When I enter the back yard through the gate there’s a load of smokers huddling together. One of them shoots a glance my way but the rest are oblivious. As I go inside my throat tightens and my mouth begins to dry up. The bar is starting to get crowded. I don’t do crowded. I don’t even do people. But my paperwork is in there and I cannot lose that. My research, my reasonings, my questions for the coroner. I feel a wave of relief as I clock my bag, still there, by my seat where I left it. The smashed glass has been cleared up. All that’s left is a sticky, wet stain on the floor. I take a cautious glance towards the elephant woman and let my eyes rest on her legs, but without focus or effort at first in order to keep it fuzzy just in case. It appears safe. Just a pair of legs. Not even swollen that much. I can breathe easier now. Relax my jaw.
I make it to the bar and get a glass of tap water and a packet of crisps. The barmaid bangs the glass down on the bar and chucks the crisps towards me.
‘Pound’. I give her a fiver and as she turns to the till I scrutinise the glass, turning it and examining the contents carefully. Seems ok, so to be doubly sure I spill a bit onto the bar. My hand is shaking slightly and more comes out then I meant. As the water flows over the surface of the bar and drips onto the floor, I look up to see the barmaid waiting with my change. She’s rolling her eyes.
‘I…I …’ She tuts and shakes her head then goes and grabs a cloth. I grab the glass and make a swift getaway. I have to empty out my bag to get to the papers I need. I shove them on the table and sit down again.
Too much shrieking coming from the other side of the bar bugs me. I take a few gulps of water and fight off the little voice demanding something stronger. Shuffling through the statements, I pull out the one made by mental health nurse, Ayunde Engola’s again and scroll my eyes down to about where I left off, then start reading it again ..
‘… On the night of 11th January 2015 I was on the night shift. Ms. Westerley was in her room and I had been informed that she was not feeling well, had been seen by the doctor and that physical observations were due to be taken every four hours. She had not been eating or drinking so was placed on fifteen minute general observations and a fluid chart was commenced. She was noted to have taken some fluids and eaten one biscuit …’
Eaten one biscuit …. one biscuit …. I’m wincing. My own ugly spots are breaking out again. My last phone conversation with Dolly is nowhere near deleted yet. I was in my room, in ……. Plymouth. She had had leave to go to the library. To continue one of the many courses she was taking online … the conversation went something like this:
‘Hey babes’
‘hey Dols what’s that noise?
‘…traffic - I’m on my way back to the ward. Bastards … shit!’
‘What?’
‘I just tripped. These bloody heels.’
‘You love your heels. They’re shit hot.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘You’re legal in them now are you?’
‘Yeh, I haven’t stabbed anyone with one lately.’
‘You can stab me any time.’
‘Fuck you.’ Muffled laughter.
‘I’ve moved into another room. Ensuite.’
‘Have you babe. Good.’ Coughing. Are you alright?’
‘Sort of. You know. Any news yet?
‘What. You mean the MOJ?’
‘What else.’
‘Like hell.’
Dolly’s breathing is quick and I can hear the thudding of her hurried steps. Neither of us speaks for a few moments. She coughs again.
‘They tested my blood sugars this morning. They’re high for some reason. What could cause that?’
‘I don’t know. Have you eaten anything?’
‘Just a piece of fruit.’ I immediately wish I hadn’t asked. My limbs stiffen.
‘I don’t know. Fruit’s got a lot of sugar in it, but I don’t know. Look, I gotta go.’
‘Okay I … bye.’
‘Bye.’
She had promised me she would begin eating again. One piece of fruit is not eating. The last time I had seen her the weight loss was dramatic. She was wearing baggy clothes but it was obvious. And the truth is, I am a bastard. That’s what she used to call me when she was in a good mood. You bastard. But she didn’t know the full extent of bastid count within me.
Dolly had a great figure. Yeh she had a few hang ups about her weight, but she was perfect to me. And I didn’t want to lose that part of her. I was afraid if she became really skinny again that I would no longer be attracted to her physically. She had told me that she had had anorexia before and had starved herself down to three and a half stone. I was pretty sure she was exaggerating, but it played on my mind. Dolly was all woman, plus size curves, a seductress, a siren, a huge radiating presence in any room, there was no way I could imagine her in any other format.
It doesn't matter now. I loved her. I know that because I would not have travelled here trying to get to the truth, prepared to face Dolly’s mother, knowing how she hates my guts. No I wouldn’t have done any of this. Without love. And there is certainly no plus size curves now. They are long gone.
