Runaway

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He wakes in a cold sweat from a dream pervaded by darkness and blood. And after a lifetime of being someone else in another land, he wonders who he is now. This man who, he knows, is fading all too soon. A life squandered for a love lost. A life that seems to have passed in the blink of an eye.

The three weeks since he has returned to these shores have somehow felt the longest of that life. Strange how pain and fear stretch time beyond limits undreamed, while the search for happiness is over almost before it begins. And from some long-forgotten past, lost in chalk dust and warm milk, comes a recollection of relativity. Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.

He came by boat. A ferry crossing from Calais. Symbolic of that day so long ago when he had steered his boat through a spring haar to a foreign shore. There had been a moment at passport control. His heart almost stopping as the immigration officer opened his passport. But he had given it the most cursory of glances. Because, of course, no one was looking for him any more. Not after all these years. An old man, pale and perspiring, he had been waved through without a second look. That’s who he is. A stranger here now.

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