Joseph O'Neill - The Breezes

I quickly walk the distance from the pub to the flat. I run up the stairs, keys ready. I push open the door and prepare to call out, Angie, Angie, it’s me.

But nobody, apart from me, is in.

But it’s half-past twelve! It’s Monday, for God’s sake!

Unwell, I drop the keys on a table. Anything could have happened to her. I walk in a circle around the room and then without warning I drop through some trap-door and an absolute, electrical sensation of absence engulfs me. She could be nowhere. Angela could be nowhere.

I grab a table with both my hands and lean forward. Block out those thoughts. Think of something else, quick …

But what comes to mind, for some reason, is this image: a hot-air balloon anchored tenuously to the earth with ropes, shifting uneasily in the currents of air, tugging to be gone, to obey the rules of physics and drift upwards into the atmosphere … Memories! These are Angela’s remains once she has gone, these are her ties to the earth and all that substantiate her. But what shadowy tethers! I have loved that girl for four years and even I, standing here in her room, cannot bring to mind more than a few moments — and even these are blurred, incomplete snapshots … Walking towards me on a foggy train platform, her head thrown back with laughter; unselfconsciously holding me for every second of our first night together; her eyes closed and mouth slightly agape as she lies on her back in erotic concentration. And if I bring her jumper to my face and smell the brand of her perfume, then, yes, I catch a momentary whiff of her; if I read her letters or look at photographs, something does come back. But that’s it. The laughs, the looks, the moments, the company, the fun, the reality of her, her thereness — all gone. For good. This is what I cannot get away from any more at night, this is what leaves me sweating and sleepless and outraged: for good. It happened last night and it’s happening now, this crushing realization: soon it will all be over, for good. In perpetuity.

No. No.

Another cigarette, quick.

Calm yourself, Johnny, calm yourself. It will not matter, death is not an experience, and besides, the eternity that preceded you wasn’t so bad, was it? So why mind the one in store? You don’t pity the dead, so stop pitying yourself. Grow up. It happens to everybody. It’s natural, everything ends.

But I reject that! That is cowardice, not maturity! I am John Breeze, I am alive, I refuse to disappear!

But I will.

Here they come again, all together: disbelief, certainty and freezing fear.

All of a sudden it is as though I am floating. Although I am standing with both feet solidly on the floor, my legs may as well be hanging in thin air. I recognize the feeling. It is that of the boy suspended high up on the seat of a see-saw as three others sit on the grounded seat, outweighing the boy and keeping him up there in the sky against his will. He shakes at the handlebar and kicks his legs, but nothing is changed and he remains where he is, powerless and dangling. A double fear preys on the boy’s mind: the fear of remaining airborne indefinitely and the fear of the alternative, the letdown, the crunching drop to earth. Either way, he is helpless and this, in the end, is perhaps the worst, most distressing thing: he is wholly at the mercy of the three others. They know this, and this is the kick they get out of it. They are in charge. The imbalance favours them spectacularly. They are reddening and squealing with the purity of the thrill.

It’s frightening; I feel so afloat, so unreal, that I could be in a dream. But I’m here, God damn it, I’m here in the flesh!

I take off my jumper and go to the kitchen to run cold water against my face. Maybe there is something wrong with my metabolism, or my blood circulation. Maybe the central heating is turned up too high.

I return to the living-room and just move around for a few moments. Then decisively I leap up and catch hold of the solid rim of the bed and hang there like an ape for a few moments until the muscles in my shoulders and arms ache with the weight of my body. I keep hanging there, letting the pain worsen until I’m fighting to hold my grip. Then I let go and land.

I feel a little more awakened. OK, that’s a bit better. Now let’s put some music on and maybe try another cigarette.

There’s an old Beatles album on the turntable. That’ll do.

A song or two go by and then on it comes, ‘Here Comes the Sun’, George Harrison, and I remember a glittering winter afternoon — was it a year or two years ago? — when this song was playing and this room shone. In the sudden confluence of the music and the light, Angela and I spontaneously looked up at each other from our Sunday newspapers and rose to our feet to hold each other in the luminous centre of the room, grinning at each other with delight, and Angela said, her eyes actually glistening, Is this heaven? Are we there?

I hit the stop button. The needle-arm floats back to its rest.

I drop face-down on to the sofa, eyes closed. My shoes fall from my feet.

But a sleepless minute later, I roll over on to my side to make myself more comfortable, and momentarily my eyes blink open again. There is the praying-chair, six feet away.

Pa asked me to pray for Merv.

I shut my eyes. Forget it, Pa. Dream on.

I roll off the sofa. I go over to the chair and remove the fern and wipe clean the ring of earth the plantpot has left on the uncushioned hassock. I kneel down, resting my elbows on the praying-desk. The wood is rock-hard on the kneecaps.

OK, God, I’m going to make this quick. Help Merv. Help him to pull through.

I shift my knees. Help Mrs Rasmussen, too, and the son, what’s his name, Billy. Then I think, What the hell, and I say to God, And help Pa. Help him to get through this weekend and help him to keep his job. Keep him healthy. Help Rosie, too. Help her to find happiness. She’s in big trouble, she needs a hand, she needs every hand on deck. A pause. Help Angela. Please let her be safe. Let her come back tonight. Oh, yes, and Steve. Don’t forget Steve. Keep an eye out for that poor bastard, as well. Make sure he gets back in one piece.

I stay where I am, leaning hard on the desk.

Help me, as well, God.

A feeling of surrealism overcomes me. I remember the poet who took a lobster for a walk.

Then I remember Ma, but cannot recall her. Ma, who was my mother.

I get up. I move over to the windows and part the curtains one more time. It has stopped raining. The golden shapes of windows in the houses across the street have disappeared. There is no sign of Angela. Above the rooftops, dark spaces of sky appear where the wind has ripped up the clouds.

‘Close the door!’

The man sitting in front of me leans over and smashes shut the carriage door, killing the draught.

‘I can’t believe the rudeness of these people,’ he says to me. He is about fifty years old. Stiff white sprigs of hair jut from his nostrils.

I raise my eyebrows mutely.

The man straightens his tie. ‘Mind you, these trains don’t help, do they? I mean, why don’t they have electric doors which open and close automatically? Why do we have to put up with this rubbish? They’ve got electric doors in Holland, France, Germany — they’ve even got them in Italy. Why haven’t we got them?’

Again, I agree with a meek movement of the face. I glance briefly at the other person in the carriage, a lady in her seventies. She has a bandage taped over her left eye.

‘It’s a joke,’ the man says. ‘A bad joke.’

‘Excuse me,’ the lady says. ‘I wonder if you might tell me when we arrive in Waterville. You see, I can’t see very well. I’ve had an operation.’