THE LONG AND THE SHORT OF IT

THE LONG AND THE SHORT OF IT

"Oh, her eyes!". Sorry, I could not resist. Even now, I am overcome by the vision, but I am way, way ahead of myself.

I grew up dyspraxic, that is clumsy in ordinary language. The limbs I felt from inside never seemed to be in the same place as they appeared to be, relative to the world I saw around me. If I was happy, the feet I felt from within were not touching the ground, but, less than happy, and I would feel my feet dragging through the pavement as I walked, feeling the friction. My first attempt to throw a ball at the garage wall failed for around a hundred attempts before I even hit the garage! The ball went everywhere but the wall I was aiming for from just a few feet away.

I was also temporally disjointed, I saw the apparent reality a little before it occurred. I was that little kid who tried to catch the ball before it arrived. The first time I really noticed that I was out of step with the rest, I was listening to the teacher tell a joke, and I heard her saying the punch line. I laughed into silence. The whole class turned to look at me. I wanted to crawl inside my desk and hide! The teacher resumed and it was several sentences before she got to the punch line!

Over the years, I learned to estimate where I was, so that I could line up with the perceived reality, and I learned to store the experience, hold it in temporary memory, forget I had seen it, then regurgitate it as close to 'on time' as I could guess at.

I say these things because what is to follow, even for a normally aligned person, would seem amazing, but for me, the degree of coordination was nothing short of miraculous.

Before we get to that revelation though, I must introduce Fanny. On my sixteenth birthday, my parents said I had a present in the garage. I went out into the garden, not knowing what to expect, opened the garage door and found Fanny there waiting for me! More clearly, I saw a dark green Francis Barnett 150 Plover motorcycle, that had been gifted by our policeman neighbour, as he was getting a new bike. First known as Fanny B, then just as Fanny, she needed some work before she was road worthy, and my parents would not let me ride her till after I had finished my O' Level exams.

From that moment on, all my homework and revision was done sitting on Fanny. I had promised not to ride her on the road, but that did not stop me cleaning and polishing, and scooting her with my feet, up and down the drive, then, when I had the engine running, riding the same limited driveway. So, by the time I did get on the road, I was already pretty in tune with the bike, something about her cured my clumsiness. I began winning trophies for trials riding against far more professional bikes and riders. Fanny was like a real person to me, we felt bonded.

That bonding with a bike was all I had, because, with my dyspraxia and dyslexia, I was almost terminally inept when it came to any form of social interaction. Oh, I had many desires, but was completely incapable of fulfilling any of them. So, Fanny was the nearest thing I had to a relationship. Imagine me, over six foot tall, yet only 9 stone, 126 pounds, 57 kilos, lanky, gawky, awkward, ungainly, probably goofy looking too. While the dyslexia, although I did not know what that was called back then, made English a challenge, mathematics seemed a piece of cake. I had learned the trick of reading the chapter before the class, so I already knew the answers, and became accredited as the school math genius. We did not have the term then, but I was undoubtedly a nerd.

Enough prelude! The night before the first event, I had recently turned eighteen and was in the break before going to University, having a drink with some acquaintances from my holiday job. They agreed to meet at a pub in Chiswick the next night. They knew the pub, and the way they spoke, it seemed that it would be obvious to find. If they mentioned a name, I did not remember it.

Next night I rode off on Fanny to Chiswick, which was new territory for me, only to find rather a lot of pubs, with none standing out obviously as the one of the intended meeting. So, I began at one end of Chiswick High Road, and started working my way through the pubs. I would park the bike, enter each pub, walk all round it, looking, exit, back on the bike to the next pub. Time was passing, and I could no longer be certain that they had not moved on to another pub.

Now, while I was not a rocker, as such, I suppose that I did look like one, black jacket, open faced crash helmet, and, of course the bike, although I think that most self respecting rockers would not be seen on the little put put that Fanny was. Now, this was 1972 and there was vicious gang warfare between the scooter riding mods and skin heads, and the rockers and Hells Angels. Two of my biker friends had ended in hospital, fighting for their lives, after an unfortunate encounter with a gang of skins, so, these were dangerous times.

I was feeling a certain desperation to meet up with the closest thing I had to friends, and was well into the routine of rushing into a pub with my helmet on, and out again. I came to a rather large public house, parked the bike with the front wheel towards the back fence, ran round the front, entered and started barging my way through a surprisingly packed crowd, raucous with the energy of raised drunken voices.

