by Jim Bennett
When she turned to look at the bar again, the woman was serving another customer. At some point in the recent conflict, her intoxicated neighbour had managed to source himself another drink. He started to knock it back as if the world was about to end.
Jack finished playing his introductory tune and those who had been paying attention gave a round of applause.
‘Thanks very much', Jack said, still not looking very pleased. ‘My name’s Jack Harper and this is my music’.
When his hand connected with the strings again, something was obvious amiss. Not understanding the finer particulars of playing the guitar and having drank about a bottle and a half of passable wine at this point, Julie didn’t know what it was, but it definitely wasn’t right. The error was so severe that several of the patrons recoiled from the noise as it reverberated through the speakers unpleasantly.
The gent sitting next to Julie let out a snort of laughter. Luckily it didn’t evolve into a full out eruption of mirth, but for one very unpleasant moment, it definitely had the potential to. Jack looked up, and shot a nasty glance in his direction. The man was clearly past the point of feeling any embarrassment, if indeed he had that capacity to begin with. He continued to smile happily as Jack attempted to recover his composure.
Jack eventually managed to find his groove. He looked incredibly on message sat on the stage. The young, beautiful musician with not a care in the world. Singing, not because it might make you rich and famous, because it was a joy, and people wanting to hear your music could make you happy in a way that few other things could.
The lyrics were pleasant if only because you could let your attention wander while you were listening to them. Much in the same way that you can stop concentrating on bad television for up to five minutes and still not lose the thread of the plot.
‘It’s not easy when you have all this love to give.
It isn’t fair when I don’t have anyone to share with.
It’s hard sometimes when you’ve been alone for so long.
How do you keep on giving, when you’re always so alone?'
‘So won’t you tell me you love me, hey?' Jack cooed.
Julie had heard Jack practising this section from outside his bedroom door. Confident, if not arrogant, about most things, Jack had been surprisingly coy about this one particular song.
‘So won’t you tell me you love me, hey?' Jack sang again.
Julie could just about remember what happened next, and only because it had been an impressive departure from Jack’s singing style more generally. After all, they were lovely little songs, but the lyrics weren’t exactly inspired. Jack would take a deep breath, and then sing the last ‘hey', with all the gusto he could muster.
Except he didn’t. He sang the first half of the lyric with no issue. When he reached the crucial line, his voice cracked. Not the small little imperfection that we all suffer from on the day to day, but the almighty failing of the voice that is usually reserved for boys entering the early stages of puberty. An embarrassment of this kind would normally be something to be laughed off with a group of friends. Awkward, yes, but nothing major. Unfortunately Jack was literally standing centre stage in a room that was becoming increasingly more crowded.
It was too much for the man sitting next to Julie. He couldn’t help it. He threw his head back and roared with laughter, pointing at Jack as he did for good measure.
Jack stopped playing and stood there stunned. When the man failed to stop laughing, the young performer’s face transformed from bemusement to rage. He let go of his guitar, jumped off the stage and began to push his way through the crowd toward the perpetrator. His instrument, now hanging from its strap over his shoulder, bumped into people at awkward angles as he went. He received a few shouts of protest, but had already gone by the time anyone went to retaliate.
When Jack finally made his way across the room, he immediately launched at the laughing man. Julie was shocked that her houseguest didn’t attempt any course of redress. He simply pulled back his arm and punched the man square in the face. It seemed so unlike the gentle soul who had been living under her roof for the past few weeks. He might have displayed a temper from time to time. It had been something more akin to a grumbling toddler than a brawling strongman though.
Jack got the first punch in no problem. There was a look of amazement on his face that it had actually landed. The recipient wobbled on his chair precariously and almost fell to the floor. Feeling encouraged by the success of this first venture, Jack pulled his fist back again, ready to land another blow. Unfortunately the bigger man had come to his senses in the intervening half a second. He stood up to his full height and looked properly mad. Next to him, the able, young man who was so sure of himself just a minute ago looked like a little boy. With one almighty smack, he hit Jack in the nose and sent him spinning to the floor face first. Julie winced as she heard an unidentified part of his face crunch sickeningly. The drunk chap, who had a rather impressive frame to support his substantial gut, took one stride forward and went to lift Jack off the ground.
Fortunately before the matter could escalate any further, the manager had rushed over and stood between the two of them. Julie rushed over to Jack to see if he was alright. When she turned him over, he looked more dazed than anything else. The manager was now having an animated conversation with the bloke who had hit Jack. Julie couldn't hear what they were saying to one another. However, as the drunk man finally went to leave, she distinctly heard him say, 'whatever, music is shit anyway'.
Jack, now seeming more alert, had propped himself up on his elbows. The manager was now saying something to Jack that was impossible to hear from where him and Julie were sitting on the ground. She took his guitar off of his shoulder before she helped Jack to his feet. She grabbed a few napkins from the bar and handed them to him to attend to the bloody mess below his nose.
'What are you playing at?' the manager said to Jack.
'Steve, I can explain. He'd been going at me'.
