I’ve documented it several times before that as a young teenager I was immature. Add to the mix that I had big ears, was tall and skinny, and according to my parents, not the most handsome of youngsters. So my self-esteem, not that I knew what that was, was poor.
I never believed I would ever get a girlfriend, I mean, who would want to go out with somebody like me? That was how I thought back then, and often do to this day.
One of my first jobs was for the local parks department as an apprentice gardener. The job wasn’t very varied and the foreman seemed to only feel fit to put me on daily litter-picking duty. There I was in my badly-fitting council-issue bib-and-brace uniform, wandering around the city’s huge public park. carrying a stick with a nail in the end, and a black plastic bag for putting the rubbish in. I hated it. It worried me, what others seen me as, a loser with crap job literally. From Monday to Friday, wondering around carrying my black bag and stick, filling it with people’s carelessly discarded litter, fag-ends and often worse discharges.
It was just another day when something quite remarkable happened. I was litter-picking, alone as always, and near a wooden shelter in the park known as the Swiss Hut, a creepy place where tramps and cider-drinkers often hung out, though a good place to be out of the distant eyes of my foreman. My attention was drawn to an attractive young lady sat on a nearby park bench. She appeared to be watching me. Every now and then, I would sneakily glance up and observe her watching and occasionally smiling at me. I was curious, but also extremely shy, so I said nothing and carried on stabbing dog-butts with my nail on a stick, trying to look as cool as one possibly could, given the circumstances.
“I’ve watched you working for several days,” the stranger girl said aloud.
“Who me?” I replied, like the park was full of people!
“Yes, what’s your name?“
She seemed genuinely interested in me, something I’d never experienced before. Over the next few minutes. I learnt her name was Catherine and she was a student at a college near the park. Catherine told me how she had been watching out for me during her dinner hours which she spent in the park every day. She was an attractive girl with a full figure. Sorry, but as a 17-year-old virgin boy, that was always on my mind. This happened over fifty years ago, so my recollection of precise details have been dismissed to the pits of my aging mind. I’ve no idea how it happened but soon after we started dating, as it was called back then.
Catherine was intelligent and a mature young lady, far above my league, and we were together for five or more years in which we eventually made plans to get engaged. To this day, I have no idea what Catherine saw in me. My parents adored her, and she became part of the family, visiting for meals at least once every week. At first, I was madly in love with her, and her to me. That is, until I got into some bother leading to me making the decision that Catherine and I should part company. Those were dark days for me. I’d made mistakesn and a decision that was wrong, selfish and heartbreaking for all concerned.
Over the years that followed, Catherine stayed in touch with my mum and dad. Whenever I visited home, they would informed me how Catherine had asked after me, every time she visited them. My mum reminded me how I’d broke her heart and how she still held a candle for me asfter all these years.
Skip forward in time to the noughties, forty years after I’d dumped Catherine. I was visiting mum with Jane, my present partner and soul-mate. During a conversation with mum, I asked her if she ever heard from Catherine.
Mum told me how Catherine had married someone, then separated before she was killed.
“What?” I said, shocked at mum’s matter-of-fact statement.
“Killed? How, when?“
Mum shared the sad news.
“Some months ago now, Catherine was returning home in her car. She was driving across the main road junction, near her home in Highnam, when an ambulance on an emergency call, rammed into the side of her car. She was killed instantly. It was in the news.“
I was shocked and very upset to be told such devastating news. Catherine was special and I think I still held a place in my heart for her. The news affected me deeply, though under the circumstances I had to hold any emotions inside me.
At the time, I was a self-employed freelance courier by day, and studying to became a medium in my spare time. Over the coming days, I searched the internet for evidence of the accident. I scoured the Gloucester newspapers archives, television and radio reports and everything I could online. I couldn’t find any digital evidence to validate mum’s story, but during a subsequent conversation on the phone with mum, she reassured me the story was true.
A few weeks later, I received a call from my logistic supplier. He needed an urgent delivery to Gloucester from Liverpool. I told Jane that when I’d dropped in Gloucester, I was going to the Highnan Church to see if I could find Catherine’s resting place. Of course, I had no idea whether she was buried or cremated, or even what surname she would have had at that time.
Late in the afternoon I arrived at the church, carrying a small bunch of flowers. I spent a long time searching through the headstones for Catherine’s. I didn’t find it. After placing the flowers near the church entrance, I decide to sit on a nearby bench. I closed my eyes and prayed. I said sorry to Catherine aloud before crying for a few minutes.
It was getting dark and I knew I had a four hour drive north to my home. Somehow, in some spiritual way. I felt at ease with myself and the situation. Since then, I’ve scoured the internet time and time again for some evidence of the accident, but found nothing to support my mum’s story. Even today, fifty years after first meeting Catherine, I have a forever lasting affection in my memories for Catherine. Who knows what might have been, if only I’d not been such an idiot young man.
