by J. S. Brent
As soon as he had arrived, the ticket inspector turned around and vanished back into the depths of the train. The man took out his earphones and packed away his things as we approached the next stop. I still had two more until I had to change train. I waited until he had picked up his luggage before sliding over to the next seat and staring idly out of the window.
The sky was a thick grey, thicker than anything that had seeped between my lips after a bittersweet drag of a cigarette. I would later learn that the Atlantic was blowing in a storm. It would amicably be named Storm Penelope due to the fact that it would be more passive aggressive and placated than any tropical storm. It was more of a small annoyance than anything dangerous, but just because it was small doesn’t mean that it was nothing to be afraid of.
I found some refuge in storms. I wished it would rain. I could find some form of peace in a silent room whilst rain and thunder rolled outside and stopped short at the windows. Ambient noise helped me think clearly. Rainy thoughts seemed to exist out of my own head. They were never of self-consciousness or fear, but of the comfortable warmth that wrapped around me.
The announcer declared that Peterborough was the next stop. I had to change here. One of the sleeping students woke up their friends, everyone seemed to be leaving the carriage. Everyone seemed to be heading towards London. I wished that I could travel into the capital. I just needed somewhere that I could fade away and not be noticed, not some small town where on a short walk I would see everyone I once knew and their dogs.
I packed away my things briskly. My music stopped and all I could hear was the train slowing and the light murmur of the other students.
I stepped off the train. A lot of people got in my way whilst I crossed the bridge to my platform. I missed the train that was immediately there and so had to wait for about half an hour for the next one.
The sun seemed to be setting behind the grey veil of clouds above me. It was getting darker as second by second my train approached. I sat on my luggage and pretended to go on my phone. In reality I was thinking. I don’t remember any of the thoughts that crossed my mind in that steady lapse of time.
There was a shuffle of feet as the train pulled into the station. It was clear that this train was going to be a lot busier and so I resided between two carriages. My suitcase was just the right height to sit on and so I didn’t have to feel any guilt for sitting on the chair next to the doors. I didn’t have to think about whether or not I would have to move if somebody else needed it more than I did. I could just sit and think.
This train had fifteen minutes of Wi-Fi, which I tried my best to put to good use. I managed to relay a message about what time I would be arriving in Bishop’s Wood. It was seen, but there was no response. I already assumed that I would have to walk home.
Everyone sat in solemn silence. It was getting late and everybody was returning home from their long day of work or pleasure. I could feel the weariness around me as it crept around the carriage reaching one person at a time.
The second train felt a lot quicker. It could have been because a lot more happened. There were delays due to a man constrained to a mobility scooter who couldn’t manoeuvre around the carriage and, when he did, he parked next to where people had placed their bikes, a problem for some due to the train’s stop at Cambridge. There was also a woman who had lost one of her ear-rings. It hadn’t been expensive but it had been precious to her. She had got them for about five pounds fifteen years ago. They were older than the son she cradled in her arms, both worn out from a day out celebrating his birthday. Finally, there was someone who was clearly a businesswoman who was attempting to reconcile standing up and reading a broadsheet to varying levels of success.
I had an obscured view through the windows. The sky seemed to be getting greyer and greyer by the minute. We seemed to be hurtling into the eye of the storm.
My phone buzzed at one point. I immediately saw an apology. I was walking home from the station.
When we arrived at Stansted there was a dance around the door as people shuffled around to let each other out, only to end up more in the way. I managed to break through and onto the platform. My suitcase glided across the floor smoothly as I raced to the terminal. I had decided to have one more pack of cigarettes. I would smoke one whilst I waited for my final train.
I made it into one of the shops in the large room that had meant imminent adventure many times before. Whenever we had had family holidays, we had either travelled by car or from London airports and so I had always been alone when I had walked into that terminal at Stansted. I had only ever seen it through my own eyes. There was nobody else with me to taint what it meant, nobody else to get bored or criticise, nobody to spoil the apprehension or excitement. There was just me and my own devices.
I went for a cheaper, more poisonous pack of cigarettes. Ones where you could almost feel the cancer growing inside of you. I figured I would have to force myself to hate them in order to quit and stay off them. It didn’t exactly work like that.
I didn’t have to show my ID. It was a simple transaction.
Outside it had begun to rain slightly. Buses would drive past every now and again as everyone stood alone either enjoying or lamenting their post-journey cigarettes. The only words anybody would exchange were ‘have you got a light?’ Nothing more.
A mother stood in the distance, pushing her child away from her as she smoked her cigarette.
I checked my watch. I had ten minutes to smoke my cigarette and get tickets, otherwise I would have to wait another thirty minutes for the next train. I sighed as I lit up. It was always easier to convince myself of quitting either during or immediately after a cigarette. It was only then that I felt that I didn’t need them.
The train stood waiting for me on the platform. I stepped on. The train was empty. The next stop was Bishop’s Wood. It was about ten minutes away. I got ready for my long walk home.
CHAPTER THREE
Nothing about the exterior of my house had changed. The interior was falling apart, though. I assumed the boiler was broken again. I readied myself for the cold wind that would hit me as I unlocked the door.
