Star Cross'd

22nd July 2010

‘Around 813 a hermit called Pelagio came to see the Bishop of Iria Flavia to report that he had witnessed a shower of stars.

This star shower began above the mountain we know today as Pico Sacro (sacred peak), and fell over a field near the forest of Libredon.

When the Bishop and his entourage searched the site, they found ruins, an altar and three tombs. The largest was identified as the Tomb of the Apostle Santiago. Word was sent to King Alfonso II, who ordered the construction of a chapel.

This original chapel was the foundation of the Cathedral and the city of Santiago de Compostela we know today - and the site was given the Latin name, “Campus Stellae” or “The Field of the Stars”…’

Lena put down the guidebook and gazed around at her surroundings. The café where she had stopped was located in a garden. A small, enclosed garden that obviously belonged to a private house. Since it was on the Way, the owner had thought they could make a good living by opening it and setting some tables up there. They had been right; all five tables were occupied by pilgrims sipping coffee and eating pinxos. At the far end of the garden was the house, ancient and stately, the elegance of years giving it grace and status. On the first floor a window opened out onto a balcony. Covered in ivy and constructed of decorated stone, in this Renaissance setting, it made her think of another balcony upon which a star-crossed lover once leaned, declaring that a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.

She snorted at the thought and drained her coffee. The irony! If only things in real life were so simple.

---

Lena had been walking the Camino for a week and a half now. Every day it was the same: wake with the sun and walk. Stop for breakfast, stop for lunch. Walk, walk, walk. Enter the motion of the land, stay true to the rhythm of your feet. And then, around four, find an albergue and rest. Go out for dinner or buy food from a supermarket and eat in the albergue. Then sleep when the sun droops and the following day repeat. An endless cycle, life, death, rebirth.

She talked to her fellow pilgrims. She told them her name and where she was from. They told her the same. They asked why she was on Camino and she gave a reason. She did not lie to them but she did not tell them the full truth. At the end of the conversation they went away thinking that that Polish girl who lives in Britain now is a nice girl. She’s good company. And of course, her being on Camino makes total sense. The Poles are very Catholic after all. She even wears a rosary and carries a small copy of Our Lady of Czestochowa. Very Catholic. But a nice girl. Fun, good company.

But they never learn about that which fills her mind. That which she talks to God about when she attends a Mass on the Way. That real reason why she came out here.

A balcony! The irony! ‘With love’s light wings did I o’erperch these walls, for stony limits cannot hold love out.’ That, at least, is true.

11th September 2035

She takes a sharp intake of breath when she sees the name on the agenda. Surely it can’t be him! After how long? Twenty-five years and there he is, entering her life again! Sitting alongside her on a panel discussing ‘Mental health and homelessness services: Working towards a common goal?’ is one Dr. Raymond Hilbery representing Homeless Link. What’s in a name? Could it really be him? It must be; that name is too unusual to belong to another.

After a third of a lifetime and he reappears.

What’s in a name?

---

“You’re on a pilgrimage after all.”

She looks at the American lady in her seventies whom she is walking with today. Her name is Deborah and Lena suspects that she was once a hippy. “What do you mean, I’m on a pilgrimage?”

“There is something on your mind; you seek guidance. And when on a pilgrimage you pray. You need to ask God to show you the way, and He will give you a guide.”

“How?”

Deborah smiles. “This is the Way, the mystical path. On Camino, anything is possible.”

---

“It helps to talk you know.”

She looked up. It was a man, a much older man. In his fifties perhaps. He wore a black T-shirt and a smile. He was English. She could tell by the language that he spoke and the accent he spoke it with.

“I’m not in any trouble,” she replied, “so I don’t need any help.”

Defensive, naturally defensive. The product of centuries of evolution. A Pole should not trust strangers. After all, look what they did.

“I didn’t say that you were but walking alone is much harder. It is so boring. Each kilometre seems like a mile. Talking passes the time.”

“That’s true I suppose.” She smiles. Lets those defences down slightly.

“Buen Camino! I’m Ray,” he says, proffering a hand. She shudders. The same name! A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but when the name is the same, it is still a shock.

“Lena,” she replies, grasping his handshake.

They walk. The Way is flat today. Flat and rather monotonous. “I heard that the meseta section is like this,” she says. “Flat and boring for days on end. Some people even skip it, taking a bus.”

“The meseta is like this, but you should not skip it,” Ray replies. “For me, the meseta has a beauty all of its own. On the meseta you don’t need to concentrate on the path. You just walk and get lost in your thoughts.”

