In conversation
I leave the seaside before winter takes hold and settle in a town familiar from thirty years ago. The town is altered since I was last here. It’s unfamiliar, a strangeness come about it. Some claim things are just the same when revisiting past haunts, but that’s an untruth. Laziness to say, ‘it is just as I remember’ for our memories are inconsistent, ever changing, dependent on our moods and capacity for truthfulness. We are all of us constantly lying to ourselves, reshaping our condition, denying this, forging that, exaggerating, comforting ourselves with what we like to recall has happened when it was quite the contrary.
Ask yourself now, this moment, what sort of person am I? Am I honest? No. (I answer for you.) Deceitful? (No and no, I again answer – I hope I am right.) What about (and here we enter the domain of writer’s language, for the writer has words at beck and call, can continue and continue and continue ad infin. if you demure), what about:
selfless or
defiant
belligerent
compassionate
sensitive
ruthless
ambitious
unassuming
heroic
deceptive
truthful
anxious
regretful
poisonous
contemplative
wise
good natured
argumentative
political
apolitical
diplomatic
sensual
erotic
headstrong
stubborn
light-hearted
comedic
tragic
humane
felicitous
personable
desirable
loving
generous
wealthy
poor
giving
charitable
miserly
lonely
happy
sad
content or
at ease
very much at ease
quite at ease
easily,
at ease?
You are all of these and more, just as this town is all of these and more since this town exists within and around me. That’s why this town, far from the sea yet just a slither of time from the capital, that’s why this town is ever changing as I am ever changing and everyone who lives here is, day by day, hour by hour, ever changing, discovering patterns and re-routing paths as they journey to an inevitable end point: their extinction: extinction of memory: the hopelessness of death.
To the west of this town lies an ancient settlement, the first Neolithic folk who came choosing this place for the sweet and constant supply of water that still flows at the foot of a hill, at the top of which they built their shelters and kept watch, day and night around fires that burned constantly as the life giving water flowed constantly below; kept watch for any strangers who might come from north-south-east or west to butcher their men, slaughter their children, rape and disfigure their women so no man would want to lay with them ever again. The view from here remains spectacular, especially in autumn when the trees – and there are thousands of trees – turn all to burning fire. From that time to this people have lived here, a village now lining the main road on level land, the rich agricultural pastures providing sustenance, the forests once dense with good workable timber that provided resource for a manufacturing industry famed throughout the British empire and beyond.
On top of the hill stands a church built by an 18th century aristocrat, the spire topped by a golden orb and in caverns cut into the chalk below he’d invite friends for pagan rituals and pleasure where opiates were smoked and women, naked to the waist, plyed for their pleasure.
In the village is a public house popular with the locals, men and women, some who still work the land about here as did generations of forbears, gathering when the working day is done to exchange gossip, recollect episodes of their youth, celebrate one another’s anniversaries, share each others grief. Some no doubt trace ancestors to the time of Dashwood’s orgies, some maybe to those Neolithic folk. It’s here I am lodging and as I sit among them tonight, a pint of warm boot-brown coloured ale at my elbow, I search each face for signs of past witness. That man’s brow, for instance, with its evident protrusion that pushes his ancestry further back. That woman’s angular jaw so set it seems capable of being able to crack forest nuts. His gnarled hands capable of shaping flint (so abundant here that many of the cottages are faced with the split black stones) for use as fine arrow heads or, in bigger pieces, ax heads. Her bowed back able to carry a basket of ripe fruits or grain to be milled for flour.
I head to the bar for a refill. The pub is run by two women, mother and daughter, who’ve pulled the pumps for decades, the mother since the war. If there was a husband and father there is no trace anywhere and I have never heard mention, though the other day I looked curiously at the wooden board above the entrance which records the licensee in white painted letters on a black ground and noted a space before that of the mother’s painted over a different colour as if a name had been obliterated. (I’d need a ladder to examine more closely.) Neither mother nor daughter – and in the half-light it is difficult to tell who is who so closely do they resemble, how similarly they dress, always in winter with hand-knitted dark cardigans and skirts of brown corduroy – neither acknowledge me though I have paid them for my lodgings, neither look me in the eye as I hand over a note or when they return change. It’s as if I am a stranger, which of course I am.
Along with another who enters right now and does look me directly with such blue eyes I am disturbed. She comes to my table, sits without asking if she may share my company, places her handbag under her chair and clasps her hands on the table top. We stare at one another and I’m reminded of someone’s description of her: eyes of Caligula, lips of Marilyn Monroe.
You look lonely, she says.
I can assure you I am not.
Will you buy me a drink? Whisky.
What makes you think I would buy you a drink? I am no friend of yours.
