Sitting on the beach again. Throwing stones into the blue.
I always come back here. Every time.
Shake myself off and start again.

It started on the morning of the fight.
I was tetchy, obviously – knowing your head is going to hit the canvas is not nice.
But three grand is three grand.
Five hundred people cheering as your knees buckle.
But three grand is three grand.
She said we needed to talk.
We need to talk – she didn’t need to tell me what that meant .
Tomorrow. I can’t even think about this right now.
She stormed out.
Thanks for your support.
She phoned me before the fight – said sorry.
But we still need to talk right?
Yeah.

Some fights you know you’re going to win.
Some fights you know you can’t win.
Tonight was the latter.
Up and coming youngster.
I’m the bait. I’m the fall guy.
Tonight they didn’t tell me to lose.
They didn’t have to.
They knew that.
It lasted five rounds.
Fuck it hurt. Could have got up.
No way I was getting up.
Got badly cut.
Can’t fight for three months now.
That fucked me off.
Went out and got off my head.
That was the trouble. I always did that.
Turned up at her place at 4am.
Still off my head.
She said go. Come back tomorrow – sober.
Fuck You.
I pushed past her. Wanted to sort it out here and now.
Get out. Get out now.

I never meant to do it. I never did.
I lost control.
I loved her and didn’t want to lose her.
Funny way of showing it.

We met in a Deli. I’d just finished training.
I spilt her coffee as I squeezed my big ass past her table.
I bought her another one.
She asked me what I did.
Punchbag.
Boxer I told her.
She looked after kids.
We went out the next night.
Best behaviour – didn’t drink.
She said I made her laugh.
Went out again – spent the night.
She told me she didn’t like me boxing.
She worried.
I didn’t like it when they worried.
It’s what I did. It’s what I was best at.
I had a drink that night.
Had an argument with some guy about a cab – shoved him out of the way.
That was the beginning.
Four months later – and it wasn’t guys I was pushing.
Though it was only ever a push – until tonight.

She went down. No one was counting this time.

I watched her from my car. Wanted to speak to her.
She was still wearing sunglasses.
Three weeks later.
And she was still wearing sunglasses.
Fuck.

I wrote her a letter.
How do you apologise for that?

She wrote back.
She doesn’t hate me.
I wish she did.
But she doesn’t want to see me.
Ever.

I always come back here. Every time.
Shake myself off and start again.

The church was hot today. Hot and humid.
John Sowter rose from his knees, and stretched his limbs. He was alone – he liked it that way. Clutching his bible he walked out into the sun – his eyes squinting.
The slow walk along the dusty path was always a time for reflection. Reflection on his life, his family and his standing. But as ever, his thoughts turned to his loss. His daughter had only been nine when the disease had taken her. And since that day, he had walked the same path three or four times a day. Asking questions. And hoping to receive answers.

The final part of his walk took him past the fields, the Dogwood trees lining a path towards his imposing abode. The mournful song from the fields matched his mood.
His maid was waiting for him, holding the door ajar, and he strode past her towards the library.
The library was a place of shelter, escape. Upon entering, he realised his wife was sitting reading.
“John. Come and sit down. I have some news. The pastor came by, and the school can now be built”.
A hint of a smile seemed to creep across Johns face, but disappeared just as quick. His generous donation had made it possible.
He and his wife, then, as they seemed to do more and more lately, sat in silence for a long while, until there was a gentle rap on the door.

“Master Sowter, the matter you asked me about – would you like to deal with it now?” asked Tom Whitehouse, John Sowter’s overseer.
John nodded to his wife and left the library.
“Thank you Tom – I’ll look after this one.”

The kitchen was dead quiet. At times like this the staff knew to make themselves scarce.

“Barney, you know why I am doing this don’t you. Mr Whitehouse has informed me that you absconded last night to see your sister.”
“She dying Sir,” said the slave, wide eyed, his hands tied to the rope hanging down from the wooden hoist.

This wasn’t by any means the first time for Barney – which made it worse. The scars from last time had barely healed – but the memory of the pain was still fresh.
He would pray. Pray it would end. Pray for help. Pray he would die.

John Sowter considered not using the gag. The screams would serve as a warning to the others – but being late afternoon, the fields were being worked, and he didn’t want to slow this down any.
“He that knoweth his master’s will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes,” John quoted and then placed his bible on the worktop and picked up the birch.

After a little over an hour it was finished. John Sowter walked to the sink, washed his hands and then made his way back out of the house.
His wife watched from the window, as John once again made the slow journey back to the church.

