by Gary Locke
“No” said Jeremy, his smile now at maximum capacity “he’s brown and sticky and smells like shit!”
He began laughing as Gayle looked on, slightly confused.
“Sorry” said Jeremy, trying to compose himself “That’s a little joke I like to do about Marmite. Everyone thinks you mean the love or hate thing but then you say: brown, sticky and smells like shit and they’re not expecting it – that’s why it’s so funny!”
He looked at Gayle, who continued to sit there completely deadpan.
“It’s a bit like when you’re in the pub and the round gets to a particular mate who says “sorry I haven’t got any cash on me”, and you say “you’re a bit like the Queen aren’t you?”, and he says “what, I never carry any money on me?” and you say “no, because you’re like an old, grumpy woman!”
Again, Gayle sat there unmoved.
“It’s funny, because no one’s expecting it?” Jeremy stated / asked whilst still laughing.
Still. Gayle’s deadpan expression remained mostly unchanged, apart from a slight hint of confusion. Jeremy realised that he would have to accept that his jokes had quite possibly missed the bull’s-eye on this occasion. He was pretty sure it was the audience and not the jokes themselves?
“Ok then..... I think I read that second one somewhere.....” Jeremy said, hurriedly trying to calm himself down, whilst trying to disassociate himself with the second of his attempted jokes. Because he was now contemplating that if Gayle was the die-hard royalist type, then his inclusion of the word “grumpy” when describing the Queen may well have completely pissed her off. “.....let me finish writing this down before we move on.”
Before speaking to her again, in an attempt to diffuse what may now be a hostile atmosphere, he slowly flipped the pages of his writing pad back and glanced over one of the answers that Clive had given him the previous day.
CLIVE:
When did you realise it was true love?
It was just like any other day; well most of it anyway.
I’d been to school, spent a nice lunch time with Gayle and the bump. We had been advised to maybe give the bump a name but what do you call a bump? Seemed like the best name for it was bump, and so we just stuck to bump.
I had got home around the normal time and Sue wasn’t there. But that wasn’t unusual; I just assumed that she was at some appointment or other that I’d forgotten about. I must have spent about fifteen minutes or so flicking through different TV channels before the phone rang and I think I knew something was wrong straight away. The ring of the phone sounded different; somehow serious.
As it rang I also noticed that the heating hadn’t come on and suddenly the house felt very cold. I answered the phone; it was a nurse from the hospital who said that Sue was “very poorly” and I should try to get to the hospital as quickly as I could. “It’s Ward B3” were the last words she said to me before hanging up. I arranged for a taxi straight away. And I phoned Gayle, who said she would meet me there as soon as she could.
Things feel like a bit of a blur now and thinking about it feels like trying to recall an old film I haven’t seen for years and years. I think the taxi driver was trying to speak to me about things but I couldn’t really listen. I just wanted to get to the hospital and so kept asking him to drive as fast as he could.
I arrived at the hospital and was shown how to get to ward B3. I’d seen Sue in hospital loads of times and so walked through the door and scanned the ward expecting to see her smiley face, in one of the many beds, staring out towards to the ward door, probably waiting for my arrival.
But I couldn’t see her.
It felt like I was looking up and down the ward for ages before a nurse walked over to see me. She asked who I was and then took me through to a little side room just off the main ward; as we walked I continued to look up and down the corridor at all the beds, but I still couldn’t see Sue.
The nurse said some words, quite a few words, but the only ones I ever remember were: “I’m so very sorry, but Sue passed away a few minutes ago. She died very peacefully as she slept.”
And it felt like there was a huge BANG!
A huge crash as the sky was ripped in two.
The nurse asked if I wanted to see her. I didn’t even know what that meant but said yes. I was taken to a private room around the corner where Sue was lying on a bed, on her back. She looked peaceful enough, but very different. At the same time she looked like her, and yet not like her. She looked almost like what a waxwork model of herself would look like.
I touched her forehead and she was cold; almost ice cold.
Looking back now, I wonder whether she had actually already died before they had even phoned me, but I guess I’ll never know.
All I could think of, as I stared at the body she had left behind, was that I never got the chance to say goodbye to her. And that thought crushed all the air out of me. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t even think.
Later, I realised that we had actually been saying goodbye to each other every day, for months and months. As her illness had got worse, Sue had taken more time to speak to me, about everything and anything. I think it was her way of trying to pass her experience and the lessons she had learnt in life, on to me. She also took more and more time talking to me about the baby we were going to have. I think she wanted to be sure that I understood what having the baby would be like for me and Gayle; making sure that I understood the responsibilities that were in front of me. But also, I remember the talks we’d had when she had tried to make me realise what an exciting and fun time we had ahead.
Of course I was so young and hadn’t seen what was happening. I was not ready to realise and accept the reality of the situation; the reality of Sue’s illness and the inevitability of the outcome.
I’d never had anyone leave before. Sure, I’d known plenty of people who had come and gone in my life, but it had always been through choice, no one had ever left permanently because of the end of life.
