by Paul Harris
There is something that feels rather uncomfortable about wearing a suit on a train and yet millions of people do it every day. I couldn’t help feeling ridiculously overdressed as I made my way up to Golders Green for Bangla’s final farewell. I must have looked like a backstreet pub bouncer in my sixty pound supermarket suit. I was aware that I was fidgeting awkwardly, taking deep breaths in a vain attempt to alleviate the tightness in my chest, as passengers on the midday service into Waterloo passed me curious glances. The cheap fabric of the trousers chafed the rough skin on the back of my thighs and shot needle sharp pains down my legs. It was impossible for me to sit still, and my fellow passengers suffered greatly for it. They folded and unfolded their newspapers, fabricating huge sighs of exasperation, as I wriggled and squirmed beside them.
A signal failure at Clapham Junction meant that our train was delayed for fifteen minutes before we could enter the station. This served to make my discomfiture worse and bring the general feeling of frustration inside the carriage to boiling point. Vile looks of antipathy were exchanged, from seat to seat, for no conceivable reason. Somebody in a baseball cap increased the volume of their mp3 player and were caught in the glare of countless blood-chilling scowls. The tension broke me and I decided to walk to the end of the carriage and stand by the door in order to stretch my legs and let my trousers hang more freely.
As I got to my feet, the train shuddered into motion and I staggered backwards, tripped over a black leather briefcase, and found myself sitting in a rather large Afro-Caribbean lady’s lap. We looked at each other. I wanted to disappear. Now all the eyes were on me, especially hers which were drilling right into my skull.
“Are you going to move?” she asked me, with not a quantum of emotion in her voice. I smiled uneasily, but couldn’t find the words to form a reply. “Well, are you?”
I clambered to my feet and the lady in question rather helpfully used her huge shovel-like hands to propel me towards the seats on the opposite side of the carriage. At that exact moment, the train, once more, jolted to a halt and I lost my balance again. I careered along the aisle, instinctively reaching out with my hand in order to find an anchor point with which I could steady myself. And just when I thought the situation couldn’t deteriorate any further, I found that I had torn some poor man’s wig from his head.
I continued to fidget for the duration of the service, but I wasn’t the only one. We all stood in a respectful but uncomfortable silence as a eulogy was read out to a man whom none of us recognised. It was as though I had come to the wrong chapel. I scanned the sombre faces about me for signs of recognition to confirm that I was, indeed, at Bangla’s funeral, and hadn’t inadvertently, stumbled in upon a service for a former choirboy-come-charity worker. The rows of faces were blank and expressionless; their wearers respectfully willing the service to end, so that ties and jackets could be removed and the true eulogies begun. Someone near to me coughed and I wriggled in my seat, knocking my prayer book onto the tiled floor with a loud thud, attracting attention from the rows of faces. Luckily, someone’s mobile phone went off in one of the rows behind me. There was an irate murmur. I glanced over my shoulder and beheld Frank Garvey glaring at his wife. She was hurriedly fiddling with the clasp of her handbag, trying to locate the source of the disturbance. Her Abba-inspired ringtone ceased just as she managed to open her handbag, pouring its contents out onto the chapel floor with a resonating clatter.
As the coffin disappeared behind the red velvet curtain, a poor monophonic version of “Stop Crying Your Heart Out” could be heard clanking in the background, and Bangla was gone, off on a celestial adventure to be reunited with his tongue.
The wake was held in the Red Cow. It was a place that I never thought I’d see again; and a place that I had never wished to see again. It’s easier to walk into a room full of total strangers; people that you’ve never seen before in your life; than to walk into a room full of people whom you used to know, but don’t know any longer. There was nothing new for us to talk about and there was nothing from the past that anyone felt inclined to revisit. We all embarked on a game of avoiding each other; certain situations; particular conversations; without appearing to be impolite.
Moke and Broomhead were huddled in a dark corner as if they were hiding. I casually held out my hand to Broomhead as I passed them on my way to the bar. We shook, and I kissed Moke on her cheek. They said nothing and neither did I but the animosity was gone and the hatchet was buried.
