Simon Zonenblick

Simon was born in Leeds. He has lived in various parts of Yorkshire and also the east end of London, He has worked in retail, mental health and now works in a library.

Vanessa

Until just a few years ago, a business was situated where the new supermarket stands today. It was a small affair, owned and managed by a single man. This owner, Cohen, had arrived in Britain as a child during the Second World War, and was fairly successful in the marketing of chocolates and confectionary. It was an old fashioned firm, the agents and the factory girls and warehouse workers congregating each morning in the same canteen.

Sidney was a thin and gangly man, facially nondescript, who found these morning get-togethers most uncomfortable.

“Here he comes, the eternal bachelor,” his colleagues would jeer as he entered. One girl, a few years his junior, was particularly cruel. “Poor old Sid,” she said one February morning. “Valentine’s Day round the corner and not an admirer in sight. Must be lonely, eh?”

“No, she’s quite right,” he put in, speaking loudly and walking up and down the room as if to dramatise his disaffection, confirming his acceptance of the tragic reputation he had acquired. “I‘m thirty years old, but with the life of a desperate teenager. I’ve only had a couple of girlfriends, and most of the time I’ve had to stand by and watch other men grab the glory, wining and dining the girls I admire, walking down the aisle with the women I’ve loved. So, you’re right, Karen. I’m a lonely man.”

On Valentine’s Day, he received a card, a beautiful card in the shape of a love heart, decorated intricately with illustrations of roses and doves. He suspected a hoax, but the next day Karen caught up with him in the tearoom. They were completely alone.

“I couldn’t think of any more hints,” she told him. “All this time I’ve wanted you, but I haven’t dared say it, and the only way I’ve shown it is by being horrible. I wanted your attention, but I guess I ended up making you hate me.”

“Karen, lets put all that behind us and start again. Lets you and I start out together.”

He nodded, and held her hand. She had always been aloof now seemed vulnerable and childlike. Innocence shone from her eyes. He kissed her for the first time.

That week, he took her to dinner in a fashionable restaurant. They talked almost non-stop, discovering hidden similarities, shared tastes and congenial approaches to many different things. She laughed at his jokes, he took interest in her stories. When she told of how her parents had died in an air crash when she was still a child, he felt as if the disaster had taken his own loved ones, a bottomless sadness bringing tears to his eyes. Dropping her off at her small flat, he kissed her again, and held her close as they stood in the doorway. As he felt her soften and relax in his arms, he knew he was in love with her.

The next day he had a visit from an old friend. He told her about what had happened, and asked her, as a close and trusted confidante of fifteen years, what she thought of the romance.

“What do I think? What do I think? Sidney, I think you’ve lost your mind.”

“Here’s a girl you hardly know, who’s embarrassed you in public, held you up to ridicule, then bleeds you dry, lets you take her out for all your worth, and like an idiot you fall in love, even taking her to bed when you’ve known her for all of five minutes. I think you’ve betrayed me.”

The engagement was announced that week. The date was set for three months’ time. At first he felt nervous at the speed at which it was moving, but each time they met Sidney was convinced of the boundless love he felt.

“I’ve never been happier,” he said one night, overlooking the river in a candle-lit bar.

“Or me,” she smiled. “You’ve brought hope into my life again. When my parents died I felt abandoned, lost, scared. I guess I have done ever since. But you’ve taken all that away, Sidney, you’ve saved me, brought me happiness, companionship. Love.”

But at the back of his mind, even in their most intimate moments, he could hear Vanessa’s words. You’ve betrayed me.

He asked Cohen, his boss, to be Best Man. The owner was well liked, the common animosity between employer and workers not a factor of his business. He was getting on in years, had not married, and had no family, so the firm was his main priority in life. The well being of his staff was important to him, so on hearing news of the engagement he was very pleased.

“Sidney, my boy, I’ve always looked upon you as something of a son to me. I see myself in you as a younger guy. Only you have the chance to find something I never did - the love of a beautiful woman. Of course I’ll be your Best Man!”

With days to go, Sidney was increasingly ill at ease. He decided he must sort things out with Vanessa, and where better to do so than the place they had first met? He found her, and they drove through town to the village where they both grew up, standing in the very schoolyard where her company had bandaged the scars of an unhappy adolescence, much as Karen had illuminated the void of a lonesome adult life. Fifteen years on, they were back, as the first flakes of winter snow scattered all around them.

