An Hour in the Night

I don’t know if it’s medically or statistically true that more people die at three in the morning than at any other time. But it’s probably the time when a great many people wonder if there’s that much to be said for being alive.

     Is that a comfort of sorts, that I’m not unique? Not really. 

     Oh, I’m not suicidal. Not in the sense of actually doing something about it. That piquant little Dorothy Parker verse about You might as well live is walking a weary treadmill in my mind. Anyway, knowing me, whichever method I chose, I’d manage to mess it up.

     But this is all cant. Can’t and cant. Melodramatic. Histrionic. Someone I wasn’t that fond of when I was a kid used to be very fond of that word. Oddly enough, though I have a good memory, I can’t even pinpoint who it was, just that I hated the word and still do.

     To look at me in the small hours glare of the light that’s too strong (but I only had a 100 watt bulb at the time and can’t be bothered changing it until I have to) nobody would think I were melodramatic or histrionic. 

     It’s more of a leaden flatness. A damp mouldy blanket with weight but no warmth.

     I know I looked forward to the next day once.

     At least sometimes. And it used to, generally speaking, be at least okay, hold no terrors if it held no especial joys.

     Terrors. Another one of those histrionic words. I tell myself – I ask myself – am I in a warzone? No. Am I awaiting the result of some tests for a grave illness either myself or someone I love might be suffering from? No. Am I living with a violent partner, or being blackmailed? No. 

     No, no, and every time no. 

     But this is the time of day when the alternate universe, the might have been and could have been torments the most. When the chain of wrong steps manacles me. 

     I am genuinely trying to think of the last time I made a right decision. Oh, I don’t mean the things like taking advantage of the special offer on coffee, or putting on my raincoat even though it didn’t look like rain. Though some to think of it, even when it comes to trivial matters I seem to have a knack for making the wrong decision!

     I decided against staying on at university to do postgraduate work when I could have done. I know I could have got round to it later, but somehow I just didn’t. I tell myself I don’t envy my friend Tilly who’s ended up as a senior lecturer, but the truth is, I do, no matter how much she says, “Oh, believe me, Clare, the groves of Academe aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.”

     It’s not a hard and fast rule, but if people say believe me then I’m inclined not to. Nor was I deluded that she used the phrase Groves of Academe ironically. 

     Still, there were other doors that opened to me before I slammed them shut. 

     I have come to sit by the window. Not because I think for one second that looking out at the starry sky will give me any kind of perspectives or hope. It doesn’t work like that. But it’s more comfortable to write sitting on the little armchair half-turned to the window.

     It’s 3.30 now. Which does not, of course, feel any better than 3, nor change anything.

     I used to think that folk were a bit unkind and dismissive to say I “landed” the job at the bookshop. But it’s true. Apart from a couple of Saturday jobs when I was a teenager I had no retail experience, and fair enough, I was a “big reader” but so are hundreds of others. And it was a kind of miracle in itself (not that I believe in miracles) that our town still had an independent bookshop, and that it still got by.

     But I blew it. Of course I did. That’s what I do. The owner, Nick Ryan, was a nice man and didn’t blindly subscribe to the customer always being right. But I was well out of order. I don’t know what made me butt in on two women’s conversation. True, they were expressing views that I found unacceptable, but looking back, and taking off my perpetual student (who wasn’t) liberal goggles I can see that what they were saying, whilst unpleasant and too right-wing for my taste, wasn’t that awful. My tirade – and yes, I used the word fascist and a few more ill-chosen choice ones besides – left Nick with no choice. 

     He truly did seem to be speaking more in sorrow than in anger when he told me – and he did it privately, credit to him for that – “Clare, you have to know that was unacceptable. I’m not for one minute saying I agree with what they’re saying myself, but …..”

     “But you think we should just shut up and let it drift over us!” Oh I was in full flood. I know I brought out that phrase about all it needs for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. 

     Looking back I realise that if I had apologised and said it wouldn’t happen again, he’d almost certainly have given me a second chance. But I had no safety valve. I never have had a safety valve. He quietly told me that he had no choice but to let me go. I told him he could stuff his job. But the word I used wasn’t “stuff”. 

     Oh, and for what it might prove, one of the women’s daughters subsequently married an Asian guy and she was 100% fine about it. 

     I had some savings – I was about to say I’d forgotten what it was like to have savings, but it might be better if I had. I haven’t. And the trouble is I know full well that if by some miracle (except I don’t believe in miracles) I had savings again, or wasn’t skint, I doubt I’d use them sensibly. I would spend nights in hotels when I had no real reason to, and buy clothes two sizes too small though I knew I’d never lose the weight. 

