Monday 5 September 2016

REUNION - by Robert Eldon


4th March at  8.00 a.m.
Ben finishes his breakfast, washes up and then sits in his chair by the window with a second cup of coffee and finishes the ‘Guardian’ crossword. 

That completed, he limps out into the back garden, shivering in the cold morning air. The limp, like the scars on his chest, is a souvenir of his last heart operation. He refills the bird feeders, remembering to scatter a little seed near the bushes for the dunnocks, before slipping back into the warmth of the house, locking the door behind him. Back in his chair, he watches through the window as a wren creeps out from its bolt-hole in the climbing hydrangea to grab a few seeds. A robin soon chases it back into hiding.

There’s a rattle as the mail comes through the letterbox and lands with a thud on the mat in the hallway.

‘It’ll just be adverts,’ Ben grumbles.

There’s a white A5 envelope amongst the usual pile of catalogues and circulars. 

‘University of Oldbury, another plea for donations.’

But it isn’t, it’s a letter from Morris Hirschfeld. He’s writing to all their old university course. It’s the 40th anniversary of their graduation, and he’s organising a reunion at Oldbury.  There’s a website and an email address.

Ben takes the letter into his study and sits wondering whether he should join them. He’s thinking about someone who he really wishes he could see again.  

‘Hilary and I just drifted together. Nothing intense, sort of friends. We were both still living at home and travelling in every day, so we missed out on a lot of the groups that formed in halls and student flats. We became “study buddies” as they call them in the States. I guess she found the notes I wrote up each night – three colours of ink in hard-backed notebooks – pretty useful. Well most of the time that’s how it was, on her side at least.

After graduation I got funding to do my PhD at Leamwick, and Hilary joined the marketing department of a multi-national down in London, a high-flying career beckoned for her. But we kept in touch.

Then one Tuesday morning, I got a call from her. She said she was supervising some market research exercise near me - suggested we met up. I invited her to stay at my flat. I gave her the bed, slept on the sofa.

She stayed on for the weekend. On the Sunday morning, I walked into the bathroom, and there she stood, just a pair of knickers on - still remember those knickers very well, sort of white with little perforations all over them – like Tetley teabags – I think they called them Artex knickers. No - that can’t be right - Artex is what some idiot had used on the ceiling of the cottage I bought when I retired, bugger to get off. 

I got flustered, stammered out ‘I’m sorry’, closed the door and dived back into the hallway. She came out after me, stood there facing me with her hands on her hips, just stood there smiling.

“Do you know how long I’ve been stood there, quietly waiting for you to barge in and surprise me?” she said. “You really are hopeless.”

You’d think I’d remember her breasts, how she looked, wouldn’t you, but it’s the knickers - that’s what I remember.

That evening I drove her to the railway station, we kissed in the car park, then she took the train back to London.

Back at the flat, the scent of her perfume still lingered on my pillow.

And that was the last time I saw Hilary Blake.’

Ben logs in on his laptop and emails Morris.

7th September 4.00 p.m.

Ben’s in his kitchen when the pain hits him. The iron bands round his chest, the sweating, the feeling of nausea, Ben knows the symptoms only too well. He presses the pre-set number on his phone to summon help.

‘Can’t be ill now,’ he thinks, ‘it’s the reunion next week.’

Half-an-hour later the paramedics arrive, at the same time as his brother, Jim.

‘They’re going to take you in for the night, just to be on the safe side,’ says Jim.

8th September 8.00 p.m.

It’s visiting time in the cardio ward. Jim’s sat at Ben’s bedside. He looks concerned.

‘Well, looks like I’ll still be going to that reunion,’ says Ben, ‘looking forward to that.’

Jim says nothing.

13th September 8.00 a.m.

Ben’s standing on Platform 1 at Blackedge station. It’s the end of the line. It’s a ten minute walk from Ben’s house, but he can’t remember exactly how he got here. The platform’s thronged with people. To Ben’s eyes they seem grey and faded. They ignore Ben. A girl standing near him, shivers and pulls her coat tighter around her, even though the morning sun is already warming the day.