My house was too big. It gave it a distinctly empty feeling, especially because both of my parents worked and so the house was empty most of the time.
On the kitchen table there was a note. Gone for Easter drinks with Hannah. Dinner’s in the microwave. Mum x.
The kitchen had been meticulously painted and decorated. It was the only room in the house that my Father had no control over. There were paintings and crafts hung from the walls. It was the only room in the entire house that had never had anything break inside it. Not by accident, anyway.
I looked inside the microwave. It was nothing appetising. I walked through to the utility room with the meal and into the garden. I threw away the meal, making sure it went under some other discarded rubbish before returning to the kitchen and throwing a few things into the frying pan.
I switched the television on, before reaching for my phone and putting on some music. I muted the television and began to cook myself a real meal. Bacon, eggs, toast, beans, all done exactly how I liked it. I fried the bacon and the eggs in the pan as the music flowed in and out of the room, building up and dying down, helping me find that distracted concentration many would call ‘flow’.
The sound of the bacon counterpointed the music as it got gradually crispier. I controlled every sound around me, every noise in the house. It was peaceful. I loved my house the most when it was empty. When it was just me in control of everything that happened inside, my little universe. I knew that there would be no random fights or singing or laughter that would distract me from my thoughts. I had written some of my best songs in the midst of silence.
The toaster beeped and so I switched off my music, collecting and collating all of my dinner onto a plate, imperfectly organised. I buttered my toast and switched the sound on the television up. I didn’t know what I was watching, probably some trash that if anyo
ne else was home there would be some silent judgement for me and the people playing out their staged lives before me.
The second I sat down with my meal to watch television and eat, the adverts began to play. I didn’t mind. I remembered the times before university where I had, where every weekend I could reward myself with a bacon sandwich and watch television in the morning. At university I was in an alternative universe where adverts, the news, and a progression of music didn’t exist. I had no idea what was going on in the outside world. I would have to look up all the actors and singers that had died last term, later, just so that I could know who I could pay tribute to in my performances.
Part of me was glad that my parents had decided to go out drinking over me. I didn’t have to stage any interest in boring conversations, yet. Yes, I have plans for the future, no, you’re not going to like them. Most of the stories I had I could only tell to my sister, anyway, even if my parents already knew that they had happened.
I broke the yolk of my egg with my toast. It erupted into some molten yellow and spilled all over the plate and onto the table. Nobody would ever know. I could clean it up without some lecture on being ‘the clumsy one’. I put the kettle on as I wiped up the imperfect mess on the table.
The kettle boiled surprisingly fast, the steam screaming up and seeping into the wooden cabinets above it. I wasn’t used to fast kettles or warm showers. Usually I had time to start an essay or a song before I had to once again leave my room and pour the lukewarm water over the cheapest coffee I could find. My meal was now complete. Bacon, coffee and eggs were the staple-points of most of the meals I had at home.
I checked my phone as I ate, finally looking at the invites to parties or gatherings from the people around me at my home town. There was a message from the open-mic organiser. I read that first. All I had to do was sign up with the amount of time I’d been playing my instrument and turn up on the night. I resolved to practise later so that I could actually enter.
Other than that there was an invite to a party on Good Friday. It may have been too controversial a date and so I decided that I would ask my Mum, first. I could buy wine in the daytime before the party and that would suit me for the night. Most people had declined as they were staying at university over the Easter weekend. I wished that I had had that option.
I had a free day, then, before I would have to travel to this party. Apparently there was the option to stay overnight, but I decided to see what everyone else was doing, a decision that would not be an adequate one for my parents. I could try to work on some songs and begin revising. I knew that the trick was to start early, because otherwise I would be weeks in, having forgotten my responsibilities as a student.
I finished my meal and placed everything in the empty dishwasher. I was surprised that there was actually bacon in the fridge, as after I had left for university my parents had begun to eat a lot healthier. Pretty much every one of their meals had negative calories.
My room was just as I had left it. I had been upgraded to the loft conversion when my sister had left home. There was still a light smell of smoke that lay softly around me. I loved the smell, I had never been in a room that had smelt like that and had an awkward or uncomfortable time, it seemed to ensure that the occupants were relaxed and that the room itself was a safe space.
Even so, I immediately lit up some incense. I placed my laptop on my desk and started playing songs of a time gone by. Songs that most modern artists would either ‘update’ or sample from. That’s how I knew the state of contemporary modern music: most of it was a copy of the last generation. This was only one of the reasons that I wanted to break through the solid barrier that kept the famous and well known from the screaming and outspoken masses.
I dropped my bag from my shoulders and threw my suitcase on the floor before sitting on my bed. Most of my posters had fallen down. Only one remained. It was a quote about imagination and it had been given to me as a Christmas present from my sister.
It was getting dark outside. I lit up a cigarette out of the window and leant on the windowsill. I knew that this would be my life sooner or later, smoking out of my window having not left the house in days, bored and agitated, music playing in the background.
