by David Park
A RUN IN THE PARK
For all those trying to set their souls in motion
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Travelling in a Strange Land
Gods and Angels
The Rye Man
Stone Kingdoms
The Poets’ Wives
The Light of Amsterdam
Oranges From Spain
Swallowing the Sun
The Big Snow
The Healing
The Truth Commissioner
Contents
Maurice
Cathy
Brendan and Angela
Yana
Maurice
Cathy
Brendan and Angela
Yana
Cathy
Maurice
Maurice
I’m a big Bruce Springsteen fan – have seen him live twice – but, no matter how I look at it, there isn’t any way I was born to run. And it’s not just because my body has gradually morphed into something I struggle to recognise as belonging to me, or one that even remotely conforms to the comforting self-image we all secretly harbour. It’s also because I haven’t tried running since I was a boy and, if you want the truth, it’s something I vaguely associate with the criminal – taking to my heels after scrumping apples, knocking doors and scarpering. And I got through school games lessons on a sick note – generally one I had forged myself.
So this unexpected impulse to take up running and try this Couch to 5K thing goes against the grain of who I am. And when I see runners as I’m driving, I always think they look a bit desperate, like they’re running from whatever makes them unhappy. But maybe that’s why I’m going to start, because I need to keep one step ahead of my own unhappiness before it catches up with me and I can’t shrug it off.
Mina was a Springsteen fan too, but her favourite song was ‘Dancing in the Dark’. And of course she had this fantasy that she’d be the one he’d call out of the audience to dance with him on stage. That was just one part of the future she never had. The future we never had. A chance meeting one night with a drunk driver, on her way home from the college where she taught, took all of that away. And what I do feel is cheated. Cheated because we were both a year off our retirements, and with so many plans made about where we were going to travel, the new activities we were going to take up. And it’s not like you’re playing some game or sport and you can appeal to the referee or umpire and get everything put right. Summon up VAR. So there is no resolution possible, and I don’t for a second think that taking up running is going to dull the pain that’s locked inside me, but just maybe it will kick-start me into some forward motion. That’s all I want right now – just some sense of being able to make it through each coming day.
I read somewhere that loneliness makes you feel cold. Well, I guess that grief is supposed to make you thinner, but I think it’s had the opposite effect on me. I was never a Slim Jim, but now too much sitting about, too much weight of introspection and too many ready-made meals have all combined to pile on the pounds. And a Pavlov’s dogs thing has started because now I associate food with the ping of the microwave. I was never exactly an unreconstructed man and did my share of household stuff, but Mina did most of the cooking, saw the kitchen as her domain. Even though she’s been gone three years, when I’m pottering about in it, it’s hard not to be mindful of her absence and that’s another reason why I’ve resorted on too many occasions to fast food. Mostly I use the drive-through, eat in the furthest corner of the car park with music for company.
Fast food. That’s a misnomer if there ever was one. Clogging your arteries with gunge as its pleasure shot pumps you with too much fat, calories and cholesterol. Slowing you down. Slowing you down until you feel you’re permanently moving in slow motion, and I can feel it inside my head too and I know I’ll slip into depression if I don’t do something, try to release some of those endorphins I’ve been reading about, even though whenever I read or hear the word ‘endorphin’, I always think of plastic dolphins for some reason. But I’ve got to keep one step ahead of it or I’ll go under. And I can’t do that because we have a daughter Rachel and a granddaughter called Ellie and I want to be around for them. If even right now they don’t want to be around me.
Until I retired I was an auditor. And, yes, sitting too long staring at a computer has been part of my problem. But it does mean that I’m good at adding things up, at seeing whether the columns tally. So life for me is about understanding gain and loss, about surplus and deficit. About balancing the books. And I’ve a keen eye for fraud, for knowing when someone or something is being sold short. That was always the problem with Rachel and her choice of partner, and just because love enters the equation doesn’t mean that all other considerations get thrown out of the window and you write a blank cheque to the person you’ve chosen to share your life with.
Neither of us liked Mark, even though Mina was more diplomatic about it and better at hiding her feelings than I ever was. But the more I expressed reservations about the way he treated her, the more Rachel made excuses for him, always ending her defence with the assertion that we didn’t understand him. And in that at least she was right, because I don’t understand any man who thinks that love is expressed by selfishness, by drinking too much and, although I never knew for sure, by frightening the person you have chosen to live with. Nor has he ever had a steady job, and some months we bailed them out with money that we didn’t ever look to be returned.
Rachel was never the best judge of people. Even in school she would walk away from decent kids and work to get herself accepted into some social circle from which she would subsequently get dumped. I’m no psychologist, but maybe she’s someone who needs acceptance from whoever she thinks is least likely to give it. But she’s twenty-seven now and so perhaps it’s time she grew out of that need, found a better understanding of who’s good for her and who’s not. And maybe I’m flattering myself, but I like to think I was a good father to her and would be still if she’d let me. But I haven’t seen her much since her mother’s death – I’m not allowed to just call at their house because she says it’s best if she comes round to me. When she does she brings Ellie, who is four now, and while that gives me a great deal of pleasure, I try not to believe that their irregular visits coincide with the times she needs money.
