To pass the time, we would go to the student bar. Presumably the college funded it. It didn’t seem to do enough trade to stay afloat.
In the first term of my third year, I met Tina McAndrew. We had an affair that didn’t do either of us any good, but we got out of the wreckage with our friendship intact. That was just as well, as there were few other people there. You couldn’t afford to lose a friend. There were sixteen computer students, the unassailable hairdressers, and the psychologists. Tina was a psychology student. I remember looking out of a window while I was waiting for yet another Cobol program to compile. I saw her walk from one of the residential blocks, wearing one of the long coats that everyone had in those days. She was heavier than the girls I usually fancied. I liked them tiny, and she was my height. She looked as though she’d beat me at arm-wrestling. She had long hair and the Welsh weather was busily fucking it over. I watched her until she walked out of my line of sight.
A couple of nights later I saw her in the student bar and decided to talk to her. I was egged on by Olaf, one of the other computer students. Olaf came from a wealthy family, by early eighties standards. He had a sense of humour that only he understood. You had to decipher him. Olaf wasn’t his real name, obviously. His real name was Peter, but he called himself Olaf.
‘It’s short for “Oh, laugh, for fuck sake”,’ he once told me.
The night Tina turned up, he watched me watching her. I sometimes thought he should have been with the experimental psychologists. He liked observing. I sometimes wondered if he was an experimental psychologist, sneakily studying the computer students. I knew that was paranoid, which hopefully meant that I was sane.
‘Go on then,’ he said. ‘Talk to the lady.’
There was no point ignoring him. After all, I wanted to talk to her. I managed to get to the bar before she was served.
This wasn’t difficult. The student bar had a lone barman, named Sid. He was older than the students and distant in manner. He would strive not to serve people. He would do his best to avoid talking to you.
‘Until he gets to know you,’ Olaf once said. ‘Then he still doesn’t talk to you. But at least he knows you.’
Sid could take a long time to pour a simple pint and girls usually chose more complicated drinks. They’d want mixers and ice; that could take him all night. I sidled closer to Tina, whose name I didn’t know at the time.
‘Hello again,’ she said.
I looked around. She was talking to me. What did she mean, ‘again’?
‘Hello?’ I said.
‘Who’s that you’re with? Not one of your crowd. I thought you hung around with a livelier bunch.’
She looked slightly quizzical. Her features managed to be both heavy and delicate; a neat trick, I thought. I didn’t know what had compelled me to talk to her. Olaf and drink, perhaps. My usual approach was more circumspect. Still, I did know that I didn’t know her. I didn’t know anyone who looked that good.
‘You must have me mixed up,’ I said.
‘That sounds about right. Can I get you a drink?’
‘I’ll get you one.’
‘That’s a bit old fashioned, isn’t it? I’m allowed to buy the drinks. We’re in the eighties now, you know.’
‘I know.’
‘Are you sure we haven’t met?’
I said that I was. I’d have remembered her. It wasn’t as though I met many girls. Computers didn’t attract them.
‘I’m Tina,’ she said, ‘and as I don’t know you, you’ll need to tell me who you are.’
‘Mick Aston,’ I said.
‘Are you doing anything tomorrow evening, Mick Aston?’ she asked. I wasn’t. ‘Well, you are now,’ she said. ‘Thanks for the drink.’
III
The next night she took me to Aberystwyth to see a film. I was expecting something French and gloomy, but she chose a noisy extravaganza with car chases and guns. She seemed to be watching me as much as the film. Perhaps it was because she was a psychology student, I thought. On the way back to Borth on the night bus, she edged closer to me across the seat.
‘Do you think people always have hidden depths?’ she asked. ‘Or is what you see what you get?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I think you’ve got depths,’ she said. She visibly came to a decision and kissed me, as though she’d been wondering whether to or not. I’d already reached the same decision and left her to it.
We had a brief affair, and ended up as friends. That’s as good as it gets, I think. Anything longer-term is based on a different emotion. It’s still called love, but it’s another flavour. Our little affair was all over in a month.
It was obvious early on that we wanted different things from the relationship. I wanted everything. I saw her and became happy.
She, on the other hand, saw some potential in me. She saw something under the surface. She could see a possible me, and it was him that she was after. He stayed hidden, however. She liked me, but not as much as she liked the version of me that I failed to become.
She began to cool. I attempted to woo her. It wasn’t something I had a talent for.
I tried to write poems for her, but they came out lifeless. I couldn’t get words to do anything good. We’d hold hands and walk the four-mile round trip to Borth and back. We slept together in my tiny student bed. I would find her crying from time to time. By the third week, that was all she was doing.
She told me she was sorry, she’d like to be friends.
We were friends. I didn’t have an easy time with that. But hope springs eternal, the vicious little bastard.
IV
Borth is really not much more than a road by the sea. You approach it by way of a long road that follows the estuary of the river Dyfi. The road winds past the college grounds, a thin strip of swampland, and a golf course. The road goes through the middle of the links, splitting the course into two and providing golfers and motorists alike with an extra hazard. A high sloping wall of grey concrete blocks the view out to sea. There are car parking spaces next to the sea wall. Inland, there are mountains and clouds.
A large public toilet, which has won awards, stands between the sea wall and the town. The shops all sell the same things; buckets and spades, strange paperbacks, cheap tat. Behind the main road, reached by way of a track, is a church of dark stone. It’s not visible from the town. It’s as though they’re ashamed of it.
A railway line runs behind the town and there’s a station which is not abandoned, despite appearances. Trains stop there at uncertain intervals. Once in a while, if the wind is in the right direction, you hear one clattering off along the estuary, upsetting the seagulls. The town is bookended by two small amusement arcades.
I spent a lot of time in the amusement arcades.
There are two chip shops and one general store. On a high promontory overlooking the town there is a war monument. From there, looking down, you can clearly see that Borth is a straight line of a town, that single road running dead level with the shore. Inland, a great expanse of featureless flat land stretches away to the mountains. It’s as though someone decided to try to build a resort on a salt marsh, just to see if it could be done. From this high viewpoint, you can also see the beach.
To get to the beach you have to climb over the sea wall, which is just over six feet high.