Trinity Triangle Captured in Time, 2021
A Moment in Trinity Triangle
On 21st July 2021 a group of ten writers met for the first time in the Hastings Library on Claremont. The goal was to write short pieces of prose or poetry which represented the heritage of Trinity Triangle. This component of the Trinity Triangle Cultural Programme was in association with New Writing South and Heart of Hastings and funded by Historic England.
We talked a lot about the meaning of history/heritage and whether an event which happened yesterday is as valuable as what occurred one hundred years ago. Our life as we knew it in 2019 seems decades away from the way we live today. I wonder if I would write this introduction differently in a years’ time and ask therefore does this become part of the project history?
The writers were set free into the Trinity Triangle for forty minutes to find inspiration for what they wanted to write about and all returned with great and different ideas. For the purposes of this project, we moved beyond the confines of the geographical triangle and encompassed the original America Ground to Haverlock Road, around to where Debenhams was, along the seafront, up White Rock Road and down Cambridge Road.
The outcome is staggering. The pieces which are a combination of history, fiction, non-fiction and poetry stand-alone but also work together to provide layers of narrative for one small part of Hastings. Even where historical events and people are used, they are told through a 2021 lens.
We got together in February 2022 for the writers to read their work to friends, family and each other. Antony Mair said that the barber is no longer there. It felt pertinent. A piece of the Trinity Triangle history from 2021, which but for Antony’s poem, might never have been recorded.
Apart from the photo above which was taken by the wonderful Tomas Labant from the scaffolding outside where Debenhams once stood, they were all taken by me today. I wanted picture postcard, but I don’t think that represents the rawness of the written work, so I’ve gone for realness and whether that involves mess on the pavement or scaffolding (of which there is much in this area of town at the moment) then so be it.
Please read to the end, and if you’d rather each piece comes with its own audio for your aural pleasure.
Thanks to all involved and a special shout out to Robin Pridy who edited the work with each writer.
The work is over six months old already. Does that make it history?
Wayne Herbert
Project Manager
13th April 2022
Charles Dickens Extraordinary Night in Hastings, Steve Amos
7 November 1861
Dear Wilkie,
I have experienced the most extraordinary night in Hastings.
It began with a reading at the Music Hall, an elegant new construction at the end of Robertson Street. I arrived to find two lines of carriages at the entrance stretching over half a mile up Cambridge Road. By the time my reading commenced, the auditorium was packed with 800 people. The audience – the great and good at the front and the masses at the back – became increasingly animated as I performed scenes from A Christmas Carol. They gasped at the arrival of Jacob Marley, wept at the tale of Tiny Tim, and the room reverberated with fear when I conjured up the vision of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, clad in dark robes.
By the end of the performance I was in a state of high nervous tension myself, but I was obliged to attend a drinks reception hosted by the mayor of Hastings, Mr Thomas Ross. My glass was frequently replenished with fine Jerez sherry, and I have to admit that, by the time I left, I was somewhat unsteady on my feet.
On returning to my room at the Castle Hotel I fell upon my bed and into a fitful reverie — and this is where the extraordinary events began. I awoke after midnight to find the gaslight flickering, and felt a supernatural presence in my room. When I looked towards the door I saw the shrouded figure of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. I understood the impossibility of this, yet there he was. When he beckoned me to follow I rose from my bed, hastily dressed, and left the hotel.
The Hastings we entered was brightly lit, with what appeared to be electrical lighting, and streets lined with strange-looking – and horse-less – metal carriages. One such carriage roared around a corner at a speed which must have been in excess of twenty miles per hour, almost knocking me down.
We arrived at the Music Hall to find a very different establishment, called ‘Yates’. Despite the winter chill the youthful crowd gathered outside were scantily clad, particularly the young ladies. I tried, but failed, to avert my eyes from their exposed flesh.
