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Great Writing - Home > Extended > Drifting - chapter eighteen
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Extended Work
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| Drifting - chapter eighteen | |
| By Jamie | ||
| 11 August 2008 | ||
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This is the eighteenth chapter in a long form story. My plan is publish all the chapters on here as I go along. I will present them as I choose, a few days interspersing the entries. All feedback, negative or positive gratefully received. I am proud of certain aspects, and ruefully aware of other areas of shortcomings and inadequacy. Rather like myself in fact. So constructive criticism or showers of stars - both interestedly received. Blunt, bored, disinterested views will be received likewise. As most of us are, who seemingly ' can't ' write with brevity, I am equally indisposed to attempt a synopsis. But... Girl has self, girl meets boy, girl loses self, girl loses boy, girl tries to find self. Girl finds a different kind of self. This would be fair, but woefully inadequate. More it is an outpouring of thoughts and words, many words along a collection of themes that had been going round and around in my head for a long time. And ultimately a traumatic time in my own life brought these feelings and thoughts rudely, and unbiddenly to the surface. So I wrote them down - a catharsis of sorts, and an interested exploration of the routine, process and 'expected' or 'required' structure of writing in long-form. Thanks for reading and your interest. I repay your time spent with gratitude and humilty. Jamie.
chapter eighteen
"It might be colder, wilder, lonely and rainy. But it’s bigger too... Cleaner, freer and far, far more beautiful than Manchester. Or Glasgow. And everything is slower, 'manageably slower' and so laid back. Dreamier, but still real... Very much the real world. And this is just a tiny part of it – the part that I glimpsed shortly through a grimy wet window. There is still more, perhaps more that is even 'more'…"Lyndsey’s thoughts and mental wanderings had become hasty strung together sentences as she attempted to articulate to Helen, her almost need to get back to spend more time in the bolt-hole that she had momentarily glimpsed with Tom over those couple of months so recently and so long ago. Her face clouded over as she momentarily left the mundanity of the public house in which they were now sat. Through the grimy window she gazed, but not onto the dusty, still side-street. Instead she was back in her coach seat, rounding the corner, and approaching and descending into the confines of Glen Coe. The cold, clear and incessant fall of the water over the grey, dark slabs of the rocks making up the downfall of the Allt Lairig Eilde, down into the dark depths of the glen. Above and beyond, the steep green, shining, glistening wet hillsides climbed up, far and away to the wind-blasted naked rock of the precipices. Far, far away, so much above and beyond the tumult of human strifes and lives below. "But do you think you could actually live up there… And in a hotel and restaurant?" Helen’s voice roughly penetrated into Lyndsey’s thoughts and cruelly pulled her back down to the London Road. "I mean day-in, day-out living and working. Just keeping on doing your work and duties and still getting something from it – still enjoy it long after the novelty of your surroundings and the new job has worn off?" Lyndsey was quiet for the moment with a small smile playing around her face. Her previous lapse into her more pastoral thoughts had calmed her and drained off a good deal of her previous anxiety and restlessness. "Yes, I'm as sure as I can be that I will enjoy it. Because I really want to this time – I want to succeed." "So what is being down here, back prevaricating - hangin' out near the squat about?" Lyndsey exhaled a long stream of cigarette smoke. "Really, I don’t know… Loose ends, sudden thoughts, impulse, fantasies…" Helen shook her head. "You won’t get by Tom with…" "Oh no – not Tom." Lyndsey quickly stopped her. "Well not really, not to try to start anything again... But maybe in an ideal world, in another set of circumstances… Well me and Jon could maybe have…" "Jon…" Helen stopped her speaking, as her friend’s suddenly mentioned name left her whirling. "Mmm, Jon." Lyndsey was smiling a little more broadly now. Her feelings and affections became even fonder as she began to speak of him and thought of his last few meetings with her, of his words and letters. Thinking of the feelings and growing desires within her, she again felt the nag of the diminishing allotment of time that she had. And as she paused to fill her head again with fantasies about Jon and Tom, she began to plot idle ends other than her plans for her forthcoming bus journey. Helen was more than just a little surprised