David Charters: Life can be very strange

May 20 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

TO THE keen observer, it was evident that the man himself was in contemplative mood, as he sprinkled shreds of chocolate onto the slow-sighing foam of his cappuccino coffee.

Outside, the sun was warm and rising. The women of a certain style strolled by the window in their dark business trousers, while other women, with an easier approach to the world, waddled behind in their quaintly named “jogging” suits.

“You know, when I was younger, on those grand summer days, the girls stepped out in their summer frocks,” said the man, tilting his head in a quizzical manner, suggesting better times, which have slipped away. “It was one of life’s pleasures, just watching them, enjoying the sun. Nothing wrong with that, just nice.”

Life can be very strange.

He lifted the beaker, took a little drink and returned it to the table, allowing the milky coffee to settle. Mobile phones trilled. A couple sitting near us plonked their briefcases on the table and then clicked open the brass fasteners in an ostentatious manner, so that everybody would see that they were working hard. Decisions of Earth-turning importance lay in the papers they spread before them. You could be sure of that.

“Did I ever tell you about my brother?” asked the man. I shook my head.

“Well, we had high hopes of him going into the priesthood, but he failed the French and that was that.”

“French!” I said. “Surely God would want his representatives on Earth to speak English. Maybe a spot of Latin would go down well in the Vatican, but tell me the examining authorities weren’t serious about the French.

“Imagine singing with a straight face, ‘Et aux epoques reculees est-ce que ces pieds-la marchaient sur les montagnes vertes d’angleterre (And did those feet in ancient time walk upon England’s mountains green)’.

“No, they couldn’t have rejected him just for the French. There must have been more to it.”

“I’m afraid they did,” said the man. “God lost a good man because of the French.”

And then we laughed, delighting in the story and the absurdities of the world, much to the irritation of the business executives on the next table, still studying their papers and ticking boxes, as though all life depended on them.

Ah life, and love, can be so strange, like hearing a wolf-whistle in a nunnery. Life is everything, but in another sense it is nothing. You can’t touch it or see it or smell it, though you can feel it. You know that one day it will disappear, but we have no idea where it will go.

Yet, it is here, with us now, and, when our spirits are down, we hope that it will get better.

So, with an optimistic spring, the bald man rises from his bed and stands before the mirror with a comb in his raised hand. The reflection smiles at him and he quietly puts the comb back on the shelf, for another morning.

A few days ago, I was at the front of our house with my wife and our 12-year-old son, when we saw a baby bird hopping across the road, his beak wide with cheeps. Suddenly, a ginger cat leapt from a bush and pounced. The bird flapped his wings frantically and rose a few inches from the ground, but the cat had him under her paw. The desperate cheeping increased as we ran to the scene, full of righteous desire to help the weaker creature.

The cat arched her back, spat and skulked into the shrubbery, turning her head at us to express frustration, anger and a desire for revenge.

We put the little bird into a box with straw and carried him into the back garden. “Do you think he’ll get better?” said my wife. “It must have been a terrible shock for him.”

“I really hope he’ll get better,” said our son, who has known some deaths in this high sun of his days, but still believes fervently in the promises of life.

“He’s lost his mother,” I said. “He needs to be with her. He’s calling for her.”

For a while he cheeped and hopped, and his small chest trembled, but as the sun slid in the sky, he grew quieter. We gave him water and I chopped up a worm for him, but he ignored them.

I turned to my wife and whispered, “I think he is going.” He lay still on the straw. His body was still there, but he had gone. Most of us will have sensed the moment when a life has slipped its shell. It could be that of a loved one or a little animal, but you know the moment is sacred.

You don’t need French for that.

LISTEN to David Charters on his picture podcast at www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk