Through a Glass Darkly
Let me tell you about the town. From the window in the room at the top of the house you can see a ramshackle of roofs, vaguely haphazard grey tiles battling to establish the predominant direction in which to point. Framed by irregular windows and beyond the blackness of their glass, similarly uncoordinated lives move on, actors whose stages are often adorned with an ornament or vase on a cill looking out into the world, standing guard. And here and there, flitting in and out of view, phantoms of those lives, faces appearing for just a moment as their owners engage in dusting those self same trinkets or replacing dead flowers. Occasionally you might catch them in that vacant space between things - between thoughts even - perhaps looking down to the shops and pavements, the progress of others. Is that how I might appear at this moment should someone glance up from the street or from another window across the way?
Having to give myself a new name I settled on Paternoster, not because of its Latin meaning or religious overtones but simply because I liked the sound of it. Paternoster. It was a word which imbued something new in me; a gravitas perhaps, or a sense of worth; a word which was laden with potent, which said “there’s something special about this guy, he isn’t a ‘Smith’ or a ‘Jones’”. And even though I desired anonymity and a fresh start, inevitably ‘Paternoster’ disqualified that to a degree, the lure of it winning me over and trumping my ambition for invisibility. Lending itself to a type of elevator, a multi-barbed fishing line, a sea-side town in South Africa, an old hippie band, I was comfortable being added to its role of honour, choosing to refine it with the prefix of ‘Ralph’, a christian name I deemed appropriate for it, my age, and my target image. When the lettings’ agent first repeated it back to me - “Ralph Paternoster” - it seemed to fit like a favourite sweater. I handed over cash for the rent with a flourish, and he looked pleased.
But I digress. Immediately outside the house, the High Street comes to something of a shambolic conclusion. The succession of shops this side of the last remaining bank gradually declines in pomp until the whimpering crescendo of a charity shop and a second-hand bookstore. Our terrace then continues with three small cottages to terminate with this house, a floor higher and a room broader. Also not anonymous, I suppose. The other side of the road is less mirror and more cheap imitation. Perhaps it has always been thus everywhere in the world, the struggle for supremacy between north and south, east and west - or the tiles on roofs. “Always live north of a river” Saffie once said after an unhappy year spent shuttling back and forth from Vauxhall and Clapham. We had both been different people back then - and now here we were, almost within touching distance once again. Not visible from the house there is a river somewhere nearby, and I’m sure we must be north of it otherwise why would Saffie be here, living her new life in the road beyond the High Street, in that house with the blue sash frames, a white vase gracing the dormer window? New life but old name. Almost like me.
Which had made her easy enough to find; after all, no-one is invisible these days, personal profiles popping-up all over the place. We’re all social media doyens now! Before I finally settled on it, I searched for myself - for ‘Ralph Paternoster’ that is - on Google, just to make sure I wouldn’t be treading on any toes. Or vice versa. Importantly, as far as Google was concerned the new incarnation that was me didn’t seem to exist, at least not in the UK. Isn’t that where most people look these days to get their facts? “I Googled it” they say, as if the resulting information could only be twenty-four-carat truth. Search using my old name and you will find almost nothing but lies: rumour, innuendo and false reporting become substantive, like some kind of gruesome papier mâché mask; yet no matter how hard people tried to fix it to my face, the fit was never a good one. How could it be? I wasn’t the person the mask depicted; it wasn’t a true likeness. I was never the monster they made me out to be.
But that was three years ago. I wonder how quickly the time passed for Saffie; I wonder when she made the decision to leave London and move up here - and whether there were any intermediate stops on the way. Never having had the chance to say goodbye properly, the last time I saw her - across a room, not at a distance like now - she looked exhausted, worn through. If she had been crushed, that wasn’t because of me; it was the process they put her through. You could argue it was all her own fault because she’d been responsible for setting the wheels in motion, but I don’t think she realised how doing so would take so much out of her: the questioning, the cross-examination. We could have worked it out. I told them that. Had they left it to us then we would have found a way through and come to an understanding, an accommodation. But they weren’t interested in nuance and subtlety; everything had to be black-and-white, provable or not, defendable or not. That was how they defined your character, by identifying which side of any particular line you stood. And by default they always seemed to take Saffie’s position as the starting point, never mine: here she is, therefore this is where the line needs to be drawn. The question became where did I stand in relation to that line? Too often in the wrong place. At first I challenged them. How was any of what they were suggesting even possible given I was only motivated by love? On that basis, surely the only possibly place for me was on Saffie’s side of the line. But they didn’t see it that way. My defence lawyer, Hanson, tried to explain to me that they weren’t drawing lines - to be crossed or otherwise - but building walls. “Why does she need a wall?” I asked.
He never gave me a satisfactory answer, though it proved easy enough for other outsiders to make up their own, drawing conclusions based on personal prejudices and perceptions. Everyone took sides. Most were nose-led by the popular press; it was an easy enough bandwagon to jump on. For some, their support for Saffie was based on no more than how we looked, as if that told them something incontrovertible. They refused to recognise that, having spent too long in custody, it was hard for me to look anything other than dishevelled. I had no access to the clothes in my flat and was forced to recycle the same things: wear them, get them washed, wear them again. Saffie was always well-dressed in professional outfits; sombre but smart. Hanson said that made her even more recognisable from the tv and the programmes people loved to see her in. They could associate with those; it gave them something to protect. Often she would be crying - which did nothing to help my cause. Harsh questioning and painful recall were the triggers, and the catalyst for much of that was when Hanson pushed her hard, especially if he sensed she was feeling vulnerable or on shaky ground. “Her memory of events that night is clearly not all it could be; she’s hardly convincing. I suspect exploiting that lack of clarity may be our best chance.” I wasn’t happy with the approach, even if he was right. And I didn’t like his word, ‘exploiting’. That was the last thing I wanted. I told him that, and told anyone else who was prepared to listen - except few people were. The press continued to play on her celebrity and the fact that she was, to a certain extent, the new ‘darling’ of early evening TV; she was charming, open, accessible - and therefore vulnerable. It was difficult for her to have a private life; the affair with that slime-bag of a co-presenter - also plastered all over the place when they broke up - proved that. Hanson said that had been another opportunity for her to play the role of victim really well: “she’s a professional, right enough”. But that was never my perspective. Saffie needed looking after; she needed to know that there was someone who really loved her and who wanted to take care of her. Was that such a crime?