at Lyndsey’s mention of interest in Jon. She had no idea of any other contact or exchanges other than mere conversations between the two of them. Jon in speaking to her, had certainly never mentioned Lyndsey in the same wind-swept words and with the same glassy far-away eyes that Lyndsey had now. Also, gradually, Helen was beginning to feel uneasy at Lyndsey’s plans and wishes, and to where and what her thoughts were now turning to. But at the same time, listening to Lyndsey elucidate on her forthcoming plans and watching her fly mentally from the drab streets they were now sat amongst was easy and pleasing for Helen. She could throw questions in as she listened to what could, and what she in some ways wanted to be her speaking. Helen had spoken vaguely many times of leaving Glasgow and the dull familiar behind her, and moving on to somewhere newer and fresher. But recently this topic had been all the more on her mind and hinted at in many of her conversations. Helen wished for an ends and means: a point to many of the doings and actions of her daily life. She also wished for a more interested, focused and less vacant set of friends. While Lyndsey had seen a more exciting and newer world in the dirty, pokey squat just a short distance away down the street, Helen could only see a vapid, dull, slow-moving existence. She was tired of her unremarkable surroundings and she wanted out and over that fence and into the imagined greener pastures beyond. It had stuck her before as she had listened to Lyndsey express interest and excitement in what she regarded as drab, mundane surroundings, and it struck her more resonantly now, as she pondered the conundrum of why the familiar, no matter how resplendent and bright – no matter how much it is praised by others, of why and how it can lose its lustre and can become as grey, dull and as unremarkable as we want to make it. Someone else’s despised dwellings can easily become another’s paradise and coveted goal. Our own personal feelings are everything, and familiarity fatally and unfortunately breeds apathy and restlessness too. "Well, I think you’re right." Helen spoke breaking the short pause between them, and jolted Lyndsey out of her own private, warm thoughts. "Right? In what?" "You must go ahead and seize your goal. You have to go and hang in there and make it your own." Lyndsey was listening to Helen, but also she was away again in a whirl of thoughts, again she was suddenly seized by conflicting ideas and actions. "Mmm, I think you’re right, 'course I do. I should. But I'm just thinking of alternatives too and…" "What do you mean?" Helen stepped in quickly, alert to Lyndsey’s wandering words and more than a little anxious to learn of the thoughts that were now betraying themselves through Lyndsey’s eyes. "Well I don’t need to go rushing off so soon…" Helen’s eyes widened, but Lyndsey continued. "I mean leaving Glasgow so quickly when I'm so pleased to be here. There’s still so much I want to do here – and can do; and there’s so many places in the city I haven’t been to or even seen yet." "But you’ve got somewhere planned to go to… And you’ll be meeting people you’ll soon be glad to be with – people who will soon be your friends." Lyndsey smiled a little wider as she looked down at the table. "And I've got friends here too, and one friend who… Well I’d be losing nothing if I was to stay but a few days more so I could then see where I stand… see where I and… stood." She tailed off quietly and with a little embarrassment at herself for laying open some of her newest private thoughts and desires. Helen however had little of Lyndsey’s diffidence. "See where you stand? With who?" "Well if… If Jon is…" Again Helen cut abruptly in as she heard the name she had been afraid to hear. "If Jon is… what? Jon has never been over-eager to open himself up and express himself emotionally. What ARE you talking about Lyndsey?" Helen stopped herself and tried to slow down her impatient tumbling words. Across Lyndsey’s face and in her eyes, she could see her jumbled thoughts and her fantastic world lighting up and playing on her desires and needs. She tried to be calmer with her words, and as wary as she could see that Lyndsey was not. "Jon is rather mixed up. He is and always has, as long as I've known him, been a brooding, thoughtful, sincere and... rather a delicate person. I only partly know that he has had a few bruising emotional encounters in the past. I know we all have – you and me included." Helen looked closely at Lyndsey’s open face. "But Jon is very guarded, very closed at being open or expressing his affections – he’s a very shy person. And he is one of my friends. I love him a lot and speak with him often… And... He hasn’t mentioned you Lyndsey, not in a desired or affectionate sense…" Helen tried to pick her words deliberately and carefully. She didn’t want to hurt or wound Lyndsey’s feelings, but she