Chapter 1
1.
If I hadn’t met her, where would I be now? I’d asked myself that question so often. But of course it was impossible to answer. So many times a day we all make choices which could lead us to entirely different lives. We turn left instead of right, we walk and don’t take the car, say yes instead of no. And each time, we shape our future almost without a care.
We had moved to Ireland at the start of the millennium. I lived there still. Alone now, in a large stone house on the west coast, with a wide and impressive view across Mulranny Bay towards Croagh Patrick – Ireland’s ‘holy’ mountain. That great dark rock was often moody and sombre, but as a solid and reassuring presence I felt it also watched over me in the way a stern grandparent might watch over a child seated in front of an open fire.
I still didn’t quite know how, as a lad from a white sink estate, I’d ended up with a mountain on my doorstep. Many years earlier I had left school with just one low grade pass in woodwork and – with nothing else on offer – I had gone to work in a car factory in the English Midlands. The beginning and end of a career for tens of thousands of men before me. But I’d escaped. And despite the foul air, grime and sheer boredom of that place, I’d learned a lot there, good and bad, and some of it had certainly helped me to find my own way in life.
Years had passed since then and today, somehow, I was self-employed and financially very secure. I was always very busy, too. Working from home or wherever I was with my computer, I had major clients in Germany and Scandinavia who were continually offering me work. I could pick and choose which jobs I took. So it wasn’t a lack of success or empty hours that were making me unhappy – and yet, unhappy, I knew I was.
I leaned back in my chair. Paused.
Kate, my daughter, would have laughed to see me sitting in my hotel room, on my first night away, writing up these thoughts on my laptop. Laughed? Well, either that or she would have told me off. Most probably both. A few days earlier, she had arrived unexpectedly in Ireland, to find me searching frantically for something, almost in a state of panic. “What have you lost, Dad?” she’d asked, standing among the chaos of the living room.
“A photo”, I had replied, hauling cushions off the sofa and checking underneath, with Kate following along and replacing them for me as I moved onto the next chair. And then the bookshelves. And then to who knows what else.
“What photo?” Kate picked up a few paperback books which I’d just pulled off a shelf and stacked them neatly back in their place.
My reply was not much more than a grunt.
“Shall I make us both a cup of coffee?” Kate suggested.
“Yeah, please”, I said. I sat down heavily. Temporarily giving up my search and slumping into an armchair as she went off into the kitchen.
It was more than a photo. It was our only photo.
I peered through the window to watch as a sudden shaft of sunlight illuminated the dark water of the bay, the Irish sky offering a panoramic mixture of ragged grey clouds and mustard coloured light. It was beautiful. Often stimulatingly so. But today it struck me as just melancholic.
The previous evening, rather than begin work on some hugely complicated scaffolding diagram for an important engineering project in Stockholm, I’d given myself some time off. It was late, the job was going to be heavy. Long and intense. And there were probably only three or four people in Europe who could handle it. So my deadlines could be flexible, up to a point. There was no pressure. Not yet.
I had switched off two of my three monitors, sat back and listened to some music on YouTube, letting my thoughts wonder as I did so. From that I had watched a film. A biopic. Set in the 1980s. As soon as it began I knew I ought not to have watched it. It would be painful. Yet I just couldn’t switch it off.
Of course I’d felt a sadness welling up as I watched it. As I knew I would. I’d tried to ignore it. Paused the film, got up, poured myself a glass of whiskey. Told myself not to care, not to be so soft, all that kind of thing. But it was no good. There were too many reasons, too many connections, between the images in that film and events in my own life. So I gave up. I let myself feel sad and I sat back in front of the rest of the movie, with the wild dark night outside, filled with black and whispering rain, doing little to alleviate my mood.
The film had ended, and then I had gone in search of the photo. And I hadn’t been able to find it. When had I last seen it? I couldn’t remember. But I knew I would have put it somewhere safe. It was very precious to me. In the end I had gone to bed much too late and feeling pretty sorry for myself.
It was the next day that Kate had arrived.
