How many years is it now? More than ten. It was another time. Things were completely different then. There's a kind of brain injury you can get when you fail to recognise people. People you know. People you should know. I don't think anyone could recognise us - not me, not you. I don't think we could recognise each other, and I think that's what held us apart, our faces worn away. You were no one at all, and I, likewise, was no one.
Ten years ago, more. I was ill, you were unemployed. Or was it the other way round? Was I unemployed? Were you ill? Ill, unemployed, we'd fallen from the world. Both of us, fallen. I don't think we liked to see it in each other. I think we wanted to see anything but that. Anyway, you had your excuse - or was it me? - your illness. And I had mine - was it mine? - unemployment.
You said my trouble was that I was ill. And I said you were ill because you were unemployed, you had nothing to do. Didn't you have your business? The recording studio - what had happened to that? You'd placed it in the hands of your business partner, you told me. He was willing to take sole charge. He sent you cheques, you trusted him. He was half in love with you, you said. He'd do anything for you.
And now you had all the time in the world. Time for - what? Going to cafes in the late afternoon. Into the cafes, a pot of tea to last you all afternoon. Take a bit of sun. Sit out in the sun. Or in, in from the rain and the cold. The seasons turned. You were always there, talking to this person or that. And I was always there, wasn't I? I wanted somewhere to go, somewhere away from the house and its distractions. The cafe, for the afternoon, when you were there, talking with the others. A pot of tea - that, for the whole afternoon. I'd make it last, until the switchover of the waitresses. They'd forget to charge me. The new shift would think I'd already paid. The old shift thought I'd pay the waitresses of the new shift ... And you, why were you there? What did you want, drinking tea, taking the sun or sheltering from the rain?
One day you saw me, or I saw you. One day you - or was it me - emerged from the small crowd who gathered there. Who introduced us? Who told one of us about the other? There we were, talking. There, and as though we'd always known one another. You were ill, you told me. I was unemployed, I said. And I thought you were ill because you'd given everything up, because you were resolved to do nothing with your life.
You'd done too much, you said, you'd been too busy. A job in the South, near Brighton, and then one in the North, nearer home, and then the recording company you set up with your dad's money. You wanted some time out, you said. You wanted to think about things. What were you going to do with your life? What did you want to do?
I said I thought that running your own business was enough. Who wouldn't want to run their own business, setting their own hours? You'd overseen the recording of a famous TV programme, hadn't you? You produced the session? That's what you told me. And you'd begun recording your own album, hadn't you? You'd cut a few songs. You had some more songs written, or you'd write some more, that's what you told me, wasn't it? But you weren't in a hurry, you told me. You wanted some time out, and besides the business could run itself. Your business partner could run it, you said, I think that's what you said, one afternoon or another.
I was unemployed - I'm sure of that. You were ill, you told me, and you said you saw some of that illness in me. I said I was just unemployed, that was all, and that illness followed from unemployment, unless you're careful. You told me you felt tired all the time, that you couldn't do anything, and I said I thought that was because you were doing nothing, because you weren't busy enough. You have to have a plan, I said, to get through the day. You have to be careful of having too much time. But you said I was ill and you could see it, and we had a similar illness, if not exactly the same one. We were both ill, you said. You could see it in me, and I knew I could recognise it in you, my ailment, you said. Was I ill? I wondered.
The days were all exactly the same. The afternoons. Every day was the same; every day, in the morning, the cafe, then I walked, then, later in the afternoon, again the cafe, where you were. I'd see you there, talking to this person or that person, as I'd seen you for some time. There was a security guard who liked to talk to you, I remember that. He had epaulettes. I thought it was some fancy fashion thing, that he was some kind of fashion victim, but it seems he really was a security guard whose shift had finished, and that was where he ended up, like us, in the cafe.
Soon, others could see it, there was something between us. We'd become accomplices. We shared something. Even the security guard could see it. He liked you, that was for certain. He liked to sit next to you. He called you by your full name which no one ever used. Your full name ... it sounded too intimate. As though you shared a secret. But, in truth, it was we who shared the secret, you and I. I knew your secret name, you knew mine. I knew how to undo your name, and you mine.
