Shadows

February 11, 2016 Longrider Personal Stuff 16

I’m a man of Kent, born and raised south of the Medway. I left when I was fifteen. My parents decided to embark on a new life in Wales. I didn’t want to go. My life was in Maidstone. My friends were in Maidstone and I was halfway through studying for my O levels/CSEs.

Since then, I’ve settled in the West Country. I like it here and don’t think much about my old life these days – after all, it’s forty-odd years ago. A lifetime. But sometimes…

Today I had to meet a candidate at Beltring. A little place on the outskirts of Maidstone. As I drove to my destination, I travelled half-forgotten byways that stirred shadows of the past, like half-seen sprites in an enchanted wood dancing in the corner of my  eye. The places recognised yet strange, the names signposts from a forgotten era, oddly familiar yet distant.  As I drove through the streets of Tovil I recognised my old paper round and how odd and far away that seemed as it sprang unbidden to the front of my mind.

Then, As I crossed the Medway over the bridge at Yalding, she came back to haunt me.  A girl I once knew. I can see her now, fifteen years old, round, fair face with pale blue eyes and her blonde hair cut in a short bob. And I thought of her, for this is where she lived. And I found myself wondering what became of her, is she happy? Did life give her what she was looking for? I never quite understood what she saw in me. It was one of those school romances with messages passed surreptitiously across the classroom. There was a magic about it and we lived for the moment, enjoying it while it lasted. She was determined that I would be hers and for a while she got her way. The move to Wales put an end to all that.

The last I heard of her, she was engaged. That was a couple of years after I moved away. I heard nothing after that and I’ve not seen her since the day we parted in July 1973.

That of course was why it would have never worked had I stayed. Her ambition was to leave school at the earliest opportunity, get a job in the local factory for a few years and then marry and settle down. So, had I stayed, not wanting these things – certainly not wanting any of it before I hit twenty, I would probably have faced an ultimatum; marry or go. I would have gone.

But, even so, I think of her today, passing through those familiar half-forgotten places, as she came to the front of my mind; a shadow from the long-buried past.  Did she marry the man she was engaged to? Is she a grandmother now? Probably, as she was keen to  get on with a family.

Suddenly I am feeling melancholic. A time, a place, a love, that was a brief moment of joy in time so long ago haunts me.

I’ll get over it, of course. But for a moment I am remembering a teenage girl who, for a few months forty odd years ago held the keys to my heart. And, I suspect, never quite relinquished them…

16 Comments

  2. 40 years ago I worked in a new secondary school with the first intake. Until last weekend I had never met any of those pupils again. Two of them sought me out – the bond was still there – the years were nothing – they are contented grannies with their own lives but still unable to use my first name – such respect and pleasure from memories.

  3. It happens to me also. Usually a very unexpected trigger, and the memory floodgates open.

    Saudade; always sums it up for me.

    Regards.

    Andy.

  4. The Rod Stewart song ‘You wear it well’ tends to make me think of old girlfriends. I had a summer fling with a girl called Deborah in 1981 when we were both working at a Butlins holiday camp. I sometimes think of her and hope her life worked out OK. It seems strange to remember her as she was when she was 18 knowing that she will now be 53.

  6. I had never heard of saudade, I had to look it up. I think that the feeling that it describes is a little more intense than the one that I feel about my lost love. I would like to think that she was far too intelligent for bingo.

  7. Funnily enough, despite being born a Wulfrunian, I lived from 1970 to 1972 in East Peckham, and worked in Maidstone. I went back in 1993, but both Maidstone and East Peckham had changed such a lot. I should have stuck with my memories.

  9. “Which Butlins Stony?”

    Filey in Yorkshire. It closed in 1982 I think. It was great fun working there. The pay was rubbish but you got your food and acommodation thrown in.

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