Because life can be strange like that.
Singing to herself tunelessly as she always had, she had shown up out of the blue, planning to spend some time with me and to visit some of her former school friends who still lived nearby.
“So tell me about this photo, then”, she said, putting a mug of coffee down in front of me.
I stared at my coffee for a moment. Searched for a reply. “It’s the only photo I have of someone”, I began, “Someone very special. It was taken in a photo booth. You know, those things where you get four photos for 50p or whatever it is these days...”
Kate began to make a face implying that these days they cost a lot more than 50p, but I cut her short with a quick shake of my head.
“No, I know. I know. I’m sure they cost a lot more now. Anyway, we were out together one day having a great time and we went into one of those booths to have our photo taken with the last of our money. Needless to say, we made the wrong selection and we ended up with a strip of four identical pictures. Later we cut them up so that we each had two and promised to always keep them. And I’ve always kept mine. Always. Only now I can’t find it. Or them.”
Up until then, Kate had been standing, but now she sat down on the sofa facing me. “Is that the girl you and Mom split up because of? I remember there being a big row about a photo.”
I laughed, a small laugh, and shook my head. “No. Not really, darling. There were lots of things. Mainly she couldn’t settle out here. It was too isolated for her after the big city.”
Kate nodded, but said nothing.
That bloody film. It had brought so many things back to the surface. Not just the whole break up with Lisa – my ex and Kate’s mother – but it had also reminded me that I had made a big mistake back then. I’d left a part of me behind.
As if I had needed reminding. For very many reasons it had always haunted me, affecting the whole of my life.
“Well...”, I continued, looking into Kate’s piercing blue eyes. “Yes. A bit. Yes. That did play a role too, I suppose. The girl in that photo. ”
Kate already knew some of it, what had happened and what hadn’t. We’d talked it over before. She had been 16 when Lisa and I had split up. We had tried to keep her out of it as much as possible, but of course she had picked up on much more than we realised. And after the separation she had spent two more years here with me before moving back to her mother’s place and going to university.
All the same, I guess I deliberately understated the role ‘that photo’ had played in our breaking up. In part that was because I didn’t want Kate to feel antagonistic towards the girl. In part because it just wasn’t her fault. One day, when things were already fraught between Lisa and I over – of all things – a small but unpaid phone bill, she had come across that photo by chance and turned on me. “Who’s this?”
She had shown me the photo and I had shrugged. “It was years ago.” Lisa had then said something else about the photo, something wholly inoffensive but – feeling guilty, I guess – I had nevertheless taken offence at, and I had suddenly blurted it all out.
From there the ‘phone bill’ row had escalated. I know. I remembered it well. I had gone over it countless times.
So yes, as I had just told Kate, and had told her before, although there were many other deep-rooted problems in our relationship, it was nevertheless true that the photo – which I couldn’t now find – was at the heart of the argument which finally drove her mother and I apart.
“What was she like?” Kate asked suddenly. “I mean, what did she look like?”
By way of answer, I showed her a bit of the film.
“She was very much like that.” I said. “Sure. Unsure. Mature, yet so young. And alone too.” I paused the film on one image.
Kate tilted her head to one side. “And was she that pretty?”
I smiled. “Yes”.
I stopped the film.
“And I’ve always known that I should have done more than I did for her.” I said at last, speaking as much to myself as to Kate. “We reached each other. I understood her strengths and weaknesses. I had seen where and how she was vulnerable. But in the end I failed her. Myself too.”
I wanted another drink, but because Kate was there I didn’t take one.
We talked a little longer.
And eventually I reached the point – which I had done before – of saying that I ought to go to the UK and revisit some of my old haunts. To try and free myself up a bit more, maybe, for the life I was now living.
“Look, Dad”, Kate said at last. “You haven’t been back to Birmingham for the best part of 20 years now, as far as I know. You should go. Stop saying you might and actually do it. Go. Take your laptop. Work from any cafe. I can stay here for a week or two and look after the place. You never know, it might help you stop feeling so sad about it or whatever. I’ll even try and find your photo for you – assuming it’s still here somewhere.”
