, that's for sure. Larger, maybe, than Richmond Park. But I wasn't wondering about that at the time. Certainly that was at the back of my mind, but what I was really thinking about was how this place couldn't possibly fit into the map of London I have etched in my head. There wasn't room for it in the network of densely packed suburban streets in that area. For that park to exist, thousands of houses would have to have been shunted aside, acres of built-up land would have to have been levelled and planted. It was a municipal impossibility. But there it was. I was standing within its perimeter, my feet resting on a solid asphalt path, and I was inhaling the damp sweet autumn aroma of its trees and grass, and I was staring at flower beds and small swelling hills and neatly clipped bushes and hedgerows, and I wasn't dreaming and I wasn't hallucinating - I hadn't had a drop of alcohol all week. It was all perfectly real, perfectly there. I couldn't have created a whole park out of nothing. No one's imagination is that good.

  "I must have stood there like a zombie for the best part of twenty minutes. People were strolling past me, giving me curious looks - questioning, not wary. A jogger almost ran into me, checking his watch. He apologised and carried on panting along the path. A dog veered away from its owner to sniff at my shoes, tail wagging, and then got dragged back by a tug on the lead, and its owner, a pretty young girl, gave me a brilliant smile and said sorry. She wasn't scared or suspicious of me. She simply smiled and said sorry, and I said there was no reason to apologise, and she smiled again and carried on her way. Some pigeons strutted over to me and pecked expectantly at the ground around my feet. And then the sun came out.

  "It had been overcast all morning, not cold, just grey, but the clouds had been threatening to part for an hour or so, and now at last they did, and the sunlight came down like a blessing and suddenly everything was aglow. The trees were no longer weighed down with yellow leaves, they were dripping with great gleaming flakes of gold. The breeze had been nagging and chilly and a little unpleasant, and now, suddenly, it was warm and wild and playful. It was amazing, the way the clouds rolled away across the sky and left everything below bright and sparkling. Like a TV advert for floor polish, you know what I'm talking about? One wipe of your mop and your linoleum is gleaming. Only on a giant scale. I didn't take my hat off, of course."

  "Of course." Harold never removed his Homburg outdoors, and seldom indoors. He had worn it ever since the day he had been struck by lightning in the Sudan (yeah, right). He believed the hat protected him from being hit again, and so far no one could deny that as a talisman it had been an unqualified success.

  "That was what finally got my feet moving," he continued, "that sweep of sunshine. It was an invitation. 'Come on,' it said, 'come and explore.' So I did. Any sane man would have done the same."

  Harold took a swig of lukewarm tea and set the mug down on the coffee table. For the first time since arriving at my flat he smiled. It was a wan smile, a tenth-generation photocopy of the real thing.

  "What can I say about that park? It seemed to have been designed with one thing in mind, and that was to please the human eye. The shapes of the flower beds, the shrubs and the roses that were still blooming even in October, the patterns made by the hedgerows, everything just so. Where you expected to see a tree, there was a tree. Where y
ou expected a pathway to turn or fork or intersect with another, so it did. The lawns were immaculate, clipped to an inch, rolled, and springy underfoot, the perfect resilience, and where a path cut through there was a clean division, a ridge of sheared-off earth the colour and texture of chocolate cake. And whichever way you looked there was always something to catch your eye: a little Roman garden, a yew maze, a cupola perched on a low hill, a small windowless Georgian house at the end of an avenue of cypresses that was there not to be lived in but because it looked right, a wooden bandstand straight out of an American town square circa 1958, painted blue and cream... Did I mention a maze?"

  "You did."

  "I stood for a while at the entrance and watched people go in and out, hearing exasperated cries and peals of laughter coming from inside. No one got lost for long. Everyone who went in emerged after about ten minutes, grinning and satisfied, saying that the maze was just the right difficulty, puzzling but not perplexing. I didn't try it myself. There was too much else to see.

