Jets Leave White Trails, or Contrails, In Their Wake
It used to be a real kind of spit-&-sawdust pub, yellow walls, low ceilings and a bad smell, creaking up the winding staircase, an epileptic fruity, not many punters but it kept going. It went for as long as it could, then it got turned over. Now it was new and out of our price range, but we had agreed to meet there, so we did. Even in our work shirts & shoes, we were the under-dressed, the dried sweat on our faces gave us away. Everyone was beautiful, wearing fine clothes and gym memberships. It was a cock-fight of entitlement.
‘Oi, grab that receipt for me. I wanna make sure I heard the cost right.’
I picked up the receipt from the barman who was halfway through resuming flirtations with another member of staff, grabbing her by the waist and stroking her arms—’Nineteen-pounds-fifty.’
‘Fucking hell.’
‘That’s six-fifty a pint! Fuck it, we ain’t coming here again.’
We stood in the corner where long, heavy curtains slouched down the wall. ‘Did you tell him?’ asked one of my friends. ‘No, I’ll tell him.’ A matter of importance, it seems. I angled my skull to emphasise my attention. He told me he was returning to Ireland for good. He had landed a job with a huge global company, and it was too lucrative to decline, so he and his girlfriend (of six years) were off to start a new life, as they say. It was good-bye to London. She would have to fly back to quite often for work, she was a reputable interior designer who worked all over, but he would be there, with his new job and his late-thirties. It seemed proper to raise a glass, wish him luck. One last Paddy’s day in the city. It was strange for a friend to be moving away; stranger still that he who had been so resistant to settling down was now doing just that, in the green of the island, stroking fingers that reached far & wide. We drank and drank. It was what we did best together. Three years ago we had spent Valentine’s day in a pub underneath Oxford St., doing Sunday right, until one of us opened up his face down the Tottenham Court Rd. Escalator and headed to A&E.
It was nothing so grand as the end of an era, but it felt to me like other people’s lives were passing me by, and I didn’t know what to make of it.
I left and the beer hit me. The beer had been there all along, but at that moment, stepping out onto the pavement and getting my bearing, I realised that I was a little drunk. What came along was the sound of tremors and wandering Friday night. I was nervous, excited, most of all I was nervous. She received pronunciation. She had this habit of asking big questions. The last family Christmas was ruined and she spent Boxing Day crying in her old bedroom. Always brothers & sisters but never aunts & uncles, it frays the nerves growing up, or it dulls them. Her calendar was full. We can’t all be Peter Pan.
The pub was noisy. It did not dawn on me that it was a bad decision, because I quite enjoyed the music and it was loud. It was a bad decision because the music was loud. I stood holding our drinks, waiting for her arrival, my fingers perspiring and the glasses beginning to slip. Two pints spilled on the floor and shattered glass a recurring theme. She smiled in through the doorway and I handed hers over. No good with hellos or good-byes, not much better between. After a while we sat down. How close? I could not tell you: perhaps a thigh’s width. I sat a thigh’s width from her, at last this spectre of RP and big conversation come to life. She was sober. Was she sober? She held herself with more grace than I, leaning precisely forward to speak or to listen. She had seen a famous actor outside and, ‘to break the ice’, I had twenty questions to guess who.
‘Dead or alive?’
‘Man or woman?’
‘TV or film?’
‘Oi, grab that receipt for me. I wanna make sure I heard the cost right.’
I picked up the receipt from the barman who was halfway through resuming flirtations with another member of staff, grabbing her by the waist and stroking her arms—’Nineteen-pounds-fifty.’
‘Fucking hell.’
‘That’s six-fifty a pint! Fuck it, we ain’t coming here again.’
We stood in the corner where long, heavy curtains slouched down the wall. ‘Did you tell him?’ asked one of my friends. ‘No, I’ll tell him.’ A matter of importance, it seems. I angled my skull to emphasise my attention. He told me he was returning to Ireland for good. He had landed a job with a huge global company, and it was too lucrative to decline, so he and his girlfriend (of six years) were off to start a new life, as they say. It was good-bye to London. She would have to fly back to quite often for work, she was a reputable interior designer who worked all over, but he would be there, with his new job and his late-thirties. It seemed proper to raise a glass, wish him luck. One last Paddy’s day in the city. It was strange for a friend to be moving away; stranger still that he who had been so resistant to settling down was now doing just that, in the green of the island, stroking fingers that reached far & wide. We drank and drank. It was what we did best together. Three years ago we had spent Valentine’s day in a pub underneath Oxford St., doing Sunday right, until one of us opened up his face down the Tottenham Court Rd. Escalator and headed to A&E.
It was nothing so grand as the end of an era, but it felt to me like other people’s lives were passing me by, and I didn’t know what to make of it.
