It was a television drama, of all things, that conjured up my nostalgia and prompted me to go online and try to revisit the places of my youth. There are a whole host of web sites that can help to facilitate such a journey and as one fond memory begat another, I probed deeper. The rest of the family having retired for the night and the wine that I’d drunk having sedated my good sense: I guiltily Googled the name of my first true love. I never seriously expected to get a result. It was just a frivolous jab at the past, but it threw up an online obituary for a woman who shared the same unusual surname. I didn’t know her or the circumstances of her death, but she had died quite young and that pricked my sympathy sufficiently for me to light a virtual candle in her memory. It joined one other, posted some time earlier by her sister—the woman who had been the object of my search. It revealed her married name. A further search threw up a Facebook page and suddenly, there she was, thirty four years older than when I’d last seen her, but still there was no mistaking her. Beauty is, after all, in the eyes of the beholder. My pulse raced as hot tears formed in my eyes and I gave a deep, involuntary sigh of regret.
Back in 1978 when we’d first met, I was a smoker and she had given me a cigarette lighter. She’d had it engraved with her initials and the word “Forever.” Likewise, she had given me a photograph of herself which was equally precious to me, but for the sake of my sanity I had thrown them both away after I’d lost her and yet, just a couple of years ago, after my mother died, I had casually flicked through some old photograph albums whilst clearing her home and come across a print of my younger self with a beautiful girl who, in the circumstances, I didn’t immediately recognize. The photo had been taken in the grounds surrounding my parents’ old house – and then the penny had suddenly dropped with a great clunk as I remembered that single, most catastrophic day of my life.
Winston Churchill once wrote an essay in which he hypothesized that if a man could travel back in time to an earlier period in his life, he could make only one change because thereafter, the chain effect would produce a different outcome to the one which he had left behind. If I could indeed, travel back in time it would be to that day when our photograph was taken and the change I would make would be seismic. That night, when she came quietly through to the lounge where I had my bed on the settee, I would not repeat my horrendous error of judgment. I would not be that shy and timid virgin whose panic, being construed as disinterest, caused mortal offence. I would scour every last vestige of that wretched episode of insanity from the face of time and what she would find instead would be the most attentive, considerate and only lover that she would ever wish for.
There’s a terrible heresy about this analysis. It’s a treacherous betrayal of my wife and family. I realize that, but it is, and could only ever be, a fantasy. In a different dimension, if my life had taken another course, they could never have existed to be hurt in the first place, but all that is theoretical nonsense. The fact is that try as I might, I cannot delete my memory of her. Until recently, I had managed to get her neatly boxed and stored away in the far reaches of my mind, and then foolishly, I had let my curiosity get the better of me.
Picture me at nineteen. A proud young soldier stationed in Edinburgh Castle, Scotland – and the world his oyster. It doesn’t get much better than that. The only thing I couldn’t find was a sweetheart, but whilst I was popular with my peers and elders; I was hopeless with girls. It was the only blemish on an otherwise perfect posting. Towards the end of it, I was detailed to run the Corporal’s Mess bar. It drastically impeded my social life. As soon as I closed the bar for the afternoon, I would hurry to my local pub – the Ensign Ewart, just below the Castle Esplanade. It didn’t close for another half an hour and I could at least, chat to the Landlord and bar staff if no-one else.
One afternoon however, I chanced to meet the girlfriend of one of my chums when she came in to look for him. She was beautiful, but I liked her far more for her sunny, sensible personality. I loved having her company and because it seemed to suit her, we began meeting quite often in the pub during that slim window of opportunity. Sometimes, after it had closed for the afternoon, we would strike out into Princes Street and visit the shops. I particularly remember her helping me to pick out a gift for my Mum. They were happy days, but we were only ever good friends. She was courting my colleague and they made a fine pair. He was a handsome hunk and she was an intelligent beauty. I was just an ordinary mortal and worse, I had received notification of a posting to Northern Ireland where the “Troubles”—as the government called them, had been raging for the past decade with no end in sight. It was inevitable that I should become an Ulster veteran. In the meantime, I exulted in the friendship of a pretty girl and sadly averted my eyes whenever she was with her boyfriend.
She attended my farewell party the night before I left Edinburgh to start my embarkation leave. It was busy. We had no chance to talk privately, but we hugged with great fondness as she left. It was no more than I had expected. In the morning, I bid farewell to my comrades and arrived at the London bound platform of Edinburgh Waverley railway station, laden with luggage. I could hardly believe that she was there waiting for me or that she ran to me so eagerly. We embraced unhesitatingly in a spontaneous kiss that was the most perfect admission of young love ever. Even the silver screen would have struggled to do it justice. When, the evening before, she had asked what time my train was, I hadn’t dared to think anything of it, but she was ever the bolder spirit of us both and thank God for that. We held each other close and talked with growing desperation as the train prepared to leave. Addresses were exchanged and promises made to write to each other, then there was a last, lingering kiss before a bittersweet parting as she waved from the platform and I drew away. I cannot imagine ever being lucky enough to be able to find that depth of joy again in one lifetime. It was unique.
Bob Jenkins
Jan 13th, 2012
