LOVE WALK

Once in the nonsense of Covent Garden Leonard longed to be back in the empty heart of the City. Back in Bouverie Street, or Lombard Lane where he almost trod on a homeless man sheltering in a doorway. Then stopped to fathom a plaque dated 1669 embedded in the façade of an office block.

Onto Fleet Street with its host of taxi cabs in the rain and lost Swedish tourist women with long legs the like of which he had not seen for twenty years, skin unfettered by veins and blotches.

He crossed over the Fleet and headed into the legal district toward Lincoln’s Inn. Another homeless man appeared, this one thin and wiry, walked over to him and began a story about seeing a chiropodist on Monday but until then could he see his way to helping him through the weekend? Leonard had no time for stories, he was on the move now and fearful of breaking his pace so he stuffed whatever came to hand into the dirty mitten without looking. It must have been a note for the man called after him: “I love you.”

Leonard laughed scornfully to himself. “Love, eh?”

He found he was stood in the lee of a legal stationery shop and wondered about divorce proceedings and if he dared at his age. Wasn’t it the territory of other people? People who believed they had more to gain or lose?

Next door stood a pub. It had a sign painted 1602 above the door and so was the oldest pub he’d ever seen. He stared through the window. It was warm within and crowded. A fat woman with a sagging cold face and extra bright lipstick smiled back at Leonard. Next to her a Spanish looking beauty with long dark hair leant up against the window talking to a young bald man in his late twenties who was giving off mating signals and failing. On the window ledge stood a row of stuffed animals on small wooden plinths and old adverts for wigmakers services. He wondered if the bald man had read them at all or if he had chosen to ignore them in his attempt to seduce the Spanish lady.

“Hotchpotch,” Leonard said out loud and turned into Lincoln’s Inn where more homeless people were gathered, some silent, others drunkenly shouting at each other.

Leonard headed out onto Kingsway and suddenly the ancient, enticing city was behind him. He felt let down by the geography and timing of the city. Though he realized its purpose was to impose rather than console.

Now bright shops were ahead of him there between the corporate obelisks and a hotel with a blank slab of concrete turned upright on one end numbered ‘90’ in bold chrome. It was like some weird bone to him waiting to crumble. It reminded him of his wife’s hip replacement: stark white and metallic placed inside her. He realized his heart felt similar.

The phrase ‘love walk’ came to him and in that gentle expression, mouthed for himself, he knew he loved his solitude more than anything or anyone.

He carried on walking, wanting to get lost, desiring semi-fantastical places and history. Not the Covent Garden falsehoods. The river would be his next location and who knew where thereafter?