Forever Young

by Steven Carroll

  It is sudden. Even brutal. Michael has been speaking for two, maybe three, minutes. She’s not sure. She’s not sure of anything at the moment. His lips are moving but she’s not registering much of what he says. Only the key words. She barely had time to sit down. He barely said hello. And then he started. And from the moment he started everything went dream-like. But it’s a bad dream.

  There have been times, after a strong joint, when she could have sworn somebody said something to her, but they hadn’t. Could have sworn that she’d had whole conversations with someone or other who was in the room, but, all along, the conversation had taken place in her head. Reality shifts at such times, and it’s shifting now. Michael is speaking but she is taking in only the key words. Key Words. It was a text they all had to have for Literature. A sort of dictionary that contained all the key terms they had to know — such as ‘plot’ and ‘symbol’, and phrases such as ‘felt experience’, and so on. All the key words you needed to get you through an exam. But the phrases ‘seeing each other’ and ‘not seeing each other’ weren’t in it. It was a book that got you through a subject you were studying, but not a moment like this. She’s only vaguely aware of the room, of his guitar on its stand, of what is said. The sky is rioting. There’s upheaval, revolution in the atmosphere. Leaves, twigs and scraps are wrenched from their resting places and thrown into the ferment. Mandy lifts a white blossom from her hair. Mandy lifts a blossom … the sky is rioting and she looks up, eyes exultant, and watches the blossom fly from her, once again, into the ferment of the sky.

  ‘It’s over. We had fun. But it’s not the fun it was. We’ve had the best of it. It’s been good seeing each other, but we’re better off not seeing each other any more.’

  There is a long pause. Has he finished? His lips have stopped moving. She heard only the key words, ‘seeing each other’ and ‘not seeing each other’. Which may have been followed by ‘any more’. But she’s not sure because it’s all a bad dream. And she’s not sure if he’s finished or if it’s her turn to speak, as if the two of them are enacting some little play that they’ve just made up. He speaks, she speaks. They both speak together. They fall silent. He speaks, she speaks. But it doesn’t happen this way. As much as the roles and the conventions of a little play demand that she speak now because it’s her turn, she can find nothing to say.

  His lips have stopped moving. In the silence he hands her a bracelet. It’s hers. He found it under the bed. Under the bed … He’s staring at her and she can’t take her eyes off his, because these are not his eyes. At least, not the eyes she’s known this last year, not the Michael she’s known until now. Not the Michael she might have been foolish enough to sometimes think of as ‘her’ Michael. Not the Michael she might have waited for. Been silly enough to wait for, and been happy to. No, this is a Michael she’s never met before. They are hard, cold eyes. No trace of sadness. No touch of regret in his eyes or tone of voice. Just this cold stare and a sort of impatience, an angry one, that says, well, get on with it — say what you have to say, then go. No, not ‘her’ Michael at all, but a Michael she’s never met. And, what is more, one she knows she’ll never be able to reach, no matter what she says. He’s beyond reach. He has gone from her, and there is only this imposter sitting in his place.

  It’s confusing. A bad dream. Where is ‘her’ Michael? Happy Michael. Eyes lit with the happiness that she put there. Where is he? And who, who are you? She looks at the door of the flat and remembers walking in that door when they first started seeing each other. Kissing in the doorway. Sinking to the floor and fucking right there. And was the door of the flat still open or closed? Who knows? Were they seen and heard? Who cares? They were a world unto themselves. There, and she’s still staring at the spot, not so long ago when they first started seeing each other — there they had sunk to the floor and fucked where they fell. And God, it was good to fuck like that. No ritual dinner and wine and all the bullshit that comes with it. Just catching the moment in all its magnificent surprise. No, not ‘surprise’. The moment in all its ‘thereness’. ‘Thereness’, that’s it. You won’t find that in any book of key terms either. You won’t because she’s just made it up. The moment was ‘there’ and they took it. Sank to the floor in the doorway and fucked where they fell.

