Reflection
by elfin
I stare into a window and the memory of him stares back at me from over
my shoulder. I imagine his hand heavy, anchoring me with him for
better or worse. I conjure up the sound of his breathing, soft
huffs of nicotine-tainted air blown from his nose. He always
breathed through his nose, it left his mouth free to shout at the
nearest potential criminal or hurl the latest insult at some poor
unsuspecting victim - be it a coloured guy, a gay bloke, or a member of
his own team.
Taking a deep breath I recall the taste of burnt whiskey in the air and
remember the night we spent running the Trafford Arms undercover.
Or as undercover as Gene Hunt got. Actually, he was surprisingly
good at it, to give him his dues. Once he got the hang of not
beating the answers out of his customers the way he would have out of
his suspects, he was a natural. Could say I was proud to be with
him for a while that night - proud to be his DI. Could say.
I recollect the soft swell of his belly against my back and stand
completely still as the warmth from his ghost in the glass soaks
through me. His mere presence used to command his team. He
was a very physical man and each time he pushed close to me my heart
would start pounding, pulse racing, driving blood south into my
treacherous, lecherous cock. There was something undeniable about
someone so unashamedly sexual, as brutally, honestly masculine.
Men like Gene don't exist anymore, but apparently if they did I'd be
shacked up with one of them….
It's like a particularly vivid dream that stays with you after you wake
up; so vivid you can call to mind the sensations, the feelings, the
smell and taste, the colour and sound of it. Only with this dream
none of the details have faded, possibly because I won't allow them
to. I hang on to them, like treasured possessions, return to them
daily to touch, turn them over in my head, remind myself of how they
look and feel. I keep the memories fresh so that it constantly
seems as if they happened yesterday, last week, last month, no
later. I won't let anyone else near them - not Mum, not Maya (who
doesn't know I heard her dump me), not the psychiatrist or psychologist
and especially not the hypnotist my doctor recommended. They're
my memories. I can't go back, can't ever return. They're
all I've got.
And I miss them; Annie's smile, Chris' unwavering trust, Ray's uneasy
respect, Phyllis' questionable judgement, Nelson's friendship, and
Gene…. I miss Gene most of all, more than I can sometimes
cope with. More than I should a man they say never existed.
How can it all have just have been in my imagination?
They say Maya was never abducted. They say Tony Crane was
always crazy, has been in a mental hospital since the early '70s and
never married. They admit a Superintendent Harry Wolfe was the
first the fall in the corrupt cops house of cards but tell me I already
knew that. I haven't yet dared to ask if there once was a DCI
Gene Hunt working for Greater Manchester CID or if the first woman
detective there was called Cartwright. They think I've already
lost it, taking pity on me because I spent months and months in
hospital hooked up the machines with tubes and wires and not really
living at all. If I found out that the doctors are right - that
I'd made them all up - I really would go insane.
So I walk down the high street, stop at the old record shop that's a
Starbucks now to stare at the glass in the window, and over my shoulder
the ghost of Gene Hunt stares mournfully, accusingly back at me.
Sometimes I wonder if a part of me didn't come back at all, if I'm
still there in 1973, sleeping in that bloody damp depressing flat,
yelling at Gene every time he jumps from crime to confession in a
single bound, banging my head against the brick wall of Chris'
education. Joking with Annie over treacle sponge and mint custard
in the canteen, chinking Scotch glasses with Ray in the Railway Arms,
arguing with Gene over who gets the lion's share of the pathetically
narrow mattress and losing, always losing. Me and Gene. The
lawmen. Beating up the wrong guy in order to lock up the right
one.
In the glass the ghost lays a hand on my shoulder and it feels so real;
the weight of it, the pressure of it; the squeeze of the fingers and
the meaning in the touch. It forces my eyes to blur as I hear his
broken voice tell me, "No need to get all sentimental, Dorothy."
