Return Journey by Sarah Green

Read a runner-up short story from our 2007 competition

Sarah, 55, is a secondary school teacher in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire. She lives with her husband Jim and they have two grown up children.

Return Journey
In my dreams, he is there still. I see him like he was on the first day of our marriage. Dark haired and tanned. And young, with tender blue eyes. I can feel the warmth of his arm across my back and I lean against it with a sense of luxury.

He nuzzles my neck, and says, 'Watch.'

The swallows are swooping low over the water, in exuberant sweeps and dives that make the air sing. At his word, the sun just touches the horizon. The rive and the lazy terracotta buildings are abruptly drenched in gold and copper and rose, flooded with a startling brilliance that matches our mood.
'Happy?' Peter asks. I turn in his arms and kiss him. 'The Ponte Vecchio is now my favourite place in the whole world,' I tell him solemnly, kissing the tip of his nose. 'What, even with the smells and the crowds?' he teases. 'Right here, right now, this tiny corner where we're standing? Favourite place. Absolutely.'

I touch my hand to the bunches of padlock that are hanging like grapes from the ancient iron rings of the bridge. They are love tokens, carved with initials and dates. 'This is such a lovely idea.' 'I'm glad you think so,' he says.
He puts his arms around me and holds out his closed hands in front of me. 'Choose.'

I tap on the left one, which has a brand new wedding band on it, and he uncurls his fingers. A tiny padlock, engraved with our initials and the date of our wedding yesterday. Together we clip the padlock onto the cluster. 'What about the keys?' I ask. He opens the other hand and there they are. Together we drop the keys into the golden waters of the Arno. I rest my hand on the warmth of the parapet and stare down at the water fretted with lines of gold. He tightens his hold on me, as if he will never let me go.

'And my favourite place?' he murmurs. 'Right here, right now, wrapped around you, Mrs Jones.' His lips are warm as they just trace the edge of my ear and touch my neck. 'Billets, par favore.' The voice of the ticket collector calls me back to the present. The train is packed with tourists and commuters, and it's already stifling, almost suffocating. I can feel the sweat trickling down my sides. I was lucky to get this stiff corner seat on the shady side of the carriage.

The ticket collector takes one look at me and says, 'Tickets please.' I must have 'English' branded on my forehead. I smile apologetically and rummage in Old Faithful for my purse. A woman sitting opposite me says bossily, 'You have to buy the ticket before you get on.' I say, 'Oh…oh dear…'

I've made a mess of things. I did know that I should have bought the ticket before I got on the train. I just didn't think about it. Should I get off and go and get the wretched ticket? As I wonder what to do the train begins to roll forward. It's too late.

I say helplessly to the ticket collector, 'Er…par favore, uno billeto a Firenze?' He sticks relentlessly to English, despite my broken Italian, or perhaps because of it.
'Return?'
I shake my head, 'No. No return.' Not this time. He nods and turns the handle and gives me a ticket, which he then clips to show he has seen it, I guess.

'Enjoy your visit to Florence, Senora.'
'Grazie.'
The woman says, 'You usually get a fine if you don't buy the ticket first.'

I don't answer. I don't want to be one of her possessions for the rest of the journey. I shift uncomfortably against the seat, and turn my face to look out of the window. The fabric is harsh and prickles my back, and I press against its hurt. Outside the sun is white hot in a white sky, and the landscape is exposed and harsh with pools of beauty where the tall trees shadow the farms like dark candles.

It's unchanged. Just as beautiful and fierce as it was on that first journey that we took together.

'I love this landscape,' Peter says, taking my hand. 'We'll bring our children here.'
'What children?'
'Didn't I tell you? I want my own cricket team.'
'Oh that's alright then.'
Children.
I lean back in his arms and imagine their faces. They'll have his eyes and his hair, and my mouth…

The day Peter and I bring back Mark home from the maternity hospital we go out into the garden to plant a tree to grow up with him. I hold Mark, warm and milky in my arms, and think, 'He smells of happiness.'
'Don't drop the brat,' Peter grins.

While he digs the hole and drops the sapling into place a blackbird sings the same wild notes over and over again. I've never heard anything so exquisite in my whole life. I finger the leaves, touch the smooth young bark of the sapling, and make a thousand fervent promises to my young son.

Yesterday I wandered in the garden, saying goodbye to all my plants. That tree is rough and gnarled with memory and age now.

