This was significant because it was his name. Parker. And each time she said ‘park’ she made the same little flourish.
He decided not to go into work and instead stayed at the station, listening to the way she said ‘park’. The staff wouldn’t tell him where her office was, but tomorrow he would discover her name and shout it on all the platforms. That way she would know that he loved her in return.
Lady Pleaser
DARREN WAS AT the pub and Geraldine came round to keep me company. ‘I saw your bloke today.’ She winked at me, long and slow. ‘That’ll be keeping you smiling.’
‘What?’
‘The lady-pleaser!’
I laughed, pretending I understood. ‘Oh, sure!’
When she’d gone I rang Steph. ‘What’s a lady-pleaser?’
‘You mean in facial hair? It’s a tuft of stubble under the bottom lip which, you know, enhances things when he goes south?’
Darren had recently grown a tiny jut-beard. ‘Oh.’
When he goes south. Darren hadn’t been further than the Midlands with me for years.
When he got back from the pub the pathetic sprout of bristles bobbed up and down as the lies poured out, but I could see through him like a cheap nightie. She was some barmaid where he DJ’d. What upset me most was that she had to customise him, when for me he was always perfect.
First Out
THE ALARM EMITTED a vile digital shriek, the bed tilted and he climbed out. I rolled onto his side, now lovely and cool, and hoped for tea. Then I heard the computer bing-bong and the chatter of a keyboard. I slipped on my robe and crept downstairs. He was sat motionless in front of the screen on which an orangey-skinned woman in complicated underwear was being revealed. “Red hot amateurs” it said.
‘Dougie,’ I said. He didn’t move. ‘Do you always look at these sites?’
‘I suppose.’
‘Then what’s this?’ I hit enter and the screen filled up with platform numbers, times and destinations.
He began to quiver. ‘I’m sorry darling, it’s just, ever since I stopped going in, I need to know about the trains. It gnaws away at me inside.’
I stroked his head. Outside the neighbour reversed his car into the thickening traffic.
Light Lunch
WE SAT AT a pavement table, the only customers brave enough for the September air.
‘I warn you,’ I told her, ‘I have a chronic inability to attract the attention of waiters. So let’s be nonchalant. Bury your head in the newspaper like you don’t care, and your man in the apron will be straight over.’
After twenty minutes she frowned. ‘Shouldn’t this have worked by now?’
‘Yeh. We’ll move up a notch.’ I popped over the road and brought back sandwiches. ‘Start eating. They hate it when you do this.’
We left the newspapers and sandwich wrappers on the table. ‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘We’ve had a cheap lunch and we’re up to date with the news.’
When I returned, the waiter was on a fag break and he helped me return the table and chairs to my car. He had no idea what a fool this made him appear.
With Tongues
HE SAID HE was in the Albanian Builders Federation and I interpreted this for the immigration officer exactly, leaving out that the federation was nothing more than a drinking club for blokes with cement mixers. My job was to interpret, the rules were very strict. Then he said that the reason for his persecution was that he was gay. Now this immigration officer was a Sun reader who always mouthed off about homosexuals. So I had to change what he said from gay to a member of New-Free-Albania.
The officer wrote this down and looked at him. ‘Who is the leader of New-Free-Albania?’
So I said in Albanian, ‘Who is your favourite gay singer?’
He thought for a long time then said, in clear English, ‘The Pet Shop Boys.’
I interpret for the police now and make things up all the time. It isn’t a problem here, it actually helps.
On This Very Special Day
MY MOTHER LIVES in Cornwall and I always forget her birthday. So I bought a whole batch of cards, scribbled messages on them, and gave them to my sister who would drop one off each year. Average female life expectancy is seventy-nine, so I bought twenty-nine cards. It didn’t seem a lot, but there it is.
Ten years later my sister said she wouldn’t do it anymore. Watching the pile of cards getting smaller was depressing. Why couldn’t I have bought like a hundred cards?
I hate waste so I tried my dad. ‘There’s not enough here,’ he said. ‘A woman in Japan lived to one hundred and twenty-six. I’ll do it if you buy another fifty.’
I looked at him in disbelief.
‘Those are my terms,’ he said.
So I gave them to my mother who said it was fine and I believed her. After all, she brought me into the world.
Cica Lights
MUM AND TREVOR were getting serious, what with her new glittery top and the way she stroked the sleeve of his knobbly jumper like it was a hamster. But you can put up with that. When he bought me new trainers my heart sank. The box declared in scrolly italics, Clarks, and when I lifted the lid, pink lights winked through tissue and my worst fears were confirmed.
Cica Lights. A Nike copy with pathetic flashing bulbs in the heels.
I was dead if I wore them. Like the boy who wore a Blue Peter T-shirt on non-uniform day and had since developed a stutter and started hanging with the science-fiction lot.
So I told Trevor about the nights my dad stayed over and Trevor stormed out taking the shoes with him.
My mum was inconsolable. But relationships come and go. Your choice of trainer leaves an indelible mark.
