Islands: A page turning story of love, secrets and regrets

by Gwyn GB

  Then she was gone.

  Her toothbrush was no longer in the glass, her wardrobe half empty, the bottles vanished from the top of the dressing table and her pillow stayed plump and pristine. Yet still John believed she needed him as he needed her, that she wanted him to fight for their union. Once the harvest was in he followed her to London.

  31

  1988, London – John

  Abundance. If there is one word to describe London, then it’s abundance. An abundance of people of cars and lorries, of noise and smells. An abundance of shops: big ones, small specialised ones, shops selling only buttons or handbags, shops offering to find you anything you want. An abundance of tastes and styles: the clothes people wear, their haircuts, the furniture in the shop windows. An abundance of nationalities: black, brown, yellow, white skins; and an abundance of all sorts of people. Serious young men just starting off in the world, flirty young girls aware of every pair of eyes that come their way. The eccentric singleton using his ‘individuality’ as the excuse for why he’s never married. The dry brittle divorcee - her face a barometer of her coldness. The young couple plumped pink with expectation of the life they dream of together. The student emaciated by his first time away from his mother’s cooking. Two businessmen lost in their conversation - oblivious to the thousands of other human beings who jostle for the restricted pavement space around them. A waitress scurrying to the restaurant where she will spend the evening enveloped in the noise of wine fuelled chatter - serving, taking orders and not being seen. The tourist couple wandering, taking it all in, looking up at places Londoners don’t see - buildings looming overhead but never noticed. A young man walking out his daily routine, picking up his sandwich from his favourite deli and planning the night’s entertainment with his drinking buddies. Abundance. So much choice. So much variety. So much of everything. That’s how John found London.

  He travels from the airport via train trapped in a window seat by a large man who looks respectable in his suit, but whose flatulence throughout the journey constantly assails John’s nose with an unpleasant smell of stale peanuts. He’s afraid the stench is going to seep into his nostrils and stay there like a stain; but he doesn’t want to move. His seat is right by the luggage rack and from here he can keep an eye on his cases.

  From the train to the underground with its huge long rickety old escalators, which are tricky enough at the best of times but even more of an assault course when you’re trying to manage two heavy bags. Standing on the platform: the slightly oily, tar like smell, the tiny little mice scurrying under the tracks searching for tasty morsels amongst the commuters’ rubbish, and the ever-filling platform as more people arrive. He’s always hated crowded platforms where so many people jostle for the train, it would be easy for someone just to give a little shove and you’d be under the wheels.

  When the train does finally arrive John’s Channel Island politeness ensures he misses out on a seat as he stands back to allow others off and more seasoned commuters slip in through any gap they can find.

  Seeing Katherine is his reward.

  ‘John.’

  Her voice reaches him through the throng of people milling around outside the tube station. He’s a little bewildered by the crowds. She looks genuinely pleased to see him. They hug each other so tightly he thinks they might never come apart again, but how wrong he is. The separation has already begun.

  ‘Isn’t London just so exciting?’ she asks him, ‘It never stops, there’s so much to see and do, you’ll love it.’

  It has certainly given her a new lease of life, but he’s worried it won’t do the same for him.

  ‘Everything still going well with the course?’ he questions on their walk back to her flat. They’d talked regularly on the phone and everything seems to be going well. He feels guilty for the question because a little part of him is hoping one day she might say things aren’t fine, that she hates it and wants to return to Jersey; return to him and never leave again.

  ‘Yes it’s brill. They’re really pleased with me. Oh I’m just so glad you’re here with me now.’ She genuinely seems to mean it, wrapping her arms around his and clinging on tight. ‘I’ve booked us tickets for Les Miserables, you’ve always wanted to see that haven’t you? Then we can go for dinner in China Town afterwards. There’s also a rounders match in the park this weekend, we can take a picnic and you can meet some of the guys from work. Oh, and I must take you to the coffee shop near the flat, they do the most divine bacon sandwiches.’

