365

by James Robertson

  The checkout assistant joined in. ‘Terrible,’ she said. ‘What’s the world coming to? I don’t know.’

  ‘If it was me,’ the man said, ‘I’d get rid of the lot of them. Every last one, out of the country.’

  She felt herself grow hot. She knew she had to say something.

  ‘That’s a bit extreme, isn’t it?’ she said.

  ‘Eh?’ He looked astonished, offended. The smile was gone.

  ‘I mean,’ she said, ‘you can’t condemn a whole group of people, a whole section of society, because of what two individuals have done. Can you?’

  ‘Oh,’ the man said. ‘Oh, you’ve spoiled it now. All that about me singing. You’re calling me extreme?’ He jabbed at his chest, appealing to the woman on the checkout. ‘Me?’

  All her items had been scanned. She handed over her loyalty card. There was hostility in the assistant’s silence.

  ‘You’ve spoiled it now,’ the man repeated.

  The assistant said, ‘My son was a soldier. He served in Kosovo, Ireland, Iraq. It’s terrible the way they’re treated, just terrible.’

  ‘Aye, it is,’ the man said. ‘And then you get this.’

  She took back her cards, moved off with the trolley. I have to get away, she thought. Arguing with them won’t do any good.

  She felt sick, hearing them reinforce each other. She feared what might be coming.

  25 May

  The System

  ‘Customer Services. May I take your name, please?’

  ‘Thank God, a human voice! My name is Geoffrey Archer.’

  ‘Really? The one who wrote all those books and went to prison?’

  ‘No, not him. He’s spelled differently.’

  ‘Oh, what a shame. Do you have an account with us?’

  ‘Yes, and I’ve already entered the number three times on my telephone keypad, as instructed by your system. That was supposed to direct me to the right department but it kept prompting me to select further options until the only option left was to re-enter my account number. After the third time I didn’t press anything and at last I got through to you.’

  ‘And how can I help?’

  ‘It’s about an order I placed last week.’

  ‘I see. Could you just enter your account number on your keypad for me?’

  ‘What, again?’

  ‘Yes, please … Thank you. The system’s a bit slow today, but your details should appear on my screen any minute.’

  ‘That’s a relief. The last twenty have been like a Kafkaesque nightmare.’

  ‘That’s funny, another customer used that word yesterday. What does it mean? Not “nightmare”, the other one.’

  ‘ “Kafkaesque”? Well, Kafka was a writer. His stories often describe individuals caught up in bureaucratic processes which cause them to feel alienated and full of existential angst.’

  ‘Like Mr Archer then? The one who spells things differently?’

  ‘No, not a bit like him. And he doesn’t spell things differently, it’s his name that’s spelled differently.’

  ‘Well, they are quite different, aren’t they, Mr Kafka?’

  ‘My name isn’t Kafka. My name’s Geoffrey Archer. Geoffrey with a G and an O. Kafka was a Czech. Haven’t my details come up yet?’

  ‘No, I’m sorry. Did you say you paid by cheque?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘If you paid by cheque I’m afraid I can’t help you.’

  ‘But you’re Customer Services!’

  ‘Yes, but we only deal with orders placed by telephone. You’ll have to contact the Mail Order Department. Would you like the address?’

  ‘No! I didn’t pay by cheque. I paid by credit card, through your website.’

  ‘Ah, then you want After Sales Liaison. I’ll just transfer you.’

  ‘No, but wait –’

  ‘Please enter your eight-digit account number on your telephone keypad.’

  26 May

  Bee

  She found the bumblebee crawling across the bedroom carpet. It must have come in through a window but it wasn’t capable of flying any more.

  She watched its laborious progress with unwished-for recognition. There had been so much on the news lately about diminishing bee populations. Some virus was causing it. They were being killed off by insecticides. Climate change was responsible. She didn’t know what the truth was, but she kept finding bumblebees, inside and outside, behaving just like this one. The bees looked fat and healthy but moved like old men on their hands and knees. The bee on the carpet seemed to have a purpose, a determination to get somewhere, but she knew it was dying. She wondered if it was in pain.

  She fetched a sheet of paper and a glass and put the paper in front of the bee. It kept going, straight on to it. She placed the glass over the bee and went downstairs, out into the garden. By the time she got there the bee was pushing against the edge of the glass. She removed it and the bee continued on its relentless journey, onto the lawn.

  Her husband was weeding one of the flowerbeds. He came across.

  ‘Another one,’ she said.

  They watched the bee together. A blade of grass was almost too much for it to negotiate. It managed a few more centimetres, then stopped.

  ‘What is happening?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘but it’s not good. Not for the bees, not for us.’

  The apple tree was covered in blossom. But it had been like that last year, and they hadn’t had a single apple from it. Not one. It had been a bad year for fruit generally. People had blamed the rain, the cold, the lack of sun, but what if there weren’t enough bees? What if there simply weren’t enough pollinators left to do the work?

  The bee hadn’t moved for a minute. He bent and touched it with the tip of his finger.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Don’t torment it.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I wanted to help, that’s all.’

