He wore a dark, old-fashioned suit, a skinny tie and a grubby white shirt with a peculiarly high collar, and he looked completely out of place in that pub, absurdly, embarrassingly incongruous.
No sooner had he appeared than one of his companions, dressed, so far as anyone could tell, in exactly the same quaint way, abandoned his lemonade and trotted up beside him.
Without the slightest trace of emotion, he announced that he too was a doctor and wondered aloud whether he could help to alleviate the situation.
Then, with the woozy logic of a recurring dream, a third stranger, identically attired, strolled up to the bar to casually announce that he’d trained at Barts and that his services were unequivocally at their disposal.
Everyone shuffled back, too befuddled to do much else, as the strangers knelt beside Granddad like the magi turned up by mistake at an old folks’ home.
The first of them rolled him onto his back and reached for his wrist, groping for a pulse with forefinger and thumb. After a few seconds, he announced that Granddad still lived. It was only then that any chink of emotion entered his voice. The entourage told me later that it sounded like disappointment.
As the second man speculated about a stroke, a heart attack, an embolism, the last of the strangers took a handkerchief from the top pocket of his jacket, wiped his brow and suggested that someone call a bloody ambulance.
When Mum told me this story, I stopped her here, my heart cartwheeling in hope. “You told me he was dead.”
I could hear the sneer in her voice. “Well,” she said. “As good as.”
There’s something more you ought to know. Each of those men, each of those so-called doctors, spoke with a different regional accent, each so pronounced and distinct as to be immediately recognizable.
Those men were walking stereotypes. They were a bad joke.
They were an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman.
Chapter 3
Nothing out of the ordinary ever happens to me on a Tuesday. It’s reliably the dullest day of the week. Even the Tuesday on which my life began its skydive into horror seemed, at first, to be no exception.
I opened my eyes a few seconds before the alarm intended to jangle me awake, rolled across the bed and smacked the machine into silence. With only a little groan at the prospect of another day, I got up, visited the bathroom, washed my hands, trudged into the kitchen for coffee, rummaged around the fridge to see if there was anything salvageable for breakfast and settle eventually for a bruised and doughy banana. But I was disappointed to see no obvious sign of my landlady, no evidence that she was even awake.
We lived, my landlady and I, in a rickety two-bedroom flat in Tooting Bec, SW17. It formed the ground floor of a careworn Victorian house, a short walk from a main street which had about it that distinctly London bouquet, that eau de Tooting — beer, dope and drains; old fish, exhaust fumes, stale urine. The second floor was empty and, so far as we knew, had been for years — something to do, we thought, with some structural infelicity or other. My landlady had been there several years whilst I was still the new boy — freshly ensconced only a month earlier but already resident for long enough to know exactly how I felt about her.
After I had showered and changed into my suit (fraying at the hem, balding at the knees from its overfamiliarity with the dry cleaner), I confess to dallying as I made my sandwiches in the hope of seeing my landlady emerge, gummy eyed and yawning, on a hunt for cornflakes. But her bedroom door remained resolutely closed.
I grabbed my lunch and cycling helmet and exited the flat, careful to double-lock the front door on my way out. It was a cold, clear morning in December and my breath steamed in the air like smoke. It had rained hard in the night and the world had a smeary, dripping quality to it like I was looking at life through a pane of glass damp with condensation. I stooped to unlock the dilapidated bike which I habitually kept chained to a lamppost despite the fact that it had failed to attract so much as a single, half-hearted robbery attempt and that even dogs declined to relive themselves against its rusty wheels and flaking frame.
Clambering on, I set off, wobbly at first, then gaining in confidence. Down the street, past the corner shop, the video rental store, the King’s Arms and the halal pizza parlor, before, sailing by the tube station, I got giddy, felt a head-rush of excitement, swerved into the torrent of traffic and sprinted out onto the main road. From there, it took me somewhere in the region of three quarters of an hour to get to work, pedaling through Clapham, Brixton, Stockwell and Lambeth, the smoke and grit and filth of London billowing in my face the whole way. Even as I cycled, I became aware that I was part of something bigger than myself, a constituent of the great charge into work, the mindless drone-stream to the center of the city. Underground and overground, in trains, by car, on foot, everybody was elbowing their way in, their eyes on the prize, sparing not a glance for anyone who shared the same quest as them, all of us hurtling forward in the merciless stampede of the morning commute.
It was perilously close to nine o’clock when I finally squealed to a halt outside 125 Fitzgibbon Street — a squat gray building just down from Waterloo station and a few minutes’ walk from the tourist traps on the south bank of the river Thames. The building did nothing to draw attention to itself, although a grimy plastic sign drilled into the wall gave further details for the curious.
CIVIL SERVICE ARCHIVE UNIT
STORAGE AND RECORD RETRIEVAL
Time was when this stretch of the city would have been thriving with rude life but now it seemed either neutered into the sterility of officialdom or else stuffed and mounted for the edification and amusement of visitors like some dead thing in a museum. Wheezy and panting for breath, I shackled my bike in the parking lot beside a bottle bank and a bin for recycling newspapers. In the distance, still garlanded by morning mist, I could make out the turrets of Westminster, the decorous spike of Big Ben, the shining spokes of the London Eye, but I turned my back on the sights of the city and trudged into the building. I waved my pass at Derek in reception, stepped into the lift, took a deep breath and emerged soon after at the sixth floor.
