Patrick Thompson - Execution Plan

I looked around. She was talking to me. What did she mean, ‘again’?

‘Hello?’ I said.

‘Who’s that you’re with? Not one of your crowd. I thought you hung around with a livelier bunch.’

She looked slightly quizzical. Her features managed to be both heavy and delicate; a neat trick, I thought. I didn’t know what had compelled me to talk to her. Olaf and drink, perhaps. My usual approach was more circumspect. Still, I did know that I didn’t know her. I didn’t know anyone who looked that good.

‘You must have me mixed up,’ I said.

‘That sounds about right. Can I get you a drink?’

‘I’ll get you one.’

‘That’s a bit old fashioned, isn’t it? I’m allowed to buy the drinks. We’re in the eighties now, you know.’

‘I know.’

‘Are you sure we haven’t met?’

I said that I was. I’d have remembered her. It wasn’t as though I met many girls. Computers didn’t attract them.

‘I’m Tina,’ she said, ‘and as I don’t know you, you’ll need to tell me who you are.’

‘Mick Aston,’ I said.

‘Are you doing anything tomorrow evening, Mick Aston?’ she asked. I wasn’t. ‘Well, you are now,’ she said. ‘Thanks for the drink.’

The next night she took me to Aberystwyth to see a film. I was expecting something French and gloomy, but she chose a noisy extravaganza with car chases and guns. She seemed to be watching me as much as the film. Perhaps it was because she was a psychology student, I thought. On the way back to Borth on the night bus, she edged closer to me across the seat.

‘Do you think people always have hidden depths?’ she asked. ‘Or is what you see what you get?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I think you’ve got depths,’ she said. She visibly came to a decision and kissed me, as though she’d been wondering whether to or not. I’d already reached the same decision and left her to it.

We had a brief affair, and ended up as friends. That’s as good as it gets, I think. Anything longer-term is based on a different emotion. It’s still called love, but it’s another flavour. Our little affair was all over in a month.

It was obvious early on that we wanted different things from the relationship. I wanted everything. I saw her and became happy.

She, on the other hand, saw some potential in me. She saw something under the surface. She could see a possible me, and it was him that she was after. He stayed hidden, however. She liked me, but not as much as she liked the version of me that I failed to become.

She began to cool. I attempted to woo her. It wasn’t something I had a talent for.

I tried to write poems for her, but they came out lifeless. I couldn’t get words to do anything good. We’d hold hands and walk the four-mile round trip to Borth and back. We slept together in my tiny student bed. I would find her crying from time to time. By the third week, that was all she was doing.

She told me she was sorry, she’d like to be friends.

We were friends. I didn’t have an easy time with that. But hope springs eternal, the vicious little bastard.

Borth is really not much more than a road by the sea. You approach it by way of a long road that follows the estuary of the river Dyfi. The road winds past the college grounds, a thin strip of swampland, and a golf course. The road goes through the middle of the links, splitting the course into two and providing golfers and motorists alike with an extra hazard. A high sloping wall of grey concrete blocks the view out to sea. There are car parking spaces next to the sea wall. Inland, there are mountains and clouds.

A large public toilet, which has won awards, stands between the sea wall and the town. The shops all sell the same things; buckets and spades, strange paperbacks, cheap tat. Behind the main road, reached by way of a track, is a church of dark stone. It’s not visible from the town. It’s as though they’re ashamed of it.

A railway line runs behind the town and there’s a station which is not abandoned, despite appearances. Trains stop there at uncertain intervals. Once in a while, if the wind is in the right direction, you hear one clattering off along the estuary, upsetting the seagulls. The town is bookended by two small amusement arcades.

I spent a lot of time in the amusement arcades.

There are two chip shops and one general store. On a high promontory overlooking the town there is a war monument. From there, looking down, you can clearly see that Borth is a straight line of a town, that single road running dead level with the shore. Inland, a great expanse of featureless flat land stretches away to the mountains. It’s as though someone decided to try to build a resort on a salt marsh, just to see if it could be done. From this high viewpoint, you can also see the beach.

To get to the beach you have to climb over the sea wall, which is just over six feet high. It’s triangular in cross-section, and slopes at about forty-five degrees to the vertical. There are steps, but most people scramble up the flanks. In the lee of the wall you notice a chilling wind. On the top of the wall, it does its level best to throw you miles inland. Families wrapped in flapping cagoules struggle with chip papers. The beach is of fist-sized pebbles that are uncomfortable to walk, lie, or fall on. Either the tide or the bored populace has arranged the pebbles into large steps. Scrambling inelegantly down them, you come to a foot-wide strip of sand and then the heaving grey sea. Someone’s dog will shake itself dry next to you. Screeching herring gulls flap out of the surf and are whisked away by the wind.

On bank holidays, people come from most of the Midlands to spend a grim couple of hours struggling along the shore. Children unsuccessfully try to spend their pocket money in the shops. At about five, the town empties. The tourists go home. The wind dies down. The pubs do a miserable trade. In the evening, there’s nothing to see in Borth.

We used to go there in the evenings.

By midway through our final year, the student bar had lost any attraction it had once had. Instead, I took Tina to the Running Cow. The pubs in Borth were still pubs at the time, and families weren’t welcome. The choice of meals consisted of either cheese or ham baps, individually wrapped in cling film and left out on the bar to die. There was a choice of beer or lager and a small selection of shorts. Tina had half a lager. I had a pint.

She was wearing black everything. Her hair had been crimped into crinkly submission. In other circumstances, I wouldn’t have found her attractive. In Borth she was the brightest thing around.

We had decided to be friends. Well, she had decided. I was being friends in case it led back to being lovers, which it doesn’t. Twenty years later we’re still friends.

‘How are you for money?’ she asked.

‘I can afford a round or two.’

‘No, you moron. I mean generally.’

Well enough, I thought. I was a little way into debt but not so far that I wouldn’t be able to find my way back. By all accounts, computer programming would pay more money than I could handle. I’d be a tax exile inside a decade.

‘Fine,’ I said.

‘It’s just that they’re paying people for research. They want two people.’

‘They? Who are they?’

‘Psychology. Dr Morrison is after two volunteers and he’s got a research grant. He’s paying a hundred apiece. I’ve volunteered. Which leaves one place free.’

‘What do we have to do?’

‘He won’t say. It’d prejudice the results.’

‘Maybe it’d prejudice the volunteers.’

‘Perhaps it would. Look, Mick, it’s not as though you have anything else to do.’