We Own the Sky(81)

Jack’s is a small headstone, not upright, but horizontal.





Jack Coates

10th August 2008 ? 20th January 2015

Sunshine passes, shadows fall

Love and memory outlast them all

I did not like the inscription. I thought it was trite, but Anna said we had to have something. It reminded me of the condolence cards we had received, with their platitudes, their empty sentiments. Besides, I had not wanted a grave. A grave was to accept that he was gone.

It has become a monthly ritual to come here, to get the early train before dawn and to return to Cornwall around dusk. I crouch down and scrape away some leaves from the gravestone, but the wind instantly blows them back. I sit on the ground for a while, shivering in the rain, drinking from my hip flask.

I check my watch. Even though it is early, I do not want to risk meeting Anna.

I kiss my hand and touch the stone lightly with my fingers and then head back to the entrance on the pebble paths, this time avoiding the long grass. There is a greater chance of meeting Anna like this, but it is wet, I am cold and I want to find a café to have some breakfast, where I can sit and wait for the pub to open.

  *

After a sandwich in a coffee shop, I go to The Ship, the pub I used to come to with Scott. I plug my laptop into the wall and log on to the Wi-Fi, and start working on some code. I have been working for Marc, the programmer in Brussels who Scott hired. The work is boring, but it pays the bills. I work for a couple of hours, drinking pint after pint, and by the time I leave, I am drunk, unsteady on my feet. I do not want to go up our old street, so I go the long way around, trudging up past the ponds on the other side of the heath. The words “we own the sky” come into my head, as they always do when I’m alone, and I whisper them to myself with each step as I walk up the hill. “We own the sky, we own the sky.”

At the top of Parliament Hill, I put my backpack on the ground, take a long drink from my hip flask and look out across London. The sky threatens in the distance, a callous, unfeeling wall of cloud. The heath is desolate. Just the occasional caw of a crow, hustling like grave diggers, flying from tree to garbage can to tree.

When the tripod and camera are calibrated, I take the first shot, down toward the Highgate ponds. The view is pastoral, a little England, houses nestled on the hill, the village spire of St. Anne’s peeping above the trees. Even though I used to come up here with Jack, I have never taken a panorama from Parliament Hill.

I have been busy recently. We Own the Sky has been nominated for a photography award, so I have been taking more and more panoramas, traveling around the country, going farther afield. The Seven Sisters, Three Cliffs Bay, the Cheddar Gorge. Sometimes I drive, but mostly I take the train, traveling in first class, drinking Kronenbourg and vodka in the dining car. There is something cathartic about it, something that keeps me going. Visiting the places we went together; writing my messages to Jack in the sky.

I slowly move the camera around, as the hills give way to the city, and suddenly there is Canary Wharf, like a fortress, surrounded by its chunky minions. I rotate the camera for another shot, capturing the Gherkin and then the Shard, rising above the skyline like a stalagmite.

  *

I am standing under the departure board at Paddington Station, when I see someone who looks familiar. It takes me a while, a flash of recognition, a feeling that we have met somewhere before, perhaps one of the women I have chatted with online.

I am just trying to place her, thinking that she looks rather Bohemian, a refined artiness, like a rich gallery owner, when she catches my eye. It is then that I realize it is Lola.

There is a second moment when we consider pretending that we haven’t seen each other, that it was nothing more than the curious meeting of two strangers’

eyes. But there is something that propels me toward her.

“Hello, Lola,” I say and as I speak I realize I am slurring my words.

“Oh, hey, Rob. Wow, what a surprise,” she says.

“How are you?” I say. “It’s been a while.”

“Yes, wow, it really has,” she says, flustered. “I was at some opening last night. Bit of a late one.”

She is exactly as I remember, the impression of creative chaos she so carefully nurtured, the tone and lilt of her voice, which always sounded like an air-kiss.

“And how are you, Rob?” she said, emphasizing the word  you.

“Fine,” I say.

“What are you up to then?”

“Just getting a train.”

“No, silly-billy. I mean generally.”

“Oh, nothing much. I’m living down in Cornwall now.”

“Yes, Anna said.”

“So you’re still friends?”

“Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t we be?”

I know I am not making much sense and I suddenly feel very drunk, like a teenager coming home and having to pretend they are sober.

“We live close by now, in Gerrards Cross,” Lola says.

Gerrards Cross? I know it can only mean one thing: that Anna has remarried. I can imagine her living with an older man, divorced, teenage kids from a previous marriage.

“That’s nice,” I say, and I want to ask about Anna but I don’t know how.

“Are you okay, Rob?”

“Yes, I’m fine,” I say, speaking slowly and trying to enunciate each syllable.