I don’t think Freddie ever would have invited me to his parents’ resort on Beachy Head a day before everyone elsegot there justbecause Nik was to marry La BallerinathatFriday.The key lay in the overlap, the synchronicity, the confluence. Freddie was very far from being my best friend,not even in the tiny pool of co-workers where we spent a frightening quantity of hours per weektogether. In the blurry past, however, at one of the annual office parties – much like the one that serves as a frame for this story – we discovered we both had a special connection with the famous Russian spirit.Hegenerallyreached the iconic state of brain freeze one or two shots before me, but once I got there,we moved forward in the eerie, creepy harmonyonlya solid vodkahood can guarantee.
‘Brain freeze’. That’s the only thing I was able to text himafter I had just missed my trainthat Friday morning. Although my phone would not stop whimpering with his replies, eachdecorated with a higher number of question marks than the previous one, I felt paralysed, unable to type back. I was sat on a bench at the station for hours, so much so that soon I wasn’t even sure he would still meet me at Eastbourne.Butas my train finally pulled in, four and a half hours later than agreed, not only was Freddiestanding therewith hisarms folded, leaning against a pillar – he was smiling.
I was prepared for some quality yelling. An adult portion of the finest sarcasm at best.How old am I, have I been raised by axolotls perhaps, don’t I know a true person would rather eat dog poo than mess with anyone’s hospitality. To my surprise not only did he remain absolutely friendly but he stopped with the questions. Paradoxically, this toleranceonlymade my situation worse. Had he pried; I at least could have shaken off the insecurity of the beginning. Because although I have been in the métier for years now, the right moment to kick off a story is still the hardest part of the job for me.
I was eighteen when I met Nik, eighteen and a quarterwhen I moved in with him, nineteen when he assured methat he was fine with the asymmetry: himselflessly infatuated, and me, well, still barely more than a child. I was twenty when he bought a bigger flat, twenty and a half when I started freelancing for Slender, twenty-one when I became a team member and when I told myself with a clean conscience that despite everything I was extremely lucky to date a nice chap who loved me to pieces.
I had gone up in flames with his predecessor.Probably not independent of the fact that everything was wrong with that relationship: my age (15.9–16.75), the age gap (22.5), him being married (12.33),those innocent kids (3.00), and the spicy fact that we had hooked up in theatre camp where he was mymentor. The truth of the matter is, I had to admit, the generally calm and serene life Nik offered me every day was probably the best remedy for my aching post-teen soul. Lo and behold, on the celebratory weekend of my twenty-second birthday I came to realisethat the proverbialtables had turned, just like the fake neo-baroque pieces that proved to be Nik’s big break, going from carpenter to set designer: it was happening, I finally loved him back.By the time we spent an entire July and August hiking all over Europe, to this daymy best summer ever, I had caught up with him.
Finally,there came the phase where I was still on the march, but his feelings began to evaporate. This was followed by the saddest possible development:I becamethe keen one, blinking nervously all day, desperate, clingy, unhappy but even unhappier at the thought of the breakup. Then, with a magical twist, at the beginning of our fifth year together we tipped back into balance again. Nik became kind, warm, attentive, but all of this soonrippled into overly attentive, conspicuously warm, suspiciously kind.Shortly after my twenty-fifth birthday, realising he had been cheating on me for a while, I moved out, he moved in, moved in with La Danseuse, the ballerina who had been consulted on the same ground-breaking performance of Romeo And Juliet Are Getting A Divorce as my man, The Stage Carpenter With Two Golden Hands And Boy, What A Brain.
I met Nik in a theatre, in my first college year,fresh as a daisy, making pocket money on the side as a dresser. Yes, Mister Artist, can I pleasehelp you get your coat on, yes, Miss Artiste, may I tie that pretty silk bow on your back – well, no, not exactly. More like sure thing, of course I can wash and iron this pile of stinky-sweaty costumesat home before I hit the sack, only a few minutes after one thirty, andbring them all back right on time for the morning rehearsal. Butat nineteen myaverage moodwas a Scandinavian summer night: just could not go fully dark, not even in the wee smallest hour.
