autumn illustration

Until It’s Time for You to Go

December 1973. A single phone call brought him back into her life. It was a name she hadn’t heard in years: Ronald Spence. A childhood friend. A name that’d been conflated with promise and potential. The child prodigy, primed to be groomed for Britain’s halls of power. She thought she might hear his name again one day in humdrum political campaign adverts on the radio or telly.

This wasn’t what she expected.

Drug charges. Repeat offender. Caught cultivating and smoking cannabis. Habitual heroin user. Low life. Drifter. Deadbeat. Junkie. He needed someone to pay his bail.

They called her during rehearsal for Spartacus. Some solicitor’s aid in London. Said they had a client who’d given her name. She had to shunt her second on so she could make the trip. At half-past one in the morning, she came with the £4,000 bail.

There was no “Long time no see,” or “Thanks for coming up, Harlow,” when she arrived. He just gave her a long look and settled on: “Nothing is more terrifying than your own potential, Harlow.” As though he knew precisely what she was thinking: what have you done to yourself, and why?

All profundity, though, was thrown aside when he followed up with, “You’re a bottle blonde now, I see.”

She raised a brow. “And you’re a heroin addict now, I hear.”

He laughed. Rich and melodic.

She paid his bail. His doctor, wearing the look of a funeral home director on the clock, took her aside and put Ronald’s medical records in her hand. She didn’t get a chance to read through them—somewhere between the courthouse and hers, they disappeared. Likely down Ronald’s pants, never to be seen again.

But she took him home. Her home. He had no place of residence, nowhere to go. His family wanted nothing to do with him. His father, a high-flying lawyer who once defended the Rolling Stones on drug charges, now claimed he had no son. His mother destroyed herself with drink to cope with her son’s addictions. Yet for a time, she’d been desperate to keep her only child (and his habit) afloat. Sold every nice thing she owned. It all came to a head when she went to pawn her jewellery. Because someone else had beaten her to it.

Her wedding ring was all that was left. Everything else was shot up into the veins of her twenty-year-old son.

His parents disowned him. His uncle and aunts, too, when word got around. Cousins. Grandparents. Everyone. “I am officially persona non grata, Harlow,” he told her on the train home. He said it as if warning her that she ought to reconsider the charity of taking him in—she, too, might be branded an outcast for daring to even look at him, let alone put a roof over his head.

She ignored it. “Well, if you’re without friends, even, where have you been living?”

“Oh, I didn’t say I was without friends. No, me and Big Daddy Milton, we’re a team. We fly real high.” He said it as though he were on stage in Shakespeare, not sitting beside her on the last train for Wandsworth. 

“Dare I ask?”

He laughed—a quiet puff of air through his large nose. There was a distinct lack of mirth to it. “Poor Milton. They threw the whole book at him. Got a year in prison. And that’s with probation.” He sat back then, lounging against the train seat and unspooling his thin and ragged body with a sigh. For a few moments, he simply watched the ceiling, likely staring through it and back into his memories. The movement of the train gently rocked him. “It should’ve been me; he never smoked the stuff.”

She asked after the subject of his guilt—this ‘Big Daddy Milton’ character—and received a rundown of Ronald’s life for the past four years.

Ronald Spence had been arrested while hiding in a cannabis patch in Oxford. The property belonged to ‘Big Daddy Milton’, some hotshot barrister. For two years, Ronald lived with him. Before that, he’d lived in a squat in East London. There, he’d befriended two women, the eighteen-year-old Jessica Bobin, and the twenty-eight-year-old divorcee and mother of four, Patricia Nodge. Tired of the squat, they’d set their sights on better horizons and motored off for York. They got halfway there before the car gave out. For half the night, they sat on the roadside before someone thought to pull over.

Milton Dobson was a barrister from Oxford. Forty. A bachelor. Had some weakness about the shoulders. Hair the colour of ash. Had no idea how to fix a car. But he’d pulled over.

Abandoning their wreck, he’d taken them back to his home in Oxford. It was a quaint, tired cottage, the kind of place that felt ill at ease without a small family occupying it. Dobson let them stay for a week. Then a month. Then a year.

During the week, he resided in London to practice law. But on weekends, he’d stay on at the cottage. Patricia kept house for him. Jessica read every beauty and gossip magazine this side of England, and Ronald tended the garden and kept his heroin habit.

“You make a strange group of friends—the heroin addict, the mother of four, the sprite, and the burnt-out lawyer,” Bella commented.

“All lame ducks, the lot of us. Unlike you, Harlow. First soloist for the Royal Ballet.” He raised his brows expectantly, breathing out a lungful of cigarette smoke.

“I’m surprised you know.”

He was quiet for a breath. Before he dropped his cigarette on the train floor and crushed it underfoot. “I went and saw Onegin two seasons ago.” Oh. “Almost didn’t recognise you.” The way he looked at her then. The way men look at women sometimes. The intensity behind it; the sexual undercurrent.

She turned away, curbing the urge to roll her eyes. “Did you enjoy it?” she asked.

“Greatly.”

“Why didn’t you—wait. The flowers: were they you?”

