I take a sip from my tea as the kids help themselves to the biscuits I have laid out on a plate. Kenneth is once again asleep, in the chair opposite me. Lisa smiles at me. I’m not entirely sure why. We discuss the weather (again), the hot (or cold) topic for what already seems like forever. Dina has heard on the news that this area has not had as much snow for forty years. Apparently, it is supposed to continue its relentless assault for at least a few more days. My heart sinks. I’m trapped.
“So, I notice that whatshisname across the road has cleared their drive,” I say.
“Who?” says Lisa.
“You know, the guy in the bungalow. No idea why.” “Mr Marsden,” Lisa says.
“Well, he won’t have cleared it,” I continue. “It’ll be his son.” “His son?” says Lisa.
“Yeah, you know. The tall one. Comes round most days.”
Lisa takes a drink from her tea.
“Don’t know why he’s bothered. I mean, it’s not as though you can drive anywhere in this weather.”
Lisa’s eyes have drifted over to the television. SpongeBob SquarePants has attracted her attention.
“I wish someone would come over and clear my drive,” I mutter under my breath.
“Sorry?” says Dina, suddenly bursting into life. She looks embarrassed to have not been listening all along.
“Oh, nothing.”
“Come on, Richard, what did you say?” She glances at Lisa awkwardly. I think she’s hoping for a hint, but Lisa is now lost in the cartoon.
“Nothing really,” I say. “Come on, I’m interested.”
“I was just saying that I wish someone would clear my drive for me. Y’know, like the guy across the road.” “Why? Have you somewhere to go?”
“Not really.”
“So, why do you want it clearing?”
“I don’t really.”
Dina sits forward and shakes Kenneth’s arm. I don’t have time to stop her. His eyes snap open and he seems surprised by his surroundings.
“Kenneth,” she says, “go and clear Richard’s drive.”
“What, love?” he says. Her comment has only added to his apparent confusion.
“Richard wants his drive clearing.”
“I don’t,” I interject. “I was just talking generally.”
Dina now looks confused. “I’m sure you said –”
“I did. It’s not what I meant, though.”
Dina looks insulted. She pulls a face like someone who has just drunk a full jar of pickled onion juice. Kenneth pushes himself up from the chair. I turn to him.
“Seriously, Kenneth, it’s fine. It’s just a misunderstanding.”
Kenneth is now standing. The movement has not gone unnoticed by Lisa.
“Dad, what are you doing?” “I don’t know,” he says.
Dina chips in. “Well, Richard wanted the drive clearing and –”
“Why don’t you do it yourself?” says Lisa, turning to me. “I don’t want the drive clearing,” I say.
“He’s nearly seventy-four!” she says. “You said you did,” Dina says.
“No,” I say. “Well, yes, I did say that. But…” I hold my finger in the air.
“Sit down, Dad,” Lisa says.
I wait until all eyes are on me and no one is speaking. “What I meant was: I wish that I had someone to come round and do jobs for me. Y’know, like the guy across the road.
Not just clearing his drive. But other things.”
“You have,” says Lisa. I know that she is suggesting that this is her role, and I am in agreement with her: I do have her to do the jobs around the house whilst I’m at work. It’s just that she doesn’t do them.
“Yeah, I suppose,” I say. It’s easier to agree. I don’t have the stomach for an argument right now, and soon the whole conversation will be moot.
“Don’t you think, though” – I can’t resist – “that it would be so much easier to have their life?”
“How do you mean?” Lisa says.
“Well, no work for starters. No kids to sort out. Basically, they can do what they want. Whenever they want.”
Lisa cocks her head slightly as if she’s considering my comment.
“Holidays whenever. Peace and quiet. If they want to stay in and read or watch films or whatever, they can. Easy life.” “Hmm,” says Lisa, “I suppose so.”
“I’d swap our life for theirs in a heartbeat,” I say, smiling.
Lisa raises her eyebrows and smiles back.
