Delighted to share a link to Mackerel Point. My short story has been chosen as December story of the month on the Willesden Herald website.
You can read it here: http://willesdenherald.blogspot.com/2018/11/short-story-of-month-december-2018.html
Delighted to share a link to Mackerel Point. My short story has been chosen as December story of the month on the Willesden Herald website.
You can read it here: http://willesdenherald.blogspot.com/2018/11/short-story-of-month-december-2018.html
‘How about climbing a volcano? Exploring some caves?’
The response is rolled eyes, attention drifting back to phones. I tell them to bring a torch and some decent boots. We’re short of funds and it’s the fag-end of the summer holidays. Jake’s restless about starting high school, Joe bemoans the speed of our wi-fi. Distraction therapy is needed.
The Wrekin is a steep hill formed of volcanic rocks – not really a volcano – so thankfully there’s no threat of lava for the tearooms and galleries of Much Wenlock and Coalbrookdale. We climb through a steep track that turns back on itself, giving framed glimpses of the misty Shropshire plain. As we step above the canopy of trees we see Shrewsbury, the silver glint of the Severn, endless acres of reddish-brown farmland.
This was the hillfort of the Cornovii tribe, rulers of these parts. It’s shrouded in cloud and stories. We sit by a trig point as I tell the boys the tale of the giant who wanted to flood Shrewsbury by tipping the mud from his shovel into the Severn. On the way he met a cobbler who showed him a bag of shoes full of holes. He said Shrewsbury was so far, he’d worn out all those boot and shoes walking from there. The giant gave up, dumping the earth on the spot where he stood and forming the Wrekin. Jake wrinkles his nose in disbelief and spends the twenty minutes it takes us to get to Hawkstone Park calculating the tonnage of earth needed.
The park and follies were once a medieval castle and grounds, later belonging to Lord Hill of Shrewsbury, Wellington’s second in command at Waterloo. Jake and Joe tear up the ridge and sprint beneath rhododendrons and towering coast redwoods, before climbing the White Tower and gazing out over the Midlands and Wales.
Then it’s a stride down to Swiss bridge where the boys inch above a steep cleft in the rock. Passing the wonderfully-named Gingerbread Hall, we climb to Raven’s Shelf and dizzying views of the golf course, where a young Sandy Lyle mastered the game. The drop into the valley was named the Awful Precipice by Dr Johnson, but it’s a majestic view of woods, parkland and distant Welsh mountains. Jake shines the torch into caves and tunnels, believed to date from the fifth century, perhaps Roman, which were carved out of the rock by men in search of precious copper. When we emerge, blinking into the daylight, we trek back along the limestone ridge, smiling that so many of the points we pass could’ve been taken from a ‘Carry On’ film. After the Cleft, we must get through The Squeeze and then use a tunnel to avoid Fox’s Knob.
We haven’t travelled far, and we’ve travelled cheaply. We’ve walked in the footsteps of Celts, Romans and Marcher Lords. It’s a curious landscape: just down the M54 from Wolverhampton, yet part Swiss Alps, part Italy, a hint of New Mexico.
I spent years writing stories on trains and it certainly seeped into my work.
Here’s another from last year…….
Heat made the rails wobble as they stretched into the distance. He tottered along the platform, switching his briefcase from palm to sweaty palm. He’d had too much coffee, too little water and he’d hardly been off the phone since Euston. The papers were saying the Midlands was hotter than Marseilles. His phone vibrated in his jacket pocket and he tried to ignore it, but he knew Fisher had a thing about unanswered calls. He glanced at it and his shoulders sagged, relieved it was a text.
They’ve cried off. You’re off the hook.
He texted back. It’s cancelled?
No walk down memory lane for you then, matey. Don’t go astray.
Paul slumped onto a bench. An email followed, but he didn’t read it. It would be his latest tasks. He never got a moment’s peace. He massaged his temples, his fingertips working in spirals, thinking. He cringed as his sweaty socks slid against his leather inner soles. He got to his feet, bought a bottle of water with the last of his change and rolled it along his forehead.
‘Baking out, isn’t it?’
The taxi driver wore knee-length shorts and a faded polo shirt that clung to the spare tyre at his waist. He smiled and snatched at the briefcase and Paul didn’t protest. He got inside, slumped into the warm seat and closed his eyes, trying to imagine he was somewhere else. Smooth pebbles and icy water, as clear as glass, came to him. He knew the place so well. He said the name of it, surprising himself.
