Tony Parsons: One For My Baby

I hate it that he didn’t love her.

Jackie looks different.

It’s more than the way that Zeng and Yumi looked different. It’s more than growing up. It’s to do with becoming the someone you always planned to be.

No makeup. That’s new. Her hair worn longer, pulled back in a ponytail, the highlights being allowed to grow out. And she is dressed in jeans and a short T-shirt. She looks younger, more casual, less concerned with the image she presents to the world. But still the same woman. I recognize her in an instant. She couldn’t be anyone else.

I am sitting on a wooden bench facing the college. She is one of a crowd of students who come down the stone steps of the building, laughing and talking and toting their books, not a care to call their own, and then Jackie and some thin young guy with long hair peel away from the rest of the pack.

My heart seems to fall away as he puts his arm around her shoulders, as if he has been doing it forever. Then she sees me.

She comes over, the thin young guy with long hair still with his arm around her, looking uncertainly at her face and then at me. Maybe his heart is falling away a little bit too.

“How’s it going?” I ask her.

“It’s going good,” she says. We look at each other for a while, neither of us knowing what to say, and then she turns to the guy.

“J’arriverai plus tard,” she tells him.

“D’accord, j’y serai,” says the guy, reluctant to go. Then she smiles at him and he steps back, knowing that whatever my presence means, nothing between them has changed.

“New boyfriend?” I ask her, trying to keep the bad stuff out of my voice.

“Just a friend.”

“French guy?”

“Can’t keep anything from you, can we? He’s in my class. I didn’t tell you that I switched courses, did I?”

“No, you didn’t tell me anything.”

“I meant to phone. Sorry, Alfie. I’ve been so, so busy.”

“I understand.”

“I’m not doing English anymore. I’ve switched to European Studies. It felt right. You know what I mean? It’s a different country. Almost a different century. The world’s getting smaller all the time.”

“How’s Plum?”

“She’s well. Enjoying school more.”

“Still in love with The Slab?”

“I think she’s starting to grow out of all that. They change so fast at that age. I think The Slab might one day go the way of Ken and Barbie. How are things at your end?”

“Pretty good, pretty good. Churchill’s is just the same. I’ve got a whole new crowd of students. Nice kids. And I haven’t even slept with any of them yet.”

“Are you planning to?”

I shake my head. “That’s gone the way of Ken and Barbie too. It turned out to be a bit of a dead end, all of that. Always seemed to end in the same place.”

“Where was that?”

“Heathrow Airport. But things are good.”

“I’m glad.”

“Well, that’s not strictly true. To be honest, it’s a bit lonely at my end.”

“Lonely?”

“Yeah. I sort of miss you. And Plum. And just the way we were when we saw each other all the time.”

“Oh, Alfie.”

“That’s why I’m here. I don’t want things to change. I know some things have to change. But I don’t want to lose any of that. I don’t want to lose us.”

“You can’t stop life happening to you.”

“I realize that now. I really do. But shouldn’t you hold on to the good things? For as long as you can?”

“Isn’t it a little late for you and me? You can’t ask me to give this up. Not now that I’ve gotten this far. I wouldn’t be happy. And neither would you.”

“I’m not asking you to give anything up. I just want one last chance, Jackie. One last chance to get it right. And I want a family. Some kind of family. It doesn’t have to be the old kind of family, okay? It can be the new kind of family. It can be any kind of family. But I want to try for a family of my own. I think it’s pretty sad if everyone in the world ends up living alone. It’s just too sad.”

“What about Rose? You suddenly forget about her?”

“I’ll never forget her. And I’ll never stop loving her. I’ve learned that you can honor the past and you can remember the past. You can even love it. But you can’t live in it.”

“So you’re here to claim your future?”

“That’s right.”

“But it doesn’t work like that.”

“It doesn’t?”

“No. You might be ready to get serious, but I’m not. If you really care about someone, you let them follow their dreams. And then maybe one day they come back to you. If it’s real. If it means anything.”

“So you think you might come back to me?”

“We were never really together, were we?”

“Do you think-when you’ve got your degree and you’ve met lots of interesting people and you’ve made friends with some hot young French guys-that you might miss me a little bit?”

“I miss you already.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“I don’t know. Bad timing.”

“That’s it? Just bad timing?”

“I’ve got to go, Alfie.”

And she does. I watch her disappear into the crowd of students, all those shining young faces looking forward to the future as though it is their personal property.

She doesn’t even look back.

But I don’t feel bad. It’s strange. My heart seems to weigh nothing at all. I feel something like my old self.

Because I know that even if I never see her again in my life, Jackie has returned to me something that I believed was lost forever.

She has given me back my faith.

And you’ve got to have a little faith, haven’t you?

JUST OVER A YEAR LATER I drop a couple of Hong Kong dollars in a scarred metal slot and pass through the turnstile, joining the crowds waiting for the Star Ferry.

The original cast are all present, if slightly altered in ways that I can’t quite define. There are the young Chinese businessmen of Central in their white shirts and dark ties, speaking Cantonese into tiny mobile phones. The office girls with their shining black hair and miniskirts and Prada bags. The old men with their racing papers, frowning as they check the form at Sha Tin and Happy Valley. And me.

Hong Kong has changed too. Not the way it looks, although the way Hong Kong looks is forever changing as land is reclaimed and buildings are demolished and new skyscrapers are raised. It’s something in the tropical air. This place just doesn’t feel British any more. Hong Kong is a Chinese city now. Brash, confident, unsentimental about the past. It’s not my inheritance any longer. If it ever really was.

Yet I love it still. Even if it is not mine to love, I love it. I can’t help it.

I go upstairs to the cavernous waiting area and watch the old green-and-white Star Ferry that I am about to catch chunking into the harbor at Tsim Sha Tsui, and I see the soaring steel-and-glass skyline of Central in the distance, the green hills beyond and Victoria Peak looming above it all.

As I walk onto the Star Ferry I get that old feeling-the excitement and sadness mixed. That old feeling of belonging and knowing in your heart that you will never belong.

Soon they are about to pull up the gangway, and I get a feeling of mild panic. I know it’s stupid but I wait to see if Rose will make it to the Star Ferry just in time, if she will come running up the gangway just before they raise it, and I know that she will be breathless and beautiful, carrying her large box of legal documents to an office somewhere in Alexandra House.

But of course Rose doesn’t appear at the last minute. That’s not going to happen. They pull up the gangway without Rose appearing, and I know-know with total certainty for the first time-that I must make the rest of my journey without her.