Kiss My Name

by Calvin Wade

  “Your account will have privacy settings because you didn’t set your account up, Will did and he will have put them on.”

  “Maybe,” Simon mused, “I still think she’s a trickster.”

  “Think what you like, Simon, but I still think Colin spoke to her.”

  “No chance. Colin died in 1986.”

  “His spirit might not have done.”

  Alcohol allows people to find a passage from jovial to morose in one easy step. Simon was no different. I could feel his mood changing.

  “Nicky, his spirit did die and do you know how I know this?”

  “How?”

  “I’ve been thinking about this. Colin loved me. If Colin, twenty five years after his death, still had a voice, he would have put me out of the misery that has been looming over me for a quarter of a century. He would have been able to see me tormenting myself about what exactly happened down at the canal. He wouldn’t have been bothered abut ‘Miss La De Da’, friendly dogs in heaven and your Mum. He’d have just yelled, ‘It was Boffin! It was Boffin! It was Boffin!’ or whatever the real truth was. Someone who is probably still alive is still hiding the truth about Colin’s death and if Colin could have told me who that someone is, he would have done.”

  “Simon, we can’t possibly expect to know what the rules are on the other side.”

  “Nicky, I don’t think there is another side, but even if there is, I knew our Colin better than anyone and the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that was not him.”

  “Well, I still think it was.”

  We went to sleep on that slightly acrimonious note. I hope one day Simon does find out what happened to Colin, because every now and again, especially after a drink, I can still see how much the mystery surrounding his death still haunts him. Simon’s opinion is that Colin is not resting in peace and until his killer is found, he never will be.”

  SIMON – February 2011

  I am a pretty regular bloke. I like the simple life. I am pretty insular and a day without drama or incident has always been a good day as far as I’m concerned! It took me more than thirty seven years to have my first really crazy idea. Having a tattoo on my wrist wasn’t earth shatteringly mad but it did give me a thrill to do something out of character. It was, however, only the first item on a ‘bucket’ list that was made in my head after Arthur’s collapse. Once the first item was ticked off, I moved on to the second.

  The idea came courtesy of Facebook. I am not a big fan of computers, mobile phones or any sort of gadget, I still like vinyl and cassettes, but whilst I have remained technologically in the 1980’s, the rest of my family have moved on and sometimes they drag me into their world kicking and screaming! Nicky made me aware of the whole ‘Friends Reunited’ craze. In Britain, Friends Reunited had been putting old school friends back in touch with each other for years, often for the common good. Occasionally though it lead to old romances from teenage days being re-kindled and new marriages falling apart. Facebook took things several steps further. It didn’t just establish two way communications between old school friends, it created a community for every individual, placing everyone in the centre of their own inner circle. It was not just for school friends either, any friendship, no matter how tenuous, could now be re-established via Facebook.

  To be honest, there were not too many friends in my life that I was desperate to re-connect with. Most of my friends, of which I only had a few, were still in touch or in most cases, were not in touch but I knew where they still lived and would see them around sometimes as I drove past them or they drove past me. These friendships were now on, what I would call, a “friendly wave” basis and that was enough for me. On Facebook, I had added the likes of Joey Neill and a few friends from cricket, but there wasn’t much point being on there just to connect with people I saw already.

  There was only one friend, who was actually from my school days, who did not fit that standard mould. His name was Richard Tyler. Joey Neill had always been my best friend at Euxton Church of England Primary School, so when I discovered Joey’s Mum and Dad would be sending him to a private Secondary School, I began to worry about who I would end up hanging around with at school. I was never going to slot naturally into the ‘Groovy Gang’, nor would I be able to adequately converse with the ‘swots’, the ‘sporty folk’ were also out, as were the ‘tough kids’. I just wanted to befriend an average sort of kid, not sporty, not overly clever or thick or kitted out in a Sergio Tacchini tracksuit, just a bog standard kid.

