The future

I know what is going to happen and when. I know the details of my imminent death: I’ve had a dream.

It is nearly 3am and I am about to go to my car. It is parked on a desolate stretch of tarmac, relieved by an extremely tall lamp post with half a dozen bright orange neon lamps casting their eerie glow out to the few sparse trees at the edge of the flat car park. It is cold and the nearby river maintains a constant fogginess in the air here, a car park on a flood plain. As I make my way to the solitary car, I am struck by the garishness, even in this light, of the ticket machine next to the impossibly tall lamp post. A dirty orange machine topped by over-sized signs: dirty white inverted triangles with ‘pay here’ in a featureless font, and a huge arrow pointing down to the machine directly beneath it. As I step into the brilliant pool of light on the raised kerb around this ugly assemblage, I wonder whether the tiny and untidy scrap of paper, hastily taped on to the coin slot with ‘out of order’ scribbled on it, was genuine, or just a subterfuge by a wily motorist who knew that the people who checked that drivers had paid and displayed worked for a different outfit to those who maintained the ticket machines. It would be a long time before one lot told the other lot what they knew. Meanwhile, no one had to pay because they all had a valid excuse. After all, this was why I usually parked here, as you rarely had to pay. But the downside, at this time of night, was the distance to be walked from here to anywhere else.

I am filling my mind with this trivia to stop myself from paying attention to a dreadful sense of foreboding. I know that I am about to die. I know the time and the place as well as the means. Even though it is 3am, some crazy blackbird is singing, probably fooled by the brightness of the car park lighting. I climb into my car, and feel immediately grateful to be out of the cold, damp air of the dead of night. I shall soon enough be keeping my fatal appointment, but there is time to spare. Later today I shall go to a secluded car park on a hill-side beauty spot. Life has caught up with me. All excuses and delaying tactics are used up. It is as good as done - I cannot repay the ten thousand acts of kindness that have been done to me by people I have known and I know that this is the end. As I drive I notice a hitch-hiker - curious at this time of night and in such a built-up area. I presume that this is just a drunk, spent up and trying to get home. I see that he has good shoes; rich man’s shoes. He seems awfully young to be wearing such ostentation. I toy with the notion that a pair of shoes like that might raise some money and wonder idly how someone like that might be attacked and robbed. The idea vapourizes as quickly as it forms. I wonder whether to call someone. But I am struck by the curious realization that everyone I know is either asleep or dead.

I take a detour and go to the station. Parking the car, I decide that I shall not keep my appointment, even though I know that this is almost certainly going to be a futile gesture. It is drizzling a fine wetness now and I laugh at myself starting to wish I had brought a coat, immediately realising that my discomfort will soon be over. I buy a ticket, a return ticket, trying to kid myself that I can get away. Waiting on the familiar and miserable platform, with the earliest of the morning commuters, I watch the screen displays and grow incredibly weary as the departure time approaches. I watch in dismay as the status of my train changes inexorably from ‘on time’ to ‘late’ to ‘cancelled’. Some anonymous and brainless voice rabbits on with miserable chirpiness conveying insincere corporate apologies. In a moment of rage I feel the urge to find the idiot spouting this nonsense, wanting to explain what that train journey might have meant to me. Then I recall a single line from the 66th of the Thousand Nights and One Night: “I hope that Allah will not make me immortal, for death is His greatest gift to any true Believer”. I toy with the idea of trying to explain this, instead, to the person that must sit somewhere in this ugly station. But she might think that I am planning to offer her this gift, now that no one trusts Muslims in this country.

Acknowledging the futility of trying to avoid my appointment, I return to the car, pausing only to give my unused ticket to a puzzled tramp. I wonder what he will make of the impossibly uncomfortable seats on the new trains, or of the opportunity to change his surroundings. By now, it is dawn and I drive out of town towards the hills where this miserable life will end.

I have already seen what will happen: I shall run towards him as fast and hard as I can, loose my footing, slip and stumble. As my knee hits the ground, the pain of the sharp stones breaking the skin will cause me to shout out. It also will distract me from the dangerous proximity of the cliff edge. My speed across the loose scree will make me roll and bounce over a railway sleeper placed at the edge to prevent cars from accidentally driving over the cliff. It will be impossible for me to stop the horror of diving over the edge. I know I am going to fall to my death at 11.15 am. Right now it is nearly 7.00 a.m.

