by Isla Dewar
Halfway across the road, Martha’s relief turned to rage. When she finally stood beside Charlie, she didn’t say a polite good morning as she’d planned. Instead she snapped, ‘Where the hell have you been?’
Charlie turned, slapped his forehead. ‘Oh, Christ. I forgot.’
‘You forgot I was coming?’
‘No. I forgot to tell you I don’t get to work till quarter past ten. Sorry.’
Tapping his nameplate as he passed, he wheeled his bike into the corridor, propped it against the wall and, once again, rummaged through his pockets for the key to the inner door. ‘They’re not in my key pocket.’ He patted his left-hand jacket pocket. ‘I always keep my keys in here.’ He gave her a pocket review. Patting a pocket and telling her what he kept in it. ‘Keys, wallet, comb, notebook, pen, dog biscuits, hanky, loose change and various sundry things not listed but sometimes necessary. A pen knife, for example.’
Martha said, ‘It’s good to be organised.’
He nodded. Pulled the key from the back pocket of his trousers, announcing, ‘Wrong pocket.’ And opened the door.
They tumbled into the office, dog first. It barged towards the sofa, leapt up and twirled, pummelling the cushions preparing for a day’s hard snoozing. Charlie looked round, checking that everything was as it had been when he’d left the place on Friday evening. Martha went to her desk, removed the cover from the typewriter and started to look through her desk drawers.
There were the usual things – typewriter ribbons, a couple of erasers, a stack of headed notepaper. In one drawer was a small book A History of Jazz and inside was a note: You will need this. In another drawer was a half-finished report with another note: You will have to complete this. I’m off. Other drawers contained books, knitting patterns and a selection of chocolate bars.
‘Did Mrs Florey give you much notice when she left?’ Martha asked.
‘God, no. She came in one morning and said she was done working here. She was off. And that was that. Whoosh, she was gone.’ He spread his arms and shrugged. ‘Who knows the workings of the Florey mind?’
Another drawer contained a harmonica.
‘Was Mrs Florey musical?’
‘Yes,’ said Charlie. ‘I’d say she was.’
There was a letter in the bottom drawer. The envelope was addressed to Whoever gets my job. The note inside was brief:
Please take care of Charlie. I love him, I really do. But I’ve had enough of lonely hearts and lost souls. I’ve paid my dues and now I’m off to see a bit of the world. It’s been out there waiting for me for a long time.
Charlie has his little idiosyncrasies but he’s not as daft as he looks or acts. And please forgive Murphy his indiscretions.
Sincerely
Rosa Florey.
PS I hope you find your lost one. I know you must be looking, otherwise you wouldn’t be sitting at this desk working for the kind of pay he’ll be offering.
Martha looked up at Charlie. He was carefully slipping an LP out of its sleeve, finger in the hole in the middle, thumb on the edge, and putting it onto a small record player on the shelf beside his desk. Louis Armstrong burst into the room, a joyous sound. ‘Louis in the mornings,’ Charlie said. ‘It’s too early in the day for Dizzy Gillespie. Might do some Rolling Stones later.’ He started to bop in the small space between his desk and the window, moving his head in time to the music. He stopped. Whirled round. Pointed at Martha with both hands, two fingers outstretched. A gunfighter’s pose. ‘My God, we forgot the bacon rolls. It’s ten to eleven. We’re five minutes late. You get them. Money in the petty cash box. I’ll make the coffee.’
Ten minutes later, they were in the kitchen, a small, snug space, painted pale green and immaculately clean. Charlie had laid out two blue-and-white patterned plates and matching cups. The place was filled with the thick dark aroma of fresh coffee. He poured.
‘Good coffee is the stuff of life. I have to go to the Italian deli up Leith Walk for this.’ He bit into his bacon roll. ‘Perfect. You have to get the right balance of tastes in your mouth. Roll, bacon and coffee.’
Martha agreed. Noticed it was after eleven o’clock and, so far, no work had been done.
‘Do you know,’ said Charlie, ‘I had to go across to that café and show them how to make the perfect bacon roll. They used to undercook the bacon. It was flaccid. Bacon crispy, bread soft and a small amount of slightly melting butter, what’s so hard about that?’
‘Nothing,’ said Martha. She wrestled with the mental image of him behind the counter wearing a large apron, waving a spatula and pronouncing on the importance of crispy bacon. ‘Actually, while I was waiting for you, a man came to your door. I was going to speak to him, but when he started kicking the door, I changed my mind.’
