Go Lightly

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards” - Soren Kierkegaard.

I did not return. I could not return. Birmingham, the place of my birth, where I grew up, threw up, escaped from ... and then the opportunity presented itself. I might be able to get in and out, like a thief, without getting shot by the memory cops.

I was on my way from and to somewhere else. It would only be a short diversion. I had not seen my sister since my mother's funeral. Three years.

It was arranged hurriedly over the telephone. We surprised each other. Of course she could take the time off work. It would be lovely to see the children. I confirmed they were looking forward to it.

Driving into my dirty old town I felt something I had not expected. Birmingham, so father told me, was known as 'the workshop of the world'. Factories were everywhere, and the biggest of these was Longbridge, a car plant. I guess at its zenith it had employed somewhere in the region of 50,000 men. Northfield, which is curiously in south Birmingham and looks absolutely nothing like a field, depended on Longbridge – appropriately enough pronounced lungbridge. As a child I had marvelled at the huge factory that snaked all the way down the side of the Bristol Road. It was like a river of metal and glass that went on forever. I excitedly told the children that this was their heritage, the blood, sweat and tears of 100s of 1,000s of men over generations. I was all ready to point it out to them, as their tour guide to my city's working class history.

Both lanes of the road make a left at the roundabout. To the right the Lickey Hills sit slumped on the landscape like a fat arsed old lady. Straight ahead is a dead end. I swung the car at the junction, thinking I would see the familiar stretch of industry, instead the horizon was blank. Nothing. Fences along both sides of the road. Big metal fences. Blue. I was so shocked that I pulled up on the pavement. I knew where I was. I had not somehow got it wrong or become lost.

“They used to be here, the factories,” the children seemed disinterested. “All the time, when I was a kid, I came past on the bus,” each kid clutched their Gameboy and stared into dimly lit screens, moving their fingers and thumbs and occasionally clicking. “They've gone,” I said. No-one responded.

I turned the engine off and yanked the keys from the ignition. “Stay here, I'll be back in a minute.” Those fence things, they have little gaps between each corrugated section and I walked up to one. Peering through I could see flattened rubble and red brown earth. They must have knocked the whole lot down, blown it up, bulldozed it.

Intellectually I knew that it was not a party working on the lines at Longbridge, enough of my friends had done it. Pete had been down there years. Wozzi used to do shot blasting. He's dead now. Pete is a psychiatric nurse. But Christ, when something vanishes, apparently into thin air, it's like a war got fought and lost without me ever knowing or noticing it was going on.

Back in the car. Stereo tuned to the local radio station. Desperate for a pee. I fidgeted uncomfortably.

After mother died the house was sold. Paulette and Tommy bought another, not too far away. I have always had this impression that there is some umbilicus connected them to Bournville. Sure, they have moved a few times, but always only about 500 yards. As a kid I had delivered papers in the street they were now living. I would not have a problem finding it. I might struggle to hold onto my pee though.

I rang the bell, hoping from foot to foot. As she opened the door Paulette opened her mouth as if to speak.
“Have you got a toilet?” I burst out.
“No,” Tommy answered, coming up behind her.
I pushed past both of them and ran up the stairs. Despite the fact I had never even been in this house before I made the reasonable assumption that the pisser was probably upstairs and it was just a question of poking my head around a couple of doors. I was right. The children ambled in on their own, without their mother to negotiate any introduction.

Lunch passed off peacefully enough. Paulette, as father accurately once said, has the ability to speak like a gatling gun. We raced through various topics of conversation at break neck speed, including the state of British military hospitals, animal cruelty, how much health insurance costs for expatriots living in the US and the nutritional benefits of a vegan diet – both of us are meat eaters.

Tommy, who is a fairly shy and reticent man, most probably because he can never get a word in edge ways, told me of his pub quiz exploits. I laughed. “God, you're a mine of useless information,” I said.
“Yeah, and you know what, I'm 60 years old and I've never read a book in my life.”
This stunned me into silence. “Never?”
“Nope never,” he said, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms.
“You must have read biographies and stuff, like of The Beetles?” I asked hopefully.
“Well, I look stuff up in the index and then turn to the page I want, but I've never started at the front and gone all the way through to the back.” He laughed. I could not understand why.
I sat back in my chair and folded my arms. “Do you read anything at all?”
“No need, I watch the telly.”

My eyes flicked over the room. A short bookcase, containing three dictionaries, all of which were out of date. A computer on the desk, another one in a box on the floor waiting to be set up. Two small lapdogs, panting for scraps. Our family houses have always looked like this, minus the dogs though. No art on the walls. More shoes than books. Nothing of any substance. I had grown up feeling like I was drowning in wide open space. It is an odd sensation to be suffocated by too much and not enough air all at the same time.

“I've got news,” Paulette said, as she cleared the plates away, to make space for endless pudding. I hate pudding.
“You're emigrating?”
“Yes, how did you know?”
“Well, you were hardly likely to announce you were pregnant.”
“What's that on your wrist,” she said, grabbing my hand.
“A tattoo.”
“What of?”
“A snake.” Is she blind?
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why have you got a tattoo of a snake?”
There was no way I could explain. Because I'm a Pagan. I have a thing about snakes. I don't know, it seemed like a good idea at the time. I did what I usually do and dodged the question. “Do you like it?”
“At least they'll be able to identify you if you get murdered and someone cuts your head off.”
“Still reading those real crime mags then?”
“Yes, the mind of a psychopath is fascinating.”
“If you say so,” which obviously she was.
“Ah, I get it, you're being sniffy because Tommy doesn't read books and you're married to an egghead.”
“No, it's not that,” I said hastily, “More that I'm not into that reality stuff”.
“You don't watch Big Brother?” she said incredulously.
“Not if I can help it.”

I trod on the dog. It let out a loud squeal. Unfortunately, some of its tail hair remained under my foot. I tried to cover it up. I realised I was always trying to cover things up. I was like that Munch picture, 'the scream', except not from the front, I was the character, looking out at the world from almost behind the painting. Trapped. Stuck in some framed void. I was lucky that Matt stole me away and kept me hidden. He never asked for a ransom, but they would not have paid it anyway.

The afternoon was over. Time to leave, to go back to where I had come from, to be on my way. I hugged my sister and wondered, vaguely, how long it would be until I saw her again, if ever. My other sister lives in Israel. I am not sure when we will meet up.

I came home, to where my heart is, with my own family. My house is full of books, 2,000, 3,000, I don't know. They are everywhere. My walls drip with images, large oil painted canvases, family photographs, masks from all over the world. It is cluttered here, with who we are, who we think we are, who we want to be. A service engineer came round to fix my telephone. He walked in and said “This place has a wonderful energy,” and it does.

For Mother's Day I got breakfast in bed, well nearly, I got coffee, but for the croissants I went to the table. Hate crumbs. The children had bought me gifts. My youngest daughter gave me body spray, curiously titled “Goddess”. She said she thought I'd like it for that reason. My son gave me a hyacinth in full bloom, white and pungent. I kissed him and ruffled his hair. He smiled shyly. And my eldest daughter, she made me cry. A beautiful pencil skirt, black and pinstriped, how the hell did she know my size and taste? But what really got, right deep down, was the DVD of 'Breakfast at Tiffanys'. It is my favourite film. For the longest time Holly Golightly has represented what I would like to believe about myself and what I know about myself:-

“You know what's wrong with you, Miss Whoever-you-are? You're chicken, you've got no guts. You're afraid to stick out your chin and say, "Okay, life's a fact, people do fall in love, people do belong to each other, because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness." You call yourself a free spirit, a "wild thing," and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.”