Frank Garvey and his wife, Joanne, were sitting on a stool each at the bar with a group of old acquaintances gathered around them. Even from my distant position, I could hear Frank boasting that he had booked a band for the occasion and had shouldered the complete expense himself. They called themselves Casino and even as Frank spoke they struck up with an old cover version of “Don’t Look Back in Anger”. I decided to swallow my pride and to reintroduce myself to my former friends. I steeled myself for possible rejection or to be bored senseless by Frank’s interminable bragging.
As I began to approach them, Joanne caught my eye. Upon recognising me, her expression changed to one of surprise; her eyes wide open, almost in disbelief that I was still alive. Then, she directed towards me a smile that had warmed me through on many previous occasions. She was still tremendously attractive and still, clearly, doted on Frank. Motherhood had done her no damage whatsoever.
But as I returned her smile and she beckoned me over, an apocalyptic nightmare occurred. Someone wrapped a big bouncy arm around my shoulders and placed a bare hairy armpit far too closely to my face. The odour of stale sweat was bitter on the back of my throat. “Rodney!” screamed my assailant. “Oh, Rodney!”
The big bouncy arm and the bare hairy armpit belonged to none other than the local gossip, and most objectionable creature outside of Westminster, Gloria Ryder. “Hi Gloria,” I muttered, “Sorry, but I was just going to…”
“The bar? Oh, I’d love a drink with you, Rodney!” She had a peculiar and most annoying way of pronouncing my name, like Rodnaay or Rodneigh. She got the first syllable out relatively unscathed but the rest of it sounded like a horse being shot. “Moke’s over there. Did you know? Don’t they look lovely together?”
I pushed her big bouncy arm away from me and did nothing to disguise my feelings of revulsion toward her. “What do you want?”
“Oh, Rodney, a gin and tonic would be lovely.”
“I didn’t mean to drink!”
“In fact, since it’s a special occasion, make it a large one.”
Joanne caught my eye once more and again beckoned me over. I gave her a subtle look that roughly translated was supposed to convey the following message to her:
“For God’s sake, get over here and rescue me from this beast of a woman!”
My facial expressions are clearly poorly formed as Joanne appeared to translate it as:
“Immediately look away and totally ignore me, leaving me to my peril at the hands of this beast of a woman.”
“Special occasion? It’s a funeral!”
“Oh Rodney!” she screeched, giving me a nudge in the ribs with her elbow, “I meant bumping into you. It must be fate or something!”
I gave an involuntary shudder and looking around the room for some form of sanctuary spotted Broomhead and Moke watching me and laughing. I smiled at them, uneasily, and Broomhead stuck his thumb up and winked. “Go on my son!”
“Don’t Look Back in Anger” drew to a close just as I was beginning to look back in anger, and then the first chords of “Valerie” burst from the amplifiers. Gloria seemed to be going into some kind of swoon and staggered towards me. I moved out of the way before she could collapse into my arms, and she stopped staggering.
“Oh, Rodney!” she yelled in my ear, spraying the side of my face. “I used to sing this to my daughter.” Her nose was touching my ear lobe.
“I didn’t know you had a daughter. Who on Earth…?” I refrained from completing the sentence, remembering my new policy of
thinking before I spoke. “You named your daughter Valerie, then?”
She looked confused. “You’re so silly, Rodney! Her name’s Chelsea! Don’t you remember her?”
I felt confused too, and was unsure of what to say. I said nothing, but just burst out laughing. “Sorry, sorry, I thought her name was Valerie.”
“No, it’s Chelsea. My little Chelsea. She has got ginger hair though.”
Joanne was still beckoning me over, and then Frank turned and summoned me with an imperious wave of his hand.
“What do I do?” I mouthed, silently, at them, shaking my head and holding my hands towards them pleadingly.
