Jennifer Manson
Creative Inspiration
There's no Warmth in an Axolotl
Short story (c) 2006 Jennifer Manson
I am sitting in a paid-for Business Class seat for the first time in my life, and all the joy of travel I have ever had and lost has returned.
I was working as a proof-reader at the city newspaper, a fairly dull job, depending on what I was reading, and after a while, it didn't matter what I was reading, it all went past in a blur as I focused on sentence structure, grammar, spelling. There aren't many people who can proof-read well any more, or so Bill, the last of the old hands told me. "People aren't being bred for excellence these days, or attention to detail, they don't care, just looking forward to the next tea break, or what they're doing after work."
"But not me, Bill."
"No, not you." He looked at me fondly. "If we don't watch out you'll restore my faith in mankind."
I liked Bill, he was hard in an 'I don't want to be disappointed again' kind of way, a heart-breaking vulnerability at his centre which he armoured with gruffness and a cultivated scruffiness. He looked like he had no-one to care for him, and I suppose he hadn't, if you left aside himself. Which I didn't.
"Bill, you need to comb your hair, and if you don't like ironing, pay someone to do it. You could be quite a catch if you would only take a little time."
"Too much bother. The world today . . ."
"Bill, not 'Today' - women have always preferred well-presented men."
"Who said anything about women?"
But I detected an underlying interest in what I was saying, so I persevered. We went window-shopping together at lunch times and I pointed out shirts in shop windows which he would look good in. His curiosity simmered below the surface. He brushed off my comments but I knew he was taking note. Then one day, as we were having a sandwich in a store cafe before heading back to work
"You know I was married, Karen?"
I looked up, taken aback. I don't think anyone in the department knew this.
"Do you know what she said to me when she left?" I shook my head, dumbfounded. "She said, and pardon the language, she said 'You're a f***ing axolotl, Bill, and there's no warmth in an axolotl.'"
I had to stifle a reactive laugh. It was awful. But it was also one of the best F-you departures I had ever heard of. But it would hurt, especially someone as sensitive as Bill. I wondered how she could have got to the point of believing it; it clearly wasn't true.
His next question surprised me. "Do you think everyone knows?"
I shook my head again. "No, Bill, not at all. I'm certain of it."
He sighed. "It's just I have this feeling that everyone, that the world, is laughing about it."
"Well," I said, then hesitated. "It is a pretty great line, I can imagine saying it myself, if I could have thought of it, just for the effect. There's no way she believed it."
He looked at me and something changed in his eyes. "You're right, it's a good line."
Bill was different after that, first subtly, then externally. He came in one morning in one of the shirts I'd shown him. His hair was combed, and was the grey slightly darker than before? I raised an eyebrow and he put on an elevated expression and went straight to work. I cornered him later. "Hey, Bill, sharp look!"
"Get lost, child. Have you no work to do?"
He avoided me for a week or so, until he became comfortable in his new skin, then asked me to go to lunch again. He was walking straighter, looking younger. I was pleased.
"And what about you, missy? How happy do we see you?"
I looked up into kind eyes, not shaded with pain as they had been. As it happened, I wasn't great. My best friend was changing before my eyes in her corporate law job, and I suspected my boyfriend, such as he was (we had only hovered on serious, never really got there) was seeing someone else. I had missed Bill the last two weeks.
I looked away. "I think maybe I need a change." And as I said it, I knew it was true.
"What kind of change?"
"Life, work, everything." My mood plummeted as reality sunk in and I sat down on a store-front wall. As I looked across the road, traffic passed doubled, reflected in a mirror glass window. In between I caught my own image: petite, short black hair, Gothic-dark clothes, and Bill's: standing tall and elegant beside me, looking sympathetically down.
"Why don't you take a holiday? Sort it out."
I looked up wryly. "You're not going to tell me?"
"What?"
"What to do."
"I wouldn't dream of it, it's not my place."
"That's never stopped you before."