“I’m not ashamed. I’ll say it again if it means you’ll believe me. I wish she were dead. I was the first, you said. The first, the last, the only one. We were in love, Sidney. Now you expect me to feel happy for this slutty little girl. Call of the wedding. Do it for me, for us, for the sake of all we’ve been through together. Please, Sidney, call off the wedding.”

He stayed late at work every night. He could not face seeing Karen. Every time he did he was overcome with guilt, not only at the secret he was keeping, but also of the betrayal of which he was accused. I wish she were dead…that was just how he felt about Vanessa.

One evening, Cohen saw him at his desk, fervently doing paperwork. It was past ten o’ clock.

“I thought I was the only workaholic in this place,” the older man said. He noticed the agent looked miserable, and invited him to his office, pouring two sizeable glasses of whisky.

“Mr. Cohen, I’ve done a terrible thing. I’ve been living a lie these past few months. I’ve never been close to my parents, and it seems you’re the only person I can talk to, so please, I beg of you, don’t judge me when you hear what I say. Please, just don’t judge me.”

“I’m in love with another woman. What’s more, this woman and I…we’ve been together on and off for fifteen years.”

“Oh, you bloody fool, Sidney, what are you thinking of? Have you told Karen?”

“Of course not. It would destroy her. I hadn’t seen Vanessa for weeks before Karen came on the scene. But now she’s back and I’m caught in this bloody triangle. I don’t know what to do. Oh, if you saw Vanessa, you’d understand. We were teenage sweethearts. My God, she’s beautiful. If angels dream, then they dream of her. All the treasures in the world couldn’t equal her. But we’ve grown distant, and her presence in my life is more a curse than a blessing.”

“Look,” Cohen broke in. “If you want her out of your life you have to tell her. But if she’s the one you love you’ve got to come clean and be honest with everybody. That is, if you’ve a shred of decency in your veins.”

“Oh, you don’t understand,” he groaned weakly, ‘She’s in here,” he tapped manically at his head. “She isn’t real…she’s imaginary, its all in my head.”

“I created her, made her up as a defence against my lonely school days, and I’ve been daydreaming ever since, for fifteen years. I’ve been playing out this fairytale romance in my mind.” He was distraught now, almost crying, and helped himself to more whisky. “Just like a writer inventing a character, I’ve built her up and worked out everything about her, investing in her all the attributes of my ideal woman, inserting an implausible personality. I’ve lived with Vanessa for half my life, no other woman can come close, Cohen but you’ll never understand. No one will. I can’t let go…every time I lay a finger on Karen its like I’m committing adultery-”

“Just stop this! Are you mad? Is that what its all about? I tell you what, if I was a young man I’d make a play for Karen myself. She’s a wonderful girl, and you, you useless scum bag, you’re going to break her heart because of a stupid Goddamned obsession. Look, imagine if this Vanessa was real. Then you’d be praying she could be just a figment of imagination.” He rose, shaking his head and sighing in disbelief. “You’re crazy. No - you’re more than crazy, Sidney, you’re sick.”

Five years later Cohen retired. The company was sold and, rather than face the uncertainty of a new employer, most of the staff had chosen to find work elsewhere. On the final afternoon, sitting with a whisky at his desk, he watched from the window as the workers dispersed, walking or driving out of the gates for the very last time. There had been a brief goodbye lunch, but he could not feel happy or even resolved as the curtains of his working life came closing all around him.

He watched Karen walking alone towards the bus stop. Since the break-up of her engagement she had not dared risked heartbreak again, and had remained a single woman. Cohen never revealed that he was in love with her, nor she that she felt the same. He had always held out a hope that one day Sidney might return, beg her forgiveness and propose. Surely he would see the error of his ways. After all, he was mentally ill, and once somebody forced him to take treatment, the absurdity of his behaviour would be all too clear. Therefore, Cohen felt that approaching Karen would be an act of betrayal. What made it worse was that a woman of his own social circle had made clear her feelings for him, but his secret love for the factory girl stood in the way of his response. He walked to the window and drained his glass. It was a crazy life.

As for Sidney, he had confessed to Karen, and the news got out. Embarrassed and ashamed, he moved away within weeks, taking a position down south where he had remained ever since.

	Simon Zonenblick
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