WHAT MEETS WHAT

“I turn into my heart. I look into it, trying to see myself. Or is it perhaps to see you in me. I try to understand myself. Understand why you abandoned me as you did. Now I can see you from afar off. Far out in the distance. There you are. A tiny figure, like a model from a toy army, gazing back at me. Stock still. Solid. Unmoving and unmoved. Caste in painted tin. Brittle as toffee.”

Patricia was lonely now. More lonely than she had been since her years at boarding school, those years in Broadstairs during the second world war. She had promised herself back then that once she was grown she would break free from the pain of others: from her mother. Her silent father. Mrs Hesselmire. Veronica, her best friend.

But it was all coming back to greet her now at the other end. A long way off.

“Charlie.” She had told him on his last visit. “You were my sweetheart. We fell for each other long before no one else would have us. When we were firm, ripe for eating, desirable.” He had looked at her impassively as though he had already made up his mind. “I remember the first time you touched me Charlie.” She had continued regardless. “I don’t mean like that.” She corrected herself just in case he was thinking of that first night in his digs. “Not felt me. But just touched me. You… Well, all at once you became enthused by something you were saying and like a girl put your hand on mine for a second to push home the point, to express yourself more forcefully. Like a girl.” He shifted slightly, readjusting his bulk on the red plastic chair. “My heart leaped just a little, partly from excitement and partly from dismay.” She remembered it all as though it were almost now. She looked out the window, seeing it all again. “It was only then that I realised my feelings for you. It was only when I feared you might be one of those that I recognised the feelings I possessed in my heart.”

The room was cheap and nasty and in need of repair. The staff wore civvies so one could not easily tell them from the patients. There was this though: they would follow those who suffered from certain psychoses ceaselessly about to insure no self harm. They would peer down through small viewing windows to check that those who felt the unending pain of paranoia would not become so distraught as to require further medication. One of the chairs was torn and some of its foam filling had been picked away, piece by piece. Another had an unfortunate stain.

“Hold your hand up to me my love.” She had requested. His large hands remained where they were but it was no matter. “No.” She continued unconcerned. “See there? There is no glow. No halo. You are not one of those chosen ones.” Charlie started to think about how best to make his exit. “You are not one of the special people I meet sometimes on the streets. Like the cobbler near the corner of Chestnut Grove. Special beings. Agents of God in their own way. But I loved you none the less, despite your weaknesses. Despite your arrogance, stupidity and violence. I loved you because you were handsome and I was beautiful back then. And that is what people did, and still do I suppose. Pointlessly. Without shame”

He had taken that last insult as his queue to leave and eased himself slowly to his feet.

She passed her hand idly over an ashtray and watched as the dust responded to her magnetic forces. They seemed strong in her right now. She lifted her palm and the security door on the other side of the room clicked open in response. Someone entered. Casually she got up and walked across the room. Eyes from every corner watched but she focused her mind and their thoughts turned away from her. She became almost invisible. Her departure went by unnoticed. She stepped through the door, down the stairs and out into the open air below.

Gower Street was empty a minute, waiting for the lights to change at the Euston Square end. Patricia stood there patiently waiting for the next onslaught to come.

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