As we were leaving Eastbourne station, Freddie took my bag – even though I had barely packed anything – and gently started bombarding me with compact, petite stories about the place as though they were irresistible bites, starters, appetisers, canapés and aperitifs, and him the dignified hostess of a glamorous dinner party, graciouslyswinging from guest to guest in herspotless white dress. He talked about the pheasants in the surrounding forestry, a‘special breed’ that looked like gigantic pigeons already the result of an experiment gone slightly bad, a semi-new species,peacocks in black and white, cork bonsais, the beta versionof buzzards. He massaged somesoothing balm intomy burning question (where are these birds, then, can I see them?) by making up a local myth on the spot. Once upon a time (thyme?)in the 9th century there was a rich young lad. He loved a very poor girl, Lola, then something and something and plot twist,so one day he died of a broken heart and so did she and the birds appeared miraculously the morning aftertheir (joined?) funeral. To balance the doleful tale Freddie moved on tomicro-realistic trivia. He had spent the week heightening his parents’ barbeque stand with three rows of bricks to make cooking more comfortable. He was thrilled to drive to the market in the deux-chevaux of his father. His cat had finally learned how to use the flap door, dirty little rascal, she loves to sleep with strangers. I was expecting a casual “Just like you” but no. To my surprise he flashed the same smile again. The one he had greeted me with at the station.
We sat down on a bench to havesomegarden-grown raspberries he presented in a wicker box. He pointed to where the famous Arch Rockstood and told me how, when they were little, his brother had lead him to believe he had actually seen the spaceship descend, with eight lynx-headed turquoise creatures carrying the stone andput it down it carefully.He said that his brother was still giving him shit about it.Then we walked on and had a curry in a little resto on the beach. Then he said he was taking me to church.
All that time I was making simultaneous moves in my head. I was desperateto spill the beans, no way could I end the day bottling up what had happened in the morning. I just needed to find the flawless first sentence.
All my colleagues at Slender know full well that I dread composing a lead, regardless of topic, length, or genre. A fear absolutely abnormal, sadly all the more real. As we are not exactly a news portal, the 5 W’s are no help at all.I always leave paragraph zero to the end, which means I legit spend at least an hour desperately staring atmy article when it is almost done. I have hard-as-a-rock jealousy for the elite group of online dailies that have come to the realisation that preserving the print structure is not where the game of words is won. The sites who have magnanimously got rid ofdated rubbish, whose journalists are allowed, no matter encouraged to kick off an article without the four or five lines in bold at the beginning.Honestly, if that is not journo-heaven, I don’t know what is.
Although I still had no idea why we were doing this – Freddie was not exactly anyone’s go-to spiri-guy –, as I kept repeating ‘please let the church not be called Saint Nicholas, please, please, please’, I was also fabricating one sorry explanation after the other. There was theneutral and boring one (“Hey, Freddie, as I was about to get on the train this morning the strangest thing happened to me”) closely followed by the corny variant(“Freddie, listen, ever felt like your life was a film with cameras non-stop rolling but certain scenes were not scripted and you still had to aim for an Oscar?”), and the slightly cringy try (“Do you believe in the supernatural, Freddie? I wonder what you make of this: on my way here as I was walking towards the train station a few minutes after ten I looked up and saw the most elegant octogenarian head straight towards me, unmistakeably in my direction.Little did I know…”), respectively. The outcome was a big, shiny, well rounded nothing, so I told myself I’d wait until we got comfortable in the house and started drinking.I figured I would mention something out of context, and whatever it would be, I’d thread away based on the last syllable. My Very Own Chat Roulette. In that moment Freddie glanced at me sideways. “It’s actually Andrew. Saint Andrew. Stop stressing.”
The priest who emerged after I had rung the doorbell three times didn’t even look at us as he told us the church was(obviously) closed for a reason. I already started walking away when I heard him speak again. Apparently, Freddie got into a conversation with him but spoke so softly that I could only hearthe priest – and the pertaining pauses. It felt like eavesdropping over the phone. Yes, I understand, the priest said. Pause. Pauline has had every second Friday off for the last forty-five years, he said.Pause. Sorry, son. Pause. We still have hours. Pause. No, young man, of course not. Irritated chuckle. Pause. Sigh. Lord, give me strength. All right, just this once.
Apparently, the winning line wassomething like ‘What happened to giving shelter to the desperate, my precious Father Samaritan? Isn’t this the reason you guys are in the business at all?’
I picked a seat in the back, the men got comfortable somewhere in the middle. Nobody said a word.As soon as I sat down,I turned inwards and immediately felt on my own. All I wanted was to see myself as an entity complete in itself. I wanted every variant – life before Nik, life with Nik, life without Nik, life after Nik, life unaware of Nik – to look, to weigh, to feel exactly the same. Indistinguishable, gradually indiscernible. I figured if I managed to do this, I’d win. After about twelve minutes I realised tears had been running down my cheeks for a while. In that half-meditative buzz,I suddenly saw a crystal-clear image of myselfat twenty, straight after my miscarriage. At the timeall I felt was that it would have been muchtoo early anyway. Now, almost seven years later,as the mountain silence of an unknown churchwas engulfing, overwhelming, consuming me,I came to realise in a flashthat I had been imprisoned in a misunderstanding. Deep down, in the quiet of my heart where everything that mattered happened, it was not a weak, cheesy, sly boyfriendthat I had lost.
