by Liam Livings
I remember thinking to myself that at least I didn’t have to stand outside in the cold with the sandwich board today. I smiled at that thought. I heard the radio from my alarm clock playing “Walking on Sunshine” by Katrina and the Waves. I kept my eyes closed, and the sound slowly muffled as I lay in the bath.
I woke, my head still over the edge of the bath, the water completely cold. I recognised the radio DJ as someone who did the breakfast show. Feeling sick, I leant over the edge of the bath and threw up on the floor.
I fell on the floor, covered in my vomit and water. Composing myself, I rolled away from the mess and rested, gasping for breath, laying on my back and looked at the ceiling. Stars shone against the lights of my bathroom. I scrabbled about with my hand and found my mobile, and I called Amy. “Now I know I’m having a nervous breakdown,” I cried, big howling cries down the phone. Amy’s voice shouted on the other end, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. After a few minutes, I heard her voice projecting from the phone.
“What happened? What did you do? Richard, are you all right?”
“I couldn’t even do this right.” I rinsed my mouth with water, to take away the vomit taste.
“What? What didn’t you do right?” There was a pause and she said, “I’m calling an ambulance. Are you at home, Richard? Are you at home?”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry….”
“On my way.”
The phone went dead.
Chapter 4
I woke up in the hospital, with Amy by the bedside, holding my hand. “My head hurts and I feel sick.” I looked into her eyes.
“What the fuck were you thinking of doing? I can’t believe you would do that, I just can not believe you’d be so stupid.” She pinched my hand hard.
“Ow, that hurt.”
“It was meant to. No more of this, all right? What did you think would happen? What did you think I’d do when I found you…?”
“I didn’t think. I just didn’t want to go to work, and I didn’t want to be in the flat. I didn’t want to do anything in my life because it was all just getting worse and worse, with no let-up.”
Amy got a tissue from her bag and wiped her face, now squeezing my hand gently.
“Does this mean I’m having a nervous breakdown?” I asked.
Amy’s body shook as she tried to keep up with the river of mascara flowing down her face.
“Do you believe me now?” Tears filled my eyes as I thought about my mum finding me in the bath, naked.
We stayed in that room in silence until Amy left, kissing my cheek goodbye.
As I packed my belongings into the bag Amy had brought in for me, I found a white feather in my toiletry bag. It was just as clean and perfect as the one in my bathroom. I asked one of the nurses if the pillows or duvet had feathers in them, and she shook her head like I was a fool.
I kept that feather, putting it in the inside pocket of my jacket, holding it close to my heart on the journey back to my flat.
After a couple of weeks, a psychology appointment, and some counselling—where I told the woman I hadn’t meant to do it—I was allowed home.
When I told the counselling woman why I’d done it, I realised I had just sort of done it. In truth, I didn’t remember doing it. I hadn’t planned it, just gone along with what was happening in front of my eyes. Because it had seemed like a good idea at the time.
“I’m such a twat. I can’t believe I actually did it. I don’t remember it,” I explained to Amy, looking around the living room, which was exactly as I’d left it just over a fortnight before.
She unpacked my bag then and went to the kitchen to make us something to eat.
“Unless you want mouldy lettuce or off milk, you don’t have much to eat,” she said, standing at the open fridge.
“I’m not hungry.” I really meant it. At the hospital, the hardest thing, once I acknowledged what I’d tried to do, was trying to eat again. They had brought me meals three times a day, and all I could do was pick at them. I started hiding some of the food under the tray cover, so when they collected the tray, it looked like I’d eaten something. They put me on a drip after a while, as I simply wasn’t eating anything. It was as if my appetite for life had disappeared along with my appetite for food.
“I’m such an idiot. I’m embarrassed you had to see that,” I said.
Amy was still staring into the fridge. “Why are you embarrassed?” She started to look in my cupboards.
“Because it’s so stupid. It’s such a stupid thing to do. I’m ashamed of it.”
“We could have cornflakes if you’ve got any UHT milk?” she offered, smiling.
“Milk’s in that cupboard.” I pointed.
She got the milk and made two bowls of cereal. “Sugar on yours?”
“Are there any Lucky Charms left? That’s what I really want.”
She nodded. “Saw some next to the cornflakes.”
I could see she was seizing on my interest in food, the first since before I went in hospital.
She handed me a bowl of brightly coloured cereal drenched in milk. It looked bright, cheery, and optimistic, like a fairy tale. “You don’t have to be embarrassed. No need to. You’re all right now, and that’s the end of it.” She chewed her much healthier crunchy brown cereal and put her hand on mine across the table.
“Did I tell you I found another feather?”
“Not since that one in your bathroom?”
I nodded.
“Where? When?”
I told her about the one in hospital, while I walked over to my bedroom. I returned to the kitchen, holding it between two fingers.
“You can’t tell me that’s just a coincidence again? You have to believe there’s more to it than random luck?”
“Do I?”
“When you were in hospital, I chanted, appealed to the healing nature of crystals, and used my wishing glass to wish you better. I did a different thing every day. I just couldn’t bear it if you’d have died. Mind you, when you woke up, I was so angry I could have killed you myself.”