- Just buy me a drink. Our time is limited. Make it a double. Malt if they have it.
Petty to refuse I order her drink. She doesn’t acknowledge me when I slam the tumbler in front of her. She examines the contents like a fish in a bowl and remarks curtly: I did not say ice.
You did not say you did not want ice.
I thought you would have known.
She removes the three cubes, puts them on the table, watches as they start to melt.
I was called the ice maiden, she says.
You were called many things but I don’t remember that. I think you mean iron maiden.
Yes, she says brightly and repeats the words. She brings the glass to her lips. Such a shame I have lost my senses of smell and taste, she says.
I notice a tremble in her hand.
Who’s left? she asks.
I shrug.
Who’s still left…in the House…who’s still around…anyone I remember?
It’s been a long time.
She pulls the handbag from under her, brushes the melting ice with the side of her hand to the table’s edge as if dust annoying her. A remaining cube totters there, a droplet forming in which I see reflected my companion’s face tensed as she now searches the contents of her bag, reveals a packet of Benson & Hedges.
Can’t smoke, I say firmly.
She ignores me, puts the cigarette between her blue lips, removes a disposable plastic lighter from within the gold packet, flicks the wheel. It doesn’t light. Nor does it when she tries again, and again. Then shakes it vigorously and tries again. Still it will not light. She looks around for another smoker.
Doesn’t anyone smoke?
Not indoors. Not in public. It’s the law. Parliament.
Her hands hit the table soundlessly. The cigarette rolls free, snags on the ice water, the paper goes grey.
I had a sense this was coming. It’s Europe isn’t it?
I’ve no idea, I reply.
It is Europe, she says triumphal. She looks around: Has anyone got a light?
There’s no point shouting. No one can hear you. No one can see you. What brought you here? I ask. And why me?
I sense my question floating between us, ready to be snatched at, crumpled like a paper memorandum and discarded. I feel discomforted, suddenly very alone, quite alone as if the room we are sitting in has become absent, everyone gone, lights extinguished except for a spotlight directed on us, me and her, separated from the living.
They were all fools, she starts. All of them. Even Joseph and I thought him the brightest. They were men with no sight. Vision is what you’d call it now. Timid men. Weak men. Stupid men. I defeated them all.
She sounds just like I’ve heard her in those clips still sometimes shown on late-night TV, flashbacks to her standing on the platform in front of the party faithful, challenging, affirming, unequivocal, the show’s host commenting at how her stridency and unshakeable determination stand in contrast with today’s mealy-mouthed leaders with their platitudes and strict on-message sound bites.
Except there’s regret too.
I was invincible, she says, still belligerent and then rises.
I feel compelled to get up too as if in the presence of an elder to whom respect is offered, though I have no respect for her. I follow her outside. A pedestrian walking an Alsatian is passing. He is smoking a pipe and she stops him to ask for a light. As he moves off he tips his cap as is the custom around here. He has no idea who she is.
I assume it’s still legal to smoke outside? she asks. Walk with me awhile will you.
I come to her side. Though the cigarette is alight I cannot smell it.
Why do people hate me so much?
You’ve no idea?
I’m not stupid. They always hated me. The weak hate the strong. It’s nature. Someone has to lead and better it be someone with courage.
You’re worried about your legacy aren’t you? That’s why you’re here. It’s all about legacy isn’t it?
You’re a bright boy, you work it out.
Why are you telling me this? I was one of those who hated you.
One of the weak then.
I am close to anger. I want to shout at her, tell her how I feel about the hurt she has left, those communities broken, those families broken, those people broken.
You are so arrogant, is all I can manage.
Yet arrogantly at ease, she answers.
She walks into the night until all I am left with is the glowing red tip of the cigarette, until that too vanishes and there is nothing but the sound of distant water and above the eternal stars of the Milky Way. I am going to call out but how do I address her? Thatcher! Baroness! Margaret! No way. There is no way I can call her Margaret. Better to shout: You ruined generations. Made a virtue of greed. Destroyed hope and left society bare.
As the words collect in my mind they sound not only trite but timid. Am I really one of those weak men, unable to stand against her even though she is dead? Let history be her judge, not me.
I return to the bar. I am startled by the light. The living are enjoying their evening. There’s a darts competition in progress, the opposition from a pub in town. The rivalry is fierce yet they all know each other, taunting with mock seriousness, half-hitting in the stomach, pulling faces, cracking jokes that are not jokes unless you have known each other since childhood.
I pass a table as I head to the stairs that will take me to my room, overhear a young man slur to his circle of friends: What we need now is another Thatcher.
Piss off, I mutter.
He looks into his beer before exploding with drunken laughter: Only joking. And his friends laugh too.
