by Neil Rowland
“Hello boy,” I exclaim, ruffling his hair up, giving him a hug. “What position you playing in today?”
“Striker!”
“Centre forward. Did I really need to ask?” I respond.
My terrors that Darth Invader would steal his love has proved farfetched. You always worry that the second husband will become substitute super-hero. But I’ve acquired a bit of superstar status myself in the role of distant parent, absent Dad.
“Are you sure you’re well enough, Noah?” enquires his mother.
“Well enough, are you joking?”
“No even you are joking about this,” she replies.
“Much better to be off out in the fresh air, than to skulk about the four walls of your cave.” Like any old flat-footed dinosaur glued to the screen.
“Then you know what you’re doing, do you?”
“Totally.”
“So long as you don’t get caught out,” she warns.
“Don’t worry.”
Suddenly I am intolerant of non-sporting males. I’ve noticed Noggins’ snooker table in the front room. Liz used to enjoy going to the football with me. Now it is a rowdy outlet for sociopath barbarians.
“We have to be off,” I announce, grasping Tim’s hand. “Kick off time is nigh.” I sound like the match referee in the sky.
She gives me a sceptical and doubting look. “If you really must. Let me know about any problems.”
“See you later, Mum.”
“See you then, Timmy.” At which she treats him to a litany of don’t and dos.
Our son swivels between our two expressions. He surveys the opposing shores of the Gibraltar straits. What a disaster it’s been for him, as for everyone else. We used to take him for a regular Sunday morning kick about. The guy stole my wife from me, but he refuses to deal with the consequences. Even a thief should have a thought. A person has to be rounded in life; and that includes some physical exercise, not just with other blokes’ wives.
We walk back through together from the kitchen. Liz watches us out into the front garden, still displaying that hideous Cupid statue, in the middle of a water feature, that springs a capricious arrow. I can’t even bear to look at the mischievous little guy.
Frank has his own computer company: Computer Links Appointments. Works six days and the best part of seven. What did she ever see in him?
“See you later Tim. Don’t get over excited.”
This is my last year at Marienbad. I’m stranded in the middle of an overgrown, blocked off maze. I’m the amnesiac killer.
You don’t want to go there. You’re lost if you do.
Chapter 10
Through the eyes of an eight year old Ashton Gate football stadium looms as an heroic amphitheatre. A few light-year centuries ago I was a boy the same age as my son, with similar impressions. I can tell that he’s almost overcome by awe and anticipation, as we close on the ground, from our riverside walk.
After we push through turnstiles I get Tim a match programme; a home game souvenir to add to his bulging collection. We scan the Bristol City team sheet quickly, decrying the inclusion of one player to the omission of another, while anticipating the brilliance of a new signing.
We greet familiar faces among home support, as we navigate towards our seats. Immediately we try to impress with match omens and up to date news briefs. Sometimes I sound like a studio pundit in the making. My brother’s always been a Bristol Rovers boy, disgusted by my allegiance to ‘the pirates’. As a result he’s reluctant to talk about football with me, unless Rovers have a recent triumph to gloat over. This could have been a shared passion between brothers, as books and films never were.
Timothy grows restless at my elbow, pulling and complaining. I am trying to keep that recent conversation with Liz to the back of my mind. Yet she is striking at my frontal lobes, which are the most influential, according to brain boffins. I am also concerned about Angela since she crashed out this morning. Liz used to discuss the idea of Angie becoming a lawyer, defending women’s rights, championing human rights around the world in international law. Maybe this put undue pressure on the girl. She’d have our full support in any job or profession she chose. We’d shell out our last penny or brain cell to get her through legal school up in London, or wherever they hang out. Not that I have any appetite for lawyers.
“University would only ruin my life,” Angela insists.
I can’t say she doesn’t read interesting books or doesn’t take any interest in the world.
