by Tim Vine
The intoxicated pair were recently back from a religious camping retreat in Wales, and Polly had sent her dad a postcard that had disturbed him as it suggested that Brian the vegetarian might be the one. However, Brian painted for Tony the worst image of a son-in-law that he could ever imagine, and was without doubt nowhere near good enough for his little girl. The two men were off each others’ radars in terms of world outlook, humour, sentiment and ideas, to such an extent that on the three brief occasions that they had met, disagreements were avoided only by the pacifying tact of Polly and her deft skill at swift subject-changing. This familiar conflict-avoidance tactic was something that she had been forced to hone throughout her childhood, often keeping the peace between younger brother Norman and their father. Now Brian seemed to be filling Norman’s boots and taking on his role when they were with Tony, and she sensed that it would be only a matter of time before it kicked off between the two of them. For the time being, however, things appeared to be rolling along fairly smoothly, with both sides not rising to each other’s bait. However, she had little idea about the important and life-altering ultimatum her father was planning to issue to her before the week was up. He was intending to take Polly and Norman out for dinner, and inform them that they were both to be cut off from his Estate, unless:--
Tony was to stipulate that the Electric Dwarf had to cease all his current drug-related activities, move out of London and find himself some genuine employment. For her part, Polly was now obliged to cut all ties with Brian, as well as promising to sever all future relations with the man – his sandals, beard and everything that accompanied him. They all agreed on an Italian place near Victoria Station that Tony had been frequenting for years, nearly always ordering the same dish – meatballs. He raved about them loudly at every visit to each bemused waiter, insisting on ‘compliments to the chef.’ He would never have a suspicion that they were inexpensive, frozen meatballs from a sprawling cash & carry in Wembley, put together with zero love at a nondescript meat-processing packaging plant on the edge of a grim industrial estate in Milton Keynes, bought in ugly plastic sacks for industrial freezing.
‘The provenance of the meat?’ I hear you ask.
Back to plate, confused waiter, microwave door shuts, heat! Aaaggghh, events are taking a terrible and unexpected turn. what’s all that sauce? out into a fridge, nestling between huge butter slab and unidentified plastic storage container, out back into kitchen, it goes dark in a sack surrounded by other meatballs, then a long wait, freezing cold! are we in a lorry or van? here we go, we are driving, out of vehicle, another inordinate wait, then I’m being pulled apart viciously in a series of machines, mixed up again and again, this is hell, what are all the powders that keep getting poured over me? in a bag, another drive, what the . . . ? blood, so much blood, agghhh, I’m pulled together, I’m a cow my God! walking backwards . . . all the others are so scared, waiting, I’m so hungry, beaten, back in a stinking lorry with no air, long journey it’s horrible, stop, more driving, some grim holding area, water – at last, and a tiny bit of food, back to a filthy overcrowded shed, there are thousands of us, food, days turn to weeks, months, water, I am getting small, smaller, I fall, Mummy, is that you? I am sucked upwards into a wet and warm comforting place . . .
It was true, however, that the chef achieved results and was deft with the microwave, so perhaps should indeed be applauded. He had a great skill in knowing exactly the combination and number of minutes and seconds for anything that came his way. Some put it down just to experience, but he really was special. Plates were certainly never returned to the kitchen with a ‘table four’s complaining that their dinner’s not hot enough, Chef’ from a waiter. This was Norman’s first square meal for some time, as he generally lived on sugary supermarket-branded yoghurt or white toast with margarine whenever he felt the urge to eat. Eating – or, rather, nutrition – for him was a slight aggravation bred out of necessity, intruding into his life rather than being a pleasure in it. But on this occasion, peculiarly, he enjoyed the meatballs in particular.
