We
loaded up the hired van and Chris drove it up. I decided to get the train,
partly because I didn’t trust Chris’s driving and I knew we would argue on the
way up there. Already our tempers had frayed haggling over how much of his junk
he would take and how much would go back to the charity shops. There was
a vast quantity of books, magazines, DVDs, CDs, videos, essays and papers he
had printed up in work in thin cardboard folders splitting at the seams. All of
which somehow seemed essential to him.
There’s
an old quote about buying books: we think we are buying the time to read them,
but having been a hoarder myself when I was younger I understand it
differently, we were buying the selves we imagined we would become after we had
read them, the great works, the great thoughts and each one bought was a new
possible self, our own future greatness, claimed, set aside, each one sold on a small grief for that self’s loss, our future diminished. The dizziness in
libraries or bookshops, the circling of souls, selves, worlds. It was easy to
get trapped there, enchanted, enchained.
I had taken that train, the
London to Glasgow route, changing at Lancaster for the service that crept along
the coast to Barrow in Furness many times, especially over the previous few years
after my father had passed away, visiting my mother, who still lived there. It
was run by Virgin trains, a private company and was notorious for its expense
and inconvenience. This was an additional reason for going to Lancaster, I had
decided to move back closer to her as she tried to decide what to do now, move
down to my sister’s place in Ramsgate or move within the town and I thought I should
be closer if I could to offer some support.
I imagined my late father
discussing it all with me and I was sorry that he wasn’t alive to see some of
the changes that were happening. Some proof that what he believed in hadn't been
entirely abandoned had come too late to rejuvenate any faith he might have
had in the cause of the working class. All he had seen for the last forty years
of his life after all was its slow defeat. He would have been pleased,
encouraged perhaps in a way he wouldn’t like to admit, but I could imagine his
scepticism too, at the possibilities of its being meaningful, at my naivete.
Still trying to throw your
arms around the world, son? At your age?
Yes, Dad.
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