WALKING SHADOW

The office convivial was going well. It had begun at 5pm in the office with a quick pre-load in the staff room before everyone headed off into town. The bar was voluminous and had several pool tables at one end. Drinks were bought and games of pool played. It was early evening- the best time to drink as the buzz is better, especially if in company such as this.

It was forming up to be a fantastic evening and everyone seemed on good form. After a few more drinks and rounds of pool, we repaired to the dining area. I foolishly nipped off for to the gents before returning to the throng. I say foolishly, because although I wasn’t too bothered about whom I did or did not sit next to, I hadn’t planned for the counting abilities of the staff. The long table at which everyone was animatedly sitting was now full. Worse still, Alice, the woman I had been chatting too earlier was now in close conversation with one of the sales team. I stood for a while wondering if I had missed a space, before the bar manager noticed me and went off to find a spare chair to squeeze in.

But it was too late. The mood plummeted within me like a body off a bridge. I no longer looked at the cheery throng as a group I enjoyed being with. I now observed them as they really were: passing ghosts.

Ghosts. Not in Ibsen’s sense. Or even in the Hammer Horror sense. Just people, who you see every day. You may be thinking “yes, countless millions of people with lives and loves and problems passing you on the tube every morning” but no. The ghosts I mean are the people you meet, get on with, spend time with, even begin to like. Then never see again. You may have a dream with them in, or a fond recollection, or humorous story to tell. But when they’ve gone, they are as ghosts: merely shadows in the memory, like they were dead. Ghosts only become tangible when time, fate and the heart have had time for roots to grow in them. Then the ghost becomes real, and abides. These are friends who are always around.

Sometimes it seems as though each person is on a little moving platform. They move towards you and into clear view, play their part, and then bow out, receding into the murkiness of time. I have accumulated hundreds of ghosts. After a while, I forget context, time, occasion or whatever and then, as the memory fades, only a few significant elements remain, like the Cheshire cat’s smile.

I have looked into a room of ghosts; they all know me, greet me, and ask if I am well. But I can’t help but look at them as ephemeral apparitions, knowing that in a year or two they will all be little more than shadowy recollections. I now saw my colleagues in the bar in this way and felt the familiar chill.

I am once again reminded of Shakey, the spokesman for all our frustrated inarticulate mewlings: Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. Bleak but awfully true.

Ghosts are all around. Twenty-two years ago I had been walking from London Bridge station to a job interview and on a whim, when half way across the bridge, turned around to observe all the bobbing heads, earnestly heading towards their work. All faces were serious and all suits were black. It was a grim grey winter’s morning.

A few weeks back, on the way from work, I stood on London Bridge again and gazed a gazely stare back across the bridge to the City. There were the ghosts. They were still there, although this time in different bodies. Fewer ties, more tattoos. Yet they were as ghosts. Ephemeral entities passing through the gut of the city en route to their destiny in the suburbs or eventually perhaps Dubai.

The ghosts may talk to you; you may even like a few. They may even seem real. But they are not: not even if you get to know their names. Afterwards, they are gone and merely a dusty memory, akin to a half-remembered dream. Twenty-two years ago, I gave some money to a beggar on that bridge. I felt so sorry for him. This time I ignored him. He was a ghost, and looked much better-off than his predecessor.

Consider the face of the old man who looks at you with his rheumy eyes and thin lips. He knows that you too are a ghost. He has seen many like you, and although he will recount the tales of his youth to you, you may as well be a robotic dummy, programmed only to receive. He will tell another ghost exactly the same tale the next week. What endures? Nothing. I turn away from the mirror with my thoughts.

Given time, I can interact with most people on the planet now, in a personal and genuine way. People seem to like me, and I am very grateful for this. That is what I have worked towards. It is merely an extension of a process that began at school, but as Margaret Thatcher once said “if you only want to be liked, you will achieve nothing”. Each child wishes to get on with the group. As I was not an immediate success with any group, I branched out on my own, only to return as a re-created character. I have made “being myself” as difficult to do as being someone else.

The chair arrived but the manager was having difficulty wedging it in as all conversations were quite intense and it would have been rude to interject in such animation. Instead, he put the chair on the corner of the long table between two opposing conversationalists. I said thanks, and headed off to the gents again.

I walked into the now-familiar toilets, looked at myself in the mirror, straightened my attire and hair and walked back out. This time I turned sharp left and headed for the door, past the smiling barman “see you in a bit” I mouthed over the noise. He nodded sagely, seeming to know that I was never to return: he had probably seen the whole act: Here’s another generic bunch, all high on that Friday feeling. Where’s the loser? Wait, wait, ha! There he is. Timed his toilet break disastrously and now he’s excluded!

I went directly to the flat I had been sharing these past months, bunged the rent in cash on the coffee table, collected my things and rammed them into my back-pack. The giddy release came when I didn’t pick up the keys but shut the front door. I jubilantly marched to the station and took a delayed train north.

As my carriage rolled through the night, it was with some bitter joy that I considered the scene on Monday morning. There would be some chat about the Friday evening bash: how bad the hangover was, who had left with whom, who had embarrassed themselves. Who had done both. Some would notice my disappearance and I would quickly become the talk of the office when I didn’t turn up for work. The manager would make enquiries. Alice would be consulted as it seemed to most that we might have had “a thing”. She would be concerned that perhaps something had happened to me: it had. I had become one of their ghosts.

Robert E Parker works in a primary school and lives with his wife and son in Sussex, England. He coaches dyslexic children and has an interest in neurodiversity. His literary interests include Stephen King and Iris Murdoch, so make of that what you will. He has been writing for many years but has only recently begun publishing short stories.