I hesitated.
“Just do it!” she’d insisted.
And so, only a few days later I was on a plane to the UK, to make a train for Birmingham and a very comfortable hotel. And it was sitting there, that first evening, a little tired from travel, unable to think of work, that I had tried to collect some of my thoughts on my laptop.
How was it all so long ago?
*
We first met in 1981. A cool day in mid-August.
I had just turned 18. Good looking, with dark eyes and thick dark hair. At the time I was seeing a girl. But we were going nowhere. I had known that was largely down to me. I had a public face, a persona, which girls found very attractive. Outgoing, talkative, with an almost arrogant charm. That was how I’d appeared. I dated any girl, every girl, as and when I chose. But in private, once we were alone together, I was much less sure of myself. Quieter. More reserved. Shy really. And that, I knew – but couldn’t easily change – was less attractive. We were teenagers and life was supposed to be fun.
Back then, I was living in Birmingham, too. My home city. But on that day, a day I would never forget, I was in a London suburb, after a dreary work-related visit to the south east, travelling on a local train slowly making its way back into the city when somewhere, at an anonymous suburban station, voices caught my attention and I looked up from my book to see a group of punks or something on the platform. They were just talking, laughing. Fooling around a little. Doing nothing in particular.
I watched them for a few seconds, focusing mainly on a slender girl with strikingly blonde hair and a short pink mohair jumper. She did a little dance and seemed to be making all the others laugh. For some reason I found it impossible to even look at her without smiling.
Then I went back to my reading: ‘There are moments in life that are given to us. Moments where we can make a choice. There is much more to the world than we realise, and those moments should be treated with special care when they do arrive. They are often crossroads or junctions. A clear choice between action and inaction. Sometimes mundane. Sometimes – and often and we do not see it – one of them will be very precious. A chance to change a whole life. To act or not to act. If only we make the right decision, we might be able to change a whole story.’
Suddenly, just as the train was about to leave, someone jumped on board, opening the door right next to me and then dropping into the seat directly opposite. That felt a little odd. It was one of those open carriages with lots of woodwork and as many doors as there were windows. Strong smells of dust and warm moquette. But the train was almost empty too. So there was no need to sit so close. And as we moved off, I half looked up.
It was that same girl.
As well as the pink jumper, she was mostly wearing black. She had also scattered a half dozen glossy magazines on the seat next to her.
Then, once again, I had returned to my book.
What had happened next? A misunderstanding. That had been it.
The train slowed down for the next station and I felt a strange sensation. I didn’t look up because, I could tell what it was.
And I was embarrassed by it. Even felt myself going red. It was the girl opposite. She appeared to be periodically rubbing her shoe against mine, against my boot.
The train stopped. And then she did it again. Very lightly, but – to me anyway it was quite definite – she pressed her shoe against mine. I tried to ignore it. Sure, it wasn’t much, but it wasn’t the kind of thing that most strangers did on a train.
Then it happened once more.
Still I didn’t look up. At least, not fully. But I did glance over the top of my book, past the words I was no longer able to read or think about, and notice that she was wearing a longish, black tight fitting skirt, probably a pencil skirt and leather high heels.
I guess because it was daytime and August, albeit a cool day, those clothes surprised me. And maybe that was why I might have stared at her legs for longer than I ought to have done, as she later told me I had. In any case, from looking at her I went back to staring at the pages of my book instead, turning them slowly to make it look as if I was reading. Not sure what to think. I hoped that staying quiet would make her stop.
The train moved off. And then it happened again.
I didn’t know what to think now. Should I say something? I’d never had anyone sit opposite me and do that before, and it felt strange.
Why would she keep doing that?
As we approached the more urban parts of London, I looked out of the window to my side and then across her to the other window – as people do – by way of an excuse so I could look without being too obvious. Not obvious? Well, that’s what we tell ourselves in any case.
Oh. Fuck.
