Thousand Words
You can recognise people you know very well by something as simple as their walk. He saw the walk that belonged to her and took a deep breath. She walked steadily towards him, sometimes looking in his direction, but mostly gazing out at the city on the other side of the river. It always looked magical at this time of night. He slowed his pace and tugged slightly on the lead to indicate the same to his dog. This was the moment he had been longing for, the moment he had dreaded for so long.
‘Jane. Hi,’ he said as she drew closer.
She didn’t show much. She stood still in her smart clothes, making no effort to close the distance.
‘How’s it going?’ he said, and he wanted to reach out for an embrace but predicted being pushed away in disgust, so he kept his distance respectful.
‘Very well, thank you.’ She didn’t show much.
‘It’s James,’ he said, ‘I’m not wearing my glasses.’
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘When did you get a dog?’
‘Oh, he’s just a puppy, five months. He’s an Irish Wolfhound, so he’ll get massive.’ He wanted to tell her that it was his own dog. He wasn’t sharing it with a partner. ‘I’ve called him Karl Barx,’ he said with a grin.
She looked over his shoulder at the path she was walking. He knew he had only a short time.
‘Hey, do you remember when we were walking around here and there were all those tourists on the bridge swinging selfie-sticks about and I was like “fucking selfie-sticks!” and I made those two old women laugh?’ he said abruptly.
She suppressed a smile and her face remained as stone. He thought of all the thousand words he wanted to say, but he could not now remember the speech he had rehearsed in his sleepless nights.
‘Not really,’ she said.
He shifted nervously.
‘We actually walked by here on our second date,’ he said, ‘Well, it was near here. We were on the other side of the bridge.’
‘That was our fourth date,’ she said with a smile.
He didn’t know what the smile meant or if it meant anything.
‘No,’ he said with a pause, ‘I think it was our fourth meeting, but it was our second actual date. The first one didn’t really count and that time you came to see a concert didn’t count because I was working and we didn’t get a chance to talk.’
‘That was the Kings of Convenience gig you invited me to,’ she said, ‘and then you just ignored me. I’d come all the way across London by myself and stood there in that packed, stiflingly hot, airless hall by myself and you just ignored me. You brushed past me like I wasn’t there and when you came back you just said “Hi!”, like you were surprised to see me.’ She tried to keep her expression blank, but her brow darkened as a look of concentration, or maybe it was anger, crossed her face. ‘You made me feel like a fool. Like I didn’t matter.’
‘I was at work,’ he said. He felt nothing but guilt when he thought of Jane, but now she was revealing a crime against her that he had never considered. ‘I had to do the job of three people, so I was rushing about.’ He swallowed hard. ‘But of course I wanted to see you. I always wanted to see you.’ He felt sick with nerves as he looked at her. He wanted to know what she thought of him, if she thought of him at all.
‘You’re not James.’
He wondered what she meant. He was James, wasn’t he? Who was he if not himself? Who else could he be? A chill wind blew through him carrying his name away, the freezing wind stabbing at him.
‘I am James.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘you’re an imposter.’
He felt as though he had been punched in the stomach. A hollow bowling ball of regret sank through his torso, replacing his insides with nothingness. He stared through her, hoping to see himself, his real self, the secret self that he had revealed to her with such difficulty. But he was not there and neither was she.
‘I don’t know when I first noticed it,’ she said as she turned to look across the river, ‘but an imposter replaced you.’
He looked at her eyes which no longer saw him.
‘Everyday I’d talk to you,’ she said, ‘and you’d tell me what had happened to you since the last time I saw you. And I’d add those events to the story of you that I kept in my mind. Then, and I remember this more clearly than anything else, I dreamt that you were someone else, someone I’d never met. But you had the same face.’ She turned and looked into his eyes. ‘Then I began to realise that the story I kept of you was untrue. It was actually the story of someone who wasn’t there.’
‘I’m not an imposter,’ he said, ‘I’m just me. I’m still me.’ But he was no longer sure. He wanted the words to be convincing. He wanted to be convinced by them.
Jane looked into his eyes without speaking. Her face expressed nothing. She did not know him. He was an imposter with his face.
‘Can we walk together for a bit?’ he asked, not sure what he hoped to achieve.
‘We’re going in opposite directions.’ She smiled.
So this was it. This was his moment to finally say the things he had never said. He would make her see him again, the real him. He would be understood.
‘Listen,’ he began, ‘I really regret how we ended things. I don’t think I ever told you…’ he paused, wishing he knew the words that would remove the mask. ‘… How much I like you.’
She walked past him.
‘Or how much I respect you.’
She walked on in silence.
