The idea of sharing work online to people I do or don't know excites me and this blog is really just an insight into what I am doing as someone studying to become a writer. Having now met many people wanting to get into writing, there is something shared throughout where fear meets excitement and I hope creating this blog will be both of those things, however it may prove much less profound than I am
hoping whilst anxiously writing this introduction.
This short story was crafted a strange evening where my friends and I were going to a party at some
ridiculous hour and ended up not finding it and getting the first tube home. We met a strange tramp and I liked fictionalising someone I did not know but only had a glimpse of his life. He was a dapper tramp and drunk and if that isn't enough of a reason to create a story about him then I
don't know what is.
G r i e f
'Knock, knock'
'Who's there?'
'
Giuseppe'
'
Giuseppe who?'
'I'll ask the questions here'
The humour was dry but not as dry as the flakes of skin that had detached themselves from his face. The congealed blood around his glasses and the cracks in the panes of glass before his eyes reminded me of scruffs on a new pair of shoes. His shoes, however had no laces, as I pondered for a moment as I awkwardly laughed at his joke, where they were? Sprawled out like cotton worms on the pavements he had walked on time and time again.
The story begins in 1961, Waltz music chimed in the ears of dapper
gentlemen holding there velvet lovers on the 3rd of December in the main hall of the Ritz, London. Austin McCarthy had come into some money through a friend of a friend getting him a dream job as a journalist for a small paper in
Southwark. He wasn't the ideal man for the job but we all get lucky sometimes. He had met Matilda a year previous and they had fallen in love with there joint desire to write. They were not suited, everyone knew that. He was skinny and already had some grey hair at the rip age of 27 and had the face of boyish charm and buck teeth. He had grown up in Dublin as a boy and had to move to London in the mid 50's to get away from the stresses that lay with a cancer riddled mother. On the train from Liverpool to Kings Cross Austin had began to write what he thought would become his big break into the world of being a writer.
"What are you writing about?"she had confidence and the face of an ancient statue, marble white with the red lips and the longest legs he's ever seen.
"My Mother, she's going to die soon."
"
That's sad, I'm writing about people who cannot deal with stress and the bad things that happen to them, can I sit here?"
He obliged and moved his case and trilby hat.
"I like to think that people go through seven stages after they hear of something terrible that has happened."
"What are the stages?"
"First you don't want to believe what you have heard so you are in denial and shock, then you feel guilty, pain, hurt and turn it in on yourself. So then you get mad and shout and beat away the people you love, oh and yourself of coarse, so you get sad. You want to be alone and turn away people and become terribly depressed. Then when you cannot be bothered to be boring and depressed anymore, you have what I like to call and upward turn. You think things through and reconstruct why it happened and then finally you just get over it and accept it. I call it the
seven stages of grief."
"Sounds like you look into people rather than at them."
"I suppose, can I kiss you?"
They kissed and when the train reached its destination they found a place to stay for the night and fucked and talked and talked and fucked. After they planned to get a house together with two studies, a library and a king sized bed.
On the day Austin found out his Mother had died he proposed to Matilda in Regents park, the sky was deep purple and red as if it had been blown on with powder paints. They struggled for money but it wasn't an issue, they were just lovers boiling up and whistleing. On the night before they were set to marry, Austin had coupled some money, enough to invite his friends to the main hall in the Ritz. Waltz Music chimed in the ears of dapper gentlemen holding their velvet lovers on the third of December 1961.
Matilda whispered in his ear the words Austin told me on the first tube to Mile End 2009 December 3rd.
"The first stage is denial"
She walked away her red dress flowing like the drapes in the hotel they had spent the first night together. He didnt follow her and stood in the hall listneing to the sweet morning, so still and silent;he saw the doors open and close and her walk out. It was the last time he'd seen her.
His eyes rolled and a light burp came from a rumble in his stomache. He shone as he slouched and told me how much he loved Laurel and Hardy, mumbleing something aabout his ex wife having cancer. I didn't bother asking, was too busy pitying him, waiting for the tube to reach my stop. I looked down at his hands; they were shivering and holding one another, comforting eachothers company. His index finger on his left hand had a carved out ring of black with red sores next to it. The gangerous sting of an old love, I asked him where his ring was. He said it hurt.
He didnt move; his suit still pristine and pressed, the couples around him, the congregation of his friends made him so happy that he was more in love than any of them ever will be. He waited, the songs changing, still staring at the oak entrance doors, so still so silent in the Ritz Hotel 1951. The night ended, wrapped up and his friends left, the brilliant hall empty, being swept by a young black boy whistleing 'the Marriage of Figaro' so light on his ears, he was so still, staring at the doors. They never opened to him, for him, he just stood and waited for her to return.
I yawned as he told me the joke about Guiseppe for the hundreth time. I stilllaughed, I don't know why, the man was clearly insane. His bow tie was so tight up to his top button that it must have strangled him, he mumbled to himself, and aske me where he was going. I laughed and asked him where he lived;p he just said he thought it was in the main hall of the Ritz. I laughed more his face obscured as another burp reached up from his gut an let out a gentle growl from his gullet. I tutted to myself and looked at my reflection in the black of the window, my eyes were full of little red lines and surrounded by black bubbles, sunken into my skull. He thought I was looking at him and lent his head down towards mine.
"The first stage is denial."
"stage of what?"really I wanted him to just leave me alone but I must admit that I was intrigued.
"I haven't been home in 49 years"
"is that a metaphor?"
"no"
He leaned over and put his hand on my shoulder. He told me I looked as if I could handle grief and I told him I havent had to yet. He said he wanted to come to my house after I told him I was a writer. I did not oblige and he let out a moan, lent back on his chair.
"I'm a writer, or used to be."
"Right, what do you write about" I asked him rolling my eyes to the back of my head and looking up at the tube map to see how long I had to listen to this shit.
"The seven stages of grief"
"What about them?"
"You know about them"
"Everyone does, Why?"
"My fiance told me about them, she's been out for a while to get some fresh air. Its the night before I take her hand in marriage."
"Is that why you won't go home, you can't sleep? Too nervous?"
"No it's because I went to look for her, she told me once that if she ever went away then to look into what she told me, she told me she loved me so I guessed that meant to follow her if she ever left. So I told myself she'd not left that night, then I thought it was something I'd done and got really angry. I threw myself in the front of a bus but it saw me and swerved as to not hit me. I was so sad and depressed I went looking for her again, following her footsteps in the pavements. I had a happy moment when I knew it would be alright and I'd find her, I grafted together my thoughts and thought about where she might be and I accepted she just got lost.
The tube stopped and the sign read Mile End so I left the gentleman and walked home. He was the strangest man I'd ever met so I laughed and slept the next day and for got the previous.
