The Sudden Appearance of Hope

by Claire North

As memory of me faded, so did a part of myself. Whoever that Hope Arden is who laughs with her friends, smiles with her family, flirts with her lover, resents her boss, triumphs with her colleagues – she ceased to exist, and it has been surprising for me to discover just how little of me is left behind, when all that is stripped away.

First impressions – my life is about making a good first impression. When one attempt fails, I will go away, and reinvent myself, and return to try again. Though first impressions may be the only thing I have, at least I get to practise until they’re right.

Vienna. “I’ve been looking for a jewel thief for three years,” he replied. “Catching you is a big break. Would you like tea, coffee?” “You’re not with the local police?” “Interpol.” “I thought Interpol was just something people talked about in movies.” “In movies, there’s less paperwork,” he replied with a sigh. “Writing emails and sorting spreadsheets doesn’t sell cinema tickets, though I have some very exciting databases.”

I exist in this physical world as sure as stone, but in the world of men – in that world that is collective memory, in the dream-world where people find meaning, feeling, importance – I am a ghost. Only in the present tense am I real.

Taster classes – I am the queen of taster classes. There are fitness, language, sewing, cooking, painting and martial arts classes across the world where, for weeks at a time, I was invited not to pay for my tuition because “the first one’s free”. After ten weeks of attendance I’d say that I’d “done a little” and after twenty the experience would usually lose its value, as the length of time it would take a teacher to discover that I had experience would be as long as the class itself, and I could progress no further.

“This is the modern world – there are resources, means to find justice …” “Such as.” “Truth.” “Meaningless, if you cannot make it heard.” “The law.” “Not if you don’t have money to pay for it.”

poverty endured patiently on the mountaintop. No – the perfect life is to have an annual salary of £120,000, an Aston Martin, a £1.6-million-pound home, a wife, two children and at least two foreign holidays a year. Perfection is an idol built upon oppression. Perfection is the heaven that kept the masses suppressed; the promise of a future life that quells rebellion. Perfection is the self-hatred an overweight woman feels when she sees a slim model on TV; perfection is the resentment the well-paid man experiences when he beholds a miserable millionaire. Perfection kills.

“There’s your mistake. You have a gift, Hope, one of the greatest ever given. You are outside it all; you are free of it.” “Free of …” “Of people. Of society. You have no need to conform, what’s the point? No one will thank you for it, no one will remember you, and so you have the freedom to choose your own path, your own humanity, to be who you want to be, not some puppet shaped by the TV and the magazines, by the advertising men, by the latest definition of work or play, by ideas of sex, gender, by—” “Perfection?” “By perfection. You choose your own perfect. You choose to be who you are, and the world cannot shape you, unless you permit it. The world cannot move you, unless it is by your own welcoming in. You are free, Hope. You are more free than anyone living.”