Fade to Back

London Bridge, Southwark Tavern

Zombe looks gaunt. His cheek bones appear sharp and his lips dry until they sip the beer. He tells me he is doing construction work. I shudder. It has come to that. How can it be? My old school mate, working with his hands and knees when we went to the best school in the country for the use of our brain. But what is wrong with construction work, I ask myself as I listen to Zombe’s tales. He is still the chatter box he was at school, his bright mouth of teeth and tongue, chomping away at words. Your laughter roared through the dorms halls every term. Zombe tells me of his work mates who are English. They are have common names like John Smith or some such to avoid the authorities. They steal what they can get away with. Cell phones, scrap metal. Their salary spent on drug debts. Zombe splits his salary between paying off his sisters loan and his tuition fees. The loan was for earlier tuition. For the work he does not attend class. He has schemes for the internet business he means to hatch. It is raining outside and the trains thunder above us.

In his town they call him Zola instead. This shakes off the banal zombi jokes. It is his town, Eastgrinstead. A little stop over on a highway outside Gatwick airport. It has two high streets. Zola lives on one of them above a pub. It is his town. Everyone knows him. I was there and saw it for my self. Every second car pulls over to greet him. He raps in a band. We got drunk after his performance. It rained when I was there. We partied in his flat. Loud music, beer cans and two 19 year old girls. Two of his groupies. They were dreadfully unattractive. One fat, one thin. One dumb, the other ceaselessly talkative.

Peckham, my back yard.

A wild place. Not large enough for boys cricket but large enough to have live game. Long grass and wild cats in pursuit of furry and agile herbivores, the squirrels. Patrolled by foxes in the night. Slugs as large as small anacondas. Spiders big enough to be seen from in doors. I must battle cob webs to get to the shed. The spiders have invaded the house. They net the windows and every corner with their webs. The front door is now a tunnel. Eric is squeamish about slugs. The hair on my back stands up at the sight of a spider. The bigger they are the louder I scream. They have tiger stripes. They get bigger and bigger. What do they eat? There isn’t anything but other spiders in the house. I cycle to the shops for groceries. At top speed ahead of a bus I notice a cob web about my handle bars, complete with an eight legged predator. It takes me a while to realize that I can stop the bike and get off. I have such fears!

Peckham Rye Common

For exercise I run around the common. It is big. No sound is heard from one end to the other. Open fields. Rugby goal posts yet all the men practice soccer. Most of them are from west Africa. The ones with big bellies play too. In the common are the gardens. It has a wrought iron fence. Flower beds, picket fences, roses, more fields (with soccer goal posts) and a Japanese garden. Families leisure here. Successful old women bond with their wise educated daughters. Young couples push perambulators by the duck pond. Toddlers try in vain to kill birds. Single people read the Guardian newspaper on the benches. A stone bridge crosses a stream in dense foliage. It was here that you cried. So many tears. I tried to catch them all but I made use of none.

London Bridge, Southwark Tavern…again

Fortune orders a coke. I feel shy and order a beer anyway. I did say lets have a drink. Fortune is buying the dinner. He offered. I only ever say no once. He works for a bank. It has been ten years since I saw him last. Most likely at our last school exam. He has been to the university at home and then to South East Asia with the bank. He still has a gap between his teeth. He still attends church regularly. The mole on his nose has grown. I had forgotten about the mole. Now I can’t stop looking at it. We shared a desk at school. It took effort to have a desk at school. You had to find it. Fight for it. Carry it. Keep it. The usual questions. What did you study? Where did you work? Are you not married? Where do you live? The answers leave something missing. Conversation dries up. It is raining outside. The trains roar overhead. The buses splash water. We got back to the station and make false promises.