Patron saint of Mid-Life - part 2
[Part 1 is here]
Part 2 – R for Regret, much?
While Ronnie thought of these people as being on an A-list, a B-list, and a C-list, he knew at the same time that if there was a list above A, Lucy would be on it. There are people you’d pay a fiver to get in touch with, and there are people who are worth your very soul. Lucy was part of the alphabet before there was an alphabet. She was a hieroglyph.
Lucy R. The R that stands for Regret.
Lucy was one of Ronnie’s favourite people, one of the best he’d ever met. Sweet natured, kind, funny, smart, she was everything you could ever wish for in a girlfriend. Which was why he was eaten up with jealousy when she started going out with Dave. What happened between them was an emotional roller-coaster (on Ronnie’s part at least) that ended badly, with Ronnie’s disasterously misjudged tactics, and he lost touch with her about 18 months after he left school, before he was even old enough to appreciate how much she meant to him.
He hadn’t thought about her every day since then, but in twenty years the feeling never faded that he had lost an important friend. And what does every day mean, after all, Ronnie thought. The way he felt about Lucy, he knew, was what people meant when they talked about every day.
He desperately wanted to know what had happened to her.
As soon as he saw the email was actually from Hazel, Ronnie’s mind was racing. This was the most promising of all the half-hearted contacts he’d made through schoolmates, and not especially because of the content of the mail. It was simply that this was the first positive A-list response in the 6 months since he’d been registered.
The first actual response came soon after he registered, from a guy he’d completely forgotten about since leaving school. They exchanged a couple of mails, a bit of news, and that was it, honour satisfied. The stranger actually put Ronnie in touch with a couple of other people, including Dave. Dave, so it turned out, was working as a civil servant for the Customs and Excise, which is more or less what he’d been doing (and hating) the last time Ronnie had spoken to him. Ronnie tried not to feel superior about this.
Ronnie had a technique, established since school, of keeping his head down to size. Part of it was in being called Ronnie in the first place. His real name was Simon, but for about six months when he was about 13, he’d borne a distant physical resemblance to the comedian Ronnie Corbett. He’d been short, dark haired, and wore black-rimmed NHS spectacles. Some wag had started calling him Ronnie, and in spite of a later growth spurt, and the adoption of John Lennon-style NHS glasses, he was called that, or Ron, forever more.
As a musician, it actually proved an advantage, because all his peers knew him as Ronnie, a classic musician’s name, and yet he could do some work, work he was less than proud of, under his real name, which nobody really remembered.
The Friday afternoon that Ronnie got in touch with Dave, and exchanged three messages, he kept reminding himself of the feeling of having the piss taken out of him because he was small and wore cheap glasses. He remembered that Dave had been something of a friend to him then, so he swallowed any impulse he had to crow.
Dave asked what Ronnie had been up to, and he just filled him in on what he’d been doing for 10 years, making it sound as dreary as possible, which he suspected Dave may have been aware of. Dave had been to the pub at lunchtime and was feeling quite relaxed, otherwise Ronnie was sure he wouldn’t have received the time of day. Something told him that when Monday morning came around that radio silence would fall, and so it proved.
Ronnie mailed Dave one more time, with some comment about someone who died, and never got a reply.
In fact, not getting replies was something of a habit when it came to any mails he sent himself through schoolmates. There must have been half a dozen people who ignored messages from him, including Jane H and Sally B. Of those who replied, most (like Ronnie himself) were only interested in exchanging news and forgetting about it.
So the gist of Hazel’s mail was surprising: using her husband’s registration details, she’d been in contact with a fair few people, though she’d never bothered to register herself. The distribution list (which she hadn’t BCC’d) included a smattering of B list (Dave), and the whole of the A list, as well as one or two others who’d slipped off Ronnie’s radar, like Doug Kinross, who was also a good friend of his. So good that he forgot all about him.
It was fascinating, and a little heart-stopping, to see what looked like an address for Lucy R: lucrob@uch.ac.uk certainly gave the game away (and an academic address, too, which was promising in ways he couldn’t have explained).
The way of things was that Hazel and her husband had been buying property in France for 15 years before anybody else did, and had ended up with a large house surrounded by a complex of smaller cottages, which they ran as a profitable gîtes business. They were prepared to write off a week’s rentals to put everybody up, with attendees pooling resources for catering and entertainment. Everyone was asked to RSVP with details of how many people (spouses, kids) might come along with.
Ronnie’s hands were shaking as he hit Reply, not even thinking about doing it. Then he scrubbed that and hit Reply All, because he especially wanted Lucy to know that he’d definitely, almost certainly, be going. If that was okay.
That was January. The event was late May; arrive from Thursday for a long weekend, depart Wednesday or Thursday (presumably depending on how disgracefully this bunch of 40 year olds behaved), giving Hazel time to clean up the presumed mess in time for paying customers the following weekend, which was a French bank holiday.
From that point on, he really couldn’t think of anything else. It was true he’d been at a loose end, but this was so much more. This was something that had been lurking at the back of his mind for 20 years. Ronnie had made his living writing songs (for other people to sing) for about 15 years, and he was pretty much well off. But he was also divorced, and recently returned to England, and looking for something to keep him interested in life that preferably didn’t involve chasing women and embarrassing himself.
Except if the woman was Lucy R, apparently.
