All the Lonely People

by Mike Gayle

‘Oh, your fancy man is back on the scene!’ and she would reply, ‘I don’t need a fancy man, Hubert Bird, I’ve got you,’ and then she’d give him a peck on the cheek. It was a little routine they had, one of many that never failed to make him smile to remember.

I can’t fathom a loss like this. There are so many relationships in life where we’re meant to out love ppl or vice versa. How does one deal with losing the person who was meant to see you through the journey?

‘And yes, I know sometimes the world’s a horrible place but not always. Sometimes it’s a lovely place where nice things happen for no reason and I’d much rather …’ She began to get upset. ‘… I’d much rather live in that world than the other one!’

But most of all Hubert liked to walk in the park with Joyce because it made his heart swell with pride that everyone would know he belonged to her and she belonged to him, and in marrying her he had won the jackpot of life.

‘This is my close friend, Mr Hubert, his beautiful neighbour, Ashleigh, and her daughter Layla, who is an actual princess,’ he said each time he managed to collar some passing stranger. ‘They are good people. And this is first time at Latvian wedding.’

How long and how hard had his friend pursued this woman he’d called a goddess, only to cast her aside for some imagined idea of freedom?

‘There are so many lonely people around these days,’ she said. ‘I see it at the vet’s all the time: old dears whose only friend in the world is their pet and who want nothing more than a little chat when they pop in for worming medicine or whatever. The world is moving so fast and no one’s got time to stop these days. It’s sad really.

And even if it failed, if the whole thing came to nothing, then at the very least all the people sitting in this room would be, for a time anyway, a lot less lonely.

‘It’s easy to waste a lot of time trying to think of a perfect solution to a problem. But sometimes the only thing you can do is cross your fingers and have a go.’

‘It was an honour and never a chore,’

When she’d seen him at the wedding reception at the social club it had felt like a sign, like fate was saying, ‘Sorry for the past forty years of misery, Jan. To make up for it, here’s that lovely fella you keep thinking about!’

What would they think, what would they say, if they could see him now? They would tell him he had to carry on, if not for himself then at the very least for the memory of them.

‘You see, the key to helping other people out of them loneliness is nothing more difficult than good old-fashioned perseverance. It’s not always easy, me know that, but you’ve got to be willing to keep doors open, to carry on trying even if it doesn’t look like it’s working. You’ve got to refuse to give up on people, even if them given up on themselves.’

‘And that’s the funny thing about life. Extraordinary things can happen to ordinary people like you and me, but only if we open ourselves up enough to let them.’

To continue living wasn’t a betrayal of Joyce, of Rose, of David, of any of the life that had led him to this moment. In fact, to choose to continue living was to honour the memory of those he had loved and lost, a celebration of the life they had once shared.