I don’t know why, but I hadn’t expected her to be so attractive. Not only startlingly bleached blonde hair, which I’d always loved, but above night-club-red lipstick, she had high, fine cheekbones which gave her an almost sculpted appearance, and narrow almond-shaped eyes, outlined heavily with eyeliner, the lashes darkened to black with mascara.
There was a coldness in that face too and, at the same time, a vibrancy, a liveliness that bordered on the insolent. I could see all that immediately.
But there was also something else there that I couldn’t place. Not then. Nor could I study her for too long, because those almond eyes flashed a sudden glance at me and a bright smile passed across her face. I couldn’t tell what colour those narrowed eyes were, but I could see that they sparkled, that they shone.
I turned back to my book. The train stopped again. And we were stuck at another nondescript station for quite a long while.
I knew the girl was now watching me now. I could feel her gaze.
Then she lit a cigarette, took a few drags on it and seemed to blow the smoke straight at me. “Ooo, sorry, is that bothering you?”, she said immediately. The accent was a little strange, but where from exactly? I couldn’t place it at first. It was also, somehow, not an ordinary girl’s voice.
“Nah”, I said, making myself smile at her. “It’s fine. Really. I smoke myself sometimes.”
“Mmm”, she said quietly. “I thought it might be bothering you. Sorry.”
I didn’t reply. And she picked up one of her magazines and, very quietly, began humming to herself as she flicked through it. Maybe even singing a little. Then she tossed the magazine back down onto her seat.
“People can be rude like that, though, can’t they? Blowing smoke.” She spoke quickly. The voice was nervous and I found myself watching her mouth, and those very red lips. “Sorry”, she said again. With a shy but wide smile. “I am. I’m sorry.”
That was it!
There, in that final apology.
That was when I realised.
That comment. It gave it away. The something about her. The something about her face. About her body language. About her movement. Everything. We made proper eye contact for the first time and I froze as we did so.
The girl opposite me wasn’t a girl. She was a boy!
That was what I’d finally picked up from that last ‘sorry’.
She was a boy.
Maybe my age. Maybe a little younger. It was hard to be sure.
I saw all that and I guess it shocked me. It must have done because I wanted to speak but couldn’t open my mouth and get any words out.
But there must have been an expression of some kind on my face. Because by way of response she smiled at me again. She knew that I knew she was a boy. But it was a gentle smile, there was no hostility in it. Her face may have been finely chiselled and almost perfect, but there was something very gentle in there too. Definitely. And yet... and yet... also something quite deliberately provocative.
“You’re not from round here, are you?”, she asked. He asked.
“Erm... no”, I replied, the words coming out by themselves. “No, I’m not. I’m from Birmingham.”
“Mmm...”, he said, smiling another quick smile at me and fanning a cloud of blue smoke out the window with a lively flourish of one hand. “I could tell. I could. Your accent.” He pinched a small piece of tobacco from his upper lip. Then the train finally started up again. “I am. I’m more or less from round here. Well. I am. And I’m not. Not really.”
I didn’t know what to do. What to say. Nor what to feel. And, at first, I told myself that it was just out of politeness that I kept the conversation going, “Oh, whereabouts are you from, then?”
He waved the cigarette a little. Another flourish of the hand. “Here. I live in London.” He glanced out of the window. Then back at me. Straight into my eyes. “No. Guildford originally. So I’m not really from around here either. But I do live in London now.”
I looked again at his face.
Bleached blonde hair, challenging red lipstick, boy or not, I could hardly take my eyes off him. He was stunning.
“So what are you doing down here then?”, he asked, again speaking quite quickly and partially covering his mouth with his hand as he did so. He was very forward. But also, at a deeper level, it struck me that he was shy. I could tell. I could see it. He was very much both things. And, instinctively, I felt drawn to that. We shared that.
I told him what I was doing, keeping it as brief as I could. Said that I had been down for one day for work. The job was boring, I said, and not worth talking about. Then I stopped, because I realised that the whole time I spoke I was being watched very carefully by unflinching eyes.
