On meeting Pam again - prose version

(I submitted my poem ‘On meeting Pam again after 30 years’ to an online poetry competition run by Poetic Republic and it failed to reach the final (sob). Talking with my piano teacher Rebecca last night firmed up a feeling I had that it might work, further developed, as prose. So here goes.)

It was a strange day, I felt awful in both senses of the word and I don’t why I went into work. That was not a good decision. We – me, Naomi, Valerie and James had our usual Tuesday lunchtime meeting that day and we went to the nearby Art Gallery where they do half decent vegan food that suits Naomi.

Since I was drugged up on antibiotics and feeling not quite on this planet – actually quite a usual feeling for me but this was much worse – James readily agreed to get me a soup and a roll on condition that I carefully guarded the only empty table left in the café. This table was in an alcove near to the door and not visible to most of the rest of the café.

I spread our coats over 4 of the years and slumped in the fifth seat. I was in a kind of pleasant enough daydream humming along to an OMD song in my head – I think it was ‘Joan of Arc’ – when a voice said “Is it Clive?’. No no-one calls me Clive these days I make damn sure of that. I looked up with a frown at being interrupted. I saw a middle aged woman with cropped grey haired who had a somewhat familiar face.

Whilst my brain struggled to bring this half recognised figure into focus she said, "It's Pam"
"Of course, I replied, stunned. It was like I time travelling back and forth
over a 30 years period. Pam in my mind’s eyes was a beautiful blond haired young woman. We had been close then and she had such a spirit in those days but this stranger/old friend in front of me looked defeated by life and was older and greyer. I wondered how I looked to her. I was greyer and less hairy. Did I look defeated? I daren’t ask though I know the truth or at least my version of it.

Had she time travelled on seeing me? If so she had the advantage on me as she had chosen when to make contact. We had one of those really weird conversations that occur between old friends who haven’t met up again in years. You know you talk about mutual friends you have lost contact with and what you are doing now and you share a few old memories. So I talked to her about Mole and Woody who had both died recently. She had been close to both of them and had taught Woody his first few guitar chords and arranged his band’s first few gigs long before he became famous, but that is another story.

Then things went a bit strange. No she had not heard of their deaths, mind you she never was a big reader of newspapers but “The thing is I’ve been in psychie hospital”
“Oh fuck”
“Fuck yes”
“Oh Pam” I said and I reached out and touched her hand. She flinched away at first from this physical contact but then she relaxed.
“Look it’s ok,” she said, “I don’t want you to worry”
(Oh Fuck she’s even taking care of me – do I need that? Am I that vulnerable? Am I? Or what?)

Things then got even stranger. “I’m here with my Occupational Therapist – the hospital just over the road. Please don’t let on you know me” I nodded - what was this? Was she paranoid or was this her looking after herself? How mad is that psychiatric ward she is on? “I must go” she said and disappeared.

Jesus! I felt stunned with traces of memories, of pictures of her and of me and a sense of the passing of time and my own flourishing in many ways. But was she flourishing? No, it seemed to me to be a case of mere survival by her finger tips. I hope she reaches a safer point.

How can we pass into and out of each other’s lives? You just do that when you are young. It strikes me we are wasteful of each other without little thoughts for the future but that’s how it was then and probably still is today. Pam is timeless in my mind as the young woman she was but also now as this older woman.

Isn’t life strange.