Upon entering ‘Yates’ I found my senses overwhelmed by bright flashing lights and amplified noise, with rhythms that seemed to throb through my very bones. I made my way through the inebriated throng to the bar, where I requested a glass of Jerez sherry. This was not available, and the bartender invited me to partake of something called a Jagerbomb. After supping from this strange and powerful brew I began to feel my inhibitions slipping away. I tentatively began moving to the pulsating rhythms, until I found myself in the heart of the gyrating crowd, my coat tails swirling around me. The young folk stepped back and made room for me, all laughing and clapping along. Once again, I was the centre of attention at the Hastings Music Hall.
I awoke at daybreak, and found myself back in the Castle Hotel. I rose from my bed, walked to the railway station and purchased a ticket to Brighton. When I reached into my waistcoat pocket to pay for my ticket I found a paper napkin, on which was written ‘Ellie – 07450334…’ – the remaining numbers were too smudged to be readable, and I have no idea of their meaning.
I am now in Brighton and installed at the Metropole. I spent the journey reflecting on my nocturnal adventure. Was I really granted a glimpse of the future?
Yours,
Charles
28 Steps, 28 Years, Karina Evans
I descend Brassey Steps. Eyes taut. Walk, tense and narrow. Stained and old, the steps rise to my feet, knocking at the soles of my important shoes. I consider the debris they will leave behind; the smudges and the stains. I sigh. Dark clouds fall to meet my gloom, a pressing melancholy that pushes me down, down, down the steps to a faded job that helps nobody.
I moan and grumble: weak sounds that echo and harden, sharpen and gather strength as they hit the walls each side of me, thrusting at the clouds above me, swelling, striving to widen my world. My shoes tremble, softly at first. The steps vibrate beneath them. Clouds shudder and I shrug. My captured echo gives up; a wisp of a memory, falling and rising, it becomes lighter, thinner, disappears into the clouds above. The cracked concrete walls tighten and I am lost in lassitude on the cold grey treads.
A shadow tiptoes behind. Her eyes are open and her walk loose. Her feet dart joyously across the width of the top step, which feels like satin beneath dancing shoes. Steeped in the history of nights out: eating cold kebabs before stinging the lips of a loved one with too-hot-sauce, of being away from home, of singing and laughing and running and dancing, the steps grasp her battered shoes as they move.
A hum escapes from the shadow’s lips, echoes and spins, whirls around her head as she moves. I turn to see her, my shoes resting on the fifteenth step. She dances, and sparks of light, of colour and shade, fly from her body, from her shoes, and from the steps beneath her.
I watch as the shadow’s heels kick high, flinging stones at the clouds pressing on us both. I look up to see a simple sky of unchanging blue; of freedom. The shadow pauses, I pause. Together we stand, observing the view as it once was: the only sports shop in town, the library that preceded Google…
And that sea: that sharp salty sea, stinging our legs as we sliced through the water, hand-in-hand-in-hand with friends who disappeared with the years – landlines merged into mobiles melded into unfamiliarity and awkward nods.
The shadow grasps my hand. Our hands. Electrified, the steps vibrate and my feet itch with yearning. I surrender, joy skimming my spine as we pick up speed and dance towards the bottom of the steps. The walls open wide, make space. We tango and waltz and taptaptap along the steps, up the steps, down the steps. Sounds and memories twist and swirl above as we move, dazzling with colour, steeped in the echoes of past and future.
We reach the bottom. I turn to face my shadow: moving with her, accepting her, aligning with her. Unified, we taptaptap down the final step.