I was about half way to the bar, with eyes only looking for my friends, when I suddenly realised that the noise had stopped and that it had gone deathly quiet. I refocussed, glanced down, saw the Doc Marten boots, pressed two tone trousers, Crombie jackets, on up to the shaved heads, which were all looking at me! Skins!

I about faced, and made my way as quickly as possible to the door, thankful that their beer addled brains were taking a little time to get into gear. As I burst out through the door, the noise erupted again behind me, most notably, a repeated shout of "Get him!". I ran! I did not have time for fear, but I certainly knew the imperative for action. So, from my social ineptitude and clumsy demeanour, we now come to that unbelievable degree of coordination.

I sprinted across the car park, no time to look behind, but I heard the shouts of many excited voices as the crowd poured from the pub behind me. Fast across the car park, then came that special moment, in slow motion. I leapt on the bike from behind, the momentum of landing taking it off the kick stand. In one movement, as I landed, my right foot found the kick starter, the left foot hit the gear lever, left hand on clutch, right hand opening throttle wide. The engine burst into life first kick, which was a miracle in itself as she was often reluctant to start.

The engine screamed, I dumped the clutch, the front wheel popped right up, and I spun 180 degrees on the back wheel. It was all one fluid motion. Now Fanny was not at all powerful, and I have no idea how she managed this, but front wheel in the air, first gear, then second, I tore across the car park on the back wheel, straight into the oncoming crowd, the bike between me and them.

The memory occurs in slow motion, with a surprising amount of detail, I saw the street lights glinting off some very large and mean looking knives being brandished aloft, along with some big sticks and a bar stool covered in red leather with brass studs around it. Isn't it strange how you take in such things in moments of crisis?

As I tore into the crowd, some 50 strong, they dodged the bike and I was kicking out at any coming at me from the side. One vignette was seeing a wicked, savage Bowie style knife, held high, stabbing down towards me, my foot hitting him in the chest, with him spinning away from me as he fell.

Then I was through the crowd, I dropped the front wheel, which was when I saw her as the headlight flashed across her elfin face! A slight girl, barely more than 5 foot tall, long straight brown hair. She had been obscured by the bike, and was now revealed, frozen, mouth gaping, eyes wide in surprise, or fear, as I was headed directly at her. But, oh those eyes! While some part within me had remained calm through all of this, there was, in that exquisite moment, something about those eyes that was like an electric shock, like a new life bursting within me.

As I veered around her, and the bike was leaning over, my face came momentarily quite close to hers, her face following me as I went past, her eyes now bright, gazing right into mine, a smile beginning on her lips. I am guessing that my joy in the encounter was visible on my face too.

I had no awareness of the road, or whether there was any traffic on it, I was looking behind me, mesmerised, and she still watching me. I did momentarily close the throttle, wondering whether, in some fantasy reality, I could go back for her, but the crowd returning from the car park behind her, convinced me otherwise. Then she was gone from view.

My father had been an engineer for the RAF, stationed up near the front line, working on fighter planes, and, after the war, as many others had, found employment at Heathrow Airport. A perk of employment was special deals and flights. This time, it was a new flight opening up to the Seychelles, the departure being the afternoon following my encounter.

That night before the flight seemed so long, those eyes, haunting my waking and my dreaming, forever floating before my inner vision, somehow more real than the outer reality. I had been enthusiastic about the flight, but now the packing seemed like drudgery and I felt resistant to going at all. Could I find her if I stayed? It did not seem rational, and my parents would have been hurt after arranging the holiday, so, with some reluctance, I went.

We took the flight to what is now Seychelles International, then a small twin prop to hop over to Assumption Island, and the hotel. I suppose it should all have been very nice, but I was moping, and not really enjoying myself, just doing what was expected of me, my feet dragging in the ground. Now, I was never one to be known for spontaneous outbursts of joy, quite dour in fact, but even my mother noticed something was wrong. My shoulders slumped, my head hung low, prone to sighing deeply, I looked like something had drained the life from me, as she put it. I lied and said I was okay, and made jet lag an excuse.

So it was, a week after arriving, that I was to be found, sitting, back against a tree, looking out across the beach and sea towards the sun heading for the horizon. Such was my habit now at this time of evening, after dinner. There was some kind of comfort in watching the setting sun, as if the extinguished light was a symbol for the loss I felt, somehow a reflection of the light in her eyes, now gone. I replayed the scene over and again, with recriminations. If I had reacted earlier and braked immediately, did I have time to pick her up from out side the pub? Oddly, it never occurred to me that she might not have wanted to come.