The World Won’t Listen
LUCY SCREECHED TO a halt, jumped out and stomped down the street. I sat for a time watching her diminishing figure in the mirror, then decided to catch her up. As I walked I noticed a sign in a shoe shop window: THIS IS NOT THE RAILWAY STATION and began to think about handmade signs. A lot of annoying things have to happen a lot of times to persuade you to make a sign. Company-made signs are obviously not good enough to communicate what the public need to know. They always have to get out their marker pens. Here was another, on a cake shop door: WE DO NOT SELL PIES.
I caught her up at McDonald’s (NO ROLLER-BLADES) and followed her into the toilets where she sat down and cried in a cubicle. Blu Tacked above a murky mirror a sign said: THE TOILET BRUSH IS FOR STAFF USE ONLY.
Smack
MY TOLERANCE WAS down to one bar so I told this tosser where he could stick his complaint and Reg, who was call-monitoring, curled his finger at me to come over. He asked me to roll up my sleeve and then gripped my forearm in his hands and gave me a really hard Chinese-burn.
‘Ow,’ I said, more in surprise than anything else. The people around him carried on with their calls.
Later, when he heard me getting chatty with a female caller, he got out a plastic ruler and waited for me to offer my hand. ‘Reg,’ I said, ‘no,’ but he whacked me on the thigh.
From then on I ignored him. But the team-leader laid down the law. People like Reg paid the company a lot of money to come in and do their thing and if I didn’t like it I knew where the off-switch was.
End of Line
I GOT THESE shoes from Aldi. Nine ninety-nine. Since the move to operations the quality of my appearance, which before was a pin in the hinge of my closing a contract, was not so vital.
But Andy wasn’t happy. ‘New shoes?’
I stuck out my foot and turned the heel. ‘Yes.’
‘Listen, I don’t want to get all bottom-line but, those colours, it’s like, Rover, your cornflakes are ready. Not very Waterson and Piper. You used to wear the sort of shoe that a pimp would lick.’
‘I’m Operations now.’
‘Still.’
‘It’s my d
octor. She says I should wear bright things. For my health.’
I moved my desk in front of reception and sat with my feet up so all the visitors could see my shoes. Funny, but since I made up the stuff about bright colours it actually seemed to be working. I felt cheerful for the first time in ages.
Server Farmer
IT WAS THE three a.m. walk round and I had finished checking the data feeds when I looked back at the servers squatting in the dim aquarium light. They seemed to be mocking me with their beady glittering eyes. These Daleks belonged to all kinds of companies — a nuclear plant, the Benefit Agency, a vehicle breakdown company. I imagined them swapping stories when I’d gone — about caesium spills, dodgy claims, flat batteries in howling gales. I knew for certain that they talked about me.
A spangled map showed the live server connections and when I flipped the switches a thousand winking stars went out. I sensed a body go limp, thought I heard a sigh as the last breath of data escaped. Sirens howled, lights flashed, Doc Marten’d feet pounded down the corridor.
I knew what it was like to kill and I had to have more.
Kick inside
MY GP WAS sceptical, but I insisted, you have to nowadays, and a week later the consultant was inserting a tube with a camera on the end into my bowel. Pink folds of glistening skin moved past like rippling sand. ‘That’s normal tissue,’ he said. ‘but I’ll explore further.’ The screen went dark then there she was, Sheila, my dead wife, pressing a panel of buttons on a small control box, a faint smile on her face. She knew we could see her, knew that the snaking black tube was capturing her image.
‘I see,’ the consultant said.
‘She’s been there for months,’ I told him. ‘She controls me. She makes me eat Battenburg cake.’
There’s no treatment apparently. But they gave me a print-out of the screen. That’s it on the fridge door. She’s making me tell you this, I wasn’t going to bother.
Pop-Tarts
THE LANDLORD WAS known as ‘Pop-Tarts’ and for some reason this worried me. I asked him right away about Deborah and he laughed and shook his large bulbous head.
‘Deborah? Which story did she spin you?’ Something went Ker-ching! and I followed his eyes to a row of mahogany-coloured rectangles poking out of a monstrous aluminium toaster.
‘She was only fifteen,’ I told him.
‘They come and go. Transients. See that?’ Grey sheets of smoke billowed out of the gleaming toaster. ‘Proof I do breakfast. Means I get to be a boarding house, do the homeless.’ He chuckled, showing stumpy brown teeth. ‘There’s money in street people.’
‘Was Debbie . . .’
‘She was different. It’s mainly druggies and alchies come through here. Where is the noble tramp, the gentleman of the road?’ He flipped the scorched pastries onto a plate and incandescent red globules oozed out. ‘Who’d have kids, eh?’
The Funny Way I Feel Inside
I RESTED MY forehead against the cold chromium rail in front so I could hear what the cute pixie girl was saying.
‘I could never go out with a boy who didn’t love, love, love the sound of rain,’ she told her mate. ‘That’s a real deal-breaker for me.’
Later that week it was really hammering down so I followed her into a bus-shelter. I threw my head back and closed my eyes. I stretched my fingers like a pianist. I hummed and rolled my head from side to side.