'Is that the explanation? Because it's shit'.
'You know what it's like. Some people are just looking for trouble'.
'Like you, you mean? That's the third scrap you've got into with a customer, and that's only the ones I've seen'.
'Yeah well', Jack said, the sulky teen voice once again making an appearance. 'I can't help it if people are giving me shit'.
'You can help acting like a dick though. I'm sorry mate. I don't need this'.
'That's the last time it happens Steve, I promise'.
'I can't take that chance. I'll pay you what you're owed at the end of the week'.
Jack first looked crestfallen and then furious. His posture changed again to a fighting stance. Before he could do any more damage, Julie put her hand on his shoulder.
'I think we should go Jack'. He didn't look sure, but when he turned back, Steve had already gone. The effort to fight another doomed battle was clearly too great. His shoulders slumped and he let Julie lead him out of the bar.
Jack said nothing the entire ride home. They did get a few funny looks on account of Jack's nose. Thankfully the trains were relatively quiet for a Wednesday evening. He sat with his head slumped against the window. His guitar was placed upright in the chair next to him. Every so often, Julie would glance over at him to see if there was any indication that he might want to talk. His eyes remained fixed and his expression vacant. At one point, he looked so zoned out that Julie was worried that he was concussed. That was before he nudged his nose with the back of his hand, and it instantly started bleeding again. She rushed to the bathroom and fetched him another wad of thin tissue. He took it from her without thanks and carried on looking out of the window.
When they got back to Brumpton, there were no taxis. Julie considered whether walking was an option, but the heat was still oppressive. The alcohol was no longer making her feel pleasantly giddy, just queasy.
She wasn't sure what she had expected tonight was going to be, but it wasn't this. Sh
e called a local taxi firm, and the two of them sat in silence at the bus shelter waiting for their lift to arrive.
They didn’t talk at all, with one exception. 'You'll need to clean yourself up a bit', Julie had said as an afterthought after she’d put the phone down to the taxi company. 'They won't take you like that'.
He left her sitting there as he ventured back into the station to use the bathroom.
When they got back to the house, the two of them staggered into the kitchen without much thought why. Jack went straight to the fridge and grabbed a bottle of wine from inside the door.
'Are you sure that's a good idea?' Julie slurred. Despite the sobriety of their journey home and a good bout of fresh air, she didn't feel any more composed.
Jack barely acknowledged her. He did an arm movement which may have been a shrug but it was anyone's guess. He poured himself a glass and slumped down into one of the chairs around the kitchen table. Out of instinct more than anything else, Julie fetched herself a glass and took the bottle from him. Only when the neck was touching the rim did she realise that she had no desire whatsoever for another drink.
'It was beautiful Jack', she said, returning both to the table. 'The music I mean. Before everything went wrong. I know you're probably disappointed with how tonight turned out, but you should be proud of what you can do'.
She went to the sink and poured herself a pint of water. She made a mental note that she must remember to get some paracetamol from the bathroom cabinet upstairs, hoping beyond hope that she hadn't polished them off the morning after her last binge.
'Goodnight', Julie said. Having not received any response from him, Julie went to walk past him and out of the room.
'Wait'. He grabbed her arm as she walked past him. 'I don't want to be alone tonight'. Julie wasn't sure what the appropriate response was to this, so just stood still. Without letting go of her arm, he rose from his chair and stood close to her. Before she knew what was happening, he had brushed her hair away from her shoulder and had kissed her neck.
A combination of shock, indecision and quite frankly lust made her knees go weak. She placed one hand on the table to stop herself from stumbling.
'Jack', she said in a whisper. She was afraid her voice would betray her if she tried anything more. 'I don't think it's a good idea'.
But it was already happening. Placing his wine glass on the table, he positioned himself in front of her. He put a hand on either side of her face and they kissed with a frenzy that she hadn't known for many years.
There had still been an opportunity to stop there, Julie thought to herself later. They were in the kitchen for God's sake. On the way to wherever they were going to do the deed, there was a chance that one of them could have come to their senses, and it was highly unlikely that it was going to be the teenage boy. But several bottles of wine and an evening of high drama don't normally lend themselves to good decision making.
Jack took Julie's hand, and silently led her upstairs.
Chapter Seven
Julie wasn't able to say what exactly it was that had woken her up. It may have been the ringing in her head reaching fever pitch. Maybe it was how her parched mouth and throat were making it near impossible to swallow. Or perhaps it was the light streaming through the window and assaulting her eyes without mercy. If she had to make an educated guess, she would wager that it was because she was lying on her son's bedroom floor with nothing but the dinosaur blanket that he had owned since early childhood to conceal her shame.
After the debauchery had concluded, Julie had a vague recollection of shifting out of the bed. Unable to make it back to her own bedroom, she had set up camp on the floor with whatever coverings were available to her. She leant forwards and saw that Jack was lying on his front with one arm hanging over the bed frame.
