Paul McCartney's Coat

by Michael White

  Maybe – just maybe – I’m not a lipstick girl at all.

  The History Detectives.

  Part One: A Nice Little Folder.

  The journalist placed her pad on her knee and picked up the cup of tea that Billy had placed in front of her a few minutes ago. The minute she did so Billy was on his feet once again, this time pushing a plate of biscuits towards her. Mumbling a quick thanks around her last chocolate digestive she picked up another one and as if not quite sure what to do with it, placed it on her notepad.

  “Don’t mind if I do.” she said, “I didn’t know that they still made these. I used to love them when I was a kid. I haven’t had one for years!”

  “Oh they’re very popular, Sarah” said Billy taking one for himself and settling back in his armchair. It had taken Sarah nearly half an hour to get Billy to call her by her first name, referring to her before that as, “Ms Clarke”. She seemed to have finally harangued him into submission however.

  “Well they’re certainly very popular in this house!” said his wife Sue who was sitting beside him on the long black leather couch. Sarah thought that they looked like any other couple really, which wasn’t unusual at all. She had often found during the course of her job that the strangest things could happen to the most ordinary people. Still, they were a very nice couple, she had found. Not like some of the people she had to interview for the local paper. Despite it being her job she had grown to detest the wasters, criminals or worse she had to deal with on what seemed like a daily basis. No, she had decided that Billy and Sue were as nice a couple as you could possibly wish to meet. They also had milk chocolate digestives, which was a big plus. As she sipped from her tea Sarah considered their appearance once again, as she had done when she had first arrived nearly half an hour ago. Although both retired, neither Billy or Sue had the appearance of being terribly old. The notes that she had made so far (before the tea arrived) indicated that Billy was sixty one and Sue sixty two. To this Sue had referred to Billy as her, “toy boy” which they had all had a bit of a giggle about, especially when Billy began to blush.

  Her notes also revealed that Billy had taken early retirement after a set of redundancies at the car factory where he worked, and Sue had officially retired the year before from her school cleaning job as she was now beyond the retirement age. Sarah placed her cup back down on the small table in front of them and picked her notepad up again.

  “Back to work.” she smiled, wiping a stubborn biscuit crumb from the corner of her mouth. “So where were we up to?” she asked, waving her pen at them. Billy smiled, happy to let Sue do the talking. Or so that seemed to be the way of it so far. Sarah made a mental note to quiz Billy a little more closely once Sue had exhausted herself. So far though she had shown no hint of slowing down whatsoever.

  Upon her arrival Sarah had noted that the semi-detached two up two down was in a relatively nice area, and although a little old fashioned inside was not really giving her the impression of a house where old people lived. There was a certain lack of the smell of boiled cabbage, and definitely no budgie. She had chided herself for her cynicism a little later on, for she found that Billy and Sue were a lovely couple. Sue was very outgoing, Billy a little more reserved, but with a dry sense of humour. She considered that both of them had probably been quite a handsome couple when they were younger, but if she had been forced to voice an opinion she would have said that the pair of them probably looked around about ten years younger than they actually were, and most definitely did not look like a pair of pensioners. This was reflected by the choice of decor in the front room, and Sarah assumed the house as well. It had the look of a home that was occupied by a middle aged couple rather than that of a pensioners house. Nevertheless it was not entirely a modern home, but neither was it cluttered with obscure, strange ornaments whose sole purpose seemed to be to gather dust.

  “So when did you discover you had a flair for genealogy? I think our readers would be very interested in that. It was quite a bit of luck really, when I noticed your advertisement in our paper. I knew straight away it would make a really good story.” said Sarah, waiting for Sue to answer. To her surprise it was Bill who replied.