Part 2 – R for Regret, much?
While Ronnie thought of these people as being on an A-list, a B-list, and a C-list, he knew at the same time that if there was a list above A, Lucy would be on it. There are people you’d pay a fiver to get in touch with, and there are people who are worth your very soul. Lucy was part of the alphabet before there was an alphabet. She was a hieroglyph.
Lucy R. The R that stands for Regret.
Lucy was one of Ronnie’s favourite people, one of the best he’d ever met. Sweet natured, kind, funny, smart, she was everything you could ever wish for in a girlfriend. Which was why he was eaten up with jealousy when she started going out with Dave. What happened between them was an emotional roller-coaster (on Ronnie’s part at least) that ended badly, with Ronnie’s disasterously misjudged tactics, and he lost touch with her about 18 months after he left school, before he was even old enough to appreciate how much she meant to him.
He hadn’t thought about her every day since then, but in twenty years the feeling never faded that he had lost an important friend. And what does every day mean, after all, Ronnie thought. The way he felt about Lucy, he knew, was what people meant when they talked about every day.
He desperately wanted to know what had happened to her.
As soon as he saw the email was actually from Hazel, Ronnie’s mind was racing. This was the most promising of all the half-hearted contacts he’d made through schoolmates, and not especially because of the content of the mail. It was simply that this was the first positive A-list response in the 6 months since he’d been registered.
The first actual response came soon after he registered, from a guy he’d completely forgotten about since leaving school. They exchanged a couple of mails, a bit of news, and that was it, honour satisfied. The stranger actually put Ronnie in touch with a couple of other people, including Dave. Dave, so it turned out, was working as a civil servant for the Customs and Excise, which is more or less what he’d been doing (and hating) the last time Ronnie had spoken to him. Ronnie tried not to feel superior about this.
Ronnie had a technique, established since school, of keeping his head down to size. Part of it was in being called Ronnie in the first place. His real name was Simon, but for about six months when he was about 13, he’d borne a distant physical resemblance to the comedian Ronnie Corbett. He’d been short, dark haired, and wore black-rimmed NHS spectacles. Some wag had started calling him Ronnie, and in spite of a later growth spurt, and the adoption of John Lennon-style NHS glasses, he was called that, or Ron, forever more.
As a musician, it actually proved an advantage, because all his peers knew him as Ronnie, a classic musician’s name, and yet he could do some work, work he was less than proud of, under his real name, which nobody really remembered.
The Friday afternoon that Ronnie got in touch with Dave, and exchanged three messages, he kept reminding himself of the feeling of having the piss taken out of him because he was small and wore cheap glasses. He remembered that Dave had been something of a friend to him then, so he swallowed any impulse he had to crow.
Dave asked what Ronnie had been up to, and he just filled him in on what he’d been doing for 10 years, making it sound as dreary as possible, which he suspected Dave may have been aware of. Dave had been to the pub at lunchtime and was feeling quite relaxed, otherwise Ronnie was sure he wouldn’t have received the time of day. Something told him that when Monday morning came around that radio silence would fall, and so it proved.
Ronnie mailed Dave one more time, with some comment about someone who died, and never got a reply.
In fact, not getting replies was something of a habit when it came to any mails he sent himself through schoolmates. There must have been half a dozen people who ignored messages from him, including Jane H and Sally B. Of those who replied, most (like Ronnie himself) were only interested in exchanging news and forgetting about it.
So the gist of Hazel’s mail was surprising: using her husband’s registration details, she’d been in contact with a fair few people, though she’d never bothered to register herself. The distribution list (which she hadn’t BCC’d) included a smattering of B list (Dave), and the whole of the A list, as well as one or two others who’d slipped off Ronnie’s radar, like Doug Kinross, who was also a good friend of his. So good that he forgot all about him.
It was fascinating, and a little heart-stopping, to see what looked like an address for Lucy R: lucrob@uch.ac.uk certainly gave the game away (and an academic address, too, which was promising in ways he couldn’t have explained).
The way of things was that Hazel and her husband had been buying property in France for 15 years before anybody else did, and had ended up with a large house surrounded by a complex of smaller cottages, which they ran as a profitable gîtes business. They were prepared to write off a week’s rentals to put everybody up, with attendees pooling resources for catering and entertainment. Everyone was asked to RSVP with details of how many people (spouses, kids) might come along with.
Ronnie’s hands were shaking as he hit Reply, not even thinking about doing it. Then he scrubbed that and hit Reply All, because he especially wanted Lucy to know that he’d definitely, almost certainly, be going. If that was okay.
That was January. The event was late May; arrive from Thursday for a long weekend, depart Wednesday or Thursday (presumably depending on how disgracefully this bunch of 40 year olds behaved), giving Hazel time to clean up the presumed mess in time for paying customers the following weekend, which was a French bank holiday.
From that point on, he really couldn’t think of anything else. It was true he’d been at a loose end, but this was so much more. This was something that had been lurking at the back of his mind for 20 years. Ronnie had made his living writing songs (for other people to sing) for about 15 years, and he was pretty much well off. But he was also divorced, and recently returned to England, and looking for something to keep him interested in life that preferably didn’t involve chasing women and embarrassing himself.
Except if the woman was Lucy R, apparently.
posted by Anonymous at
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
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