Over the just-defrosted tiramisu, Tony dropped the impending bombshell on his two stupefied offspring. Polly – who had felt that something was brewing, was fuming inside, but she bottled up all the anger as her faith and character insisted that she must. Such intense personal restraint wasn’t always healthy and it certainly left her with many issues to deal with, when perhaps she should have had a good shout or wobbled through a self-purging row with somebody. Instead, a straining vein in her delicate and slender neck appeared to throb and bulge from nowhere, and she became aware of a sudden and unwelcome dampness under her armpits. Norman was too weak and emotionally crippled to complain, and besides, he felt that his father’s wishes had been expressed with an indisputable air of finality, certainly not inviting any questions or debate. He was, for once, correct on that score. Tony had decided that he had put up with too much nonsense from his two beloved children, and recently he’d not been enjoying the realization that comes to us all that he wasn’t going to be around on this Earth forever. Led by both his paternal instincts and a misguided intention of improving his children’s lives, Tony had rashly decided upon this thinly-disguised attempt at blackmail.
With an ugly scrape of her chair, Polly got up, grabbed her jacket and shiny bag, turned on her heels and spat out an abrupt and near-sarcastic ‘Thanks for dinner, Dad, I’ve gotta run. See ya, Norm, gimme a ding sometime.’ Then she disappeared out into the night, still thin-lipped with scarcely-hidden fury.
The two men remained at the table and sat together uncomfortably. They could have been players in a Harold Pinter scene. It had been many years since they’d been together at a mealtime, and once the usual conversation would have consisted of Tony dishing out endless advice to Norman that was generally rejected before it had even been uttered.
‘Best to just leave it now, Dad,’ mumbled the son meekly, like a boy under half his age. ‘I think I’ll be off too.’
Less than an hour later, a louche Norman was giving a watered-down version of the evening’s events to Yatter while chopping out their second line of speed. ‘Maybe the old boy has got a valid point, I mean look at the state of me. I’m not exactly early twenties anymore, I shouldn’t be doing this shit,’ he rattled, as he wolfed up a huge line of off-white powder through a grimy ten-pound note. He offered the remaining slightly skinnier line to Yatter. ‘Here, mate, get your laughing gear around that, son!’ Norm stretched and watched Yatter lumber across to the table and greedily hoover up the offering.
‘How about a trip somewhere to have a massive and final blowout, a two-week binge without restraint? I’ll just take all the drugs I can find, and then some. Stay up two weeks solid, something like that. I might even get laid for a change, you never know. Then I could come back, move to Dulltown and find me a sensible nine to five, if anyone’ll have me. Los Angeles always beckons and last time I tried to go . . . well, you know what happened. Bollocks, I’ll probably go to Agricultural College for a year and become a farmer!’
‘Mazel Tov, Norman! That’s a great plan,’ Yatter commented snidely.
‘Mazel what? Sounds like a Cold War machine gun, you know, the famous killing machine, the Mazeltov BR38. Fully automatic 7.62mm cartridge, rarely jammed, short recoil, fairly lightweight for back in the day considering its firepower . . . ’
‘You knob!’ was all Yatter could utter, chuckling as he brushed his nostrils and snorted vulgarly.
Norman’s brain was processing and spewing out a torrent of information at breakneck speed, and Yatter turned his head away as Norman’s words washed over him. This was, once again, a whirlwind of irritating and useless pondering that Yatter had to endure . . . but he had forced himself to put up with it and had built up a strange yet necessary tolerance as far as Norman was concerned.
A couple of years before, Tony had sponsored Norman a ticket to LA for a summer school, but his idea monumentally back-fired. At
the last minute, with plans made and bags packed, Norman had been forced to send his father a text. He preferred it this way rather than face his wrath over the phone. It read:
technical hitch . . . I’m not going to LA as student visa declined due to arrest a couple of years ago. Sorry
Tony’s immediate disappointment swiftly turned to anger, and Norman’s subsequent avoidance of his calls and messages for the following few weeks only managed to fuel Tony’s mounting fury.
