(I’m talking to you! Yes, you! You’re peering at me over the
top of the screen on my laptop. Your head is just above the webcam and your
fingers are either side, just like Chad or Kilroy. I wonder what you are like.
I’ll never know.)
"Peter"
If you go to the same place, at the
same times, repeatedly you start to notice people. It was true when I commuted
through Waterloo railway station in London twice every day and it is true now. Faces
seemed to stand out from the crowd. Staff or passengers lost their anonymity
and I began to recognise them and look for them. Sometimes they faded back into
the background but sometimes they remained, pricking the curiosity. I would wonder:
what are they like? What do they do? What are they called? Then I wouldn’t
notice them anymore and ask myself if something had happened.
If these moments of recognition
occur among the thousands streaming through Waterloo each day, imagine how much
more likely they are in a small country town in rural Ireland.
Peter, let’s call him that, because
it is so much kinder to give him a name, even if it is not the one he would
recognise, was such a face which stood out from the crowd. I started to notice
him around the town. Mostly I would see him in the morning, but sometimes in
the evening too.
I don’t remember the first time I
noticed Peter, but I am sure that the first thing I registered was the coat. Most
men don’t wear coats these days, but Peter does. He wears a shabby, charcoal
grey, knee-length overcoat, come rain or come shine. After the coat, the next
thing I noticed would have been the elbow crutches which he uses to steady
himself. The crutches are explained by the orthopaedic slipper he sometimes wears.
His face is weather beaten and florid, beneath a tousled mop of dark greying
hair.
Peter isn’t a man whose company I
would seek out. In fact, I would probably avoid him, because the final part of Peter’s
ensemble is the beer can. Almost every time I see him he has an open beer can
in his hand. I feel that he is a man who needs, rather than enjoys his drink. I
have seen him engaged in earnest negotiations with a local publican at 10 in
the morning and I have seen him in the evening, leaning against the door jamb watching
the traffic climbing the bridge on the road out of town. He was sipping from
his can with others sitting on the window sill beside him. I imagine him as a
cat, lying in a place it finds comfortable. But this is not a relaxed cat fast
asleep with its legs in the air, or a sly, alert cat observing through slits but a
sick cat (disinterestedly) watching the world passing with faded, watery eyes.
Then he was gone. Since starting to
write this I have realised that I haven’t noticed Peter for several days, possibly
even weeks. The cat is no longer lying there watching the world go by. Peter is
no longer in his usual spots as I pass. Another face has differentiated itself
from the multitude for a moment and then disappeared again. Perhaps he has
changed his habits, perhaps I have, or perhaps something really has happened
and he is gone for good.