Those of empathic tendency might already have diagnosed that I was love struck, but I was pretty severely Asperger's, that is, emotionally blind, and I was just confused and disoriented. I was sitting in the shadow, alternately looking out at the sun, than back down to the sand beside me, doodling with my finger. I was trying to draw the shape of her eyes in the sand, being dissatisfied, wiping it clear and starting over, so I did not see her immediately, but I did see her before she saw me.

She was a slight thing, seeming dissolute, head hung low, gazing down at her feet, listlessly kicking at the sand as she walked, looking like she felt a lot heavier than she was. At first, I did not realise it was her, now in a sarong type thing, just that I recognised, "She looks like I feel". She was walking along the tree lined edge of the beach, right towards me, but, head down, did not see my outstretched legs till she was nearly upon them.

As she suddenly became aware of my feet, kicking sand onto them, she let out a squeal, "Oh, sorry!" and made to walk around them, then she looked up, and our eyes met. Again! Those eyes! Her eyes! There was a moments confusion as I wondered whether I was projecting my inner image onto someone else, but her exclamation of, "You!", settled the matter. Her eyes, initially dull from introspection suddenly became alive and bright with wonderment.

"Sorry!" I blurted for some unknown reason, maybe it was for getting in her way. "What for?" she asked. "Sorry!", I said again, this time being sorry for saying sorry.

"You kicked my brother in the chest!", she exclaimed. I had the sense of her putting the pieces of a puzzle together. "Sorry!", I said yet again. While not exactly struck dumb, there did not seem to be any other words in my vocabulary.

"Oh, don't worry,", she responded chirpily, "he deserved it, he is such a brute! I don't know were he gets it from.". Her voice reminding me of a wind chime. I fought back the unreasonable urge to say sorry yet again and stumbled clumsily to my feet, then instantly regretted it as I was looming over her. Yet her sweet face gazing innocently up at me, transfixed me to the spot, and I stood frozen, gazing down at her, probably grinning like an idiot.

Social etiquette was saying this was a stranger, but some inner part of me was crying out that we had know each other for all eternity, and the mutual gazing went on in silence till the socially entrained aspect of me became uncomfortable, so I broke the silence with, "How did you recognise me?", my voice on the verge of cracking. Glad to get past, 'sorry', I was genuinely curious, as last time she had seen me was in quite different circumstance, and even though the crash helmet had been open face, it does change ones appearance.

"It was your eyes!", she blurted out, instantly regretting it, she clamped her hand over her mouth and mumbled through her fingers, "Did I just say that?". Bigger grinning from me! I was delighted! Her hand dropped away, and I could almost see her accepting she was already committed, her eyes dropped, as if in modesty, and she almost whispered, "And your lips.".

Was that a fire within me or a tornado? Already feeling tall in her diminutive presence, I now felt like I was floating somewhere up in the sky, looking way down. I realised I was shaking my head in disbelief and stopped it. I was pretty sure she could see from my face, but I wanted to dispel any doubt, so that she would know for certain. I took a deep breath for courage, hoping it would stabilise my voice that now wanted to quaver. I looked deep into her eyes, and said, as evenly as I could muster, "Your eyes have haunted me ever since, too.". The smile she had now was the most beautiful I had ever seen, her eyes somehow yet bigger, brighter and deeper.

While some part of me was still looking down from way above, another part was falling, falling ever deeper into those eyes, mesmerised. I was genuinely dizzy. "I'm feeling a bit wobbly, do you mind if we sit down? There is a wall just up there.", "Sure.". We began to walk, side by side, but feeling unstable and my feet sliding in the soft sand, I lurched sideways and barged into her shoulder with my elbow. "Sorry!", I said yet again, this time with purpose. She play acted staggering sideways from the blow, pretending to lose her balance, but my clumsiness was further exposed by the grace of her movements, a fairy dancing, I thought at the time, as she pretended to stumble about, then deliberately barged back into me. "Oh, so sorry!", she mimicked, then ran off to jump onto the wall and sat kicking her heels till I arrived. Her feet were a good six inches off the ground, but mine were firmly planted as I sat down.