After one particular late-night performance, backstage, she’d found a small bouquet of flowers awaiting her on her dressing table. There was no note attached, no name given. Just a posy of red carnations.

Here and now, Ronald smirked. “Did you enjoy it?” He turned her question back on her.

“You caused a minor stir—it’s not every performance that one of the grunts receives mystery flowers. Usually, all the praise, flowers and chocolates go to our principal. Bets were running on who my secret admirer was.”

“Was I an option?”

“Yes.”

Ronald was quiet—stunned at being caught red-handed, most likely.

She could have told him that half the company were wagering on her wannabe-fancy-man being some fat, elderly French millionaire, or a serial stalker (who collected the skin of ballerinas). But her own quiet bet had apparently paid off. “Red carnations gave you away, Ronnie. Anyone else would have plumped for roses.”

“You used to like carnations.”

“Still do.”

Quiet. Nothing but the gentle click-clack of the train tracks.

“Are you still on heroin?” she broached the tension, eager to ask the other question that was burning on her mind (and change the subject).

He took the question in stride. “No.”

“How about cannabis?”

“Never on Saturdays, never on Sundays.”

She raised a brow. Ronnie didn’t respond, except for a quiet, enigmatic smirk. An inside joke she wasn’t privy to, obviously.

That first night, that was all he cared to tell her of himself. She didn’t pry any further. What he’d shared already was enough to keep her mind turning over for hours—days, even. Long gone was the golden child and star pupil once set on a path that’d funnel him directly into Whitehall; that boy who’d bullied her into being his best friend. Instead, here sat a strung-out recovering junkie who could have passed as an off-brand Mick Jagger. It was a lot to process.

He settled into her home, as well as her life. Found a corner of her days and nights to wedge himself into. It unnerved her initially how easily he did it; how easily he stitched himself into her habits, rhythms, and wonts, and made himself indispensable to her.

He tended the garden, kept her house, and cooked for her. He spoke to and befriended her neighbours (Old Margaret, the widow over her back wall, handed him gifts—of the kind couples looking to start married life received). He fixed the rusted radiator. Fixed the broken banister. Wanted to restore her late father’s old 1930s roadster.

But most of all, he loved the garden. She’d never seen such a passionate love affair. He spent hours salvaging what he could, turning the overgrown Amazonian jungle into the Kew Gardens. She bought him a new set of gardening tools—her mother’s were rusted beyond salvation.

It wasn’t all smooth sailing, though. Despite the congenial air, sometimes the tension bubbled to the surface. Sometimes, she lost her temper.

It was something to be expected, perhaps. Because sometimes she forgot the circumstances that brought Ronald Spence back into her life.

The problem was he was so well spoken. Upright. Confident. He may not have gotten past his first day at Cambridge, but he gave off the air of a Cambridge Man. That good breeding that he came from was so ingrained in him. He spoke with the plummy accent of his forebears and could comfortably settle himself into a robust debate about the finer points of Thomas Aquinas or Foucault. One evening, rather than pull out her records and shuffle the couch back to dance, he had her sit centre of the couch so he could recite the Odyssey to her in Ancient Greek. Then Virgil’s Aeneid in Latin.

It set her teeth on edge.

At school, they’d been two peas in a pod. They’d met in drama club, or the “Ledgedites Society”, as their little troop of thespians preferred to be called. She made a mean Don Quixote at twelve. He did an uncanny Richard the Third when armed with a pillow-turned-hump beneath his shirt.

But, beyond the theatrics of the stage, she was quiet and studious. He maintained his brash loudness on and off stage, always vibrant and so full of life.

And brilliant.

Ronnie Spence accomplished everything with the apparent effortlessness of a god. She’d always been second to him. At Ledgewick, she’d been relegated to his shadow despite her own intellectual promise and potential. He’d been tapped on the shoulder in the womb to one day become prime minister. He came from the right family, the right social milieu, had the right name and gender, and was prone to thinking the right thoughts. He had everything.

After she’d left for the Royal Ballet School, he continued on at Ledgewick College, their star pupil shining bright. Even before graduating, he secured Cambridge’s most prestigious scholarship.

He was introduced to heroin on his first day at university. He didn’t make it six months before forfeiting his scholarship.

…But he’d once been brilliant.

And that’s what made her irate. Such potential and promise, wasted. He was the possessor of many a gift. And look how he’d squandered it. God, how royally he’d fucked himself.

She never said it to him outright. But when she yelled at him over trivial things, he was clever enough to suss out why she was really yelling at him. “Like I told you in the nick, Harlow. There’s nothing more terrifying than facing your own potential. Overcoming the beast that is your own promise…” He looked at her then, quiet and serious. “Only one of us made it, Harlow,” he whispered.

She intended to help him get his life back on track. He was twenty-four. Brainier than the average prep school science teacher (even after the hammering of drugs and alcohol for four long years). A good-time Charlie who genuinely liked people (or, at least, was very good at pretending he did). He wasn’t without time or options. She’d help him.

She suggested he find a job. There were jobs going down at the docks. She could also ask around with the mothers at the ballet school she ran, see if their husbands caught wind of any work going somewhere. Grocers and corner shops were always looking for someone. Maybe some nursery or the local council were looking for gardeners.