‘It’ll cost you,’ the driver said. ‘In this bloody traffic.’ Paul unfolded two twenties and slapped them into the driver’s palm. They crawled out of town in heavy traffic and Paul felt he could breathe again as they passed whitewashed cottages, fields of glowing oilseed rape and a lone, towering oak in a field of barley. He loosened his tie and stuffed his folded jacket into his briefcase. His shirt was stuck to his spine and there were wet patches under his arms. They passed the old hall and the dovecot, the disused airstrip where Paul had learnt to drive. ‘Just here’ll do nicely,’ he said. The driver frowned, watching him in the rear-view mirror. ‘Long walk back to town, bud.’
Paul took the business card the driver gave him. He opened his shirt as the driver performed a tight turn between the hawthorn hedges. Paul followed the lane, crossing the bridle-path and avoiding dense clumps of thistles buzzing with flies. Heat shimmered from the fields, blurring the outline of hawthorn and oak up on the ridge. At the bottom of the lane he let gravity run him down a grassy bank and he dropped to his knees. He loosened his laces and kicked off his boots so they landed in the reeds. His tie remained stubbornly knotted, so he took his shirt off first, not caring that he looked ridiculous bare-chested and still wearing a paisley tie, like some drunk exec doing a piss-poor nightclub striptease. He trod his trousers into the sand and pebbles and ran into the river stomping his feet. He splashed and snorted and dropped like a felled tree into the shallows. Tiny fish darted from his thrashing arms. He shouted what Fisher could do with his job and then, when he was spent of energy, he sat in the river, catching his breath. He felt the whisper of breeze about his shoulders as he sank in the gravel.
Afterwards, when the sun had dried him and begun to burn his shoulders and neck, he leant on a gate and looked out over the river valley. High above on a knotty branch was a loop of frayed orange rope. Could it be the same rope they’d used as a swing as kids? He circled the tree liking the feel of the roots and the damp peaty earth between his toes. Paul never went barefoot. It felt sensual and strange. The bark was mouldy but striped with slashes and gouged where names and dates had been carved with blades. It was a wonder the poor tree had survived so many cuts.
Andy & Kay
Potters Rule!
Pete +Stacey 4EVER
He ran his finger along a scar. There were names he knew. He walked around the trunk reading them. He read a name and read it again, his pulse jolting him. A heart, shaped more like an apple, had a clumsy arrow puncturing it. Joanne S 4 Paul M. He blinked. He took a photo of the words, checked his watch and saw it was the third. Her birthday. Twenty-two years his name had been carved in this tree. His name and Joanne’s.
Paul’s heart pounded as he stepped it out up the lane. He was being a fool, but fate had brought him here, hadn’t it? No, he said to himself: don’t be so bloody stupid. If he hadn’t had the meeting cancelled; if he hadn’t decided on coming to the river; if he hadn’t walked into the wood and seen the words they’d made in the tree; and today of all days. He tapped his phone screen and did a search. Ah! He dragged through the photos of cakes Joanne had baked. She’d always been keen, years before all that stuff was splashed over TV. Let Them Eat Cake, she’d called her place. She’d always wanted a little caff of her own. She’d won awards so she hadn’t been hard to find. She’d kept her name too, so maybe she hadn’t married.
He strolled past the shop twice, making out he was studying his phone. Let Them Eat Cake was painted in soft shades of blue and yellow and wedding cake-white, just like icing. There was no sign of her. Faint heart never won fair lady. It sounded as stupid now as it had when his granddad had said it. But it was all the justification he needed. Paul was never one to wonder, what if? Paul’s heart was thudding in his chest as he took a window seat, ordering home-made lemonade. A teenage boy had fidgeted with things on the counter before tying on an apron and taking his order.
‘Is the owner here?’ Paul said.
The boy was about to say something when the copper bell tinkled above the door. Paul turned to see a woman struggling with a box, trying to prop the corner of it against the doorframe while she searched for her purse or car keys. Her long red-brown hair obscured her face and it took Paul a moment to realise it was Joanne. He sprang from his chair and said, ‘Let me.’
