Ideas Above Our Station

by M Y Alam

  Clarice and Julian ran the hostel for seven more miserable years until, another dark and stormy night, some thieves broke in and murdered them both in their beds, much as Julian had offed his mum and dad. After which he was canonized. Which is what you might call a right result.

  Clarice, meanwhile, failed to make the cut: there is no St. Clarice. She’s a bit pissed off about it, by all accounts, and I can’t say I blame her.

  So there we were, a couple of months ago – assorted Saints and Friends, a pair of Psycho stag beetles locking mandibles, a six-foot cockroach chewing the furniture – and Julian, telling the story again. He’d just got to the leper when the call came. He had an audience and he didn’t want to go: just some murderer wriggling on the hook, he said. He looked around the pool of faces and he asked me – me! Pogo! – to get Nick to cover for him.

  Off I went to find Nicholas of Myra – aka Santa Claus, aka Father Christmas. Now, this isn’t as fucked up as it might sound, on account of Nicholas – when he wasn’t delivering Christmas presents or looking out for burglars, pawnbrokers, poor people, barrel-makers, pharmacists, spinsters, newlyweds, dockers, judges, Portsmouth, scholars, shoe-shines, or a dozen other categories of sinner – was one of the half-dozen patron saints of murderers I mentioned earlier. But the client didn’t know this. The client thought he’d been pretty clever putting in a prayer to St. Julian, whose story is not, frankly, as well known outside the Institute as it deserves to be, and who, the client thought, might be grateful for the business. Grateful enough to secure an acquittal, or at least a retrial. So when Nicholas turned up – red coat, woolly beard, snowy boots in September – the client was a tad pissed off. He didn’t think his prayers had been answered at all. He thought he really should lay off the vodka. He thought, in short, that Nick was a Psycho.

  Now Nick was a bit touchy about this sort of thing. He had a voice that rumbled like something deep, deep underground, and he said to the murderer: ‘Are you repenting, or what?’

  And the murderer, taken aback, said, ‘What?’

  So Nick said, ‘Fuck you.’

  He crossed the murderer off his Christmas list, along with his kids and his wife. Which turned out to be a bit redundant, and in pretty poor taste, on account of it was the wife and kids the murderer had murdered. Which Nick might have known if he’d only hung around long enough to find out what was going on. Instead, he came straight back, grabbed a beer and told me to tell Julian he owed him one.

  The murderer, meanwhile, had sobered up and realised his prayers were answered after all. He could file a complaint. Even if Nick wasn’t going to bat for him, he couldn’t talk to a client like that and not expect the client to go for a mistrial. So he did, and the Adjudicator was not amused. Nick argued that he was patron saint of children, so he had a conflict of interest and couldn’t have interceded for the murderer anyway, but it cut no ice. He got a twelve-month ban and compulsory anger management classes.

  A few weeks later, things were hotting up for all of us. There’s always a rush when the nights get darker and the clients’ festivities approach. What with the anxiety and the guilt, the shortage of cash and the increased consumption of legal and illegal drugs, we were all – Friends, Psychos and Saints alike – working double or triple shifts. You could practically taste sweat in the air.

  Nicholas of Myra and Julian the Hospitaller, aka Julian the Poor, meanwhile, spent most of December building empty beer can pyramids and getting to grips with the latest X-Box technology.

  Normally, of course, this would be Nick’s busiest time of year. Delivery to the entire world within a twenty-four hour window is a major logistical undertaking. As a rule, you couldn’t see Nick for project plans and Gantt charts you could paper Heaven with. But not this year. This year, if anyone stopped to ask why he was sat on his arse while the rest of us were sweating our bollocks off, he’d say: ‘I’m on a ban.’

  Julian seemed to have taken Nick’s words about owing him one to heart and said he was coming out in sympathy, brother. He said ‘brother’ as if it were a foreign word that he was trying out for the first time.

  I saw my chance and said, ‘Me, too.’

  ‘Who are you, kid?’ said Nicholas.

  I told him I was Pogo. He looked me up and down, checking out the sailor suit. ‘Nice threads, Pogo.’

  I asked if he wanted some chocolate.