  Richard Tyler turned out to be the boy who passed my criteria check. Richard wore NHS glasses, had greasy, dark hair with a severe fringe that led to some of the older kids christening him ‘spade head’, but we had common ground and almost immediately after starting Parklands, my Secondary School, we became best mates. He lived in Brinscall, which is five or six miles from Euxton, so I didn’t see much of him outside of school, but in school, from the ages of eleven to fifteen, we stuck together whenever we could.

  At fifteen, the tectonic plates beneath our feet took Richard and me in different directions. Richard’s Dad was a teacher, a Deputy Head at a primary school in Brinscall. Richard was always mentioning how ambitious his Dad was for a Head Teacher’s role and in 1988, he managed to get one. This was great news for Mr.Tyler, but not such great news for me, as it meant the Tyler family moving to a tiny village in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, called Bishop’s Cleeve. Throughout the rest of our teenage years, we exchanged regular letters, but, for reasons I can’t really recall, the letters became less frequent and eventually stopped altogether. When Friends Reunited became popular, I kept hoping he would register on the Parklands page, I only registered myself because of him, but it was a phenomenon that did not draw him in. Like me, I doubt there were too many friends that he was desperate to trace.

  Having introduced me to Friends Reunited several years earlier, it was Nicky that introduced me to Facebook too. She had become pretty addicted to it, posting photos of the kids on there, accumulating hundreds of ‘friends’ and seemingly wasting quality time playing farm games! The kids were on it too, but at first, I kept away, telling them I’d rather listen to a good play on Radio 4, read a book or have a laugh by listening to one of the old classics like ‘Hancock’s Half Hour’ or ‘Round The Horne’. Nicky always said I’d been born a generation too late or even two!

  One day though, a couple of years back, I think I must have been feeling particularly and unusually sociable. It must have been an evening that Nicky and I had shared a bottle of Sancerre that had been on a half price offer at Tesco, as I remember being half cut when I asked whether Nicky or Will would show me how to set up a Facebook account.

  “This is strange,” mocked Will, “it’s like seeing Laurel & Hardy in colour! It’s not natural. You’ll be listening to Jay Z next.”

  Cheeky so and so.

  Even for a technophobe like me, Facebook was relatively straightforward. I made sure Will altered the settings so I only communicated with a carefully selected few. I had a nose around old school ‘friends’ pages for a couple of hours, delighting in the fact that some of them looked even older, greyer and fatter than me! I particularly enjoyed seeing the pages of girls who would only give the time of day to handsome boys at school, many of whom were now what my Mum would politely describe as ‘rotund’ with leathery faces and wrinkles showing the belated evidence of their 1980’s sunbed addiction. A few were now grandmothers and most, somehow fittingly, were divorced. Selfishness and vanity are not great strengths in any marriage. That first Facebook evening, I was too busy wallowing in the decline of the teenage princesses, to seek out Richard Tyler, so after adding four friends, three of whom I shared a house with, the other being Joey Neill, I signed off.

  Two years after losing my Facebook virginity, I was up a ladder, letting my brain wander aimlessly, as it so often does on my window cleaning round, when Richard Tyler came into my mind in a ‘I wonder whatever happened to...’ moment. So, that evening I r
eturned to Facebook, inputted the name Richard Tyler in the search field and then looked through the dozen or so Richard Tyler’s with photographs that appeared. I have to say, not one bore a striking resemblance to the child I knew, but there was one guy who now had long grey hair and a wispy grey beard who was sporting a hippyish look, who I thought , at least, bore some sort of similarity. His Facebook page revealed he was single, though did not mention whether he had ever married, none of the photographs on his page gave me any indication that he had children, they were mainly pictures of Richard scuba diving in exotic locations around the world. I found it interesting though, that his current location was listed as Chester rather than Cheltenham. Had I definitely found the right Richard Tyler? The only way I could be certain was to ask him, so sent a ‘Friend Request’ and a message asking him if he was originally from Chorley because if he was, he used to be my school friend. The second bit probably went without saying, given we were best friends for four years, but some people have lousy memories!