“You have walked the Camino before?”

“This is my seventh time. Like so many people I have become addicted I am afraid.”

She laughs. “Yes, I have heard other peregrinos say the same. It gets under your skin. I must admit, I’m really enjoying it. More than I thought I would.”

“But is it doing what you want it to do?”

“What do you mean?”

“I did the Camino for the very first time when I was much the same age as you. A close friend of mine did it and they said it helps when you need to work stuff out in your head. Well, my head was a bit of a mess at the time, so I thought that I’d give it a go.”

“And did it work?”

“Like I said, this is my seventh time, so it must have done something right. But this is not about me, Lena. I am just an ageing hippy walking for the sake of it. You however, you I sense, are someone who is looking for answers.”

She stopped short, as if a punch had been landed in her stomach. The defences shot up once again. “You don’t know me, Ray,” she replied.

He smiled. “That is true.” He paused and looked up at the sun. “I shall say no more.”

For the next couple of kilometres they walked on in silence.

---

“Ever since the introduction of the Homelessness Act 2002 we can say that there has been a positive focus and change of direction governmental attitudes and policy towards both homelessness in general and rough sleeping in particular. However, whilst we at Homeless Link do welcome this change, we would argue that, in one particular aspect, the Act was fatally flawed, namely in that it has maintained silo thinking. Our job is to think about street sleeping, your job is to think about mental health. Any yet, we argue, only by a multi-disciplinary approach which tackles the multiple and complex needs of the individuals affected by homelessness can we ever attempt to solve…”

Lena listens to him with two ears. The first is as a professional, eager to hear what he has to bring to the table with regards to the reason for the conference. But the second is as a woman, a woman with emotions and a history. And that ear listens even harder, picking out every syllable and caressing it in her mind. It is him, after twenty-five years Ray Hilberry has re-entered her life. Yesterday, he had been but a shadowy memory, a set of blurry images in those photograph albums that she got out less and less, a quandary to meditate upon over a coffee when there were no distractions and the appeal of what-iffery became too strong.

And yet, as well as him, he is also… him.

It does not make any sense.

She starts to prayer, her lips moving but no sound coming out:

O Master, let me not seek as much

to be consoled as to console,

to be understood as to understand,

to be loved as to love…

---

“I am looking for answers actually,” she said. They were climbing a slight rise now. The village that they were heading towards could be seen on the horizon.

He nodded. “And…?”

“One answer actually, but I did not find it yet.”

He said nothing.

“It is about love,” she continued. Even as she said the words, she could not believe that she was telling these things to a total stranger. But then maybe that is why she was; a stranger is a stranger; what’s said on Camino stays on Camino. She would never see Ray again in her life.

This Ray.

“There is a boy. We are going out. We live together even. And he asked me to marry him. He is a good man, intelligent, educated, hard-working, fun. I like him a lot.”

“But…?”

“How do you know there’s a ‘but’?”

“There must be, otherwise you wouldn’t be justifying him to me.”

“There is another guy. I went out with him before. He is not so smart or educated. He can even be a bit of an idiot sometimes.”

“But…?”

She said nothing. She didn’t need to. Ray did not reply. Instead they walked on to the village.

---

“Dr. Hilberry, I… I believe we know each other…” She holds out her hand. Does he recognise her? How will he react?

“Lena! Lena Zoledzjewska! It has been too long, far far too long! How many years now, twenty-three, twenty-four…?”

“Twenty-five I think…”

He takes her hand and clasps it and then hugs her. When he withdraws, she notices that his eyes are wet with tears. “So wonderful!”

She smiles and holds out a tissue. “My presentations on working together with the criminal justice sector to tackle homelessness do not normally elicit such a response.”

He smiles back. “You did present well, but of course, it is not the speech… when I saw your name on the agenda I did wonder. I thought, ‘Can it be her?’ I expected a different surname.”

“I did change at one time, but… but then I reverted back to my original. It is so good to see you, really, so good! I have so much to ask you and…”

“Dr. Hilbery, excellent presentation!” A large lady in a purple dress who Lena vaguely recognises pushes in at the drinks table. Now, I need to introduce you to someone whom I think you will find very interesting. He works at… oh, hi Lena, how are you? Long time no see! Great presentation by the way! When I’ve borrowed the doctor here, we must catch up…”

Lena remembers as Ray is hustled away that she works for a government agency and her name is Deborah Davies.

