Looking Back...

18/10/08

They left Siem Reap together in a shared taxi. The man who was sharing the taxi sat in the front, he was an army man. A home made tattoo of Angkor Wat was etched onto the back of his hand. He didn’t speak much but he explained that he was going to Phnom Penh on official business, something to do with the trouble on the Thai / Cambodian border.

On their first night in Phnom Penh they argued over something that had been bubbling for a while; an emotional undercurrent that neither had chosen to face up to. She left the next morning; back to Sihanoukville. No problem, Tony the Aussie was also back in town. The next seven nights were spent drinking heavily and trawling bars. The days were spent with hangovers, listlessness, coca cola cravings, sporadic coughing and frustrating language barrier problem conversations with her on the phone.

The date of his return ticket was looming large. What to do? What to do? What would it mean if he went home? What would it mean if he stayed? Tony had gone back to work in Ratanakiri, she was down south of the country. He was alone and had time to think, to reflect. Happy hour began at 4.30pm in the Herb Garden, just up the road from the guesthouse. At five o‘clock he ordered a beer and sat staring at life as it passed him on the street.

As the alcohol kicked in, he thought back on his life. A multitude of memory snapshots presented themselves to his inner eye. He remembered his father’s parents. He remembered their house. The ashtray with the porcelain goldfish on it, or was it meant to be a salmon? The ashtray, usually but not always, sat on the windowsill of the window that looked out on the stunted apple tree standing in the back garden. The tree was beside a garden shed that had a lot of potential but failed to live up to it. It was always dark and musty, full of junk and a large tool box that lay on its side disgorging its rusted contents. It was as if the building had originally been built with grand designs but was never actually finished properly. ‘There’s a message in that’, he thought. He remembered the upright piano in one of the rooms. His father taught him how to play ‘Doe a deer’. As a child he would call down to see his grandparents with his father. He remembered the summers as his father would cut the grass and he would potter around the garden. Time was spent packing the cut grass away, climbing the apple tree but mainly sitting at the piano practicing ‘Doe a deer’. When he got older he used to call down and cut the grass himself. After the job was done and as his grandmother prepared him a meal he would sit at the piano and work out how chords were constructed.

As he moved from drinking beer to sipping on gin and tonics he thought of his mother’s parents. He remembered being so relaxed and at ease in that house. Even recalling the sour smell of stale cigarette smoke emanating from his grandfather’s bedroom brought a smile to his face. His grandfather made model buildings from matchsticks and lollipop sticks. An old plastic washing up liquid bottle could be covered with glue, then sand and seashells, covered with clear varnish to seal the pattern into place and suddenly manifest itself as the base of a reading lamp. It occurred to him that sometimes people could make a change in their life, for the better, but then decide that is the peak of their existence. They coat it in clear varnish and expect it to stay the same way for evermore.

He thought of friends as he fell out of the bar at 2.30am. He sent text messages to them, telling them he loved them. They replied in their own special ways. He got to thinking of the woman he had previously spent six years of his life with. He wondered how she was doing. At that moment he wished only the best for her and felt compelled to send her a text message. Her number wasn’t on his phone but he still knew it off by heart.

‘Hi Y, it’s over a year now. I am living in Cambodia. I still think of you and hope all is well with you x’.

‘U went far’, she replied immediately. ‘I am doing great. I am very happy and getting on with my life, as you are. Much stronger person now, thank God’.

He smiled as he read the text. Life is short and we should see it as an honour to meet the people in life that we do. Feeling that something had shifted in his heart he retired to bed and listened to Jeff Buckley on his iPod. Jeff caught the mood just right.

‘Remember when I moved in you
And the holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was hallelujah............ hallelujah, hallelujah.

The next morning he had his Cambodian visa extended by three months.