It was only a petite
semaine, Tuesday till Sunday, but it feels like I've been away for an
eternity. Unbeknownst to me, it even snowed here while I was gone. There wasn't
much evidence of it on the road home from Brive, but our track was still a
picturesque matt white, being always the last place to thaw.
I seem to have been on the road or rail for a pocket
eternity. My wife implored me to find some quicker and more comfortable form of
transport, something more in keeping with my time of life, but there were no
flights to Southampton in January and I was too late for sensibly-priced
Eurostar tickets. Besides, I was intrigued to try out Megabus.com. What kind of
business model can be based on tickets so cheap? £18 from Brive all the way to
London, every day of the week. Are they mad?
Not according to the driver. They pay him a good wage –
50% more than he got as a driver of tour buses – and they're expanding. They
already go to France, Spain, Belgium, Holland and Germany, and this spring
there's a new route planned to Milan via Lyon and Turin. My coach had come up
from Barcelona and the driver told me that, if you book early enough, there are
a few seats to be had at a £1 each. He told me of a student who had travelled
from Aberdeen to London for a quid and then on to Barcelona for another one.
It does, however, take a long, long time. I boarded my
coach just after two o'clock and arrived in London at about six the next
morning. There's an inconvenient three-hour break in Paris, along with another
two hours on the ferry, but still... My wife, I think, is worried that putting
myself through such an ordeal goes with the hair-shirt handed down from my
mother.
Well, yes and no. I was genuinely curious and it's true
that such a bargain deal pleases me about as much as snapping up a Blue Note CD
for a euro in among the dross at Cash Converters. I also wanted to try out the
service for our daughter, who might one day be glad of it if she realises her
ambition of studying her metier in Scotland. Besides, it really wasn't that
much of an ordeal. The coaches are state-of-the-art, warm and comfortable with
a plug for your phone and/or laptop and LED reading lights for short-sighted
citizens like me who want to lose themselves in a good book.
Soon after midday the following day, I was chatting with
my father in the comfort of his new flat in Romsey, Hants. My sisters and I had
dinner with him in a pub that evening and, after almost three weeks in cold storage,
we buried our mother the following morning. It was bitterly cold but very
beautiful and, as funerals go, a fine occasion.
My mother would have whole-heartedly approved. The little
parish church of North Baddesley is right on the edge of the Southampton
overspill, looking out across open, rolling countryside. The ceremony was
concise and dignified. My eulogy made people laugh and I concluded it by
reading a beautiful poem my mother once wrote about John Clare, the 19th
century romantic poet. She recognised in him a kindred spirit: unable to cope
with modern life, he would end his days as a madman in a form of psychiatric
hospital.
Afterwards, we filed out and followed her willow coffin past
the oldest tombstones to a plot they had prepared for her at the edge of the
graveyard. No one mercifully tried to fling themselves into the open grave. We
said our goodbyes and left messages among the tasteful arrangement of wild
flowers. Far enough away from the traffic's wall of sound, it was like a scene
from some updated Thomas Hardy novel.
We then headed off for soup, sandwiches and coffee cake
in a little room above the tea shop in St. John's House, a charming historical
building tucked away behind the centre of Romsey. We had a soundtrack of the CD
my father and I had compiled the previous afternoon. Along with the Chopin and
Glenn Miller, it included my mother's incongruous favourite: Les McCann's
'Compared to What', a version of which Roberta Flack included on her first
album.
By noon the following day, I was off again. Bound for
Liverpool and a reunion of the class of '73. This time by rail, changing at the
most awful station in the world: Birmingham New Street. True to form, there was
chaos on the underground platform. The power lines from Euston were down, so I
had to make my way to Liverpool uncertainly via Lichfield and Crewe.
It wasn't a fit
night out for man nor beast, as I made my way down from my labyrinthine
hotel in Mountpleasant to Albert Dock via the centre of town. I couldn't find
our meeting place at the Premier Inn and wandered about in the dark; wet, windswept
and bemused. But it was there, after all, right beside the Beatles Museum. And
there in the bar was a group of old school associates, already well into the
business of celebrating reunification after 42 years.
And my oh my, it's weird. Paul, my old classmate and the
only other 'boy' to turn up, confessed that he'd been 'terrified'. Probably a
bit of Belfast bluster, but I knew what he meant. I'd certainly felt an element
of trepidation and it was awkward to be put on the spot and asked whom of the
assembled group you remembered. It was only later, after we'd shifted our
reunion to one of those big noisy restaurants that resemble seated nightclubs,
that I started to remember voices and adapt youthful profiles to their aging
permutations.
I went to a big school. There were three or four hundred
of us in the 6th form alone, so of course you didn't – couldn't –
know everyone. We all had our own cliques and the majority of those back
together again seemed to have a scientific bent. It was noticeable that neither
my best friend, Winston, nor I featured in any of the group photographs of
dimly recognised individuals we tried to name. We had probably mitched off to drink or smoke and listen
to the new Frank Zappa and do generally arty things with our more literary
pals.
But it didn't really matter a jot. Those of us who'd come
together have all gone our separate ways. Helen B., whom I'd known as Helen W.,
has lived in Germany for 30 years; Rosie has a house in France; Alanna has
lived in Australia and renovated houses in Wiltshire; Paul is now a man from the motor trade, who lives in
Dunblane, Scotland. Yet we all have our old school in common. We all remember
the same teachers and we all share similar acquaintances.
We all, too, grew up with the Fab Four. So, next morning,
we met up to dredge up still more memories at the Beatles Museum. I was even able
to claim my first ever senior citizen discount. This, too, was pretty weird, as
I've been immersed in the Mop Tops' life stories during the past fortnight. The
museum is full of artefacts and mementos and reproductions that might have been
as naff as their Madame Tussaud wax models. But they weren't. The mock Cavern
was particularly poignant. I found myself standing at the stage staring at the
three guitars and the empty drum kit, listening to the endless loop of 'Twist
And Shout', almost paralysed by nostalgia.
When we said our farewells, we vowed to do something
similar at some time in the future. And we meant it, because it was lovely. The
sands of time are pouring rapidly through the glass neck now, so we can't
afford to wait another 42 years. With power restored to the overhead cables, I
finished Shout! on the train back to
London, resolved to go back, Jack, and do
it again.
So I'm home again in a land that somehow still feels less
familiar than Northern Ireland does. Despite my daughter's imprecations, I
hitched into the centre of Brive from the Commercial Centre where the chatty
coach driver deposited me. A young lad in a beaten up car full of empty beer
bottles, with his four-year old daughter strapped into a car seat in the back,
stopped to pick me up after only a couple of minutes of wondering whether I was
tempting kidnap and/or murder. He was only heading for a petrol station, but he
took me out of his way and dropped me off at the Rex cinema.
I found my car, still parked where I'd left it. I'd quite
forgotten to lock it. I guess that's the impact of all those passing years on
your grey matter.
No comments:
Post a Comment