“I don’t get it,” says Dina. “Do you want the drive clearing or not?”
I shake my head. “It’s okay.”
The lounge door opens slowly and Cliff pushes his way into the room. In his mouth is a brown package. He drops it by my feet and I reach down to pick it up. I may be imagining it, but his eyes seem to tell me he knows what’s in the packet. He looks resigned to losing me.
It appears that Amazon do deliver today – whatever the weather. The perfect advert for capitalism.
CHAPTER_TWENTY-EIGHT
I admit, being trapped wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been.
The afternoon is spent in two polar opposites: activity (me) and inactivity (Lisa). The children seem to be content lazing around and staying near the fire, but I declare that I am going to do some jobs ‘that need doing’. I’ll admit that my declaration to the room is slightly pointed, but Lisa doesn’t pick up on it. I half-expect her to look up from her Take a Break magazine and say something, but my comment isn’t enough to light the touchpaper and the possible explosion of action turns out to be a damp disappointment, so I quietly excuse myself from the lounge.
Dina decides to stay in the lounge for the day as well. From time to time I pop my head in, and I see her alternating between lying on the floor colouring (Hannah) or building with Lego bricks (Oscar) or on the sofa with one or both the children, their head on her knee, her hand stroking their hair gently.
Kenneth seems to have developed feline traits. I cannot believe that he can actually sleep the entire day, but it appears so because at no stage is he awake when I enter the room. I am secretly pleased about this, because one of my most hated situations is when Kenneth ‘helps’ me. Due to his age, I sensibly defer to his better knowledge when it comes to DIY. I expect that experience alone will have helped him to identify better and quicker ways to make a good job of putting up a shelf or mirror.
Not so.
It may be that he has more experience, but this overload of information has only served to cause an unsurpassed level of confusion in his mind. Each time I ask him for help I instantly regret it. He seems to draw from every DIY experience he has ever had, eyeing screws and drill bits like they are ancient treasures. Air-hammering to test the weight of the hammer, like a golfer practising his swing. Checking that the shaft of each screwdriver is straight. ‘Reading’ all pages of the instructions, including (where applicable) those in Polish and Korean.
After around an hour of this charade, we are ready to begin. I have already lost interest (and patience) and by then I don’t care how straight the shelf is or how many drilled holes I am going to have to correct.
Today, happily, I am left to my own devices. Upstairs and alone in our bedroom, the curtains being at the top of my list. Before I begin, I open the Amazon package that Cliff kindly brought to me. Of course, I know that my notebook is inside, but I still feel an excited rush as I tear into the cardboard.
The notebook is A5 size and is covered in a deep green moleskin cover. It’s the type of fabric that you can brush with your fingers and it changes colour depending on the direction of the fibres. I spend a few moments trying to ‘write’ my initials on the fabric, then I stretch the orange elastic that keeps the book closed and I look inside. There are eighty pages, all ruled horizontally in the same green, with a vertical margin in orange. An orange ribbon to keep my place completes the book. It is perfection itself. The perfect book to plan the rest of forever. I want to write in it straight away, but I am concern
ed that I may be discovered, so I hide it in my bedside drawer for the time being. I know I’ll have to move it before the day is finished. Somehow, Lisa will not miss its arrival.
I spread out the curtains across the bedroom and meticulously unhook each of the plastic fastenings. Then I replace them, having ensured that there is exactly the same distance between each. This is probably unnecessary, but I am lost in a daydream. I wonder whether my little place in the hills of Nebraska will have curtains. I imagine a small wooden shell of a cabin, big enough maybe for a couple of rooms. A lounge and dining room and kitchen in one. A roaring fire, a necessity. The place where I sleep, an extended mezzanine overlooking the lounge fire. Through the only internal door, off to the side, will be the bathroom. A tin bath and a toilet. That’s all.
I am surrounded in all directions by timber, and my cabin will need a lot of work. But I will have a lot of time.