When he’d set the box down on the counter she looked him up and down, tucking a silver-grey strand of hair behind her ear. ‘To what do we owe this pleasure?’ she said. She didn’t want to sit and talk with the boy about. ‘Tim’s my sister’s kid. Do you remember Beck?’ Paul nodded. Beck was a year older than Joanne and never gave him the time of day. He fished a twenty from his pocket and handed it to Tim. ‘Can you give us five, pal?’ Tim stuffed the twenty in his jeans pocket and ran off.
‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ Joanne said.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘He gambles. He’s driven Beck to her wit’s end. He’s working here so he learns the value of money.’
Paul sipped his lemonade. ‘This is really good.’
‘What do you want, Paul? I’m sure you didn’t come back here to praise my lemonade.’
‘I was here on business.’
She nodded, the faint trace of a smile on her lips.
‘I found something,’ he said.
Joanne stared at him. He swiped his phone display, sliding it across the table. The screen showed the heart etched in the trunk, their names picked out with the Stanley blade he’d pinched from his granddad’s tool shed. She tilted the phone a little and squinted, wrinkling her nose and Paul remembered the girl with the same gestures. There were lines around her eyes now, her skin a little taut at the mouth. She frowned. ‘That was years back. We’d have been fifteen?’
‘I’d forgotten we wrote that,’ Paul said.
‘We were kids for God’s sake.’
‘True.’ Paul’s hand moved across the table and Joanne sat back. He stirred the sugar in the bowl, heaping it at the rim.
Joanne shook her head. ‘I’ve got things I need to do.’ She got up and ran a basin of hot water. He followed her. He didn’t know what to do with his hands. ‘Why are you here, Paul? Look at your shirt.’ It was rumpled and dusty and weed had fastened to the tails.
‘I swam in the river.’
She dropped plates and cutlery into the bowl and Paul waited until the clattering had finished.
‘I was working here today. I was meant to give a talk. It got cancelled and-’
‘You’re a lawyer, aren’t you?’
Paul nodded. Perhaps she’d checked him out. Despite what she said maybe she’d been looking for him online. ‘How do you know what I do?’
‘Your mum, of course.’
‘She comes in here?’
‘She never shuts up about you. The whole town gets regular updates whether they like it or not.’
A red van pulled up on the opposite side of the road. Its brakes squealed as it came to a halt on the cobbles at the kerb. It had a rusty front panel and a cracked number plate. The driver was in shadow but he made no move to get out of the van. JK Builders was picked out in fading paint on the side panel and a local phone number was sprayed above the wheel arch.
‘Why did you come here?’ Joanne said.
‘Are you married?’
‘What does it matter?’
Paul sighed. ‘You don’t think things sometimes happen for a reason?’
‘Last of the great romantics, aren’t you Paul?’
‘Look, I hate my job and I made a decision I wasn’t going to do it anymore. I had to give a talk here and-’
‘That’s why you’re in town?’
‘It was cancelled. I went for a wander and I decided. Look, that doesn’t matter now.’
Joanne leant on the counter. The veins stood out on the backs of her hands. ‘You wouldn’t be here if your boss hadn’t sent you.’
‘I’m burnt out. I need a change. I’m sick of being treated like dirt. You know what I did this afternoon?’
‘You said. You went swimming.’
‘I went for a walk and I ended up sitting in the river.’
She made a sour face. ‘There are people you can talk to. You can get help for things like that.’
‘I don’t mean like that. I mean I needed to rest. I needed to see things differently.’
‘So, you saw things like a fish.’
Paul ignored her. ‘And I got dried off and I was walking and I found a sign. I found what we’d written on that tree.’
Joanne glanced at the door. ‘It’s not a sign. It’s kids messing about a long-time past.’
‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, Jo. I was stupid.’
Joanne folded her arms on her chest. ‘You were a kid. We were both kids. You’re being daft. You don’t just pull some diary or photo out of a cupboard and wind back twenty-odd years.’
Paul reached to take her hand and she stepped back. ‘Why do you keep looking at the door?’ he said.
Joanne ran a hand through her hair. ‘I’m hot and I’m tired. Look, I want to close up.’
‘You normally close before midday?’
Paul tried to look at her but she wouldn’t meet his gaze. ‘Have you got someone?’
‘I don’t see what difference that makes.’
‘Are you married?’
The driver got out of the red van and perched on the bonnet, arms folded. He rolled a cigarette between thumb and forefinger, glancing across at the café.
‘Is it him?’
‘What about you?’ Joanne said, ignoring him. ‘You ever married?’
Paul shook his head. ‘I didn’t meet the right one.’
