by Mike Gayle
45
NOW
Smiler! Smiler, open up the door and let me in!”
He’d known the man for so long that Gus’s voice was almost as familiar to him as his own, but Hubert knew it couldn’t be him. The last time he’d seen Gus, the man hadn’t looked capable of crossing his living room, let alone London. No, this couldn’t be Gus. But if it wasn’t his old friend, what was it? His ghost? Had he died in that wreck of a flat of his and come back to haunt Hubert for being such a terrible friend?
Hubert recalled childhood stories of duppies, restless spirits sent by enemies using obeah, a sort of sorcery, but he didn’t believe in ghosts, or for that matter magic, black or otherwise. So if the voice didn’t belong to a duppy, and it couldn’t possibly belong to Gus, then the only explanation left was that Hubert was losing his mind again. Having conjured up Rose’s voice on the telephone, now here he was summoning his old friend for company. He couldn’t go through this again. Once was enough.
Desperate to do something to keep the madness at bay, Hubert yelled at the door: “Go away! Me know you’re not real! So just go away!”
There was a brief silence filled only with the noise of the blood rushing through Hubert’s ears and the sound of his own heart racing. For a moment he believed he had banished the voice for good, but then it called back in that same deep baritone: “Smiler, man, what you talking about? It’s me, Gus. Open up and let me in!”
It sounded so real, so much like his old friend, that Hubert wanted nothing more than to open the door and find Gus standing there. He knew it couldn’t be him, though, and what’s more, he knew he couldn’t give in to the urge like he had last time. He had to be strong or they would end up carting him off to a mental institution, just like they had his father all those years ago. On the other hand, if he were to open the door and prove once and for all that there was nobody there, he would at least be able to dismiss it more quickly should it happen again.
Clenching his fists, Hubert inched his way to the front door and then, drawing a deep breath, pressed his eye up to the peephole he’d instructed the workmen to install after the burglary. There was definitely a figure there, distorted by the fisheye lens, but whether it was really Gus or not, Hubert couldn’t tell.
“Smiler, man, come now!” said the voice through the door. “My bladder’s full and I’m busting for the toilet, so unless you want a puddle on your doorstep, let me in!”
Scared as he was, Hubert couldn’t help but raise a smile. Real or not, this voice sounded so much like his friend that it was impossible not to be comforted. How long had it been since he’d felt like that? He reached a hand up to the latch and, resigned to his fate, opened the door to reveal Gus standing right in front of him. If this was his mind playing tricks, he thought, it would win every time, because this apparition looked and sounded as real as anything else in his life.
Despite the temperate weather, the figure was dressed in a wooly hat and a shabby overcoat, a newspaper sticking out of the pocket.
Hubert reached out and touched its arm. It felt real. It was real. This was Gus, his old friend.
“Gus, is it really you?”
The note of hope in Hubert’s voice sounded strange to his ears.
“Yes, man!” said Gus. “Yes, man, it’s me!”
Gus hadn’t been joking about needing the toilet and so after ushering him in the direction of the bathroom, Hubert headed to the kitchen and filled the kettle. By the time Gus came downstairs, Hubert had made them each a mug of tea and filled a plate with biscuits.
Sitting down at opposite sides of the kitchen table, the two men ate in silence, sipping tea and crunching biscuits one after the other, until Puss wandered in from the direction of the living room.
Gus raised an eyebrow. “You have cat now?”
Hubert nodded. “She called Puss.”
“I always thought you couldn’t stand them.”
“Me too,” said Hubert, and he shrugged. “What can me say? Life is full of surprises. Bit like you showing up here today.”
Gus nodded and finished chewing a mouthful of biscuit.
“Let me tell you,” he said, reaching for another, “no one is more surprised than me, friend.”
“So, what bring you here?”
Putting down his biscuit, Gus reached into the pocket of his overcoat, pulled out a rolled-up newspaper, and laid it on the table between them. It was a copy of the Bromley Gazette from two weeks earlier, and there on the front cover was a picture of Hubert and the rest of the committee, hands raised as if in mid–battle cry.
Hubert smiled as he recalled the day the photograph was taken. It had been the week before the burglary, in the midst of all the press attention the campaign had been getting. The photographer had latched on to the idea of them declaring war on loneliness and had requested that they all adopt battle stances. Hubert stood smiling but with an arm raised like a warrior; Ashleigh posed, mouth wide open, looking like she was in the middle of a war cry; Jan was holding her hands above her head as though she were about to execute a lethal karate chop; and Fiona, Tony, Maude, and Emils stood behind them, fists up like boxers. As ridiculous as the photo had turned out, it had, Hubert recalled fondly, been a good day with lots of laughter and excited chat. And for a fleeting moment he allowed himself to miss those times and the people he’d spent them with.
Hubert scanned the article’s headline: Big Day Approaches for Local Action Group Declaring War on Loneliness.
