Sunday 2 October 2011

Coming home

It's a curious thing to me that this hour-long show can pass in about an hour and be over. I have been looking forward to this, apart from all of my life, for six months or so, and then, there it is, gone. I expect that's what your wedding day is like, but with more expense, a bigger hangover and white goods to show for it.

I leave the stage for the dressing-room – normally, at the end of the show I go out into the bar. It's rather odd not heading for the audience. The audience are getting a drink to get them through the second half, I hope.

And the second half passes quickly too, with Chris talking to me about the experience of the show, why we made it, that kind of thing. There are a few questions from the audience and then we are in the bar and I'm talking to all sorts of folk, some of whom I don't know, but most of whom I can slot into a part of my life, my past. This is my very strange present.

It's not long before we're in the Dog and Partridge, me, Mum, cousin Ruth, Martin, Roger, aunt Zee and Miriam, whom I've not seen since we left university. She calls me Becky. Even though it's a name I am never known by and, well, sometimes react badly to, seeing Miriam and having her use it is actually very nice. She's always called me Becky.

She is a rather beautiful and brilliant woman. Miriam was actually good at Spanish at university – she had, after all, studied it before the course started - I was doing it from scratch. We had ended up on the Amnesty International committee, sharing the role of campaigns officer, if memory serves me. I do hate having responsibility on committees. There is so much I am not good at and, it turns out, a committee is the best place for me to show that to all and sundry. I am a confirmed second in command. I think Miriam and I acquitted ourselves okay, though, probably because she was half of the team. I certainly have fond memories of standing in Centenary Square in Birmingham trying to persuade passers-by to sign one petition or another to, you know, save one life or another. And Wednesday lunchtimes where anyone could drop in to write about a prisoner of conscience. I was the lazy activist.

So, here she is, and it's as if the years have not passed at all. One of the reasons for this is that she seems not to have aged at all, she's just as radiantly gorgeous as ever. We all sit round a table and talk loudly about everything. I think we're all pretty relieved. I had a wonderful time, but it is now over and that is okay.

Miriam and I get to talk to one another and she tells me her brother died a few years ago. We talk about the effects of that, what I refer to as the Smell of Death which surely exudes from a person in our situation. There's repellent and then there's grieving. I cannot believe that such a beautiful woman has not been snapped up, but then she's only beautiful up to a point. She is delightful, easy on the eye, but she is tainted by death. And, from her description of what she has been through, she is still struggling. The worst thing of all for me, though, is that with all we have in common (okay, I'm not radiantly beautiful, but apart from that) there is nothing I can really do to help. She is on her own and all I can do is observe and sympathise. We vow to actually see each other more, which will not be hard. We have passed each other a couple of times on the tube or on the escalators on the tube, over the past 15 years. That is all. How can we not have got together more when it is as if no time has passed at all since the day of our graduation? I guess we've both, in the words of Bob Dylan, been keeping on keeping on.

I nearly always sleep well, but tonight I sleep the sleep of... those who have got away with it.

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