The driver got off the bonnet and strolled across to lean against a lamp post smoking. He put on a pair of black sunglasses and pushed them up the bridge of his nose. He folded his arms and propped a heel against his other foot. There was something about his stance that seemed familiar. ‘And you?’ Paul said.
‘Separated.’
‘Anyone I know?’
Joanne opened the till, began counting fives and tens. ‘It doesn’t matter. I don’t know why I’m even telling you this.’ She folded the notes in her purse and zipped it tight. Paul stared at her. ‘So, tell me-’
Joanne twisted the Celtic band she wore on her middle finger. ‘Jason Knight was a few years below us.’ Paul’s eyes widened.
‘But he stuck around, for a time,’ she said. ‘He didn’t finish school. He’d got into nicking cars. Yeah, I can tell by your face you remember him. You think I should’ve done better.’
Paul nodded. ‘Does he follow you and stuff?’
Joanne swallowed. ‘Why do you ask that?’
‘Cos he’s standing over the road.’
‘You what?’ Joanne picked at her thumbnail.
‘He’s got a beat-up red van, hasn’t he?’
She wore a long-sleeved cotton top but the arm had ridden up at the sleeve and she saw him looking at the bruises on her forearms.
‘Did he do that to you?’
She tugged down her sleeves. ‘Why are you here?’
Paul took off his jacket, slipping his wallet into his trousers, and set it down on the back of a chair. He unbuttoned each sleeve in turn, rolling them back till they folded past his elbows. He cracked his knuckles and made for the door. The bell rang as he crossed into the sunshine. Jason stepped out from the kerb, thumbs hooked in his jeans pockets.
‘Don’t be so bloody stupid, Paul. He’ll kill you,’ Joanne said.
‘I’ll have a word with him that’s all.’
Joanne stood in the doorway. ‘Leave it, Paul. I’m begging you. Please don’t go over there.’
Paul took her hand. ‘I’ll deal with it. He’s not going to bother you anymore.’
‘Don’t be an idiot. He’ll murder you.’
‘Like you said that was twenty odd years back.’
She forced a smile and gave his hand a little squeeze.
‘If I sort this, will you come out tonight?’
She said nothing so Paul strolled across the road. He kept his hands flat to show he meant no threat to Jason but his temples were throbbing.
‘Well look who’s back in town,’ Jason said.
Paul got closer, said he meant no harm. He kept his back turned to Joanne. It was no bother to lower his voice, reach inside his pocket. ‘What would it take for you to clear off?’
Jason snorted. ‘You want her?’
‘You get lost and she never sees you again.’ Paul held two hundred between his fingers, close to his chest, his back to the café. Jason didn’t like taking orders but he was looking at the cash, and licking his lips.
‘A hundred more.’
Paul took another five twenties, folded them.
‘I only wanted to scare her,’ Jason said. ‘I don’t give a monkey’s if you fancy her, pal.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘For another fifty I’ll let you make it look good.’
Paul stepped up, grabbed a handful of Jason’s T-shirt and got so close he felt the man’s sour, onion breath. He stuffed the twenties inside Jason’s jacket. He shoved him hard in the chest and jerked a thumb. ‘You steer clear of her and this place. You got that?’
Jason skulked off, spitting and scowling. He got in the van and tore off. Joanne stared at Paul, wide-eyed as he crossed the road to the café. ‘I should say thank you. But I don’t know what you want.’
Cancelled. I stood in the middle of the almost empty concourse, staring up at the displays, praying it was some sort of mistake. I dropped my case onto the marble tiles. I was tired and sweaty and my shins ached from the pounding I’d given them up Tottenham Court Road. The tendons in my right arm hummed and throbbed where I’d gripped my briefcase. In London, in leather soles, there’s no relief from the flagstones and concrete, the granite and tarmac. Even the grass in the parks is trimmed tight, hard and bald underfoot. I did a little jig to shift the weight from my sore, aching feet, like a nervous boxer readying for the first bell.
Someone groaned and I turned to see a woman with a frizz of auburn hair shake her fist at the screens. Every few minutes there were mutters or groans as the displays updated, but the last train north was still cancelled. I wanted to complain, to shout at someone, to tell them that I was on a warning: You dare miss Kate’s birthday. You just bloody dare. I scoured the ticket office and concourse, the Cornish pasty franchise and the entrance to the Tube, but no one from the railway was daft enough to show their face.