Eideh, Alba Frederick
Palace Court, 2021 This new moon sings me forward through the room's darkness, her light drawing me in like a rope reaching through my window. I’ve never seen it like this before, so close and low and urgent. I stand up so we’re eye-to-eye, but still, it's not close enough. You're not close enough in this new world I'm in. I close my eyes and I’m in the cave of your mouth, wet, undrowning. Reaching out to find grip, my palms land on your dark, damp walls, and I fill my fingernails with soil from your Jasmine plant, the one you grew to cradle us in our home. I press dirt into my palms, then eyes open, ceilings tall and I'm small again. I sit on the bed, body facing home and I want to stay here, where the edges of me remember the edges of you. Grinding my feet into the carpet, I breathe hope that we’re staring at this same low moon. I lift my trembling feet because I know you’d want me to, and walk out. I hear muffled voices across the corridor, talking, laughing, sweet and foreign. On the ground floor, I stop to see myself in the lobby mirror - me without you. Outside, the floral smell of your headscarf curls and crushes my face with the wind. I am caressed. My elements are no longer River Euphrates - where we lived and loved - shimmering carp, jumping frogs and quiet winds, but now they are this pavement, road, sea. The sounds of wheels and waves collide - last of the Saturday taxis - and I remember the feeling of your heart beating on my skin. Here, Adama, time is different. Water different. I’m scared. I can’t stay away. Like when we first met. Wooden steps hug me towards the black sky, black shore. The moon is far now. Watching. Pebbles fray over my bare feet. They feel light like your fingertips. Do you remember Aisha’s birthday when your mumma walked in and you were tickling me? That night, I wanted you to kiss me. I close my eyes and think of you, Adama, let the wind take a tear. Opening them, I see the whole world in front of me and feel like I’ve been lied to my entire life. Like this, only this matters, and that somehow, you're here with me too. I take a deep breath in, and walk.
Thomas Brassey 1880, Gabrielle George
A gentleman is walking briskly towards Holy Trinity church. He stops and looks round.
‘My darling Annie, where are you?’
A light sea mist rolls in and Thomas Brassey brushes the droplets off his shoulders.
‘She promised to meet me here.
‘I’ve been to the Carriage Works on White Rock to order new cushions and linings for our coach, in sea-green watered silk. A year abroad and she says all the fashions, colours and fabrics in England have changed.
‘That’s wives for you.’ He takes from his top pocket a small photo of the family. ‘Yes, here we are on our steam yacht with the children and the dogs; Thomas our eldest, our daughters Mabelle, Muriel and Marie. Our beloved second daughter, Constance Alberta, we called her ‘our sunbeam’ as she was always smiling; died of scarlet fever at four years old, just as the boat was nearly finished. We named the yacht The Sunbeam after her.
‘Our journey took almost a year. Annie wrote a fascinating book about it. She has a feather cloak given her by the King of Hawaii, brilliantly coloured with reds and yellows from tiny birds on the island. She has worn it some winter evenings in London, amazing, so soft.
‘We brought many treasures back, mysterious tokens and masks, fine porcelain, silver. You should go and see them in the Brassey cabinets up the hill at the museum. Quite a collection.’
He looks up and down the street for his wife Annie, who is nowhere to be seen.
There is a burst of late afternoon sun and the golden letters of the Brassey Institute and Library catch the sunlight.
Thomas Brassey turns.
He stops to admire the elegant building, a tall decorated edifice at the end of the street.
He nods, ‘Our family, Thomas Brassey, father and son, we had the building designed in Venetian Gothic with libraries and a school of art, open to all in Hastings.
‘Education, learning, travel. That’s what we believe in, the Brasseys.’
A steam railway whistle can be heard in the distance. ‘Ah, must be the 3.07 leaving Hastings for London.’ He reaches into his waistcoat, pulling out a pocket watch on a heavy silver chain. He shakes his head in irritation, ‘Which means you, Annie, are already seven minutes late. She promised to meet me here at exactly 3pm.’ He paces up and down the street, ‘At least the railways are always on time.’
‘My father, Thomas Brassey, he built the railways. He was the greatest railway construction engineer the world had ever seen. Thousands of miles of shining rails across Britain and France and South America, even Canada and India, he helped to build. It made our fortune.