“What about you?” I finally asked, trying to shake that gaze off.
He blew smoke straight at me and widened those eyes a little. Smiled. And then just shrugged. “Actually some of my friends live in a big house. Out in the posh suburbs. And we’ve been there all week partying. Partying on and off, and now I suppose I’m going back home. It’s a shame really, I wouldn’t have minded spending another day or so out there. It was fun.”
I nodded. “I’m jealous. It sounds ideal. Was it out in the country? I love the countryside. But I never get out to it.”
He shook his head a little.
The train stopped once more. And a half dozen biggish lads got on and sat right behind us. They made no impression at all on me, but he, the girl opposite, glanced up at them and winced. Then, leaning forward and lowering his voice, almost conspiratorially he asked, “So what are you doing now? Where are you going? Somewhere lovely?”
The truth was I was going back into the centre of London to catch the first train back home, but I lied about that. Lied because I knew now, already, that I wanted to keep this going, keep this boy talking. This girl. Boy. Girl. “Oh, well, before I go back to Birmingham I guess I’ll go and have a drink somewhere. Do something.”
I didn’t really understand myself at that moment. I knew I wanted to say more. To talk. Yet this was a boy dressed as a girl, and I also knew that I was totally straight. So why did I want to talk to him? Why? I had to be honest with myself. I wanted to talk to him because I was breath taken. He had simply crashed into my space. He looked like a girl but chatted me up like a boy. And I was impressed. Almost dumbstruck.
Once more those eyes fixed me. A hesitation.
The tip of his tongue briefly touched his top lip. “Isn’t life strange?”, he said at last. “Actually we’re all going to be in Birmingham this very weekend. Do you know the Aussie Bar? Yes, you must do.”
I smiled. He asked and answered his own questions. I liked that.
I replied, saying I knew the Aussie Bar.
The truth was that I’d heard of it but had never been there. Actually I wasn’t really focusing too much by this point as the voice, his voice... I suddenly realised that I found it attractive. It was a little bit husky, as if he had spent a weekend smoking, or at least dancing in a smoky club somewhere. It was also quite effeminate, for want of a better description.
But there was also something else in there which fascinated me. Another accent I couldn’t definitely place. Not at first. And I wanted to ask him about it.
“I’m sorry”, he said, that soft, light voice. “Do you want a cigarette?”
“No thanks. No. I’m fine.”
He lit another cigarette and sat back in his seat. I looked at him a little more closely as he did so. In addition to a short pink mohair jumper, those heels and uncomfortably tight looking skirt he was even wearing black fishnets. In many ways it seemed like an outfit from the 1950s. Even I could see that much. I wondered if he was a so-called ‘New Romantic’. They were making the news a lot. Maybe those others on the platform had not been punks.
Then I saw that he was watching me again.
I smiled. And he smiled back.
“My turn to say sorry”, I said, “as you’ve already said it to me about five times. But I think your accent’s a bit strange too. Where is that? It isn’t an ordinary southern accent, I can tell. There’s another sound in there. It’s almost like a foreign accent.” I had met and dated a Swedish exchange student on holiday the year before and a Finnish girl the year before that.
“Oh my god!”, he laughed, sitting up sharply. “Thank you. How did you hear that? That’s quite sweet. That’s really very perceptive.”
“Sweden?”
“Yes and no. I’m not, I’m not English. Well, I am. And I’m not. My father was English, but my mother is French. And I was actually born in France. We moved over here when I was little. Then we lived for a while on the south coast of England before moving up to Guildford. How could you hear that?”
I laughed.
“Oh don’t. Don’t ask. I have no idea.” I paused. Why was I saying all this to a boy I didn’t know? A stranger on a train? But I carried on anyway. “There’s supposed to be a million-year-old man living inside each of us. Well, I think I’m him. I seem to know and feel everything sometimes. Just... I don’t know, everything. So that’s it, I guess. I’m a million years old.”
Those dark narrow eyes lingered on me again.
He drew on his cigarette and held the smoke in for a moment.