  “We prefer to call it family trees.” he said. “Genealogy seems a little elitist.” he paused, rubbing his chin. “Plus a lot of people have no idea what it means. They may think I’m some kind of bloody surgeon or something.” Sue giggled beside him. “Family trees is what we call it. Very nicely we’ve done out of it too. The money certainly helped once I was made redundant. Five years before I could claim a state pension it was at that point. Not that a state pension is going to go that far! Though the redundancy helped pay off the house and what have you.” Sarah nodded. “It also enabled me to buy my first computer and that as well.” Continued Bill. “I had never bothered with one before. To be honest I thought it was all beyond me, but once I started using it I found it was all pretty straight forward.”

  “I think he only really got it so he could watch the foreign football online.” said Sue, taking up the story. Bill chuckled at this and Sarah thought that this was probably the case, judging by his guilty expression. “Though we soon found that family trees could be a lot more entertaining, didn’t we, Bill?” Sue asked, and Bill nodded.

  “I happened upon it by accident, really. I’ve always had a bit of an interest in my own family tree and when I was talking to a few guys down the pub they seemed pretty interested too. I found a couple of websites and after a few months I had a fairly respectable printed out family tree. They were real impressed down the pub! A few of the lads asked me if I could do one for them and some of the staff too. Even said they would pay for it.”

  “So I designed a couple of forms for background stuff and what have you.” said Sue. “A starting point, if you like. And off we went.” Sarah waited for either one of the two to continue but they seemed to have paused to think, remembering how they had gone about setting up their genealogy business. She glanced at her shorthand and it was Billy who took up the reins.

  “Eventually I had the first family tree done and printed out. Nice paper and so on. I couldn’t figure out how to parcel it up though. A big envelope didn’t seem right. We thought about rolling it into a tube, didn’t we, Sue?” he said and Sue smiled in agreement.

  “In the end we decided to put it all into a folder.” she said. “People like a nice folder, don’t you think, Sarah?” Sarah nodded in agreement, though if forced to give an honest opinion she had not really noticed this particular trait in people in general at all. Still, a nice folder it was.

  “So there we were. Twenty quid seemed reasonable after all the research we had to do.” continued Billy. “I felt a bit awkward about it really, though it had taken some time it wasn’t as if it was that hard to do. Certainly wasn’t anything that anyone else couldn’t have done if they set their mind to it. But the bloke down the pub I had done it for was absolutely made up, and handed the twenty quid over without even thinking about it.” Billy paused to think for a minute and took a sip of his tea. “He even went as far to buy my drinks for the night, I seem to remember.”

  “Humph.” Snorted Sue. “I remember that night all too well. You were staggering through the door just after midnight.” Billy smiled. “I think I even had to help you up the stairs to bed you were all over the place!” Billy laughed out loud at this and placed his tea cup on the table once again.

  “Well, that was that.” he said, “We were up and running. That was nearly a year ago now.”

  Sarah looked at her notes. “So now your genealogy business is doing very nicely, I understand?” she said and both Billy and Sue nodded.

  “Very nicely indeed.” Sue volunteered. “It seems like there’s no end of people wanting a family tree.”

  “All in a nice little folder, too!” Laughed Billy and Sue blushed slightly at the ribbing as Billy carried on. “So far we’ve upgraded the computer twice, bought a colour laser printer for a good finish on the printed charts
and we also have a very healthy queue of people waiting for us to investigate their family trees. It really has worked out very nicely over all. Not many people can say they are more or less earning a living from what started out as a hobby now, can they?”

  Sarah shook her head as Sue asked if anyone wanted more tea. As she was having such a nice time with the two older people Susan decided that she would have another cup, and Billy seemed pretty keen too. So Sue gathered up the cups onto the tray and off she went to put the kettle on. “So where did you get the name of your company from then?” asked Sarah and Billy frowned as if trying to remember, before calling through to Sue in the kitchen.

  “Sue!” he called, “Was it your idea or mine for the company name?” he asked and Sue appeared in the kitchen doorway once again, drying a cup with a pastel shaded tea towel.

  “It was yours!” she exclaimed. “I can’t believe that you can’t remember that!” With that she sighed and rolled her eyes at Sarah and then went back in to the kitchen to make the tea.