  "There was a boating pond where a dozen amateur admirals - young and old, from eight to eighty, the boys as serious as grown men, the grown men as blithe as boys - were sending their precious craft on perilous voyages across an Atlantic twenty yards wide. Destroyers and ducks were engaged on manoeuvres side by side. Hopes were pinned on the whims of the wind to bring sailing yachts safely back to shore. A lone submarine glided underwater, popping up every so often and surprising everyone.

  "And there was a playground, a playground like you only ever dreamed about when you were a child. There were swings, there were roundabouts, there were slides and seesaws, and best of all there was a climbing frame as big as a house, a sprawling fantasy of ladders and portholes and turrets and fireman's poles, its various sections joined together by wooden suspension bridges hanging from knotted ropes. To the children clambering all over it, it was Sherwood Forest, the Marie-Celeste, the Alamo and the Death Star all rolled into one, and they were having so much fun I had to fight the urge to join them. And do you know what? In any other park in the country, if I'd stood for as long as I did watching those children, at least one of the adults present would have come up and asked me to leave, if not threatened to call the police. But in that park the mothers and fathers and nannies and au pairs just smiled up at me from the benches that surrounded the playground, understanding that I was simply sharing their delight at seeing children at play.

  "Not far away there was an ice cream van. I didn't have much change on me, and it wasn't what you might call a blistering hot day, but right then I could think of nothing nicer, nothing that would cap my mood better, than a vanilla cone with a Flake in it. I joined the queue, and, can you believe it, they were giving the stuff away. A promotional offer, the man in the van called it. A new brand, apparently. I don't think I need to tell you how much sweeter that ice cream tasted for being free.

  "I took my cone to a bench on a rise just above the playground and gazed out across the park, licking slowly, savouring, nibbling the Flake to make it last. I looked for houses, but there were none. Their rooftops were hidden by trees. I couldn't even see a tower block. There was just park whichever way you looked. Park to the north, park to the south, park in every direction. There were bright green tennis courts, and men and women in clean white sports clothes running backwards and forwards, and the yellow balls arcing over the nets. There were three teenage boys tossing a Frisbee to each other, and with them a red setter that rushed to and fro and every so often leapt up and snatched the Frisbee from the air in its teeth and wouldn't give it back without a long, grinning tug-of-war. There were young couples wandering hand in hand, pausing now and then for a lingering kiss. There were other young couples lolling on blankets on the grass, legs entwined. There was even an elderly couple behaving like a young couple - walking a little more slowly, to be sure, but taking more time over their kisses, too.

  "Who were these people? Were they Londoners who, like me, had strayed into the park by accident? Or did they belong there? That might have explained their universal cheerfulness - the fact that they were the park's people, embodying the delight of every spring, summer or autumn day anyone had ever spent in a city park. The ones I'd exchanged words with - the jogger, the dog owner, people in the queue for ice creams - had all been kind and gracious and generous with their time. They didn't shy away from me like most people do, worried that I'm going to ask them for money and that they won't know how to respond. These well-dressed, smiling human beings had without exception treated me as an equal. Much like you do, my friend. You don't know what that means to a gentleman in my position.

  "And at no point during that long, happy, sunlit afternoon did I ask myself if this was possible, if a place like this could really exist. Exactly the question you're asking now, Mark, with your eyes. What you must realise is that I wanted it so badly to be possible that I wasn't going to let a little thing like common sense get in the way. So a vast park had appeared where a park could not possibly be - so what? Sitting there with the sun on my face, a free ice cream in my belly and a view of dozens of happy people in front of me, why would I want to disturb the illusion with questions?

