Sunday Morning
by Andrew Lee-Hart

 

 

“Sunday morning and I'm falling/ I've got a feeling I don't want to know”/ Early dawning, Sunday morning/ It's all the streets you crossed not so long ago.”

(“Sunday Morning” by the Velvet Underground)

 

 

There was silence, a silence so absolute that I could not even hear the sound of my heart beating, whilst my mouth tasted of nothing, and my limbs were weary but without any pain.

 

I was alone in bed, but Julie must have only just got up, because the bed felt warm where she had been sleeping, and the duvet had been pushed aside. For some reason I was desperate to see her, as if I had not been with her for weeks or even years, so I pulled myself out of bed to try to find her.

 

To my surprise the bedroom window was open, but I could feel no breeze, nor could I hear anything outside, except when I concentrated hard and there was the faintest sound of birds talking amongst themselves, but it was as if they were miles away, or the volume had been turned right down. I realised that it must be Sunday morning hence the quiet, but everything still felt strange, hopefully once I was up and had had something to eat all would be back to normal.

 

 

I did not feel like showering, nor did I need the toilet, so I sprayed myself with deodorant (although I didn’t think I needed it) and put on my clothes. I thought that Julie would be downstairs making breakfast or reading the Observer, but the kitchen and dining room were empty, and when I called her name out loud, there was no response, my voice feeble against the peace of a Sunday morning. Perhaps she had gone to the shop, or to visit her sister; I was struggling to remember things more and more, so most likely she had told me and I had forgotten.

 

My morning coffee is my favourite drink of the day; but today it tasted weak and barely warm, despite my having just boiled the kettle. After a few sips I tipped it down the sink, but could not be bothered to make another one. I grabbed an apple and decided to go out for a walk. I was clearly half asleep and confused, so a walk would wake me up and clarify things. 

 

I took a bite out of the apple as I walked towards the town centre, but it was tasteless so I tossed it into a neighbour’s garden and carried on walking. There were no cars and I did not see anybody out and about, as I made my way down our avenue and towards the town centre. Every so often I would hear the faintest of sounds; a car revving, a dog barking, like a memory that I couldn’t get hold of. The Velvet Underground song “Sunday Morning” sung by Nico came into my head, and I started to sing it but the words began to escape me and then the tune.

 

The walk seemed to go on forever, and then above my head I could hear something; at first I thought it was angels, checking all is well below, but then I looked up and there were helicopters, six of them in rows of two, riding slowly across the sky. I pictured inside the cockpit, men with helmets that hid their faces, and with guns close by; searching for someone…. I wondered if they had always been there, part of the world but hidden from view.

 

As I continued to walk, they flew over my head and away into the distance, but even when I could not see them anymore, I could hear them faintly. It was the only sound in this strange Sunday morning. Perhaps they had taken Julie; it seemed unlikely, but so many people seemed to have disappeared from my life; my parents, my brother and friends and colleagues. Some malign force was out there, picking people up at random and taking them to God knows where.

 

And then I reached Victoria Park; there was an ice cream van by the gates, but when I went over; it was empty. After waiting a few minutes I found a bench and sat down, I didn’t really fancy an ice cream, but it would have been good to have somebody to talk to. The sky was grey, almost colourless, and there was no sun that I could see but it was warm and I lay back on the seat.  In the distance I could see some children running and every so often the sound of their shouting drifted over, but eventually they disappeared, and I was glad.

 

I wished that I had brought a book with me to read; for most of my life I had at least one book on the go but of late I had stopped reading much; I found it tiring and pointless; perhaps it was my eyes; maybe I should have bought a Kindle so that I could enlarge the writing. It would have been good to have a detective novel to read as I sat in the park. But there was nothing and I was not bored, I just sat and stared out, my thoughts like passing clouds.

 

 With a start I realised that it was getting foggy; I could barely see the tennis courts at the far end of the park, and the houses behind them had completely disappeared. And then I felt the bench move slightly and an elderly man sat down beside me.

“I thought that I was the only one here” he told me.

“Yes, likewise. It is very quiet. Sunday morning I suppose and the weather is a bit grey.”

“When I was a boy I would have been in church.  My parents were Latter Day Saints, Mormons, well the whole family were. Three hours every Sunday and then more meetings during the week.”

 

“You’re not a member now?”

“No, I left a long time ago. I drifted; both spiritually and geographically and now my parents are long dead and my brother and sister. It is odd there is nobody left who I can share memories of my past with; what it was like growing up in a Mormon family in the 1950s. All of what we did; our everyday life, has disappeared with nobody to remember. At least if you were a Mormon well you were significant, part of something larger, but one day that religion too will go or change beyond recognition, like all these small chapels which used to be thriving but are now cinemas or shops.”

 

“You sound lonely,” I ventured.

“Well in the end aren’t we are all alone? Just you and your God.” He sat staring out into the blankness, and I wished that I could help him, make him feel as if his life was important and would last beyond him, but I had no idea what to say.  And then he got up with a sigh and headed away without saying goodbye. It was becoming even foggier now and he soon disappeared from view, as colours were bleached from the park, and everything became a dull and lifeless grey.

 

As I sat there, I pondered over what the stranger had said; the disappearance of our lives and history. Perhaps I should have written down my memories, because after all what was left? Just some photographs which no doubt would disappear once I had died, put in the recycling bin or hidden away in the loft to be discovered by the new owner of my house many years later; who giggled at mysterious strangers in old style hats and coats.

 

I wanted to get up, find my wife, talk to my brother for the last time but I did not know where they were. My brother Saul, I remembered him as a child, romping through the woods where we used to live in Shropshire but what had happened to him as an adult? And then even my memories of him as a child faded and he was nothing.

 

The fog was around me now and I felt numb and intensely lonely, and then as the fog washed over me, I closed my eyes and let it take me. 

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