‘You should have seen the roads in my father’s day, before the railways. They were thick mud, with ruts almost as deep as the carriage wheels in places, splashes on the ladies’ dresses, teams of horses, and highwaymen. Railways and steam were the only way forward.
‘Annie, my darling wife, where are you?’ He consults his pocket watch again, looking at the windows of the nearby shops with their velvets and silk lit by gas lamps.
‘She went looking for ribbons for a party at our house in Catsfield. It’s a May Day ball, all greenery and blossoms, with no doubt a great maypole in the centre of the ballroom, and she’ll be dressed as a May Queen and my daughters as flower girls…’
He turns on his heels and sets off up Robertson Street in search of his wife.
Karwan the Barber, Antony Mair
Waiting for customers, he sits outside in the sun, where he’s placed a battered chair against the window. Beyond the traffic streaming through the lights tourists and pensioners stroll along the front. He takes his phone out, opens Candy Crush. Ten years have passed. The landscape of his youth has blurred in memory, like a faded print— mountains round a fertile valley, a house crammed with family, chatter, laughter, blighted by masked gunmen in the shadows, the crack of a sniper’s bullet, a wail of grief. He marvels still at England’s placid regularity, the punctual deliveries to shops and bars. His wife and son arrived two years ago— each day he watches the twelve-year-old unfurl, as fear loosens its hold, defeated. Yesterday they laughed. Even here, old conflicts have their echoes in his Turkish neighbour’s covert enmity, disputes between his fellow Kurds. But in this sunshine, gentle as a kiss, he dreams of a future where his son is safe and finds his solace in the oblivion of candies exploding on his phone. He has no interest in the local past— knows nothing of how, two centuries ago, people from elsewhere built houses on a shingle bank where cars now idle at red lights; of how they named it America, and formed new lives; of how in makeshift sheds workmen would pause while sawing wood or hammering a horse’s shoe and dream of better futures for their children. Ground bass memories of pain and tears are overlaid with brighter notes, forming a harmony behind the seagulls’ calls, the noise of traffic and the crash of distant waves—a melody his life now sings to, that was heard by those long gone, and will be heard again when others sit where he sits now, embraced by sunshine, comforted by hope.
Medusa in the Trinity, V G Ni Shiuin
He hurried up Trinity St, past Holy Trinity Church; he could hear the jazz singers practising for a midday recital; the sound was in strange contrast to the opulent interior and ornate, stained -glass windows of this High Anglican, Victorian Gothic revival church. He went around the back of the library to the studio he rented in Gotham Alley. When one of the old buildings in this previously neglected part of the Trinity Triangle had been renovated and let out as a studio, he’d snapped it up. It had a strange, eerie feel about it, with its rusted tenement buildings perched on the high cliff, and the walls dripping water from some unknown source. It was grotesque and inspiring. The stone he used for his sculptures came from this very cliff.
The client was picking up the piece she’d commissioned this evening. She was certainly precise in her details, he thought as he put the finishing touches to the sculpture. She’d done a sketch and a detailed description of what she wanted, down to the exact dimensions of each strand of hair. What a strange creature; he couldn’t have told you what she looked like, or what she was wearing, but he might have said she had a luminescence – she glowed. He had felt a stirring in his loins on first seeing her… a little embarrassed, he had to turn away and hoped she hadn’t seen the flush that suffused his face. To cover his confusion, he asked, ‘Is it Medusa?’, but she didn’t reply.
There was a quality to this woman that was vaguely familiar but he couldn’t put his finger on it. He’d had many anonymous, erotic encounters in his life, but most he couldn’t remember. There was one that was coming to mind though; he’d met her when he was sketching Holy Trinity on one of his visits to Hastings as a student many years ago, before he moved here permanently. They’d spent the whole day together; unable to keep their hands off each other they’d even slept entwined…. He left the next day, forgetting his whispered promises and never thought of her again – until now, when something had triggered the memory. What was her name….?