Ben sings to himself, ‘I’m standing on the railway station, got a ticket for my destination.... Paul Simon composed that on Warrington Bank Quay, or was it Widnes?’

He boards the train for Oldbury, he’s heading for the reunion at the University.

13th September 9.15 a.m.

Ben stares out of the window as the aged multiple-unit emerges from the mist that seems to have enveloped it since they left Blackedge an hour or so before. Now it’s ambling through a townscape of scrap-yards and derelict factories, clattering its way towards his destination. He’s still thinking about the girl he hadn’t seen for nearly forty years.

Ben looks round the carriage. The seats around him are empty. ‘So much for all those stories in the ‘Evening Post’ about overcrowding and cattle truck conditions,’ he thinks.

13th September at 9.30 a.m.

Ben disembarks onto an empty platform at the new re-designed University station. He doesn’t know which way to go. Everything’s changed.

Suddenly another train comes in. It’s absolutely jam-packed. Students and office workers in bright, modern clothing pile off the train and start up the platform. Somehow the tide seems to swirl round Ben and he finds himself being swept along towards the exit.

There’s a sign pointing to “University Campus”, so Ben heads in that direction. He crosses a road and finds himself in a car park. All his memories tell him that there should be an old brick building in front of him, but there’s nothing there, just an empty grassed space and a signpost pointing to ‘Library / Cafe’.

‘I’m still too early, maybe I’d better get a coffee.’

So he wanders off across the grass.

As he reaches the Library a woman, a girl really, steps out towards him.

She looks so familiar, he thinks for a moment that…. But she can’t be.

‘Hello, Ben,’ she says.

Hilary?’ he says, ‘Is that really you?’

And they link arms and walk together across the campus. The young woman in her leather jacket and tight jeans and the old man dressed in his best formal suit.

‘You don’t look a day older than when I waved you off on that train at Leamwick station,’ says Ben.

Hilary smiles. ‘You look a bit more worn, I fear. Have the years been hard?’

‘Not really,’ says Ben, ‘there’s just been a lot of them. I used to have hair, and why am I dressed like this? It’s a reunion, not a funeral.’

‘So you’re here for the reunion, then?’ asks Hilary.

‘Yes, you too?’

 ‘In a way.’

Ten minutes later they’re standing in the shadows of the Senate House, looking across the grassy square, watching a group of middle-aged men – their former classmates – who’ve gathered around Morris Hirschfeld on the steps of the sixties glass and concrete block that is now the Maths building. 

‘Shall we join them?’ asks Ben.

‘I don’t think we can,’ says Hilary.

‘So what do we do?’

‘Maybe we should just go back to Leamwick, take up where we left off.’

‘Could we do that?’

Meanwhile the group are chatting amongst themselves.

Morris Hirschfeld is holding a clipboard with a list of names.

‘I think that’s all of us,’ he says.

‘What about Ben and Hilary,’ asks another, ‘Do you know anything about them, are they coming?’

Morris puts his clipboard under his arm and sighs.

‘No they won’t be coming. I suppose we had to expect in forty years we’d lose someone. It’s amazing in a way the rest of us are all here.’

‘Ben was due to be here today. But he died last week, heart attack. Today’s the day of his funeral. His brother emailed me. He said Ben’s last words were that he was really looking forward to seeing Hilary again. He must have been out of it by then. He knew about her, he was the one who told me.’

The group falls silent. Then, ‘why what happened to Hilary?’

‘She was killed in a rail accident, not long after graduation,’ says Morris, ‘apparently she’d spent the weekend with Ben in Leamwick and was heading back to London. I only found out myself a few months ago when Ben emailed to say he’d come to the reunion. First time I’d heard from him in 40 years.’

Morris pulls himself together, ‘Come on,’ he says, ‘we’ve got to get on. Let’s get started on this tour of the new campus.’ He waves to a young woman standing by the Maths Building doors, ‘here’s our guide.’

Meanwhile, in another time and place, in a flat in Leamwick, a long-haired young man is stepping out of the mist and sleepily beginning to turn the handle of the bathroom door.