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Lost Love
A Narcisists's Tale
(or, A Question of Commitment)
By
Peter Mackeonis
It was one of those warm summer London evenings that was just made for having a glass or two of wine while people watching from a table outside a wine bar and that's where Nick was waiting to cadge a drink or two off some tourists, when it happened.
"Nick? Nick Papworth?"
"Yes," he answered.
There was something familiar about the voice, but as he turned to see the girl who looked like she just stepped off the cover of Vogue, yes she was definitely someone he would have remembered.
"Have I changed that much?" she asked, in an almost childlike voice..
"Sorry?"
"Shame on you, Nick."
"Sorry, ' Nick repeated, followed by 'but I'm really not sure we've met?" wishing they had.
"The bank?' And, as she lifted her dark glasses and with a hint of mocking laughter in her voice she continued, "You were my first boyfriend, and you know what they say about first loves."
"Elaine?"
"At last, Nick! I was beginning to feel a bit stupid,' and, as she looked me up and down, she continued, "Looking at that tattoo on your arm, I guess you're no longer with the bank."
"I'd say you've changed more than me." Nick replied, trying to suppress a grin, as he viewed the elegant woman talking to him; the baby-faced teenager had developed into a real beauty with a voice a couple of octaves lower, as sexy as hell.
"I'll take that as a complement.” she smiled.
Nick had no idea what to say next and was relieved when Elaine broke the embarrassing silence.
"You could ask me to sit down? I've been the back room lunching with friends, but I'd love another glass of wine?" And, just as the last word left her pink painted lips, a waiter brought a bottle to the terrace. Nick looked at the label and knew that was his month's budget blown.
"Are you still living out in Essex?" Nick asked as he started to relax.
"No, not since my mother died."
"I'm sorry to hear that," and after a pause, "So, where now?
"Not far from here, I'm at a friend's flat in Beauchamp Place," came the reply.
Nick knew the street well in better times, and, like the wine she'd ordered, it was expensive.
"And you?" Nick was asked
"I have a flat in Notting Hill." Nick answered, aware that it sounded a lot grander than it really was.
So, tell me,” Elaine asked coyly, “what are you doing here all alone?” with the emphasis on the word alone “on such a beautiful Saturday afternoon."
"I was just hanging out with some mates and they've all just split." The truth was he'd been laid off again and been nursing the only glass of wine that he could afford hoping that he could take a drink or two off of a tourist.
And then he followed up with what he though was a funny comment. "So I thought I'd just sit here opposite Harrods watching all that money going shopping."
“Same old Nick” came the reply and he couldn't tell if it was meant to be cutting or not, and then he noticed her rather large Harrod's bag, so he quickly added, "How about you? What finds you in Knightsbridge?"
"I live most of the year in Paris now, so so when I'm in town, I like to stock up with gifts. Don't you think It's just the best store in the world? Macy's or Galleries Lafayette have nothing on It."
Nick knew just how cheap his comment must have sounded, and was relieved that it had gone unnoticed and, as the wine flowed, so did the conversation.
"So what are you doing these days?"
Nick felt embarrassed. He used to picking up girls, being in charge of the conversation, but this felt different. It felt like he was talking to an old friend and he wasn't sure how to being honest without sounding such a loser.
"Well, I left shortly after you did. I just didn't feel appreciated.' and realizing he shouldn't have started there where he had, he just carried on. “I've worked for a few places since then." and he casually added, "now I'm just about to start my own company."
Sadly Elaine just ignored his last and best words, as she asked, "Do you have a problem with not being appreciated?"
And the surprising comment made Nick think of the way that Claire had started to speak to him.
"Doesn't everyone?" Nick replied, half laughing, and hiding his annoyance at being grilled, . "Working for others is too restrictive and I'm much happier now, isn't that what counts?"
Nick sensed that she wasn't impressed. She'd moved on from when he knew her. But, rather than face another silence, he stupidly just carried on talking.
"I joined a band after leaving the bank, but we had what people call 'artistic differences' and I quit.” Nick was now rambling. ”London's still the best city in the world for music and sometimes I sing a few cover songs at Jimmy's at the top of High Street Ken. Perhaps you know it? The T-bone streaks are the best in London," and now even he was wondering why he was talking gibberish."
For some reason, Elaine wasn't going to let the topic go.
"Any regrets? Nick."
"With what?” Thee was but with no reply coming Nick carried on,
“Not really," and now he was wondering why she was so interested. After all, they hadn't seen each other in five or six years.
Elaine then, surprisingly took the conversation back to when they'd dated.
"Do you ever wonder what would have happened if Diane hadn't joined the bank?"