Here was all the comfortable monotony of a day at the office. Gray floors, gray walls, gray desks, gray life. The room was large and open plan and seemed crowded with the usual sounds — the fain hum of the computers, the chuntering whine of the photocopier, the persistent insectoid buzz of ringing phones. I walked to my desk, piled high with stacks of dun-colored folders, nodding at a few of my colleagues as I went, exchanging the usual good mornings and all rights and how was your weekends.
There was a strange girl sitting in my chair.
“You’re sitting in my chair,” I said, feeling like one of the three bears.
“Hi.” She sounded friendly enough. “Are you Henry Lamb?”
I nodded.
“Hi,” she said again. “I’m Barbara.”
She was in her late twenties, plump, bespectacled and dumpy. She gave me a gauche smile and fumbled nervously with the frames of her glasses.
I still had no idea what she was doing in my chair.
“I’m from the agency,” she prompted.
Then I remembered. “You’ve come to help with the filing.”
“I think so.”
“Well then. I’ll show you the ropes.”
Barbara nodded politely as I pointed out the lavatories, the water cooler, the notice board, the fire escapes and the coffee machine. I introduced her to a few colleagues, all of whom looked faintly irritated at the interruption, before, finally, I knocked on the door of my manager. A voice from within: “Come!”
Peter Hickey-Brown slouched at his desk, arms folded behind his head in a clumsy attempt at nonchalance. He had a shock of gray hair which he had grown out too long. He didn’t wear a tie. His shirt was sufficiently unbuttoned to reveal tufts of salt-and-pepper chest hair and, more ill-advisedly still, the glint of cheap jewelry. Poor Peter. He’d worn an earring to work for a week last year until senior manage
ment had been forced to have a quiet but firm word.
“Peter? This is Barbara. She’s come to help us with the filing.”
“Barbara! Hi! Welcome aboard.”
They shook hands.
“So you’re working under Henry?” he asked.
“Looks like it.”
Peter winked. “Better watch this one. He knows where all our bodies are buried.”
The three of us managed some feeble laughter.
“So what do you prefer? Barbara? Barb?” He broke off, as though struck by a brilliant idea. “How do you like Babs?” He sounded hopeful. “Less of a mouthful.”
The girl had a trapped look. “Well, some people call me Babs.”
This I doubted. She didn’t look like a Babs to me.
Peter strutted back to his desk. “You like music, Babs?”
“I suppose.”
Now I just felt sorry for her. Peter behaved like this around any woman younger than himself — a demographic which, perhaps not wholly coincidentally, encompassed most of the female percentage of our office.
“I’ve just been on the web booking tickets for a few gigs. You ever heard of a band called Peachy Cheeks?”
“I don’t think so, no.”
“Boner?”
A shy little shake of her head.
“Arse Bandits?”
Barbara thought for a moment. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”
Peter shrugged. “I’m not surprised. This stuff’s a little out there. It’s…” He broke off for a stagey chuckle. “It’s not exactly what you’d call mainstream.” A hideous pause, then “All righty! Great to meet you, Babs. Any questions, my door’s always open.” And he winked.
Good grief, the man actually winked.
“Sorry about him,” I said once the door had clicked shut and we were safely out of earshot.
“Don’t be. He seems nice.”
“You’ll learn. Come on, let’s grab a coffee. I’ll get us a meeting room.”
I found us a room, where we sat for a while, each staring awkwardly into our cups. “I’d better say something about what we do here,” I said at last. “What did they tell you at the agency?”
The girl looked apologetic. “Not much.”
“We’re filing people,” I said, starting the usual speech. “Our job is to catalogue every document the civil service produces.”
“Sounds riveting.”
“It has its moments. Record retrieval can be surprisingly interesting.”
“And how long have you been here?”
“Me?” I said, stalling for time — as though she could possibly have been referring to anyone else. “Oh, about three years.”
“You’ve been a filing clerk for three years?”
“It’s a living,” I protested. “Anyway. On your feet. You ought to see where the magic happens.”
The largest of our filing rooms was the size of several tennis courts but still felt cramped and claustrophobic thanks to the enormous metal cabinets which took up every available inch, crammed next to one another like stainless steel commuters. Filled with moldering paper, packed end to end with dead statistics, old reports, putrefying memos and long-forgotten minutes, the place had the air of a second-hand bookshop which never makes a sale.
“It’ll be nice to have some company in here,” I said before going on to explain the filing system (a needlessly complicated business of acronyms, mnemonics and numeric codes) whilst Barbara did her best to stifle a yawn.
“This stuff’s just the tip of the iceberg,” I said. “This is just a fraction of it. Of course, a lot of the older stuff’s in an annex in Norbiton but even there we’re running out of space. It’s getting to be a real problem.”
“You’ve really been doing this for three years?”
I tried a grin. “For my sins.”
