William
Davidson
Exhibition
They’d arranged to meet on the steps of the art gallery. She
was always late, he remembered. Thirty years before, she was
always late for lessons but she did get away with it. Always
late, he thought, as he glanced again at his watch.
Thirty years apart and then they’d collided in Sainsbury’s.
They’d talked of both moving south and both marrying and
both now with teenage children and back in their home city
and where had the time gone?
“Let’s meet at the gallery,” she’d said, “like we always did in
the holidays.”
But now, as he waited on the steps, he wondered if they’d
ever met at the gallery. Maybe he’d been a handful of times
with his parents as a small boy, but as a teenager, when he
knew Rose? Really, never.
“So sorry,” she said. “Am I very late? We used to meet right
here, didn’t we? And you’d be fiddling with your packet of
Camels, wondering if lighting one would magic me up!”
He’d certainly smoked Camels, but not on the steps of the
gallery, not waiting for Rose, never there, never then.
“Did I?” he said.
“Oh yes, you did. And you did magic me up, didn’t you? It
always worked.”
He’d never magicked her up. Surely.
“William Etty in the main gallery!” she said. “We can have
a good dose of Etty like we always did.”
“Did we?” he said.
“Oh yes. We loved the hugeness and all the flesh,” she said,
“and the dark, dark, distant horizons.”
“Did we?” he said.
“Oh yes we did,” she said, holding his hand for a second.