What If I Just Kept On Driving?

I can’t do this anymore. Not at my age. Speeding around the country to endless meetings, trying to charm people whose names I can only just remember, so that I’ll meet my sales targets. And motorway service stations. I’m so unutterably sick of motorway service stations; of the crap, overpriced food and the staff who look as bored and apathetic as I feel. I’ve had enough of it. Leave this nonsense to the young turks who still think they can achieve something and be someone by flogging tat to strangers.

I woke up this morning with the prospect of a drive to Gillingham ahead of me. I mean, Gillingham. If ever a town was guaranteed to instil existential ennui in a man, Gillingham is it. And as I curse my way out of bed, I’m struck by a vague sense of low-grade pointlessness. I look around me. I survey my one-bedroom kingdom. Simple, functional, devoid of all the feminine trinkets that made the old place feel like home. I’m about to leave this expensive but soulless apartment to drive a featureless road to a depressing town, to do a job I no longer have any passion for. I’ll earn my money and give half of it away to a woman who treats me with cool, morally-superior politeness, so that a teenage girl who despises me can continue to feed her £200 a month retail habit. Is this what it’s all come to?

My mind begins to drift. I picture the journey to Gillingham in my mind, and I start to wonder, what if I just kept on driving? What if I carried on past Gillingham to Dover and got on a ferry? How difficult would it be to find a quiet little town somewhere in Brittany and start again? How long would it take before anyone noticed I was missing?

I’m still daydreaming when I slump into the driver’s seat and start the engine. Thin, wintry sunshine starts to struggle through the clouds, so I pull down the sun visor. As I do that, something drops onto the floor at my feet. I fumble around and find a folded piece of paper. When I open it up, I’m greeted by Camilla’s florid but precise handwriting:

Dear Dad,

Whatever Mum says, I still think you’re alright. Have a nice day.

Love

Camilla

She signed off with one of those colon-and-bracket things that’s supposed to look like a smiley face. And actually, I am smiling now. God knows why. It’s an off-hand one-line note, written on the back of an envelope. Hardly a warm and effusive hymn of praise from an adoring daughter. But for some reason, I find myself smiling. Even with Gillingham, motorway service stations and meaningless clients to contend with, for some reason that note makes it worth my trouble not to disappear.

In Loving Memory

There’s not much there to look at now. Just a small pile of rocks on a windswept cliff top. Josie and I put the rocks there to mark the spot – to do something to commemorate what happened – because it seemed clear that no-one else was going to. After all, who commemorates a suicide? We felt like we had to do something. Josie said it felt as though if we didn’t do something to remind us of Gareth, that there’d be nothing to anchor him to us, that our memory of him would just float away on the breeze. Hence the rocks. It had the sensation of weighing him down, stopping him from flying away and leaving us. Leaving us for a second time.

Standing there now, nearly eight months later, neither of us really know what to do or say. We’re left just kind of standing there, looking at the rocks, looking past the rocks, out over the edge of the cliff into the air beyond. I glance across at Josie, with the wind playing a wisp of her dark brown hair across her cheek. She brushes it away impatiently. I always thought she could do better than Gareth. That's a hard thing to say about my brother, particularly now he’s gone, but it’s true. When I used to see the two of them together, something used to jar inside me. It just wasn’t right. I tried persuading Gareth that she wasn’t for him, but he wouldn’t listen. He said I was jealous. He had a point.

The one good thing that’s come out of Gareth’s death is that it brought me and Josie together. You know how it works – two people leaning on each other, talking things over, grieving – I suppose it was bound to happen.

‘Let’s go,’ Josie says. She smiles bravely, turns to head back to the car, and takes my hand. In a funny way, this has all turned out for the best. Far better than I expected when I did what I did. I was right. Josie could do better than Gareth. That’s why I pushed him.

[Inspired by the image 'Memorial' at www.elephantwords.co.uk.]

Ed

Ed couldn’t sleep. Hadn’t slept properly for weeks now. It began with one or two nights of tossing and turning for an hour or so, until his mind eventually stopped whirring and let him drift off. But soon, alarmingly soon, it developed into a persistent, nagging insomnia which drained him of all energy and enthusiasm, leaving him vacant, listless and dispassionate. An awkward position for a vicar to be in. He knew everyone expected him to be patient, caring, wise and simultaneously bold, visionary and indefatigable. But he felt none of these things. Could his parishioners see through the thin veneer of patience and vibrancy which he put on for their benefit? Surely they could tell by now that their vicar just wasn’t up to the job.

The irony was that the job had reduced him to this state in the first place. The ever-lengthening list of sick and elderly to visit, the exhausting counselling of young men in the throes of the Dark Night of the Soul, the endless, cripplingly mundane meetings, populated by people who seemed psychotically driven to make sure the church lounge was painted exactly the shade of beige they wanted. It all combined to leave Ed’s head spinning, even late into the night.

An unfortunate side-effect of the insomnia was that it left Ed more disposed than usual towards navel-gazing. A better man, a wiser, more godly man would surely be able to handle these pressures, he thought. Did it reflect on his own spirituality that stress drove him to insomnia, not prayer? If he was plagued by this inconsequential yet strangely debilitating affliction, how could he still tell his flock he believed in a God who healed? Wasn’t he living a lie, just pretending that he was OK? And the more Ed drifted towards self-recrimination, the more time his insomnia granted him to think it all over. More and more time, confronted with his own darker side; the vices and character flaws he couldn’t seem to shake off, his fondness for cigarettes, alcohol and internet pornography. More and more time, lying in the darkness, staring at the ceiling, quietly hating himself. Which of course took him deeper and deeper into the grip of self-recrimination. It was all so neatly self-perpetuating.

Ed couldn’t see the situation improving any time soon. He decided this was just a cross he’d have to bear. Particularly since his sexuality was so glaringly at odds with everything everyone believed about him and expected of him. Material for months of lying awake, in that one fact alone. No doubt about it, a vicar’s lot is not a happy one. Especially when the vicar is gay.

We're back...

And... you're back in the room. It's been a while, but here we are again. I've been inspired to resurrect this blog by my desire to get some of my fiction out there. By 'out there', I'm not sure exactly where I mean, but just knowing it's online and people can read it if they're really determined to find it makes me feel I've accomplished something. Anyhew... my first piece of flash fiction will follow in a few minutes.

By the way, if you like this next piece (or even if you find it mildly disappointing but still enjoy really short pieces of well-written fiction), check out elephantwords.co.uk. I aspire to write for this site one day, but in the meantime, check out what's there already. Some of it is very good indeed.