Death of A Lady

      “If There Is Hope, It Is With The Proles” 1984, George Orwell.

      A single father wakes in a lonely hotel room. It is the week after the kids have gone back to school and the hotel room is surprisingly easy to find now that the holidays are over. It is no fancy room but a single room with a bed and wardrobe. He goes over to the wardrobe & picks out his jeans & t-shirt.

        All he is wanting to do is have a simple day with his child. He is no great reader of newspapers, no great listener of the radio. He does not have a television, no, not even now. In fact, he is more and more adamant not to have one now – the great sitcoms of old have been replaced with shows which have good looking young Americans on them & it puts him right off. Nobody can be that good looking and funny, of that he is sure.

        So, he has his bacon & eggs served by a sour faced landlady. Nothing unusual in that. They never seem to smile, and he has learnt to never smile back either. She makes her absence known right away & the whole dining room is empty except for him.

        He makes his way up to the station. This was where he arrived yesterday. He sees his young daughter waiting there. 9 years old. Already she has got to know him as an excitement, a trip out, a ‘burger at the burger place’ type dad. So this is a big deal for them. Where will they go? He hasn’t planned it out yet but it would probably be: the slots, the burgers or the fish & chips, the library, a shop where he can buy her the latest toys or sweets. Whatever her heart desires. He hasn’t got a lot of money but he spends it on her, being wise enough to know how to spoil on a shoestring.

        It is 10 in the morning. It is also an eerily quiet 10 in the morning.

        The more they go into town, the weirder this gets. Nobody at all is in the town centre. This is a Saturday morning. It is coming onto lunchtime. It might as well have been a Tuesday afternoon. In fact most Tuesday afternoons would have been noisier.

        Every single shop is bordered up.

        Is he sure he even saw the land lady this morning?

        Because it is starting to feel as if there are only two people in the whole world. Two anoraked figures. Parent and child. Child with her hand in the hand of the father.

        And it is his job to keep her from freaking out at how odd this is. All the time, he is noticing himself just how odd it is. All the time he is trying not to panic.

        The only saving grace is that this is a seaside town. Suddenly, if you don’t mind a lack of bucket and spade because again, absolutely nothing is open, the beach is like a wide open space.

        So they go alone to the beach. They walk along the sand. To him, the sight of sea is true freedom. He stares across it. It could be any time in history. He might as well be a Viking. It gets even eerier: he cannot see a boat. It is like they own the entire town.

        Stopped fairground attractions. Closed shops and cafes. Streets totally empty of people. No boats on the sea. Not even a lost donkey.

        Nobody there but them and the gulls.

        They go out paddling in the sea, shoes left, jeans pulled up to the knee. The tossing of empty waves in echo as she tells him of her holidays, he tells her of his life. They are alone in the world. Will it last forever like this? It might as well.

        But she grows hungry. So, he looks absolutely everywhere through this ghost town. This town that would stop like that. Where normally there would be burger joints and chippies, now there is nothing but shutters. One particularly drab place has a poem on the door, windows painted black, a flag over it all. It is haunting. It is hard to not feel a tinge of sadness – whoever owns the place, the one thing is certain and that is that they are not happy today.

        They go on walking, walking. Eventually they find a cafeteria.

        The one place that is open.

        The Italian lady at the door. “We do not usually do food” she begins. “But today… look through the menu, I will bring you sandwiches and meats”

        She goes away and they busy themselves with the menu. The black coffee, the chocolate milkshake. The chorizos and the Italian breads.

        “Only place with any sense” he says. “Why is it all closed up like that?”

        “The lady… she died” the Italian lady says. What lady? It is all very much for one town to be like this. One woman turned this town into a ghost town.

        “Well, at least you’re open. I’ve come all this way to see my daughter you see” he goes on. And they eat.

        And every weekend since, until the day the café closes, they smile when they see that café. The one place that stayed open, despite it all. The one place that on a windy, drizzly day in September, offered them a bite to eat. There will always be somewhere for a sandwich and a coffee at noon, whatever else happens.