“Where you find this? Brixton?”
Gus pointed to Ashleigh in the photograph.
“No, man. That girl there brought it to me just last week. She wanted me to come and talk to you. Said you were in a bad way.”
“Ashleigh came to you? How did she know where you live?”
“That’s not important. What matters is that she was right. I can see just from looking at you that you’re not yourself.”
“How much did she tell you?”
“Everything,” said Gus. “About David, about the burglary, about Rose and the phone calls: everything.”
Hubert was quiet for a moment. He felt ashamed and embarrassed in equal measure.
“And me expect everyone is laughing at me. Stupid old fool, making out like his dead daughter is still alive.”
“Hush up!” exclaimed Gus. “No one is laughing at you, least of all that young girl. I don’t know why she thinks you’re so special, but let me tell you, she does. That girl, well, she thinks the world of you, and she was so worried about you that she came to rattle the cage of an old man like me just to help you.”
“Me tired, Gus, man. So tired.” Even saying the words aloud felt like an effort. “Them damn thieves coming in me house, taking Joyce’s rings, rooting through me things… well, after everything else… it was… it was… the last straw.” He stared down at his lap, ashamed of what he was about to say next. “You know, some days me don’t even bother getting out of bed. Some days when me wake up me wish me hadn’t. It’s too much, Gus; this life is too much.”
The two men fell silent again while Puss, back arched, weaved her way around their legs, desperate for attention.
“After Rose died, Smiler, you weren’t the same, and who can blame you? It was a terrible thing that happened. Something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, let alone my oldest friend. But when you cut yourself off, that left me cut off too. Over the years, every last one of the old Red Lion lot went their own way: moving out of the area, the country even, or getting sick and ending up in some home or other… or worse. Without you to see and do things with, I almost stopped going out altogether. Then three winters ago, when we had that terrible snow and ice, do you remember it?”
Hubert nodded.
“The pavement outside my door was so slippy it was like a skating rink. Me had to put some sharp sand down just to make it to the gate.
“Well,” said Gus, “it was then it happened. I was coming back from the shops, lost my footing, and mashed myself up so b
ad they had to take me to hospital in an ambulance. I smashed up my hip, my shoulder, and lost a tooth too, and as I lay there day in, day out while them fix me up, I got to thinking about how no one knows I’m here, and no one cares.” He stopped for a moment, as if struggling to find the words to carry on. “Smiler, man, I should have married Lois, all them years ago. I should have married her when I had the chance. I should have been more like you and Joyce. Had a few kids, got myself a nice place, but instead all I did was carry on with woman after woman, never settling down, never taking life seriously, and now there I was, holed up in a hospital bed, watching all the others on the ward with them cards and visitors. All I could think was, that could’ve been me if I hadn’t lived my life so selfish. What if I had been more like Hubert Bird? By the time I was well enough to go home, I’d all but given up on life. I stopped looking after myself, looking after my place, looking after anything at all. Instead I just sat there hour after hour, hoping each day that passed might be my last.”
He stopped again, removed his wooly hat in order to run a hand over his matted white hair.
“I thought I was dreaming that first day you came by. I thought you might be dead. That I’d never hear from you again. And then there you were, just like Lazarus, sitting in my living room as if the last five years hadn’t happened.”
Hubert shook his head sadly. In all this time, all his grief, he’d never once spared a thought for how his behavior after losing Rose had affected his old friend. But it had, in ways that Hubert would never have guessed, and he felt awful about it.
“Gus, man, me didn’t know any of this. Me so sorry.”
Gus waved one of his large hands in the air, swatting away Hubert’s apology like an errant bluebottle.
“Smiler, man, I’m not asking you to be sorry, I’m asking you not to waste your life by locking yourself away again. You have people who care for you, people who need you, people who are counting on you. I’m not sure what this campaign thing of yours is about. But you know what, that isn’t the point. The point is you’ve got people fired up, Hubert Bird, you’ve got them all really fired up! Councilors and MPs listening to your every word, newspapers and TV people interviewing you left, right, and center, and a big carry-on in Bromley Park on Saturday to set it all off. Don’t you see, Smiler? You’re hiding away from the world again, thinking it’s the only way to live. But you and I both know that’s not living, that’s waiting to die. It’s not what Joyce would’ve wanted for you, and it’s not what Rose would’ve wanted for you either.”
Hubert didn’t notice the tears until he accidentally brushed a hand against his cheek. Gus was right, he thought as he dried his face on his sleeve, neither Joyce nor Rose would ever have countenanced such behavior. They were both fighters, right until the bitter end, unwilling to yield or give in to their circumstances, always striving to hold on to life and the riches it offered. What would they think, what would they say, if they could see him now? They would tell him he had to carry on, if not for himself then at the very least for the memory of them.