A more pious man she did not know.

She was so different.
Never met anyone like her before.
Never will again.

This is gonna sound so so stupid, but I fell in love with her the moment I set eyes on her. That very moment.
She was nineteen then. I was twenty seven.
She could have had any man at that party. And she knew it.
That night she chose me.

I drove her home.
“This is where I invite you in for coffee, isn’t it??” she asked.
Said so innocently, but there was no innocence about it.

Fifteeen months we were, how should I put it, together.
Together in my eyes anyway.
She was the one for me, the one I always wanted – but I knew the feeling wasn’t mutual.
You see, it wasn’t me she wanted. There was this one guy – the only guy in the world she couldn’t have, and because she couldn’t have him, she wanted him all the more.
So I was the stand in.
But that was enough for me. Then.
I was the one who had her. Not him.
But he was the one who really had her.

She got him eventually. He left his wife for her.
That was when I got shown the door.
The hardest thing I’ve ever had to take.
I was completely screwed.
One hell of a mess.
I got away for a while. Lived with a friend in the States.

Anyone else would have been too embarrassed. Not her.
She sent me a text.
“I need you.”
Three guesses what I did.
Jumped on a plane.
He’d gone back to his wife. The first reserve was back off the subs bench.
Three months later we were engaged.
She was mine. Finally mine.

And they all lived happily ever after.

Yeah right.
I found her in the bathroom.
Passed out.
Vodka.
His picture.

The next day I left.
She begged me to stay.
She couldn’t live without me.

“Fuck you”

It was a fun night. I was the centre of attention.
I liked it that way.
He caught my eye immediately.
A few years older than me – nothing new there then.
He drove me home. He didn’t need asking twice if he wanted to come in.

He wasn’t a rebound. I’d given up hope with John, and I knew I had to move on.
And he helped me. Helped me so much.
He put a smile on my face.
Not that fake smile I was so good at.
A real smile.
But I couldn’t shake him off. John was always there.
John was my dream.
And then my dream came true.
John left his wife.

Telling him was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
It broke him. Crushed him. Crushed me too.
I was certain it was John I wanted.
Until then.

It never worked out.
It wasn’t John I liked. It was the thought of being with John.
Don’t get me wrong, we had a great few weeks – but then it started to go wrong.
I’d made the biggest mistake of my life.

John got back with his wife.
I sent him a text – he was in America.
“I need you.”
I didn’t think he’d respond. I was so fucking selfish.
But he did.
And it was amazing.
He asked me to marry him.
I couldn’t say yes quick enough.

The girls had come over. The drink was flowing.
You know how girls can talk.
That night we decided to exorcise John – get him out of my life forever.
Before I went to bed I took his picture out.
Was going to put it in the trash.
Never got that far. I passed out.

It never got that far.

I begged him to stay.
I pleaded with him.
He didn’t understand. Didn’t believe me.
The last words he said to me.

“Fuck You”

John worked in his office on the third floor of the family townhouse that he and his wife occupied. He sat at his neat and tidy desk, shuffling his pile of neat and tidy papers, and watched the world go by through the large window to the right of his desk. John spent all day with one eye on the latest share prices, and his other eye fixed on the neighbourhood – and when his job became second nature to him, it was this other eye that he found much more captivating.

The school run mums were the first group to catch his eye daily, usually just after his second coffee. There was the tall, elegant lady with the young, equally elegant daughter who were always the first to pass, and this signaled the start of the school rush. In the next ten minutes, most of the kids and parents would shuffle past, and then finally the latecomers would speed past, in a funny half walk, half run. Then a few minutes later the same people, minus their children, would come back past, this time a little slower, normally in groups of two or three, deep in conversation.

Around eleven, John would always hear a car beep, and look down to see a small white van, and a few minutes later a shabbily dressed man would rush down the stairs of the house opposite – loudly apologise for taking so long, and then the van would accelerate away.

And a half hour after that, a green car with a ladder attached to the roof rack would pull up a few doors away. A short unshaven man would always get out, slick his hair back with his hand, and then wave with a newspaper up to the window of an apartment on the corner. Always standing in the window was an elderly lady, who would wave back, and then remain at the window, until the man, presumably her son, would enter the apartment building – at which point she would leave the window. Fifteen or twenty minutes later, the man would come out and drive off, with the elderly lady once again watching from the window, until the car was out of sight.