Norman simply went on living from day to day, with nothing particular of note in his life, no remarkable events or points of interest, nothing. As the drugs fuelled him, the bumbling dwarf drifted through the months without really noticing time slipping away. It seems that many people’s lives – or existences – pan out in such a manner. There isn’t a suitable piece on a chess board that conveys and represents Norman’s unimportance in life; even the lowly pawn quietly holds too much potential for a reasonable comparison. Even when living day to day in a great city such as London, his effect on any one of his ten million or so neighbours was negligible. The great masses in city apartments packed into their tiny boxes like bees in a honeycomb, swarm to and from work like contestants in some nightmare reality TV show, although this is their reality, their boredom. Should glimpsing a Z-list ‘celebrity’ filming a commercial outside the Argos in Aylesbury truly be the highlight of someone’s year? Or witnessing a punch-up in the Morrisons car park in Dollis Hill, or perhaps a crash on the southbound M1 carriageway? Such inane, mundane lives, so many human beings . . . a species that ticks along with the supermarket tills beeping, the gas bill at the crematoriums always rising. Do the managers of these death tidiers fix their energy tariff for a few years in advance, and are they eligible for a preferential rate, as faithful and reliable customers?
Norman had actually applied for a job once in his life. He’d managed to get an interview with the Area Manager at the local DVD rental place a few years previously, when such places still existed. Now, this guy must have been bullied at school; he resembled the overly-styled nerd type that had recently started to crop up in the background of so many trendy TV commercials. He spoke in a monotone, sounding as if he needed to clear his throat, but never did. ‘So Norman, tell me, how would you deal with someone who wanted to rent a DVD?’ Norman was a bit taken aback by the question and couldn’t quite tell if it was a trick or whether it was serious, as it appeared so inane. He decided to take it at Face Value. ‘Well, I’d probably say ‘Welcome to Acadia Entertainment, are you looking for something specific, sir?’ Then I’d maybe suggest a title or help the customer find what he was looking for, throwing in a quick ‘Good choice!’ as he approaches the counter. I’d offer the usual extras – sweets, crisps, ice cream or a 2-litre bottle of Coke for him to wash the movie down with, and then accept payment when he was ready. Terms concerning the return of the DVD would briefly be explained and a cheery ‘enjoy it, see you soon’ might be offered at his departure. Something along those lines, I’d imagine.’ Norman had a hard time going through the process without laughing, but was sure that this was what Mister Blend-into-the-Crowd Area Manager wanted to hear. He subsequently could never figure out why he wasn’t hired for the position.
On another occasion, an old school friend roped Norman in to help paint his aunt’s shop just off the Fulham Road. Norman thought that it might be a chance to do something a bit different, so he turned up on the Tuesday in his painting gear. Tight, disgusting brown jogging pants from Oxfam and a ludicrously large T-shirt brashly emblazoned with a Polish Judo Club’s logo completed the ensemble. It seemed like a ‘bit of a laugh’ at the time, but it really was not a good idea to emblazon A-R-M-A-G-E-D-D-O-N on the wall in metre-high black letters before starting to paint. It was only several days and many coats of paint later that the outline of the letters was not somehow still stubbornly poking through, visible to all. Needless to say, that marked the end of his brief decorating career.
Recently, the most effort that he had made to become gainfully employed was six months or so ago. A late-night post on Facebook: I guess I need to get a job. Fairly lazy and no ambitions. Any suggestions/offers? Funnily enough, there were no takers.
The Dwarf’s sadly lost potential was that he had once shown promise as an Artist. Not as a painter, but as a youthful stoned man whose thoughts sometimes drifted towards rather interesting ideas. For instance, when a lively sixteen-year-old at school, his class had been instructed to build a model of something for an art project. His industrious classmates put in the effort and spent hours drawing plans, painting, gluing and building various structures. They produced aeroplanes, bridges, an impressive helicopter and even a dinosaur. It may have been born out of laziness, but Norman’s plan was brilliant. These were the step-by-step instructions to build his model:
Blow out an egg.
Colour it all around with an orange felt tip pen.
Lay it on a small bed of cotton wool.
Cut a piece of white card about the size of a business card.
Lay the card in front of the model, as if an exhibit label in a museum or gallery, with the words BAKED BEAN – SCALE 1:80.
Unfortunately, the Head of Art had not appreciated The Bean, and Norman had been sternly told off rather than praised and encouraged.
