A difficult friendship

Alcohol-fuelled pub environments always intimidated me. The wish to be somewhere else usually gathered strength about the time the evening had just begun for whomever I happened to be with. I’d distance myself from them, perch on a stool and retreat into music, tapping on the bar the rhythms or notes of a piano piece.

‘I play Fur Elise too.’ The voice was deep and resonant.

I found myself standing next to a tall young man. I considered myself tall, but he towered above me.

His smile was sardonic. ‘What’s someone like you doing in a shameless place like this?’

‘Friends dragged me here,’ I replied.

‘Take my word for it, if you are looking for a soul mate, you won’t find them here.’

We chatted about classical music and movies and literature. James was in university studying for a psychology degree.

‘Would you like to come to my place and try out my Steinway?’ he asked.

‘Of course,’ I replied without hesitation.

‘What are you doing tomorrow evening?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Come for dinner.’ He wrote down his address and phone number.

His Steinway turned out to be a ramshackle upright that had gone way past its junkyard date. I didn’t mind, attributing the deception to his sense of humour. The piano suited James. He played in a ramshackle way, big chords, fast passages, fingers flying and missing most of the notes, snippets of this and that, not a single complete piece. Even his Fur Elise was just a few bars. But he was a great cook.
I invited James for dinner. He was effusive about my piano and the Sri Lankan meal, and he suggested I could do with a little more furniture. The next day he loaned me a sofa, two comfy chairs, and a coffee table.
My sister, a single mum, fell ill. She asked me to help with the weekly groceries. Because I didn’t drive, on four Saturday mornings James drove me to a supermarket. He was turning out to be a great friend, even if I was wary of him. He was highly opinionated, and he didn’t brook disagreement. He was scathing of people he didn’t like.

I discovered I had crossed a line when I rubbished astrology. In my defence I had no idea that not only was James a fervent believer, but also he compiled horoscopes. He asked what time I was born. The best I could do was, ‘Late in the evening.’

‘I need the exact time. Horoscopes are a precise science.’ He then poured scorn over my ‘abysmal’ ignorance. His arsenal contained many such words. They would have shattered my self-confidence if I’d not perceived the troubled soul uttering them.

He rang a few days later and apologised. ‘If you are home on Friday evening, I’ll bring a pot roast and a decent red.’

He didn’t come. His phone rang out. The next afternoon he rang collect, from a city over a thousand kilometres away. ‘I’m in a refuge. I have no money. Can you come and get me?’

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘Some time on Friday I blacked out at home. When I woke up I was lying on the floor in a shopping centre here.’

‘How did you end up there?’

‘I have no idea. Can you come and get me?’

After maxing my credit card on airfares, I flew out the next morning and collected him from the refuge. We caught a late afternoon flight back. James told me he suffered a lithium imbalance, but he had been feeling so good recently, actually since we’d become friends, that he had stopped taking his pills. He promised to resume his medication. He gave me a cheque for the airfares and said he owed me dinner. After a sumptuous pot roast dinner at his place the following Saturday, he went into his bedroom and came out with a velvet box from which he retrieved a necklace.

‘I had it valued yesterday,’ he said.

‘What’s it worth?’ I asked, not out of interest, more out of desperation to say something, anything, in case my silence offended him.

From his reaction, my throwaway question was worse than silence. His eyes narrowed. Suspicion shot out of them. ‘Why are you asking? It’s worth a lot of money, at least…I’d better not tell you.’ He returned the necklace to its box, theatrically snapped it shut and took it back to his bedroom.

Early next morning, my phone rang. ‘I know it was you, so don’t deny it.’

‘Deny what?’

‘You tried to break in and steal my necklace.’

‘What?’ I slammed down the phone. It rang again. I didn’t answer.

I didn’t hear from James for over a month. Then he rang and said he’d admitted himself to a mental hospital. He begged me to visit him. I was ushered into a large visitors’ common room. James swept out in an ankle-length kaftan. He clutched two framed, autographed photographs of the Pope and the Queen Mother. He declared he was a direct descendant of one of Edward the eighth’s illegitimate children. I spent an hour with him, during which other patients engaged me. One, an old lady, assured me she had no face. Another one, a young man, told me he had a project to complete before inheriting a fortune. He went into disgusting detail and even James was taken aback and chased him away.

Two visits and three weeks later James rang saying he was being discharged the next day but needed somewhere to live for a week or two until he found his own place.

I took him in, against my better judgement. I felt I could endure him for a fortnight. He brought with him a beautiful white cat. He was at home all day. He played my piano, leaving marks from his coffee mug on the woodwork, ignoring my entreaties to use the coaster placed on the piano for that very purpose. A neighbour complained that the music coming out of my place was too loud, even for daytime. The Phantom of the Opera blew my speakers. His cat disappeared. He accused me of killing it. The neighbour from over the back fence confirmed his dog was responsible. James then accused me of trying to poison him. When he upset coffee into my piano, I decided I could take no more. I ordered him to pack his bags and leave. He hurled grenade after grenade of imaginative, eloquent accusations and insults. But he left. He rang me a few weeks later and informed me he had found his true soul mate, unlike the fake one he had before.

‘Yes, you,’ he confirmed. ‘You showed so much promise but ended up a profound disappointment.’

He added that he was moving far away from me.

I never heard from him again..