If anything, I’m more convinced than ever that Mark is a lowlife because Rachel seems different – tentative, always metaphorically and literally looking over her shoulder, never really relaxed with Ellie. Telling the child to be quiet and sit beside her when all she wants to do is explore the house. But I can’t risk saying anything, because I know the consequences will be even greater distance and a reduction in the already meagre rations I’m allocated. And there’s something else I never say to Rachel. Have never told her and didn’t tell Mina because she’d have been angry with me. Mark and I have had words. Just after Ellie was born I went round when she was struggling a bit and he was sleeping off a bender. So I woke him and asked if he was taking good care of his wife and child and he gave me a mouthful, and I’ve never been as close to hitting anyone in my whole life. Most acutely at the moment when he called me Fat Man.
And maybe, despite everything I’ve said about taking up running, it really all comes down to this. A piece of lowlife called me Fat Man. Because that’s when I decided I wasn’t going to be that overweight couch potato any more, and it wasn’t just about personal vanity or self-preservation but because I understood that I needed to be in good shape as, sooner or later, my daughter and my granddaughter would need me to come running. And I want to be ready, don’t want to let them down, because in that moment when I looked at the fixed hatred on his face, I saw someone who wasn’t able to control or suppress the anger i
nside him. And that’s something that scares me.
So I’m set to start running. My royal-blue Fusion Pro quick-dry long-sleeve half-zip running tops (extra large) have arrived with two pairs of tracksuit bottoms (also extra large) and a pair of running shoes (size 12). I’ve tried them on in front of a bedroom mirror and told myself that I don’t look ridiculous. But am not entirely sure and then doubt floods in until I stand close to the mirror, let my fingers press against the coldness of the glass, and I tell myself that I’m doing it for Rachel and Ellie, doing it for Mina. Doing it for myself because I have to keep moving forward and ward off this creeping paralysis.
And before long I’m being congratulated by Pauline for having the courage to give it a go, and I like her already because she says all the right things, tells us that we’re all going to help each other, that we can do it, even those of us who think we can’t, and the programme works if we commit to it – three sessions a week with one rest day in between. For nine weeks. Nine weeks very gradually working up to the final graduation run. And she’s telling us of the benefits, and I want to believe her, and when I look around there’s all ages and all shapes so I only feel mildly self-conscious. She makes us laugh with a joke about fast-food takeaways and for a second I think she’s been spying on me, but then I convince myself that if I’d had a PE teacher like her I might not have forged so many sick notes.
Some people have come with a friend or partner, but there are plenty on their own, and as we set off for our first session round the council’s playing fields, we are bunched up in a tight group that creates a sense of joint enterprise. A brisk five minutes’ walk and then Pauline blows her whistle and we begin our first minute of running. The first spaces open. But what is a minute of running? A scamper out of the rain, a rush for a bus, a scurry towards a slowly closing door. It’s only a minute but already there’s something not quite right. I’m moving forward but it’s more of a shuffle than a stride. And I’m conscious that I’m carrying too much in front of me. I look down and my royal-blue Fusion Pro quick-dry long-sleeve half-zip top makes me look as if I’m carrying a Lambeg drum. I’m still pondering this when the whistle blows and Pauline is walking beside me and asking if I’m OK. I tell her yes and try to say the words without them sounding like air coming out of a balloon.
One minute of running followed by one and a half minutes of walking for a total of twenty minutes. I wonder when she blows her whistle to start running if I can disguise walking so it looks like running. There’s something of a slight sideways movement working itself into my motion and I can’t help thinking of a ship in a storm where cargo has broken free and is sliding about the hold. Then I’m conscious of someone beside me.
‘How’s it going?’ she asks.
‘Not so bad,’ I tell her.
Pauline has encouraged us to talk to each other – she says it helps keep our breathing right. But right now I’m not the one able to lead the conversation because the whistle has gone and we’re setting off on our final run.
‘I’m Catherine – Cathy really.’
I tell her my name is Maurice and try to stop my voice sounding like a heavy breather on the end of a phone.
‘Hi Maurice,’ she says. ‘Longest journeys, single step and all that.’
‘Yes,’ I say, but all I’m listening for is that final whistle and when it goes I try to hold myself straight as we do our warm-down brisk walk and not yield to the temptation to put my hands on my hips as if I’ve just run a marathon.
Pauline tells us we’ve done well, taken that big first step, and she’ll see us next session and how important it is to always do one on our own. Then I’m in the car and, even though I’m going back to an empty house, I try to shrug off that loneliness with the comfort that Mina would be pleased I’ve started to move forward again. And despite everything that’s happened, I’m off the couch, up and running.
