Winchester Words

Ernst was increasingly becoming a social isolate. He had lived in his large three-bedroom maisonette for nearly quarter of a century. Gradually the people he knew were dying. Most notably Ian who had died earlier in the year. Whilst he and Ernst had never been lovers, they had been first friends, and later companions, for forty years. Ian had lived in the ground floor maisonette, and they had seen each other virtually every day for the twenty-five years since Ernst had given up his London flat to make what he knew would be his final move to the seaside.

               It had been Ian’s idea for Ernst to move there. Ian had lived in London and enjoyed a successful career at the Home Office. He was tall, debonair, and confident. They had met at various parties on the London gay circuit during the 1980’s when they were already middle-aged. Ian had a very impressive flat in Bayswater, but also a place by the sea. A maisonette on All Saints Street, to which he would go for weekends and holiday as he had family in Sussex. In the mid-nineties Ian had retired and decided to sell up in town and move to the sea permanently. Ernst had always been rather in awe of Ian. It was his confidence that he found irresistible rather than his physique. They had never slept together or had any form of sex in fact. It was purely a relationship of convenience, peppered with a degree of fondness and irritation in equal measure, rather like many long marriages, heterosexual or otherwise. Ernst was a shy man. An only child born to parents who took too little interest in him as a boy, before rather rejecting him as a man. He lacked self-esteem, which was strange, given he had been required to battle against the current so often in life. Rather surprisingly he remained diffident and in need of support. He masked it with a veneer of brusque indifference which, if held to the light, would be paper thin. Ian had departed London for a couple of years when, just before the millennium ended, the maisonette above him had become vacant. Before it was placed on the market, he had contacted Ernst suggesting that he join him by the sea. As a pensioner who was finding the expense of London life, as well as the noise, increasingly worrisome, Ernst agreed.

He condensed his belongs and moved into the relatively spacious three bedroomed maisonette above Ian. Two decades had snuck by, each growing older by degrees. Ian’s willowy frame had bent and twisted, his height lessening as his weight grew. Ernst had leaned on Ian when he moved from London. Ian had a social ease that oozed confidence. Ernst felt reliant on him in an almost resentful way. He valued his friend’s social capital, and the regular contact was a counterpoint to the long hours of solitude, but he often felt rather bullied and belittled. Oddly, in those final years before Ian passed, the roles had reversed, the tall urbane man had leaned increasingly on his less confident friend – quite literally. For more than a year before death came, Ernest had gone down to the flat below his own, to help the carer lift Ian. As the once tall, handsome man buckled from old age and disease, his friend was needed to assist the move from bed to chair, chair to lavatory, lavatory to bed. It was in part an act of gratitude; but mainly just a task that gave some shape and social contact to the increasingly lengthy days. And now it was gone. The carer, who had at first arrived as a once weekly cleaner, some fourteen years earlier had become an integral part of both men’s lives. Ian was the one who paid her to come. By the end she came for eight hours a day. A split shift of sorts. A couple of hours in the morning to get him out of bed, fed and dressed; and then later in the day to provide company, care, more food, and then the return to bed. Ernst would be asked to help and, as carer June became increasingly unable to manage alone, Ernst’s trips downstairs became more frequent. He ended up going down three, four or even five times a day. Whilst he complained to himself about it in the silence of his flat, it was very often the only time he saw other people that he knew.

And now Ian was dead. The funeral had been a very sad occasion, but Ernst shed no tears. He was beyond crying. Death had been an ever-present feature of life for so many years. Both parents and both of his longer-term lovers were all departed along with scores of other friends and lovers. Some cut down in the gaiety of their youth, others wracked with age; Ernst almost felt those that had gone early had the better deal. Dying whilst having fun, youthful and mourned for rather, than grinding slowly down to a shuddering, unseemly end, becoming virtual skeletal shadows of their former vigorous selves, before their transformation to empty unloved cadavers.  He recognised that he was unusually youthful for a man of ninety plus, but the pride and satisfaction it had once afforded him was long gone. He might well be the last man standing, but to what end? There were two men, former friends from London, who had made the trek to Ian’s funeral. Both had arrived with assistance. One on a frame, the other in a wheelchair. They were shockingly shrivelled versions of the men he remembered from the wild parties that he had hosted in his Tavistock Square apartment forty years ago. They had laughed a bitter wistful laugh about those days. Ernst was saddened, despite the sense of pride that he felt at looking so much younger than them. But of course, the most significant aspect of Ian’s passing for Ernst, in the present day, was the loss of June’s daily visits. He had grown used to the rhythm of her visits and had not realised how important they were to him, until they had stopped.

Apart from Ian and June, Ernst only really saw a few shop keepers in the old quarter of the town. This being mainly people who ran the charity shops, of which there were many. They recognised him, and he them, but there were very few that ever got beyond a friendly nod or good morning. Those that had were people who merely added a name to their salutation and perhaps engaged in that most British of routines of asking how each other were, each knowing that the expected answer was of the bland non-committal ‘not so bad’ type. There were a few with whom Ernst had been exchanging good mornings with for over twenty years. It seemed odd that he had known them for so long but knew nothing about them beyond the fact they ran the shops to which he had found himself increasingly drawn.

When he had moved to the maisonette, he had entertained ideas of moving on. Getting one of the large, rather grand, whitewashed Victorian villas that gently crumbled under the salty sea winds on the hills of the town. To that end he had kept some of the larger pieces of furniture from his London flat as well as storing some of Ian’s Aunt’s pieces when they were offered to him. Hastings prices then nudged up a little, as St Leonards, along the coast, garnered a reputation of being an artistic quarter. The large Georgian and Victorian houses inched out of his price range, meaning the dream of a bigger place never came to fruition. But the accumulation of furniture, books, paintings and statues continued to grow. Once he went on an extended holiday to France and when he returned found that one of Ian’s friends had moved a considerable collection of small furnishings and suitcases into the shared attic for safe keeping due to a house move. At least Ian had told him it was shared. They did share the freehold of the building, along with associated costs of roof repairs, so Ernst felt obliged to accept the fait accompli. He knew of the guy and was reluctant to cause a problem. Besides he had a large attic space, and the entrance was from his upper maisonette, so he boarded out a main walkway, moved the stored items to one side and began to fill the other side himself. The friend had never returned to collect his stored things and several decades had now passed. Ernst thought that he may well have died. As the years passed and Ian’s large family passed away, he inherited several quite nice pieces of furniture as each aunt and uncle went. The consequence being that space had to be made to accommodate furniture of increasing aesthetic value. And Ian did this by passing on the less attractive pieces to his ever-willing friend upstairs. Ernst never refused to take Ian’s cast offs. It only occurred to Ernst sometime after Ian had died, that he had probably only taken these things because he feared offending the dominant partner in their rather unbalanced relationship. The realisation made him feel embarrassed, weak and rather foolish. It was not a nice feeling, and he tried to bury it. And bury it he had, largely in the amassed collection of other things that he had gathered to his nest himself. Alongside, and above, below and inside these things, were the clothes. Bags and bags and bags of clothes. Some were Ernst’s but mostly they were the collected contents of the wardrobes that had belonged to his two principal lovers. Their clothing was all he had left of them – and he treasured their memory through the clothes he had bought for them.