Regret

There are half a dozen of us sitting in the lounge watching the morning news, the volume turned up because of Roy’s endless babble about the toilets not being clean, when a piece begins about how seventies fashions are returning to the high street. Good God, I hope not!

And there it is, in my head, unbidden, as if it was yesterday.

I see us in our flat in Notting Hill. It wasn’t really a dinner party; there was hardly any food. And it wasn’t really a party; there were only four of us. Angela and Robert,  very good friends from the flat upstairs, and Mike and I.

I recall that we’d all had way too much of my homemade sloe gin, Carole King was on the turntable — soppy and sentimental time — and the conversation had somehow made it’s way to life’s regrets.

My feet are resting on the coffee table, legs stretched out from the disgusting, brown, faux-leather sofa that Mike loves and I hate, my Tango flares brushing the chocolate-stained floorboards. Still, I can’t moan about the sofa, my spider plant’s taking over the place and he never complains. I stare down at my lap as I listen to the tales; dropping out of uni. to marry Robert, not stopping after a prang (then finding out it was the neighbour) and sleeping with a girlfriend’s mother. And all the while I’m not sure.

But then it’s my turn.

“I was fifteen,” I say, putting my glass down on the coffee table with a sigh. “Fifteen? Fourteen? No, fifteen, it was ’54, Preston had just lost the cup to West Brom. Anyway, I was riding my bike through the park when I saw the park keeper kneeling down around the back of his hut. Edging my bike forwards I hid behind a tree. As it was he wasn’t praying — although in hindsight he may have been — he was digging a hole in a pile of compost. He then placed a tin in the hole and covered it up.”

“What sort of tin?” Mike says.

“Honestly! Peek Frean’s biscuits, I dunno. Anyway, just at that moment the police arrived. They talked with the park keeper for a while and then he left with them.”

“What had he done?” Robert says.

I raise my hand. “Well… curiosity kept me awake that night, so I got up early, went back there and dug it up.”

“And?” Mike says.

“Letters. Chock full of letters.”

“What sort of letters?” Angela says, leaning forwards on a wicker chair, elbows on knees, glass in one hand, joint in the other.

“Very intimate letters.” I glance up. “To a man.”

“Ah,” Mike says, a frown crossing his elegant brow, “deep shit.”

“What did you do? Did you read them?” Angela says.

I nod. “I was 15 remember. I was disgusted. It was wrong, everyone knew that. But the thing was, as I read more of them, I began to get angry with myself, I felt — “

“Why angry?” Angela looked confused.

“Because, I dunno, there was something about them that had started to resonate. A battle between my head and my heart… feelings… emotions, right and wrong. I can remember putting them back in the tin, and then, twenty minutes later, getting them out again. And the more stirred by them I became, the angrier I got. So much so that I convinced myself that it was the park keeper’s fault that I was feeling so… affected. And I knew that I couldn’t keep them; Christ no! I certainly couldn’t destroy them. So.” I stared down at my hands. “I jumped back on my bike, went into town and posted them through the door of the Police station.”

Silence. After a few moments I summon up the courage to look up. Angela and Robert are staring at me. I turn towards Mike. His face; it’s like he no longer recognises me. I reach out a hand. “I know,” I say in a whisper, “even for a kid that’s pretty shitty isn’t it?” He smiles sadly, but slowly nods.

“What happened to him?” Angela says, sitting back now, her glass on the coffee table, her hands folded across her chest.

I spread my hands. “Nothing.”

There’s a loud chorus of, “nothing!”

“But,” Mike says, “this was way before ’67?”

I nod. “It was in the local rag. The Police couldn’t prove anything. I do remember that they weren’t signed. They were careful.”

“But back to you,” Angela says, leaning forwards again and meeting my eye, “it sounds like those letters struck a cord.”

“Yes. They did. Even after getting rid of them I couldn’t get them out of my head. They seemed to have awoken a part of me that I didn’t even know existed. Or couldn’t acknowledge existed. Wouldn’t acknowledge. I was only 15, but I knew enough to be very frightened about how they made me feel. But they did answer questions that I didn’t even know were questions.” I grin. “Questions like why, despite all the other boys being obsessed with Mrs McGregor’s large breasts, I had more time for Mr Lewis, the maths teacher.”

“Jesus,” Mike says, laughing, “I’d forgotten about her. We must have been the only kids in the country to have learned French with a strong Glaswegian accent.”

And the conversation turns away, towards school memories.

I continue to stare at the TV as the memory fades away, but my mind’s no longer following the news. As I have done every single day for the last seven and a half years I wish that Mike was still with us. With me. I would have loved to have shared that memory with him.

I glance back up at the TV. The news had finished and Antiques Roadshow had started. I slowly pulled this antique upright. Even in your eighties there’s always something better to do than watch Antiques Roadshow. Tend to my Spider plant, for one.

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