  And as Mandy stares at the doorway, she’s wondering if she will ever fuck like that again. And didn’t they just roll onto their backs afterwards, still clothed (except for her knickers, out there in the room somewhere), didn’t they just roll onto their backs and say, ‘Now, let’s eat!’ And didn’t she say these are the best fucks ever. And did she feel, even then, the faintest shadow of sadness fall across her as she spoke because she knew she was right? They were ‘seeing’ each other, and written into the whole idea of ‘seeing’ each other was the possibility that one day they would not be seeing each other, and that whole world of unapologetic abandon, of sinking to the floor in each other’s doorways and hallways and having the best fucks ever, would one day become a memory.

  She looks back from the door. Now that day has come, and the hint of a shadow that may have touched her then falls across her now and her world turns cold. As cold as the eyes of this Michael she’s never met before.

  And so without speaking, not sure how long she’s even been in the flat (two, three, four, five … ten minutes?, she has no idea — how long is a bad dream?), she rises, feeling nothing, only numb, from the chair that she can’t even remember sitting in, holding the bracelet she barely remembers accepting, walks to the door and closes it behind her. And she can’t even remember if she said goodbye. Who was there to say goodbye to anyway? Not ‘her’ Michael, just this imposter.

  The dog turns its eyes to her as she approaches, its eyes alight with hope and trust because it knows there’s a biscuit coming. A reward for its patience. And it’s only as she’s driving away and the dog is munching on the biscuit with the air of a gourmet savouring a long-sought-after delicacy, that the numbness begins to melt. And as much as she might ask herself did that really happen?, she knows it did. And though it all felt like a bad dream at the time, she knows that it was one of those bad dreams that are true. And as the numbness begins to fade and feeling returns, she begins to feel the pain. Right there, in the heart, where all the love poems and love songs tell you it is felt. And she knows, too, that it is not a passing pain. This is a pain that tells her that something of significance has happened, that one of those events by which we signpost our lives has occurred. That, years from now, those five or ten minutes in which she sat speechless in Michael’s flat will remain clear to her, undiminished by the years — clear, but unreal, like one of those bad dreams that happen. And as the numbness melts and the pain begins, she turns the wheel towards home.

  The sky is rioting. Leaves and scraps are flung into the ferment. Mandy takes a blossom from her hair and releases it, eyes on the sky, exultant with the anticipation of seeing Michael — the evening in front of them. Such a long time ago. Another Mandy. Another Michael. Such a long time … And suddenly, as pain and memory mingle and gather in force, she turns the wheel away from home and points it towards the sea.

  Mandy parks the car in the street leading down to the beach. A taxi passes, women talk idly in the doorway of the shop behind her, a gull sits on the railing of the tram stop as if waiting for its regular tram. Everything is strangely still. At some point during the drive across town the wind dropped, the riot in the sky exhausted itself, and all those leaves and scraps and blossoms fell back to earth miles from where they were lifted. Upon a different earth. Which is how it feels to Mandy. An unreal stillness. A strange calm. Another earth. Not the same one she drove through on the way to Michael’s. An hour ago she was in the world; now she’s detached, walking through another one altogether. Everything strangely calm, like the lull in a violent argument that hasn’t finished yet. Strangely still, the streets, buildings, ships, looking like one of those cities that have been lost in time and which, by some fluke of nature,
she has stumbled across. The numbness goes, the unreality stays. Life is a dream. A bad one. She must wake.

  She opens the passenger-side door and the dog tumbles out. The dog loves the sea. He can smell it. His nose is in the air. He is impatient. But he waits, like the good and true dog that he is. And upon her instruction they cross the street and suddenly the bay is spread out in front of them.

  A tanker is coming in, a tanker is going out. There are occasional fishing boats. But the beach, in late afternoon amber light, is deserted apart from a woman sitting on a bench and looking out to sea with a quiet longing that Mandy can feel even from where she is standing. But apart from this woman, the beach is hers.

