Three Dont Tango 2

Wont it be wonderful to get back home? A nice cup of tea, some decent beer, my own bed, my wife and kid. No more dusty roads. No more dirty hotel rooms. No more rude bastards giving me a hard time. No more people screaming into my head in hundreds of damn silly languages. No more religious enthusiasts shouting from the top of a tower at four o'clock in the morning when you are desperately trying to get your required quota of kip.
Yes, it's good to be back.
Or is it?
I'm sitting on a slow suburban line train rattling at forty miles an hour through the tedious suburbs of North London. This is boring. It is as if someone has suddenly taken a wet cloth and erased all the past months from the board. They are now just memories.
Last week I was sitting on a hillside in Baalbec looking at the ruins of the old heathen temple, and listening to the rush of streams.
The week before I was up in the mountains of Ethiopia sloshing around in mud, and having my evening meal cooked by two gorgeous girls dressed only in pretty coloured loin-cloths.
The week before that I was hiding in a tree in the Central African Republic as several of my companions were hauled off and beheaded.
I look out of the window. The glass is filthy. Hornsey is filthy. So is Harringay. There are rows and rows of miserable little houses abutting the railway tracks. They are probably full of people fast asleep, waiting to start their incredibly boring day.
It is five o'clock in the morning. The sky is grey. The train is now managing the momentous speed of twenty-five miles an hour. This is home. I'm back in the UK. Isn't it good to be back? Ha-ha!
What have I really come back for? These skies dripping down towards tenement roofs? Drooping flags of grey washing hanging limply from lines slung across small backyards? Both sides of the railway line look to be the wrong side of the tracks.
Sitting in the carriage are about twenty other people all either staring straight ahead, looking half asleep, or reading newspapers. They have all left their nice warm beds to earn their daily bread. What a drag!
Have I made a ghastly mistake in coming home?
I have just spent months wandering around East Africa, and even further afield. I didn't have to get up before the sun comes up in order to go to work. Somehow I managed to get by. I bought subsidised airline tickets and then exchanged them for non-subsidised money, and lived happily for a month on the difference.
I taught English for food and lodging.
I gave a rather beautiful prostitute some pretty clothes brought from another country, and she gave me food and lodging for another month. She was tall, and looked proud, and her skin was very soft.
Someone asked me to collect aloes from the highlands of Ethiopia and bring them back.
Then came that amazing meeting, and a strange sense of identification when I saw my first Fuzzy-Wuzzy. I walked into the village market-place one day in the wilds of Southern Sudan, and we came face to face. I was paler than the Fuzzy-Wuzzy boy, but there was no mistaking it, we were brothers. We both stared at each other's hair, and we both grinned, and grabbed each others hands, and made a silly pledge.
We walked back to the village, where the women played with my hair, and plaited it properly (as they thought), using mud.
For months on end I wandered around, and for months I did no visible work, and for months I still had enough to eat and drink. I had somewhere to stay, and friends to talk to, even if, most of the time, we shared so few words, but strangely we did seem to understand what we were saying.
I could have gone on and on, walking from room to room in the big strange mansion of the world. But one day (it seems now, in the cold light of a cold morning on a train) I did a very foolish thing: I turned my back on the big world and headed for home. So here I am sitting on a suburban line train slowly making its way through Wood Green and Winchmore Hill in the dull grey morning of a summer's day, amongst people who had opted out of the great walk. They had chosen to stay in only one room in this great exciting world. They had forgotten that the good lord will feed those who roam, and they had decided not to roam, but to stay and feed themselves.
I look out over the reservoirs, across the race track, and up to Alexandra Palace. The green is as grey as the grey palace, and I try to see instead the great pyramid pushing its pointed head into the deep blue desert sky on the outskirts of Cairo. I see the kids playing over the lower steps. Camels are standing patiently in the sand. It is evening. A slender moon rides above the silent pile of stone:

Wavelets of sand
among the
toes of trees. The green long leaves
loosen
dropping their dust
silently
while the white moon
moves
softly onto her back
relaxing
her cool breasts pointed like new
pyramids of spring