  John smiles down at his excited wife, it’s good to see her so full of life again, to see the colour back in her face and some energy in her body. He wonders though how deep the glow goes, is it just superficial? Underneath this smiling exterior is she still red raw and hurting, or has the city really been a cure-all panacea? Would this city cure him and the rift in their marriage, or will it tear them apart forever?

  They go to the theatre, try a range of different foods from around the world, visit museums and art galleries, play rounders in the park and walk along the Thames. They take in the history with visits to the Tower of London and a trip out to Windsor Castle. Kathy introduces him to her new friends, and they have people round to the flat for dinner; but all the time he feels like a shadow in the glare of Katherine’s new found freedom. An impostor. Can she not see how he’s struggling? Or does she not want to see?

  John vows to give himself time, perhaps he too could come to see the excitement rather than the noise of the place. He applies for a job as a park keeper with one of the boroughs, and gets it. Day after day, week after week, he travels through the heaving streets to his green oasis where he can rub the earth between his fingers, create life amid the concrete, and make believe he could be happy here. But the earth doesn’t smell rich and full of iron like at home, it is grey and dusty. His flowers are often vandalised, and the air is thick with exhaust fumes not fresh and salty, just blown in from across the seas.

  He tries, Lord knows he does, because he wants to be with Katherine; but he just can’t make himself enjoy living in the city. They have a pleasant enough flat in a modern block: functional, comfortable, seven floors above the teeming streets below. Floor after floor of people, all piled up on top of one another. Tiny windows to the outside world, each living in their private pen oblivious of those above, below or around them. There is no social contact, nowhere to stop and chat. No front yard or street to stand in and catch up with the neighbours. John wonders how children growing up in these concrete towers can be expected to become adults with social skills and consciences when they have no real idea what society is, let alone their place in it?

  It’s all about money. They work to get the things they want, as defined by the conduit that has access to almost everyone – the TV. Television is the one ubiquitous thing John hears when he walks past the other doors, not conversation or laughter, but the incessant sound of television voices playing to an audience choosing to watch drama or be a fly on the wall of somebody else’s life rather than live their own. Yet he can’t see how television can impart a sense of history, belonging, or value like conversations with grandparents or shared family meals. To him, television value is only defined in monetary terms.

  Everything seems to be played out amid a frenetic pace of life. For an outsider, like John, people aren’t people - they’re a blur rushing from one place to another. The endless stream of cars. Never any peace. It’s constant. Nothing except the buildings stand still to watch. Dirty, tired buildings, chewing gum splattered pavements, walls covered in graffiti: illegal and purposeful as buildings and signs. Life that needs a new lick of paint.

  John has been in London around six months when things come to a head. On the surface their relationship is fine, sex has started again, although Kathy is obviously taking contraceptives this time. They don’t talk about what happened, she hushes him if he ever broaches the subject, as though to speak the words in her new life will somehow taint things. It’s almost as though she wants to complet
ely wipe her slate clean, deny her own past. John has begun to wonder if Katherine thinks of him as her past too. He doesn’t feel able to keep up with her new way of life and friends, Katherine simply doesn’t seem to need him anymore. Has he become a millstone around her neck? The man she’s married by mistake? He imagines that if he suddenly disappears she probably won’t even notice.

  It’s a Friday night and they are out for dinner in the West End, just the two of them. London is lit up with multi-coloured lights, it seems like a million eateries are vying for their attention. All the focus is on the streets, on the people, the shops still open for business and the Maître d’ trying to tempt them into their restaurant. Nobody seems to notice the black sky with its beautiful full moon and sparkly stars - it might as well not have bothered.

  They choose an Italian which looks traditional and fairly busy. Several of the customers are Italian themselves, ‘You can trust a restaurant where their own nationality eats’, has always been the advice John’s father gave him.