That really came out of left field, and Nick as he sat back in his chair looking slightly puzzled Elaine continued, and her voice now with a slight edge to it. So Nick didn't reply and this time Elaine left no room for a silence of any kind. "You really changed when you started to hang out with Annie and Paul and her, it was like I never existed."
The tone in Elaine's voice when she said her told Nick that it was time to make an excuse and leave, but Nick's face telegraphed his next move because and before he could speak Elaine asked again.
"Do you ever wonder what would have happened if Diane hadn't joined the bank?"
"I'm not sure what you mean," but Nick did, and that would have been the time to have apologized. He should have said something like, 'I don't know what came over me, or I can't tell you how bad I felt when I heard.”
But I didn't.
He should have said “It was so lucky they found you in time.” But there was no way to say that without admitting to having been the unfeeling bastard that he'd been.
But to his surprise, sweet Elaine returned and the next words he heard were, "Why don't we find out?"
Nick thought he'd misheard but he hadn't and to his great relief Elaine handed the waiter a £50 note and flagged down a taxi.
As they cut though Hyde Park towards Notting Hill Nick heard how his sudden coldness towards her had turned out for the best as soon after she'd met 'Tini' the Italian music event promoter, who was very rich and great fun. With his senses all but overpowered by the seductive waves of ' Samsara perfume that up til then he hadn't noticed, and as he casually glanced at the Chanel buckles on his beautiful companion's shoes all he could say without any tone of remorse in his voice was that he was pleased for her.
As the cab pulled up at the shabby Colville Gardens terrace Elaine smiled a knowingly as if to say perhaps he should have stayed with the bank.
Nick's embarrassment grew as they climbed three creaking staircases and peaked as they past the flat that reeked of boiled cabbage. He became almost schizophrenic as his thoughts alternated between thank God that Claire had gone home to her mother's for the night, and what the hell was he doing. How could he bring someone like Elaine to this dump and he felt ashamed until, and as if by telepathy, Elaine said, "This is such a great location for Portobello Market and the Electric Cinema."
Finally at the top of the house Nick was thankful that his room was not a complete mess, but he was painfully really aware that this was not what his guest had become accustomed, and it made him think how far she'd graduated from her mother's caravan parked in a field outside a small country town.
"A bedsit, how charming?" Elaine said, her eyes moving from the sink in the corner to the cooking ring along the side wall, to the bed at the back wall and finally down to the coin-fed electricity meter while ignoring the laundry that Claire had left on a chair.
Nick heard himself say, "I needed somewhere central and flats are far too expensive around here. So I just settled for a bedsit."
But she had noticed Claire's clothes on the chair and she gently corrected him.
"Don't you mean we? Where is your girlfriend today?"
Semi flustered, Nick answered "Claire is at her mother's for the night." and expecting Elaine to turn and run, she didn't. Instead, she took a bottle of wine out of the over-sized Harrods bag and said, "So we can have breakfast together. I suppose you have a corkscrew?"
"Somewhere," I replied and started rifling through a drawer next to the sink.
"Where's the bathroom?" Elaine asked.
Elaine showed no emotion as she was escorted down the dark scruffy hall, but Nick could feel himself getting smaller and smaller.
"You open the wine and I'll see you in a minute," she said as she closed the door that was in need of a fresh coat of paint.
Nick poured two glasses of wine as instructed and then as they passed in the hall Nick nervously joked that it must be his turn to remove some of the grime of the day.
Standing in the small windowless bathroom Nick saw the chipped tiles and grimy curtain in a new light, and wondered why Claire had put up with where she was living and, come to it, why had she tolerated me at all. Sure, today, I was being such a charming guy, but was that the real Nick? And he now wondered if the real Nick should have left the security of the bank, and perhaps, just perhaps, he should have paid more attention to Elaine at the time.
The moment of self-reflection over Nick walked towards what was going to be possibly the biggest embarrassment of his short life.
There was no small-town shyness left in the young girl as she sat with the upper half of her body exposed and it made the bedsit look like Monet painting. The silkiness of Elaine's skin as Nick slid in beside her gave him goosebumps and continued to do so when later recollecting what happened next, and as they lay together bathed in a gentle sweat he would only recall it as a once in a lifetime experience: the outside world had ceased to exist and for the first time in his life he knew what love was. He experienced how two became one and he then finally knew what Ecstasy meant. He was in the true sense, in the sense expressed by poets, in love.
Had he forgotten how close they'd been those years before before? Before Diane joined the bank?
Suddenly he understood how Elaine must have felt when he'd suddenly ignored her. Sure we'd never had sex, but that was coming. It just never happened.
As Elaine lay cradled in the crook of his arm she again led the conversation. This time though the softness in her voice began to entice the truth from me.
"So you and Claire. It's not love?" he was asked.
"No, she really more of a friend. She came to a party and somehow just stayed on."
"And you?"