She arrived on time. She didn’t look at him but went straight to the sculpted piece. He looked in astonishment as she picked it up… it was as heavy as lead but seemed light in her hands. She remained still for a long time staring at the sculpture cradled in her arms. He was beginning to feel unnerved, when she turned towards him, and said, ‘You don’t remember …?’
He gasped, it was her! She was indeed glowing and as he stared, transfixed by her other-worldly beauty, he saw that the hair of the Medusa had turned into a mass of writhing serpents, winding themselves sensuously around her face and head.
When no one had seen him for several weeks, they broke down the door. The stone likeness of him they found in his studio is still considered his best, if last piece of work. Some say it has to do with the seraphic smile on his face.
Sunken Gardens, Ben Pacey
~ Down the steps, out of the wind and onto a bench. The beat still pounding through me. I hold my head, but – My body rocks – back and forth – there's no respite. Back there, in the bar, I wasn't there, just my head, my feet, the sticky crowd. The bassline and our beating hearts keeping us safe – keeping us in time – in line – Until – freaking out – needing air – water – I ran straight into both on not-quite-steady-feet, getting blown down the street to shelter here. Out of the wind but caught by the boom of waves the boom of waves the boom of waves – I can't let go – my body won't stop – not yet – there's nothing else but the bang-bang bang-bang bang of hammers – Skilled hands batter us down – the adverts roll – of course we say – and on we go – Beating time – You've got to try! Work with the grain – flow like rain – this beating rain! I'm back up on my feet, letting it take me, when a bus strobes by – Number ninety nine – it takes me home – takes me back – And drums kick in – A fiddle shrieks – The fair folk howl – That's everyone in town, tonight. I want to scramble up and see the flames – Faces fair or foul, the lights, the dancing, fights – Tension building with each turn, they keep you hooked – You walk the walk, hold on to what you can – That's what you've got to do, they say, until... Your head explodes. And this bit is in the dark. It's really loud. There's mud, shingle and ghosts. All ripped apart. It tears and howls, surging on – Taking buildings, dreams and rich men down. Their dreams brought us this storm, took us all down. But this – Obliterates. Levelling, clearing, it scours down to no-man's land. Returns the ground. Returns the ground that I'm lying on right now, staring up at the dark, staring up at the pulsing nothing, staring up at all the quiet empty nothing, staring up at – You. Drenched, with mud and hair across your face, I'm staring up, watching, as the storm begins to ease, begins to let me go... Have you been through this too, I want to ask, we all have, right, it's what we're taught – No matter now. Just pick a bench – lie back and look – the sky! The wind has dropped The rain, the beating rain, the beat is gone, at last. Just us, and distant bells – white noise – tinnitus – shingle – sea – just – back and forth. You hear it too? It fades, they say, you can't beat time, they say, But look, we did! The sky is blue. And up those steps there's mud and sand and rock – Waiting – just like it always has – for castaways to step up, to steady our feet and say – This time, this land – what's left of it – is ours. Let's make our lives, and – Let's care this time, let's thrive. * But first, I really need a cup of tea. You coming?
The YMCA Reading Rooms 1903, Andrea Samuelson
Every evening at seven, the YMCA Reading Room at 12 Claremont opened its doors to the young Christian men of Hastings. We were tram drivers and house painters and shop assistants and bank clerks and plumbers. Some of us were no longer very young, and only Christian in the same way we were men.
We did not yet know what would become of us.
At the top of a narrow staircase Mr Randall, the Honourable Secretary, would greet us with a tepid pot of tea and a plate of fruitcake baked by his invisible wife.
Obscured by pipe smoke, he would dispense advice. “Do not look at women, particularly those who walk by the sea. Do not think of the sea, it is too large and unknowing, and holds secrets you cannot understand. On no account waste time in wondering, even when the air is thick with scent, and the delicious fruitcake tempts your appetite. Pay attention to the literature provided, which is of an improving nature.”