As I continue driving along in this melancholy mood, my thoughts turn to my father. I have not seen him for about a year. I imagine that he will soon want to try patching things up again. He rarely leaves more than a year between these delusions of contrition. But his complete inability to follow through makes it clear that these hollow gestures are primarily designed to satisfy some occasional inner guilt. It is nearly 30 years since he and my mother divorced and I still resent his departure unbelievably deeply. My resentment annoys me. But as it is 14 years since my mother died, there is simply no prospect of resolution. I recall one of the many objectionable things about my father’s behaviour: the way that he calmly announced some years ago that he had become a born again Christian. My outward acquiescent acceptance of this fact betrayed nothing of my inner scorn and cynicism. What a waste of words. What an incredibly stupid brainless fool’s idea. Born again. Who conjures up ridiculous phrases like this? No mother’s scream of pain accompanied this birth. No gift of new life. I have no problem accepting that people can have revelatory experiences but, please, do not confuse this act of self-development with the miracle and pain of birth. While all these thoughts went through my mind, I just said ‘oh’. What I had not expected, though, was his next request. For him, being born again in the eyes of God meant that he felt God had forgiven him all his sins. Again, my inner cynicism cranked up another notch. His next request was for me to forgive him. I was flabbergasted. I told him that I did not know what he wanted me to forgive him for. A thousand things went through my mind: lying in bed at night, hearing my mother being thrown from one side of the room to the other, coming downstairs with my brothers to see what was up and being lied to that it was the dog; rarely seeing my father and having no recollection of playing with him as a child; drunken beatings of me and my brothers by my foul-mouthed father; my mother working for years to pay off loans my father had taken on our house, even after they had divorced; the graphic and detailed descriptions of the way that he had sex with my mother and how he still hankered after her sexual performance years after their divorce; his first visit to me at university when his car broke down and in a bad temper he swore never to visit again (and that was one promise he kept); replacing my earliest soft childhood memories with stark scenes that I had not remembered myself, like rubbing gravel into the paintwork of his first car. It was not clear to me whether he wanted to be forgiven for broken promises, leaving us for another woman, beating us up, drinking himself to stupidity, never having enough money to raise a family, paying no attention to us for months or even years on end, or just everything. It was a huge request, asking me to simply put all this behind me as he had done, and I just couldn’t, so I told him simply that mine was not the place to forgive. I recall vividly this occasion; one of the few times, or perhaps the only occasion on which he had visited me without his second wife. Needless to say, no crisis or trouble of my own has ever prompted a visit, only his own problems.

I find a nice coffee bar to pass the time. I think twice about reading the paper–a now meaningless act. The coffee is brilliant here and I tell the girl how much I enjoy it. I don’t get the impression she cares all that much. But the coffee is divine. I have another and a glass of water. I savour the espresso kick, then return to the car and make my way to the appointed place; an isolated cliff-top car park. At this time of year it is deserted, an ideal location for a quiet meeting away from prying eyes.

As I am not entirely sure who to expect, I arrive a few minutes early. I am surprised by the unexpected arrival of my father. What the hell is he doing here? We are miles from his house and he hates driving. But, as always, I reveal nothing to this born again impostor. I have long ago got used to the idea of polite interaction with this man who calls himself my father, and also grown used to the idea that we can never again hold a meaningful conversation; at least not until he drops the hypocrisy of his bargain basement spirituality.

I greet him breezily as I climb out of the car, asking him what he is doing here. He is trying hard to be cheerful, but it is clearly not what he is really feeling as he tells me that he was just about to ask me exactly the same thing, followed by the usual how-lovely-to-see-you-how’s-everything-isn’t-it a-beautiful-day stream of automatic questions requiring no real response. Not bothering with the trivia I tell him how puzzled I am to find that we are both here, now. I need to get rid of him. Dying is a highly personal thing and I have no intention of doing it while he is around. I tell him that I had an arrangement to meet someone here and that I didn’t think anyone else would be here. It really is strange that he is here. I ask him outright, perhaps a little too bluntly, why he is here. He agrees that it is odd and more than a little strange. But he is not even sure himself - something about a dream last night, about being an angel of death. Such a real and vivid dream that he could not sleep and after getting up realized that he had to come here today, now. But he has no recollection of waking up. He says that in a way he just came because he felt that he was still dreaming. It was not like things were fuzzy, bitty or nonsensical; it was just that it had not dawned on him that he had any choice until now. I find this very odd indeed, and grow increasingly uncomfortable. Once again, I ask him why he came here. All he could say was that it seemed that he ought to, but he couldn’t really say what for. And after all, it was a nice day for a drive.

I am confused and annoyed. But I always feel like this with him, so it is familiar territory in that sense. As he walks towards me, I started pacing around, head in a whirl. “You shouldn’t be here”, I wail, surprising myself with the passion in my voice. I never liked being intimate with him, and having him around at my death was certainly far too close for comfort. He asks me again what I am doing here and I tell him that it is something like the same reason as his, but I thought I had come here to meet someone and resolve something. I am shouting to him from the other side of the car park, trying to sound non-committal, but the wind is picking up and it is difficult to work out the subtleties of conversation at this distance. It is all very surreal. But then I realize that he misinterprets my suggestion that I have come here to resolve something. He thinks I mean to resolve the tense relationship that we have! Oh dear, nothing could be further from my mind, but I don’t know what to say. He has always had a habit of turning things to himself, placing himself at the centre of everything, incapable of perceiving life from anyone’s viewpoint but his own. I am pacing around the car park, near the edge. My mind is in turmoil as I try to figure out what to say next, or how to get rid of him. But in my muddle, one thought emerges. He is thinking that I want to patch things up between us, and I really don’t. All this passes through my mind in a split second. And I am right. I become aware that his face has lit up and he is running across the gravel towards me. He misses his footing and falls, wincing as he grazes his knee on the gravel, and as he rolls sideways, downhill, he bounces once on a railway sleeper marking the edge of the cliff, and screams as he plummets over the edge.

I am standing rooted to the spot, trembling, wondering how that could have happened so quickly, so stupidly. After what seems like ages, I walk to the edge to peer gingerly over. It is a long way down, but I can make out a crumpled misshapen bloody heap at the foot of the cliff. It seems that I ought to feel despair, regret or something. But I just feel the extreme irony of witnessing this just before my time is due, and then I start to worry that the manner of that fall was horribly familiar. I look at my watch and see that it shortly after 11.15. The time has passed! I am staggered. My mixed emotion is replaced with elation as I realize that it was not the end of my life that I had come here for, but the end of the tyranny of being the offspring of a man like that. I leave the place with the feeling that an immense weight has been lifted from my life. I have not felt this free in years. Now this is what I call born again, I shout to myself, as the car surges easily south.