And you can look away all you like, Edward Topper, and pretend you don't know me, but I'll not forget you, and I'll not let you forget me, neither, for all you've pawned your wedding ring and we've not shared a bed for nigh on twenty years. Not had a bed for that, neither, sleeping under cardboard or in the doss house - I'll bet this bench has served you a few nights afore now, a fine bench, you'd call it, well ventilated and all.
- You should be ashamed of yourself, looking away like that, kicking your feet, for all the world as if you had brand new shoes on and not those open-toed, flapjawed hand me downs - where did you get them, any road, they's two sizes too big for you at least.
- Edward Topper. Oh I never thought I'd find you here sitting on the sea front, your trousers tied up with string, and don't think I haven't seen the newspaper under your shirt. You always did feel the cold, do you remember? Always warming your icebox feet on mine under the eiderdown. Or standing shivering by the river, all of us, skinny dipping on a summer morning, do you remember, you always were the last in, goosepimples on your ribby chest.
- Who'd have thought then that you'd be the brave one, the sky flying, high flying hero, Tornado Ted, who went to war a boy and came back a hero. My hero. What did you have to prove, Ted? What were you trying to prove to the other kids, the ones that taunted and jeered and called you Teddy Topper, Teddy Topper, push him once, he'll come a cropper.
- So you flew a wooden glider, no more than balsa wood, towed high above the English Channel, then cut loose and drifting, drifty over enemy lines, to land on a sixpence in a field, the specials pouring out of the fuselage onto the bridge and you, flung out of the cockpit into the river, sinking, gasping for breath, clinging to the wet mud, the ooze slipping, sliding out of the stench, wishing you were back skinny dipping again.
- So you came back a hero, and you got your girl. But it wasn't what you wanted, was it Ted, my love. You thought you did, you tried so hard, the job, the bowler hat, the New Electric cooker, the little house with the washing and the wife and the roses round the door and the wife smiling and handing you the rosy cheeked baby - but the baby didn't come, did it?
- Is that where it went wrong, Ted, or was it all wrong way before that, way before the baby and the slime and the stench of the French ditches? For I'll not have it that I'm all to blame, Ted, for all I was barren as a desert. I did my bit, I baked and bottled, and cleaned and coddled as much as the next wife. No, it went back , way back, to long nights of dark drinking, to sitting at the top of your mother's stairs, listening to your father pick up the poker, hold it in the fire until the tip glowed liquid, fire, holding it just so close, just so near, just so close to your mother's throat.
- And you listened to her silent scream.
- So, my sweet, I left you. I left you to your demons and your drink and there are those that say I should have stayed, but what could I have done? Nothing, then. Because you didn't know. You couldn't see.
- But now , Ted, now, can you see any more? Those long days spent gazing out to sea. The long nights listening to feet on the sidewalk, the sound of rainwater and rats in the gutters. You've had plenty of time to think. Does it all make any more sense? Come with me, Ted. I don't have a home, but I know a good hostel where they'll give us soup and bread and a clean blanket. We could walk along the promenade together, talk of the old times. I've got a shiny two pound coin in my pocket, just enough for a bus fare to Llanrwst. We could walk up the river to the big pool, sit on the rock, take off our socks and shoes, and dip our feet into the minnowbrown water. Old age skinny dipping.