A man lowers himself into the place next to me with a soft grunt, making my seat creak and arch its back in protest. He is very fat and his straining business suit is shiny and tight. I try not to shrink away.

Instead I close my eyes.

I'll stand on the bridge. I put my hand flat on the table between the seats and touch the warm stone of the parapet. I feel the scrape of the stone on my legs as I scramble up untidy. I like the cold plunge through the rushing air with the yells of the crowd following me down. Then the concrete slam as I hit the water. And then down. Deeply under, sucked by the current. I dwell on the feel of the thick silty water manhandling me as it rolls me over and over. I can taste the muddy grit on my tongue as I stare into the brown darkness of the river.

The fat man shifts heftily, and I open my eyes. It's getting hotter and the air is tighter than ever. I ease my hand down to my bag and take out the card that I brought with me and my pen. I stare at the card for a long time. I want to write something…significant. Something that will help them, something they will treasure.

Dear boys…so general. And they're not boys any more.
Dear Harry and Mark…Perhaps I should have bought two cards, one each. How will they feel about it? Sharing this last private message? Will it bring them together or will it make each of them feel they were less important to me? I don't want to add this small hurt to the bigger one.

It's too late now to change it. Or perhaps I can get another card in Florence. Somehow this disturbs me. I want to clear my mind. To get to the bridge, think intensely about him, conjure him, and then.

Another thought strikes me. Should I post the cards? Or leave them somewhere? And where could I leave them? Not on the bridge. They might be blown into the water, smudged and drowned in the mud and the silt. How can I be certain that the cards will reach them?

Post. It's the only way. But they might get them too late. I passionately want to explain myself first. Before they know anything else. I haven't managed this well either. Suddenly I feel very tired. Too tired to deal with this. I close my eyes again.

Come to me now. Let me hear your voice now.
'I'm sorry I've been such a stroppy old bugger.'
Those blue eyes, set in a network of laughter lines meet me fair and square and look down the years with me.
'Well, if you've been a stroppy old bugger, I've been an awkward old cow.'
He grins and says, 'Yep.'
I smile across the candles into his eyes.
'Lucky you.'
He ducks his head and makes a counter bid, 'Lucky us.'

I reach my hand to take his and touch something alien. My eyes flicker open in alarm. The woman opposite is watching me and the fat man shifts his bulk. There's a battered postcard on the table in front of me. I look up past the woman's stare. A little man, quick as a lizard's tongue darts from seat to seat, table to table, leaving a card front of each passenger. He's wearing a stained anorak, two sizes too big for him. It says poverty.

The fat man next to me grunts his disapproval, and sweeps his card on the floor without a glance. I pick mine up. It's dog-eared and greasy like outworn money. It shows the image of Mary or some other Catholic saint, with a fan of gold circling the head and the downcast eyes. It's beautifully drawn but the colours are tired. You can tell that they used to be simple and strong. The image makes me feel sad. I can see how confidence has seeped away.

I watch the dark little man work the rest of the carriage, leaving his cards. He moves at speed down the aisle with the wariness of a wild creature. He has a young-old face, grained and grubby, narrow and expressionless. Defeated.

I remember a day Peter came in with just that look on his face. I look up from rolling out the pastry and see the sag in his shoulders. There's a little lurch of alarm in the pit of my stomach.
'What is it?' I ask.
'Oh…nothing…'
'You can't kid me.' I take both his hands in my floury ones. 'Tell me.'
He shrugs and tries to sound nonchalant. 'I overheard something, that's all.''What?'
'They've appointed this new guy, Colin, to lead the group…'
'Yeah, but you told them you don't want management, you want to go on as an engineer…'
'Yeah, and I do…only…'
'What?'
'I heard my line-manager on the phone and he said, 'If the old sod doesn't like it, just get rid of him.'' Peter gives me a grey look, and adds, 'He was talking about me.'
'Are you sure?'
'Yes…am I really such an old sod?'
'You're a glorious old sod, and don't you dare change.'

The blue eyes smile at me and I see again the young man in the ageing face. The man who held me in his arms on the Ponte Vecchio and turned the world to gold. Suddenly, I'm blinded by swift tears and I wipe them away with the back of my hand and a mental shake.