  The following night, Richard Tyler had been back in touch and thankfully, it was the correct Richard Tyler and he did accept me as a friend. At school, he had been no brighter than me, but he had obviously just been a late developer as he ended up going to Sheffield University to study Law. He had decided whilst studying though that there was as much chance of him being a solicitor as there was of him being a professional gigolo, so as soon as he had graduated, he went travelling around the world, alone, for twelve months. Whilst travelling up the East coast of Australia, he had discovered and fallen in love with scuba diving. He subsequently qualified as a deep sea diver, working for oil companies all over the world, but in recent years had decided to live a less dangerous life, so had found himself a scuba diving job at Blue Planet, the huge aquarium in Ellesmere Port, Wirral. I had never heard of the place, so I googled it, which was when my next crazy idea came to me, that linked in to the second item on my ‘Bucket List’. The thing I have now discovered about crazy ideas though, is that they don’t just materialise over night, they take a lot of planning.

  It was necessary to confide in Richard about what this crazy idea was and he was still the generous, kind hearted, well meaning person he had always been, he helped me every step of the way and brought my crazy idea to life. It worked out better than I ever could have imagined and having managed to get one crazy idea in the bag, I was hoping to get another one in before cold feet got the better of me!

  ARTHUR – March 2011

  Simon Strong had spent the last twenty years irritating the hell out of me and he wasn’t going to stop now. Since Angela, my late wife and Nicky’s mother, had died tragically when Nicky was only seven, I had always played out a scene in my head, picturing the day someone would ask for my daughter’s hand in marriage. Trust Simon to get the whole scene wrong! I could not mask my annoyance!

  “Get up off your knee, you bloody fool and do it properly!” I commanded.

  “Arthur, you’ve been telling Nicky for about fifteen years that this is what I should be doing and now I finally am, you are still bloody moaning! I don’t know the bloody etiquette, do I? The lads at cricket told me when I asked your permission, I had to go down on one knee too. ”

  “They were winding you up, you pillock! This is an important moment, I don’t want to be looking down on your baldy head! Just let go of my hand as well, will you?”

  I shook my hand free of his sweaty grip. Simon rose to his feet. He dusted off his jeans. Where did he think he was? His house? I suppose I should have felt guilty about getting annoyed, but the simple fact was, Simon Strong had the capacity to wind me up like no other. He wasn’t a bad man. I just did not want him to be with my daughter. My only daughter. The fact that he had waited sixteen years for this moment to arrive, was plain wrong. The scene I had pictured, when Nicky was a child, involved a good looking young man in an expensive suit, politely requesting my permission in a charming, confident manner. I did not foresee the request coming from a balding muppet, holding my hand whilst sweat dripped off his fat jowels.

  “Ask me again,” I firmly requested, “properly this time.”

  “Will you…,” he began.

  “Yes…”

  “..do me the honour..”

  “Go on…”

  “..of marrying my daughter.”

  He was driving me mad!

  “For Christ’s sake, Simon, can you not get anything right?”

  The idiot hadn’t even realised.

  “What have I done now?”

  “You just asked me to marry your daughter. I’m in my seventies, Simon! Chloe’s eleven!”

  “And she’s your granddaughter!”

  “Exactly.”

  I let out a deep sigh. Maybe, just for Nicky’s sake, I should go a little easier on him.

  “Right, Simon. I understand that you’re nervous. Let’s give it one last go and after that, I am going to head down to the allotment.”

  Simon straightened himself up and ran his fingers under his collar. Did I enjoy watching him squirm? I am afraid I did.

  “Arthur?”

  “Yes, Simon?”

  “Would you do me the great honour of allowing me to have your daughter’s hand in marriage?”

  I must admit, with hindsight, my response was all wrong. I love my daughter like no other and what I said was said purely to antagonise Simon Strong. It was not meant, in any way, to be disrespectful to my daughter.

  “Well, I suppose I best had, hadn’t I? No-one else will have her now. Used goods.”