And as she does, she is reminded of another Deborah that she once met.

---

In the village there was a café. No balcony this time, but coffee and tortillas. They ordered one between them. She had her coffee white with sugar. Ray did without the sugar.

The other Ray also went without sugar although he only drank tea.

Ray stirred his cup and then looked at her. “So, your head tells you to accept the proposal because he is a great guy, the sort who you could live a good life with, but even though you like him, you don’t love him and your heart longs for the other guy, even if he is a bit of a waste of space.”

“I never said that!”

“No, you never did, my bad. But the fact remains that, rationally, there is no choice to make: accept the proposal.”

“You are right.”

“But…?”

She smiled. “There is always a ‘but’ isn’t there?”

“Not necessarily.” He sipped his coffee. “When Juliet accepted Romeo’s proposal, she had no hesitation even though he was the most unsuitable man on the earth.”

Lena shuddered again. Was this guy a mind reader? How did he know that she had been thinking about that balcony?

Or maybe he didn’t?

Lucky guess.

“She followed her heart, not her head.”

“And did she regret it?”

“They both died and so…”

“Did she regret it?”

“That was fiction.”

“Indeed it was.” He paused and took a bite of the tortilla. “This is really good,” he said, “much better than the one I had yesterday in Estella. By the way, I never asked, where are you hoping to get to today?”

“Let me look… it is a place called Viana I think.”

“Viana, yes, that is my aim also. Shall we continue walking together, Lena?”

“That would be lovely, Ray.”

---

She found to her annoyance that the workshop that she’d signed up for, ‘Introducing strengths-based practices’, was not the one that Dr. Raymond Hilbery was attending (‘Understanding the Mental Capacity Act’). Worse still Deborah Davies had attached herself to her and was busy wittering on about her issues over staff retention and high absence levels. Still, having no Ray to distract her meant that she could at least give the workshop the attention that it deserved, but even so, throughout it all, she found her mind drifting back down the years to those months that they’d spent living together in a little terraced house in Sheffield, the meals that he’d cook, the board games that they’d play in the evenings, the bed that they shared…

… and then too to the Camino which she’d walked after he had delivered that unexpected, heart-stopping marriage proposal on one knee that day they’d climbed to the top of Kinder Scout. The tumult that it had caused in her mind had been unlike anything she had ever experienced in her short life. She liked him so much, enjoyed being with him, but that burning fire she felt for Chris whom she knew was waiting for her, could not be extinguished.

It was the priest who suggested it. Ask God. Go on Camino. You enjoy walking anyway, so it will be enjoyable too and it will give your head the space that it needs.

He had been right. Fr. Damian had been an excellent priest. She missed him. But now her thoughts were not on the good father, but instead that other Ray.

Other…?

“Oh Lena, I almost forgot…” Deborah’s voice jerks her back to reality. “Dr. Hilbery asked me to give you this.” She passes her a business card. Lena looks at it and then turns it over. On the back he has written:

Meet me in the foyer after. Let’s go for a coffee and catch up! Ray xx

---

“So, do you have an answer to my question, Ray?”

“As a professional counsellor, no. In counselling we are taught that the expert on Lena is Lena and that our job is help Lena see the truth that she already knows deep inside her mind.”

“That’s not very helpful you know.”

“I know.”

They both laughed. The Way was steep now, a tough hill out of the village. They did not have the energy to speak more.

However, at the top, where they stopped to regain their breath and drink some water, Ray turned to her and said, “But I am going to be unprofessional today.”

“You are?”

“Yup. Go with the loser.”

“Why on earth do you say that? What if it doesn’t work? I mean, the chances are it won’t and then…”

“Maybe it will, maybe it won’t, but you’ll never know unless you try. And if you don’t, you’ll spend your whole life wondering if he was the one that you should have chosen. Were you the Juliet that went for Paris and then always dreamt of Romeo?”

“I’d live longer if I were!”

“But is that living? Is surviving on this earth living? I mean, somewhere out there, probably in the next town, there is a person, maybe hundreds of them, sitting on the settee watching TV or playing on their phone, letting their life clock tick down. Is that living?”

“But the other guy is a good guy. I don’t want to hurt him!”

“And you won’t. In the long term that is. Now, yes, he will be gutted. You’re a pretty amazing chick after all, Lena, but he’ll get over it eventually. He’s obviously not the one for you when all’s said and done.”

“How can you say that?”

“Because there are buts. With the one, there are never any buts.”

She finished her water bottle and started walking again.