“Really?” And then he pouted to exhale a big cloud of blue smoke. “Well you don’t seem a day over fifty thousand.” He smiled.
I laughed.
“Thank you.” I said.
Yes, to answer my own question, I liked him, I liked him a lot. That was why I was talking to him.
He looked at me. Still intense. Almost a scowl. And once again I felt under examination. But, somehow, from somewhere, I think I understood why he did it, and it felt OK. It even felt right. Maybe he needed to suss a person out. Of course he did, being dressed like that. And perhaps he did so just by scrutinising their face.
“What are you reading?” he asked me at last. Nodding at my book, which was now on the seat beside me.
“Oh that”, I said. “It’s philosophy, I guess. Religion. A bit of both. Eastern.” I paused. “If we could live our lives like that, I think we’d all be a lot happier.”
I was reading a lot in those days, too. Serious stuff like Jung, Rousseau, even Nietzsche. Sometimes novels by authors like Gide, Balzac or Camus. That was a big part of the inner me. The real me. I had begun doing so as an escape from the boredom of the factory, where I felt so trapped. In fact, to kill those seemingly interminable hours, it was read books or read newspapers. In practice I did both. Oil stained copies of The Sun and the Daily Mirror, cover to cover. Leather-bound copies of the Timaeus and Critias of Plato, cover to cover. I could relate to either. And I liked that.
“Read me a bit, then”, he said.
‘Bloody hell.’ That was my thought. But instead I shook my head. “No, no. It’s a bit heavy going really.”
“Go on”, he said. “Please. Just a bit.”
Thirty minutes ago, maybe a little more, I had never met this boy, this girl, boy. Girl. Now I was reading him philosophy? What had he said a few minutes ago? ‘Isn’t life strange?’
I picked the book back up, opened it where I had folded one corner of the page to bookmark it, and read: ’Past and future are the same. Neither is here now. Only the present is here now. Time is shaped so that we can alter the past, and therefore the future, to heal ourselves or even to heal others. What we did not live, we may yet live, but first, in the present we must give shape to it’.
I shut the book.
Was I boring him? I wasn’t sure.
“Like I said, it’s pretty intense”, I said. “Sorry.”
He nodded.
And for a moment neither of us spoke.
“So... anything that we missed, or anything we did that we didn’t like, we can change that?” he asked suddenly. “Tell a different story? And if we change that, then that will change who we are today for the better. And maybe change our future for the better too?”
“Yeah. Exactly that.” Inside it surprised me that he had followed the passage so clearly and summed it up so concisely. I didn’t think I could have done that.
“Hmm. So how does that work, then?”
I wasn’t really sure, but I had a stab at it anyway. “I guess the point is that reality isn’t what we think it is. It’s very different. It has so much more potential. It’s just that as humans we don’t really get it. There are dimensions and all sorts of possibilities...” I tailed off. “Maybe we just have to have faith.”
He watched me very carefully as I spoke, almost as if he was looking for truth or lies in my gestures and facial expressions. “I like that”, he said at last. “I like the idea that our past is actually as open as our future.”
“Me too”, I agreed.
What was I saying? What was I doing? This was a boy who was dressed as a girl. Were we flirting with each other? I was straight. What was I doing? I looked at him and as I did so he returned me the favour, deeply, almost piercingly. I didn’t flinch away, having already learned not to.
“What about you?” I said, trying to change my focus and nodding at the fashion magazines by his side. “You read a lot too?”
He laughed. “Oh those. Yes. And no. I read a bit. And I cut out some of the pictures and put them on my wall.”
“You bought all those just for a few pictures?” I was surprised. One of them was Vogue. Big glossy magazines like that would have cost quite a bit.
He shook his head. “Oh, I didn’t buy them”. A quick gesture with his hand implied that he must have stolen them.
I smiled. There were at least half a dozen magazines. He’d taken quite a risk.