  It did have the desired effect though. It antagonised Simon. I was annoyed with Simon, Simon was now annoyed with me, nothing new, either way.

  “Arthur, can you not just stop being such a grumpy old sod? You wanted me to ask you, so I’m bloody asking you! Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”

  I gave him one of my stares.

  “Simon, nothing could make me prouder than having you as my son-in-law.”

  Somehow, Simon detected I was being sarcastic. I am not saying my tones were not sarcastic, I am just saying it was surprising Simon detected them, because he is thick.

  “Piss off, Arthur!”

  “Charming!”

  “Arthur, I am doing the right thing here! I haven’t asked Nicky first, I’m asking you! That’s what I knew you wanted me to do and although I think you are a patronising old git, for some strange reason, part of me respects you, so I thought it was the right thing to do.”

  Even patronising old gits have a conscience.

  “I know. To be fair lad, you’ve done things right.”

  “And I love her, Arthur. Your daughter means the world to me.”

  “And to me.”

  “In the last sixteen years, a day hasn’t passed when I haven’t thanked my lucky stars for having Nicky by my side.”

  Simon often trotted out this romantic drivel. When he did I would usually reminded him that he was right to be grateful. Nicky was the best catch in the ocean and he had managed to catch her with a lousy plastic rod. It seemed like I had already managed to get his back up though and I wanted to get down to the allotment more than I wanted another argument.

  “Alright, alright! I get the message! You love her, she loves you, at long bloody last you’re getting married. Now where are my shoes? I need to get out of here”

  I gave him a quick shake of the hand. Simon had that gormless look of surprise on his face.

  “Arthur, I was hoping we could go down to the Duke’s for a quick pint,” Simon said a little forlornly.

  “With all due respect, I don’t think his bodyguards would let us in.”

  “Very funny. The Duke Of York pub, just for a quick one, to celebrate my impending marriage to your daughter.”

  In sixteen years, we had never been for a pint together, not just the two of us. This still did not feel like the time to start.

  “Simon, I’ve got an allotment to tend to. I have some chitted potatoes to plant. Now if you want to grab a
spade…”

  “OK. Where are they?”

  Give him his due, he was trying.

  “Simon, I was only joking. I want to go on my own. When Angela died, I had to adapt to spending large periods of time on my own, like when Nicky was at school or in bed at night or as she grew older, round at friends. I learnt to enjoy the solitude. I grew to appreciate the peace and quiet. Anyway, you’ve already been down there once and when you came, I collapsed. I think we might be tempting to fate to try it again!”

  “It wasn’t my fault you collapsed, Arthur. You were bloody lucky I was there.”

  Simon had a point. I eased off him a little, but still couldn’t help giving it to him straight.

  “Look Simon, I know you make Nicky happy and ultimately, that’s all that really matters to me, but let’s just face facts, we are different people. We are never going to be best friends, so let’s not waste time trying. We are both too old for that.”

  “OK.”

  The lad seemed to understand. He didn’t like me any more than I liked him. There was no need for us to pretend.

  “…one thing I need you to promise me, Arthur.”

  Admittedly, I wasn’t really listening.

  “I need you to promise me that you’ll come on my Stag Do, Arthur.”

  “Yeh, yeh, that’s fine. Now where’s my hat? I need to get a move on. Come on, Simon, I’ll show you out.”

  NICKY – March 2011

  I hardly ever baked apple pie. Hardly ever baked anything. If truth be known, I’m not much of a cook, children are such a drain on resources both financially and time wise, that I rarely get an opportunity to improve. That Saturday, however, probably inspired by doing the ironing that morning in front of Saturday kitchen and the delightful James Martin, I decided to give it a go. Simon had nipped out on one of his, ‘I’m just popping out for ten minutes’ things, that always took a few hours. The kids were both out too, Chloe had gone around to Lydia’s to practice their dance routines for the following Sunday’s show and Will had headed around to a mates from Runshaw College to watch the footy, so it was just me, my i-pod, Beyonce and the rolling pin.