Apologies in the delay in uploading this. Be warned this is not a happy Eric!
Chapter Two
She didn't come. It seemed as if I sat there for hours, waiting; hoping, my body strained with the tension which I held in it. Every time the blasted chime on the door rang my head whipped round, focusing on whoever was entering. There were plenty of mother's coming in and going out, there wretched children filling the air with their cries, but none were the mother I wished to meet.
I stared into the dregs of my coffee cup, hoping that the vague froth would let me on to what I was suppose to do. People read tea leaves; this was simply the twenty-first century version. I wound my hand around the cup, ignoring the stiffness of my fingers as I gripped the warm china, simply waiting and drinking more damn coffee, the caffeine causing my already jumpy state to be enhanced.
I could not believe that this is what I had been reduced to – me; who at one stage could have any woman I desired with the crook of my finger, reduced to sitting in a damn coffee shop in a god forsaken town hoping that a sleep deprived depressed mother might come and talk to me! I wasn't even in London for crying out loud!
Momentary anger surged through me and I roughly stood up, stalking out the building, throwing a menacing stare at anyone who dared rest their eyes on me for longer then was necessary. I was annoyed at the pathetic excuse my life had turned into, angry at the horrific truth that I was no longer at the head of my game; livid at the fact that my so called friends could no longer spare the time of day to contact me; depressed at the fact that I was upset by Ali's absence.
That was it, depression wrapping its loving caress around me, suffocating any breath of hope that I might have dared inhale. I sunk onto a nearby bench, practically unaware of the cold bitter wind that teased the corner of my coat, blowing empty crisp packets and leaflets against my legs. Burying my face in my hands, I closed my eyes, feeling the scratch of the glove against one eye, the smoothness of the unyielding plastic, hard against my ragged fingertips.
"Breathe," I commanded myself silently. In, out, my chest seemed to labour against the weight pushing my chest in and I knew that if I allowed my emotions to get the better of me I would end up howling my heart out on a public bench in the middle of town. "Breathe," my voice was strict, as I felt the air pump into my lungs, in; out, the effort involved huge.
Finally after about five minutes I was able to raise my head, take in my surroundings, my head dizzy with the oxygen rushing around my body. All of a sudden I was aware of the biting cold, the weather not having improved from yesterday. It blew across my body, down my neck as I had not bothered to wind my scarf around my body. With a weary sigh I levered myself into a standing position and trudged off home.
It is amazing how your life course can change in a flash. Within a split second the path on which you are travelling veers off so suddenly, so violently that you aren't even aware of the consequences until it is too late. One moment the future is sure and solid; you can grasp your plans; know what lies ahead, see tangible results for hours of hard work. Know what you want from life. And in a second, one measly movement of the hand on the clock and my life was changed – forever. Or at least that was the case in my situation.
I was driving too fast. I always drove too fast, the thrill of speed coursing through my veins like a drug. It was a warm summer's evening; the fading light had only recently disappeared over the horizon, the heat of the evening still torpid and heavy with humidity.
There was champagne flowing through my veins, the alcohol rising in my blood, like the sap in the trees at spring. It made me dizzy, drunk on my own success, carefree. I could feel my subconscious self guiding me, my foot caressing down on the accelerator, enjoying the throaty roar of the car as it responded, its growl music to my ears.
Music was my life, literally. I ate slept and breathed its intoxicating power, needing it in my life. I was a junkie to sound; dependant on the noise to keep funding my day and keep me going. And yet I wanted to control it; define it, not play an instrument to someone else's tune. Four years at the Royal College of Music made me sure that playing in an orchestra was not for me. A couple of years of composing, living the life of the poverty stricken artist, made me realise that I did not want to grovel at the feet of the public, desperate for recognition. Scrabbling for the money to pay the gas bill, scrapping out the meagre pennies on the most basic of food was not the life I wanted, the existence I had dreamt of either. It was disheartening to have door after door slammed in my face when I tried to offer up my latest composition and so with a loan from the bank and the backing of my parents I decided to set up my own record label and show the bastards what they had so summarily dismissed.