  Julian remembered me, though. I was the one who took the messages. He threw me a beer. ‘Take the weight off your feet,’ he said. ‘No offence.’

  So I joined the rebel Saints, and for a while I was in Heaven. A couple of Psychos joined us, figuring their clients wouldn’t miss them for a day or two – or would be too pissed to complain if they did. A Friend I knew slightly – a union guy – stopped by and asked me what I was doing, hanging out with the dilettante, adventurist scum. I said I was working to rule.

  Julian thought this was very funny. He threw me another beer. Nick rolled another joint and started a story about the time he’d got so pissed he missed the whole of Canada.

  The Friend’s pager went. ‘Parasites,’ he said, leaving.

  I felt a bit bad about my client, but I reckoned she’d be all right. I told myself it might even do her some good. She didn’t need me any more.

  Naturally, it wasn’t long before the Boss came down to sort things out. Nick said he was on a ban. The Boss said it was Christmas, and Nick said: ‘You should have thought of that before.’

  The Boss said it was his kid’s birthday. Was Nick going to fuck it all up out of spite?

  Nick drained a can, peered into it. ‘Looks that way,’ he said.

  The Boss shook his head.

  ‘What about you?’ he said to Julian.

  ‘I want Clarice on the payroll.’

  The Boss said they’d been over that.

  ‘Then I’m out,’ said Julian.

  Finally, the Boss turned to me. I could feel something prickling at the back of my neck. I hoped it was just one of the smaller Psychos.

  ‘What about you, Pogo?’

  He knew my name. Stupid – of course he knew my name.

  I could barely speak. ‘I’m with them,’ I said.

  ‘Splendid,’ Julian drawled. ‘One out, all out.’

  ‘You’re a bright lad,’ said the Boss, and even though I wasn’t sure he had any evidence for that, I relaxed a bit. If he said it, it must be true. Perhaps, if he said it, that made it true?

  ‘Think about your future, Pogo.’

  I couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so I kept my mouth shut.

  ‘Do you want the gig or not, lad?’

  What was he saying?

  ‘Pogo, listen to me. You can get stoned with the riff-raff. Or you can make a couple of billion Christmas dreams come true.’

  Julian said, ‘Hang in there, brother Pogo. He’s just trying to buy you.’

  The Boss ignored him, focused entirely on me. I felt very, very hot.

  ‘Make a decent fist of it, Pogo, the job’s yours. For ever.’

  Nick rumbled, ‘It’s not worth it. Take it from me, kid. The paper work alone’ll kill you.’

  The Boss said, ‘Make your mind up, Pogo. You’ve got ten seconds.’

  I closed my eyes. I thought about my client. I thought: she doesn’t need me any more. Soon I’d get a new one, some inadequate spotty boy with a cruel streak.

  ‘Five seconds, lad.’

  I looked at Nick and saw nothing but tiredness. Was that him or was it the job?

  ‘Four.’

  I looked at Julian. He was looking at me.

  ‘Three.’

  I could see the need in his eyes.

  ‘Two.’

  Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  ‘One.’

  ***

  In the end I said I’d do it.

  Julian slumped and said, ‘Fuck.’

  ‘What do I always say?’ growled Nick. ‘You can’t trust a Friend.’

  ‘On one condition,’ I said to the
Boss.

  He said, ‘Try me.’

  ‘I want to be a Saint.’

  He looked me up and down. ‘You’d need to smarten up a bit, lose a bit of weight,’ he said. ‘But sure, why not?’

  ‘Because I don’t exist,’ I said. ‘I’m imaginary.’

  At that the Boss, Nick, Julian – even a couple of elephant Psychos who’d been hanging around pretending they knew what was going on – laughed and laughed till the beer cans rattled and the tears ran down their cheeks.

  Julian recovered first. ‘Imaginary?’ He rolled the word around his mouth. ‘I’ll tell you a little secret, Pogo. Santa Claus isn’t real. Neither am I.’

  They all laughed again.

  ‘But you…the murders, the Turks? The leper?’

  ‘Pious fantasy. That’s what the historians say these days: pious fantasy.’ He shook his head.

  I staggered as if he’d punched me. I felt sick. The Saints were real. That was the point of Saints.