We were ill, unemployed. And we were the most ill, the most unemployed, wasn't that it? Things were hopeless for us, wasn't that it? We'd been beached and stranded in life, wasn't that it, by the shore, on the coastal sands?
How many years is it now? Ten? More than ten? More than ten years ... set adrift in my life. A part of my life adrift in my life. A kind of floater in the eye. What happened then? What happened back then? Something is buried there, back then. Something important, important for me to know. A kind of secret. Something I knew then I do not know now. Something I knew ... or that knew me. A kind of secret I was locked in, that kept me, rather than the other way round. I lived in a kind of secret, as between parentheses. A life in brackets, enclosed, that had become exceptional ... in that there was nothing exceptional about it. In that it was the most ordinary life of all.
And I think you, too, knew the secret. That it was wrapped around you, too, that it drew us together back then, and now in my memory. We shared something that you called illness and I unemployment. We shared it and it held us together and apart from one another, kept each in orbit around the other like double stars.
You received sickness benefit, I remember that. The cheques came from your business partner, but you were also on benefits, as I was. I lived on my unemployment cheques, and you on the sick.
I should try and get on the sick, you told me. You'd get more money on the sick, that's what you said. You wouldn't have to go in so often, you said, because I'd told you how I disliked going in, how I disliked the dole office. The queues! The long queues! And the despair! Such unhappiness there. Such unhappiness in me when I was there, when usually I was content, or at least half content, numbed. And having to explain what I'd been doing for the past two weeks - no work, of course, nothing earned, and what I would be doing, what kind of work I was looking for.
How I disliked it!, I explained to you. You should go on the sick, you told me. I wouldn't have to go in except for once every three months. That's what you did, you told me - you went into the benefits office every three months with a doctor's note. Your doctor was very sympathetic, you told me. I could register with her, you told me. She'd be sympathetic with me, too. She'd send me to the counsellor, who had an office in the cellar.
You had a friend, you said, who had the same doctor, who'd got sheltered accommodation. She was ill, really ill, you said, but she'd got a flat, quite a big one, and lived there on her own. That's what I could get, if I wanted one, you said. I could register with the doctor, get a sick note (you'd have to see a counsellor, you said), and then get sheltered accommodation, a flat, you said. You'd help me.
What happened next? Then what happened? I remember ... but what do I remember? I feel confused. I feel I've lost something. Part of my life has broken away. Part of me. But it's important, I tell myself. I need it. I need to understand what happened.
Ill and unemployed. Unemployed and ill. Did I get myself a flat? And you, what happened to you?
Fallen. We were both fallen, but in the end you fell farther, I remember that. I rose again. But you - you kept falling, I remember that. You thought illness was a kind of ruse, didn't you? That you could gain a few months by it, a few years, living on your benefits and the cheques of your business partner? You thought you could take some time out with impunity, that you could see out the 90s and the new millennium as though at the end of everything, at the mouth of all rivers, didn't you? But you fell a little further, didn't you? The illness hollowed you out too far. You fell too far, didn't you? The illness fell inside you and hollowed you away.
You disappeared. I saw nothing of you; and when I asked, no one had any news. Did I ring you? I must have received no answer. But then I've never liked phones, I still don't. Disembodied voices. Voices in the air. Did I call on you? Did I kock on your door? But you lived a long way away, two bus rides, and I've never liked to travel, I still don't. Until - when? when was it? I heard you'd been sectioned, that you were in the mental hospital. How had you wound up there? Sectioned - and in the mental hospital, that's what I was told.
I shuddered that morning in the winter sun when I heard. Shuddered. I was on my way up. Somehow - an upward eddy - I was on my way up, rising in the winter sun. I wasn't ill, not any more, and I wasn't unemployed. I don't think I'd recognise you, if I saw you again. I don't think I'd know your name.