The woman walked out of her back door. She was in the house opposite. I always saw her when I leant out of that window and enjoyed the moment of peace a cigarette could bring me. One of us smoked too much. I was unsure of who it was. Her dog sprinted out of the door from behind her as she looked up. I was looking directly ahead. As usual, both of us pretended that the other didn’t exist. She crossed her patio to the fenced off alley next to her house. It almost ruined the peace, the reminder that other people were still out there, the reminder that somebody may step into my room at any moment without warning and break the thin wall of misplaced peacefulness.
I was left with a dropping cigarette butt and a shivering leg. I had no idea what to do with it. I found a packet of gum, one of those plastic 64 packs, and emptied the gum out onto my bedside table, before dropping in my spent cigarette and resealing it.
Turning around I saw it, my most prized possession, gathering dust because it had been too precious to take with me. My Spanish guitar. It was older than I was and had been handcrafted. I don’t know how many woods it had been made of, but I had been told when I bought it that the split in the back showed that it was one of the best. The action had been replaced to give it a more flamenco-esque sound but I didn’t mind, I preferred it, actually. Most of my songs I played with a pick at that time and not with free fingers and so it gave a nice sound to any modern song that I actually liked and to any classic that people never knew why they hated.
I had named it after my guitar teacher. The rest of my guitars had a female name but this one, this one I couldn’t pass up on the opportunity. It was at the time when it was my guitar and not my fingers that had been holding me back that my teacher had suggested that I buy a new one. He knew someone that was selling a few and so we had gone to his house. He had passed me a couple of factory made ones, one Chinese and one Spanish one. I had seen the majesty of a third one hanging proud over the room. He had spotted me looking at it and said: ‘do you want to try a real guitar?’
Back then I hadn’t known about the phrase there’s a price but it’s not for sale and so I had accidentally fallen in love with it. He was growing old and so arthritis was kicking in. The price was high but affordable to me, but was obviously a lot of money to him.
That was the tragic thing about the guitarist had taught me. I was one of his last students as he was fading into old age, even if he never acted like it. I had realised at university when I remembered that he had taught me less and less and had just begun to give me songs and comment on them. That didn’t stop him from pointing out all of the wrong notes when I played that guitar in that room. That and the infamous ‘oh God, don’t play that’ comment.
The guitar itself had had three owners before me. I had wanted a guitar with legacy and I had got one that talented men had lived and died with. It was more than just a guitar, it was a promise that I would one day make it.
I felt the bridge. It was as solid as ever and it had kept its tune. I wondered how many sets of strings it had gone through until it had settled on these ones. I picked it up and began to play whatever classical covers I could remember. All had been arranged by my guitar teacher.
After that I went to sleep.
CHAPTER FOUR
I woke up to busy sounds. There was occasional yelling, I was unsure if it was serious or put on. My parents had probably seen that I had come home from the slight disruptions that I had made on the matt or the lights or the doors. I wiped my eyes and pulled myself out of bed, before thrusting on my dressing gown and opening the window for the age old tradition of the morning cigarette.
After making sure I got ready, first, in order to kill most of the smell, I headed downstairs. I could have a shower after breakfast. My parents sat at the table, reading the paper. My
sister stood and ate something smothered in chocolate. It would just be cereal and coffee for me. I never cooked anything for breakfast when my parents were in my room.
‘Morning. When did you get here?’ My Mum said, without looking up from her paper.
‘You know when I got back.’
‘I meant what time did you get in?’ She said.
‘I don’t know, half six?’
‘Thought about a proper job, yet?’ My Father said, taking a loud sip out of his coffee.
‘Not yet.’ I lied.
‘Hello there!’ My sister said, genuine happiness shining across her face.
‘Hi, Hannah.’ I said, hugging her.
‘You smell like smoke.’ She whispered in my ear. She was somewhere in between not proud of it and knowingly powerless to stop it. She had had a phase where she had smoked to impress the group that she used to go around with. It had led my Father to burn one of her twenty pound notes in front of her as she wailed. That’s what you’re doing. He had said. I had heard it all from my room. I had heard everything that had ever gone wrong from that room downstairs. Hannah’s missing. Hannah’s in the wrong group. Hannah knows better than to go out with that guy. It had settled like the dust after an earthquake, still with cracks in the solid earth.
‘You doing anything while your back?’ My Mum asked, finally looking up from whatever was in the paper.
‘There’s a party tomorrow night.’ I could feel my Father’s heavy sigh. ‘If that’s too…’
‘No, you can go.’ My Mum said. Part of me hoped that she’d say no.
Many families had been torn apart by divorce. My family’s tragedy was that my parents were still together, perpetually holding two differing conversations with each other.
That was the problem with my parents. Their ideals were identical, but their methods differed. Both planned so meticulously that they knew what they would be doing minute by minute, they both believed in the same higher power, they both wanted me to get a proper job, but my Mum favoured my happiness over my job security. She had only just started to work properly, my Father had been working in London for years. More and more I saw her become like him. More and more they argued with me and not with each other. More and more they became one unified force against my ideal future.