To distract myself I turn over the grimy postcard and look at the back. There's a message in Italian and then in English. It's an apology, 'Excuse me for taking a minute of your time.' It's also an explanation: ' I am from poor family.' And an accusation: 'You think we are robber but we are good people, just poor.'

But it's the final sentence that speaks to me. 'If you can't or won't give, remember you have met a man who lives, loves and dreams like any other.'

I sit and stare at that passionate, naked line for a long heart-beaten moment. I find myself wondering who he is and how he came to have this card. Did he barter for it, or did he write it himself? I have a strong image of this girl. She is dark-haired and beautiful. She believes in him. Her name is Annalise.

Together they lay their plans. They must leave their homeland where thing are hard and make a life for themselves elsewhere. He will go first. To one of the wealthy countries, France or Germany or Italy and he will work hard and make money, and when he has enough he will send for her.

But supposing he is not accepted or understood? He does not speak the language. Annalise has a sparkling idea. She will speak to the priest. He will translate their words and the boy can present this token to strangers he meets. People will understand. And everything will be alright.

Everything will be alright. Those words are a litany of love. How often have we said those words to each other? When we hurt each other. When the children got hurt. The dreadful time when Harry got hit by a car when he was ten.

Peter comes rushing to the hospital, his hair askew.
'Where is he? What's happening?'
I shake my head helplessly, but I won't let myself cry.
'He's in theatre. They won't tell me anything. Peter, it will be alright, won't it?'

He folds me in his arms, and nods wordlessly against my hair. It's hours later when the surgeon comes out in his hospital scrubs. He gives us a drained, grey smile, and says, 'He's going to be fine.' Peter hugs me and I see tears on the face of my strong man. 'It's alright, it's alright,' I whisper.

But now nothing is alright. Peter's gone and nothing can bring him back. The consultant was very kind. And grave. 'Make the most of the time you have left,' he advised.

We planned to go back to Florence, of course, but it was over before we could book the tickets. I shake my head and try to shake the pain away.

'Awful, isn't it?' sniffs the woman opposite. 'These beggars are a pest.' I look up at her words, and see that the little man has returned to collect his cards. He keeps glancing furtively over his shoulder and he seems driven by urgency, looking up and down the train as he stops at each table. I think he is afraid the ticket collector will catch him.

He does not meet my eye as I scramble for a fistful of coins and notes and hand them to him. He gives me a curt nod, his face shattered. He clicks his fingers impatiently at the woman, almost beckoning the coins out of her purse. Meekly she gives him some money. Without a backward glance, he leaves the carriage.

This was not what they planned, him and Annalise. He was going to send for her, but now it's years since he's spoken her name aloud. Maybe she still dreams of him. Maybe she has married someone else. He does not know. He cannot think about her any more. He must focus on survival and not think about what might have been, about what he has lost.

And he is a man who has lost everything. He does not belong with the rest of us any more. He leads a lonely, isolated existence between the trains, immune from human contact. Life has stripped him bare.

And then I know why he does not look anyone in the face. For him, eye contact is a luxury, a gift he does not give, some part of himself that he withholds. It is the last expression of humanity that he has deep within himself. He guards it like a miser. But it is we who are mean, stingy with our money and with our humanity.

I see that I have been rich. My life spilling with gold. And I see that I am still rich. I recognise that the little man has given me this gift. I wish I could tell him.

The train pulls in, and there's that sense of shock that you have when you come to the end of a journey. The fat man lumbers ponderously down the platform and the woman strides ahead of us all with rapid heel tapping assurance. There's no sign of the little man. I go to the kiosk and buy two cards. They are both pictures of the river streaming with gold in the rich sunset.

I write a message to each of the boys and post the cards. First class. I turn away and wander the narrow streets until I reach the Ponte Vecchio. It's crowded with shops and dense with people but I feel alone, immune from human contact.

I stand on the bridge, in our place. I find out little padlock and finger the engraving on it, his initials and mine. I watch the swallos swooping and diving low over the rippled waters of the Arno. I hear his voice once more, 'Watch.'

And the sun touches the horizon and the light turns everything to gold and copper and rose. This is the moment. I reach out my hand to the parapet and feel the warmth of the stone. I miss the living warmth of Peter's arm at my back, but knowing it was there is enough.

I watch until the light and colours begin to fade. Then I turn away. I have to buy a ticket home.


Read the other finalists' entries in our 2007 short story competition

See a full index of Lifestyle or discuss similar topics on our forum