  He stood up, shaking his head. She reached for his hand.

  27 May

  The News Where You Are

  That’s all from us. Now it’s time for the news where you are.

  The news where you are comes after the news where we are. The news where we are is the news. It comes first. The news where you are is the news where you are. It comes after. We do not have the news where you are.

  The news where you are may be news to you but it is not news to us.

  The news may be international, national or regional. The news where we are may be international news. The news where you are is never international news. Where you are is not international. The news where you are comes after the international and national news.

  The news where you are may be national news or regional news. However, national news where you are is not national news where we are. It is the news where you are.

  If the news where you are is national news it is only national where you are.

  The news where we are is national wherever you are.

  On Saturdays, there is no news where you are after the news where we are. In fact there is no news where you are on Saturdays. Any news there is, is not where you are. It is where we are. If there is news where you are but not where we are it will wait until Sunday.

  After the news where you are comes the weather.

  The weather where you are is not the national weather. The weather where you are comes after the news where you are, and after the weather where you are comes the national weather. Do not confuse the national weather with the weather where you are. The weather where you are comes first but is lesser weather than the national weather.

  Extreme weather is news. However, weather that is more extreme where you are than where we are is not news. Weather that is extreme where we are is news, even if extreme weather where we are is only average weather where you are.

  On average, weather where you are is more extreme than weather where we are.

  Tough shit.

  Good night.

  28 May

  Ti
dying Up

  My father and I are reading the papers. Dad’s daily paper is the Herald, a broadsheet. After a while the pages get out of control and he spends a lot of time trying to reorder them. I offer to help but he says he’s fine. He isn’t. This is one of the things that has changed: he can still take in and retain a lot of information from the paper, but the physical organisation of the pages causes him great difficulty, and tires him. When he falls into a doze, I rescue the paper and restore it to its correct page sequence. I have a go at the cryptic crossword, something we used to do together but which is now beyond him.

  He wakes up. ‘Do you want the paper back?’ ‘No, I’m fine,’ he repeats. He turns his attention to the jumble of pens, CDs, keys, coins and junk mail on the shelf beside his chair. I can see he’s decided to tidy this all up. He becomes completely oblivious to my presence. He can’t reach every item with his hand so he uses a pen to nudge things closer. A bunch of keys falls to the floor. I force myself not to go to his assistance. This is an opportunity for me to observe, not to help.

  Slowly, stiffly, he stretches down and retrieves the keys. He uses the pen to guide a CD case to the edge of the shelf, and manages to grasp it before it falls. He’s less successful with the coins but they drop within reach and, with agonising slowness, he picks them up. Item by item, he transfers the pile into his lap. This takes about twenty minutes. He dozes again. I finish the crossword.

  Waking again, he starts to move everything from his lap back to the shelf. The pens, coins, CDs, keys and junk mail return to where they were, in a different order that is no tidier than before. This is what my father does these days. This is what he can achieve, unaided.

  ‘Do you fancy a cup of tea?’ I ask.

  He smiles. ‘Lovely,’ he says.

  I go to put the kettle on.

  29 May

  McKinley

  ‘McKinley? That bastard? I hate him. You see him, you tell him: “I have a message for you from an old acquaintance: rot in hell, you bastard.” You tell him that from me.

  ‘You know what he did? He put his wife on the street. That beautiful, innocent girl. She wasn’t so innocent by the time he finished with her. First he turns her into a junkie, then he puts her on the street to pay for his habit and her habit. But she stuck with him a long time, years and years. She became as desperate as he was. No, that’s not true, he was never desperate. He always was a calculating, self-serving bastard.

  ‘I never knew anyone so selfish, or so capable of getting people to do things for him. Oh, he was a charmer all right. Everybody gave him money. Even I gave him money once. It was a loan, theoretically, but I knew when I handed it over I was never going to see any of it again. I remember one poor sucker gave him twenty dollars, a lot of money back then, and you know what he did with it? He set it on fire. He burned that twenty-dollar bill in front of the guy’s eyes. And somehow he made him laugh about it. Me, I’d have killed him, but somehow he persuaded the guy that it was only money, you had to despise it to be liberated from it. That’s never stopped McKinley taking it though, as much of it as he can get. It makes my blood boil just thinking about him.

  ‘People say he’s a genius, they say he’s so far ahead of his time, but let me tell you something: McKinley is a talentless shit. He wrote a couple of novels that weren’t too bad, sure, but that’s it. He used to copy the first one out in longhand and then sell what he’d written as the original manuscript so he could score more heroin. That’s not genius, that’s pathetic.

  ‘They had a son, didn’t they? Can you imagine? What kind of life, I mean, what kind of life? God knows what happened to that boy.’

  30 May

  The Diners

  Joe was doing his usual thing, studying the wine list as if he knew something about wine. Isobel, by slightly raising her eyebrows, indicated to the waiter that they were ready to order. Jane was still trying to make up her mind but Isobel had lost patience.