That night they stayed in the same albergue in Viana, he on the bottom bunk, she above him.

Lying there staring at the ceiling, Lena tossed his words over in her mind.

---

The workshop concludes and she rushes out of the room, clutching the precious card in her hand. As she descends the stairs she looks down upon him from up high and that dream from two and a half decades earlier floods her mind.

---

That night she is back there. Back in that garden where the café was, the garden with the balcony. Except that now she is standing on the balcony, leaning on its stony parapet. And below her is a man. His name is unimportant, but his identity means everything. Yet she cannot make him out clearly. Night’s cloak hides him too well. “Who are you?” she calls out.

“Call me but love, and I’ll be new baptis’d,” he replies.

She cannot make out the voice, nor still the figure. Silently, she asks God to reveal him to her. And then the clouds shift and the moon, the inconstant moon, comes into view, illuminating all.

Then she sees who he is and gasps.

---

He smiles when he sees her, a smile of great love and loss. They hug and then he suggests a place he knows by the railway station. She merely nods and links her arm with his.

In the morning Ray was gone but, on her backpack, someone had left a small book. Lena picked it up and looked at it; it was a much-read copy of Romeo & Juliet. Inside the cover was written:

To Lena,

Buen Camino!

Love Ray xx

“What will you have?” she said. “My shout.”

“Cappuccino, no sugar,” he replied.

She got the coffees and joined him at the table. “It’s been how long?” she said.

“Twenty-five years, give or take,” he replied.

“My God, yes, twenty-five years. Half a lifetime!”

“Indeed.”

“And how are you? Are you well? Married?”

“Married, no; well, yes. And you?”

“The same. It didn’t work out with Chris. In fact, the split was pretty messy, but I got over it.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I won’t say I told you so. Besides, who’s to say we would have been any better?”

“No, who’s to say. Still, at least you are well and I’m also enjoying life. Maybe things turned out for the best after all.”

“They probably did.”

She sat there sipping her coffee, thinking of what to say. What do you say to your ex, the guy who proposed to you three decades earlier whom you then dumped for someone else?

And more than that, what do you say to someone who…

“It helps to talk you know.”

She looked up at him with alarm. How could he…? Put up the defences! “I’m not in any trouble,” she replied, “so I don’t need any help.”

“Yes you are. You haven’t a clue what to say to someone you haven’t seen for half a lifetime and you’re fishing around for assistance.”

She laughed. “In that regard, you are right. So, what should I say?”

“What would Juliet say?”

“Juliet?!”

He sips his coffee and sits back in his chair. “You know what, this reminds me of that little café in Los Arcos where they serve amazing…”

“…tortillas.”

He smiles.

“How can you? How… I mean, that was, what, twenty-five years ago and you were in your twenties then like me and yet that guy I met on Camino was…”

“…like me now…?”

“Yes! Precisely! I mean, it’s just not possible!”

“When I met the young you on the Camino last month, I wondered the same, but then I just thought, ‘Hey, this is Camino, roll with it!’ After all, it had always connected us. You went on it to make your decision and after you did, I was drawn to walk to Santiago as well. And when I had done so once, I did so again and again. I always felt that it was trying to tell me something. Besides, whoever said that time is linear anyway?”

“Well, maybe, but…” He voice drifts off and she looks into her coffee for support. Then a realisation crosses her mind and she looks up, staring into the eyes of the man who once loved her. “Then why did you… I mean, you were nuts about me, you were so desperate for us to stay together. If you’d have told me to dump Chris and go with you, I would have done; honestly, I could not choose! You could have changed history, got what you wanted! Why didn’t you?”

“Camino is a pilgrimage, right? And so when I walk it, I always take a Bible with me. And just before I met you, I’d sat down and read a lesson: ‘Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.’ When I came across you, I realised that I’d read that lesson for a reason.”

“You told me to reject you because you loved me?”

“Wrong. I told you to reject me because I love you. I always will. But I know that you did not love me. You liked me, yes, very much so. But not loved. Not as I loved you. So you would never have been happy with me and, in the long run, I would never have been happy with you. Love is not self-seeking; Love rejoices with the truth; Love never fails.”

As he spoke, tears welled in her eyes and she reached out her hand to hold his. They sat in silence for seconds, minutes, hours, she cannot say. Then he rose, smiled and softly said, “Buen Camino,” before heading on his way.

Written 23/03/20 – 15/04/20, Smallthorne UK

Copyright © 2020, Matthew E. Pointon