As I stood there, just staring at Sue’s body, I had never felt so alone.
I was lost.
I’m not even sure how long I’d been there before Gayle arrived. She said that she’d left almost straight away after I’d called her so it must have only been a few minutes, but it had felt like forever.
Gayle was also shocked and upset.
Sue was probably the only person in the whole world who hadn’t judged us for the situation we had found ourselves in. She was definitely the only person who was happy for us and focussed on the positives of us having a baby and getting married.
Not long after Gayle arrived we were asked to leave Sue’s body because she “had to be moved”.
I didn’t want her be moved.
I didn’t want anyone to touch her; ever.
We were ushered into another, different small room and told that we “could stay as long as you like”, “take all the time you need”.
We sat down and held each other tight.
Although I was numb, I knew that I wasn’t alone, and those feelings of being lost slowly began to fade. As we sat quietly, we could hear noise coming from the room next door that must have been the wards’ TV room or something. There was music playing, albeit it quiet-ish and muffled, coming through the wall. It must have been MTV or maybe perhaps there was a radio playing.
The first few songs I couldn’t make out, and they meant nothing to me and were even a bit of an annoyance; so much so that I wanted to go next door and turn the TV or radio off.
Didn’t the people in that room realise what had happened? Didn’t they understand that the world needed to be in silence?
But then a song came on that I recognised and actually quite welcomed. It was a song that Gayle and I both liked and had listened to countless times sharing the earphones on our walkmans.
It was Space: “Me and You vs. the World”.
It was our song. Our anthem.
Gayle’s family had abandoned us. My Mum had been “taken” from us
. We’d never had many people at school that we could have called “close friends” but, even those that we may have loosely described as “mates” didn’t want anything to do with us anymore; almost like they were embarrassed by our situation.
So we were on our own.
But it didn’t matter, because we didn’t need anyone else. We had each other and we weren’t afraid to take on the whole world.
Sue had been taken from me but she had left me so much. I felt strangely happy right then because I realised how lucky I had been to have the years that I’d had with her as my “Mum”. If it’s true that you get sent Angels in time of need, then Sue was definitely the first one I had been sent.
She had given me a sense of stability and safeness for the first time in my life. My first few years, before being homed with her, had been nothing other than disruption. The sad tale of another young kid who’d been neglected and then passed around from home to home; until, fortunately, landing at the doorstep of someone special. Someone who was beautiful enough to let in, and love, another wayward soul.
Sue had taught me what love was; how it works, how to give and receive. She had taught me to just be me, and not need to try and be anything else. But to be the best me I could be. And not through material achievement, but through happiness.
She taught me that success isn’t measured in pounds and pence or in houses and cars and other such objects, but in moments of joy and happiness. And she had done it to so many other kids before me; and it felt like her job was done.
It was her time to rest.
She was leaving me, but she was passing me onto my new Angel, Gayle.
From one Angel to another.
And we were ready to start our new life; our new family. I was ready to spend the rest of my life knowing and practicing what Sue had taught me. And Gayle and I knew, and would often remind each other, that it was Me and You vs. The World.
Chapter Twenty Nine: Echoes Through Time.
Jeremy carefully put his budget writing pad and seven pens back into his fancy lawyer-esque briefcase. Gayle couldn’t help but notice that as he performed this, rather slow and meticulous tidy up, he was wearing a very satisfied grin on his face. It was one of those contagious types of mini-smiles and Gayle found her own lips unable to resist the urge to curl and smile along as well.
“Are you ok?” she asked, curious as to why he appeared so happy.
“Oh yeah!” said Jeremy, slowly turning to face Gayle. “Oh yeah!”
She continued to look at him, hoping that the look on her face would persuade him to give her a little more information as to why he was so ok. Jeremy laughed a little to himself as he realised that she was fishing for more than just a yes/no type answer to her question.
“This is going to be easy!” he finally said. “There’s so much for me to go on here..... I guarantee that by tomorrow night you and Clive will be head over heels in love again!”
Gayle felt her own smile fading slightly.
Why was Jeremy so sure of himself? She may have just told him two or three nice stories about her and Clive’s past, and she had actually rather enjoyed reminiscing about their good times together, but that didn’t mean that everything else between them hadn’t happened.
The more she thought about it, the more she realised that there had been too much water passing under their bridge. Simply talking about a few nice things that happened many years ago can’t compensate for years of relationship neglect and mediocrity. She couldn’t help but feel that this whole thing felt like a big gimmicky, waste of time again. She wasn’t sure how much Clive had agreed to pay for the privilege of all this (knowing him, it probably wasn’t a lot) but she wondered whether that money, and all their time, could be saved if she put an end to it right now.
“I’ve got quite a few things to organise” began Jeremy before Gayle had any chance to say anything “but I will be back to pick you and Clive up for your first event, or maybe date, at 3 p.m. sharp.”