“I’ll try the docks,” he told her, laughing. He watched her, and she couldn’t puzzle out the look on his face.

They went on like this for a while, pretending he had a future. She hadn’t an inkling that something was off—not until Ronnie disappeared for a day and a night. At the time, she’d thought he’d done a bunk, that he’d grown tired of domesticity and run off back to a life of drugs, sex and rock’n’roll. Maybe it’d been inevitable.

Then came the knock a little before midnight. Two young women stood on her doorstep with Ronnie propped up between them. He was near comatose, limp, and racked with chills. She’d seen livelier corpses.

“He said he wanted to come back here. No hospital,” the older of the two women said—a blonde who looked and sounded like she’d brook no nonsense.

The problem had to be drug-related—he’d overdosed on dirty heroin, surely.

The women shared a look, and it became apparent that the truth was much worse. “Ronnie ain’t told you?” the younger of the two said, a shapely redhead with a thick cockney accent.

“Told me what?”

The blonde cleared her throat. “This is awkward. No, girl. He’s come back…‘cuz he wants to die here.”

Cancer. Leukemia. Stage Three. Riddled through his bones. He had little more than a year left to live.

At the hospital, she learnt Ronald had been avoiding his weekly check-ups. She gave him a dressing down. For everything: for lying, for not telling her, for neglecting treatment, for not trusting her. Then she burst into tears.

His health had been deteriorating for weeks, and he couldn’t face it. It was easier to run away, he told her…until an episode took him to the brink of death, and he realised he didn’t fancy dying on the streets in a puddle of piss. He’d asked Jessica and Patricia to bring him back.

“It was cruel. It was cruel not to tell me.”

“I’m sorry. But you’re all alone in that house. I didn’t want to give you false hope.”

False hope? False hope for what?

She felt all flushed with fever, embarrassed by his eyes. He saw too much of her. Knew she enjoyed the carnations and foxgloves he brought her from the garden. He knew she lay awake at night, tossing and turning until she made herself seasick with worry over him. Knew how he liked his coffee and tea. She knew to put on Roberta Flack whenever the mood took him. Fixed the rip in his jeans. She bought him the Stones’ latest album on a whim. Bought him boot polish. Bought him booze. Bought him all his toiletries, new gardening tools, anything and everything he ever expressed a need for.

Thank God he never asked for smack or hash.

But Ronnie saw all of this. He saw right through her silly pretence of keeping distance. He knew that when she sought his company, his job was to keep her warm and laughing.

She’d missed him. She missed the casual affection they’d enjoyed at school. And now that she had it back…

She managed to accurately diagnose the reason for him keeping his terminal prognosis under lock and key: so she’d treat him like a person, not a walking corpse. He enjoyed her yelling at him and being on his case to get his act together. Liked pretending he had a future. “Sorry, Harlow. But, if it’s any consolation, I’ll be out of your hair in six months.”

“No.”

“Sorry. No say in the matter, I’m afraid.”

The tears were relentless. They came welling up, and she had to cover her mouth. Ronald took pity on her. “Don’t regret yelling at me, old thing. I got a kick out of it.”

Finally, she sat beside him on his hospital bed. But what to say? She picked up his wig off the nightstand. “I knew this was fake. I just knew it.”

“What gave it away?”

“Other than the shaggy-goat chic? The sheer degree of volume you’ve got. I have to lacquer my hair to get anything close.”

He laughed. “You sound jealous. You’re welcome to try it on.”

“Thank you. But I wouldn’t want to give you girl cooties.”

“Who said I don’t want girl cooties? Maybe I want my wig slathered in them.”

She laughed, but popped the wig back on the nightstand. “I don’t know what you think you could accomplish with a wig full of girl cooties.”

“Oh, I can think of a few things.” His voice dropped to smooth velvet, and she found she couldn’t look at him.

“…Least your libido hasn’t perished yet.”

“I truly do pray that’s the last thing to go.”

She shook her head. “You are incorrigible.”

She wanted him to stay on with her. It was either he came to hers, or he stayed on at the hospital for the few months he had left. She couldn’t abide by that. So she took him back home, where she could keep him company and comfortable…as he died.

God, he was only twenty-four. Same age as her. At twenty-four, you were supposed to be figuring out what to do for the rest of the long road ahead of you—career, love, family, hobbies, and vocations. Not waiting to die. “How strange life is sometimes, hmm?” he whispered one night. “To go from the yellow brick road to guaranteed success, to sleeping in a gutter awaiting Death.”

“Excuse you. My house is not a gutter.”

“No. Nor is your bed.” With a smile into her neck, he rolled on top. She sighed, settled back, and let him do as he pleased.

But his romantic overtures were interrupted by her fists bunching at his shoulders. “It’s cruel,” she whispered into the dark. He stopped mouthing at her skin. “It’s not strange,” she clarified, “it’s cruel.”

After a time, he resumed his business at her neck. “…Life often isn’t kind, Bella.” Kiss. “It feels no such obligation.” Kiss. “Unlike you, my dear.”