“You know what?”, he said finally. Out of the window there were all kinds of railway lines meeting up as we neared central London. “I’ve made a decision. I’m going back to my friend’s house right now. Why should I go back home today? It can wait. It can all wait. What’s a few more days?” He paused. And took a last long draw on the cigarette, still fixing me with those eyes. “Birmingham”, he said, changing the subject. “We’re going to go to a wine bar there. On Saturday. The Hostaria. It’s a very ‘in’ place. The Hysteria. Why don’t you come? If you aren’t doing anything else, I mean.”
“OK”, I said, trying to look back at him as hard as I felt he was looking at me. “But where?”
“Sorry”, he said again. We seemed to both be saying that a lot. “Actually it’s right by the Aussie Bar. Come on, come. You’ll enjoy it. I promise. Why not?” He laughed. It was a small laugh. Quick. Almost a giggle.
Saturday was only two days away. On Saturday nights I usually went to a club in the city centre with some friends. But I had been a bit bored with that for a while. So, yeah, whatever, that could wait. I was going to go to that wine bar. I wanted to do that instead.
“OK”, I said. “I might. I will. It sounds good. The Aussie Bar. The wine bar by it. Saturday night. What time?”
The train was coming into a station and he was clearly going to get off. He blew out a long breath. “Oh anytime. Any. Time. I shall be there... all night. Until we leave.”
He stood up. Not tall. Not short. But very slim, his trim figure enhanced by the tight fitting skirt. “Are you getting off here too?”, he asked.
“Oh... er... no”, I said. “No. I don’t think so. A few more stops yet, I think.”
We stopped. I don’t know why but I instinctively opened the door for him. He exited the carriage in much the same way I would imagine a film star from the Golden Age of Hollywood might have done. Then he turned back to me. And smiled. A huge broad smile. “I’ll see you there, then.”
It wasn’t a question.
I smiled back. And he was gone. I tried to read my book again. But I couldn’t. My mind was already elsewhere. I couldn’t really believe what had just happened.
*
Suddenly my phone beeped with a text from Kate. “Dad, Hope you OK. Stop sitting in ur hotel feeling sorry. Get out and go see things! Have found your photo. He is beautiful. Love Kate xo”.
I rang her back immediately, got no reply and sent her a text instead. “Wow. Brilliant, well done. Thankyou. So much. Guard it with your life. Going out right now. Love Dad.”
Kate’s news, that she’d found my photo, cheered me up. It was only two small identical black and white images, but they were the only ones I had. Today, with cameras in phones, every step, every moment of a life is logged and posted on social media. One long-running photo-saga. But in the 1980s, we had none of that. And most of our memories were locked up inside our heads, with no permanent visual record ever existing.
Despite my promise to my daughter that I was ‘going out right now’, I turned back to my laptop. Not to write. Not to put down any more memories but to catch up on my work. First, several business emails. And then I had to work on a detailed drawing for the parts needed for some unusual scaffolding to be used on a new hotel in Stockholm.
An hour or so later, looking up from my screen, I realised that outside it was now dark. I had already showered, eaten, watched some nonsense on the TV and now I really did owe it to myself – and Kate – to get out and explore a few sights.
It wasn’t easy to motivate myself to do that, as my hotel room offered the kind of comfort I could never have dreamed of years ago when I had once drunk in the bar downstairs, as a prelude to going on somewhere else with my mates. But, somehow, after one last bout of wrestling with the scaffolding diagram, I managed to shake off my lethargy and go out into the Birmingham night.
To begin with, I knew that what I needed, wanted, simply had to do was make a visit the Hostaria wine bar. Where, in so many ways, this story had really begun. But first, I would walk across the city centre to get a feel for my home town.
My hotel was situated adjacent to the central cathedral, churchyard and graveyard where, all those years ago, the punks used to hang out on a Saturday afternoon and where, sometimes, there would be fights. Benches and iron railings. Trees. Rows of bus stops. It all looked and felt exactly as it always had done during my youth. And despite the typical background noises of the city, all around me I could hear starlings, arguing and chattering in their distinctive manner as they settled down for the night in treetops and on buildings. I’d always associated that sound with this particular churchyard.
