The Sense of an Ending

I’d noticed — well, I would — that parking restrictions only applied between the hours of ten and midday. Probably to discourage commuters from driving this far into town, dumping their cars for the day, and carrying on in by Tube. So I decided to take my car this time: a VW Polo whose tyres would last a lot longer than Veronica’s. After a purgatorial hour or so on the North Circular, I found myself in position, parked where we had been before, facing up the slight incline of a suburban street, with the late-afternoon sun catching the dust on a privet hedge. Bands of schoolchildren were on their way home, boys with shirts out of their trousers, girls with provocatively high skirts; many on mobile phones, some eating, a few smoking. When I’d been at school we were told that as long as you were in the uniform you had to behave in a way that reflected well on the institution. So no eating or drinking in the street; while anyone caught smoking would be beaten. Nor was fraternisation with the opposite sex allowed: the girls’ school linked to ours and quartered nearby used to let its pupils out fifteen minutes before the boys were freed, giving them time to get well clear of their predatory and priapic male counterparts. I sat there remembering all this, registering the differences, without coming to any conclusions. I neither applauded nor disapproved. I was indifferent; I had suspended my right to thoughts and judgements. All I cared about was why I had been brought to this street a couple of weeks previously. So I sat with my window down and waited.

After two hours or so, I gave up. I came back the next day, and the next, without success. Then I drove to the street with the pub and the shop, and parked outside. I waited, went into the shop and bought a few things, waited some more, drove home. I had absolutely no sense of wasting my time: rather, it was the opposite way round — that this was what my time was now for. And in any case the shop turned out to be pretty useful. It was one of those places which spans the range from delicatessen to hardware store. Over this period I bought vegetables and dishwasher powder, sliced meats and loo paper; I used the cash machine and stocked up on booze. After the first few days they started calling me ‘mate’.

I thought at one point of contacting the borough’s social-services department and asking if they had a care-in-the-community home which sheltered a man all covered in badges; but doubted this would get me anywhere. I would baulk at their first question: why do you want to know? I didn’t know why I wanted to know. But as I say, I had no sense of urgency. It was like not pressing on the brain to summon a memory. If I didn’t press on — what? — time, then something, perhaps even a solution, might come to the surface.

And in due course I remembered words I’d overheard. ‘No, Ken, no pub today. Friday night’s pub night.’ So the following Friday I drove over and sat with a newspaper in the William IV. It was one of those pubs gentrified by economic pressure. There was a food menu with chargrilled this and that, a telly quietly emitting the BBC News Channel, and blackboards everywhere: one advertising the weekly quiz night, another the monthly book club, a third the upcoming TV sports fixtures, while a fourth bore an epigrammatic thought for the day, no doubt transcribed from some corporate book of wit and wisdom. I slowly drank halves while doing the crossword, but nobody came.

The second Friday, I thought: I may as well have my supper here, so ordered chargrilled hake with handcut chips and a large glass of Chilean Sauvignon Blanc. It wasn’t bad at all. Then, on the third Friday, just as I was forking my penne with gorgonzola and walnut sauce, in walked the lopsided man and the chap with the moustache. They took their seats familiarly at a table, whereupon the barman, clearly used to their requirements, brought each of them a half of bitter, which they proceeded to sip meditatively. They didn’t look around, let alone seek to make eye contact; and in return, no one took any notice of them. After about twenty minutes a motherly black woman came in, went up to the bar, paid, and gently escorted the two men away. I merely observed and waited. Time was on my side, yes it was. Songs do occasionally tell the truth.