Seven years later I was at the top of my profession. Success had been fickle in coming, but when it arrived I was swept up in its wave and feted and fought over the length of the country. Eric St John became a name to watch, as I had a tendency and the tenacity to track down unusual, obscure talent and let them bloom under my care. From opera and classical to rock, pop and alternative music; there was no genre I considered below me as long as it stood up to my demanding stipulations that the artist put their heart and soul into what they were producing and were in it for the long haul.
It was unsurprising that after a few years of such massive achievement the sharks started to circle and I found myself in the middle of a huge management buyout. They offered me nirvana in exchange for my company, but I realised that it would mean I became a faceless name in a faceless boardroom of some nameless multinational. Instead, to their surprise and the shock of financial advisors I sold out to them but retain my original rights to scout for talent and produce anyone I wished or hand them over to the greater protection of the company, only I got a share of the profits with anyone that I signed.
It was a subtle and calculated move that over the past three years had made me a wealthy man doing exactly what I loved. I had absolute freedom to seek out artists as I wished, in my own time and then to lovingly nurture and bring on a select few to international recognition.
Of course nurturing took on many different forms and there were a few females who had a more personal level of care then others. And that was where I had come from that night.
She had long silken limbs that entwined around my body and the ability to contort herself into a huge range of positions. She also had a penchant for fine wine, fine drugs and success. Food unsurprisingly didn't really come into the equation.
She was no more then a good bed companion. A good fuck, if I wanted to be crude. I felt nothing more for her, then the usual male animal instincts. If I loved her, then it was her voice I wanted to possess, to shape and to call mine, not her as a person.
As a result I was determined not to stay the night after our session of bedroom gymnastics. To stay was to suggest that there was more to the relationship. The passion of the moment would sink into sleep and in the morning I would still be there and then she would expect intimacy. A glance over the breakfast table, sharing the basin as we cleaned our teeth together; a slight kiss as I left for work; women tended to think that was the start of something beautiful.
No, I had been down that dangerous route and did not want to traverse it again. Instead I left as soon as our breathing had levelled and she started to try and make pillow talk. I knew that I was too high, too drunk, should not be driving, but I was determined not to stay. In hindsight - god, if only I had not been so arrogant, so egotistical, I would have a spent a warm night in a bed and a slightly awkward morning.
And then, driving home; the music blaring, the heat of the night allowing me to drive with the roof down, high on life and drunk on my own success, my life changed in a flash.
I didn't see, was possibly slightly too addled too calculate properly. The lights, the noise, the screech of rubber on the road; the sickening crash of metal on metal and then heat, inexplicable heat down one side of my body, burning. I tried to move, tried to crawl away and found that I couldn't, my body would not respond and then finally blackness washed over me and the beautiful embrace of unconsciousness carried me off.
I wasn't aware of waking up as much as returning to existence. It was the constant beeping of a monitor that first registered itself with me, then the squeak of shoes on linoleum, followed by the sounds of people softly speaking against the whirl of air conditioning. Slowly my sense of smell came into being and the pungent aroma of disinfectant assaulted my nose. It was with great pain that I forced myself to open my eyes and see exactly the situation I was in.
I couldn't do it. My right eye opened a fraction, allowing a piercing slither of light into my consciousness, but my left eye refused to cooperate, it felt stuck down, merged into my skin. I lifted my hand to try and use my fingers to force it, push the eyelid back, but recoiled as the scratch of bandage met my cheek.
"No, don't do that Eric," a soft voice spoke to me and strong hands grabbed my wrists settling my arms back down by my sides. I recognised that voice, knew that it was familiar and searched my brain for a name.
"Mum," my voice startled me, dry and cracked, croaky with disuse and dryness.
"I'm glad to see you're awake," she replied. "You've been out for three days."
