December

It was a slow and haunting chorus, more a last post than a reveille, and the notes drifted across the still winter air with the slow and metronomic inevitability of the tide wearing away at a cliff. The fall would come, it had to, slowly but surely the music would erode the protective layers he'd spent so long building up. It would wear them down until at one critical moment the whole mass toppled, like a Jenga tower that has teetered on the verge for several moves before it collapses bringing the whole thing in upon itself.

What had caused this sudden bout of nihilism? Well, he couldn't entirely say but that damnable trumpet wasn't helping; it seemed at the same time to soothe his woes and to add to them, to build and to destroy, to heal and then wound. He stood leaning against the barrier at the entrance to the underground station and let it wash over him. A curious lethargy gripped him so that he could not move even if he wanted too, at least, not until the end of this melancholic refrain.

The eyes of the people as they walked through the turnstiles seemed pregnant with memories not their own. They were his memories, though how they got into the eyes of these strangers he could not tell. Snatches from another life, the life that he loved and remembered and yet that he knew no longer was and never could be again. The memories were at once his own and yet also so far divorced from his present reality that they may just as well have belonged to the passers-by whose eyes reflected them to him. A brushed kiss here, a sneaked glance, a lingering stare. The day they had first met - him with a confidence he no longer felt and her with that slightly shy charm as though she had not yet found who she was. Then there was the holiday they had shared in Monaco, reflected in the eyes of a Turk whose aggressive demeanour was almost enough to distract from it. Almost, but not quite.

The trumpeter's song had changed now to a more upbeat number that he thought at times he could place but yet the title eluded him, lost in the haze of multiplying memories that flickered now in Cinema Scope across his mind. The change of tempo did not change the nature of these memories, these petit-vignettes, postcards from happier days. It was strange to him that it should be the case that all of these memories of happiness should now come to represent only bitterness. They had meant positivity, once.

Then came another feeling, reflected in the eyes of a young blonde sixth former. It was pain, the pain of guilt, as though this fresh faced young girl - who in his present frame of mind could have been the young her as he'd met her - was judging him and condemning him for ruining her future with his present. She had passed in an instant and yet the pain remained lingering after he had gone.

Blues on the Champs Elysses, Joe Newman, that was it. Or was it? The notes meandered away now, sliding into a different tune once again.

The next eyes he saw bore no memories only a cool sense of calm and dignity. The next eyes he saw were hers. They were brown flecked with lighter shades of amber, just as he had remembered them. When she was happy they seemed to sparkle but today they were strangely flat and, though still beautiful, gave off none of the phosphorescent glow that they had in better days. She walked straight towards him instead of joining the glut of humanity passing like cattle through the turnstiles or the swarm of tourists flocked around the ticket machine, battling with the complexities of the map and the intricacies of a foreign currency. She walked with confidence now, her head up and her face undaunted. She'd lost her nerves along with her innocence and he wasn't sure if he hadn't liked her better when both were intact. She wore a trench-coat belted at the waist and with the collar flicked up at the back, forcing some of her thick honey blonde hair into it and making still more cascade over it and down her back. She looked good, drat it, she'd came out of it better than he had by a lengthy stretch. She had won. The chess game was over and his king had abdicated.

"Hello, George," she said, in a voice that showed not a shred of emotion and yet was not unkind or harsh. She reached into the big handbag, the one that had cost him more than a week's wages last Christmas, and pulled out an A4 manilla envelope with dog-eared corners and a white address label. "They need to be back with my lawyers by Tuesday. Please don't be late." Something in her appearance seemed to soften and a small amount of something approaching tenderness crept into her eyes. "And George? I'm sorry. Do try to have a good Christmas."

She touched the top of his arms as though about to hug him but then paused and gave half a smile before turning and walking away, threading through the queue and intermingling with a crowd of people leaving the station. The trumpeter was now blowing a chorus of 'When the saints go marching in' and outside the doors he could see that it had started to snow. What he had thought would be the tower falling, Babel like, upon and around him, turned out instead to be a feeling of relief. He had expected a crushing end and yet instead felt the seed of new beginnings, and of hope, germinating inside of himself. Atlas had shrugged, yes, but the world had stayed suspended in air and he had realised the weight was not his to bear.

He stood up straight, folding the envelope once, and put it inside his coat to stay dry. He started to move forward not just in space and in time but had the feeling that he would now do so also in life. He could do nothing to change the past, but perhaps the future was not so bleak as he had first thought. He dug in his pocket and dropped a handful of coins into the trumpeter's hat and walked out into the snow.