"How is it that you are here?", I asked. "My father works at the airport, we flew on this morning, I could not face the swim.", she responded cheerily, as cheeky as she looked. "My father too, but I see you for a second, cannot get you out of my head and here you are, thousands of miles away, beside me. How can that be? What are the chances?". "Don't look a mouth gift in the horse!", she quipped cheerfully, deliberately misquoting.

I looked up briefly and saw the Sun, now large and red, was getting closer to the horizon. "They say you can hear the hiss when it hits the water.", I teased. "Oh really?", she responded in mock disbelief. We sat, side by side, watching the setting Sun. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her fingers walking along the wall towards mine, so mine walked towards hers until our fingers met so gently, with such delicacy, and began to entwine, until we were hand in hand. The moment the Sun touched the horizon, I let out a loud, "Hsst!". She giggled. I said, "You know what this island is called?", "Assumption Island", she replied. "Well, I am going to make one!" I said, feeling bold. "What, an island?", she teased, and it was my turn to chuckle, "No, an assumption.".

With that, I slid my hand from hers, trailed my fingers very slowly and lightly up her wrist and arm, over her shoulder to arrive behind her neck. She shivered several times during this, and it was not cold. There was a soft smile on her face, her eyes still on the sun, now just a half circle sitting on the sea. I pulled her gently to me, leaning in to meet her, and, for the longest time, just looked directly into her eyes, till our lips only just touched, then ever firmer and deeper till we were in a passionate, very deep embrace, both murmuring softly.

Suddenly, she snapped out of it, looked at her watch, said, "I said I was only going for a quick walk!", and she was gone into the darkening evening. When I was back at the hotel, my mother exclaimed, "What happened to you?", "Oh I caught the sun.", says I. I barely slept that night, then, the next morning, our fathers recognised each other, we shared the breakfast table, and I was introduced to Nicole. At last I knew her name! We sat opposite, smiling at each other, playing footsie under the table. I saw our parents exchanging knowing glances.

Our families shared meals together and were to become lifelong friends. All the available time I had in the remaining week I was there, was spent with Nicole, being thoroughly bewitched and enchanted. Although small, she was bigger than life in my eyes. Then we had to fly home. When they also returned, I visited, and, thankfully brother George of the Bowie knife had left home and soon after went to Africa for a job, so, when we did meet years later, he had no memory of our previous meeting.

I went to Royal Holloway College, which was close enough to return at weekends to be with Nicole. I got a good degree in maths and chemistry, followed by a well paid job as a chemical engineer. We married as soon as we had the savings, Nicole had been working in a local chemists and saving too. She bore two sons who turned into strapping great lads, the three of us dwarfing her, yet her heart was bigger than all of us. But, something changed on the second birth, and she left the hospital less buoyant than she had gone in, and after that was never again of the most robust health. Yet her eyes never lost their sparkle, and they never ceased to enchant me.

Nearly 50 years passed, mostly in happiness except for her bouts of poor health. Near the end, she knew she did not have long to go, but forswore the hospital, saying, if they could give her a few more days, they would be wasted unless she was home with me. So she stayed, growing weaker, and I was glad she was not heavy as I carried her to the toilet, bed bathed her, and those usual sorts of chores.

Her last hours were spent in my arms. She was growing weaker all the time, then, suddenly picked up, as if she was fine. I had hopes she might pull through, and for nearly an hour, we chatted, making plans for the future, being normal, then as suddenly as she had picked up, she relapsed. For several hours, she was too weak to move, then pretty much 50 years to the minute from that first delightful kiss, she lifted my hand to her lips one last time, her final conscious action. Then came an awfully long night as her breath grew ever more shallow. All through, I was holding her in my arms, her head against my chest. I am sure I did a lot of talking, loving and consoling, but I cannot remember, only the feeling of her against me. I watched dawn rise, still holding her and she hung on through the morning, the boys arrived to be with us, and she finally passed in my arms mid afternoon.

She was gone and there was no more life left in the body. Her eyes had opened in death, and I went to look into them one last time, and realised that I could not, I could only look at them. I realised there was nothing special about her eyes, just eyes, but it was the Spirit that looked out of them that had thrilled me for all those years we had been together, and then, it was no longer there. I only have the memories now, two years later, burned deep into my soul.

There is still a part of me, forever trapped in those moments, her beautiful face, caught in my headlight as I left the car park, those precious first moments on the tropical beach, that first kiss. My darling, I am forever blessed, for the light of your eyes lives on in my heart, in perpetuity.