Life is an acquired taste

I got married when I was twenty-one, an age far too young to get married. But I feel now that any age is too young to get married.
I had just come out of the army; Georgina had just come out of the cinema. We were both lonely, and clung to one another.
And now I am clinging to the steelwork of this bridge. I am much higher now and can feel the force of the wind trying to pluck me off the girder. But I’m feeling more confident. What I’m doing is, I’m pretending I’m one of the maintenance men working on the bridge. I’m a professional. It’s all in a day’s work to me. I actually begin to whistle. I can’t whistle very well. My auntie Nellie now, she could whistle. She would put two fingers in her mouth and emit the most ear-splitting shriek. She tried to teach me but I could never master it. I think I was too much the ‘little-gentleman’ when I was a boy. My mother always wanted me to be a ‘little gentleman’. And I was. George came along later.

I could be in an aeroplane now. I’m so high up. I hadn’t realised how far I’d climbed. I wanted to be a pilot. But I didn’t have the maths. You have to have the maths to be a pilot. And I didn’t have the maths. But I did have one flying lesson. And I also took a gliding course. I did very well. The instructor said I had a natural aptitude.

The curve in front of me is much shorter now. And suddenly the fear has gone. Now, isn’t that odd. I can look down without getting that bottom-dropping-out-of-my-stomach feeling. I look down onto the water, way, way down below. How many feet? Can’t be bothered to work it out. It’s beautiful: a silver mirror. No it isn’t. It’s water. The river: more beautiful than an old silver mirror.

It was all getting a bit flat and stale, when Sydney came along. He wasn’t planned. But the universe wasn’t planned. They say it started with a big bang. How very appropriate – a big fuck. And here we are, trying to make sense of it, when there is nothing to make sense of.

But I loved the little boy; we both did. Still do – each in our own peculiar way. And perhaps we still love each other, but it just isn’t working. It hasn’t been working for a long time. Good intentions are not enough.

I am close to the top now. The red light is dazzling me: a huge lantern thing. You wouldn’t think it was so big, from down on the road.
Suddenly there are lights down there: a car, going very slowly. Wait a bit. He’s stopping. It’s a police car: a dinky police car. And two coppers are getting out: dwarfs with flat hats. What are they doing? Are they looking for someone? George – you fool! They’re looking for you!
Torch beams begin to sweep over the girders; twin searchlights, criss-crossing, like in the war when they were trying to get an enemy aircraft in the cone of light where two searchlights cross. And then they find me: first one and then the other. And there I am, in the spotlight, centre stage.
Instead of an ‘ack ack’ barrage, a metallic voice opens up. One of the dwarfs has a loud hailer. This should be fun.