  "I stayed there all afternoon, heavy with contentment, the kind of contentment I haven't felt since I was a very small child. A peace that, to coin a phrase, passed all understanding. A sense that the world and I had come to terms with each other, shaken hands and declared a truce. And the sun rolled down and shadows fell, and gradually people began to gather up their belongings and move off. One by one the tennis courts emptied of clean, white-clothed players. The young couples suddenly found a purpose after a day's dawdling and hurried off to the pictures or a pub or a bedroom somewhere. Supremacy over the boating pond was given back to the ducks. The ice cream van whirred away along the pathways, headlights on against the clustering dusk, tinkling a mournful tune. The climbing frame was abandoned. Beside it the swings swayed vacantly to and fro. And finally, when there was no one else in sight and I felt like the only person left alive in the entire world, I hauled myself to my feet, stretched the cricks out of my spine, and set off down the hill in the direction of the gates. Everything was hushed, that twilight a sacred hour. The only sound I could hear was my own reluctant, dragging footsteps. Had it been summer I might have thought about spending the night there, perhaps on the very bench on which I'd been sitting all day, but what with my cough and the dreadful dampness of autumn nights, I thought it would be best if I found somewhere indoors, one of those church crypts perhaps. And I could always come back to the park tomorrow, couldn't I? I could keep coming back as often as I wanted.

  "There seemed to be only one way in or out of the park, and that was the way I'd come in, through those gates. And now, as darkness was beginning to fall, one of the gates was shut and there was someone standing by the other. A plain-faced man in uniform. A park-keeper. He had on a cap and a courteous smile.

  "'Last one out, eh, sir?' he said to me. Someone in uniform calling me sir!

  "'Am I?' I replied, glancing around. I really thought there would be others like me, stragglers unwilling to leave. No one. 'I'm sorry. I was enjoying myself so much, I entirely lost track of the time.'

  "And the park-keeper said, 'That's all right, sir. We deserve a little enjoyment in our lives, don't we? One day of happiness to make up for all the other miserable ones.'

  "I told him he couldn't be righter, thanked him for the use of his park and said I'd be coming back soon. It was too wonderful a place not to revisit. And he just smiled again - a little sadly, I realise now - and ushered me through the gate and closed it behind me with a heavy, ringing clang and wished me good night and strode away. I was halfway down the street when I realised I had forgotten to ask him the name of the park, but by then it was too late. I looked back, and he was nowhere to be seen.

  "I slept well that night. The crypt was warm - once a hundred or so bodies had heated it up - and a mattress makes all the difference, doesn't it? A mattress and the memor
y of a day so strange and delightful you can hardly believe it happened.

  "And then, near dawn, I woke to the sound of the 'shift' taking place again. A great groaning, far off, like the bellow of a dinosaur in pain. A grating noise like a huge stone being rolled across a cavern entrance. And up and down the length of the crypt sleeping people stirred and moaned and rolled over, as though sharing a bad dream. I lay there for a moment frozen in horror, then leapt out of bed and threw on my hat and coat - of course I'd kept my new shoes on in bed; even amongst beggars there's precious little honour - and I sprinted out of there filled with a panic I couldn't explain, a sense of foreboding, of abrupt and irredeemable loss. I dashed through the dawn streets like a madman, driven by fear and the need to know, and finally I reached the street from which the other street, the street that had come from nowhere, led off. Gasping for breath, I staggered down it to where the junction with the other street had been. But I knew, even before I got there, that..."

  I completed the sentence he couldn't finish himself: "That it was gone."

  "As though it had never been there," he sighed. "The street was gone, the houses were gone, the iron gates were gone, the park was gone. What had been unearthed by that first shift of the city had been buried again, packed neatly away back where it came from, like a toy no longer wanted."

  He paused there, as if unable to contemplate the magnitude of his loss.

  "I don't understand the hows or the whys of it," he said eventually. "Perhaps the street and the park belong to a London we don't normally see, a secret London that exists alongside the city we know, a second London, a ghostly twin that's made up of all our hopes and dreams and longings of what this city should be like, and sometimes the two, for some reason, overlap and you can move from one to the other. I don't know. Or perhaps everyone, once in their lives, is allowed a glimpse of how things should be. Perhaps that's what the park-keeper was telling me when he said that everybody deserved a day of happiness to make up for all the miserable ones. Perhaps he meant we should never forget that true contentment is possible and, whatever our circumstances, we should keep striving to achieve it. I don't know.