I kicked off my shoes and gasped as I pressed them against the cold tiles. A blister was forming at my heel and a hole had appeared in the black wool that pinched around my big toe. I’d neglected to cut my toenails. I always bloody forgot. I stretched up on tippy-toes as much as I could bear it and rocked back on my heels. I rubbed my spine and winced and was rewarded with a reflection in the window of a shop that sold French moisturisers. I looked a proper fright and wondered where the guy on my driver’s licence had gone, and the last twenty years with him. I had dark crescents under each eye; depression, the internet said and I wasn’t arguing. My hair needed a trim and was going to steel wool again at my ears. A dusting of dandruff lay about my shoulders and collar. The pockets and arse of my trousers sagged and, as I turned, I saw the seat was shiny. I was as wide form the side as the front. My jacket was shapeless from keys and phones and all the other shit I carried about and I’d fixed two new holes in my belt since Christmas.
I slumped against the locked-up information kiosk. Across the concourse an old fella in an orange tabard, with a greying mullet, three days’ stubble and a prison worth of keys hanging from his belt, pushed a huge broom in zig-zags, picking up paper cups and sweet wrappers and burger cartons. He had a slight stoop and his head seemed to sit at an odd angle as if he had a stiff neck. He used one of those cloth brooms that looked as if it’d got cuts of a candlewick bedspread stuck to it, that was meant to clean as it swept. I gave him a nod, but he didn’t spare me so much as a grunt. He whistled a tune from an ad I knew. Something classical, but I couldn’t say what. When I fancied a blast of the classics Charlotte had always changed the station. Gravy music, she called it. She said it was the stuff she’d been made to listen to at Sunday lunches while forced to chew on sprouts and pork crackling. He swept a little further, turned and saw he’d missed a shred of paper. It was barely a scrap, the silvery paper you got in fruit pastilles. He must’ve been sixty if he was a day, but, despite the stiff back or neck, he dipped like a ballerina, snatched at it and dropped it into his trolley. Pride in his work and for the minimum wage too. You had to admire that. There was something familiar about him, but I couldn’t say what. Perhaps he had a doppelganger keeping the streets clean up north. I’d always liked watching folk work. There’s a special pleasure in grabbing a coffee while some poor bugger has got to mend a gas pipe or dig a grave.
I grimaced as I trod back into my shoes. Groans came from the few of us that were left, jabbing at phones, cussing and praying for the impossible. Oh, hang on. A flicker. No. Milton Keynes was back on. Further north wasn’t happening. Well, that was it. My fingernails dug into the soft leather handle of my case. I wanted to tilt back my head and scream, but only the pigeons in the roof would hear. I chucked my case down, made to give it a boot like a footballer who’d been red-carded, and instantly regretted it as it clattered onto the tiles. A transport policeman stared at me from the first-class balcony. I nodded an apology and he folded his tattooed arms and shook his head. When I picked up my case he’d gone.
Something trembled in my jacket. I remembered my phone was on silent after Danby’s emergency six o’ clock. Given the news we’d be restructuring for the second time in three years I’d been too shocked to say anything. I’d have thought you of all people would have something to say, Tony. ‘Mm?’ was all I could manage. I’d found a pub off Fleet Street, sank I don’t know how many pints of London Pride and then the answers had all come to me. They always did when it was too late, didn’t they?
A reminder popped up in my diary. Kate’s birthday. Christ, what was I going to get for Kate? I’d have to trudge over to one of those shops that sold tea towels and keyrings or mouse mats with Tower Bridge and Big Ben on them. I wondered if a jigsaw of the Tube or a red London bus would get me off the hook. I’d never got the hang of what a daughter wanted. I hefted my case and looked for somewhere to sit, to think, but I couldn’t find a bench. There were no bins to be found either. It seems terrorists are winning the war when it comes to litter and sitting down.
I stepped outside, rubbing my hands together as my breath rose, silvery in the night sky. Night buses chugged at the traffic lights. A guy in a stripy sock hat and a long grey coat that could’ve belonged to a naval commander shuffled up, getting foetal among some crumpled newspapers. It’d be cold tonight, might even be frost. I dipped into my jacket pocket and smiled, remembering I’d given up. Two years since we’d decided I should stop but some moments are perfect for a sly drag.
‘Want one of mine?’ a voice said and I flinched.