I’m paranoid about Luke prowling the pedestrianized city centre. He probably stood on a skate board, careering over concrete surfaces; assuming he doesn’t tumble over his flares or fringe. Some of his stunts on the board are impressive - they look impressive - I have to admit. What’s the harm in this off the wall behaviour? My former wife and her team of crack lawyers are less impressed by the sport. Should he mess up with a tricky move, perhaps a skim along the railings, Luke will be back to his mother’s house, as fast as the plaster may set. Then he’ll be climbing the walls of that freshly papered prison instead. Then I wouldn’t have a leg to stand on, would I. He’d be rolled out in front of the magistrate again, faster than he could whiz around a drained swimming pool.
How can I molly-coddle a six feet sixteen year old? When I was his age I was studying James Dean; the shy troubled gaze, quicksilver charisma, and the gently hurt voice. In the contemporary era I have been recast in the father’s role, like Vanessa Redgrave going through Chekov’s. I’m all cardigan and blood pressure, even though I still own a leather jacket. These modern kids are equally as tough as our generation. Except that we can never predict the direction of their rebellion. We’d have more luck trying to predict the next big technological breakthrough; like growing new hearts or something. But I can’t afford to just stand idly by, with my eyes closed, as I feel him swish past: Especially when love has turned to rivalry.
I direct Tim along an aisle towards our pair of reserved plastic seats. After settling, we stare about at the filling stadium around, as red plastic transforms, piece by piece, into a multi-coloured weave of humanity. Season ticket prices have shot up considerably. Next year I’ll have to donate one of my organs to pay for them. That’s not including the appendix, which is the most detached organ.
There’s a crescendo of cheers as our players jog out for their warm up. You will never catch me doing that intense physical stuff these days, I remind myself: apart from occasional sex, when there’s a chance. Obviously the thousand year old man is sensitive to vigorous exercise.
The stadium announcer reads out the team sheets, before reading out special announcements and other football info. There’s a definite feeling of community as well as rivalry to football; which you re-join at every match attended. Our team captain throws up a coin - it was probably a brass farthing when I attended as a lad - and ‘we’ appear to have won the toss. Let’s hope this isn’t our only victory at the final whistle. Teams have to change ends. So this arrangement takes time to complete, to the ref’s satisfaction.
Then, as the players take up their positions of readiness, the speaker music is switched off. A roar of anticipation and excitement swirls around the tinny stadium, filling the atmosphere within seconds. The match ball balances on the centre-circle spot, as if culturally confused. The referee raises a hand up, as if consulting with the top referee in the sky, sends the split pea in his whistle to a frenzy, and so he starts the game off.
My mind tends to wander. Not that I’m bored by the match or sleepy. My senses are following the action. But my thoughts and feelings are going elsewhere, following the terrain of my past life. This may be a way to clear my head, or to cleanse the old wounds, as when I play a board game while listening to instrumental music.
Watching football isn’t equivalent to challenging Kasparov, I guess. There’s nobody here to ask
me awkward questions. Though I am not exactly alone with my thoughts either. The experts at the hospital already warned me. I’m trying hard to follow Wickham’s advice how to live. I gave up all robust physical sports, including my squash games and tournaments, and even signed up for yoga classes. There’s no incense or lotus position here, only a chilly atmosphere needling into my bones. What type of stress-free and relaxed life is possible for any contemporary person? It kills many people just trying to get to work in the morning. Does family life allow these luxuries of time and space, talking of the contemporary period?
According to Wickham’s advice, too many emotional pile-ups will have a fatal impact. How can I protect myself in the immediate future? Then also a calm mind and life isn’t necessarily going to save me, or extend my time here on Earth. As Dylan wrote, Time’s an ocean, but it ends on the shore.
I have to transform myself into a west country Confucius, just to stay sane. Then again Leonard Cohen decided to become a Buddhist monk. I could root out the old texts, get myself into the garb, follow Cohen’s footsteps. The Chinese don’t scare me.