These words, and the cake, lay heavy on our stomachs. But our lodgings were lonely and our landladies miserable; and under Mr Randall’s watchful eye, we hoped to become better men.
Alf read the local papers, Bert wrote letters to his mother, George studied accountancy. We never once glanced into the lodgings above Reasts’ Corset Company, where a past member, now excluded, claimed he had seen women ‘combing their shimmering hair’. We lowered our faces to the page when the air became suffocatingly close, or we discovered a succulent raisin in the tasteless fruitcake. The clock’s steady tick measured out our waiting.
Then one night Harry found a note tucked amongst the rows of religious volumes.
The fruitcake needs more sugar, it said.
The next evening, Tom found another.
Mr Randall claims to be Christian, but he is very unkind to his wife.
We had often suspected as much.
Each night we found more messages seeded amongst the bookstacks, in many different hands.
Why do you listen to other voices? one said. Listen to yourself.
Go down to the sea, said another. Tell it what you most desire.
Who could have written them? We had no idea. When Mr Randall briefly left the room to answer a call of nature, we shared the scraps of paper and with each word felt ourselves expand, leaving behind our burdensome bodies, the stuffy reading room, even the Britain we had been taught to serve. We escaped the men we had been told to be. Alf’s fingertips brushed Tom’s across the teacups, George’s knee pressed up against Bert’s thigh, and Harry peeked above the obscured glass, hoping to spot a mermaid. The scent of fresh salt filtered through a crack in the transom. How had we never noticed it before?
Too soon however, the clock struck nine and Mr Randall coughed politely into his handkerchief.
‘The rooms are closing, gentlemen. Please return your literature to its proper place.’
The last time we saw Mr Randall, it was a Thursday evening. Turning off the gas lamps and locking the door, he bid us good night and we filed out into the narrow gloom of Claremont. The girls who lodged above Reast’s Corset Company laughed at us from their bright windows.
‘Go home!’ they called.
But we no longer knew where home might be.
Instead, we followed the roar of the sea, so loud in the darkness, our bare feet pressing against the shattered stones. Holding each other tight, we sang our longings to the waves, in the faith that, one day, they would surely come into being.
Let the salted air wash away your sight,
a colorless day of grey past life.
Who’s got a black face in Hastings Town?
Who’s off the clock and stumbling around?
La-lalala-lalala-la-la!
Black burnt cork smoothed down his nose,
master’s gloves, and patchwork clothes.
The first blackface in Hastings Town,
gaudy dressed, but a bit run down.
La-lalala-lalala-la-la!
What’s his name? I know you know,
that medicine man, Uncle Sambo!
A vaudeville rat, a traveling show,
most loved buffoonish negro!
La-lalala-lalala-la-la!
Sambo sits on Brassey Steps,
eatin’ watermelon and lickin’ his lips.
Come close, kid. Hey! Come closer.
Sambo the clown is a real joker.
La-lalala-lalala-la-la!
Here he’s brought a hilarious act,
horrific comedy in the abstract,
merciless, slapstick violence,
Our grandaddy’s cartoons need an ambulance!
La-lalala-lalala-la-la!
He’s got a blackface, but not like mine.
His blackened skin is not a crime.
Strutting through town, all the girls and boys know,
Sambo’s the star of our “local minstrel show”.
La-lalala-lalala-la-la!
Welcome folks, yes! Step right up!
See Uncle Sambo before you see the pub.
Dixie thrills outside your cup,
Sambo’s a scream, yes, he’ll crack ya up!
La-lalala-lalala-la-la!
But don’t laugh, dear. No, don’t you dare
Uncle’s gonna hurt you in this nightmare.
Tip-tap, tip-tap, his grey toes,
down the steps his tapping goes!
La-lalala-lalala-la-la!
Knickknack, paddy wack, and voodoo bones,
he’s a real-life Golly doll, with lifesized clothes
Strutting around and “putting on airs”,
He’s a frightening funny guy, falling down the stairs!
