Everything Could Be So Perfect

By Mark Binmore

'And watching lovers part, I breathe and feel you smiling. What memories we share lie so deep in your mind. To tear out from your eyes I won't speak of forbidden lies. I'll keep watching as you leave me further behind'

 

A middle-aged author of elite fiction watches a film adaptation of his first book and is immediately enraptured by the young actor in the leading role. Captivated and, increasingly, consumed: he discovers more about the person, his life, finds old photographs, kisses them – and more. 

Eventually, his mania takes him to a meeting and a pathetically awful denouement.   

Everything Could Be So Perfect is an engaging study of an obsession bordering on madness. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mark Binmore
• Release date: Aug 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223677345

Book preview

Mark Binmore

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Now Is Not The Time For Trumpets

A Life Of Parties

A ‘Sorta Fairytale

Take Down The Flags

Nemesis

Beautiful Deconstruction

Everything Could Be So Perfect

Sunsets Etc

Sad Confetti

Published by Fontana

First published in Great Britain by Kindlight 2018

Copyright ©Mark Binmore 2018

This edition ©Mark Binmore 2021

www.markbinmore.com

The right of Anonymous to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and publisher of this book

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

And watching lovers part, I breathe and feel you smiling

What memories we share lie so deep in your mind

To tear out from your eyes I won’t speak of forbidden lies

I'll keep watching as you leave me further behind

A middle-aged author of elite fiction watches a film adaptation of his first book and is immediately enraptured by the young actor in the leading role.  Captivated and, increasingly, consumed: he discovers more about the person, his life, finds old photographs, kisses them – and more. Eventually, his mania takes him to a meeting and a pathetically awful denouement. 

Everything Could Be So Perfect is an engaging study of an obsession bordering on madness. 

For Ben.

For being there.

He woke up.

He thought he could hear someone breathing in the next room, the near silent, smooth sound of air in and out. He touched the pillow next to him. But there was no one there. The room was too dark to let him see, but he felt movement, the shift of blanket and sheet.  He whispered to himself, 'Listen.'

He listened harder, he thought he could hear his wife’s breath, thick and heavy next to him, but there was no one there.

The hardwood floor was cold beneath his feet. He held out a hand in front of him, and when he touched the door, he paused, listened again, heard the life of a child. His fingertips led him along the hall and to the next room. Then he was in the doorway of a room as dark, as hollow as his own.

He put on the light.

The room, of course, was empty. A single bed, a spread merely thrown over bunched and wrinkled sheets, the pillow crooked at the head. The small blue desk was littered with coloured pencils and scraps of construction paper, a bottle of white glue. He turned off the light and listened. He heard nothing, then stepped out of the room and moved down the hall, back to his room, his hands at his sides, his fingertips helpless.

This happened each night, like a dream. 

Looking back, it all seemed so unreal.

Pathetic really.

I mean, it shouldn’t have happened the way it did.

But it did.

It was months ago when all this began.

I was out walking, my usual afternoon jaunt with my familiar outward appearance of not giving a care about the world or anything, when I came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the pavement. I’m not sure why I stopped but I did. I rested for a moment with my eyes fixated on a street sign which was attached to a low brick wall. 

'Fitzsimmons Avenue.' 

For a moment I couldn’t quite decide whether I had meant to walk here or not. There was also the slightly disoriented conclusion that I was lost somewhere in London and I had no idea of how I got here or even how I would get back home. 

But I wasn’t lost.

I was still on home ground.

It was a street I had walked up and down for many years yet somehow, I never knew the name.

Until now. 

My usual practise for an afternoon walk would be to turn right outside my block then straight up to the high street and a stroll around the park or sometimes a long stride down one side of the main street and up the other. However today, I must have taken a different route with my mind on other matters and ended up here. An avenue I have known all my life. I know that I left home with no specific destination in mind but I knew that I had to just get out.

And here I stood. 

An avenue, a lamp lit crescent with rows and rows of pretty detached houses on either side. There was nobody else around, the pavements to the left and right were bare and there appeared to be no traffic in either direction. A peacefulness in the middle of a city. The houses were of red brick, imposing, private and yet quite beautiful. I wondered for a moment what lay behind the walls and curtains. All had chimney pots, but no smoke came from any of them. 

A bygone age. 

At the top of the avenue stood a church and the other end I think a school. A convent perhaps. I really hadn’t taken much notice. But my mind was beginning to take note and more importantly the vision that was right in front of my eyes. The house I was looking at had been modernized slightly. New windows, a concrete paved driveway with shingle on both sides and a rather peculiar rock garden near the front porch which appeared to be guarded by concrete toads.  A piece of old ship wood had been varnished and nailed into the garden wall on which were carved the numbers seventy-two and the word 'private.' 