  She takes the steps down to the sand. The dog runs on. She stops near the water. The dog pauses, looking back, gentle waves breaking over its paws. Life is a dream. A bad one. She must wake. Mandy looks about. Nobody. Except the woman on the bench, who doesn’t seem to have eyes for anything but the horizon.

  First she removes her sandals. Then her jumper. She drops it on the sand with her shirt and her jeans, and she stands in nothing other than her bra and her knickers. And all the time the dog is looking at her with a puzzled expression on its face, as if to say, what are you doing? And she could smile, if there was a smile in her. But there isn’t.

  Then she walks forward. The water about her feet is cold. And as she wades further in, the first rolling wave crashes into her and almost takes her breath away. She must wake. For a moment she looks back at the beach, at the small pile of clothes she has left behind on the sand, like a pile of clothes left by someone who is not coming back. Another wave crashes against her, and she welcomes it. The dog is paddling beside her, concern on its face. And then she dives.

  Her legs, strong and athletic, lift her from the sand and she dives like a fish, flying through the air. A perfect arc. There is a splash, then bubbles, and icy water all around. Black water. A cold spring sea. And this time that icy black water does take her breath away. As well as the pain. And the bad dream. And in one magnificent moment she is alive again. A living thing. And she opens her eyes to blackness and bubbles and stays there submurged. And the cold is so enormous, so complete, so utterly exhilarating that she could just stay there in darkness and bubbles. And she doesn’t know how long she stays there beneath the water. A wave passes over her, the icy water stings and she welcomes it. She is in her element. She is water. She is sea. She is a sea creature come in from the land. Come home. And she drifts in the blackness and bubbles, happy to stay in her home of the sea, until the sudden urge for air drives her upwards and she breaks the surface, taking in huge gulps of air, then stands and looks back at the beach, still gasping for breath.

  She is disappointed. She is land, after all. Not some fabulous creature returning to its element of the sea, but condemned to live on land. In this other earth, this other world that doesn’t feel like hers any more because Michael took it away. For a moment, love turns to hate. And at the same time she notes with a cool detachment that — there! — she’s said it. Love. And all the time they’d been ‘seeing’ each other she’d harboured the hope that ‘seeing’ each other would eventually become ‘knowing’ each other. But, even then, she couldn’t call it love. But it’s all gone, whatever it was. Whatever they’d been or might have been. Washed away.

  And it’s then, shivering in the water, in nothing but her bra and her knickers, that her whole body is convulsed, shaken by the first of her sobs. One after another, with barely any pause in between. Deep breaths and deep sobs. Oh, it’s nothing, she tells the open sky, between breaths. Don’t make a fuss. Big girls don’t cry, big girls don’t … it’s nothing. Her boyfriend told her to fuck off. That’s all. It’s nothing. Take any street, at any hour, and somebody’s bound to be telling someone to fuck off. It’s nothing. Just love. Just the end of love. And there, she’s named it again. Love, love, love, love, love … say it often enough and it’s just a word. She wipes the snot from her nose and stares at the dog, paddling about her, circling her, the same concerned look it had on its face as she dived into the icy water and discovered, for a few incalculable moments, the possibility of another element, still there. Then she looks up to the sky. Here I am, for God’s sake, waist deep in the sea, in my bra and knickers. Only love, only love can do this. You bastard. You bastard, Michael, you bastard.

  And so, shivering, her face plastered in salt and tears and snot, she wades reluctantly back to the sand. A failed fish. Back to the beach and the land, and this whole world that’s not hers any more.

  And that bundle of clothes at her feet that had the look of having been left by someone who wasn’t coming back was, in reality, always going to be reclaimed. And it’s with a relief that feels like betrayal that she feels the warmth return to her as she puts the clothing on that she shed no more than a few minutes before. The shivering eases, the sobbing has stopped for the moment. And she turns back and looks at the blue, black water, and that feeling that she could have just stayed there returns.