  ‘What about him?’ I said, pointing at the Boss.

  Now the room went cold and very, very quiet. Julian closed his eyes. Nick lowered his joint, unlit. Even the Psychos gritted their teeth to stop the clicking and grinding.

  The Boss fixed me with his one good eye. ‘You want the job or not, Pogo?’

  ***

  I’m never going to be real, but at least I’m on the inside now, and I can see where Nick was going wrong with the Christmas thing. I’ve suggested we outsource most of the delivery side to in-country contractors and put all the helpers on annualised hours, so we’re not paying them to sit on their arses eleven months a year. The Boss says, whatever, it’s my job now. I tell him I’ll have to tackle the union. I say he’ll need to back me, and he says you can’t make an omelette without cracking heads.

  Nick says I’ve sold my soul, but I remind him we’re imaginary. We don’t have souls to sell. I still see him and Julian around from time to time, telling anyone who’ll listen about the good old days.

  I’m cutting down on the chocolate and getting some new suits made. I’m still not wild about the name, but at least St. Pogo – patron of modern management and chocolatiers – has a bit more class.

  Trying to Find Van Breukelen

  James K Walker

  I can see the whole of the city from the top of Wilford Hill crematorium. It makes me feel like Gulliver with the whole of Nottingham at my fingertips. It gives me a sense of power and control, the ability to be ‘looking at’ rather than the object of the gaze. It is not often you get to be in such a privileged position. In my car the cameras on Western Boulevard monitor my speed and calculate if I am a law-abiding citizen. At the office where I work the computer automatically clocks me on, calculating how many calls I take in a day and deducting pay for too long spent in the toilets. It is an electronic tagging system devoid of compromise which reduces me to a system of digits. But up here I am free of the iron cage of rationality. Up here I can take the city at my leisure and revel in the open space. Up here Nottingham seems manageable and less of a threat.

  When my son and I come up here to see his mother we start with a game. We play who can spot Nottingham landmarks first.

  ‘Where’s the Forest ground?’

  ‘Where’s Trent Bridge?’

  ‘Where’s Sneinton Windmill?’

  ‘Where’s Wollaton Hall?’

  ‘Where’s the Clifton tower block?’

  Whilst we play this game my mind is miles away. What I really see is the road leading down to Rushcliffe swimming baths and how we used to take our son there when he was first born; or trying to spot the pub on Trent Bridge where I first bumped into his mum, and I literally did bump into her, spilling a drink all down her new top. If I hadn’t we would never have met.

  I never let onto my son about my happy reveries but I am sure he knows.

  Although Wilford Hill offers up the freedom of height and space it is no different to the city. The hierarchy of the stones confer status in death as consumerism once did in life. There are enormous stones made of alabaster that cast shadows over the others like high-rise city apartments. Then there are the ones which have toppled over or crumbled and been forgotten, they sit like inner city slums in desperate need of investment. But just as the relatives of the deceased are no longer alive to take care of this grave, the council has somewhat given up on the areas it classifies as a problem. Truth is everywhere telling you a story; you just have to take your time to find it.

  The cemetery has its own hierarchy of pain. Although death is the great leveller, everybody at the top is secretly glad that they are not dropping off flowers to the children section at the bottom. This is a different type of pain. My granddad called it the system. If the system works properly then the parents go before the kids. This way the old are always replaced with young and it balances out. My granddad liked order; he said it stopped a man falling apart.

  In the cemetery, lives are placed into easily definable categories – gravestones, urns, benches, young, old, religions etc. It would seem that we cannot avoid this need to order, even in death. Yet we are not really fooling anyone. It is clear that beneath the order, chaos reigns.

  The cemetery is scattered with flowers, photographs, letters, ashes, fag ends, teddy bears and flags. It is like emotional vandalism; a graffiti of pain. It is beautiful in a miserable kind of way and far more pleasing on the eye than the chip wrappers and puke which fill up the city streets beyond.

