Don't Give Up, Tom Drake

Don't Give Up, Tom Drake Part 6

Thirteen

The Morning of 1st May – Again

Drake had left Evie's flat feeling both confused and relieved. Confused, because it had taken him his whole twenty nine years to find someone he couldn't be without, yet here he was, relieved having escaped the lunacy of Evie's beliefs. Reincarnation, he silently mocked. Bloody dressing up and lying on a bed for ages, pretending it's nineteen forty bloody two!

'Why did I have to fall in love with a loon!' Drake heard himself say out loud, as he walked up the concrete pavement towards Plaistow train station that was waiting for him at the top of the hill.

A gentle breeze brushed against Drake's face as he crossed the last road before the station. He found himself, quite unexpectedly, rooted to the ground halfway across a junction and fortunately, no vehicles were entering or exiting the road at the time. He looked to his right. Down the road that he and Evie had travelled the evening before, when they had alighted at West Ham station and not Plaistow, which would have been a quicker way to go.

'Why did you take me down Corporation Street?' Drake wondered aloud, as others walked by and chose to ignore the weirdo talking to himself.

Intrigued by Evie's unknown aims, Drake made his way back to the curb and started to walk down the street with its Georgian houses lining either side.

'There's a reason,' Drake was still talking aloud.

The walk from one end of Corporation Street to the other was no longer than seven minutes at a normal pace, but Drake was taking his time, trying to understand the importance of where he was and what it was that was luring him.

He could see the end of the street approaching. There came to him a sudden sense of heightened reality. The air seemed fresher, the colours about him, clearer. At that moment, Drake felt that he had walked into an invisible brick wall. An undeniable urge to be there caught hold of him. He stopped and turned his face to the house to his right. On the light green door, above the frosted glass, the number, 222 in gold plate, shone out. Turning his whole frame, he went to within a couple of inches of the woodwork and stared at the number. Then, like a loud hailer sounding off behind him, Drake heard the roar of a motorbike. The sound was usually something Drake would dismiss, but this was something else, something true; something all too familiar to him. He spun around to face the road to see the bike. But there was nothing. There was no rider and certainly no bike. Yet, the echo of the engine and the smell of the petrol fumes hung in the air, filling his nostrils. Utterly perplexed, Drake threw a glance to either end of the street, hoping to catch the tail-end of the bike as it vanished around a bend. There were no bends and no tail-ends.

As the final hum of the ghost bike filtered away into the cool spring air, Drake turned his attention back to the green door numbered 222. A thought entered his mind as he stared. What would he find if he reached out with the palm of his hand and pushed the door open? For a moment, this entertaining thought seemed logical. He was on the verge of pushing at the door, going inside and seeing what he believed was already there.

'Stan?!'

The voice of a girl called out from above. Leaning back, Drake looked up to the window directly overhead. The window was closed. There was no girl there to call out.

Once again, this voice, this noise had been as clear and as real as the deep breaths Drake was now taking. He recalled what Evie had told him the previous night. That in a past life, in his past life, his name had been, Stanley MacDonald!

There came to Drake one of those moments in everybody's lives when we lose time, when we jump from one instant to another and can't remember things that happened in between. Drake failed to recall setting off, all he knew was, he was running, pounding the pavement with an all-consuming need to get back to Evie Potts.