My first impression was that nothing really had changed. It still felt like home. Time hadn’t even passed. The sky was dark, of course, and so bright lights were everywhere. A city centre shines. Attracts. Especially at night. I soon realised how wrong first impressions could be.
People who didn’t know the city thought it was grim. Concrete. Built for cars, not humans. But it was also a good city, with a big heart and when I was young, the centre of Birmingham had been small. We all knew the names of every club and pub ‘up town’, as we called the city centre. It was intimate. Much more so than other cities. But now there were lots of bars. Lots. Many more than we had known or needed. And I had the clear impression that the names of the bars were now changed almost every weekend. Each finding it increasingly difficult to have a unique voice. I wondered where people found an anchor in such rapid change.
There was something else, too. The further I walked, the more I realised that town was packed, with crowds roaming pavements in ways they never used to do at night. I tried to avoid some of that by cutting through some dark alleyways and the hardly used side streets of my childhood. But even these were now filled with people, drinking outside, crowds smoking sugary electronic cigarettes ignoring one another and talking to friends on phones, and a lingering smell of hair gel.
Wasn’t any part of the city centre still dark and quiet? It seemed to me that the answer was no. And that was very different from the old city that I had known.
Further on, the old Bull Ring shopping centre had gone from the centre of town, but ‘The Ramp’ was still there. I smiled. ‘The Ramp’. New Street. Where so many people would arrange to meet, at the foot of ‘The Ramp’, or on it or at the top of it. A long sloping walkway, ugly concrete with a plain black iron railing. A McDonalds. Some other fast food shops.
It had been many years since I last sat in a McDonalds, and I wasn’t about to go into one now. But as I walked past it, I vividly recalled how this was the very first one I’d ever seen or ever used.
When? It had been 1979. I remembered the date so clearly because I had taken a girl there, from my school. A girl who used to backcomb her blonde hair and make it stay upright with far too much hairspray. The date hadn’t worked. We hadn’t really got on. But I remembered her name very clearly – it was Lisa.
The same Lisa I would later live with and have a daughter by.
As I recalled that first, failed date, I hesitated outside the shop. Then I laughed out loud to myself. I had ordered a horrible sugary apple pie, the watery contents of which burned the roof of my mouth. I had spat it out. Lisa had not been impressed. Did they still sell those ghastly things? Surely not.
From McDonalds and the Ramp I went along New Street itself to where the Golden Eagle pub had once stood.
A wonderful old pub and a great venue for live music. I had seen bands like Birmingham’s own ‘G.B.H.’ there and stood in awe watching Mark E Smith’s ‘The Fall’. But now? Just a small and largely inaccessible car park.
I might have lingered a bit longer in New Street and even gone for a drink somewhere, but it had been a long day travelling, and, in any case, the closer I got to the Hostaria Wine Bar, the more excited I felt at the prospect of seeing it once more.
As I walked along I visualised it; the wine bar was out past New Street Station, beyond any of the main shops, through dark and windswept underpasses, with very little to brighten the area up except for the headlights of passing cars. The relative isolation of the area had allowed it to develop a Bohemian character all of its own. Which was probably part of the reason it been so appealing to those who felt themselves to be outside of ‘normal’ society...
Sadly, for me anyway, very little of all that now seemed to remain either.
What used to be such an offbeat part of the city was now a bright and vibrant Chinatown. Large red brick restaurants, new hotels, crowds and traffic. The Aussie Bar, the old public house, was still there, albeit now blacked out. But I had hardly ever used it. It had always been merely a sort of bookmark for me to find the Hostaria, or to tell people where it was.
But the Hostaria? No. It was gone. Not only the wine bar itself, but the whole brick building and courtyard had been demolished and replaced with a characterless modern structure, largely unlet despite being perhaps 10 years old, that did very little for me or for the city. Some might call it progress. But elsewhere old industrial buildings were being preserved and brought back to life. An industrial city needed its industrial heritage. The Hostaria could have been renovated, renewed. Instead it was gone as if it had never existed.