“I wasn’t going to come, you know,” said Gus. “When the young girl came, I told her there was nothing I could do, that you were your own person, that you were a grown man.”
Lifting his head, Hubert fixed his gaze on Gus.
“So, what changed your mind?”
Gus gestured toward the table.
“She left behind that newspaper. I didn’t even think to touch it until last night. But when I read what you said about me, how you said that you weren’t going to give up on me no matter how stubborn I was, no matter how awkward, that was when I knew I had to do the same for you. I had to help you, even if you didn’t want to be helped. It’s just what friends do.”
46
NOW
It was morning and Hubert and Gus were sitting at the kitchen table, two mugs of tea and the remains of breakfast in front of them. Hubert was dressed in a smart pale blue shirt and what he liked to call his summer trousers, a pair of light beige slacks that Joyce had bought him for a holiday to Torquay they’d taken. Gus, meanwhile, who had not long since woken up, was still wearing the pajamas Hubert had loaned him the night before, the legs and arms of which were woefully inadequate cover for his long limbs.
Hubert picked up his mug and plate and took them to the sink.
“So, Gus, man, me going to have to get off now but me should be back sometime late afternoon. Help yourself to anything you want to eat, and there’s plenty of hot water if you want another bath. If you want to watch some TV, use the long remote control to turn it on and use the one shaped like a peanut to change the channels.”
“Don’t you worry about me, Smiler,” said Gus as Puss wandered in through the cat flap in the back door and made a beeline for Hubert’s guest. In one fluid movement, she leaped from the floor to Gus’s lap and settled herself down, purring loudly. “I’ve got this little lady to keep me company. You go about your business. I’ll be fine right here.”
As Hubert brushed his teeth, he thought how good it felt having someone else in the house. It had taken Hubert a long time to talk Gus into the idea that he’d had: that they should become housemates again like they had been in the old days. “You can’t go back to that mess of a flat,” Hubert had reasoned, “it’s not good for your… what them call it now… your mental health. No, you need to stay here with me for a while, take David’s old room, get yourself well again, and then we’ll see where we are. Come on, man, what do you say?”
“The two of us sharing a place again after all these years? Could be fun. We had some good times back in the day, didn’t we, Smiler, man? And at least this time around we don’t have to share a bed!”
Rinsing out his mouth, Hubert dried his face with a towel and checked his reflection in the mirror. He looked more like himself, having shaved his beard off that morning following his shower, more like a man with things to do and places to be.
Downstairs, he sat on the bottom step to put on his shoes and then, standing up, he slipped on his jacket, put on his hat, and, after calling a final goodbye to Gus over his shoulder, headed outside.
Within a minute or two of ringing Ashleigh’s door buzzer, it became apparent to Hubert that she wasn’t in. He checked his watch, wondering if she was at work and how she might feel about him dropping by to see her there. What he had to say to her felt urgent, but the last thing he wanted to do was get her into trouble when he’d caused enough as it was. As he weighed his options, a middle-aged woman wearing a pink-and-black polka-dotted dress came up the front path, carrying two heavy-looking shopping bags.
“You’re Ashleigh’s friend from next door, aren’t you?” she said, and smiled. “Are you looking for her?”
“Me was hoping to speak to her, yes. Me guess she must be at work or something.”
“Not today; I walked up the road with her and Layla earlier. They were off to the stay-and-play group at the big church opposite the petrol station.”
“Me know the one. Me go and see if me can catch up with her.”
“I saw you when you were on the TV with Phil and Holly that time,” said the woman. “You were great. And I absolutely agreed with everything you said.”
Thanking her, Hubert made his way up to the main road and then, turning right, headed to the church. The main doors were closed when he arrived, but a quick glimpse through the windows that ran along the side of the building revealed that the room was full of young mothers with their babies and toddlers, along with the odd gray-haired grandparent with their grandchildren. They were all facing away from him, looking at a young woman dressed in rainbow-pattern dungarees, who appeared to be animatedly telling them a story. Hubert spotted Ashleigh and Layla sitting at the very front. He began waving, but try as he might, he couldn’t get their attention. But then the young woman in the dungarees pointed in his direction, causing everyone to turn around. Ashleigh’s eyes widened when she caught sight of Hubert and, scrambling to her feet, she ran toward the exit.
“Ashleigh, girl, me sorry, you’ve been nothing but a friend to me all along. And me sorry for acting the way me did, leaving everything all in your hands, shutting myself off, letting people down. Me been a damn fool these past few weeks, a damn fool and no mistake.”
Ashleigh stood back and wiped her eyes.
“Oh, Hubert, don’t be silly, of course you haven’t let anyone down. You’ve been going through the mill, that’s all. I’m just so glad to see you back out and about.”
“Well, it’s all thanks to you. Me had an unexpected visitor yesterday. And don’t pretend like you don’t know who it was. Me nearly have a heart attack when me saw Gus on me doorstep.”