If Only

2016 | Fiction & Poetry

"More people commit suicide during their holidays than at any other time. It's strange but it makes sense. The rest of the year they are too busy, too harassed, too tired to think seriously about anything. Only when they get away from home and work do they have the leisure to reflect at length on their misery and abandon themselves to despair. It's only then that they have the energy to rouse themselves without the aid of habit and do something out of the ordinary."If Only is the story of Jim Taylor, a gifted young man who dreams of becoming a great musician, but tired of poverty and homelessness, gives up his vocation. 'I want to enjoy life before I'm too old for it,' he says when he finds a well-paid job working with the first computers. He meets Lesley at a concert and they have a disastrous affair, but "each felt guilty, each felt the other was innocent - they were in love" and they get married. Lesley is the sun of Jim's life, the light of this otherwise dark story. 'You turn your head and a decade is gone." Jim is the Senior Vice-President of the UK's biggest software company.A decent but weak character, ('he had a mortgage - he wasn't a free man') he became the best of the worst kind of villains.

If only he had stuck to music! If only he had known, if only he had understood.

Stephen Vizinczey (Author)