  My son’s mother used to work in the Interflora call centre down in New Basford. She used to come home and tell me it was the best job in the world. That she was employed to write down love messages all day for all the romantic fools in Nottingham. She used to say that the money was crap but it was worth it because it filled her with hope and that it was good to be reminded that love was what kept people together – rather than bills and a mortgage. The only downside to this was when we argued and I tried to make up, my gestures would be compared to that of the twenty thousand men she had spoken to that week. I could never win. It is odd that I never bought her flowers whilst she worked there – as it always seemed like an insult – and now that she is gone, I buy her flowers every week.

  Whenever we visit her grave my son grips my hand a little tighter and I never know if he is doing this for me or for him. Sometimes it is best not to know everything.

  To try to calm his nerves on such occasions we play Spot The Forest Players, which involves searching out their names across the graves.

  ‘I saw a Collymore.’

  ‘I see a Lester and look over there, a Taylor.’

  ‘Look there’s a Steve Stone.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Well a gravestone. Can I have that one?’

  ‘Of course you can, Son. Bet you can’t find a Van Breukelen?’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘He used to be in net when I was a lad.’

  The aim of the game is to see who can find eleven ex-players’ names first. Fortunately, Forest are constantly producing new teams as they have to keep selling their players to stay out of debt. Consequently, finding names is never a problem. It helps distract my son from the reality of death, which is a good thing.

  Today it is Christmas Eve and the snow has settled so that you can’t read all the names. It is time for another game.

  ‘Dad, can I throw a snow-ball at a gravestone?’

  ‘Of course you can.’

  ‘Will they mind?’

  ‘Not anymore.’

  On his mother’s grave it says her name, date, and then, ‘Thank You’. I do not know if this is for growing up in Nottingham, for all the lovely messages she heard at work, or because she lived a little of her short life with us.

  Thank you. What else is there left to say?

  I chose this particular plot for her because it is beneath a tree and is usually full of birds which tweeter away. It is like listening in to a foreign conversation and I often wonder what it is that amuses them so.

  As
my son builds a snowman next to his mother’s grave I watch people sliding about; some laughing, some swearing. Death, like snow, turns up unannounced, is inconvenient, disruptive and then gone. I find this symmetry pleasing but am unable to contemplate it further because a man has started shouting out orders in that flat Nottingham accent.

  ‘It’s five ta four, I’m shurrin the gates so hurry on up. I’m geein yuz five minutes and then ahm leaving. I don’t care. It’s Christmus Eve an some on us uv gor homes ta gen to. If ya get ya sens locked in, it’s tough shit.’

  The Wilford Hill gatekeeper then drives down the hill and starts shouting at the poor bastards placing flowers at their children’s grave. It is so unbelievably insensitive that you have to smile, or else you’d probably go insane.

  I know he is just doing his job, and he forgets that this isn’t just any old job, but he wants to get home like everyone else on Christmas Eve and get down the pub and smoke some fags and get nostalgic about when Forest used to be good at football and County were in the same league. And I can’t hold this against him.

  Missing You

  Rosa Ainley

  I’m back again, standing in front of the arrivals board at Heathrow. I’ve been here for half an hour or so and I’ve already checked the board twice as well as the entire stock of all the rubbishy little shops. I’ve been for a wander around and here I am, back for another look, as though something might have changed in my favour. As though some time might have been swallowed up more quickly than usual. I’m early, much too early. I could’ve slept for another hour at least. Except I hardly slept at all anyway, haven’t for weeks. I was so worried that I would be late and miss the flight coming in that I allowed enough time to take a short flight myself and still be back waiting for her at arrivals. London Transport got me here early. Astonishing. I was so pleased with myself but it’s only now I realise that turning up at this hour means I’ve given myself enough time to construct a disaster out of boredom. I don’t need to let rip with the paranoia and vileness, I’m already a mush: expectant, excited, anxious and annoyed. But there’s nothing unusual about that. It’s not just me, is it? Most people who go to airports feel the same: arrivers, departees, waiters, daytrippers, plane spotters, never mind the workers. There’s the holiday that’s over – more of a nightmare than that fantasy paradise you talked yourself into but at least it takes you out of the office for a couple of weeks – and the fear of the holiday to come – replay on the same theme, slightly different key perhaps. There’s fear of flying (and fear of not flying where you were expecting to go, whether that’s about low-cost airlines or hijackers). Did you remember to turn off the heating and did you remember the pleaded-for Valium?