I shrugged.
“Don’t you think this is all part of some big cosmic plan leading you somewhere you’re meant to be? That someone’s trying to tell you something—out there?” She pointed out the window.
“If it is part of some big plan, it’d better become clear soon, because at the moment, all it looks like is a big mess.” I took the feather off her and stroked it, before resting it on my chest.
“You do want it to mean something, I can tell, or you’d have just thrown it away. Why else would you keep it?” she asked, her eyes lighting up with glee.
Chapter 5
Once I was feeling better, I managed to wash, dress, and make myself look presentable. Filling in graduate job application forms was still well beyond me, so I decided to go old-school: I took a copy of my CV, including all the temp jobs I’d done during and after uni, and handed it in to places near my flat, with a friendly letter Amy had helped me write—my laptop and Internet were still not fixed.
Before this, I hadn’t left my flat since coming out of hospital. Amy had organised food, and I’d just retired to my own little urban cave. Once, I ran out of milk for two days, and the thought of going to the corner shop—even though it was literally just around the corner—had terrified me so much that I drank black tea until Amy came round.
Black tea—it’s vile if you’ve never had it.
That’s how terrified I was.
Now, I left the front door of my block of flats and was on the busy pavement just outside Tufnell Park. Two stops north of Camden Town, and a million miles from Camden in so many other ways, this was the little corner of London I had called home for the last two years.
It had been convenient for uni, and now it was convenient because I knew it, because it was easy, because it was safe. It wasn’t fun, exciting, or particularly metropolitan compared to other parts of London, but it suited me. Amy didn’t live far either, which was a bonus.<
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Now, I felt like I’d been dropped into a crowd of people at Piccadilly Circus. People pushed past me as I stood on the pavement working out which way to walk. I looked left and right, then noticed a white feather blowing along the pavement to my right. I ran to catch it as it flew on the breeze.
Again, it was a perfect, unmarked, large white feather. I put it in my inside pocket, next to my heart.
Must be from the Chinese up the road. They eat ducks, don’t they?
I continued in the direction the feather had been blowing. I stopped at a shoe shop and asked if I could hand in my CV and a letter. The shop assistant woman smiled and took it, saying she would give it to the manager.
I continued and stopped in a pub, a mini supermarket, and a petrol station before reaching a cemetery.
I felt a sense of impending dread, like a cold black-gloved hand grasping my heart. I thought I was going to die as my heart pounded in my chest and I felt dizzy. I sat on the pavement outside the cemetery, trying to get my breath.
An old man appeared at the cemetery gates. “You all right, son?”
“Fine. I’ll be fine.”
“Well, you don’t look fine.” He leant to help me up and started walking me into the cemetery. “How’s about you sit down for a bit and I’ll make you a nice cuppa tea. You’ll be right as rain after that.”
Random. Scary. Stranger. All my usual London alarm bells were ringing, but I didn’t have the energy to object. It was broad daylight, and lots of people were milling about the cemetery, visiting loved ones. The old man was odd, but he wasn’t creepy. I was definitely not getting any creepy vibes off him. Yet.
He led me to a little green shed in the corner of the cemetery. I sat on a threadbare tartan sofa, which made my eyes hurt, and he turned on a kettle on an old school table in the corner. He perched on an old office-style twirling round chair as the kettle boiled.
We sat in silence as he made the tea.
I sipped the drink, which I’d watched the old man make, without once taking my eyes off him. He’d definitely had no chance to put in poison at any point. Okay, so he wasn’t creepy, but I wasn’t stupid either.
He handed me the tea, and I took a sip. It was so sweet I felt the enamel on my teeth retreating. “How many sugars?”
“Three.” He sipped his drink. “For shock. You looked like you could do with it.”
I shrugged. “Okay.”
“So what brings you here, on a weekday? Young fella like you should be at work, no?”
I explained about my CV-posting plan and that I’d just come to the end of the road. “I didn’t realise there was a cemetery up this end of the road.”
“How long you lived here?”
“Couple of years.” I took a sip of tea. No odd tastes there. No poison, no almondy taste—cyanide, apparently, tasted of almonds. “But I’ve never needed to go up this far. Never really needed to go to a cemetery, you see.”
“How would you know if you needed to go to a cemetery?”
“None of my family’s buried here. I’m not from here. I grew up outside London. Wiltshire, near Salisbury.”
“People don’t just come here to visit relatives, you know, Richard. There’s plenty of people who just come here, to be.”
When did I tell him my name? I definitely hadn’t told him my name. Or had I? On these new tablets my GP had prescribed me, I sometimes forgot things, sometimes woke feeling like I was wading through jelly. I must have told him my name. Definitely, yes, I had. “Come here to be? To be what?”
“It’s like coming to a park, but you don’t have people playing on slides, or swings, or kicking a ball around. It’s like coming to a forest, but with the graves, it helps you think, to reflect about what your headstone will read. About how long you’ll be here, what things you’ll do for people to remember you.”
I shrugged. “All that from coming to a cemetery?”
He nodded slowly. “Trust me.”
We sipped our drinks in silence. A bird landed on a gravestone just outside the shed.