I feel a jolt and look up. Some geezer has knocked into my table and spilt lager over my bag which is on the floor by my chair. I grab it and lift it onto the table before any liquid gets on the paperwork.
I’ve spread myself out too much. I’m in the way, an intruder. I tense up rigid. I look down at the Ayunde statement again but the words won’t register. The more I stare, the more stuck I become. I am in danger of becoming catatonic. Before it takes hold I manage to leap up out of my seat. Water is not gonna do this.
I make it to the bar. The barmaid has just finished serving someone and turns to me.
‘Yep?’
‘Um , a er … just a ...’ I take a deep breath ‘… um’ I breathe out again, my lips tight. I’m squinting, eyebrows all screwed, my mouth is opening a tiny bit but my teeth are staying clenched. ‘Yeh, a glass of ...’ I sigh hard ‘...um’ I’m shaking my head. ‘No.’ I inhale through my teeth. I can feel the impatience of the barmaid engulfing me. ‘Oh whatever, I don’t know I can’t …..’
She’s rolling her eyes and let’s out an irritated sigh. My teeth are clamped tight together. I look away and screw my face up more. My lips are all chewing and movement, and my mouth keeps opening wide with my lips pulled taught, in a kind of cycle. When I turn back to the bar she is off serving someone else. I want another double Jamiesons but I’m bricking it down to what happened before. My limbs are rigid. I need time to work this out. Hominini are impatient and I don’t really count as a member of the tribe. I’m not the sort of person people are gonna be waiting for. I dig down in my pockets and retrieve a coin.
Heads water, tails whisky
When I toss it onto the bar, it goes tails. I’m relieved.
The barmaid has clocked onto me again. I manage to get the words out this time and after securing my jamiesons safely, I thread my way back to my seat, being forced to negotiate way too many tossers draped around tosserettes. All part of the family. Once I’m sat down, I can’t help fixing my eyes on some peroxide sitting at the bar. One of those slappers who can’t look complete without a hand on her bum. I’ve never been exactly sure what you’re supposed to do with brainless morons. Whether your supposed to be wowed by staring at endless bursts of the same garbage on a handheld bit of plastic, or claim to be super super duper excited at the prospect of spending Saturday trailing around that shiny new shopping mall which looks and feels like eternal damnation.
Then again, they’re part of the pack, I’m not.
I settle back into my seat. The bar is starting to get crowded. I don’t do crowded. I don’t even do people. Looks like I’m the only person drinking alone. Before I came, I had in my head this romantic image of the regular with the long beard, smoking his pipe under the old oak beams, coughing up phlegm alongside his war stories. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. Theres not one bod alone. Not even alone with a phone. I'm the only one. It’s always that way. It’s always been that way. Wherever I go. In town, any town, anywhere. Cafes, parks, on the beach. People are always together. Even on the bus, you only get ones alone coz they’re going from A to B. And there will be somebody at ‘B’. I know coz if you pass the time of day with any old dear on the no. 61, she always comes up with the ‘we’ word. That’s if she’s under sixty five. Over that and you get ‘we use to’.
I do need to connect. Everybody does, except those mythical types who self help gurus spend their lives preaching their unsubstantiated BS to. You just need to learn to love yourself. No need for encouragement affirmation, friendship, warmth, humanity, understanding, communication, touch, hugs or anything else then, when you can just hang out with a mirror, stare stupidly into it and regurgitate the blatant whopper ‘I love you’. Self sufficiency isn't all its cracked out to be. The damage is cumulative. Spending most of my adult life isolated has left me with a mind full of eternal feedback loops. It’s long reached screeching point. Every bit of energy I’ve got is drained in attempts to claw away from me, myself and I, but I reach only me, myself and I, clawing at my own existence. If you can call it that.
When life becomes solely a series of brief encounters with strangers, it makes you never forget one thing. Homo Homini Lupus. Man is a wolf to another man. It’s no surprises then that most loners don’t venture out much. That's why, when you go to a cafe, a bar, a park, you won't find us. And if you do, you'll turn your back. We’re even guilty of doing that to ourselves. We walk down a street, see another one of our own kind and don’t bother to reach out. At the supermarket we move the divider thing behind our goods at the till as if we are a robotic arm on a production line. We see the shopping behind us. Not the person. We don't look them in the eye. No way. That would be suicide. We clock the chocolate hobnobs, or the humus and bread sticks, that gives us a scent.
Share this post