Cathy
I think Maurice needs a little encouragement – that’s why I’ve been talking to him, and I’m happy to run at his pace even though I think I might be able to go a little faster. But tortoise and hare and all that. And there’s something vaguely nostalgic about having a man’s heavy breathing in my ear – something I haven’t heard in over ten years since my conscious uncoupling with my husband, although there wasn’t anything particularly conscious about it on my part, because with no prior warning he went off with his work colleague. And if you want the truth, there hadn’t even been much heavy breathing in the years before he left.
Maurice still has the price tags on the soles of his running shoes and sometimes his breathing is less amatory in my imagination and more like a boiling kettle that hasn’t enough water in it. But he seems a decent soul and he’ll have to forgive me for remembering what a woman once said about her encounter with someone of similar build that it was like having a wardrobe fall on top of her and being poked by the key. But then again I never think about wardrobes without remembering that sometimes they lead you into surprisingly beautiful and mysterious snow-covered worlds.
It’s the story I like reading to the children in the library book club most of all. So many of the new children’s books, worthy as they are, are driven by the most fashionable social issues and I think children sometimes just need stories. Need lions and evil witches. Need mystery and wonder. In fact we all need stories, and although it probably labels me as some stereotype of an old-school, old-fashioned, liver-spotted, musty librarian, I’ve never found anyone better at telling a story than Charles Dickens. I know my colleagues think it’s hilariously weird, but when I go to London I always visit his house in Doughty Street. They have his desk and chair where he wrote and even part of the prison grille of the Marshalsea debtors’ prison where Dickens’s father was locked up.
And there’s something else to do with Dickens in my head right now. It’s a line from A Tale of Two Cities that’s running round my head, and it’s ‘recalled to life’, which Dickens uses to refer to Dr Manette’s release from the Bastille and of course Sydney Carton’s regeneration through love. Recalled to life – that’s what I feel and why I’m here running. I had a scare, a small lump in my breast, a referral and then a long anxious wait where you torment yourself before the scans and tests. Everything finally got declared OK, but an experience like that frightens you at first and when it’s over you want to do whatever it takes to give yourself the best chance of staying well. And you want to embrace life more fully. Want, regardless of how much time has passed or whatever the hurt and disappointment of previous experience, to love and be loved. Because no matter how long you spend on your own, it’s not easy to get used to the singleness of it, just like the Joni Mitchell song about the bed being too big, the frying pan too wide. But most of all because there’s no one to hold you when you’re frightened. No one to tell you it will be all right.
I never told anyone about the scare, not even our daughter Zara who lives with her husband and their child in Australia. Skype never seems the best means of saying things that are important. So everything on it is mostly jolly and upbeat, my four-year-old grandson Patrick used by Zara to fill the awkward gaps until he gets bored talking to a woman he’s never met and wanders off. Sometimes it feels like watching a foreign film with no subtitles, because you’re trying to read things from the faces, ponder the silent gaps when we both run out of small talk. And despite the happy images and my daughter’s face in front of me, there’s no way of hiding the realisation that she’s on the other side of the world and that our lives are largely strangers to each other. What’s the point then of sending an announcement like the health scare I had spinning through the ether when you don’t know how it will be received or impact on her far-off life.
There are times when I think that, although she’s never said it outright, Zara somehow blames me for separating from her father, even though he was the one who went off with someone else. She was always a bit of a daddy’s girl and sometimes I’ve sensed that she thinks it was something I did or didn’t
do that caused the split. And although she tried to keep it from me, I know he’s been out there to see her with his new partner, and that hurt. Hurt a lot and in a childish way made me want to magic a new partner for myself. Good for the goose, good for the gander and all that.
I’m thinking of trying online dating but I’ve heard some scare stories and another scare is exactly what I don’t need right now. So I’m nervous about it. Sometimes if you want things too much or try too hard, life takes pleasure in denying you, so for these nine weeks I’m going to concentrate only on running and staying well. We’ve started gently and in this second week we’re doing ninety seconds of running and two minutes of walking. This easy pace means we’re mostly pretty bunched up and, abandoning Maurice briefly, I’ve already spoken to quite a few of the group – to Ciara who wants to be a firefighter and is in training to pass the fitness test; to Brian the accountant and Elise the classroom assistant; to Brendan and Angela who tell me they want to look good in their wedding photographs; and to Maureen who’s bored with watching TV every night. But I’ve never spoken to the young woman wearing a hijab because she seems keen to run on her own and I don’t want to intrude.
And the library keeps me busy too, despite the cutbacks and the struggle for funding. It’s true no one ever takes out Dickens or the classics any more. Sadly it’s all mostly according to stereotype – romantic fiction for the women, crime fiction for the men, with a gender crossover for biographies and books that show you how to do something. And of course the computers. They’re in constant use. Kids doing homework, people who have no home connection accessing the internet, and more and more people seeking help with filling in their PIP forms or doing something else demanded by officialdom. So it’s not just about tidying books on shelves or stamping books – not that we actually stamp anything any more – but it sometimes feels like we’re social workers as well. Even though it’s not in our job descriptions, helping with appeals, advising people how to access things they need to live in the modern world. And sometimes too it feels as if we’re increasingly living in a tale of two very different cities, two different experiences of life, where some are always just getting by.