wanted to express her thoughts. Unfortunately though, Helen’s warnings were falling on almost deaf and aloof ears. Lyndsey’s sudden new ideas and feelings were building her a cloak of little warranted surety. She smiled winsomely as she spoke. "Oh, but you haven’t seen the letters he has written to me, the language and his thoughts are clear. I think I can see a little of what maybe he wanted to say before I left, and I know on reading them that I thought of words I wanted to say back to him." Helen sighed. She didn’t want to prick bubbles and dismantle or pull apart fantasies and desires, especially if some of their aspects and foundations were based on facts and words. But she did want to protect Lyndsey and Jon even if it was only from themselves, or from each other - or more likely - one from the other. She breathed out as she thought of someone else too. "And what of Tom, Lyndsey? Helen uttered the name that suddenly brought on a change of expression over Lyndsey’s gazing face. "Tom… What of him?" There was no immediate answer from Helen, so Lyndsey headed on. "See – I haven’t asked you once about him or even mentioned an interest in seeing him again, but people just assume that I'm stuck on him. Ian couldn’t wait to speak about him, and now you mention his name like he’s on my mind – like he’s some kinda big problem." Helen sighed ruefully again. She could perceive the slight dishonesty in Lyndsey’s thoughts and speech, but how to say that – that she could see she wasn’t being true to herself or to Helen in her words. "But he shares the same house Lyndsey. If you and Jon say, were to set up some kind of fragile relationship, how do you think Tom might affect it?" Lyndsey shrugged and remained silent. "And what of Tom? How do you think your's and Jon’s partnership might affect him?" Suddenly Lyndsey’s face lit up with a small smile and a sneer of malice. Idly she checked her watch against the rapidly approaching departure time of her bus. She turned back to face Helen’s open eyes with her own full of bitterness and malignance. "Well if it hurts Tom… Too fucking bad! Then he’ll understand a little of what I went through, and then maybe he’ll suffer a little of my suffering" Helen rocked back in her seat as Lyndsey’s true intentions became clear and her immature, spiteful words hit her. Away Helen’s guarded words went as a wave of anger and annoyance washed into her. "So this is your fucking game is it? A game with so many ends – ‘Win Jon - hurt Tom... Score a few points and somehow feel better about and in yourself while you try to manipulate and play with the emotions and feelings of those around you – even those who may care or feel something about you?" Lyndsey jumped back quickly onto the defensive. "No – no, no. I'm just talking about doing and following what feels right. Following MY judgement and feelings. If it’s good and right for me and Jon to… well then it's just unfortunate if it hurts or affects someone else. But that’s not the point behind it." Helen glared back at the girl. "You know yourself that its at least half of the point behind what you think you want. No, that's almost ALL the point. And you almost admitted that you would use Jon to gain what you think would be a few 'tears' of regret from Tom..." Lyndsey started in growing indignation and a growing rage, but Helen didn’t allow her to get started, much less get carried away. She leaned forward over the table and Lyndsey. "Tom is much more cunning, much wiser and far more aloof than ever you think or realise. And Jon is far more fragile and softer than you realise too. He's much softer than Tom – and probably you too. The only person who would be definitely hurt from your silly games would be Jon. Followed, probably, by you – again." Lyndsey was quiet again now, sulky and stubborn at being read so easily and talked down by her wiser companion. Helen listened to the silence between them, then reached over to take one of her friend’s cigarettes. She uncharacteristically lit and began to smoke it. "You surely can’t have learned so little between leaving here and now returning again. And you’ve evidently been strong enough inside yourself to pick yourself up from where you stumbled and fell, to re-direct yourself and aim even higher to get and take what you say you want. You’ve obviously spent a lot of time in thoughts, and you’ve worked hard to get your opportunity and another chance to live up in the Highlands. But now – just now it seems, you’re prepared to throw all that up – and for what? Some kind of protracted game and revenge – a perfect revenge…" Lyndsey looked down at the table again, but she was relaxing with the aroma of Helen’s cigarette. She paused, lit herself one, then she spoke again calmly. "I have learned a lot. I came a long way as a new, over-eager girl reaching out to others for the first time. I so quickly wanted to find someone else who could help me to