Chapter Four

I must have stood there for a full five minutes, lost in a reverie, flicking through memories as though paging through a photograph album. Some were good, but most less so. And there were gaps that I couldn’t explain. Brief periods where neither Myles’ nor my life seemed to have been recorded. What happened to the summer of 2008? There were no associations, no images, no memories of scent or mood or place. Nothing good or bad, just a blank space. Disconcerting that there were so many of these.

I did recall some happy times though. Pictures of laughing faces flickered and shimmered as though seen through a very old telescope. Silent movie frame grabs that each stirred tentative sentiment and suggested a forgotten narrative, and that made me move quickly on.

The bell was no longer ringing. I looked down at Horatio who lay perfectly still, with his eyes upturned, watching me as though looking for cues as to how to be. I held his gaze. A silent moment, devoid of thought but rich in the sensation of quietly existing. My mind’s eye rose up high above and looked down, and saw me standing there in a small, shabby room, in a small shabby Victorian mansion that stood alone surrounded by fields, on a small island surrounded by sea. And not a person to be seen anywhere.

A noise from outside distracted me and I turned to the window. Lifting the sticking sash with some difficulty, I lent out and looked down on the gravel driveway just in time to see a taxi driving away. There couldn’t have been many vehicles on the island and once the sound of the taxi’s engine had faded, all was silent save the plaintive call of a gull somewhere overhead. The air was sweet and clean and smelled of the sea. A sense of adventure washed over me and I felt, in that moment, on the cusp of something new. A change for the better. The possibility of a new start and a new life. But the feeling was soon tainted by rising angst. Ill defined fears raising their smirking heads. In truth I had no idea what I was going to do.

Djuna Barnes may have been able to discard her moral compass, although I somehow doubted it, but I had an unborn child to consider, who was reliant upon me. Whose very existence depended upon the swing of my moral compass. And there was Myles to consider. Did I have the right to ignore his paternal role? The love he may feel for his child? Djuna was wrong. All we can hope for is a future that’s as thawed as possible. An optimised future that suffers minimal interference from detrimental past influences. And the only real tool available to us that could help us to find that is our morality and our sense of justice and kindness.

Horatio had lifted his head and was watching me with his tongue lolling out. How could Djuna Barnes see only ‘instinctual choices’ in a creature that offered such loyalty and an obvious, intuitive awareness of my mood?

I decided to take a bath and was pleasantly surprised to find copious amounts of steaming hot water on tap, although the bath itself was an enamelled antique that wobbled slightly on four little curved, cast iron legs. Twenty minutes later, having dried myself with heavy, crisp and slightly abrasive towels that left me feeling invigorated and refreshed, I dressed, gathered up Horatio, and set off to explore the hotel and the grounds, slamming the room door behind me.

The passageway was dark and musty, with tatty Persian rugs that were probably splendid in their day, overlapping one another along its length. Looking down on the stairwell was a tall, arched window with a stained glass panel that cast a luminous pool of colour on bleached and faded wallpaper. With Horatio walking patiently beside me, I ran my hand down the broad dark banister and descended four floors down to the hotel reception.

Eric was there. Unmoving in such silence that I could make out a wheeze as he breathed. He looked up as I approached and in one seamless, unsmiling movement, reached behind the reception desk and presented me with a letter. I recognised it immediately. I’d written it myself. It was for Myles and I’d concocted it in a moment of emotional panic whilst on the ferry. I took it from him, smiled and thanked him.

‘Some bloke in a taxi just dropped it off for you. Said you wouldn’t know ‘im but he saw you drop it on the boat.’

The envelope felt damp in my hand, and it was creased. I turned it over. It had been opened and my letter was visible, my handwriting there like a guilty secret. But secret no more it would seem.

                                                                                                                           (by David)