"Where am I?" I thought that perhaps I was dreaming. On more then one occasion an excess of substances had caused me to hallucinate when I was asleep, the dreams wending themselves through my memory and twisting into nightmares. This must be a nightmare.
"You're in hospital," her reply was blunt. "You had an accident."
"Oh," I could not find words to describe how I felt and the truth was too hard too accept. Instead I found myself blissfully surrendering to the joys of sleep, not wanting to deal with what may or may not be a horrible reality.
And so it was, my life had changed dramatically overnight. I had been in a car accident, although amazingly enough it had not been my fault. Instead a drunken youth had wandered across Chiswick Bridge, not stopping to look either left or right as he walked across four lanes of Friday night traffic. The car in front of me had braked in an attempt to miss him, the driver wrenching the wheel round, spinning into the side of the bridge and spilling petrol all over the road. How it caught light, no one was quite sure, but my car a wreck behind it, was affected by the blaze.
In addition to a broken leg and fractured wrist; I suffered burns down one half of my body. My leg, protected in part by the metal trapping it; was least affected, but my arm in its light cotton t-shirt and my hand gripping the wheel as well as the right side of my face; felt the full lick of the flames.
I could not believe that in this day and age the cure for burns was so crude, so basic. There was little they could do they said, had to wait and see, time will help; were the banal phrases that were bandied about over my head. Therefore six weeks after I was rushed into hospital I was discharged with skin tight garments to wear on my worst affected areas, my leg and wrist in plaster and worst of all; a tight plastic mask pushing against my features, applying pressure to hopefully aid the healing and reduce scarring.
Realising that I was depressed, ill, angry and bordering on suicidal, my parents took me under their wing once more and at the age of thirty-three I moved back into my old bedroom in the faceless town that I had grown up and thought I'd escaped and waited to for my life to end.
Somehow the human spirit is stronger then the individual and whilst I wished for my pathetic excuse of an existence to end, my body would not comply with my wishes. Slowly, painfully slowly it started to heal. The skin grafts that had been put on in hospital started to heal with the normal skin, the pain of daily physiotherapy kept my limbs moving, if not exactly limber and I began to go out, slowly moving around the house at first and then venturing into the autumnal joy of the garden
It was four months before I found the courage to walk into town, my mother dogging my steps all the way there, her glare as people starred at me more vicious then any rottweiler. In this first few nightmare months she was my total support. I was no longer the successful talented only son, the apple of my parent's eye, but a hobbling, disabled excuse for a child. Yet in her quite supportive way she still loved me, still looked out for me. When I cried out in the night she was there by my bedside to soothe me back to sleep; when I snapped at her from sheer boredom, frustration and pain she never shouted back at me.
When I threw a tantrum upon finding that all my clothes did not fit over the bulkiness of the pressure garments, Mum went out and silently bought me a new wardrobe. I swallowed my pride and did not dare point out that one of my hand-made designer suits cost more then the entire set of clothing she bought me.
It was at her insistence that I went out everyday. "Even if you only go out to buy a paper," the words echoed in my head as I stumbled home. "You need to keep going out, becoming a recluse will not help you at all."
Becoming a recluse seemed very desirable at the time. My company had quietly disposed of my services, so that except for a gaudy basket of flowers when I was first released from hospital, they did not bother me. No one called to ask my opinion or offer their support. I had been summarily replaced and whilst in theory my job still existed; my role was fulfilled. So much for my supposed friends, they all sunk back into the woodwork. Maybe that is why I was so pathetically grateful when a woman chose to acknowledge me. Maybe she was tired, upset and depressed, but then I could not offer her much, except similar emotions.
A stiff gust of wind blew past my body and I gathered my coat tighter around my tall frame, head bent against the breeze, not that I could really feel it. I trudged back to my parent's house, back to my pathetic, stupid excuse for an existence and tried not to think of a woman with a running nose and the brightest blue eyes you could ever imagine.