The Unforgiving Mile

He drives there under the blanket of a dark cloudy night. The moon attempts to pry, but is thwarted by grim maiden aunts wise to its antics. There will be no light this night. No frivolity. This is a night of purpose. There is work that needs to be done.

The lights of his Land Rover stare blindly at the grey of the road. Everything before him is monochrome. Beyond that there is the blurred and muted promise of colour in a world that cannot exist for him right now.

He is tired. Ever so tired. He has been tired for an age. This journey is a miracle of will. He believes that he can and so he does. There will be no payment for his exertions. Payment has already been made. He has given everything but never appreciated the interest that was due. He is breathing his life out into the world as he pushes himself from the driver’s seat and slips out of his vehicle. The door requires more effort than he is prepared to give it. It pouts its lip as he pats the car’s flank in thanks for its faithfulness. Doing his best to give credit where it is due. Manners maketh the man even as he is coming apart.

Over his shoulder is a rucksack with a change of clothes and the accoutrements necessary for an overnight stay. He opens the door without looking at it or its stone surroundings. The cottage is familiar to him and always will be. He has known it with a love he cannot dispel. That is why he is here. To finally do something about that love.

Inside, he wants to kick his boots off, but the laces are an impediment to that simple act of release. He sits heavily on the sofa taking care not to walk into the room and mark the carpet. He fumbles at both knots. Resisting the urge to throw the boots once he is free of them. Taking a moment and some care. Leaving the boots standing and together. Sentries at the door. Heralds of a better day tomorrow for the small effort he has expended this day.

The stairs beckon, but he resists their siren call. The steps to the kitchen are few. He begrudges every one of them. He runs the cold tap and fills a glass. Empties it all into his mouth. Introducing the glass to the futility of its existence. By way of balance he fills the glass again and brings it with him to the bedroom. It will sit a vigil over his sleeplessness tonight.

The duvet is fluffy as a Summer cloud. It’s presence in this cottage has always baffled him. It is too light and cheery. He hankers after substance and yet his experience tells him that this bedfellow will keep him warm all night. It will do as it says, even if it makes fun of its purpose every time they are reacquainted.

The bathroom is windowless and dark. Befitting of his mood. A mood he has carried with him for far too long. A habit he is loathed to break. A comfort blanket that hides his true nature. Covers the person he may once have been but has forgotten during the storms of life. He fears meeting that man. He is ashamed of what he has done to him. Of what he has allowed to occur on his watch.

Cleaning his teeth is one good habit he has carried through his life. There have been times when he has sailed close to forsaking it, but somehow it has survived where so much has been consigned to the place where odd socks escape the mundanity of their slavery. Splashing his face with cold water is a token punishment that he cannot fathom. Neither welcome or shunned he indulges it in the hope that one day it can find meaning within the residue of his life.

Back in the bedroom he considers a betrayal of the duvet. Taking his clothes off seems a wasted exercise. He would not do so in order to lounge on the sofa. The sofa is an option in these circumstances, but the trip back down the stairs is not. He kicks off his jeans and sees them laying broken in the middle of the floor. That will not do. His folding of them is makeshift, but preferable to their former chaos. His jumper is dropped upon those jeans. There is no need for folding when it comes to that garment. His inconsistency makes him sigh with sorrow but he does not correct his failing. Has no energy for that particular battle. Knows that this is how it is done. A constant erosion of what once was until there is nothing left worth knowing.

Smirking at his sock clad feet and the minor violation of etiquette they represent, he lifts the duvet and climbs under it. The ceiling stares down at him. He accepts its challenge and returns the stare.

The staring contest was lost and somehow he has slept and feels all the more tired for it. His body aches and he feels old before his time. Kick starting his day is fraught with niggles and pitfalls. Stretching can cause spasms and cramp. The only course of action is to go gently into the day. The restrictive practices he is reduced to makes him feel as weak as a kitten and as ugly as the travesty he has become. Age has done more than wither him.

All the same, he looks forward to the coffee he heats on the stove. The aroma is one promise that will be delivered upon. The taste of it delights him. There is pleasure in the wait itself. And now he looks out of the kitchen window and allows himself further pleasure as he takes in the undulations of the land above the stone outcrop he has hidden himself within.

As he drinks his coffee his focus is on the sunlight invading his refuge. Motes of dust dance in the air before him. Loving the spotlight and performing regardless of his gaze. That is what it is to live, he thinks to himself. No need for attachment or approval. His seemingly eternal sadness returns unbidden asking him how he goes from this sorry mess to the elation of the simple dust murmurations before him.

Still he drinks the coffee and is steadfast in his enjoyment of it. There is good in this life and he clings onto that good. And he clings on for his dear life, even as he clings to a dark shadow that continues to tear him apart. He tries not to think about that shadow and in so doing he has never stopped thinking about it.

The Land Rover coughs once, reminding him never to rely upon its compliance with his wishes. He pats the dashboard and smiles. There is something reliable in its threatened unreliability. Everything is temporary and all good things will come to an end, but this time together is golden. They have made memories together that will live on beyond the both of them. He is grateful for that as they make their way to the café nestled in the valley. He finds gratitude for the ghost in the machine. Not all ghosts are intent upon dread haunting, some keep him company in his self-imposed loneliness.

The greasy spoon is far from greasy. There is a minimalist blue-print to a good café and this one adheres to it. The message is quiet but clear; you’re paying for the food and nothing else. The smell of frying bacon speaks to his empty stomach and it replies. Unself-consciously, he puts a hand to his belly to placate it. Soon, the hand says. And the food comes swiftly after he has ordered the Big Breakfast. He is pleased to note that everything is included in the fry up, and the quality of the sausages is just right. A step up from basic and nothing more. The yolk of the egg bleeds out into the black pudding. The saltiness of the bacon and the sweetness of the baked beans create a harmony with the rest of the plate. He savours the fried slice. Knowing it is bad for him is somehow also good for him right now.