The digital clock on the bedside table showed that it was 7.30. Julie tried to remember whether she had made the effort to put the clocks forward a few months previously. It was beyond her though. She collected her clothes from where they were bunched up in the corner and tried to leave the room with as little noise as possible. Having sex with your son's teenage friend was embarrassing enough. If she had to endure him seeing her naked in the unforgiving light of day, Julie thought she might just keel over and die.
Back safely in her own room, she checked the clock and managed to comprehend that it was definitely half past seven. At least she had about an hour to try and get herself into a fit state before she needed to be at work. There was a glass of stale water next to the bed which she downed without hesitation. In the top drawer of the dresser, the only medication she could find was an old tablet of something ground into dust. Deciding it wasn't worth the risk, Julie donned her dressing gown and made her way to the bathroom.
There was something comforting about the sterile environment that the cold porcelain provided, and Julie spent a moment with her head rested against the wall. Unfortunately it wasn't enough to counteract the nausea resulting from the consumption of an overwhelming quantity of alcohol. She fell to her knees hard and crawled towards the toilet. Thankfully she reached the bowl just in time. Initially she couldn't find the strength to get back to her feet. She allowed herself to slide to the floor, holding her knees against the chest and wondering what in the world she had let herself become. If she didn't have anywhere to be, Julie thought that she would happily stay there all day. Content to let the world keep moving around her while she slowly perished.
Without having any perception of an intervening period, Julie woke herself with a sharp intake of breath. Panicked, she looked at her watch and realised that it was now 8.55. She jumped to her feet and immediately regretted it. With time quickly running out before she needed to be at work, Julie splashed some cold water on her face and under her arms. It did nothing to help her feel more alert, but hopefully it would at least partially address the cloud of alcoholic miasma which must have been emanating from her pores.
By the time she had got back to her bedroom, Julie had worked herself into such a frenzy that she couldn't see the clean uniform that she had left on the chair in the corner. Nor did it occur to her to check the pile of laundry downstairs waiting to be ironed. Instead, she began dragging dirty clothes out of the washing basket with wild abandon. In the very bottom, there was a scrunched and shriveled top that she must have worn several weeks before. With no time to source an alternative, she coated the offending article in a cloud of deodorant and a rather offensive eau de toilette that Betty had bought her ten Christmases previously.
Once she had put it on, Julie caught sight of the clock in the corner and saw that it was now 9.05. She had no time to consider how ridiculous she looked. She ran down the stairs, and slipped on the nearest pair of shoes before pulling violently to open the front door and running out into the street. Only when the door had swung shut behind her and the latch had engaged did Julie remember that she had forgotten her keys.
She sprinted round the side of the house and through the back gate, running straight into the back of the house. Luckily her instincts had been right. Having no additional key for the front of the house, Julie had given Jack a spare for the back door. He had let them in last night and Julie was elated to find that he hadn't locked the door after them. However her excitement was short-lived. As she barreled through the door, she tripped on Jack's sandals which had been left directly inside the back door as usual. Her shin rubbed painfully across the linoleum and left a nasty friction burn where her trouser leg had ridden up. Her first impulse had been to shout for Jack to remonstrate him, before having to remind herself that he wasn't in fact her teenage son. The thought of this and her actions of the night before created a new wave of nausea that hit her with renewed conviction.
Her leg continued to throb, but she didn't have time for any self pity. She grabbed her keys from her handbag which sat open on the kitchen counter and rushed off once again.
After Julie had been sitting in the traffic jam for about twenty minutes, she final
ly accepted that she was going to be horribly late and there was nothing that she could do about it.
Looking at her reflection for the first time this morning, she saw that her hair stood at odd angles where she had slept on it. She grabbed at it and did her best to restrain it in a bobble. The problem was that she had intentionally cut her hair short to negate the need to tie it up. The resulting effect was something similar to the hairdressing styling of a toddler. Julie alternated between the two for a few minutes, trying to decide which one was ultimately worse. In the end she wasn't sure whether she determined that they were both as bad as each other or if she simply didn't care, but she took the bobble out and threw it in the foot well. She rested her hair on the steering wheel until the car behind her pipped its horn to let her know that the traffic had moved on.
Julie finally pulled up in front of the shop at about 10.05. Under normal circumstances, she reckoned that Mr Peg didn't have much of a sense of the passage of time. In fact, his devotion to his flora was so intense that Julie thought she could probably rock up in the middle of the afternoon and he still wouldn't realise that anything was amis.
But today was the day of Mr Peg's big announcement. Whatever his grand new plan was that would herald monumental changes for the three of them. To that end, both Mike and Mr Peg were stood outside looking concerned when Julie arrived. Even if they hadn't been, Julie also managed to knock over a sizeable pot on her way out of the car, announcing her arrival with an almighty clatter. Julie had a moment of realisation in which she understood that the look on Mr Peg's face before had been irritation rather than concern, the latter having been reserved for the big pot which was now the wrong way up.
'Oh God, sorry', she said, attempting to right it.
She had only made a token effort. Partly this was because she knew that she wouldn't be able to lift it. Mr Peg bustled over and with Mike's help, managed to get the plant the right way up again.