  “Do you want a hand?” called Billy after her, to which Sue answered in the negative. “You see, Sarah” he said, laughing gently. “Sue has always had a talent for crosswords and stuff like that. I think she must be a lateral thinker or something.”

  “I’m listening to you, Billy!” Sue called from the kitchen and Billy smiled before continuing, pulling a face as he did so.

  “So it’s a bit like that when you’re researching someone’s family tree. Sometimes you have to make a leap of faith from one date to the next or from one name to another. But Sue‘s pretty good at that kind of stuff, as I said. She very rarely gets it wrong. Like a kind of gut instinct or the like. There’s always a bit of history that needs looking at as well. That to me is the really fascinating stuff. It’s strange the things you find out. Places you walk around perhaps every day and you never notice something that has been there all along. A piece of history wrapped around a building, perhaps a plaque or a certain window.” He paused as if racking his brains. “I’ll give you an example. The Liver buildings, right?” Sarah wrote this all down as he continued. “The circumference of the clock face is bigger across than the clock face on Big Ben by two feet. Didn’t know that did you now? That’s the problem you see, Sarah. People never look up. Too busy just getting on with getting through the day as quick as they can, it seems. Now me and Sue, well, we have both always naturally looked up.. That’s the difference between us two and everyone else, I think.”

  Sarah scribbled this down furiously, whilst at the same time trying to keep up with Billy. This was good copy! Billy seemed to be a bit more of a thinker than perhaps he was letting on! She let him continue.

  “So the name we gave the company seemed pretty obvious, really.”

  “The History Detectives.” said Sarah. “It’s really catchy!” Sue reappeared bearing a tray with fresh tea and sat back down.

  “We think so.” said Sue. “Gives it an air of glamour too!” and Billy nodded in agreement. “Better than Family Trees ‘R’ Us, anyway!” she finished and Billy roared with laughter.

  “That was what I wanted to call it!” he laughed and Sarah joined in too.

  “That one’s a bit naff!” she laughed and they all sat chuckling for a while as the tea was replenished and the biscuits were handed around once again. They sat in silence for a while as the biscuits were eaten.

  “Actually we’ve been busy as real detectives recently.” Said Sue. Sarah noticed that Billy was looking at his wife as if trying to get her to stop. “Haven’t we, Billy?” she continued, however.

  “That we have.” He replied. Sarah looked at them both expectantly, willing either one of them to continue. With a sigh Billy nodded just once, almost as if he was giving Sue permission to continue. Sue smiled.

  “I think we probably need to start right at the beginning. Get it in the right order.” Said Sue, taking up the story of whatever was coming next.

  “Yes.” said Billy, once again frowning as he brought the sequence of events to mind. “It all really started at the garden centre, I think.” Sue nodded beside him.

  “Yes. The garden centre.” she said, also frowning. “That was where it all began.”

  Part Two: The Potter’s Wheel (Or just another bloody garden centre).

  Billy drove into the garden centre car park and chose a spot to park up. It was mid-week just after lunch, which he thought was shorthand for, “No bugger but bloody pensioners going to be in here at this time”. Although he was sixty one himself, as far as he was concerned he still theoretically, at least, had four more years before he was eligible for a state pension and therefore he was still technically speaking, middle aged, and not a pensioner in any way at all. Sue got out of the car and waited for him to get out too. Now Sue was a pensioner, he thought, and he never quite managed to prevent himself from teasing her about it. Still, she took it in good heart, he mused. God help him in four years’ time!

  “Do we need a trolley?” she asked, pointing to the large steel trolleys that had more of a resemblance to a row of low loaders than shopping trolleys.

  “Nah.” he said. “We’re only here for a few plastic planters. We’ll be okay.” There was no way he was dragging one of those things around the garden centre. As they entered the door Billy’s thoughts darkened. This garden centre was pretty much the same as every other one he had ever been in. Of course there were the usual miles and miles of everything the budding gardener may possibly require, from fruit nets to mousetraps. Spades to charcoal burners. On and on it went. More chemicals than Levers.