Maybe it's my tears reflected in his eyes, or maybe it's because - in
all my dreams - he's never sounded so shattered, but I reach up to
cover his hand where it lies, my heart crashes once against my ribcage
and I feel flesh and bone under my fingers. Blossoming tears
become a torrent, riding waves of soul deep sobbing I can't hope to
control, even standing there in the middle of the street surrounded by
shoppers and kids with ice creams. Warm fingers part under mine
and the pressure on my shoulder pulls me around so that I come face to
face with him to see his smile burst through his own tears like
sunshine in a storm. His arms enfold me at the same time as I
almost jump him, flinging myself around him as if it really has been
three long decades since I saw him.
#
The pub awaits us as it always did. It’s far too late for explanations from me; the newspapers have already done all that.
"Thirty-three years, Sam. I lost my mind wondering what happened
to you." The smile has gone; the sunshine back behind black
clouds.
He divorced in the end, my fault he said, for corrupting him, showing
him the dark side. (He finally got the offhand Death Star comment
I'd made next to the elevator one morning, he says. I don't
remember it.) He never remarried; a couple of short-lived affairs
with younger women, a few brief, shadowy liaisons with men who - in the
dark at least - reminded him of me. In the '80s he'd given up
smoking, taken up five-aside-football with Chris and Ray, dropped a
couple of stone in the hope, he says, of making it to 2006 without his
heart packing in like I'd often hinted it would.
"Never got over you, Sam," he tells me. It's both flattering and heartbreaking at the same time.
Thirty-three years - he's come the long way round. He's lived
almost the whole of my lifetime since I last saw him; I'm barely out of
hospital. He has the air of a man who's reached the end of his
path and it scares me. There's none of the boisterous '70s
Neanderthal I fell for in the man sitting opposite me. After that
initial hug he's barely smiled, only once, maybe twice met my
eyes. And after a single Scotch and a half-pint, he's asking me
to walk him out, this man I've missed more than I missed anything from
this time while I was back in his. I don't think he feels
anything for me any more and why should he? It's tearing me apart
though; I'm still in love with him.
A stilted handshake is how we part this time, more than we had thirty
years ago but not even a shade of what I want. Still, what right
have I to ask him for anything? I feel like my heart's being torn
out piece-by-piece and stamped into the pavement like a chain of
cigarette butts. Why I imagined three decades wouldn't dull what
had existed between us, I'll never know. But it was so explosive,
so consuming, so desperate, I'd hoped beyond hope that it could have
survived. Thirty years separate us now. Gene's old, he
says, and I'm young. I feel a hundred years old watching him walk
away from me along the pavement.
When he stops it's not next to a bronze Ford Cortina but an old blue
Vauxhall Cortina. Two steps to the right and I can see the number
plate - the same number plate that's forever etched into the forefront
of my mind.
E599 SRJ
I set off at a run.
"Don't you dare, Gene! Don't you dare drive away from me again!"
He stops with the key in the driver's side door, turns and finally he
looks at me with something other than blank resignation. It's
devastation, complete and total, but somehow it's better and when I
reach him I do the only thing I can think of doing. I snatch his
head in my hands and kiss him, hard and for a moment seemingly
unwelcome. Then his hands slide over my shoulders and his mouth
opens under mine. My trampled heart is singing - something by
David Bowie - and it's Gene who has to push me away, still holding on
when he meets my blurring gaze.
"I didn't drive away from you that day. I stopped, called the
station, called for an ambulance. Then I parked my car at the top
of the slip road to block it and sat with you in a state of disbelief
until the police arrived. It was an accident, Sam, I swear.
It was always an accident."
I can't help my smile. "Best thing that ever happened to me."
#
I stare into the window at the reflections of the people passing by,
the lights of the café opposite and Gene Hunt, who shakes his
head.
"I don't feel like a Chinese."
Fine with me. "Indian?"
He nods happily. "I could murder a curry."
I've never been so happy in my whole, entire life, in any time. These years at least I can share with Gene.
Fin
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