He frowned. "How's that friend of yours, Stacey?"
"Busy. She's talking years' off ambition, associate partner, partner, but when she describes the cookie-cutter profile of the ranks she wants to join, it makes me ill."
"Well, people change on the surface. But underneath, she's the same."
"You think so? I'm not sure."
"And Jake?"
I glared at the ground. "Faithless snake, cold as bedrock."
"An axolotl?"
I looked up at him again and grinned. "Yeah, an axolotl."
I went to my boss, who had always fought my corner, and told him I was leaving . . . unless . . .
"Okay, Karen, blackmailers have to be good communicators, what exactly do you want?" Bastard! He was large and woolly and horribly insightful. My soul was bare before him.
"I'm burnt out proofing. I'd like a writing assignment."
He sighed and pulled at his hair. "You know that's not my department."
"But you could ask."
"Okay, I'll ask."
Three days later he came back. "Okay, Generation Y-er, we thought an opinion piece, an issue relevant to your age group. Come up with something, 800-1200 words, and if they like it, it'll go in a Sunday mag."
"Sandy, for real?"
He stretched his beard-obscured mouth slightly sideways and breathed a tiny laugh, then nodded. If not for that beard, I could have hugged him.
So it began. I would do anything, go anywhere, travelling always on the barest budget, to be moving and watching the world. I was absolutely lonely on one level, and at another, everyone I saw was my companion, I thought about them and loved them. The writing was easy – facts would string themselves together, barely stated, into compelling reading if the content had value. I went where my gut told me, fear being my best guide: I would get that 'Oh, no, not that' feeling, and that would be where I would go.
I read every newspaper I could find, in whatever part of the world I found myself, so I always knew who would take the various stories that appeared under my feet as I went.
Then one day I looked up and realised I'd been travelling without stopping for seven years.
I called in on Bill in England, where he was living now, happy with a wife and a tiny apartment in a converted country house.
"So," he said, "have you nearly finished running from love."
"Bill, you misjudge me. I've found love."
His face brightened with curiosity. "Tell me more."
"Love of life, Bill, of travel, of the world."
"Oh." I sensed my answer had annoyed him, forestalled him saying something he had intended to say. He stood up from the table in the walled garden where we sat, a jug of Pimms on the table. "Walk?"
We were silent for a while, watching the sliding golden light on the rural scene.
"You couldn't do better than this." I told him.
He nodded, thoughts still elsewhere.
"I love seeing you and Helen together . . . I was right, wasn't I?" He looked up at me, questioning.
"No one could ever think you cold. Can I take credit, for showing you your first wife didn't mean what she said?" Through the long lonely years, my thoughts had often anchored here, on the difference I believed I had made to Bill's life. It was my touchstone.
He shook his head. "You misunderstood. Janet did think I was cold, and she was right, I wouldn't let her near because I didn't believe she would love me if she really knew me. But the fact that you believed I have warmth, that you understood me better and saw a different side, changed everything."
We walked through the park to a distance from the house and stood looking back at it. "Who'd have thought it?" he chuckled.
"What?"
"That we'd both, cynical souls that we are, end up happy."
"Happy? Me?"
He was perplexed. "You're not then? You said you love this wandering life."
"I do and I don't." I sighed. "Loneliness is fine at 30, but it looks a bit bleak twenty years on from here."
"Well, then, why haven't you settled down?"
Why hadn't I? "There are a lot of reptiles out there, Bill. I'm pretty good at finding them – it's just the warm-blooded variety of lovers that eludes me."
"I'll find someone for you then, just right. And when I do, I'll call you from wherever you are in the world."
"Fine, Bill, you do that. Send me the Business Class ticket and I'll be there."
So you see, there is more to this flight than just a holiday, just seeing Bill and his sweet wife again. And I have to confess it, I'm sort of excited. I've made such bad decisions over the years, and I trust Bill, he knows me better than anyone. He'd never turn over a stone and hand me an axolotl.