     Though the starry heavens mean nothing to me, nothing of any significance, a thought has still come into my mind about Leonard. He was a mad keen astronomer, had a telescope and everything, though he said that he had always been realistic enough to know that he couldn’t make a living out of it. 

     “Isn’t realistic just another word for boring or scared?” I asked. For a while Lenny and I were an item. God knows how he put up with me. At times I put him down for the sake of it. He was no doormat, but for some reason seemed to like me and want to make something of the relationship. But one evening he did say, “Fair enough, Clare. But perhaps you should look at yourself. You’re always saying you’d like to be a writer, and the stuff you write is good, though I’m no expert but what do you actually DO about it?” The truth, as it tends to, hurt. But I told both him and myself it wasn’t the same thing at all.

     In the end he got fed up with me, of course. And I told myself I’d have finished with him if he hadn’t done the job first. He’s married to a woman called Julie now, and they have a little girl they’ve called Astra. VERY original!

     I can’t help myself. Out comes the sarcasm. Out comes the regarding people who’ve made a better job of their lives than I have as boring and predictable.

     I’ve known for years it isn’t true.

     It’s suddenly dawned on me who was so fond of the word histrionic. It was my Uncle Norbert. I have – or had – four uncles, and three of them were lovely, but Uncle Norbert grated on my nerves with his stupid little words and his prim little mouth.

     He found out that I planned to go into business with Dawn and Dennis Marlowe. “You’ll regret it,” he said, his mouth on full purse. “Don’t know much about her, so I won’t make a comment. But he’s a chancer.”

     Another one of those words. The words that trigger defiance and contempt in me. But not liking words doesn’t mean that they’re not true. 

     Dawn and Dennis were starting off a select toiletries business – with both an online and offline presence. “It’s the new big thing,” Dawn said. “They’re all eco-friendly. All natural essences and perfumes, none of this chemical stuff!”

     I sunk what was left of my savings into the business which they called Clarion. They flattered me that it was in honour of my name. I only found out later that it was pure coincidence, and that had been the name they’d planned all along. The good were certainly prettily packaged, though I suspect some of the images were probably copyrighted! The little added extra was that I added a little poem to each of the products. I had a flair for it. So they told me. Oh, I could churn them out, “Put on Clarion’s soothing gel, all will be sweet, all will be well” or “Orchid essence, rose combine, to make a fragrance like fine wine”

     And they were probably among the better ones. So who says I can’t earn my living as a writer, eh, Lenny? I thought. 

     I don’t think that now. 

     It was quite a scandal at the time. Someone had developed an allergic reaction – a nasty one, though mercifully curable – and rumours began to circulate about the actual ingredients of Clarion’s products. Trading standards were called in.

     I still remember that day – of course I do. The day when it turned out that their secret organic formulae included such things as washing up liquid and cough medicine, and they were among the more palatable ones.

     Unlike Dawn and Dennis I escaped actual prosecution though some folk thought I didn’t deserve it. 

     So here I am. Without a job, having thrown away chance upon chance upon chance.

     It’s 3.45 now. It won’t be too long before the dawn starts to break. In fact, it almost looks as if it’s breaking now, though it can’t be – but the sky is lightening.

     And I know what it is. I know perfectly well what it is. Some of what Lenny told me has stuck. It is happening. The thing that they knew could happen any time – or not for another 1,000 years, probably somewhere in between.

     It isn’t somewhere in between. It’s happening now. In the constellation of Orion. Even I can recognise that one. In Orion’s belt, Betelgeuse is going supernova. It is exploding with light far brighter than the full moon that’s also in the sky, and looking like a night-time sun. And it is somehow frightening, though I know I have nothing to be frightened of, it is billions of miles too far away to harm anyone on earth, it is just treating us to a glorious firework display that will blaze in the heavens for months. And it is beautiful. It is so beautiful.

     And I have been one of the first to see it. I don’t kid myself that I’m the very first to see it, or the only one to see it, but I have seen it long before others will, and have seen it on a clear dark night. In optimum conditions. I have seen something that, if people could live to be thousands of years old, there would be no guarantee they might see. I have seen something that is carved into the sacred stones of South American sights and that some people believe was the star that led the Three Kings to the Baby Jesus. 

     I begrudge nobody their beliefs if I don’t necessarily share them. But it is also sufficient unto itself, and I have seen it, and I have been one of the first to see it, and something stirs in me that is not exactly hope, and not exactly perspective, and not exactly serenity, but is nearer to any of those than I can remember feeling for such a very, very long time.

     I hope Lenny is one of the first, too. I hope he and Julie stir Astra from her slumbers to see something she will never forget her whole life long.

     I will not forget it, either.

     It is 4 o’clock.