So this was John’s morning routine, and he had been seeing the same people doing the same things for over two years now. And although life moved on, these little sub plots still carried on, with a pleasing regularity.

It was in March that all this changed. The school run was the same, the white van (now a newer model) was still beeping, but John stopped seeing the green car. For a couple of days John hadn’t really noticed, there had been odd days before when the car hadn’t turned up. Then after a week John realised that he hadn’t seen it for a while, which he thought was a little strange.

One afternoon a couple of days after that, John was sitting at his desk, busy for once, when something in the street caught his eye. A hearse was driving slowly past, and in the car behind, peering distantly out of the window, was the unshaven man.John never saw the man or the green car again.

Six thirteen. AM.
Disoriented at first, then a realization. Lisa. No Liz. Yeah that’s it – Liz.
She’s naked. Sound asleep.

I’m wide awake. I always wake up immediately when I’ve been drinking the night before. I let my eyes become accustomed to the semi-darkness and scan the room.

There are my clothes and there is the door. That’s all I need to know.
I pull on my jeans, shirt and jacket. Check the pockets – phone, keys and wallet – all present and correct. The wallet still has money in it. Good – I haven’t spent it all, and none has been taken – you can’t take any chances.

I go into the hallway, and close the door gently behind me.
The hallway is familiar. We didn’t get as far as the bedroom for quite a while.
Fortunately she hadn’t locked the front door from the inside – other things on her mind.
I leave.

As the fresh air hits me – I realise my head is pounding. It’s the crack of dawn, I don’t have any idea of where I am and I need a piss. I find an alleyway and relieve myself.

Classy.

I find a main road, and there’s a shop. I buy a bottle of water, some aspirin and a packet of cigarettes. Twenty, not my usual ten. I ask the guy directions to the nearest tube station. It’s a twenty minute walk – which I’m glad of. Clear my head a bit.

The underground station is relatively quiet. Only losers like myself are up this early on a Saturday morning. The tube arrives quickly, and I place myself in the corner, my head resting against the glass. For the first four or five stops, I have the carriage to myself, but as we get closer to town, a succession of cleaners, shift-workers, down-and-outs and drunks inhabit my space – or was I inhabiting their space?

Daylight greets me for the first time as I step through the ticket gate – and for the first time this morning I feel cold. I reach the flat and head straight for the shower. The steamed mirror denies me the opportunity of looking at my face, looking into my eyes – which I am eternally glad of.

I sit on the end of my bed, and my eyes immediately become drawn to her picture.
Her picture.
It’s always her face I see.
No matter what their names are – it’s always her face I see.
Always her face.

But it never is her.
Not her hair. Not her smile. Not her mouth. Not her body.
Not her.

The room was a brilliant white and he just sat silently opposite me. He looked exactly as I remembered him and he was calmer than I’d ever seen him. As the thousands of words that I wanted to say raced through my mind, I struggled to begin – where could I begin?

“Do you remember?”
I kept saying those words over and over, and every time there was a different ending to the sentence, and every time he nodded. And with every nod I could see in his face that he was back in that place – there was a glint in his eye, and occasionally a huge smile would spread across his wrinkled face.

I told him I knew he’d been looking after me. Looking out for me and guiding me. I’d grown a lot in the time since… I know who I am, what I want, where I’m heading.

The day of the funeral had been one of the saddest days of my life, and as I realise now, one of the proudest. Seeing the Union flag draped across his coffin made my chest burst, and I was so proud to have been a part of that life. So proud.

“You helped me. You taught me. Sometimes I never believed you. You always did the right thing, and at one time I thought that was wrong. I thought other people got ahead by doing the wrong thing, and I was getting left behind, and I resented it. But you were right, and I realise that now.”

As a child, it was my dread that he’d go. He was old then, but he was always around. He was around for my first days at school, my first car, my first house, my wedding day, my first daughter. Some day I’ll bring myself to look at the pictures of him and my daughter. She’ll never remember him of course, but she’ll know all about him.

“I hope you are proud. Proud of my past, present and whatever I do in the future. I’ll never fight a war, and I’ll never see the things you saw, and I know you are thankful for that. You never glorified war.”

The last few times I saw him I always made sure that I said goodbye properly. He was very old then, and the signs were there.
I shook his hand. His hands were rough.
“Goodbye H,” I said as I looked into his failing eyes. As I walked out of the room I turned around one last time and looked at him.

“Goodbye H and thankyou”

In memory of
Henry Charles Dodd 1910-2005