Kissed a Sad Goodbye

THE COINS CLINKED INTO GORDON FINCH’S clarinet case in a staccato, irregular rhythm. The children tossed them, then stood as close as they dared, rapt with attention, moving their bodies unselfconsciously to the music. Both the small girls and boys were bare-chested in the heat, the definition of their ribs showing like the delicate tracery of the branching veins in a leaf. Their faces were flushed from the sun, and some held half-forgotten ice creams in sticky fingers.

He envied them their uncomplicated innocence, intact until someone came along to bugger it up for them. Thank God he hadn’t the responsibility for the shaping of a life. Caring for Sam was about as much as he could manage, and he’d been off his nut to think otherwise.

He finished “Cherry Blossom Pink” and wiped the clarinet’s mouthpiece. The children watched him, large-eyed, jiggling up and down in expectation. Their parents stood behind them, some half sitting on the knee-high iron railing that separated the flower bed from the round, brick bulk of the Isle of Dogs entrance to the foot tunnel. Lifting the clarinet to his lips again, he played a bit of “London Bridge.” The children giggled and he thought for a moment, searching his memory for tunes they might like, then improvised “Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush.”

A pied piper with a clarinet, he slid into “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” then “When I’m Sixty-Four,” from the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album, and the children bounced and swayed happily. But after a bit their parents grew restive, and one by one the families began to drift away. They all had agendas, he thought as he watched them leave—places to go, things to do, people to see. Surely he didn’t envy them that as well?

Finishing the piece, he drank from the bottle of water he’d bought at the refreshment kiosk a few yards away. He stood with his back to the spreading plane tree at the far end of Island Gardens. Behind him, just the other side of the tree, ran the river promenade. People strolled by at the undemanding pace dictated by the hot summer day, pausing occasionally to rest on the benches or gaze at the bright glint of the Thames. Directly across the river, the twin white domes of the Royal Naval College irresistibly drew the eye, echoed by the round dome of the Greenwich end of the foot tunnel.

Between the Naval College and the tunnel rose the tall masts of the Cutty Sark, in dry dock at Greenwich Pier. The ship was the last survivor of the lovely clippers that had once unloaded their cargoes in the East End’s docks, and he’d often wished he had been born in time to witness the end of that era. But near the Cutty Sark, the much smaller, flag-bedecked Gipsy Moth proved that adventure was still possible, for in 1967, Sir Francis Chichester had single-handedly sailed the tiny yacht around the world.

A voyage around the world would present an easy solution to his own present predicament, but Gordon knew even as the thought flitted through his mind that he was too well-rooted here, in the place where he’d spent his childhood, and that running away would solve nothing in the end.

Squatting, he sloshed a bit of water into the bowl he always carried for Sam. “Thirsty, mate?” The dog raised his head, then lumbered to his feet with an air that spoke more of duty than desire. After a few obliging laps of water, he circled twice on the patch of bare earth he’d chosen as his bed and settled himself again, nose on his front paws. Sam’s movements were visibly slower these days, but it was hot, after all, and the heat made everyone lethargic. Still, Gordon had made up his mind not to take the dog down into the tunnel anymore—the seeping dampness couldn’t be good for the animal’s joints.

Not that he wanted to play in the tunnel anyway, after what had happened last night. Of course, he’d known he would see her—it was inevitable, living and working in such close proximity. Yet he had stayed on the Island, playing in the park, in the tunnel, beneath the shadow of the cranes on Glengall Bridge, tempting fate. Even today, as good as this pitch was, there were places he might have done better. Maybe he should pack up and try South Ken, or Hampstead High Street, or Islington again.

He knelt, hands on the clarinet as he prepared to break it apart, and before his eyes flashed an image of Annabelle’s face, white and furious. Last night, anger had stripped her of the cool veneer of detachment she’d maintained even when he’d told her he wanted no more to do with her. He’d thought that, perhaps for the first time, he’d had a glimpse of who she really was, what she really felt, but still he’d not been willing to believe her. Now, doubt gripped him and he wondered if he had been blinded by pride.

What if he’d misjudged her? What if he had been wrong?