Out Of The Blue

So there I was on the top deck of the bus on a beautiful London morning. I was on my way to write a song. I had a cool musical idea. I was in a good mood as the bus crossed Battersea bridge. I’m on my phone having a chat with my publisher and then I see something on the bridge. A silver haired man in a wheelchair purposefully staring at the river. The next second he’s pulling himself up with his arms and drags himself over the parapet and then he’s gone over the edge. So quick. The wheelchair stands there. The bus is moving fast and that’s all I see. I say my publisher in a hesitant voice that doesn’t sound like my own “sorry, have to go…… I think someone’s just thrown themselves off the bridge”

I immediately call the police, I’m shaking a bit. They say they will send the river police to the area. I miss my bus stop. This is where the story ends for me. I don’t know if this grey haired man killed himself or whether he was (by some miracle) rescued. After my writing appointment (that was a weird thing to have to do) I walk home over the bridge, stop where I last saw him, and look down at the swirling brown water. There are no flowers, the wheelchair is gone, there’s nothing in the evening paper. It’s like it never happened, it’s like I imagined it.

Irrational thoughts cross my mind. It was a beautiful sunny day full of the promise of summer. Surely you wouldn’t end your life on a day like this? A rainy day would make more sense perhaps. Perhaps there was a TV crew there I couldn’t see and it was a TV show. He was an actor.

Stupid thoughts.

That man’s expression stays with me all night and it’s the first thing I think of when I wake up. I want to call the police and find out whether they recovered a body. I want to know more; the who-was-he, the why-did-he but I know full well the police wouldn’t tell me. In their eyes I have no connection with this man. I am not a relative, so I have no right to pry. I doubt I could find out what happened from other sources. It’s not as if a London suicide will make the papers. It’s an everyday occurrence in this city. I feel strangely ghoulish even wanting to know.

So I’m sorry to leave it like this. I like to have a beginning, middle and end to a story (I am a songwriter after all) I want to know about this man’s life and I want to know about this man’s death. I want to know who will be at the funeral and how he will be remembered. Then part of me doesn’t want to know. Can’t I just imagine that a boat plucked him out of the water? Why do I want to know? Why do I feel in a strange way that I owe him something?