Giacomo, Davide - resentment’s a waste of time.
As I count the herons (wondering whether or not they’re really storks) I hope that a sort of ‘one for every year’ comes out of it. A sort of anniversary Ted Hughes piece of imagery. But no, there’s one more than the years of our marriage. Next year there’ll be twelve of them… always one more… always awkward, nature never running according to literary neatness.
-What do you think about when you’re running?
-Nothing. I have to concentrate on not falling over.
True. But I do think about the herons, and I think about questions I can’t find answers to.
-Where did it start? When did you fall in love with me? (Where did you first ask me those questions?)
I’m tracing the fields trying to think outside the answers we’ve always given to dinner-table guests, to investigative priests…
I remember where it began. Westbourne Grove tube station. I’d realised I could get off the train there - the stop before Paddington from Shepherd’s Bush - walk a bit further but get to the school sooner by avoiding the mainline station. Then, some time, I realised that you took that road too. Now I can’t count how many days I stalked you into Queen’s Gardens. But I can remember hotfooting the stairs from the platform onto the street every day, and more often than not you were there.
So what were you doing in Westbourne Grove? How come you got the job there with the little flat overlooking the train line? How come I thought you would be the perfect student for that particular opportunity, and not the girl from Rome? Me, the happily married director of studies, choosing one girl over another to teach Italian to little Hortensia (or Ophelia, or Lithuania, or whatever she was called).
You were at the end of that assignment and you were in the middle of exams. You’d taken one of your papers the day before. You had about 50 metres on me that particular day. You had your absolutely-determined walk on, slightly late for work. It took me until Queensway to catch you up and professionally ask you how it had gone. Today I remember that moment as being the one I knew I was in love with you, even if I didn’t ‘know’ it at that moment. At the time I was planning a trip to Greece to try and meet my lost-love-lost-contact there. (So the happily-married bit was a bit flawed even then.)
Where did that hotfoot up the stairs lead to? Hampstead. Bloomsbury. On a weekly travelcard from Northfields. To and from Milan and Genova and Camogli and Palau. And then the decision to move to Italy, the thought of another winter with a pushchair in a rainy west London park too much to bear.
We’ve been married ten years. And each morning I’m coming up the June stairs of Westbourne Grove tube, with that same anticipation of seeing you: I fall in love with you every day.
As I count the herons (wondering whether or not they’re really storks) I hope that a sort of ‘one for every year’ comes out of it. A sort of anniversary Ted Hughes piece of imagery. But no, there’s one more than the years of our marriage. Next year there’ll be twelve of them… always one more… always awkward, nature never running according to literary neatness.
-What do you think about when you’re running?
-Nothing. I have to concentrate on not falling over.
True. But I do think about the herons, and I think about questions I can’t find answers to.
-Where did it start? When did you fall in love with me? (Where did you first ask me those questions?)
I’m tracing the fields trying to think outside the answers we’ve always given to dinner-table guests, to investigative priests…
I remember where it began. Westbourne Grove tube station. I’d realised I could get off the train there - the stop before Paddington from Shepherd’s Bush - walk a bit further but get to the school sooner by avoiding the mainline station. Then, some time, I realised that you took that road too. Now I can’t count how many days I stalked you into Queen’s Gardens. But I can remember hotfooting the stairs from the platform onto the street every day, and more often than not you were there.
So what were you doing in Westbourne Grove? How come you got the job there with the little flat overlooking the train line? How come I thought you would be the perfect student for that particular opportunity, and not the girl from Rome? Me, the happily married director of studies, choosing one girl over another to teach Italian to little Hortensia (or Ophelia, or Lithuania, or whatever she was called).
You were at the end of that assignment and you were in the middle of exams. You’d taken one of your papers the day before. You had about 50 metres on me that particular day. You had your absolutely-determined walk on, slightly late for work. It took me until Queensway to catch you up and professionally ask you how it had gone. Today I remember that moment as being the one I knew I was in love with you, even if I didn’t ‘know’ it at that moment. At the time I was planning a trip to Greece to try and meet my lost-love-lost-contact there. (So the happily-married bit was a bit flawed even then.)
Where did that hotfoot up the stairs lead to? Hampstead. Bloomsbury. On a weekly travelcard from Northfields. To and from Milan and Genova and Camogli and Palau. And then the decision to move to Italy, the thought of another winter with a pushchair in a rainy west London park too much to bear.
We’ve been married ten years. And each morning I’m coming up the June stairs of Westbourne Grove tube, with that same anticipation of seeing you: I fall in love with you every day.