Other aspects of the garden showed themselves to my eyes. 

The front lawn, what was left of it, had been manicured almost symmetrically with pots of different shades all filled with bright flowers.  The herb beds were also filled with a chorus of colours and a drifting scent. In the middle of this impressive almost theatrical stage set appearance was a palm tree. No doubt the intentions were to create a touch of the Mediterranean in London, perhaps a symbol of light and peace, a memory of a past holiday maybe. Yet strangely this solitary palm tree sent my mind into an uneasiness state of affairs which I could not fully explain. I didn’t feel transported to the warming airs of North Africa but instead shifted my mind to a memory of living in a southern seaside town filled with bowling greens, bizarre beach cafes and palm trees. Maybe the tree had grown there, uprooted and transported back to the city to live out its life in the exurbia of an avenue. I began to look at the tree with distaste. 

But it wasn’t the tree that I was bitter with. 

As I stopped and began to gather my thoughts, I suddenly spoke out loud with bitter notions and exasperation that had been bottled up since I left home. 

'Why can’t I just be left alone?'

Don’t tell anyone but these guys are everything

They broke out and broke away

And you sweetly surrendered without hype

Without gimmicks

Just tight snared groves, bohemian harmony

Swing complicity

Out of the cool and into your radio heart

But don’t tell anyone

The jazz police are everywhere for on the lookout for in the know

So, speak the silent way or it could be too late to cry

After all, you gave them your ears

Guilty

And like some backstreet dealer

Scored

Bright brass filigree and satin sheets of strings for them

And we’d risk it all again for a peculiar sense of fun

The wrong chords in all the right places

And yes, the singer, all flapper head to clunky brother shoes

That optimistic alto flute

We call his voice

What the hell

Tell everybody

It’s the worst kept secret in the best dressed world

They went out as moondreams and came back as stars

I am a writer. 

It wasn’t a career that was expected of me. Indeed, whilst at university many, many years ago it was mentioned in passing that no one expected anything of me. A late developer I was told. 

Creative. 

Artistic. 

But he won’t come to much. 

Lives in a daydream.

A different world. 

For years I actually believed them. But then I started writing and managed to publish a collection of short stories all based around people that I knew who lived in the same house as myself. I called it Marble Arch.  Home. The book featured my elderly, lovely eccentric landlady Mrs. Collins and all the other tenants that I lived with for nearly three years. Written several years after I had moved out, I had heard that Mrs. C had passed on and the house was about to be demolished, but just before it vanished from the map forever, I wanted to give a montage of its occupants and their defining characteristics, seamlessly dissolving into one another as if to cram as many of their memories as possible into what time is left to them before they're irretrievably lost in the rubble. 

The book was a very personal project for me, providing a snapshot of a large London house at the end of its era. Literally. But it was also how I saw life through a small corner and bedsit room in London. The building itself was fantastic, a hundred stairs and a myriad of rooms, all presided over by an outspoken house keeper, rent collector, mother hen. Mrs. Collins was everything rolled into one. Even now I can close my eyes and recall the other house tenants. Obviously somewhat Bohemian in nature, most bent towards the artistic. A titled painter, a young photographer and a dance teacher. The book was rather sweet and poignant. The intention was to capture a personality, a life, forever, long after that person has gone. Sadly, along with the house, those friendships were lost. A concrete office block stands shabbily proud where I once lived and the book was lost in time. In every respect, that period of my life resembled that from years before. 

Sketchy. 

Boredom. 

Frustration. 

I couldn’t decide what to do with my life. Friendships that I made years before had vanished and I retreated back into my own world. But I had my writings and soon enough four books appeared one after each other.  These four novels, which rather annoying were referred to as a trilogy plus one, shared a common theme of remembrance and sacrifice. My favourite was the first Moondreams & Stars which was set in a local dance school. Here we discovered the rising talents of Angelica, her brother eventually destroying her passion, her search for love, and finally the artist ascending to heaven to bring down a perfect set of replacement wings. All of these books had been conventionally read, loaned from the local libraries and sold in good numbers, surprisingly my niche market was in Germany and France. 

And then, nothing.

I wrote nothing for a period of ten years although a more accurate description would be, I did not publish anything for ten years. I ceased to become anything. Invitations were still forthcoming and I could regularly be found at a cherished event for some function, a theatre opening or exhibition but it was more of a case of free drinks and something to eat rather than the whole experience of actually enjoying what it was I was there to acknowledge. 

It was also interesting that I was I invited to such affairs by people who really did not have an idea who I was.