Instead, the train pulls into Enfield Chase station. The houses look clean and tidy. The street is busy with traffic. Trees sprout between the houses. I remember once long ago running for the local athletics club. Here I am on the train already adjusting to being back. I feel as if I am returning to some boring norm.
I try to think myself back to the highlands of East Africa, but Enfield is in the way. The events of the past few months have somehow turned into a story in some adventure book. They have contracted down to a two-dimensional experience. I read the book. I looked at the pictures. Now I've turned the last page, and the book is somewhere in my bag.
I feel flat, empty, with nothing to do, and the relationship is over.
I don't want to go home. I could get out at Cuffley, cross the platform and get going again, but I know I cant do that. The magnetic pull is now too strong. I have to go home. I am almost there, and the magic has drained out of the box. The drink's gone flat. The coffee's cold. I slump into the seat. There is lead in my body pulling me ever down. I feel as if I am falling into a small box.
Last week I could look across thirty miles of desert to a haze which hid a horizon. Now in my mind's eye I can only see as far as my bedroom and my garden, and there are no ways I can fathom to feed myself unless I get a job.
I look out of the train window. There are fields, then suddenly we are in the tunnel. Years ago, I would be starting to run down the hill to Bayford station to catch the train into Hertford to get to school. Now I'm already on the train, but where the hell am I going? The grey morning sky lowers itself onto my box and hems me in.
At Hertford North I open the carriage door, stare sadly at the grey platform, thread my way amongst the throng waiting to leave for work, walk down the steps, across the meads, and up the hill.
I stand at the corner and look at the sleeping house. It is early. No-one is up. I smile to myself. I know something the folks in that house dont know. I cross the road, put my key in the lock, and let myself into the hallway as if I'd left it only yesterday. I shut the door very quietly and creep up the stairs and into the box we call our bedroom. Once upon a time it was my bedroom, then it was ours, now it is Annabel's. I am creeping in to filch back something I thought was mine. Actually I am creeping back to filch something which I know isn't mine. She has made this room hers. I'm here as an unreliable visitor.
I take off my shoes. I undo my shirt, drop my trousers, and creep towards the bed. I stare down at Annabel sleeping uncomfortably in a twisted position. I reach out my hands. I am grinning. I know something she doesn't know. How long shall I crouch here knowing and not telling?
I reach out my fingers, touch her hair, stroke down her body, squeeze her breasts, and lay on top of her. She squeals and laughs, and leaps upwards like a dolphin, her arms about my neck. She is kissing me all over, great wet kisses, quick, quick, quick, all over my face, one after the other, and she is squeezing me to her bosom, and I rake off the bedclothes with my foot, and she is so hot.
"Oh Johnsie, Johnsie, ummmmmm." And she is still kissing me. "I cant believe it's real. I'll wake up in a minute and find its just another dream. Are you really here?"
I squeeze her, pinch her sides, turn her over and slap her bottom. "That'll wake you up. Teach you to dream when I come home."
"Oh hug me. It's been so long. Ummmm, love you."
"Have you got to go to work today?"
"No, silly, it's the holidays. Come to bed. I've got a lot of time to make up. I've been wanting you so much. It really aches. Hurry up man."
Afterwards I lay in amongst the jumble of bedclothes unsure whether I really have just climbed back into a tiny box. If I have, I quite like it here. That's the problem, the box is pretty, and comfortable, and you don't have to struggle to go anywhere, as everything is conveniently within reach.
I laze in bed, have a leisurely breakfast, and play with my son, then we all go out shopping like a nice family in a boxed-set, and yet there is a real joy in being home, being happy with someone who is so unbelievably pleased and excited I've come home, and everything is wonderful.
Annabel spends hours making an amazing meal for the prodigal who has returned with nothing but himself: five courses with wine and liqueurs, and I am so full, and Cephren goes for his afternoon kip, while Annabel goes to bed with her errant man for another hurricane bout of love making, and the hero enjoys being the prodigal returned to a hero's welcome. Annabel rushes about looking pleased, secretly smiling, standing on one leg, humming, and at night she bites chunks out of the hero and attacks him as if she is making up for a lifetime.

---