Going to St Andrew's Soon

I’m thinking of planning a trip to St Andrew in the dead of the winter when the city looks its best. I could catch the bus up and be done with the whole thing in half a day.

When I think of the supposed winds coming through the supposed belltowers- I think of Andrew himself, a man I’ve tried to write about to no success, a man who comes into my mind like a tick in the heat of restless nostalgia. I met Andrew in throes of my time working as a barista. He came in unmistakably, giant, American, with dark sunglasses, carrying a tasteless Prince Andrew mug. He also spoke incessantly and brashly to anyone, trapping me by the sun-soaked doorway while I tried to read on my break. I was offstandish at first. After all, he was 38 and I was merely 19. He was also conservative and opinionated, and behind those dark glasses, I never knew what he was thinking or even if he was meeting my eyes while we spoke.

I knew he was a local because we would meet on the street occasionally. Coming home from the club with friends, I would suddenly collide with him. He was rarely able to sleep at a normal time and tended to go to the gym in the early hours of the morning. Wide eyed and itchy, I would shift from foot to foot while we exchanged slightly awkward pleasantries, and then he would depart, slipping into the city without a trace, just the way he came.

One of these times sticks out to me still. I was alone, head down with my keys in my fist, marching in the direction of home. I was trying to ignore a Holloway crazy who had come into my vicinity swinging an aluminium bar and murmuring about the time he allegedly murdered his wife. Heart pounding, I began to survey my options, eyes scanning for the nearest open corner shop, when Andrew slipped into view. He deescalated seamlessly, coolly, and then offered to walk me to my street or all the way home, whatever I was comfortable with. Still wary, I took my street home alone, but I was grateful and relieved. From then on I considered Andrew a strange friend of mine.

Andrew began to make more appearances at staff get togethers. He managed to slip into such situations. I gathered that he must have been a bit lonely. I began to tell my best friend Esme about him, laughing about the crude and outlandish things he used to say, discussing how he was predictable and how he wasn’t. My boyfriend thought he was strange. I didn’t care- I was proud to be crossing the boundaries of politics, age and gender, proud to be included in adult conversations about How Life Works.

It wasn’t long until I introduced him to Esme. Andrew began to slot into my regular rotation of friends. Andrew, Esme and I would go to a bar and drink and laugh and I would- with a tinge of resentment- listen to them talk about things that flew over my head, discussions I did not have the ability to slip into. We must have looked strange, a bearded grey man and his two polygamous young wives- who clearly weren’t his daughters due to the unmistakable boom of his accent. Andrew would always talk about daughters. He wanted one so desperately, so purely, above marriage, above partnership. He had been married once and they were childless, but he talked incessently of his mythical Georgia peach and the baby girl they would raise. He didn’t care if they stayed married, he just wanted a child. And he wanted to live in Georgia.

East Coast born and raised, Andrew had packed his bags and left for St Andrews for University. He later moved to London, around age 30 or so, and although he was worldly and had spent a quarter of his life in the UK he never really acclimatised to British culture. He knew this and wanted to leave, was talking about it all the time. I never thought it would happen. I supposed he had come to the UK to leave his life behind. His father was a chainsmoker- even smoking in the shower- and died when he was young. He survived as the glass child of two, his brother was disabled and his mother was a WASPy maniac. This made me feel close to him. It made sense for who he was, it made me more comfortable about my own neuroticisms. It made sense to me that he would leave it all behind. And so it made me sad that this land was not so fruitful for him.

There was one evening with Andrew that I’ll never forget. He invited myself, Esme and her boyfriend at the time round for dinner. We arrived nervously. He was nervous too. He had spent the whole day cooking this beautiful ragù, the whole apartment was filled with the smell. I looked around the room. It looked like something out of American Psycho, spotlessly clean with all the objects arranged uniformly around the edges of the space. Even the books were stacked on the floor with no shelves. His dog had died four years ago but grief-stricken he was still unable to part with the dog’s bed, and it sat looking unused by the window. Two of the four chairs by the dining table still had plastic wrap on them. He had bought them for the occasion.

I knew that Andrew was a little lonely and tired, just looking forward to his eventual move back to the states. But with his multitude of colourful stories about his life I was shocked by the state of affairs. I made eye contact with Esme across the room, who looked at her plate with a hard stare. He smiled and told us to tuck in.

The meal was nice. Esme and her boyfriend and Andrew talked excitedly, about polyamory, about his flirtatious neighbour’s girlfriend, about politics, about the podcast we had talked about creating with the mediocre premise being Liberal socialites come up against conservative American. As the evening climbed on, I began to become more and more tightlipped until I was practically electric with anxiety, leg vibrating the table. He served dessert and didn’t eat any because he hates it. I slapped my knees and stood up, booking it for the door. That night I lay awake in bed long after I climbed into it. This was close to Christmas-time.

A few months later I was notified by someone that Andrew had sexually assaulted her. He must have known that I knew, because I heard nothing from him for a long while. I messaged him to tell him that I was sorry to see things end this way. He replied almost instantly: ‘I think highly of you. Be good.’

I thought of him much after that. I felt guilty that I hadn’t messaged him more aggressively, that I had tiptoed around what he had done. I had never felt threatened by him, but I guess I had always been wary. Both of us had, me and Esme. We never met him alone and always arrived and left at the same time. The only time I had spoken to him on my own was when I ran into him on the street. I was shocked and saddened that somebody I had such confusing affection for had been exactly who I had expected him to be when we first crossed paths.

Later that year I went to America. We had spoken about it much when I had bought the tickets, making loose plans to come see him when I was over in the states, perhaps stay in Georgia for a few nights. I’d be crossing over in Atlanta anyway. I thought about him in Atlanta airport, knowing that he was only miles away. I was annoyed by the condescending tone of his last message. I was angry and disgusted by what he had done. In New York I sent him some pictures of my trip with no caption and waited for him to reply with some sort of explanation, to bring the whole thing up himself and come to terms with it, so I could close the chapter on this whole affair and move on.

He responded quickly again. Nice pics, still in London. I waited. He sent a follow up, something along the lines of ‘Not sure what you’ve been told, but I guess that’s how men are treated these days’.

I closed my phone and collapsed backward onto the bed, a guilty sick feeling about reaching out climbing up my throat. I never spoke to him again after that.