I am surprised how quickly the day has passed: as I finally draw the curtains, I notice for the first time that the dark has descended, turning the sky outside a blueish-black. The snow is invisible in the night sky, but beneath the streetlights it again seems to be gathering pace, heavy golden flakes being forced from the sky to earth. The speed at which they’re currently descending reminds me of my leaf blower.
I oversee bath-time, which begins quite amicably before quickly collapsing into tears from both children. And very nearly me.
We have an old-fashioned metal rack which reaches across the width of the bath. On it we keep the flannels, sponges and soap, along with a few of Oscar’s bath toys. The children play a game that involves Hannah acting as bartender, preparing drinks from the taps for Oscar and passing them across the rack, which doubles up as a bar. Today they are both lost in their roles, Hannah as the landlady, Oscar as a local with a varied taste for drinks, ‘Savvylong blank’ and ‘Jim and tonic’ being his favourites.
I am only out of the room for the time it takes to pull on a hoody, but when I return both children are screaming. It turns out that Hannah passed Oscar a ‘beer’ poured largely from the hot tap. Oscar didn’t notice Hannah’s trick until he had taken a sip, at which point he threw the remaining contents over Hannah. Cue tears from both sides. It makes me wonder why humans have an innate desire to cause damage to one another. It seems that whenever something is going well there is a desire to destroy it, instead of simply allowing it to be.
The children are separated for their own safety, and dried and dressed for bed. We go downstairs: Oscar first; then me as prison guard; and behind me, Hannah. I give them a biscuit and warm milk, and Hannah slopes off into the lounge, where Lisa and Dina have remained all day. While Oscar sips his milk I can just hear Hannah begin to tell a distorted and self-serving version of the bath-time events.
Oscar crunches his way through his biscuit and says goodnight to the rest of the family. I carry him up the stairs, and once he has brushed his teeth we lie on his bed and I flick on the star-shaped lamp next to his bed. The room is lit in a vanilla-yellow that reminds me of the colour of the moon. His walls are decorated in a deep blue and dotted with at least a hundred glow-in-the-dark stars. A life-size sticker of an astronaut floats toward his door on the wall at the end of the bed.
Oscar rests his head just beneath my armpit, and I take a book from his bedside table.
“Story?” I say, showing him the book.
He shakes his head. “No, Daddy, space book.”
I lean over again and find the correct book. It has seen better days. This book has been a part of our family since Hannah was born, and its pages are creased and crumpled now. The cover itself is hanging on by one of its two staples. The book is simply a collection of pictures denoting certain scenes, with a single- word description beneath each picture. I turn immediately to page twenty, which is of the solar system. There, in the middle of the page, is an astronaut. Surrounding him are the moon, a space buggy (Oscar’s favourite), various planets, a monkey (this one originally took some explaining), a rocket and maybe thirty other related images. The purpose of the book is to inspire the child’s imagination and get them to create their own story. It works very well.
Oscar describes to me his first trip to space and what he
will do when he gets there. He goes into great detail about initially “filling up the rocket at the local petrol station”, right through to reversing it into his “space garage” when he arrives. I enjoy each second of what he says, which unnerves me ever so slightly. When he has finished, he asks me to find my favourite page and tell my story.
I instantly turn to page thirty-four, Camping Trip. He snuggles up closer to me as I begin to tell him of my outing to the woods. Within a few moments, he is snoring lightly, almost a purr. I am quiet for a few moments to ensure that he is asleep. I know that if he is still awake, he will insist that I keep talking. Aside from his purring there is no sound, and I know I am safe to tell him where the woods are going to be in real life, that the ‘family’ depicted in the book won’t be coming with me and that the scene of ‘packing up the tent’ won’t happen.
I am overcome with guilt as I gently push myself up from his bed. I wonder whether in years to come he will have a vague memory of being told I was leaving. That I wasn’t coming back. It is this feeling of guilt that makes my situation more difficult to deal with. I had hoped that once I made my decision to leave nothing would hold me back. But every now and again something like this happens that makes me question my decision. As I tuck Oscar in, I consider that I may need to formulate a strategy to deal with the moments where my resolve wavers slightly.
