creation with his stick. ‘I think the technical term is “drip painting”.’
The girl scraped her long, mousey hair behind her back and tilted her head to one side. She was standing right next to him now, eyes narrowed, lips pursed in contemplation.
‘Looks to me like the inside of my head,’ she replied in a lightly accented voice. ‘When I’m having a bad day. A day full of demons.’
Henry thought this was an interesting analogy, but he was too distracted searching for something to stem the blood flow to express the fact out loud. He patted the pockets of his overcoat and noticed that the fringes of the girl’s multicoloured scarf were stained with thick, wet splashes of coffee.
Silently, he berated himself.
‘It’s dramatic, though,’ the girl continued. Her tone was attentive, her pale eyes keen, unwavering. ‘Like an explosion of light and dark.’
Turning at last to face him, she pressed a pocket-sized packet of tissues into Henry’s palm.
Henry fumbled, his stiff, papery fingers tugging clumsily at the slippery semicircle of perforated plastic.
The girl edged closer and cupped her hand around his arm. ‘Are you okay?’
Henry nodded. Instinctively, he felt that he should ask her name, discover the identity of this troubled, angelic stranger who had rushed, unbidden, to his aid, but his heart was still jackhammering beneath his ribs.
It was the damnedest thing… Half of him had expected to see his life flash before his eyes, and yet surely this wasn’t his time? Not here. Not now. Not when his journey was only just starting to unfold?
He blinked several times in succession in an effort to ground himself more fully in his surroundings.
The irony of the situation weighed on him like sin.
Here he was, once again in a bustling train station (albeit one on a much grander scale), ready to resume where he had left off all those years ago, the night of a snowstorm, and of a slow-curling flame…
Henry raised his head. Fixed his gaze on the soaring latticework of white metal girders which strained and arced, crisscrossing like a giant sugar cage high above the station concourse. He felt the girl take the tissues from his hand. There was a moment’s hesitation, and she began to wipe the trails of blood from his chin.
Henry kept his head held high and inched his foot discreetly along the ground, searching for his suitcase. He found its flat, armoured surface with his heel and gave an inner sigh of relief. It was still there. Everything was fine. His plan was all on track!
In the expectant space before him, Henry sensed the Pollock seeping into the concrete, morphing like a kaleidoscope and creating wondrous new forms, until the blood slowed into droplets, and finally into nothing at all, so that all that remained were shiny swirls of milk-white and scarlet and caramel-brown; a promising – if unexpected – explosion of light and dark on a once empty floor.
The Notebook
KENTISH TOWN, LONDON, DECEMBER 5: JOURNEY EVE
Henry
My name is Henry Arthur Applebee. I’m eighty-five and counting, with an arthritic knee, a healthy head of hair and all my faculties, though not all my own teeth. I’ve had a pretty good life, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have any regrets. Anyone who gets to my age and says they have no regrets is either deluded, or senile, or both. When all’s said and done, the facts remain as follows:
I may be old, but it doesn’t mean I don’t still have any dreams.
Who’s to say there’s an expiry date on achieving your goals?
Is it ever too late to right a wrong?
Now that Devlin’s gone, I’ve learned that establishing a focused and precise daily mantra can be a very effective way of ensuring your marbles are still intact. ‘Stay engaged in life!’ – that’s what they say when you retire. Then, as time hurtles by and everyone you know starts dropping around you like flies, it’s: ‘Keep your mind active. Cultivate a hobby. Join a community group!’
But for me, it all comes down to my notebook. The Revealer of Secrets. The Holder of Truths. The place where those I’ve loved reach out – right from between these very pages – and, grinning, take me by the hand and say, ‘Come in! Don’t be shy. You want us to show you something marvellous?’
It began, somewhat prosaically, with Adam Donnelly, a young man from Wyedean who called in to see me at the start of July. Banjo and I had been managing just fine on our own up until then. But visitors have an annoying knack of stirring things up; of reminding you there’s a whole sprawling world beyond the confines of the one you’ve learned to inhabit by yourself.
‘We’d like you to write an article for the Wyedean quarterly magazine,’ Adam D. said. ‘It’s for a retrospective we’re running on former members of the teaching faculty, and as our most senior contributor, we’ll be featuring you in our cover story. You’ll be the poster boy for excellence! For a life well and truly lived.’
A small weight snowballed inside me. ‘Will anyone still be interested?’ I asked. This was not false modesty; on the contrary, I was positively taken aback. The corners of Adam D.’s mouth veered upwards. ‘You’re one of Wyedean’s most esteemed former language teachers, Mr Applebee. The board thinks a self-penned profile will be illuminating not just for the current staff and pupils, but also for your peers.’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I see. Are any of them still alive?’
I hadn’t heard from Wyedean in a long while and the request puzzled me. ‘What kind of illuminations are you looking for?’ I asked. ‘Anything uplifting,’ he replied. ‘Anecdotes, observations, greatest achievements. That kind of thing. It’s a tough world our pupils are facing. Hugely competitive. Our aim is to buoy them up with as much support and inspiration as we can.’ Adam Doolally drummed his fingers on the arm of my wing-back chair and smiled encouragingly once again.
Doubtful as to my ability to either illuminate or inspire, I nodded. Signed on the dotted line, as they say. It was only after he’d gone that the full magnitude of the task hit me: academic career aside, I couldn’t think of a single event in my life which might reasonably qualify as a ‘greatest achievement’. Nothing worthy of the inspiration-hungry readers of the Wyedean quarterly magazine, at any rate.
How in the name of all that’s holy does a senior citizen, occasional UFO spotter and Francophile reduce eight-and-a-half decades (and counting)
