Begin Again

The taste of salt in my mouth.

Looking down, I see that it’s being whipped up from the sea, rising in flurries of spume from a choppy, inky surface which looks much closer than it did an eighth of a second ago. I’ve forgotten who I am again. I have a feeling that this keeps happening.

Let’s see. The chill of an early spring spray. Alan rings a bell. Alan….Tait?

I am Alan Tait. No, not right, Alan Tarrant? Aaron Tent. Abi Trent. Barry Trentham. Benny Tendon. Benji Tunstone. Terry Benzo, Larry Bonzo,Bonzo Dog. Barry Bungo. Harry Tailspoke. Lenny Bespoke. Perry Toothpaste. Perry Mason. A Mason? Am I a Mason? Seems unlikely.

I am running out of time. Ah.

Dick Dastardly. Howard Orange. Micky Quinn. Tom Raworth. Princess Michael of Kent. Matt Fallaize. Clare Goalby. F.W de Klerk. Graeme Swann. Grahame Greene. Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, John, Paul, George, Grub. I’m not Ringo, no-one’s Ringo. Not even Ringo’s Ringo. Bingo Bango, Gary Andrews Julie Andrews, Andrew Barber, Harry Palmer. Larry Calmer. Jerry Mulligan. Yes we can. Hannigan. Finnegan.
Finnegan!

Mmmm aaaaaa ddddd

Ah, it’s close.

(the sound a body makes when it hits a shingle beach from a height of 400ft)

(the stillness of the world the moment after, only a shudder from the sea, a Turnstone working the shoreline)
 

*
A bright light without my closed eyes. Registering as a sharp, painful red.

My head.

A voice.

“You were quite close, that time, Daniel, it was a definite improvement on your previous try, a touch gauche in the mid-teens, but you've definitely ironed out a couple of the more glaring flaws” (Daniel, of course, can’t imagine why I didn’t remember before. I am Daniel Finnegan. Man of means. Husband to Eleanor. Father of Joseph, Holly and Alice. Son of Thomas and Marie. Inept guitarist. Failed writer. Reasonably successful in advertising, to my own self-disgust. Five ten and a bit. Blue eyes. QPR fan. Dead, I’m fairly certain. I’m also fairly certain that I’ve been here before)

“Good?” I ask, it seems an appropriate response.

“Yes, good. Well, better” I feel faintly pleased, absurdly, I get the impression that I'm about to get a star put up on a wall-chart. The voice speaking is warm and authoritative, I feel better for pleasing it. My eyes are still tightly screwed shut. Presumably they haven’t yet got the message that I’m no longer hurtling towards a shingle beach. “I’ll be back shortly, Daniel, just try to relax, Mr McInnes will be along shortly and I’ll try to get back to you as soon as a I can, busy day today.”

There’s the sound of a door closing, with a fairly authoritative click, and as if that’s the signal they needed my eyes, blinkingly, open up.

It looks like a doctor’s surgery for the most part. The first thing I see is a coat-stand by the door, with a a tasteful looking black overcoat hanging from it. Matching hat, too, I see.There’s a desk, a couple of photo frames on it. I wander over and look at them, they’re the sort of photos that come in frames when it’s the frame for sale. Stock photos, a bland and generic sunset, a dog sticking out of a bucket. A Scotty, looks like. There's a desk jotter of the type that drugs companies hand out, but the script on it is indecipherable. In the corner of the room there’s a metal filing cabinet, stuffed with files, none of the doors are properly closed. I wander back to the couch I woke up on and stare at the window, it's blank outside.

So, to recap, this morning I, who I now realise to be Daniel Finnegan. Dan to his friends, Danny to his really good friends, woke up and realised that something catastrophic had gone wrong. I didn't know what, but it wasn't something I could analyse, I only knew, as surely as I knew I had hands and feet, that I was done, that was it for me. I drove to the coast and threw myself off a cliff. And now I'm here, wherever here is. I should be freaking out, but I'm not.

I suppose, on one level, it's nice to have an answer to the question, is this all there is? Apparently not, but, annoyingly, I rather feel that I already knew that. Like the pub quiz question that you get right just as they read the answer out. Of course, that was it all along.

I do wonder though, why I'm not more upset, why, for example, I haven't started worrying about the kids, or my wife, how this will affect them. Why aren't I worrying about that?

"Because you're an egotistical solipsist, Danny. But don't worry too much about it lad, most people are." A tall man, who I take to be Mr McInnes says. I didn't notice him come in. "You're coming along all right, but we've got a few goes yet to get rid of that part of you."

I look up into a broad, beaming and honest face, the sort of face that you can tell stuff to. He extends a hand and I grasp it, the handshake is firm, but not going for that knuckle -crusher that big types like him tend to favour, it feels weirdly reassuring.

"So" I ask him "what happens next?"