Llanberis
by Andrew Lee-Hart

 

 I

 “How are your neighbours? Any friendlier, or do they still want to kill you?” asked Godfrey, my oldest friend.

I laughed, “I have never said that they want to kill me, although presumably if they did they wouldn’t tell me, well not until the last minute. But no, things are still the same. They are not rude, well not often, but I do feel isolated. When I only lived here for holidays…well I did not notice, and of course I had Liz then so I did not….well it was okay. But now…..”

“Do you think it was a mistake coming here?”

I thought about it; “wherever I would have ended up I would have been lonely. My life is shrinking. If I had stayed in Nottingham it would have just been the same.”

“But you have your friends there…..” and Godfrey smiled at me with something that resembled affection. Although actually most of my friends had died or had forgotten about me; even Gill, my closest friend at work had disappeared from my life soon after I retired.

 

What worried me was that I was actually starting to enjoy my isolation, whilst I liked Godfrey - we had been friends on and off since sixth form - I did not want him here; I had my routine and the noise he made, using the bathroom, walking up and down the stairs, eating his dinner annoyed me more and more. And there was the smell; an alien scent, not unpleasant, but alien nonetheless, hard to describe, some kind of aftershave, but also of damp laundry, never overwhelming but always there, and which would linger long after he had returned home.

 

Would I have felt the same about Liz if she had lived longer? Obviously I loved her, but even when we were married I liked to spend time on my own. My need for peace upset her when we first married.

“You haven’t seen me all day, and now you just want to read.”

I shrugged, “I just need a bit of quiet, just for half an hour. I have been people getting at me all day” I explained.

“I am not people getting at you…I am your wife.” And she put her clothes back on and went downstairs. Eventually she got used to it and learned to give me time and space, fortunately we hadn’t had children, because I don’t think they would have respected such boundaries as Liz learned to.

 

II

Godfrey and I went out for a walk the next morning; he was going after lunch so I was feeling happier. I noticed how slowly he was walking, and barely a couple of hundred metres down the lane to the town centre he stopped for a few minutes to gather his breath.

“I haven’t been feeling too good of late” he admitted. “I went to Queens for tests on my heart but they could not find anything or they wouldn’t tell me.”

“Of course they would tell you. We are just getting old that’s all….”

But he did not look well, pale and sweating, and this short walk had clearly exhausted him.

 

We set off again, but I realised that he was distracted, not listening to what I said.

“Are you okay?”

“Sure….” He murmured after a moment, “I haven’t told Marie about the tests, so please don’t mention it, next time you ring.”

“Of course”, not that Marie and I ever spoke much, although after Liz had died she had been very kind, but the friendship was between Godfrey and me.

 

“Remember when we travelled around Europe that summer? What an adventure that was. A now a few days in North Wales has left me knackered.”

I smiled remembering the trip, particularly staying in Naples, in a small flat, and thinking of staying there, but I had my degree to finish and had just met Liz so we had gone back home and got on with our lives.

“There is plenty of life in us both yet.” I told him, but am not sure I believed it. And I noticed how scared and ill he looked despite my best efforts to distract him.

 

 We sat in the café, where I had been coming since Liz and I bought the house in the late 1990s, and yet the owner had never called me by my name or asked how I was.

“Have you never thought of learning Welsh” my friend asked, “it might help…”

“I did try” I hushed my voice, not wishing the staff to overhear me, although I doubted they could care less. “I tried a few words here when ordering my coffee and cake, but they just replied in English, I soon gave up.”

“Well I am sure they all speak English anyway.”

“Here they do, although when I am out and about it is Welsh you hear. And in the smaller villages, some of them don’t know any English at all. At Bangor University they even have English lessons for some of their Welsh students….”

“Isn’t that where Liz studied?”

“Yes, that’s why we came here and bought the house. She loved it round here, but…well it is perhaps for the best she died when she did, I think she would have become disillusioned living here all year round.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Why not, it is true.”

 

III

As I watched Godfrey drive off, unbidden came the thought that this would be the last time I would see him.  I am not sure where that thought came from, but there it was and it remained with me as I tidied the house and sat down for a cup of tea.

 

And so it proved; he was dead within a month, a heart attack as he walked along the canal where he lived in Beeston. Marie rang me, sounding surprisingly calm, and I wept, on and off for the rest of the evening, some of it was for my friend, but also for me; I had nobody left; my parents were long dead, my brother had died young and Liz of course. My life was meaningless now, and when I died who would be at the funeral?

 

Unfortunately, on the day of the funeral I was not feeling up to the drive, so I stayed at home and thought about my friend and death. I thought of last things, many I had not realised that they would not happen again; my final trip to Meadow Lane to watch Notts County play, the last concert I had been to (no decent music within travelling distance for me now), my last trip to the pub, my last holiday and now the death of my last friend.

 

Then there was the last time that Liz and I had made love a few days before she went to hospital for a few tests which were “probably nothing”; we had not done it that much of late, she was too tired, but that afternoon she clung to me with passion, as if trying to stop me escaping from her, and that was the last time we lay in each other’s arms, as she snored gently and I stroked her hair.

 

And I remembered the last time we kissed a few days later; I was about to leave the hospital and I could tell she did not want me to go but I was tired and hungry, so I bent down and kissed her on the lips; they felt cold and lifeless and she looked at me with infinite sadness.

“I will be back first thing in the morning” I told her, but an hour later, just as I went upstairs to bed, they rang me to say she was dead.

 

That afternoon, after Godfrey had gone, I had looked up at the hills which surrounded our small town and realised that was why Liz had loved it so much, and why I continued to stay. They were dark and beautiful, as if from a different world, full of strange and mysterious things, perhaps Merlin or the ancient Celtic Gods and Goddesses dwelt there, looking down on us mortals with our petty lives.

 

I thought of going for a long walk, maybe not in the mountains, but at least out past the village and see where I would get to. I put two bottles of water and some chocolate into a small ruck sack I had bought several years ago, and looked for my walking shoes. But as I did so I realised that there was no way I could walk any distance, that I would be tired and need to urinate, so with a sigh I put the bag and sat down in the sitting room, even too tired to read my book. I must have fallen asleep immediately, because I woke several hours later, the sky was dark, my back hurt and my bladder was full.

 

IV

Lying here in the hospital, in my own room, in the middle of the night, I think of the black hills that surround my latest home, and I have an urge to go and walk there. I slowly get up out of my bed and put on some clothes, and head out of the ward, taking my time and trying to look as if I am about my lawful business.  Around me I can hear the soft tones of nurses and visitors talking quietly in Welsh.

 

Just as I am about to leave the ward, a nurse I don’t remember ever having seen before, calls to me in English.

“Oh Mr Hart, what are you doing up and dressed?” She laughs, and then takes me by the arm, and guides me gently, but firmly, back to bed.

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