In that sameflash I understood that unborn babies have names, all of them. Mine was called Lola.
Would it have helped then and thereto catch a glimpse of the future? Tosuddenly see that in less than three years I would bump into Nik in a most unlikely pub, me already a single mom, him on the brink of divorce?To foresee that despite the cling-a-bong circus wedding the Wonder Wedlock would pop open and rust away in less time than the timewe spent together? To foresee that in that bleakbarhe’d turn to me with the same uncannytenderness that I had found so repulsivein the end? His touch on my face, the kiss on my cheek, every moment so frightfully deprived of honesty?And finally, would it have filled me with gratification on the day of his wedding to have a sneak-peak revelationabout how, in thirty-three months, he would be begging me to get withhim in such utter despair that I would shudder in secondary shame?
“Are you out of your mind?” – I blurted out, being abrasively dragged back into the present moment asa playful co-worker of mine tapped me on the knee with a half-full bottle of vodka. It took me three more seconds to understand Freddie was pulling my leg, bless hisbrain-freeze-junkie sense of humour.No, he wasn’t offering me alcohol in St Andrew Church. It was just time to leave. As I watched him crack up and hit the pew with his forehead, wheezing about some joke I wouldn’t have got if I tried, barely able to hold his pee,I realised that during the time I had been zonked out he was diligently putting away a slug or two withFather Sebastian. “Sorry, son…no, young man…”– oh, that I can really, really be deaf and blind.Those two had grown up together.
A little later, in the house, surrendering toone shot after the other in the company of my new and Freddie’s childhood friend I finally understood that the exclusivity of the evening (“You can’t be down the dumps, not ever, you’re the girl who made me open the church when it was closed for the entire congregation!”)was every inch in synch with what had happened in the morning, starting with me trying to catch a train to Birling Gap and suffering a glitch the moment I spotted a beautifully suited and booted gentleman at least eighty-six years of agecoming right at me, straight as an arrow. There was no reason for him topick me in that slow crowd, he was looking forbus 137, headed to Church Saint Nicholas, excited to attend the happiestfamily wedding of his life. I offered to walk him to the spot which he accepted graciously. As he chatted away in aeuphoric voice, my head started to spin. He had come to the city to give away his granddaughter, onegorgeous, famous ballerina and popular choreographer whose name is well-known even among the ballet-non-goers, he bet if we had asked anyone in the street – “Oh, that’s not going to be necessary” I cut in, my voice half a register higher than normal, this beautiful and lovely creature, he went onamidst that roaring wave of humans, he was sure I had heard about her, too, “You are probably right” I said and tried to swallow, tried to get through a mass that looked and felt like cooling lava, hundreds of people in haste, well, long story short, thanks be to the Lord Almighty that he had lived to see the day, he went on,thank the Lord for the groom, too, such a sport, “No doubt, no doubt” I said and took a deep breath or two, although at the moment this lovely blokewas more of a carpenter, the elderly gentleman explained, but he had such a brain, such vision, andtalent, young lady, talent, the ultimate chest of goldthat changeseveryone’s life, the only treasure huntyou must never give up on, the promise that has a chance to save the world.
The eveningwas growing thicker and thicker. After Father Sebastian blessed us both and left quietly,Freddie and Icontinued to ride off into the vodkaset. I can clearly remember the feeling thatthe stage in my head suddenly got unbearably bright, La Ballerina’s enchanting grandfather beingin charge of the spotlights. Before swooning into the velvet pit of my well-deserved sleepI understood the reason for the cathartic and brisk shimmer: this was the finale, the very last moments of a play called Don’t forget to thank your loss. In that moment I was too wasted to grab gratitude’s hands, but joy was already plenty on her way. With Agony and Helplessness, two lanky, pale, extremely talentedactresses,and withSelf-Pity, the not too handsome but all the sulkierdirectorgiving it their all for months, it was now time for applause.The three of them had taken their sweet time to win over their audience, me, but presently, at long last, after many a curtain call,they deserved to leave in glory, hail an orphan swan, the taxi service of the healing heart, and disappear. Seven hours later, whenI stepped outside onto the spacious patio with a moderate headache, a light stagger, and a cup of undrinkable hot coffee, I spotted two birds in the fog.They were unlikely, mythical, enormous, gorgeous creatures, picking up bits and bobs for their nest-in-the-making. Theirsoft, vibrating beautywas in absolute harmony with the blunt buzz in my chest: a decent wave ofsoul freeze receding, declining, leaving my heart for good.
