Free A Distant Shore by Caryl Phillips Page A

to his voice, and the look on his face was pained. “I did not mean to interfere.”
    During the bus journey back from the seaside I had thought of poor Solomon sitting alone in his bungalow, with only his memories for company, wondering where I’d gone to. Wanting me. The journey itself was dull and uneventful. I sat near the front and looked over the driver’s shoulder at the road ahead. I could see everything from his point of view, but there was nothing inviting about the coarse, bracken-strewn landscape that swam out flat to either side of the road and so I closed my eyes. When I opened them again the sky had already begun to turn dark, and I was being blinded by lights either flashing past us red, or barrelling towards us white. When the bus reached the town I stood up and remained hopeful that Dr. Williams might still be seeing patients, for the splitting headache that had plagued me during the previous night had returned. “Have a good evening, love,” said the driver, but I didn’t reply. I was clutching my suitcase with one hand and gripping the hand rail with the other, and trying hard to concentrate so that I didn’t fall down the three stairs.
    The half of Guinness has really done for me. I’m still tired. Not surprising though, for I didn’t sleep much last night. In fact, yesterday was difficult. First, I’d had to endure a day of sitting alone on a windswept promenade. Then the tedious bus journey, followed by yet another encounter with Dr. Williams in which he didn’t appear to want to take me seriously. Then the police. Then Carla and the stupid letter. After Carla left I maybe got a couple of hours at most before the sound of car doors slamming woke me up. And this morning I walked by the edge of the canal in the dreary autumn haze, and I thought of my friend lying face down in the water like a dead fish. It’s hard to believe that there will be no more trips to the Somalian and Mediterranean Food Hall, or conversations with him in my house, or time spent with him in his house trying to work out who exactly the strange man is in the photograph on the mantelpiece. I worry over who will look after his car, or tell his family. I don’t even know if he has any family. The poor man may as well have been living on the dark side of the moon. It was only after I’d been to the pub and had the half of Guinness, and then walked back up the hill, that it finally dawned on me. I slumped down in this chair and realised that there’s no way that I can live among these people. I don’t think they care about anybody apart from their stupid selves, and if this is true then I too may as well be living on the dark side of the moon.
    Out beyond the viaduct, and through the evening gloom, I can see that night has paused on the horizon. In a minute I’ll get up out of this chair and pull the curtains. Weston is simply not the place that I hoped I might be retiring to. I suppose I knew this yesterday when the policeman and policewoman came to tell me about Solomon as though they were enquiring about an unpaid parking ticket. And then there was poor confused Carla, who was obviously terrified of the boyfriend who’d been doing Lord only knows what with her for the past few months. I listen to the birds singing as the day finally begins to fade behind the viaduct. I turn Solomon lightly over in my mind. Maybe I should visit the small stone church and say some kind of a prayer for my friend? And then one final trip to town to put flowers on Mum and Dad’s grave? And then what? Off to some tropical place to tell Solomon’s family? And then? Back here and live with Sheila by the seaside? If I mention Sheila to Dr. Williams he only gets annoyed, so it’s perhaps best to say nothing further to him on this topic. Maybe Sheila and I can go abroad together. For the first time I want to leave England. To see Spain or Italy. England has changed.
    I decide to take Carla’s boyfriend’s letter to the pub. I have to do