A half-hearted attempt at a German language course, a determined mission to get fit which lasted three days, the endless intention to learn the guitar, a yoghurt-producing business that never passed the pub-table planning stage one evening, that first and final painting evening class, a market stall on Portobello Road selling something as-yet-to-be-decided, a DJ management agency, the start-up company that would produce alarms to warn that the bath was overflowing, a car wash, Christmas tree importing, a druggie destination-holiday specialist travel agency, and a gourmet marmalade suppliers were just a few of the pie-in-the-sky projects that Norman toyed with but never furthered. He harboured wildly fantastic ideas that he would one day become some sort of enterprising Bill Gates character, and although the dream had been formulated, the reality was that he may as well imagine that he’d become the next Archbishop of Canterbury.
Even so, there was something about one particular profession that fascinated Norman. Whenever he took a trip to the dump, all the guys who worked there appeared unreasonably jolly, upbeat and satisfied with their work. Whether it was by helping an old lady unload garden waste into a skip, or heaving an unloved rusting refrigerator onto a squeaking trolley, these guys never had a bad vibe about them. Could it be the fact that they were generally outdoors, doing something physical, also sociable? The criteria added up to a fairly rewarding job if looked at objectively, and on the rare moment that he pondered attempting some genuine honest employment, these factors hadn’t escaped Norm . . . but then he’d roll a spliff.
Norm still hadn’t asked his flatmate how his date had gone, and this finally got Yatter’s back up. ‘So when are you gonna ask me about the date, Norm?’ Norman looked ever so slightly taken aback. ‘Oh sorry, mate, with all this family shit I forgot to ask.’
The truth was that the evening had been far from a success. The girl in question – Caroline – was a lot plainer than Yatter had remembered from the motorcycle courier’s office where she worked as a secretary, and out and about she had a strangely dominant and matronly way about her that completely turned Yatter off, irritating him somewhat too. She was a big classical music fan, and had insisted on picking up tickets for an evening of Beethoven and Brahms at a church in North London. As the interval approached (and not soon enough), Yatter was glad to notice a few wine bottles, boxes and an array of glasses neatly set up in a side aisle. As polite ripples of applause were dying down, he grabbed Caroline to get to the bar before a queue formed. Over his rancid glass of red – which incidentally had been invaded by tiny pieces of cork that bobbed around like plastic toys in a baby’s bath – and her orange juice, he took the rare moment to actually speak to her. �
��Did you clock the jazz bassoon moment towards the end there?’ Caroline studied him blankly. She hadn’t noticed the sketchy efforts from the woodwinds in the final movement of the concerto. He tried a different tack. ‘Have you seen how dusty Jesus is up there on the rood screen? I want to get a ladder, a bucket of hot soapy water, climb up there and give him a bloody good wash! Look at that dust on his chest!’
Caroline was not impressed. ‘Ssshh, you can’t speak like that,’ she chastised him.
‘Or I could start with his feet, and maybe sherry vinegar would be better?’ The evening was becoming tedious. She was clearly boring and he felt like winding her up because she took herself far too seriously. More importantly, he had decided that he didn’t fancy her with even one bone in his body. Soon the serious-faced musicians were filing calmly back to their places for the second half, sitting down and tuning their instruments. This ritual contained Yatter’s favourite music of the concert – the short-lived but exciting din of the orchestra’s pushing and twisting, blowing or scraping their precious jumbles of pipes and Heath Robinson contraptions somewhere approaching ‘in tune.’ What a pile of mushy, sentimental wallpaper paste followed! A Brahms violin concerto, with some flash South American soloist who Yatter imagined all the female members of the orchestra fancied, and no doubt some of the male ones too. He was not at all impressed by the man’s never-ending scraping, particularly his dire tuning problems when double stopping, however technically brilliant. Pathetically, the orchestra didn’t even have a sexy cellist to ogle when the music became interminable. This is a requirement that many believe every orchestra must provide, and Yatter was very disappointed as it’s always the fallback entertainment. He found a chewed-up pencil in his jacket and contented himself with scrawling a poem about tea on the back of the programme, just to pass the time.