  The design was pretty standard as well, a sense of doom and gloom being in some way built into the building. There was a small coffee shop set off to one side, from where the smell of burnt something or other seemed to arise. There was a section entirely for jam and pickles which almost seemed to dictate that anyone who was going to plant a rose also had a great passion for peach marmalade or the like. “How much jam can one person possibly need?” he thought as they passed. There was also a pond centre towards the back of the place, and then outside a large open air area for all the outdoor plants, the trees and supplies like compost and garden furniture. Billy thought that it was like a template for all garden centres, right down to the bloody awful car park outside it. He could never quite understand this. Every garden centre he’d ever been to seemed to be in possession of a car park that looked as if it had been recently, and comprehensively, bombed. There were pot holes everywhere, most of them usually that deep that they filled up with water when it rained. Bloody awful.

  Passing the selection of plastic stand-to greenhouses, or balloons, as Billy liked to think of them (he had bought one once until the wind caught it. He liked to tell people it was last seen heading in the direction of Norway), they passed the main checkout desk where four members of staff were stood, mostly employed in the art of looking down their collective noses at anyone that went past. Billy had long ago stopped being polite and usually left Sue to pay unless it was something heavy. He thought that perhaps the words, “You work in a bloody garden centre, get over yourself - you’re just another bleeding till girl” were likely to be uttered at some point if they continued to look down on him as they plainly were doing now.

  “I’ll go and have a look at the planters over there.” said Sue, noticing Billy glaring. “You have a look at the price of the compost outside.” and off she went. Billy spent a couple of minutes teasing the fish in the tanks as he passed the pond centre until the assistant who clearly knew more about fish than most people would consider normal came across and started glaring at him as well.

  “Got any scraps for the cat?” asked Billy as he sloped off chuckling through the back door and into the outdoor area, leaving the by now obviously confused and somewhat irritated pond keeper behind him. Passing several bins of stone and bags of gravel he made his way to where the compost was stacked up. He priced the one he wanted and as they only needed the one bag he stood for a while waiting for Sue. After
a few minutes he got bored and decided to have a wander.

  Ahead of him the raised planters containing all the outdoor plants, shrubs and trees were arranged in straight lines, heading back to the front of the garden centre and the Battle of the Somme replica car park. To his left stood the various bits of garden furniture and pedestals, whilst the compost and soils were behind him. As it was a quite sunny day he decided to have a wander amongst the garden ornaments. These never failed to make him laugh as he usually strode past, the frankly outlandish and downright ugly things that some people bunged between their rose bushes never failing to amuse him. He wandered the aisles, glancing at them. Strange, twisted wood nymphs and gargoyles. Sundials and pedestals of ornate design. General objects like a wheelbarrow or bird tables of many different types. They were mostly made of what looked like stone or clay. As he moved onto the third row, here were the planters and corner pieces. One was designed to look like a shoe.

  There was even a bench to one side of them and noticing the price tag of nearly six hundred pounds, he decided to treat himself, and duly plonked himself down on it. It wasn’t, he was glad to discover, comfortable at all. As he sat there in the sun he took in all of these objects. They all seemed to be cast of grey stone, though that was probably some kind of concrete mix. Or clay. Stone, possibly. He nudged one of the pots that seemed to be in the shape of a squirrel with three heads with his foot and it moved easily. That one was clay, then. He sat there for a while in the sun until he saw Sue coming across the way. She didn’t seem to be carrying a plastic planter though, Billy noted dourly.

  “Trust you to be sitting down!” she said as she drew near and placed herself on the bench next to him. “The planters they have are all horrible or too big. We’ll have to look somewhere else.” Billy sighed to himself. Sue looked around them, squinting in the sun, noticing for the first timer, as pretty much he had, all of the garden ornaments arrayed about them. She perked up a little, having previously been slumped onto the bench in the same way he was.