I click off his lamp, and across the room his night light comes on, lighting up the astronaut above it. I kiss his forehead and stroke his cheek with the knuckle of my forefinger.
Then I close the door and stand alone on the landing. Thinking.
CHAPTER_TWENTY-NINE
It’s time to go. Like, yesterday.
I begin to walk downstairs, but stop on the square where the stairs take a ninety-degree left turn down to the hall. There, I sit on the last step and stare at my surroundings. From here I can see the snow through the side window. I listen to the sounds from downstairs, from the house around me. I can hear the dull hum of the television and from time to time the sound of muffled voices coming from the lounge. All is calm. This must be how it is every day in the bungalow across the street. Warm. Contented. Silent. I sit and ponder how I would feel about my life if every moment, each and every day, was always like this. You and I both know that’s impossible. This moment is a miniscule proportion of my time. The thinnest slice of a pie chart. My time is filled with noise, work, children, confrontation, argument and disappointment. The times that life reflects the quiet solitude I desire are so fleeting that they are not even worth considering.
What I do consider is that for me to get the life that I want, I will have to wait at least another twenty years. Twenty years until the children have grown up and moved on. Twenty years until retirement allows me my time. It’s crazy to even question whether leaving now is the best option for me. To allow me to become the neighbours across the road, I will have to let two full decades pass me and my family by. They will have to endure twenty years of me not putting in the effort that they so deserve. It’s a complete waste – for everyone involved. The sooner I am out, the sooner I can be replaced by someone who wants all of this. Someone who is confident with the differing beats of family life. I have to get out. And quickly.
I hear the volume of the television increase as the lounge door slowly opens, and I scramble to my feet and pose myself into a what-a-coincidence-I-was-just-heading-downstairs look. I hop down the next three steps and am relieved to see Cliff at the bottom of the stairs. His tail is down and he looks in my direction as I greet him. Then he immediately turns his head and flops on the floor next to the bottom step. His eyes are staring away from me. Not for the first time, I get the feeling he has been listening to my thoughts.
As I reach down to stroke him,
he gets to his feet and walks slowly into the dining room.
I pop my head around the lounge door and smile. “Oscar asleep?” says Lisa without looking at me. “Uh-huh,” I say, “fast asleep.”
Hannah is snuggled up to Dina, and both are transfixed by the television. They are watching a Victorian period drama set in a decrepit hotel. The programme is a mother-and-daughter institution, and both watch it religiously each week. Usually, when it ends Lisa is immediately on the phone to her mother, chatting about the events of the show. I am suddenly struck by the horror that this will take place live in front of me if I don’t get out of the room.
“Mum says I can stay up late,” says Hannah.
I nod. I know that, like me, Hannah has no idea what the programme is about or who any of the people are. She would usually be in bed by now. I check my watch and realise that the programme has only just begun. I have at least two hours until it (and the accompanying post-mortem) has ended.
“I’m gonna catch up with my work emails,” I say.
No answer.
I pull the lounge door closed slowly, wondering whether anyone even heard what I just said. Before the door clicks, I pause to give them one last chance to respond. And then I close the door.
Quietly, I make my way upstairs and grab my wallet and my Dartmouth green notebook from the drawer.
In the dining room, I spread out a few official looking papers from work across the table and then turn on the laptop. I open my notebook and smooth the first page down. I get the same feeling of contented pleasure that I got when I opened a new school exercise book.
Then, in purposely messy writing, I write: Company Budget Accounting Department Aims and Goals: Forthcoming Strategy and Departmental Analysis.
It’s the most tedious title that I can come up with. What is disappointing is that it is not even original. It is actually the title of a report I am currently working on. It is equally disappointing not to be upfront and honest; not to write:How Was I Supposed To Know How It Would Be? My Escape.
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