I turned and saw the guy in the sock hat had vacated his bench and was offering me a smoke. He held out a hand as if begging for change. It was soiled, rimed with nicotine. A sorry roll-up lay limp in his palm.
‘I- I’m sorry I don’t,’ I said.
He tucked his thumbs in his belt. His eyes were watery with cold. ‘You looked like you did.’
‘I quit. She didn’t like the smoke in the house.’ He scratched at the corner of his mouth. I wondered why I was telling him this. He twirled a grubby finger at the plane trees in the square, the rooftops, the moon. ‘This is my living room. So, I can please myself.’ He rocked on his heels and seeing as he wasn’t going anywhere I said ‘Ah’ and gave him some loose change from my trouser pocket, picking out a chewing gum pellet. He shook the change in his fist, holding it to his ear and listening to it the way Kate did with seashells.
‘Never mind,’ he said. He looked me up and down, appraising me. ‘You could always try the-’ He scratched at his temple, named a few hotels in spitting distance. I thanked him and he went back to his bench. I walked as far as the path ran and feeling a little wobbly, gripped a railing in each fist at the end of the square. A drunk vomited into the gutter, clutching at an empty newsstand and gasping. His phone and his keys fell from his shirt pocket and he cursed and patted the pavement with his palms as if he were blind, cabs tooting and flashing their headlights as they shot past. I sat on a low wall, deflated now the beer had worn off, leaving me a sore head and a bursting bladder. I made for a bush in the corner of the square, dark and waxy-leaved like a rhododendron, and tugged at my flies as I half-ran, scared I’d wet myself. I had grey trousers on. I wasn’t risking a wet patch. There might be coppers about, could be CCTV, but it was dark and I didn’t care. I had to go. I stepped through a break in the canopy of leaves, adjusted myself and let a stream of my hot piss spatter the leaf mulch and litter. It steamed and made a ring of glistening foam where the jet struck the dark earth. It was such relief, such bliss to let go and for a few precious seconds I leaned back and stared up at the moon, feeling I was tiny and insignificant down here and my problems were pathetically small in a universe that stretched to infinity. For every star in the sky there’s a grain of sand on every beach in all the world, I’d told Kate once when I’d sat and read to her.
As I shook and zipped up, that bloke came past, hands in his pockets, whistling. He’d changed out of his work gear. My heart fluttered. I knew I’d clocked his walk before. At first, I didn’t want to believe it, but I was sure the cleaner with the belt full of keys was Colin Silvester. Col had something wrong with his neck or spine too. He’d had it for years. But Colin Silvester had left a pile of clothes at the riverbank. Seven years back that was and no one had ever seen him again.
I crouched behind the bush. He stood still, sniffed and listened, his back turned to me. Sirens drifted from the west, blokes shouted as they came out of a pub. He raised a hand and said: ‘I don’t have no money, so you’re wasting your time, kid.’
Kid. Col used to say kid. I came out from behind the bush, held my palms up to show him I meant no harm. My heart was pounding. ‘Colin. Colin Silvester,’ I said, unable to stop the croak in my throat.
His cheek twitched. His accent seemed to shift, switch southern. ‘Nah, mate. Don’t know what you mean.’
‘It is you. I’d know you anywhere.’
‘You got me mistaken chief.’
‘Chief? Come off it, Col. We played darts for how many years? It must be six, maybe seven….’
He ran a hand through a sweaty fringe. He wore a denim jacket, torn at the shoulders and dark jeans with great turn-ups. A voice in my head said it couldn’t be him, but he had the same birthmark on his chin, the same wiry hair that’d been left to grey and hang lank at the collar.
‘Got a cigarette?’ he said.
‘I don’t anymore.’
‘Then you’ve changed too.’ He took out a packet, handed me one and sparked up for both of us, cupping them from the wind. ‘I suppose this is the bit where I say I’ve been waiting for this to happen for years and get found out and now it’s finally happened….’ He waved a hand, took a long drag on his cigarette and let his words and his thoughts drift into the London night. ‘Too cold to stay out here.’
‘Where then?’ I said. ‘You want to grab a whisky?’
‘Not really.’
‘Fine then,’ I said. I picked up my case and turned on my heel.
‘Don’t piss about Tony. You’ve missed the last train and, anyway, I don’t want you blabbing, do I?’ He flicked his cigarette into the gravel, grinding it with his heel. ‘Let’s get that scotch then.’