Frank pointed towards the entrance door and I thought that he was suggesting that my only hope was to leave but now I wanted to stay and speak to Frank and Joanne and find out how life was treating them. I wanted to catch up on old times all of a sudden, as if a wave of sentimental nostalgia had swept over me. I looked towards the door and thought that maybe if I popped out to the toilet, Gloria would be gone when I returned. She might disappear and fall into a big black hole. People were still coming and going; putting their coats on and going outside for a cigarette, and then coming back in and shivering, and blowing warm breath over their fingertips.
Then it dawned on me as to why Frank was pointing so animatedly. Rory was standing in the doorway arguing with somebody. He was my former landlord. I’d rented a flat off him when I’d last been staying in this part of town. He was a good bloke and he trusted me implicitly. I ripped him off for a hundred quid when I left. It wasn’t so much the money, but the principle of it. I was out of order and I felt terribly guilty about the whole affair. If I’d had a hundred pounds in my wallet, I’d have walked straight over to him and put it in his hand, there and then. Rory had never done me any harm at all.
Gloria tapped me on the shoulder.
“What?” I asked, irritably.
“Guess what?”
“What?”
She lunged towards me and before I could take evasive action, she was whispering into my ear. “I’m not wearing any knickers, Rodney.”
“You never do, Gloria. I gotta go.” As I turned around, I collided with Frank who had finally arrived to rescue me. He took me by the arm and led me to a quiet corner.
He seemed quite alarmed about something. “Rory’s here!”
“I know; I saw him.”
“What you gonna do?”
“Why?” Frank didn’t even know about the money. “What can I do?”
“He was hopping mad when you done one without paying him.” Apparently, Frank did know about the money.
“It was a long time ago, Frank. Rory won’t bear a grudge like that, he’s a good bloke.”
“Be careful, Rod.”
I nodded and we both glanced over at Rory. He was dressed appropriately in black: a black donkey jacket, black jeans, and black Doctor Martens’. He removed his glasses, exposing a red groove that they’d worn into the bridge of his nose. He took a handkerchief from his pocket, spat into it, and gave the lenses a brisk wipe. He began circling the room, talking to nobody, but peering through his milk bottle lenses at everybody. He was never the most sociable of geezers.
“Bad shit about Bangla, eh?” said Frank, still talking as if he was in a detective movie.
“Yeah, you got any ideas, Frank?”
“About what?”
“About who did for Bangla?”
Frank seemed to be searching, mysteriously, around the room. “Nah, of course not! I ain’t Hercule fucking Poirot, am I? The police don’t know, so how would I know?”
“I just thought you might have some kind of clue, that’s all. I’d love to meet up with them sometime.”
Frank held out his hand, and I accepted it. “Sorry, mate. We’d all love to meet up with whatever cowardly bastard done this, but it ain’t never gonna happen. Never. So, let’s have a beer and forget about it. Jo’s over there. See that girl with her; the one that’s sobbing her poor little heart out? Bangla’s missus, innit. Ex-missus, I suppose.”
“It’ll happen, Frank.” We started walking towards the two grieving women. “One day it’ll happen, Frank. One day I’ll meet him and he won’t know fuck all about it. No one will. But Bangla will, up there in the stars.”
“You sure you should be drinking, Rod?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Frank never answered. His mysterious gaze had been captured by something or someone, and they appeared to be rapidly approaching on the starboard bough.
“Hello, Rodney!” boomed a familiar voice, “Long time, no see. Right?”
“Alright, Rory? How’s things?”
“Mustn’t grumble, I suppose.” He removed his glasses again and wiped them with his handkerchief. Then, he placed the handkerchief and his glasses in the gaping pocket of his donkey jacket. I’d only ever seen him take his glasses off to clean them before. He looked remarkably different without them; like a young Cary Grant.
I smiled, but knew that he couldn’t see me. “About that money, Rory. I know it was only a hundred quid but I do feel bad about it.”
He waved it away. “Don’t worry about the money, Rod. The money’s not a problem.”
“Oh, good,” I sighed, “I’ve been feeling so guilty about it all, and if…”
“It’s not the money,” he interrupted, and then his fist clattered into my jaw bone, dislodging a couple of fillings and splitting my lower lip in two, “it’s the principle, Rodney.”