“Don’t you get bored?”
“Sometimes.” Sighing, I admitted the truth of it. “Every day.”
For the rest of the morning, Barbara stood by my side as I filed a batch of records, ostensibly watching me work (“shadowing me,” as Peter had put it), though, as I kept catching her sneaking glances in my direction, I wondered if she wasn’t spending more time looking at me than at the work. I wasn’t at all sure how to take this, although I had my suspicions and it’s almost certainly not what you’re thinking.
At ten to one, we were back at my desk and I was tussling with a more than usually insubordinate spreadsheet when the telephone rang.
“Henry? It’s Peter. Could you step into my lair?”
My desk was seconds from his office but he seemed to derive pleasure from making me come running.
When I went in, he barely looked up from his screen. “New girl settling in OK?”
“She seems fine. Very competent.”
“Good, good. I’ve just had a call from Phil Statham. He’s got to do some induction thing with her this afternoon. Safety training. Two o’clock in the conference room?”
“I’ll let her know.”
“I’d like you to sit in as well.”
I cleared my throat. “I’ve already done the safety course, Peter.”
“Sure, sure. But after last month’s little blunder…”
I blushed.
“You see what I’m getting at?”
“Of course.”
“All righty. You kids enjoy yourselves, OK?” And he waved a cheaply bejeweled hand to indicate that my audience was at an end.
I prefer to eat lunch alone. I like to find a bench, unparcel my sandwiches and lose myself in the flow of the Thames. I can spend an entire hour gazing at the river as it gropes and claws at the banks, watching the scummy hitchhikers who float on its surface — the plastic bottles and the crisp packets, the used condoms, the sodden paper and all the random metropolitan junk which bobs on the black water to be tossed ashore or sucked under. Often I’ve made myself late watching that liquid history, wondering who has come before me and who shall come after, who has watched that same stretch of river, that same water ebb and flow in its endless mysterious cycle.
On that particular Tuesday, however, I had Barbara with me. She hadn’t brought any lunch so we had to go to a sandwich shop, where she blew an hour’s pay on a cheese baguette.
The riverbank bustled with London life. We passed flocks of suits and clusters of tourists — the first group strutting with jaded impatience, the last ambling, filled with curiosity and exaggerated wonder. We passed a homeless man juggling for pennies, a crocodile of schoolchildren on a daytrip and a shaven-headed young woman who hassled us for donations to charity. There was a power walker who scurried feyly past, his head set at a comically quizzical tilt, a blind woman and her dog and a fat man in a bobble hat selling early editions of the Evening Standard and bellowing out its headline. This was something about the Queen, I think, although I wasn’t moved to buy a copy. At that time (my apologies) the royal family had never interested me all that much.
Barbara picked a bench close to the gigantic Ferris wheel of the Eye, and after some desultory attempts at small talk, we settled down in silence to watch its stately revolutions.
As she chomped through her baguette, I couldn’t help but notice that she persisted in sneaking little looks at me, shy, curious, sideways glances.
At last she came out with it. “Do I recognize you?”
So that’s what it was.
I was spooning out the last of my yogurt. “I’m not sure. Do you?”
I let her flail about for an explanation. “Did we go to school together?”
We did not.
“Do you know my father?”
How would I possibly know her dad?
“Did you used to go out with my friend Shareen?”
Actually, I’ve never been out with anybody, but I wasn’t about to tell her that.
She chewed her lower lip. “I’m stumped.”
I sighed. “Don’t blame me. Blame Grandpa.”
“Do you know,” she said, “I thought it w
as you?”
This happens from time to time. I can usually tell when someone’s about to recognize me. They tend to be the type who watched a lot of telly as kids, who were regularly dumped in front of it by their overworked parents before dinner. I sometimes wonder if there might not be an entire generation who, in some weird Pavlovian way, are actually able to smell fish fingers and chips at the sight of me.
“What was it like?” Barbara asked.
“Oh, great fun,” I said. “Mostly.” I swallowed. “By and large.”
“God, you must have had a riot. Did you even go to school?”
“Course. Mostly we filmed during the holidays.”
“Will you do the catchphrase for us again?”
“Do I have to?”
“Oh, go on.”
“Don’t blame me,” I said, and then, again, eager not to disappoint: “Blame Grandpa.”
For two years, between 1986, when I was eight, and 1988, when I was ten, I played the part of “Little” Jim Cleaver, the wisecracking son in the BBC’s family sitcom Worse Things Happen at Sea. That said, I’m a terrible actor and I freely admit that my casting was entirely down to nepotism.
It was Granddad’s show, you see. He wrote all the scripts, his only major credit after twenty-odd years toiling in the Light Entertainment department of the BBC, something tossed to him as a favor by mates who wanted to give the old guy a break. My catchphrase (actually, often my only line in an episode when they worked out that I couldn’t enunciate for toffee and was pathologically unable to emote) was: “Don’t blame me. Blame Grandpa” — this invariably delivered on my entrance, as I trotted through the door to the family home and onto the main set. Although gales of prerecorded laughter followed on its heels, I never actually got the joke nor met anyone who did.
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