“Pull of Distance” is comprised partly or real and partly of imagined experiences. The scenes alternate between accounts of being away and of coming home.
You leave them dancing and sneak away. Everything has been said that can be said. You’re never going to forget each other. You’ll always be friends. You’ll be back. You’ll be back. Arms in the air. Lights reflecting off their faces. Smiling. That’s how you want to remember them. That’s how you do remember them. You slip out into the Glasgow night. The crossroads at Argyle Street has neon-lit fast-food signs at each corner; pink and orange and red. Horns blare and girls screech. The music still pulses inside you. The hiss of a black cab in the rain. The thud of its door. The squeal of the fan belt as it pulls —
—up a stairway in Philadelphia above a record shop that sells Belle and Sebastian posters and you’re wondering if you can ever leave home behind. You’re getting your fortune told by a woman who approached the three of you in the street. She gazes at your palm and tells you the future. You will never marry but will be like a mother to someone, people will think that you are strong but really you are sensitive, you will travel but you will always come home. Behind the greasy, beaded curtain you can hear her sister asking the boys, which is your husband. Tom drawls in his boarding school accent that they share you. You giggle. You work in a fun fair in Pennsylvania. Long days of sweating in a Care Bear costume and posing for photographs with sticky children, nights of weak beer and watching fireflies spark in the dark, as you listen to the boys memories of dancing on a beach in Thailand, stars torn from an velvet sky, of the fruit that tastes like sewers and of sharing whiskey buckets with strangers. You share your dad’s tales of being mistaken for one of the Beatle in Japan, of the boats that sold teacups in China, of the night in prison in New Orleans. Tom make plans to enter an Elvis tribute competition in Memphis, to play with a Country and Western band in Nashville. Andrew is going to sale a boat down to Mississippi and hire a witchdoctor to make an effigy from river mud —
—leaning back on the swings in Kelvingrove Park on a midsummer evening. Lemon sunlight and a faded denim sky. You’re home again and you found Finn at the flat party and left the others. That’s the way it has always been with you two. This time the gap has been longer and your words trip and clash, run together and separate as you both try to fit everything in. Your ideas are being placed in a queue, he says, and will be answered shortly. His laughing eyes sparkle behind his glasses. His Irn Bru hair and skimmed-milk skin. There was a time when you’d thought, when he’d thought – and you sit on your hands to stop yourself from touching him. At the park gates you say a casual goodbye. In another city, another year, you realise that it might have been a final—
—Gerard has brown hair and brown eyes and when you tell him that you like his eyes, he shrugs and tells you that they are vulgar. You try to explain why he should say ‘common’ not ‘vulgar’ and it becomes a lesson on semiotics. He rolls the words around his mouth as though he is tasting them, common, vulgar, common, vulgar. He nods. He has decided that he likes it. He tells you the difference between Spanish and Catalan. You mustn’t worry, he says, they are brother languages. The sun is beating down as you watch him build a sandcastle house, complete with a fire and a working chimney. He shrugs off your compliments. I’m an architect, it’s easy for me. He strokes the back of your neck and you shiver. He tells you that you are sensible and you think sensitive. You’re not sensible at all, though he doesn’t discover that until later. He pulls you to your feet and you run together into the sea. The next house I build could be for us, he says and it is half a question. He comes with you to the bus station when you leave. You drink black coffee and he smokes his last cigarette and then spits in the gutter. You tell him that it’s vulgar and he says but common. When you kiss him goodbye he tastes of the sea. You often wonder about the sensible choice—
—you close the door of the balcony behind you so that you can shut out Franz Ferdinand blaring from the speakers. People are dancing but you want to be separate for a while in the cool darkness of the night. It’s your best friend’s engagement party and the room is filled with people that you only half-recognise. You have the same conversation over and over. Are you glad to be away? Do you think you will ever come back? Someone tells you that Finn has gone travelling too. Canada maybe, or America. This time the gap between visits home has been longer and the city seems more confident. Below, the dirty old Clyde looks almost romantic and, if you ignore the roar from the motorway, you could believe that you were somewhere exciting. A breeze ruffles your hair and trickles down your bare arms. Tomorrow you’ll visit your mum in her crowded house. She’ll make Sunday dinner and refuse any help. She’ll stop every so often to take your grandpa to the toilet. To change your niece’s nappy. To find your brother’s clean shirt. The blue one. Is the dinner OK she will ask? Have you had enough? Then it will be bus-flight-train-bus-taxi to the next—
—bus with your rucksack, Ferdinand helping you up whilst carrying his own. There is no overhead luggage rack so you jam the rucksacks in front of your knees. On the wall of the bus station, graffiti in blood brown letters says ‘Si Chávez’. At the corner someone rents mobile phones for five-minute intervals. Street-side beauticians do manicures with rusted nail files. A car screeches across the path of the bus and jerks to a halt. An old lady, dressed in widow-black, clambers out of the passenger seat and climbs onto the bus slowly. She’s carrying two canvas bags. The driver shouts at her above the music blaring from his radio but she ignores him; her silence louder than the music. The chocolate sellers jump out of the back exit and onto the next bus, throwing their stale sweets onto people’s laps. Street vendors sell Paulo Coelho novels through the windows. Sweat pools between your breasts. You’ve visited colonial towns and rowed across a lake in the dark to watch Catatumbo lightning. You’ve glimpsed wild pigs running along a river and held a baby crocodile and caught a piranha and danced with a cowboy. You’ve had food poisoning and heaved up bile on the toilet floor of a vegan restaurant. You look at Ferdinand’s profile, silk black hair, strong nose and chin, pale green eyes. Already you can see the time when you will part. Another dusty bus station. You’ll wave him goodbye and for a few moments will enjoy being the abandoned figure that you believe you can see reflected in others’ eyes. You’ll construct stories of the ending: a funny one for casual friends and a poignant one for future loves. He takes your hand and winds his fingers through yours and although he’s still here, already you miss him—