I left and the beer hit me. The beer had been there all along, but at that moment, stepping out onto the pavement and getting my bearing, I realised that I was a little drunk. What came along was the sound of tremors and wandering Friday night. I was nervous, excited, most of all I was nervous. She received pronunciation. She had this habit of asking big questions. The last family Christmas was ruined and she spent Boxing Day crying in her old bedroom. Always brothers & sisters but never aunts & uncles, it frays the nerves growing up, or it dulls them. Her calendar was full. We can’t all be Peter Pan.
The pub was noisy. It did not dawn on me that it was a bad decision, because I quite enjoyed the music and it was loud. It was a bad decision because the music was loud. I stood holding our drinks, waiting for her arrival, my fingers perspiring and the glasses beginning to slip. Two pints spilled on the floor and shattered glass a recurring theme. She smiled in through the doorway and I handed hers over. No good with hellos or good-byes, not much better between. After a while we sat down. How close? I could not tell you: perhaps a thigh’s width. I sat a thigh’s width from her, at last this spectre of RP and big conversation come to life. She was sober. Was she sober? She held herself with more grace than I, leaning precisely forward to speak or to listen. She had seen a famous actor outside and, ‘to break the ice’, I had twenty questions to guess who.
‘Dead or alive?’
‘Man or woman?’
‘TV or film?’
I am not sure of the time that passed. She was as I had imagined, but the night was not. The music became even louder and I couldn’t hear a word she was saying. Perhaps a word or two could be made out and the rest of the sentence constructed through context, but no, I was nigh on deaf to everything she was saying. Of course I would beg her pardon but then after failing to hear a second time it was too embarrassing to ask a lady to repeat herself again, so I sat there dumb and grinning, clueless. She caught me, and all the apologies could not make up for the way she stared at me.
How strong is this beer? How empty is my stomach? These nerves have surely made me tenderer to the drink.
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When I looked back at it the morning after, I could recall very little. There was this odd white trail of memory, strongest at entry and palest at the exit. Even the good-bye was faint, although it may have been conducted in the middle of the road, amidst passing traffic, brief. I laughed to myself but it was a sour laugh, the kind of laugh one does not like to make, the kind of laugh saved for when the fairground ride was a bit rough and a friend asks you how you are. I laughed because. I laughed because the moment had passed, and it did not linger about my brain but asked to be chased. The gravity of the situation was elusive at that moment; the opportunity had passed
A brief moment of time. (Secondary school took four years to sink into; university two; like a glacier.) Dating was not for me. ‘No, I’m not nervous at all. I’ve been on loads of these,’ she said.
The date opposite us seemed to be going very well, I noticed that. She had her legs draped over his knees and they were laughing. I always notice happy people. Could they hear each other clearly? If only I was not so drunk. The drunk, the tiredness, the rough week would leave me vacant in the morning, and so it was.
I lay there, imagining possibilities and laughing to myself a sour laugh.
I was alone again. I brushed my teeth and went outside. It was the tail-end of Storm Garrett; the winds blew strong and all the dust on the roads came up into my eyes. It was not so bad to be alone on the Central Line with a coffee, not when children in prams coo, or friends chat, a drunk sips, married couples don’t exchange a word, not so bad.
‘Went on a date last night.’ I looked at myself in the mirror.
He put his hands into my hair—‘Really? You never seemed the type, so I never asked. How’d it go?’
‘All right.’
How strong is this beer? How empty is my stomach? These nerves have surely made me tenderer to the drink.
When I looked back at it the morning after, I could recall very little. There was this odd white trail of memory, strongest at entry and palest at the exit. Even the good-bye was faint, although it may have been conducted in the middle of the road, amidst passing traffic, brief. I laughed to myself but it was a sour laugh, the kind of laugh one does not like to make, the kind of laugh saved for when the fairground ride was a bit rough and a friend asks you how you are. I laughed because. I laughed because the moment had passed, and it did not linger about my brain but asked to be chased. The gravity of the situation was elusive at that moment; the opportunity had passed
A brief moment of time. (Secondary school took four years to sink into; university two; like a glacier.) Dating was not for me. ‘No, I’m not nervous at all. I’ve been on loads of these,’ she said.
The date opposite us seemed to be going very well, I noticed that. She had her legs draped over his knees and they were laughing. I always notice happy people. Could they hear each other clearly? If only I was not so drunk. The drunk, the tiredness, the rough week would leave me vacant in the morning, and so it was.
I lay there, imagining possibilities and laughing to myself a sour laugh.
I was alone again. I brushed my teeth and went outside. It was the tail-end of Storm Garrett; the winds blew strong and all the dust on the roads came up into my eyes. It was not so bad to be alone on the Central Line with a coffee, not when children in prams coo, or friends chat, a drunk sips, married couples don’t exchange a word, not so bad.
‘Went on a date last night.’ I looked at myself in the mirror.
He put his hands into my hair—‘Really? You never seemed the type, so I never asked. How’d it go?’
‘All right.’
—19th March 2019