Kirkie

by martin maguire (Italy)

I didn't expect to find United Kingdom

A gun-metal grey sky is reflected in muddy puddles Peppa would die for as I pull my heavy coat tighter around me against the wind which rattles the bare trees, but the cold is still biting until the sun batters its way through the cloud cover and those couple of degrees make the difference. I’ve skipped the funeral of someone I barely knew and leave the out-of-place Italianate church to its mourners and choir and gargoyles. In the street, "She Loves You" blares from the stereo of a car waiting at the lights, 50-something years late, but here is where I first heard it, in that playground over there, on a tiny tinny transistor radio held like a treasure on Jackie’s legs. And although it was an old song even then, it blew me away, and still does, though I like to pretend I’m too cool to ever click on it. Over the road to the old house which used to be an off-pink sea-shell shade and is now solidly and respectably brown, like its owner’s brogues, maybe. But then he – or maybe it’s not him – comes out and catches me looking. Not Neighbourhood-Watch, curtain-twitching, frothing-dog hostile, but definitely curious and questioningly interrogative. Which is understandable, I suppose. I stammer, I explain: I’d gone for a walk to avoid something worse and ended up on this street, in front of this house where I spent a large part of my childhood... "OK," he seems to think, "You’re not casing the joint, but I am wondering a little about your mental stability." Instead he says, “You wanna see inside?” but I know heroic good manners when I see them, and decline, matching him politeness for politeness. “Nah, you’re all right, It’ll all be changed anyway. Have a good one,” and I smile, striving for reassuring. “You too,” and he watches me leave. I continue up the hill, noticing the gap in the skyline where the swimming pool should be: I seem to remember it went years ago, but I still feel its absence. The council houses are all now owner-occupied or bought-to-rent, already tiny gardens made tinier to accommodate two cars, satellite dishes starting to rust and waiting for streaming to win, alarm systems, children’s toys immobile in the February chill. The corner shop is still there, selling Sunday essentials, but only a lottery winner could afford to get their weekly supplies there: same as it always was. Turning my back on my grandmother’s house, I can see the Campsies now the clouds have fled west: the snow line is low, between the blinding-blue sky and the solid-green trees and vegetation. A picture for a postcard for people who don’t come here on holiday, but to visit, or reminisce, or rekindle something in hope, or refute something for ever, or to bury or be buried. It’s that kind of place: Memory Motel meets Heartbreak Hotel. I didn’t expect to find so much to remember: familial love, friendship, music; falling out, falling in love with those lips and legs, Jackie, falling from trees, always falling; the foul, industrial, sooty air which is now strangely clean; being stolen, and stealing too from little shops till a hand fell on a shoulder; altar boys and bonfires and steeples in the fog. And going back to the church, an abandoned cinema where once everyone met, contracts were drawn up, hearts broken, betrayals consumed, and lives begun; estate agents and charity shops reign on the High Street, but cafés survive as well, offering succour and caffeine and a little taste of the old country; and the pubs, obviously; the canal with its secrets and death; the library, the escape pod for those too scared to stay but brave enough to flee. And later on, at night, in winter, in the dark, magical strings of lights sparkle like a ‘60s starlet’s eyes above her cheap jewellery, winding up the hills signalling farms, hamlets, vehicles, pylons, wanderers, stables and hermits... It’s a psychological tourism, a trip into my past, and everyone else’s, and it can be as warm and welcoming as you like. Or not. Either way, you have only tears for souvenirs.