The Echo

Photograph: G Cooper

1243.

She climbed the steps of the train. She waved to me. My daughter.

‘Till the next time,’ I said to myself.

I was echoing the words my father used to say to me forty years ago standing on this same railway platform. There was a smile on his face although I knew his heart was heavy because I was going back to the city.

Isn’t this how our lives move forward, though? From the moment of our birth onwards, each day taking another step away from home: primary school, secondary school, university, the big city, work. Parting. Learning. Losing innocence.

Once I had bought a car, I used to drive like the wind to get home. ‘I was fifteen minutes faster than the train.’

‘And what will you do with those fifteen minutes?’ he would ask, out of concern for me. ‘You know it’s not the quick who win the race …’

As the years went by, I became well known as an artist. He worried that I had turned my back on the most important things.

‘If your art isn’t about the truth, then what is it about?’ he said. He didn’t expect an answer.

He was proud of me. But he wanted me to look for ‘the old paths’.

I became middle aged and grey. The last of the mooring ropes between us gradually slackened, although it never broke – like the cord of three strands he used to talk about.

Finally, the day came when I had to let go of the rope. It burnt into my hands.

I was still standing on the platform, although the train had gone out of sight.

‘Till the next time.’