"I live with Tini" Elaine answered
It was the unwanted, but expected, answer.
"Serious?"
"He buys me what I need."
Nick wanted to say, you mean he buys you, and instantly regretted the impulse because it was none of his business.
Instead he asked, "That's important?"
"Aren't we all bought with something? He pays for anything I want and sometimes we live on his yacht."
And then in a quiet voice, "But, perhaps, us meeting again has changed something?"
Nick paused before nervously asking, "I've always wondered why did you do it? I was that important to you?"
There was the raw sadness of youth in Elaine's' voice as she continued, “You were spending evenings with me and then watching her all day and when I heard that you were both going off with Paul and Annie as couples I just couldn't cope. I thought that you and me were together... and I simply couldn't cope"
A callous denial came too easily to Nick, "It wasn't like that and anyway you and I were..." but then he paused as he began to remember what he had conveniently forgotten.
"What was it like then?"
"I don't know, we were both too young to become that seriously involved and I can only think that I loved you like a friend, but what I felt for Diane was different. Anyway, my going out with her shouldn't have made you decide to …" He did not finish the sentence.
Elaine interrupted me again, "There was no real decision.."
"But did you really mean to die?"
The naive young girl disappeared as quickly as she'd come as the sternness bordering on anger that she'd tried to mask entered her voice.
"I could think of nothing else. It swept over me and, like I said, unlike your weekend there was no decision."
In return Nick tried to be recall how he'd felt when he'd heard the news, had he been shocked? "When my boss called me into his office to tell me that you had been found on the bathroom floor ..."
"Yes?"
"I felt nothing..."
Elaine pulled away in a jerky movement. The shock on her face startled him.
"No. Not like that, but like I was dreaming."
Elaine reached for a cigarette and lit it.
"I was just confused that you felt so deeply for me."
"If you couldn't tell, you were the only one who didn't know. Why do you think that the director only called you into tell you what I'd done?
Nick had no answer., was it possible that he hadn't cared?
"And then," with definite annoyance in her voice, "I never saw you again. When didn't you come see me in hospital? And when I went home, you didn't even call me."
"I didn't have your mother's phone number."
"You could have just come by?"
"I didn't think I'd be welcomed. I guess I was afraid."
"Or you couldn't be not bothered."
"That hurt."
"Yes it did, but I'd meant me not you, and it was the act of a really selfish bastard.”
And then like a miracle, Elaine softened.
"But lets put all that behind us. I still can't believe how we just met again."
"Neither can I." Nick was just grateful that her voice had lost the edge that had been building as his heart was beating hard at the need for this not to be a one-night stand. He wanted to keep talking, to keep the feeling going; he needed to hear what might be.
"Would you ever think about living in London again?" Nick asked and his meaning was obvious.
"Perhaps? But perhaps you could stay with me in Rome until we work out something more permanent? I'm sure Tini wouldn't mind my cousin staying with me."
Sensing that Nick was disappointed with her response and wanting something more concrete, Elaine added, "We can sort all that out tomorrow."
As Nick poured more wine he couldn't believe the new direction that his life was about to take, but after taking a couple of sips they both started to fall asleep. Half conscious, Nick began to recall how he and Elaine had been close; she was right, she had been his first girlfriend and they had shared a simple love but he'd always through that it was really a naive kind of love. Sure, most evenings after work he'd walk her to the station and yes, as they'd lived near each other the evening when her mother was out playing bingo he'd would visit her caravan and they'd play records. He hadn't meant to hurt her when he'd become infatuated with Diane and he'd certainly had no idea that she'd try to hurt herself.
Was it just possible that he was supposed to have wasted years for her to find him again and, as drifted off his last conscious thoughts were composing the 'Dear Claire' letter that he'd write in the morning.
Nick woke just as the morning sun began streaming through the bedsit window and reaching out to touch the girl who'd opened his heart to so many new possibilities he found the space next to him cold.
Fifteen minuted passed and Elaine still had not returned from the bathroom, so he went to see if she was okay.
Nick looked down the hall to see the bathroom door was open.
Perhaps she'd gone to get coffee and croissants, Nick thought, as she seemed well organized.
Then, as he came back to his room, he saw the envelope with NICK written on it in capital letters.
The contents was short and to the point:
“Elaine says hi, and, she's not sorry that she could not come herself because she still hates you.”
Nick continued read through watering eyes.
” Having finally met you, after years of having heard about you, I can see why.
Victoria.”
Moving in slow motion across the room to bed, the faint air of Samsara still perceptible, the tears ran down his face, as Nick climbed back in to bed.
That was where Claire found him when she returned later that day.
Claire moved out shortly later that evening after finding a lipstick. Victoria's parting gift left under their bed, was the final straw.
Nick never saw Elaine again
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