  She ordered scallops followed by the cod. David said he would have exactly the same – his way of saying he fancied her. Jane went for the goat’s cheese salad and the chicken. Joe opted for the chicken too, preceded by soup. No message to anybody was intended by Joe’s choice. Isobel understood this and despised him a little more.

  ‘White okay for everybody?’ Joe asked, and when they all agreed he said, ‘A bottle of the house white, I think,’ and snapped the wine list shut like an expert. Isobel noted and immediately dismissed the ‘I think’.

  ‘Don’t look now,’ Jane said, ‘but there’s a couple over to your left, Izzy. Isn’t that that guy?’

  They all looked, except Joe.

  ‘Who?’ David asked.

  ‘He was in the news last year,’ Jane said. ‘They arrested him.’

  Isobel said, ‘Oh God, yes, but he’s completely changed. He had weird hair and weird clothes, didn’t he? That’s why he was arrested. He looked like he could have done it.’

  ‘Done what?’ David said.

  ‘What’s she doing with him?’ Jane said.

  ‘Is she famous too?’ (David again, completely hopeless.)

  ‘He’s not famous,’ Jane said.

  ‘He nearly was,’ Isobel said. ‘Maybe she’s interviewing him for Newsnight or one of those shows. Doesn’t she present that sometimes?’

  ‘But what did he do?’ David wanted to know.

  ‘He didn’t do anything,’ Joe said, suddenly and sharply. ‘That’s the point. He was arrested on suspicion of murder, his face was all over the tabloids with lurid headlines, then he was released and he sued them for damages. He got plenty too, quite rightly, because you know what? He was completely innocent. So just leave him alone.’

  He stood up and went out for a cigarette.

  ‘Whatever’s the matter with him?’ Jane asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ Isobel said. ‘It’s just Joe.’

  She caught David staring at her adoringly.

  ‘Anyway, no smoke without fire, that’s what I think,’ she said.

  31 May

  Thanks to Dr Beeching

  We walk our dog on the disused railway line now, but I can remember when the trains still came through the village. Half a dozen a day there must have been, and they were always busy, because nobody had cars then, well, nobody that we knew anyway. If you wanted to go into town you went on the train.

  We lived in a cottage on one of the farms, and if you needed something you walked in and bought it at the village shop and walked home again, two miles each way. You didn’t go for just one thing, that’s for sure, and you didn’t forget anything either.

  I know exactly what age I was when they closed the railway here. I was eleven, and it was 1965 when the last train ran. I know this because I was going up to the grammar school after the summer, and I was dreading it. There were all these stories about what happened to new boys the first day they were on that school train. Your cap got flung out of the window or you were put in the luggage rack or hung out of the window by your ankles – whether the stories were true or not I was worried sick at the thought of it. I daresay I’d have handed out the same treatment to new pupils myself when I was older, but I never got the chance, because Dr Beeching had recommended closing the line, and close it did. Things were much quieter on the bus.

  Nobody has a good word for Dr Beeching. The way they say his name you’d think he carried out sinister medical experiments or something. He took all the blame but he only recommended the cuts, it was the government who went ahead with them. It was absolute madness, of course, we can see that now, but I suppose the future looked different then. And I have to say, although I’m sorry that the railway’s gone I still feel quite grateful to Dr Beeching. It was thanks to him that I was saved from a terrible ordeal. And the old line’s not a bad place to walk the dog either.

  JUNE

  1 June

  The Essay

  The headmaster’s hand on the back of your knee.

  ‘I’m not trying to needle you,’ he said.


  Thursday evening. Thursday prep was English. Every week you wrote an essay or a story. He wrote three titles on the blackboard. You chose one and wrote about it, and later he marked the essays. He called boys to his study, one at a time, and went through their essays with them.

  ‘What do you mean by this sentence?’

  You felt yourself reddening. You stood beside his chair and his hand was on the back of your knee, squeezing it.

  ‘I’m not trying to needle you. What do you mean by it?’

  You were good at English so usually these one-to-one sessions were all right. You even enjoyed them: special times when he took the trouble to dissect your writing and discuss with you what worked and what didn’t. He wanted you to write as well as you could. He was a good teacher in that respect.

  ‘ “Sex would corrupt many pupils, and it would be too late to regret it,” ’ he read out. Your words, from his mouth.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  You didn’t know what you meant. You meant something, but what? The essay was about co-education. Should the school take girls? You were twelve. Twelve was innocent then.

  You mumbled something about boys and girls going to bed together.

  ‘Why would that be wrong?’ he said. His hand squeezing the back of your knee.

  You didn’t know why, it just would be. Sex was wrong. But you were thinking about it. More and more. You couldn’t help yourself.

  ‘Corrupt’. Where had that word come from? From the Bible? From him?

  You wished you’d never written the essay. You wished you’d chosen another title. You wished he hadn’t summoned you to his study but you knew why he had. Because of what you had written. That one word, ‘sex’.

  ‘I’m not trying to needle you,’ he said. What did ‘needle’ mean? What did he mean?

  His hand, big and heavy, on the back of your knee. Was that needling?