Chapter Three
Dental Nurse, Dental Nurse, Dental Nurse
I have a morbid hatred of going to the dentist and that is why I seldom go. With the exception of emergencies like this one, I never go. Perhaps that’s why my teeth hurt every time I eat solids or have a cold drink or a hot one. But, for once, this visit was rather pleasant; unmercifully painful but strangely pleasant, nonetheless.
I was sitting in the dentist’s chair and unfortunately it wasn’t the variety that Gazza and Teddy Sheringham made famous at Wembley in ’96, but only the traditional leather upholstered variety. I was squeezing my fingertips into the soft black arm rests and screwing my eyes tight shut in anticipation of grinding pain. The very sound of the drill sent lightning rods of dread through my teeth and into my jaw bone. My gums twitched and tensed long before the needle delivered its shot of novocaine.
Occasionally, I would unscrew my eyes, realising that the pain was all in my mind, imagined, and not real at all. As my pupils contracted and adjusted to the light that was shining into them, I’d see the dental nurse, peering intensely back at me over her surgical mask. Her eyes were a strange hue of amber and glinted at me in the afternoon sunlight that poured between the vertical blinds that hung in front of the open window to my right. She wore her dark hair tied into a bun at the back of her head. An understated fragrance discretely imbedded itself into my psyche and would remain there for the rest of my life always reminding me of the wail of the dentist’s drill. She leant over to poke something into my mouth, and one of her breasts pressed against my shoulder. I groaned, involuntarily, and the dentist stopped hacking at my gums.
“Did that hurt?”
“Ugh.” I shook my head slowly and thought that perhaps Rory had done me a favour after all, and this was all part of my final destiny.
“Well, this will,” said Doctor Ling, with an almost maniacal look crossing his mildly Korean features. He was right too. I squirmed in the chair and tried so hard not to cry, casting my mind far and wide seeking something to occupy my thoughts. Topics of interest flashed through my mind: the best loaf, the best washing powder, Big Brother, the Arab Spring, Gareth Bale’s transfer fee, the new barmaid at the Pig, the Pig, the dental nurse, dental nurse, dental nurse!
Lights flickered above me like the backdrop to a crazed nightmare. Fingers prodded the insides of my mouth. Various gadgets were inserted and instructions randomly dealt me. “Bite”, “Not so hard”, “Harder”, “Open wide”, “This may sting a litt
le”.
“Sting a little?” I thought and tried unsuccessfully to speak through a mouth full of steel instruments and flesh. “That’s an understatement!”
“Suction,” Doctor Ling said, gently. The nurse leant over me, this time to suck saliva from beneath my tongue so that I could begin to breathe again. I groaned with relief, but this time Doctor Ling didn’t stop the drilling, he just ploughed on regardless, and I could tell that the nurse was smiling behind her mask and that those sparkling amber eyes were meant for me.
Miss Lady
Tesco have built a new superstore down on Stafford Street. Even the habitually graceless supermarket chains have spurned the crude glass and concrete architecture of the sixties and seventies. This building is a magnificent redbrick affair with sweeping turrets and imposing piers of layered brickwork with a fountain bubbling away in front of the automatic doors. The shiny black car park stretches all the way to the horizon without so much as a hint of a pothole. Customers listen contentedly to passionless piped music as they withdraw their wages from the array of user-friendly cash dispensers. The smart red and white signs above their heads are tastefully lit with glowing neon.
Inside, the bustling aisles, packed with everything a human being could possibly require, are air-conditioned and temperature-controlled. Shopping trolleys with broken wheels are a thing of the past. Tesco trolleys glide smoothly across the floor with pin-point accuracy, from toiletries to delicatessen. The staff are smart and literate now; they complete courses in customer service; and some are even friendly. They can locate any product you ask for without reference or delay. There’s a crèche for the children, a balcony restaurant for the peckish, and an in-house magazine for the insatiably curious. There are postage stamps, phone cards, lottery tickets and special trolleys that the elderly can hook to the back of their mobility scooters and drag around the store like an articulated lorry.