hold me up and bring me out. And for a while I did, or thought I had." Lyndsey took a long, deep drag on her cigarette whilst Helen patiently listened to her rueful account. "Then… then the whole fucking thing fell and collapsed away, and I suddenly had no one to hold me up. And I fell away too, and refused to get up for so, so, for so… for far too long." She stared dazily with damper eyes toward the windows as so many unpleasant past scenes came back into her head. Abruptly she shook her head and looked back defiantly at Helen. "I got up again. I've collected myself and my thoughts and others have helped me to begin loving myself again. Now I'm up and I’m ready once more." "But you’re about to fall again. And more cruelly and stupidly this time - bringing others down with you…" Lyndsey cut back in, in a higher voice. "NO! It doesn’t have to be as you say. Can’t it – can’t some things be in my hands – why can’t I be someone who can trust and control myself?" Helen shook her head. "Ohhh Lyndsey. No. Only when you are truly and honestly working and looking forwards to catch yourself. We all of us stand prone to falling down or exposing base feelings when we plan or act dishonestly, and from not open or true intentions." There was a pause, then Helen spoke again. "If you truly believe Lyndsey in what you are doing – in the integrity and true honesty of your plans and desires, then you will always be sure-footed and confident enough to keep yourself and your dreams and world together. You’ll never put yourself at risk of falling over – because you’ll be there to catch yourself. You. There should be no more important person for you - than you." Lyndsey looked up at Helen, into her shining, clear eyes. "And I'm just trying to find… find me. Find what I want. And Jon’s words in his letters make me feel, make me think I’ve found…" Again she trailed off, embarrassed and unsure of the right words and her true feelings. Helen leaned in to speak again. "But you haven’t found yourself yet, Lyndsey. And neither has Jon… neither has Tom – neither have I." Silence again as the two girls smoked into the stale air around them. Helen was the first to move again as she spoke mindfully. "Tom is floundering around. He’s sleeping around, surrounding himself with partners in an effort to make himself feel better about himself, and the un-ambitious way he remains at a level far below that which he and his intelligence and wits could reach. He’s funny and good company, but he’s also vain and can be terribly weak." She paused and smoked into space for a moment. "But he’d laugh so loud and feel so good, knowing two of his ex’s are sitting around, talking and agonising over him - discussing and analysing him over a bloody drink..." Lyndsey smiled, then laughed at the truth of Helen’s words. Helen then continued with her indiscrete thoughts of her companions. "And Jon… Jon is nervously, slowly and self-protectively building up his own confidence and self-pride again after a traumatic relationship he had some time ago. If he has been writing to you, and if he has been opening himself up and expressing his feelings and true thoughts, then he’s moving on, picking himself up and finding what he wants. But it will only happen slowly – he’s a long way from any kind of arrival. He definitely doesn’t need a strange, warped kind of love-triangle to mess his head and hopes again." Helen paused to flick off the accumulation of ash on her cigarette, her exaggerated efforts exposed her lack of habit and regularity in partaking of this habit. Lyndsey sat silent again, her eyes turned back and down to the table, listening and thinking. "And you Lyndsey, you might have collected and picked yourself up from where you fell. But those bruises don’t heal or disappear quickly. All of us know the pain and misery of losing out on someone whom we adore, and after, we very rarely know or truthfully can say when we are over them or can think or speak of them with a clear, cool head. You may think that you are over Tom - but... you’re not. Your words, your thoughts, plans and even your eyes – definitely your eyes... They all show that you’re so far from being over and beyond him." Still silence from Lyndsey, Helen leaned in again, over her. "And in a terrible twist to your scenario before – your ‘revenge relationship’ with Jon: Tom would probably reach into the both of your precious, ever-so-fragile worlds. He would try to pluck you out, just to show you he could – that he was still in total control of your emotions and feelings. And I just bet that you’d go crying into his arms and into his bed…" Lyndsey started again, breaking her quiet in indignation at Helen’s bluntness, but also at her clarity of vision and foresight. She began to noisily bluster, but Helen silenced her with a tight grip of her arm. "Just think of the mess there would be then as he takes over you again - JUST to demonstrate and