  They sit at a window seat and John orders some Lambrusco. Kathy is chatting about her day at work and John idly looks out of the window. Outside young people are spilling out of pubs onto the streets, smoking, drinking their pints. Inside the pub he can see a mass of heads like pins crammed tightly together on a board. The pub is packed, a people-stuffed sausage. Any movement to the bar or to the toilet requires a group ripple, a giant intestinal contraction to expel the object of irritation elbowing its way along. All around the street the lights are on, empty offices bleaching energy into the darkness.

  The door springs open with a chime and a man with his basket of single wrapped roses comes in, targeting the couples. He walks up to their table with his salesman’s smile proffering a flower to Katherine. John looks at it. A single lonely bloom, probably flown thousands of miles half frozen from some foreign country to end up here in a restaurant in London as a trite gift. The price is extortionate, his sales will get better as the evening wears on and suitors become more intoxicated.

  John looks at Katherine; a single rose isn’t what she needs. He waves the man away. The man doesn’t hang around, he has a hundred other places to try and is quickly gone.

  Four elderly people sit next to them chatting over old times, hair brittle and white, skin dry and transparent. Fading eyes in deep dark sockets that have seen a million things - but right now struggle to focus in the dim light.

  At home - home! How could he have ever thought anywhere else but Jersey could be home? If he’d sat for an evening looking out a window in Jersey, watching people go by, he’d have seen at least one, if not several people he knows. Here he could sit for a lifetime and never see a friendly face just happen to walk past. Cast adrift in a sea of strangers he realises the experience makes him want to launch a distress flare, whereas Katherine is not only enjoying the sensation, she is positively seeking it out. She wants to be lost, to break her anchor and drift away from her rock. Sitting here it dawns on John that he has been watching her drift away from him.

  He chews his food but he isn’t tasting it. A gaping chasm has opened between them. Katherine could be sitting at the other end of one of those huge medieval dining tables for all the closeness he feels tonight.

  He can’t finish his meal. At another time he might have felt a little guilty, or embarrassed, in front of the waiter’s question, ‘Was everything all right sir?’ but not tonight. He will never be here again, never see the waiter another time. He owes him nothing.

  After the meal they walk home arm in arm, Katherine still chattering about work and what they can do at the weekend. He wants to hold her. Not to feel skin on skin, flesh on flesh, they do that – no, to really hold her. He wants to feel the true Katherine, the electricity of her body instead of the warm soft nothingness she has become. He wants to hold her, to envelop her so she’s welded into him, protected, nourished and they become one again.

  She’s still chattering on. Now she’s talking about the future.

  ‘My boss says there’ll definitely be a job for me here at the end of the course. He’s really pleased with how I’m doing; says I’m going to do great… Perhaps we could start looking into buying a place, nothing too big but...John? Are you listening to me?’

  ‘Yes sweetheart I’m listening. That’s good. Well done. I knew you’d be brilliant.’ There is a resigned weariness to his voice which Katherine can’t fail to pick up. They are almost back to the flat now and John feels a storm brewing between them. Perhaps it is time. Time to have it all out and say what needs to be said.

  Katherine rises to the atmosphere. ‘You’re not really interested are you? You just don’t care about my career!’

  ‘I do Katherine, honestly I do. If that’s what you want, then I’m happy for you.’

  ‘Happy for me. But you’re not happy. Right?’

  There is a silence as she puts the key into the front door lock and opens it.

  ‘Right,’ he finally says with a sigh as they enter the flat.

  For some reason she doesn’t think to turn on the lights and the sitting room is illuminated only by the white glow of the city streaming through the windows.

  ‘Why John? Is it me? Is it because we can’t have children?’ Her voice has risen, the all too familiar notes of distress creeping into her tone.

  ‘No. God! No darling. I love you.’ He spins her round to him holding onto her shoulders with both hands. ‘I’m happy with just you and me.’ But she’s spoiling for a fight now, he can tell whatever he says she’s going to twist it.

  ‘I see. You love me, but only on your terms right? Admit it, you don’t like the fact that I’ve got a career now, do you?’ Her anger, or is it something else, is coming out in her physically. She flings his hands off her and starts to pace the room.