But when I opened my eyes she’d gone.
I stayed there listening to the pulsing of the drops. If there was ever an overrated sound, it’s the sound of rain. It’s not even actually the sound of rain. Rain itself doesn’t make a sound. What you hear is a much more complex phenomenon, more intricate than she could ever imagine.
The Heartless Chain
SOMEONE SUCKED THE soul out of Palouki’s bar. We’d gone back there to rekindle the love in our marriage, but Helen wasn’t impressed, believing the place had been gobbled up by some heartless chain. I deduced that old Palouki had passed it on to his son. I knew I was right, as was usually the case, but I didn’t push it; the job was to rekindle.
When our food arrived a photographer appeared and asked if he could take some pictures for outside the restaurant. Helen laughed girlishly, threw her arms about me and waited for the flash.
But the photographer was focussing on our plate of meze.
‘The pictures fade fast,’ he explained. ‘Since the old man retired, his son wants everything so-so.’
I winked at Helen, but she began to cry. ‘Just imagine it. Our special dinner, outside for all to see. How many people can say that?’
The Man Whose Head Expanded
IMAGINE YOUR MIND has left your body and is hovering in front of you. Can you see it? A clump of steam, straining on the end of a silver thread? Feels OK, doesn’t it? But soon the thread will snap and it will float away. Hopefully you’ll have thought ahead and closed the window tight, but it will bat against the walls like a trapped bluebottle, trying to escape.
Ask it what it wants.
It will say, ‘To be free. To go where the other minds live.’
Open the window and follow it.
That’s how I got here. It’s a bit dull, actually. Sometimes I’m allowed to float outside on a silver string, but usually I just keep things tidy, and maintain the diary of appointments. Practical stuff really, grunt work, whilst my mind thinks long clear unbroken thoughts that go on forever, something it longed to do for years.
A Personal Message
IT BOILED DOWN to a fear of novelty ceramic objects, that’s all, but this doctor fellah took it very seriously.
He clasped his hands together. ‘Your, er, system. Is it closed or open?’
‘System?’ I thought for a bit. ‘I’m very open.’
He glanced down at his papers. ‘Then you need a key. To release the pressure.’
‘But where is the key?’
‘You have the key. It comes with the system.’
The central heating droned and hiccupped and he looked at the radiator.
‘Sometimes,’ he added, ‘there’s a build-up of thick sludge.’ He sighed. ‘Complete draining is required.’
I snatched the papers from his hand. It was the instruction manual for the boiler. I looked at it and smiled. Tomorrow I would collect all the instruction manuals from around my house. It was as I suspected. Every piece of printed material ever produced contained a personal message for me.
Doctor Logic
IT TURNED OUT that the lads had an insulting nickname for every manager apart from me, and according to the gurus, this is a sign of enormous affection, so I had to get one too.
I tried everything. An elaborate corkscrewing limp, a breathy ee-aw sound when I spoke, but nothing happened.
‘I’m at a crossroads,’ I explained to Gary. ‘One way I get a nickname, the other way, oblivion. Could you arrange for me to be called a funny name?’
‘That’s not a crossroads,’ Gary said. ‘That’s a T-junction.’
After he’d gone I thought about how logical he was. I rang Keith.
‘Keith, I’ve been talking to Doctor Logic.’
‘Who the fuck is Doctor Logic?’
‘Gary. You know how he’s always logical.’
Soon everyone would be saying Doctor Logic and when Gary discovered the favour I’d done him, I was sure he would devise a suitable name for me.
Dead Star
I WAS OFF sick from the buses with my back when I saw the ad for a park-keeper and I thought what the hell? I’m stuck here, drowning in afternoon telly pap, why shouldn’t I do something useful? So I got a start with parks and after a week of trowelling rang in sick on that job too. That’s when it struck me; there’s no limit to the jobs you can be off sick from. I bought an Evening News, got four more jobs and after a few weeks called in sick to all of them.
Keeping it
up was a full time occupation. There were six Christmas dos. Yet I was addicted. I conjured with multiple homes, multiple wives, a thousand parallel existences, each nourishing the other. Because somewhere in the universe I was already gone; a star that burns in our sky but died a million years ago.
Think About it Baby
THIS IS NOT about the money. It’s about the gorgeous curved stem of the headset and the cute bobble microphone. It’s not just till something better comes along. It’s about the giant slabs of data shuddering into life at my command, the cooing sing-song script, the juicy clack-clack of the keyboards, the whispering disembodied voices at three a.m..
But my accent wasn’t right. They’d set up in Middlesbrough for the lovely Geordie lilt and I hailed from Swindon.
Viz is on the top shelf and I can see why. It took three months of reading aloud, but before long I’d nailed it and was back in the nest.
It was even better. They loved my voice. Would I say something else? Would I repeat a word? Did I know how sexy I sounded?
Tony from Crawley wanted to marry me and I think I might take up his offer.
Sawn-Off Tales Page 3