Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

I’d been back for a while when she called me to say: “While you were gone I had to find something to fill my time, something to take my mind off things.”

     “Well,” I said. “When was your mind ever on anything but you?” Just like that, I said it. My hand was shaking. I was full of hatred. It was over. Everything was over.

     It was all clear to me as I lay the phone back into its cradle. But I remember being a bit surprised, too. I hadn’t ever guessed that she’d cheat on me. I’d thought my trip alone to Nice would be good for us, the whole “distance” theory. And for Christsakes, I was going to France to be with my brother while he lay In that hospital bed after his accident. I sat there with him for three weeks.

     She’d seemed fine when I stepped off the airplane. It had been all hugs and deep kisses. That night we’d made love on the living room floor with a passion I thought we’d lost. I realize now that It was sadness, sadness disguised as passion, hidden away as we tried to fuck it out of us.

     That was a long time ago, almost four years now. For some reason though, I was thinking about it today. Not so much about the break-up and its aftermath; I’ve made peace with all of that. Rather, I was thinking about my trip to France. My trip and the flight home, in particular.

     I was laid over in London for five hours. I sat in an airport bar for the entire five hours with a guy I’d met on the plane from Milan. The bar was a sort of courtyard area but it was made up to look like a traditional pub. There were these “old pictures” on the wall behind the barkeep; pictures of white bearded old men lined up at a bar with pints of beer in front of them. And there were sports photos. Shots of men playing football that looked like they were from a different era. The photos seemed fake to me, like reproductions. The barkeep had noticed me looking at them and smiled. I smiled back and ordered the first round.

     The dark stout surprised me. The cold thickness of it filled my mouth and then slipped smoothly down my throat. The guy from the airplane took long, deep drinks from his pint, like he drank in this bar every day of his life. I sipped slowly at my stout. Eventually we started buying these little grilled sandwiches, too. The sandwiches were filled with cheese and meat or cheese and tomatoes.

     You know, I couldn’t think of that guys name right now if I had to. It doesn’t matter though. I don’t think it really matters at all.

     Over those first pints of ale, I told the guy about my brother’s accident. How he had lost control and the car had spun. How the guardrail had come through the car door looking for flesh and had found my brother. How that metal pinned him there, in too much pain to even be scared.

     And that was enough. I couldn’t say anymore on the matter. We finished our beers in silence. Then that guy, he was from California, I remember that much, he bought us another round of stout. I drank easily from the second beer and looked out the large airport windows and across the tarmac. The day moved towards afternoon and the light was changing. I turned back and, for a moment, it appeared as though I was sitting in a small English pub. Then the noise of the place hit me; this was Heathrow. Twenty minutes later I got up and bought us another round. The California guy bought us another soon after. It went on like this.

     “…I walk into a room sometimes,” that guy said. “And I can’t even remember what I was doing, why I walked In there in the first place.” He caught me off-guard with this, said it out of nowhere.

     “How do you mean?” I asked. Maybe I shouldn’t have; I realize that now.

     “It’s my son I guess, I miss my son.” He told me that he had been in Milan to visit his ex-wife and son. He had moved from California to Italy five years ago with this woman, his now ex-wife. The move had been over his work; he was some sort of super accountant for a large corporation. After less than a year in Milan his wife had given birth to their son. It wasn’t more than another six months before she told him that she didn’t love him anymore. He said that he had quit his job and moved back to California, where he couldn’t find work for three months and was forced to live with his parents.

     “How does this sort of thing happen?” he asked me. I had nothing to say to that. I do remember though, feeling a tightness in my chest. I remember thinking, how does this sort of thing happen?

     “My son is growing up with no father,” he said, tears in his eyes. “There’s just this Italian guy that my ex-wife dates now.”

     He said that his son would speak In both English and Italian in the same sentence. He said that confused him; that it made him somehow proud and deeply sad at the same time.

     “Never mind this,” he said, suddenly. “Forget I said any of this.” And he got up and bought us another round. When he came back with the two pints of dark stout, it was as though none of our conversation had happened. We drank our beer.

     We sat there like that for a long time. It was practically dark out. There were people bustling around us; the whole place was throbbing with humanity. Flights to catch, paperbacks to buy, duty-free items to splurge on. And we sat there, silent. We just sat there. I stared down into my beer and I couldn’t wait to get home. Can you believe that? I couldn’t wait.