La-lalala-lalala-la-la!
Uncle’s head twists front to back,
He’s got a terrible grin for this anxiety attack.
Chuckling apart and slapping his knee,
Uncle is making you his pickaninny dream!
La-lalala-lalala-la-la!
Slow walk, slow talk, slow as shit,
he’s a dandy darky and a goddamn tit.
Gigantic mouth, gigantic grin,
piano-key teeth be clanging!
La-lalala-lalala-la-la!
Schoolboys on summer holiday,
pay a shilling a piece just to hear uncle say:
Jump, Jim Crow, and hang like so.
The bulging eyes of a real negro!
La-lalala-lalala-la-la
Benches, Ryan Smith
I travelled rarely. Though on occasion, I’d run out of excuses to stay home. I’d fret, staring into my closet, Which shirt says, ‘not lonely’? But it hardly mattered.
Sometimes I’d go and watch other people meeting, usually in a park or a bus station. I’d find a bench, whichever looked most inviting, and sit, and wait, trying to guess which two strangers might embrace. And when they did I’d run my hand along the slats, let myself sink back, imagine my share of some sturdy caress.
No, a bench will not discriminate. It gives you what you need, demanding nothing in return. And it was this bench — seasoned, not bolted down, wood seat baking in the sun — where I met Keith.
This was before the apps, back when computers were still beige. ‘I’m just picky,’ I would say. But I’d been a coward, sat at the screen most nights, drink in hand, reading profiles from men all over the world, trying on their lives like I was shopping for a jacket. It was my own fault, really. I should have taken more chances, got into more trouble. I wasn’t ashamed or anything, but I didn’t know how to act around other gay men. I was used to small-town life, and the simplicity of sex being off the table.
Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t a complete monk. But the Internet came at the perfect time for me. It gave me space to rehearse, to pretend I was already someone worth knowing. One day I received a curious message:
“mmmmmmmm”.
It was a profile untroubled by the conventions of written English. Keith’s ‘about me’ section was a single unpunctuated sentence, a sort of requiem for the 1970s, peppered with names of people against whom he’d sworn revenge. Next, a Bette Davis quote: “I’d like to kiss ya, but I just washed my hair.” It made his profile photo all the more arresting: a man, mid-scream, ensnared in a shower curtain, giving whoever’d just barged in on him the finger.
At first the image made me laugh. But the longer I looked, the more I wondered: had I just found someone as confused as me?
It was Keith’s first computer. For months the mp3 visualiser was all he could manage. After work he’d come home and watch a crimson lightning bolt dance across his monitor in time to Donna Summer. Eventually a friend showed him a few dating sites. Six weeks later he sent me his ‘mmmmmmmm’.
By way of an ice breaker, a bird shat on me. ‘That’s lucky,’ Keith said. ‘Is that so,’ I asked, dabbing my neck with my train ticket. He stood to help, and I saw how short he was. At the beach, I learned we shared a fondness for tiny swimwear. For a while we floated – our heights, in the water, an irrelevancy. We made for a groyne.
At dusk, I asked to see him again. ‘Sure’, he said, and under those furry wisps of clouds we walked back into town. Keith, as always, a few steps ahead. His baby-blue rucksack was slung over his shoulders, each as hairy as the backs of his legs, which I could see had once been muscular but now, as a man in his mid-50s, were beginning to sag.
– – –
I sometimes come back here, to protect that little strip of territory that was ours, to feel the heat on my legs and recall how Keith first found me, all that time pretending I wasn’t lost. I remember the fear born on that day, too. That my only chance of happiness was to seal him up, to nail Keith to the floor until he could answer me:
‘How long do we have together?’
‘Oh Jerry,’ he would say, because this had become our favourite, ‘Don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars.’
Images: All writer headshots credit to Caitlin Lock
Trinity Triangle Captured in Time - 2021 