express his control. And think of how bad you’d feel at being used by him and then the total low-ness of how you will feel as you know how weak you've been. And then... if he again turns his back on you..?" Lyndsey was silent again now, sulky and down. But Helen still hadn’t completed her dark conjecture. "And amidst all this, think of Jon… If he really likes you as you suspect – and you could be very right, then how do you think this situation would affect him? You would probably destroy him…" Lyndsey was still silent and breathing out another breath of smoke. She shook her head, still looking down. "Why does it all have to be so negative – and so open to all this analysis? It’s only about two people – it’s just a boy and a girl…" She stared moodily and with a dazed expression into the space between them. Helen slowly and thoughtfully spoke again. "It’s not all negative – not at all. You’re dong well Lyndsey; you’re pointing yourself, and in your better focused moments, you’re aiming a lot higher than just 'relationship – tears – relationship'. When I saw you walking back past the pub, back towards Buchanan Street not long ago, you were back on track – back, coaxed by yourself, and you were aiming higher and truer." She leaned over and took hold of Lyndsey’s free hand. "Haven’t you learned yet that the first and so important place that we MUST occupy well is here" She tapped the side of her head. "If you can’t fill up your own space – or if you need someone else’s company or input to enjoy inhabiting it, then you will be forever fragile and always open to someone else being able to reach in and able to take away your self-love, your happiness and control. Them taking away You... When you are happy in your own world, then you are happy in the real world. And then it will always need you to dismantle your control and sensibility. Or it will only be you who will allow someone else to erode or steal it away. Or to one day share it..." Helen paused to gather her thoughts as she looked at Lyndsey’s staring and listening eyes; her hand was still and warm in her hands. "Like a boat that’s been lost or un-moored, you’ve been drifting Lyndsey. And now, almost literally, now you’re sailing off towards the clear blue skies and the green, green hills... you're throwing down thoughts and stirring up - FINDING determined misery to help unsteady and disorient yourself. Why not follow your head and forget your heart and those who make it beat a little faster, but dishonestly? Repair and disentangle your feelings, learn and strive to love yourself before you give yourself away again. Next time you’ll be stronger – next time you’ll be master of your own world – the one you will fill up. The next time will be better." Finally an end and silence from Helen as she let go of her friend’s hand and stubbed out the long since dead cigarette resting on the ash tray. Lyndsey looked back towards her, warmly and feeling so much love and respect for this kind, expansive girl. "And what about you Helen – where are you with yourself?" Helen laughed. She was willing to read and assess others, and more than ready to tell them of her thoughts, but she was not eager to analyse or express her own feelings, weaknesses and desires. "Me right now? I'm okay, but envious." "Envious?" Lyndsey echoed her word. "Envious - of watching someone else doing what I know I should be doing... Reaching out to go ahead and do the kind of things I should be doing. But I'm too busy prevaricating, doing other things - and making excuses not to." "But what do you mean? Envious of who and what?" Lyndsey was sure she knew what and to whom Helen was addressing herself, but she wanted to hear her say it. Helen smiled. "I'm envious of you. You leaving behind what you know and what you have previously lived amongst. You’ve got the guts to seek, embrace and chase down a new world. You’re brave enough to make mistakes, pick yourself up and still go back after it. I wish, and know I should be doing what you are doing. And now - now - you’re not going to dismantle my faith and admiration by dodging back and avoiding seeing it through. You're not gonna fuck it up Lyndsey!" Lyndsey smiled; partly with embarrassment, but mostly with inner pride at Helen’s expressive words as her friend finished her speech. Her mind was again restless, but with a feeling of more order and imminent calm as a new sense of purpose began to wash into her.She looked up again and jumped as Helen surprised her by leaning over to kiss her cheek. Lyndsey blushed and looked down, but Helen took hold of both her hands and pulled to her feet. "Come on Miss Intensity. You’ve got a bus to catch. You've got a life to live. You’re gonna carry on being you – you’re gonna find the world of streams, dreams and extremes you told me about. And while you do that you’ll be making my world better too..."
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