This is a treat that he feels worthy of even before the walk he is about to embark upon. This food goes beyond the fuel necessary to power his day. Food has always been far more than that. He takes solace from a part of his life that has remained intact. A part of him that was formed long ago and cannot be changed. Only those almost ancient parts of him have stayed the course. He knows he’s kidding himself when it comes to their resilience. Everything changes when the landscape has been blighted with poison. Even the rocks that gape from wounds in the mountain are forever changed as the land around them dies.

The drive to the foot of the mountain is inconsequentially beautiful. The scale of the beauty surrounding him makes him so small he dares to feel alive again. Freed from the want to be something, he relaxes into the role nothingness. He now is a particle drifting this way and that. The energy required to dance this way is deceptive and rewarding. He stops frequently to drink water and rest. Telling himself that he is stopping to enjoy the view. And he does, but this is a happy accident, not his design.

The muscles in his legs are on fire and his breathing is laboured. This is a world away from the days of his youth. He knows this to be yet another fiction that he convinces himself of. He knows there was fire back then, but it also resided in his belly. The world was his for the taking. Now he is trudging through it. Borrowing time and uncertain as to his purpose anymore.

As though the universe is aware of his quest it lowers a grey curtain on the summit. Clouds come to greet him as the mountain empties of the usual day trippers and tourists. There is nothing to see here anymore. There is only feeling now. He is in the grey of his existence. The world knows his sadness only too well and answers it with its own.

On he goes. There is a chill in the air as the sun is evicted from this party. He walks within a ghost he knows only too well. The path is all that remains. His head is forced to bow. He is a pilgrim to his own pain. The damp air cools the fire in his muscles and brings its own discomfort. He is blinded to the world. He understands this is how he has been for some while. Eyes wide open but unseeing.

At the summit he cautiously walks in what he hopes is a straight line. The path has yawned outwards and he is temporarily lost. A figure presents itself to him in the roiling mists. For one heart stopping moment he believes it to be the fantasy of a happy ending that quickly transforms into the prospect of a shattered solitude. In this swaddling of his senses neither is the case. The outline of a cairn becomes clearer as he approaches and he knows he is now at his journey’s end.

Taking a moment, he composes himself as best he can. Now he is here, everything is real in this surreal place. The gathered clouds commune with him and provide him the privacy he did not know that he needed. Suddenly, the last of his energy deserts him and his legs buckle. He reaches out into the damp air and his hands conduct an invisible orchestra. Somehow his collapse contains a modicum of grace and he finds himself cross-legged at the base of the cairn. An involuntary worshipper at an open air church at the top of the world.

The ring hangs around his neck. He lifts it reverentially over his head and attempts to undo the knot of the leather necklace. He sighs, thinking better of it. The leather means nothing to him. Less so without the ring. Another means to an end. With the ring in his palm he reconsiders what he is about. Taking a moment he casts his mind back to different times.

A good friend told him that once he was out of the melee of his broken heart he would see clearly again and all the good of the past fifteen years would arise and greet him. All the happy memories would make themselves known to him and they would be his for ever more. His most prized possessions. The way markers of a life well lived. His coming days would mirror the good he had already lived.

He sits there and he floats in an alien world that liberates him from himself. There he drifts back through the mists of time. He is searching. Searching for those good times. Looking for the moments that made it all worthwhile. He scrabbles around more desperately as he comes up empty handed again and again. He cannot even find the man who he once was. That man saw something that was now lost to him. And in that loss, that man was lost as well. Loss was all there ever was. From the very start it haunted him and grew in the act of haunting of him.

Fifteen years of betrayal and a mind ravaged of memory. All he surveyed was wreckage and ruin. He had handed over the key to his heart and entrusted his very life to the devil himself. Once his heart was won the mind was easy prey and it fell without a fight.

How he could not have seen this would remain a painful mystery to him. Everything he had. Everything he was. All of it was gone. Replaced by an indiscriminate pain and a deep seated shame.

He made of his hands fists and he punched at the air. And as he did so, he gave forth a roar of defiance that shocked him to the core. The roar lasted an age and after it was gone so too was that part of him that was of no use any longer. The used and dying part of him faded into the world as the low cloud caressed his face and took his silent tears from him. There were no memories here. None to keep a hold of. None worth sharing. He released them with a desperate scream at the unseeing sky. Letting go. Letting go of a nothingness that was drowning him in a sadness that was not his own.

Shivering he noticed the leather necklace swinging from his right fist. Without conscious thought, he plunged his hand into the ribcage of the cairn, oblivious to the cuts and bruises he inflicted upon his knuckles as he released the ring. Letting it fall and come to rest in the tombstone of his empty memories.

The return to the cottage was unremarkable. Another lost memory to add to the rubble. He was not done with loss quite yet. Cold, wet and miserable he retrieved the letter he’d written. A letter that he would never send. A letter that referred to a fiction of good times. It burned in the hearth for a brief moment and then guttered out. More light in its death than the past fifteen years had contained. He sneered at the mockery of that illusion before gathering his scant belongings and leaving the cottage for the final time.

The drive away from the place that would always contain too much hurt for him was punctuated by a prearranged detour. Handing over the keys of the Land Rover had about it a sullen motor memory. He was upon another mountain and the only way was down now. The keys he picked up felt lighter somehow. Less substantial.

The car he now drove was devoid of meaning. As was his destination. Acceptance required release. And in that release was sacrifice. He must end what was started. Burn it all away in order to allow new growth. The hope of a new life awaited. There were memories to be made and there was love to give. That was all he had now. But then, that was all anyone ever had.