The faulty plastic valve broke in my heart, like a snapped crab’s claw. The surgeon fitted this ingenious component to save and extend my life, but somehow it was sub-standard, causing it to split and move, while inserted in my body. That’s what caused the intense pain that day, followed by shock. Somehow the component didn’t break up entirely, so it was not lethal. That’s why I have a memory about it; why I can think about what happened. This artificial valve could disintegrate at some unspecified moment. Then it will be curtains and floral tributes. You get a new car with a faulty breaking system or a prematurely exploding airbag, something negligent like that, then the manufacturer will recall it for replacement. But men are irreplaceable, often, it would seem.
There I was about town, enjoying the sensation of being a new man. I had that fresh lease of life. But my heart’s working out again; pumping away. The wise guys say that my heart was swollen, but the swelling will disappear. The heart is just a big muscle of course. It doesn’t feel anything! It doesn’t have any nerves! There’s a cracked plastic valve in the artery wall. They certainly have a bloody cheek. The mechanism that cleverly opens and shuts, opens and shuts, like the doors into your hypermarket; ad infinitum; allowing the blood to flow, oxygen to oxygenate, but which harbours a potential catastrophe. Causes me to wake up in the middle of the night, going through cold sweats, gasping, frightened to death. But I don’t want to frighten the people who are nearest and dearest. Maybe I just had a bad experience. Nobody gets out of here alive, as Hank Williams wrote, and it always gets you in the end.
“When is our striker gonna kick on the goal?” Timothy objects.
“What’s happened to our approach play?” I return.
He’s noticed that I don’t put as much of myself into the match as usual. He’s becoming a passionate supporter of City. He’s learning to stand up from his seat to curse. But you can’t stay terrified for a whole ninety minutes. Life continues.
The surgeon explained that heart failure can happen at any time. It could be while I am tucked up in bed, either with Rachael or with a wretched mug of malty drink. I could be in the garden clipping my roses, or I could be sitting here at Ashton Gate football stadium. Death ain’t fussy.
“We’re all in the same leaky boat,” Owen Hopkins said.
Not anymore, am I. I’m the captain of my own boat now, which is a type of holed rusty hulk, dropped to the bottom; worse than the Great Britain when they first towed her back up the river, dragged the ship from its graveyard and began to patch her up for tourists.
The feeling of peril makes me sweat; the weird calamity of collapsing and dying within seconds, right in front of my boy’s eyes. Such a terrible memory would be branded onto his mind forever. Although I still wanted to take him to the game today didn’t I, and insisted to his mother. Who’s going to take him to the football otherwise?
We’re sat together in this noisy, unpredictable place; my son and I and twenty one thousand other souls, men, women and children. Everyman’s sporting wisdom is reverberating in our ears. I have no choice other than to sit tight, a tempting target for fate, until the game is over.
Crowd noise whips up. The ball is struck long down field. It’s laid off to our centre forward, whose quick pass leaves the Grimsby defence like a tattered fishing net. The ball is driven low and hard into the left hand corner of the net. The Bristol City crowd rises to their feet in expectation of a certain goal.
Unfortunately the Grimsby goalie manages to scamper across his goal line. Doubling back he manages to nudge the ball away, in a miraculous last ditch fingertip save. The crowd’s fever dies back to a rumble of muttered disappointment, banished by a round of thunderous, encouraging applause. This vigorous excitement beats off the cold, although it might cause the stadium to collapse.
I have to get on with my life, don’t I. I have to persist with all my normal activities at home and work. It would be daft to turn inwards and live like a terrified recluse. I understand how hard it is not to brood about the past, when the future’s as unpredictable as nitro-glycerine. I still have responsibilities - wardrobes full of them. Meanwhile I’ll take a few pints of best bitter, keep up with the local music scene and keep half an eye open for the ladies.
The Grimsby ‘keeper kicks long, creating a two on two situation at the other end. Our defenders try to force their second striker out wide, but somehow he manages a jinx and cuts back inside, towards the area, throwing a dummy pass. At the end of a strong run he manages to get a shot in, that swerves beautifully through the air, right into the top corner. Our goalkeeper stares back over his shoulder, gormlessly up towards the corner of his own net, where the ball was stuck for a few seconds, more like a basketball. A cracking goal; a real sizzling banana kick. Ronaldo would have been proud of that one. But it wasn’t for the City team. We’re a goal down to Grimsby already and we’re sick. You couldn’t get a parrot from Brazil that’s sicker than we are at this moment.
