Summer Song

The end of last summer came gilded with the burnished gold of autumn. An inbetween time, neither one thing nor the other. It was how I felt but without the adornment.

The house felt empty but echoed with your footsteps, laughter and the silly songs you were always singing, which were mostly off-key and with substituted words, so that they often made no sense. 

Earlier in the year, around springtime, you’d made an attempt to write a song. It was as though you wanted to explore another part of yourself in a creative way. But unfortunately your song writing abilities were on a par with your actual singing. Awful! It was like a rusty gate blowing in the wind and even then I’m being somewhat kind! You called the song: ‘Our Song’ and I lied and said I loved it, but somehow I think you guessed I was lying.

Then summer arrived. I remember the garden being almost obscenely fecund at that time, flaunting its offspring in the form of heavily laden apple trees and ditto with luscious berries, dripping through the gaps of a latticed fence. Even some of the birds who came to the garden looked swollen with eggs but that was probably my guilt manifesting. You’d wanted children; I didn’t. We were happy on our own. At least I thought so.

You stopped all your singing in midsummer. The songs had gradually been tapering off anyway. I was worried about you. You were staying later and later at the office and had been away on two ‘sporty’ weekends with a male colleague, whose name you’d never mentioned before. The signs were there – almost in neon – but I chose to ignore them.

I’m not a sentimental person, I don’t wallow in the past. I don’t keep theatre tickets, birthday cards and the last sandwich you bit into. Well okay I did keep it for a week or so, because it was the last time I saw you – you’d suddenly remembered an urgent meeting – and then later that day I got a phone call from you informing me who the meeting was with and a whole load of other details that were hard to register. It was hard to focus on anything apart from the sandwich you’d left: it was made with wholemeal bread, filled with ham, spread lightly with mustard. The bite was large and your teethmarks clearly defined. It was beginning to curl at the edges, before I chucked it, thinking I felt pretty similar: I was folding in on myself. Apart from that one item, I had no inclination to keep anything else of yours, and your brother came round two weeks later, sweeping round the house in high energy, trying to inject fake bonhomie into the situation and gathering the rest of your belongings as he did so. And then he swept himself away, leaving behind his false smile, which lingered in every corner for days afterwards. I never did like your brother.

I asked myself questions, a habit I became very fond of at that time: ‘Was it right to chuck the ham sandwich when I did, considering it was the only connection with you I had?’ And, ‘How long does it take to fall out of love with one person and in love with another?’ Both questions appeared to be equally important and needing accurate answers, which just reveals the state of mind I was in. However as time elapsed, answers seemed less important. The answer to the latter one, I sussed out anyway, it was three weeks, but I never had a ‘lightbulb’ moment with the sandwich one. Another question has also come to the fore just recently: ‘Is it a sign of madness to sit here in the armchair, gazing at the chair opposite, talking to you as if you were still here? Which is, of course what I am now doing. I’ve never done this before but I saw you a few days ago, with your new woman, exactly a year after you had left. You were walking along the road together and suddenly you whispered something in her ear, then patted her slightly distended stomach in a very affectionate way.

And that was when I decided to talk to you this way, hoping that some part of you is still here and can listen. When I saw you pat her stomach, it was as though something deep inside me twisted in pain and I felt an emptiness that went beyond the feeling in the house and in my mind. I reckon that pain and empty feeling might both get worse, especially if I see you both again with a child.

But all I really wanted to say was that I still love you and that even though your singing voice was so awful – I would give anything to hear that rusty gate creaking in the wind again.