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He was from a Cockney family – David Brockwell – and I was Irish growing up in South London.
I met him in school, Keyworth Primary – we were five. He had beautiful blonde hair. I was the opposite – dark hair, freckles. I’ve had very few encounters like that – meeting somebody and immediately becoming best friends. We spent every day together – I’d walk him home from my place, and he’d walk me back to mine.
I was lucky, living in a tough area with racism everywhere, to have this one friend throughout my young childhood. We were inseparable. We lived close to the Tower of London and the Beefeaters would tell us fantastic stories. You’d get a ticket for the tube that lasted all day – we explored a lot of the Thames, had lots of adventures.
My mother always said Cockney and Dublin people were the same – river people. I remember a moment, hanging around the barges at Chelsea, jumping from one to another, landing in the Thames. The tide was out, but the Thames is very muddy – I was above my knees in mud. I looked up at David and he jumped in straightaway beside me, he didn’t hesitate, didn’t look for a rope, just jumped. So we were great friends. I loved him. I’m sure he loved me too.
When I was 12 my family decided to return to Ireland, so when we went to secondary school he knew I was going… a little distance arose, just to protect feelings. We lost touch for a few years. At 17, I went back to London and we met as adults, rekindled the friendship. We were doing things we hadn’t before, like going to pubs. We loved each other’s company. I guess he was like a brother.
Back in Dublin again when I was 19, he sent an airmail letter from the Middle East, saying ‘come over here for an adventure’. I didn’t hesitate. I felt free, no ties – this was an opportunity to be even freer, see some of the world. And he was giving me passage: ‘this is great, come over here, there’s sunshine’. It was 1982.
He was working on farms, then moving on, exploring – life on the roads. I took his invitation, followed him, but I could never catch him. It wasn’t easy to find somebody then – all we had was airmail letters and phone boxes. I was just travelling, of no fixed abode, he was travelling, and I could only trace his footsteps.
I was away six to eight months. In the Sinai desert, I lived among the Bedouins. I travelled, slept on beaches. I hadn’t realised you could be so free, not need a house. It was life-changing for me, that freedom. On the way home I went to Greece, lived on Naxos for a month.
Returning home through London, one of the first things I did was go in a phone box and ring him. His sister was strange on the phone…. and she said… David had passed away, six weeks before. He’d been hit by a stolen car, crossing the road outside his house in Kennington Park Road.
They’d been looking for me in Greece through the consulate. They’d held off the funeral but – not finding me – they were going ahead with it. And the day I rang was the day of the funeral. It was just extraordinary, that I rang then.
Yet that’s not really the day that changed my life. That whole day of the funeral was a daze. I was in shock.
The day that opened my eyes, when I felt in some way strangely blessed, came later. I’d returned to Dublin. I remember, clear as anything, being on the bus, around the North Strand area. A huge rainbow took up the whole sky, it seemed so magnificent, wondrous.
And I could really feel the presence of David in that, in nature. There wasn’t a question. It was him in all his glory. I really felt he hadn’t completely vanished. He was with me, around.
My life was never the same again, but strangely in a very positive way. I felt a comfort, that we are only visiting, and life is really to be enjoyed, got into, not wasted. I was only 20. David never made his 21st birthday. But every day since that day, I feel, even today, is one more day I have had on this beautiful planet that he is maybe looking at from elsewhere.
It’s a sad story, but it’s not. It’s a story about perception. It informed me while very young that the important things are not, maybe, the things we prioritise. So maybe David gave me permission to live. He was the one who gave me the great adventure in the first place, through his letters. So it was to keep going on the adventure.
And I have managed, through ups and downs, to follow my heart. I’m not religious but I am spiritual. I do get a sense of the miraculous nature of life, of nature’s intricate balance.
I’ve lost friends since. It always hurts. You can never really decipher it, but I try to hold onto that first lesson. You feel them around you, the fact they love you and you loved them. You do get a sense, of energy, out there.
- Jerry Fish performs songs from his No 1 album, Dreaming of Daniel, 8pm, Saturday, February 22 at St Luke’s, Cork. Click here. for more information.