He added such an emphasis to the word: date, and again displayed such an annoyingly infectious smile, that Gayle was unable to stop herself grinning once again. Also she couldn’t ignore the strange feeling that was building inside her because of Jeremy’s, somewhat rather juvenile, stressing of the word “date”.
Wow, she felt as excited at the prospect of doing something different with Clive, perhaps even something romantic with him, as she had the previous day about the prospect of going on a date with Lee. In the space of one second she had gone from feeling like everything was a big waste of time to actually feeling, almost nervously, excited about it.
What was going on?
Was she now experiencing some kind of hormonal, mid-life change to go with the onset of beginning to look and feel older?
Jeremy had packed his stuff away, had carefully triple-checked that all his pens were present and correct, and had walked out into the hall.
“3 p.m. sharp!” he added before reaching out for the front door. Before he left the house though, another of those smiles spread across his face as he took his time reading Gayle and Clive’s “song” that had now been restored to its position on the radiator cover.
Echoes Through Time.
How did I know your eyes,
Before I’d ever seen your face?
And your smile, before we’d even met,
Always, somehow, brightened my day.
I thank the Earth for food and water,
I thank the sun that cuts through the frost,
I thank fate, fortune and destiny,
For the day that our paths did cross.
It’s you and me against the world,
And they’re shooting at us all the time,
I will always be your shield,
And I know, you’ll always be mine.
Time and space collide,
Every time you’re by my side,
Because Baby, You and I,
Got a love that echoes through time.
When we shared our very first kiss,
Fate made sure the stars aligned,
Because Baby, You and I,
Got a love that echoes through time.
The music will always play,
The words will always rhyme,
Because Baby, You and I,
Got a love that echoes through time.
So let the whole world keep on shooting,
I’ll be your shield, and you’ll be mine
Because Baby, You and I,
Got a love that echoes through time.
Chapter Thirty: The Maroon Volvo.
Clive yawned heavily as he locked the front door behind him.
He usually arrived home from work on a Saturday a little tired and grumpy and looking forward to a nice siesta. Well he liked to call it a “siesta”, trying to make it seem somehow European-ly sophisticated, but Gayle saw it for what it was. A nap is a nap, much in the same way that a lazy bastard who avoids the Saturday afternoon food shop is a lazy bastard who avoids the Saturday afternoon food shop.
They both got into Jeremy’s car, a maroon Volvo that could very well have been manufactured in the 1970’s, wondering where he was going to be taking them for this, the first of the weekend activities they had agreed to. (And were both regretting doing so, right now.)
Clive slid into the worn, dark grey leather seating of the back seat and closed the door gently, worried that he may damage it if he slammed it too hard. This was probably one of those cars that stood completely on the border line between old classic and old banger. Gayle got into the back via the opposite door and couldn’t help but feel like she was getting into a taxi in a foreign country. One of those taxis that had been running for generations, passed from father to son to grandson; one of those taxis that you just pray gets you to your holiday apartment before you get bitten to death by the infestation of bugs that have also lived in the back seat upholstery for generations.
“So are we both excited for the first activity?” asked Jeremy, as he hideo
usly over-revved his engine whilst setting off. The best Gayle and Clive could muster were half-hearted “mehs”, as if Jeremy was trying to talk to two teenagers in the back of his car, playing on their i-pads. As such, he kept the conversation to a minimum. In fact, the only attempted talking involved Gayle or Clive trying different questions to find out where they were going, only to be answered by an excited Jeremy, who answered with an annoying: “You’ll have to wait and see!” every time. After a few minutes they both got bored of trying to coax any information out of him and so sat back in silence.
Clive closed his eyes wondering if a “power nap” may make up for his need to forgo his siesta, whilst being concerned that any sharply taken corner may see him skid across the slippery leather seat and crash right out of one of the flimsy back doors.
Gayle couldn’t help but focus on the fact that, the more she thought about it, the more she really didn’t want to be doing this. It really did feel like a big waste of time for everyone involved. But she knew that she had to try and clear this negativity from her mind. Whatever lay ahead of her she needed to embrace it in the spirit that she had agreed to; it was the very least that she owed to her and Clive’s history.
Before too long Jeremy announced that they had arrived at their “first destination”. Gayle was relieved that it hadn’t been so long that she had slipped into a negative frame of mind again. Be positive, be positive, be positive; she told herself.
Clive felt frustrated that his attempted power nap had ended before it had begun. Then again, who was he kidding? This new-found, Japanese-invented phenomenon wasn’t really fooling Clive, like it may be doing the rest of the world. Just adding the word “power” to something doesn’t mean you can completely change the rules. A “nap” is as old as time and, in Clive’s humble opinion, needed to be at least an hour long to have any real beneficial effect.
Both Clive and Gayle looked out of the car window and noticed that they had arrived at a church. As Jeremy slowly turned into the car park Gayle couldn’t help but wonder whether Jeremy had brought them here to be married in a church seeing as she had told him that their actual wedding had been at a registry office. Could he actually arrange a wedding at a church in just a couple of hours?