Waiting for that day

clicked, as if I (if indeed it is me in the picture) can’t bear even to tear my eyes off her for the brief moment the photographer requires us to look into the camera.

If there truly is such a thing as the look of love, it’s passing between these two people.

And then, like a tragic postscript, to the left of the wedding day photo, another one. This time, it’s her alone, enclosed as if trapped by a small oval at the top of a piece of card that, while white in colour somehow contrives to be dark. There are words upon it, her name, age, address, in lovely tasteful flowing script. A poem, some more words, culminating in a wish: May she rest in peace.

Looking at the picture causes me sadness I can’t explain or understand. The woman in both photographs, and the man in the wedding one, mean nothing to me. I have a feeling both should, but no matter how hard I try, no memory will surface, if indeed there is anything there to uncover or reveal itself.

If this is not my house, then those pictures have nothing to do with me, which would explain why I cannot recognise the people in them. If I am an interloper in someone else’s house, these are someone else’s photographs, someone else’s memories. And yet, such thoughts bring me no relief, no peace. Somehow I know this is my house, those are my photographs and I should know the faces smiling out at me, but I don’t.

As for the men on the stairs (and everywhere else) who are not there but are there, they seem to have been here for as long as I can remember. Or not here. There doesn’t seem to have been a time when they weren’t. Though I’m sure I once lived here alone. I can’t point to a specific time or date when they arrived, I couldn’t tell you how they gained entrance to my house, or why I let them in, but a tiny voice in my head, growing quieter and more distant every day, whispers that it was not always so.

I suppose it would be fair to say I used to live mostly in the dark. I tended to be frugal with my electricity, to the point where I would ensure that if I was leaving one room to go to another, I would switch off the light in the room I was leaving. Save the pennies, and the pounds will look after themselves. I was never a rich man - this much I know - and was constantly struggling to pay my bills. These days, I no longer let such things concern me. These days, lights burn in every room through the night, and voices mutter as I try to sleep. I once found myself worrying about my electricity bill, but oddly it never arrived. Nor did any others. Fearful that I would either be cut off, or that an even larger bill would drop onto the mat in the hallway, replete with warnings scrawled in red pen (though really, I know, printed out by a cold, unfeeling inkjet printer that does not even know what a red pen is, or any pen, come to think of it) about final payments and penalties, I rang the electricity company.

That is, I tried.

I remember distinctly punching out the number on the dialling pad on the landline, holding the receiver to my ear, hearing the chirruping ring sing its happy little tune like some imprisoned songbird trapped inside the phone’s workings.

The next thing I remember, I was waking up the next morning, with (at the time) no recollection of having even made the call. Had I remembered, I could have checked the last-dialled number, to confirm if I had actually called the electricity company or had just dreamed it. Had I remembered. Which I did not. And so I didn’t check. Because there was nothing to check.

But despite a lack of communication with – and more importantly, any payment to – the electric people, my supply was not discontinued, and though power continued to be expended and consumed throughout the night, every night, even at weekends, no bill ever arrived. And I don’t just mean no electricity bill. No bills of any nature dropped through my letterbox. In fact, no post at all was delivered. No junk mail, no one-time-only special offers to join gyms, no cutprice sales at carpet and tile shops, no screaming adverts for holidays. No letters. No cards. No flyers. Even the ubiquitous agents of the local Indian takeaway seemed to give my house a wide berth. Look outside and you will see every single doorknob, letterbox, windowsill and gate festooned with menus from A Taste of Mumbai, but my house stands as a pariah among houses, like the kid not picked for the soccer team or the wallflower at the disco, alone, untouched, avoided.

Unclean?

My memory, which I know will soon degrade like badly-stored fruit in the summer heat, tells me that it was not always this way. In fact, it reminds me that on more than one occasion I had made irate phone calls to the manager of A Taste of Mumbai, the improbably-named Gerald Lynch (very Indian!) and had even visited their premises once, to complain about the practice of their little munchkins slapping a menu on anything that didn’t move (and, I’m perhaps not too reliably informed, but I would not be surprised, some things that do). My efforts had been rebuffed, and when I had in impotent anger phoned their head office, I had been left on hold for so long that there was only so much bad Indian covers of fifties rock and roll songs (the Indian Elvis? Give me a break!) that I could take, and I had hung up irritably, my mission unfulfilled.

So I know that my house used to be like all the others, a target for the roving ninjas of A Taste of Mumbai and its parent corporation, Blue Fish Industries. But then, one day, it all stopped. No more did I find menus extolling the virtues of Biryani, Chicken tikka or other stuff I would never dream of eating. I found – to my initial delight, though that did not last – that I could open my door in the morning and not see the ominous cardboard menu with its half-hook hanger swinging precariously from my doorknob like some climber who had lost his hold and was trying desperately not to fall. It was great for a while, but then some nagging voice inside me started asking Why? Why was my house the only one – and it was the only one; the Indian takeaway ninjas even continued to put their menus on old Mr. Bennett’s house, and he’s been dead now for six months and the house vacant – that the indefatigable agents of A Taste of Mumbai ignored, even avoided? After a while, I began to feel an outcast, left out, ignored, shunned. There was a time when I would have given anything to have seen one of those stupid, badly-printed menus hanging from my door, just once.

But my door remained menu-less, and still does.

My letterbox never rattles, my door bell never rings, no footsteps wend their weary way up my pathway to breathlessly inform me that Virgin are doing a great deal right now if I switch my TV and broadband, or to try to convince me to switch to prepay power. How I used to loathe these people, who badgered and annoyed me and always seemed to call at the most inconvenient moments. What wouldn’t I give now to watch one smile his or her plastic smile and rattle off a list of benefits, screw up his or her face in surprise when I inform them that I’m an “old-fashioned sort, not prone to change”, and send them off, shaking their head? Well, now I wouldn’t be so eager to see them off. I’d even invite them in, make them a cup of tea. I might even sign their form, make their day, earn them a few quid in commission. What, in the grand scheme of things, does it matter if I have Sky or Virgin, or get my electricity from this or that supplier? Just to have human companionship...

The mention of electricity supply brings my already staggering mind back to the recollection of the bills that never arrived, and the huge amounts of electricity being consumed, and for a moment I’m confused. I don’t use that much electricity. I don’t stay up late at night. So who is using this power?

And then I remember, as I believe I continue to forget, and remember, and will forget, and remember again; as I perhaps always have done, and always will do.

I remember when they came.