“Jammy bloody bums!” Tim squeals.
If only Elizabeth could be here to enjoy his word play. The guy next to me is even less equivocal.
I cast a determined stoic glance towards the celebrating ‘Mariners’. “Don’t get into a depression yet, Tim boy. There’s loads of time to roll ‘em over,” I tell him.
How’s Lizzie going to feel about my demise? It would require a grotesque effort to be smug about it; even if acrimony has taken the place of matrimony. I can’t say how she is going to be affected. But I can’t help being curious, or hoping for the big tearful goodbye. How do you mourn an ex-husband, while you resent their intellect and good looks? I guess she’ll be upset to receive the news, if only for old time’s sake.
She may have more tender feelings towards me, when I stop putting in personal appearances. They say that absence is a brilliant aphrodisiac to dead marriages. I’m not going through this evil trip just to make her feel bad. I’ve had to reconsider my legacy. I’ve had to reappraise my character, if only through the glass darkly of a broken marriage and a damaged heart.
“I had to tell you, Noah. I really had. That my feelings have changed,” she explained. She reached for a formulaic phrase. But I already knew the score. I hadn’t objected to previous formulaic phrases. She made this confession while getting undressed for bed.
“What does this mean?” I said.
“I’m going to have to leave you.”
“Leave me? Why?”
“The plan is to move out.”
She laid this on me without warning, although she cried every night for days after that. She stifled her sobs into her pillows and soaked her tears into my pyjamas. What should I do to console her? How was I ever going to sleep peacefully again myself? My heart just freezes at these memories. These memories circulate through me like cobra venom. I put my arms around her and tr
ied to comfort her. What else could I do? She wouldn’t like to talk about this now. There are intimacies that she chooses to forget. She disappeared from my life, while I sit tight for the end of the line.
They went out for a drink together after a lecture. She and Frank. I realised that. They started going out for lunch together. That was more suspicious and alerted me. He’d pull up outside Big Pink, in that armoured personnel carrier of his, and let her back out. What had they been up to after their sorbet? They were following a Master’s Degree in business studies. I didn’t realise they would go to town on that.
Lizzie finally got the free time and motivation to return to Uni. She resumed her studies, changing her subject. Frank Noggins offered her the support and advice to be a student and to write an essay again. She went to the pub with a group of fellow students after evening lectures. There was nothing harmful about that, until she claimed to love the guy.
All right, his business had been performing well. But you have to ask, where’s the soul in high tech? How could she sacrifice our ideals? Forget about our struggles in the past? Why couldn’t she sleep with the dinosaur, if she really fancied him, without wanting to marry him? Why did she have to jump ship in mid ocean? Why not have a sordid affair? Her fling with the dinosaur had to be pure and principled: Like the struggle against apartheid.
“Noah, it’s finished... We’re finished.” These weird dreadful words from the woman I loved. I looked at her in horror, as if she was the double of herself. It shook me, how a relationship can take on an entirely new spin. Our emotions are actors with the insufferable versatility of an Olivier, after he blacked up and mugged up as a Jamaican busboy for Othello. No longer was I an incorrigible original, but an insufferable old fool and hopeless case. Amazing. The times they were a’changin’.
Shaken, blind-sided, I considered the disintegration of our relationship. What was marriage? It was our love and friendship, our being together and being happy, that mattered. I can’t help being a left brained guy in a right brained world. I hadn’t fully realised how unhappy and discontented she was; although she’d become more disgruntled and awkward. It was like finding a set of tree roots had grown under our house, so much ruining the foundations that it required demolition. I lost my peace of mind watching these changes in Elizabeth. I didn’t know how to respond to her evenings away, or the uncharacteristic excuses. We were going nowhere fast, and I couldn’t see any mutual escape route.