Over the top of his mug, he stared at me. “You’ve had a near miss, I’d say. And you could do with a bit of time to think, to reflect on what it’s all about.”
“I’m not religious.” I was adamant about that much, strange old man or not. Despite Mum’s strong belief in God, which obviously gave her comfort, it hadn’t transferred to me.
“I’m not talking about God, or whatever you want to call Him. I’m talking about energy, healing, your dreams, and your wishes, how they come true.”
Maybe he was a bit creepy. I looked at my mug, and I’d nearly finished the tea. I took the last sip and stood. “Well, that was very kind of you. I feel much better now.” I handed him my mug. A white feather was stuck to the inside of it.
The man took it from me, put it on the table, next to the kettle, and said, “You’ll be wanting this, won’t you, Richard?” He handed me the white feather, staring into my eyes.
I took it from him and held it.
“Because that’s why you really came here, isn’t it?” Once I put the feather in my inside pocket, next to my heart, he shook my hand. “Take your time, have a walk around. It’s all very well looked after, thanks to yours truly. Even the bit right up the far side is now all tidy.” He gestured to where he was talking about. “There’s a mausoleum right in the far corner. I think you might find it useful to pop over and see before you go.” He ushered me out of the shed, and I stood on the path, looking at the cemetery in front of me.
I walked around the cemetery, slowly taking in the mixture of well-tended plants and weathered stone statues. The Victorians sure knew how to grieve, didn’t they?
I stopped to read some headstones as I wandered along the carefully raked gravel paths.
I stopped as I’d reached the edge of the grounds. In front of me was a six foot by six foot stone mausoleum, covered in moss and lichen. The inscription on the apex of the building explained that it was for a man who had owned the manor house when it had been in a little village in the parish of Camden, Middlesex, before the Tube, terraced houses, or any of that nasty post industrial revolution stuff the Victorians brought with them. This man had lived in a bucolic little village surrounded by open fields. Wonder what he’d think now, knowing where the grounds of his house had been was now rows of terraced houses and a supermarket car park?
It was interesting, and it was healthy, allowing myself to come out of my own head for a while, to imagine what this man’s life had been. I sat on a bench opposite the mausoleum and just enjoyed the noises around me.
There were two large angels standing guard to either side of this stone monument, their wingtips worn from hundreds of years of British weather. Their once naked bodies were covered below the waist with a flap of armour—obviously the Victorians had imposed their values on things.
I looked at the angels’ torsos. Both were well-built men with impressive chests and broad arms. My mind flitted back to an ex from a few years ago. A complete gym bunny, he would have easily lifted both these angels without breaking into a sweat. I remembered how he’d thrown me around the bedroom during some of our more hilarious sex sessions. I felt a stirring in my trousers—a stirring I hadn’t felt in as long as I could remember, certainly since before I had been in hospital.
When was the last time I had a good shag? Never mind that, when had I had any sort of shag?
In the last year at uni, Jenny and I had gone out, and I’d pulled a few times, but since then there hadn’t been anything. No action at all. Well, not strictly speaking true. I’d had the Internet to keep me occupied. Until the Internet broke and I hadn’t bothered fixing it. Hmm, that said it all, really.
I shook my head at the memory. I didn’t want to drag myself down again.
Then I remembered the last time I’d pulled. Amy and I had gone to a rocky, punky pub in Camden together. It was a compromise: I’d wanted to go clubbing in Vauxhall, where I knew I’d pick up, and she’d wanted to have a
quiet drink in a local pub near her flat. The compromise actually meant neither of us was happy, but we hadn’t known that at the start of the night.
We’d walked into the rocky, punky pub, and we stood out like a pair of denim-wearing, non-pierced sore thumbs. “It’ll be fine, once we’ve had a few drinks,” Amy had claimed.
A few drinks in and suitably loosened up, we were sort of enjoying ourselves, chatting about looking forward to finishing uni. Until the music act came on stage.
A six-foot woman with long purple hair, wearing a purple corset walked on stage, her metallic platform boots clicking on the floor. A five-foot-nothing man with a three-foot beard and three-foot-long hair, carrying a large electric guitar, followed her. She proceeded to scream her way through some reasonably well-known popular songs, giving them a good thrash metal makeover—this, we learned was the name of the genre, as we had asked the barmaid later that evening. The man screamed along too, and seemed to play two or three approximate chords from the original song, at some point, during the performance.
We left, drunk and laughing, and said goodbye, and promised next time we wanted to compromise, we’d just go with one of our suggestions rather than disappointing both of us. “But in fairness,” I pointed out, wiping tears of laughter from my face, “we’ve had a laugh, haven’t we?”
Amy nodded. “True, but I’m not sure I need to hear any of that any time soon. Who knew you could do a thrash metal version of “Love Story” by Taylor Swift?”
“And who’d want to find out is the better question.” I walked Amy to the Tube station and waved her goodbye as she disappeared underground on the escalator.
I realised I had an itch and it needed scratching, so I fired up my mobile phone and opened the app I’d been using a bit more often to find men, rather than the old-fashioned alternative of talking to people in nightclubs or bars.