  Still neither of them turn on the lights preferring instead to hide their emotions in the half light, like some strange black and white Hitchcock thriller.

  ‘Of course I want to support you Katherine. If this is what you want to do then I’m a hundred percent behind you, I’ve told you that and I mean it. But are you sure this is you, are you sure that moving here away from all your family is right, that you’re doing it for the right reasons?’

  ‘The right reasons? I’m here because I want to be here. Because I’m fed up with being trapped on that tiny island. Here there’s so much opportunity, I can be somebody, do something with my life.’

  John looks at her shadowed face. He wants to say all he sees is a wounded deer shying away from the light, that she’s still hurting, that she’s running away. He wants to tell her in this city of millions the last thing she is likely to become is a ‘somebody’. The most likely outcome is she’ll end up a nobody in a crowd of strangers. Perhaps that is what she really wants, to lose herself, to escape everything she was before. He says none of this.

  ‘OK. But I’m sorry Kathy I can’t. I just can’t do it - live here I mean. I have to go back. I miss the land, I miss home.’

  ‘So that’s it… just give up?’ She’s venomous now, ‘Roll over, don’t try. You’ve only been here a few months and you’ve hardly made any effort. Let’s face it you never wanted to be here in the first place.’

  He sighs, ‘Maybe you’re right, but I came didn’t I? I came because I wanted to be with you. I came because you said it would be two years and I didn’t want us to be apart that long. Now you’re saying you want to stay on after the course as well.’

  ‘You said you’d support me, that I should do what I really want to do...and what do you mean by wanted? You said you wanted me, so does that mean you don’t want to be with me anymore is that it?’

  ‘No Kathy, no, that’s not it. I love you. I will always love you, but I’m accepting that right now you have to do this. It’s what you want. Only I can’t do it Kathy, I’m sorry but I can’t. Please. You have to understand, it’s just not me.’

  ‘Sure, I understand all right.’ She turns away now, her voice changing, the fight going out o
f her. In the semi darkness it’s impossible to see if there are tears or not.

  ‘I’ll still be there for you Kathy, I’ll come and visit, and you can come back and visit too. Other people manage long distance relationships, why can’t we? I’ll always be there for you…’

  ‘Yeah sure…. Well don’t hold your breath.’ With that she walks into the bedroom and slams the door.

  Is this it? Is this the end of their marriage? The complete destruction of the honeycomb?

  John sits for a good hour on the brown leather sofa, his head in his hands. His stomach is hurting and he feels sick. They are at opposite ends of a spectrum. Katherine sees the big cosmopolitan city as freedom, John instead feels trapped. Trapped in a concrete maze where building after man-made building rises up around him. The little patches of green park where he works just aren’t enough, they’re tiny sticking plasters on a giant graze. He misses the sea, the big open skies that surround Jersey where he can see for miles, pick out the houses on the French coast, watch a storm roll across the horizon towards him. He can’t breathe here sucking in the recycled air of a million others, his ears bombarded by a hundred discordant orchestras of daily life.

  Freedom to him is being able to stride across an open field or walk for miles along the golden sands of St Ouen. For Katherine freedom is to escape who she is; and sitting on the sofa is when John realises freedom for her is also to escape him. His presence is like an open sore to her. Every time she looks at him she must be reminded of what they’ve been through, the childlessness of their situation. How can she be free with him hanging around her neck like an albatross? He must go home not just for his sake, but for hers as well.

  32

  1988-2008, Jersey – Margaret

  Margaret’s life with Robert and their new baby settled into a gentle cruising speed. Their marriage a comfortable holding pattern interspersed with the birth of James and then Sophie. As Robert predicted, John returned to the farm from London; picking up his tools from where he’d left them. They watched as he drove his tractor in and out of the yard in silence. There was barely a word from Katherine. She called occasionally: birthdays, Christmas, but she didn’t come back to her husband. Her training course developed into a new career path.