—your sister’s new baby is suddenly three. She is fascinated by you and follows you around, upstairs and down and then up again. ‘Wait for me.’ She puts on your necklace, asks for some perfume and rubs it into her knees. She tells you all the things she will learn at school: whistling, clicking her fingers and hopping. ‘When are you leaving? Can I come? When I’m a big girl can I come?’ Your sister holds out a cloth to wash her face and she runs off, her arms outstretched as she flits about the garden. ‘I’m a butterfly, I’m a wee bumblebee, I’m a fairy, I’m an airplane.’ ‘I’ll see you the next time,’ she says, nodding earnestly, when she leaves-
—you’ve been coughing all night and you shiver under a thin duvet in a tiled room designed for summer. Outside the rain is heavy and water runs down the hills. It falls in puddles were the chickens are pecking amongst the bins overflowing with used toilet paper. The British sold the Greeks bad pipes, you’ve been told too many times, and now they seem to blame you personally for their sewage problems. You climb slowly upstairs to the room above the bakery and huddle over the tiny heater, attempting to teach teenagers a language that they don’t want to learn as they mock you in a language that you don’t know. Your throat is raw and you struggle to be heard over the sound of church bells next door. Afterwards, you take the bread and a coffee back to bed, along with a letter that has arrived from your best friend. You’re planning to island hop together in the summer, the volcanic ash beaches of Santorini, the glitter sands of Ios. You try to remember what it’s like to feel warm and burrow deeper into the pillows. You read that she’s got a new job that she’s saving for her wedding, that she won’t be travelling with you, and that she knows you won’t mind, she knows how independent you are, she wonders if you will return home—
—the cemetery is cold. You pull your too thin jacket tight around you. Rain runs down the back of your neck. You remember your grandpa tucking you into the single bed in the room you shared with your sister. He smelled of cigarettes and soap. He pulled the blanket over your head and told you that you were in a tent, the rain against the window was the sound of sizzling sausages. Do you smell them? he whispered, and you nodded. When the coffin is lowered into the ground your mum lets out a cry and turns to your sister. Your niece hugs your mum’s leg. Later, back at the house you eat sausage rolls and drink whisky. Your niece is perched on your mum’s knee and your mum strokes her hair. You hear her ask who the lady is and you realise that it is you—
—San Francisco has drawn you in with its Chinese laundries and Italian hotels, the bay and the steep winding streets. Around every corner you catch a glimpse of the rust-red bridge stretching off into the mist. Since you’ve arrived you’ve rarely spoken and you feel like there is glass between you and the city. You’re passively recording without emotion and your memories are holiday snapshots: here you are watching a drag queen doing street-side piercings in the Castro district; here you are drinking a martini on the twenty-first floor of a hotel bar in the Mission; you again eating chowder from a bread bowl at Fisherman’s Wharf. At a party in a flower painted house you see red hair that could only be Finn’s but when he turns round you realise that he’s someone else and when you kiss him he tastes of eucalyptus and brine. You slip into your host’s bedroom, dial a familiar number. The line is dead—
—You skype your family every Sunday now when they meet for lunch at your sister’s house. The first time your niece had tried to climb into the screen and cried when she couldn’t manage. This time she is cheerful. Are you going to the beach? Can I come? You wish you could say yes. In the background you can see the snow through the French windows and hear Antique Roadshow burbling from the television. Your sister is trying out a new recipe. She tells you that she will make it for you when you come back. You can almost smell the food and feel the radiator warmth of the room. When are you coming back? Your niece asks. You’ve been away for a long long time. She kisses her fingers and places them on the screen-
—the man at the check-in desk smiles, a gold tooth glinting in his dark face as he hands you back your passport. You grin and the excitement swells in your chest. You turn towards the toilets, pulling out change for the toilet-paper attendant and she smiles at you too; hers is a closed-mouth smile. You wash your hands thoroughly and splash your face. The carbolic soap smell reminds you of your grandpa’s bathroom. The black and white tiles, the toilet-paper dolly and the coldness. Right now you wish you could step into that coldness and feel it on your cheeks. You lift your ponytail up and dry the sweat on the back of your neck with the remainder of the thin paper. You glance again at the departure board and its list of adventures. Buenos Aires, Bali, Kerala, New York. Tango, and beaches at sunset, skyscrapers and strange food with new people. Then it’s straight to the departure gate, black coffee gulped. Final call for the flight—
—a hundred words for drunk. Fifty words for rain. It catches on peoples’ hair and sparkles like sequins. You want to stick out your tongue and taste it. The band is a blur on the outside stage. Hash smoke sweet in the air makes you cough. Grass is soft and green beneath your damp trainers. Pale blue, far away sky. And you’re all creeps. Your eyeballs are peeled back. And you’re all weirdos, Rain dancing on your skin. You don’t know what you’re doing here. Your best friend rests her arm along your shoulder. Do you belong here?
Margaret Callaghan is a writer and researcher who lives in Glasgow after spells in Crete, Barcelona. London and Cambridge. She is currently working on a play.