I got a table where he’d have to pass me to get to the toilets or the door. I plonked my stuff where I could feel it against my shins and gave him a twenty. He came back with two doubles, no offer of change. He slumped into his stool, raised his glass and said, ‘New life and all that,’ downing most of it.
‘Is that what this is? Cleaning the floor at a railway station?’
‘Is there something wrong with hard work?’
I sipped my scotch. It nipped at my throat. ‘No, but you were management and-’
‘And what?’
‘You must’ve been on a good whack.’
‘Another?’ he said. I sighed and reached into my wallet, but he’d already gone off to the bar. He brought back two more whiskies and slid mine across the table top. ‘Just cos I clean toilets doesn’t mean I can’t stand my round.’
I ran a finger around the rim of my glass. ‘Are you happy, Tony?’ When I didn’t answer, he said: ‘Cos you don’t look it.’
‘Are you?’ I snapped.
When he didn’t answer, I said: ‘They found your clothes by the river and everyone thought-’
‘I know what everyone must’ve thought. And I did think about doing it as it happens. When Jean died I-’ He ran his hand through his fringe. ‘Look, I’d got everything I needed, but there was no one to share it with. I had to make a fresh start. I didn’t top myself but I would’ve done if I’d tried to go on. I had to make a go of it elsewhere.’
‘You could’ve told us,’ I said, hating myself for sounding whiny.
‘Nah,’ was all he replied.
I nodded. I’d read the newspapers, listened to the police briefings. We all had. For the first few weeks Colin had been a missing person, classed as vulnerable following the death from MS of his beloved Jean. When he wasn’t found the rumours spread that twenty thousand in wages had gone missing from the office safe.
‘I know what was written, what was said about me. I kept up with the local papers online,’ he said.
‘People were worried about you.’
‘Worried? People said I’d done a runner. That I’d gone off with their money. Do you think I’d have done that?’
I let the scotch hit the back of my throat. ‘No,’ I said. ‘You weren’t like that.’ I hadn’t spoken up for him though.
‘Well, I’ve spoken to the police. They’re happy I’d nothing to do with that.’
‘But if the police know where you are?’
‘I’m not missing. I’ve no one to report me missing. I’ve no one left. This is my life now.’
‘But you’re still missing.’
‘I’m not. The police know where I am. I told them not to say anything. I can live where I want.’
I snatched at my scotch, draining the last of it.
‘Do you feel cheated, Tony?’
I shrugged. He folded his arms. ‘Would you rather I’d been washed up on a beach? Or that I’d started a new life in the Costa del Whatever with your month’s pay packet?’
‘Course not.’
‘See, I’m happy here. I wouldn’t have thought so once, but things change. I’ve got a flat the size of an eggbox that takes five minutes to chuck a duster around. I can eat fantastic food, get cheap theatre tickets, whatever, cos it’s all on my doorstep. When I’m not on shift I go to the British Museum, the British Library, the Tate, all of it free. I walk for miles at night over Millennium Bridge and Westminster Bridge and along the Embankment cos I can. I sketch sometimes or I just sit and stare and think I live in one of the most amazing cities in the world. And you know the best bit?’
I said nothing.
‘It’s all going on around me and no one notices me. That suits me just fine. London’s the loneliest or the best place in the world depending on your lookout. I’m one of life’s spectators.’ He paused, spun his glass on the table. ‘What do you do at night, Tony?’
I pushed my empty glass away. ‘Oh, it’s one, long, non-stop party for me, Col.’ He got out his phone while I went through to the gents’ toilets, not caring anymore if he stayed. I stood at the urinals, cooling my forehead against the white tiles. He knew what my nights were about. Since I’d had to get a place of my own I was seeing less and less of Kate and working more hours than ever. I didn’t get to wander past St Paul’s and stare at the Parthenon Marbles. I got home late and knackered and washed a microwaved bhuna down with lager on a tray in front of the TV. Colin came into the toilets. ‘Just checking. You OK, mate?’
I forced a smile. I had the management job, the Audi. I was supposed to be asking him if he was chipper. I went back through to the bar, set him up another scotch, took a beermat and scribbled my number on it.
YOUR SECRET’S SAFE. STAY HAPPY
I walked out into the night, sniffing the cold, sharp air. So, a toilet cleaner was giving me life lessons. My feet didn’t feel so sore anymore. I could get a room later. I decided I’d walk down past St Paul’s, lean on the bridge and watch the lights on the river.