  She picks up her sandals and trudges back across the sand to the steps and the street and the car that are all waiting for her. A life, waiting to be resumed. And as she walks she notes the woman still sitting on the bench, eyes only for the horizon, and she is impressed by her powers of concentration — if concentration is the word. For it’s more a longing that won’t be denied. Did this woman notice her? Did she see her — Mandy and her dog diving into the icy waters of the bay on this late spring afternoon? Was her splash heard? And, if so, is she deliberately concentrating on the horizon so as not to stare? No, if she noticed anything at all, it was litle more to her than one of those incidental events that come and go, vaguely registered and forgotten almost as soon as they are noted. Mandy, for all the world, a splash that no one heard.

  She opens the passenger-side door and the dog jumps in. At the wheel, she points the car for home. The sea recedes in the rear-vision mirror — the sea, and the possibility of living in another element. But as much as she might imagine there’s been some bureaucratic slip-up in the administration of the natural world, and that she’s been assigned to the wrong element, there’s no mistake. This one is hers — streets, yards and houses full of rooms that have lost their hope. A world that doesn’t feel like hers any more.

  The song ends, the song begins. Ends, begins. Begins, ends … beginnings become endings; endings, beginnings. Mandy is lying across her bed. She can feel the salt still on her skin and taste it on her hands and forearms when she wipes the tears from her eyes. It is a large rented room in a large rented house in the suburbs. Michael lives in the inner city. Mandy prefers the suburbs where the houses are larger and the dog has a yard. There is a cold mug of tea sitting on some drawers beside the bed and a small square of hash lying in its silver foil beside the tea, like the last square of a chocolate block. The distinctive scent of the hash hangs in the air and there is the stub of a joint in an ashtray. She has no clear idea of how long she has been lying there or how long the song has been playing or how long she has been crying. The well seems to be inexhaustible, the tears endless. Like the song.

  It is a popular song. In it, a young man (at least, Mandy imagines him to be a young man, even a familiar one, a young man with the face of Michael singing to her) is telling either himself or anybody who will listen that he is not in love. And he is neither sad, this young man, nor expresses any sense of regret. In fact, he seems to feel nothing at all. Like a character in one of those French novels who casually kills someone with neither regret nor remorse — who seem to feel nothing at all. She is not, the young man sings, to tell her friends that they are, presumably, ‘seeing’ each other, and she is not to make a fuss when they do. And the picture he keeps of her is to hide a mark on the wall. They are casual. They are seeing each other.

  It is not a sad song. It is worse than sad. It is like being stuck in a bad dream. At least, that’s how she hears it. And somehow she doesn’t have the energy to rise from her bed and end it. The f
act is she is drawn to it. Wants to wallow in it — in the bad dream of the song. It’s her fate. A sickness that she doesn’t want to be cured of. And, staring at the ceiling, recalling Michael’s face that was a face she’d never seen before (or hadn’t she been watching properly and was it always there?) and recalling the Michael and the Mandy that they once were — falling to the floor and fucking where they fell — she hears (wondering if she will ever fuck like that again) the song fade, merge into silence, then re-emerge from silence to start all over again. How long has it been playing? This bad dream of a song. This song that is neither sad nor regretful, but which seems to feel nothing — like the Michael who spoke to her today. But it also occurs to her, as she eyes the small block of hash, wondering if she has the energy to roll another joint, knowing that it would bring with it blissful oblivion, that for all the singer’s insistence on not being in love, he may very well be. For Mandy suddenly imagines (or likes to imagine) that he insists too much. And this very insistence on not being in love brings with it a glimmer of hope. And it is a hope that she suddenly clings to. And instead of reaching for the small block of hash, she reaches for the telephone. She has stopped crying. She is calm. She is strangely hopeful. Even happy. It’s hard to tell. She can do this. And, without allowing herself time for second thoughts, she dials Michael’s number.