Back Up

Back Up      

‘Caution vehicle reversing’  the voice, repetitive, robotic. As the removal van backed into the drive I felt this is an end beginning.

When you left all that remained was possessions. Usual, books, vinyl I should have decimated long ago before the space was empty.

As the vehicle came to a halt I thought of those film scenes when a priest  asks a couple if there is any impediment to the marriage and someone actually says something. The past stops the future. The driver looked first at the boxes then at me, then back to the boxes. Things no words. You will have to go through with it now. I can see removal people are like doctors or other interstitials – they work on an amalgam of what you tell them and what they see.

My definition of decimation was literal, my estimation. The driver, who had introduced himself as Mervyn and his partner Tariq  - ‘ Life is Moving’  it said on the side of their van – looked at the boxes again, then at Tariq. I almost apologised.

After sugar and tea things moved quickly. I admired their system of loading. The Bӧsendorfer and the Conran were stacked in the storage compartment.  It was time for the personal stuff.

‘Let me secure that’, said Mervyn. Before he sealed the last box he sighted a stranded  LP. Appassionata sonata, the Barenboim, ‘ I always preferred the Brendel  myself’, he said, ‘nothing personal.’

I hadn’t been as ruthless as I believed, the van which at first sight  seemed cavernous was full. Tariq looked at the last container, then me.  He said ‘ see you in another life.’  When we shook  hands  he  planted  a small box in my palm.

I’d chosen Antibes because of the story I had read of how Graham Greene would go to the Café Felix there every lunchtime after he has written 500 words.

Plus it was less freighted than Nice, where we had strolled on the prom still listening to each other above the waves of  landing  jets.

When I saw their van again outside my new studio they were like old friends. They looked at the studio. We could more easily move into the van.

The boxes that couldn’t fit in they stacked on the balcony. ‘It won’t rain tonight’ said Melvyn. I don’t know where he found the certainty.

The van reversed out of the service road, the robotic voice still advising caution.

The first night I worked  the boxes. When I found the Appassionata  it was the Brendel. I opened the box from Tariq, a continental electrical adaptor.

By the time I reached Chez Felix I had no words just the aperitif.