Name Of Love

Charlie stepped out into the afternoon and closed the door softly behind him. The heat of the day had passed, though the warmth still lingered and the high sun promised many hours of light yet. It was shining now through a layer of translucent cloud so that it looked like a smear burned across the west side of the sky. Underneath it, darker clouds gathered like rubble, and their edge was crisp as if etched in with a pencil. He walked into the breeze so that the smells of summertime were carried to him – sun baked car interiors reeking through closed windows, and faint flowers wilted by the heat.

The streets were quieter than they had been of late, but there were still people around. Adults and children walking together, all quietly now, as if the day had taken its toll. They were stumbling back towards their homes, to sit in gardens and drink cool drinks and stare silently at the sky. Charlie walked against the tide of these people, stepped into the road to allow a family to pass him.
He reached a main road and stopped to cross. Here, the peace and the sweetness of the air was lost amidst the crush of vehicles and their ugly fumes. The heat had heated them, and the air looked brown and wavy, tasted industrial. Engines growled and he could feel them burning as they passed. He crossed quickly and hurried back into the quieter streets.

As he turned corners and bends, the hush returned and the air cooled again. High hedges began to rise over garden walls and softened the lines of the city. The streets narrowed, and he could only see a narrow strip of white sky above him. Some streets carried little streams of cool air, and he followed these, felt the currents enliven his thin film of sweat.

The park opened to the right at the end of one of these small streets. Charlie bumped his fingers along the cast iron railings which ran alongside the pavement. At the gate he turned into the park, and the world opened out once more. A straight concrete path ran ahead of him, with two large grassed fields stretching out on either side. The sky was once again wide and blank, but the grey clouds had gathered and neared. He could feel cooler air drifting from them; it rippled the sleeves of his T-shirt and agitated the hairs on his arms. He walked along the path towards them.

The park had been used that day. Blue carrier bags fluttered against the green of the grass, and crushed cans caught the light here and there. A mother and two children ambled towards the gate in the same stupor he had seen on the faces of the families in the streets. One or two small groups remained settled amongst the grasses, drunk and content. Any shrillness in their voices was blunted by the closeness of the afternoon. There were no footballers today, and the tennis courts were empty. Too hot maybe, too late in the year or in the day.

Charlie walked on. He was walking to clear his head, and had further to go. So he walked on even as the clouds gathered, and the air cooled and quickened. The first spots of rain immediately filled the air with the scent of summer tarmac, and he breathed it in deeply before it was lost. Soon it rained heavily. Fat drops leapt from the ground and splashed his shoes, and his T-shirt clung to him, cold now. He had wanted to be out for longer, but it was time to turn for home.

He did not run; he kept his pace. He followed the same streets back, and saw them changed; blurred and sodden, darker and greyer.
Lighting flashed somewhere, and soon rumbled overhead, and the rain came down heavier still as he reached his door. He stood in the open doorway a moment and watched it come, looked at the sky and the floor, at the barely visible house opposite. Then he shuddered in the cold and closed the door.

He was walking to clear his head because he had a dinner tonight. A dinner with a woman full of promise. They had met first in a pub, having arranged to do so via an internet site. Charlie thought carefully about that evening as he peeled his T-shirt from his skin in the bathroom. She had been there first, and was sitting behind a glass of wine and reading. He knew it was her, but he didn’t like to disturb her, or didn’t know how. So he sidled unseen to the bar and ordered himself a drink. Here, he composed himself a while, 10 minutes maybe, until she looked around and he knew he had to step forward.

He moved quickly towards the table and sat down before she could stand up. Clumsy. But he reached his hand over nonetheless and she took it. Delilah. Such an old-fashioned name. So loaded, and so long. And she didn’t like to shorten it, she liked to hear the whole thing fall from the lips of the men who met her.

Her hand was soft, he remembered, as he looked down at his own in the shower. He had held her hand a little too long, but wished now he’d held it longer.

He dried himself methodically, as he’d been taught to do by his mother, and stepped into some clothes, smarter clothes than he normally would. He looked out the window with damp hair pressed back against his head. The rain had stopped. One of those sudden summer washes which clean the air. Night was coming now, but the air was still so warm and wonderful. He left earlier than he’d planned so he could walk some more.

They had gotten drunk in the pub that night, and stayed late. Things eased between them as they got looser, and they laughed quickly at not much or nothing at all. Charlie was deeply attracted to her. Her short curls seemed to bounce on her cheeks, and her eyes were a dazzling brown, lighter brown than any he’d seen before, like they were lit up.

‘Delilah’, he’d said. ‘Where do you live?’

Her eyes flashed at this, red or yellow or something between the two. She told him, but did not invite him, and they finished their drinks quickly after that. They stood outside in the night, stood apart a little and did not speak.

This was the image that Charlie played to himself as he walked to dinner. He could have taken her hand, he thought, or an arm around her shoulder. He could have leaned in to kiss her.

He was walking too quickly as he thought, responding to the panic he felt at his reminisces. He had sweated, and his shirt clung faintly to his back in the warmth. Such a warm evening. He had almost twenty minutes to spare when he reached the restaurant. He cooled himself outside for a time before he entered.

In fact he relished the opportunity to ready himself. He ordered some wine, red, like she’d had before. He drank a small glass as slowly as he could, swirling it carefully and looking hard at the filmy surface.

He’d kissed her on the cheek as they parted, and turned swiftly to walk home. That evening too, he’d walked to clear his head, along the same black railings, running his fingers against them. Amongst the hedges he’d fretted drunkenly that he’d leaned a little to close to her mouth as he left, pressed the corner of his against hers. He’d stood with his eyes closed by the traffic that night, and allowed the noise to blast tangled thoughts from his mind.

For three days he’d tried to arrange again. She had been busy but polite, and he had messaged her with dwindling optimism. But, just like that, she’d agreed to dinner, and his hopes had sprung up alive again. Now as he nursed the end of his glass, he fluttered and shook. He knew he had invested too much, he had too much to lose. Delilah. He allowed his tongue to flick silently as the word passed through his mind.

So many times he’d been here at the precipice, fretful and anxious, seeing a new future roll out before him. He’d suffered much in the name of love. And now Charlie sat and waited for Delilah. Such a weird and wonderful name. He would never get tired of it.

But she didn’t come. He walked back again with his shirt untucked and clinging limpet-like to him. He breathed hard and deep as he paced, but the air was still so warm he couldn’t get a breath. He searched many faces on the way. He blinked long and slow, until the ugly half-kiss flashed on his eyelids and he opened them again. It began to rain quietly as he closed his front door softly behind him.

So still Charlie had no one to whom he could give the name of love. And he knew the name so well. Not Delilah, though it played so nicely on the lips, but she, you, my darling, my love. She who had sat with him so many lonely nights, a faint form who rested her head on his shoulder, or perhaps her feet in his lap, so casual and so familiar. She was that ghostly knowledge of love to the lonely, who shares an empty bed, not for sex or sensuality but for company. He knew her skin was soft and her lips too. He knew how to feel content with saying nothing to her as she sat by his side. All of this he knew, all of this he had fully formed, ready to lay at the feet of someone who would only let him.

Delilah sent a message later to explain, a battery thing or some such, but he knew he could no longer name her love, never could have. He tossed his telephone aside, and settled down, not quite completely alone, to watch television.