‘Good thinking,’ said Charlie. ‘What did he look like?’
Martha shrugged. ‘Middle-aged, smallish, dark hair, a bit of a pot belly, cheap suit.’
Charlie said, ‘You could be describing anybody. In fact, if it wasn’t for the dark hair and cheap suit, you could be describing me. I don’t have a pot belly either, come to that.’
Martha said, ‘Nor are you smallish. So it couldn’t have been you.’
‘No. But when observing people, you’ve got to look closely. It’s all in the details.’
Martha said she wasn’t a detective. ‘I wasn’t aware I should be looking for details.’
‘You have to be careful,’ said Charlie. ‘Sometimes people get upset. You know, when they’ve been happily missing and I find them and bring them back to the world they thought they’d left behind.’ He sipped his coffee contemplating this. ‘So,’ he turned to Martha, ‘who is missing with you?’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Martha answered too quickly. And flushed.
‘Yes, you do.’
‘How do you know?’
‘You kind of twitched when you asked me about my work. And, you’ve left a well-paid job to come and work for me for buttons. A bit like Mrs Florey. Except she worked for nothing.’
‘She did?’ said Martha. ‘Why?’
‘I found her sister and she couldn’t afford my fee. After she’d paid it off, she just kept turning up for work. Said it was somewhere to go.’ He put down his cup and pulled a hanky from the appropriate pocket to wipe his hands. ‘So, it’s not your mother, you live with her. It’s not your daughter. Your father’s dead. You’ve no sisters or brothers, so who is missing? Your husband?’
Martha was shocked. ‘How do you know all that about me?’
‘I checked up on you.’ He was lying. Sheena at the newsagent’s had updated him on Martha’s life.
‘That’s not very nice. In fact, that’s horrible. Why did you do that?’
‘I needed to know who was coming to work with me. Checking up on people is what I do.’
‘It’s my husband. He ran away. I don’t know why for sure. It’s a bit of a mystery.’
Charlie finished his coffee and carried the cups to the sink. ‘I don’t believe in mysteries. I don’t do mysteries. I gather facts and present them to my clients. They decide what to do with them. Your husband probably got scared.’
‘What of?’
‘Living the life he was living and never doing the things he dreamed about – going to California, riding a camel across a desert, seeing the sun come up over the Taj Mahal. Making love to a beautiful woman with the surf crashing over him. Becoming a cowboy. That sort of stuff. He got to the point where, yes, it was scary to go but even scarier to stay.’ He sniffed. ‘Unless, there is another reason and you know what it is, but you’re keeping it to yourself because you’re ashamed.’
Charlie said she should get on with the report Mrs Florey had left in her desk.
‘Just write it up from my notes,’ he told her. ‘Then, perhaps, you could take a look at the filing cabinets. Mrs Florey had her own system. She put everything under degrees of tragedy.’
Martha spent the rest of the morning typing the report. Charlie s
et and lit the fire before running a carpet sweeper over the rug and dusting his desk and shelves. After that, he put on another Louis Armstrong LP, carefully removing the first one and replacing it in its sleeve. He took off his jacket, draped it over the back of his chair and settled down to work, scribbling furiously in his notebook.
Every time the phone rang, Charlie would look at Martha. ‘Who’s that on the phone?’
Before picking up the receiver, Martha would say she didn’t know. Then she’d slip into her perfect secretary routine. ‘Good morning, Charlie Gavin’s office, who is calling?’
The caller would tell her their name. Martha would repeat it and glance at Charlie. He’d wave his arms in the air, shaking his head and mouthing no, no, no. Unless it was Brenda or Art, in which case he’d pick up and say, ‘What now?’ He’d listen then give appropriate instructions. ‘The plunger is under my kitchen sink.’ Or, ‘No, you fry the onions first.’
‘Who are Brenda and Art?’ Martha asked.
‘They stay at my place.’
‘Lodgers?’
Charlie shook his head. ‘Nah. They just stay.’
When Martha asked Charlie why he didn’t take his work calls, he told her, ‘Not on a Monday morning. It’s too early in the week for dealing with broken lives. I need to warm up to get ready to cope with life’s absurdities. Anyway, I was working yesterday. I work most days. So Monday is sort of my Sunday.’
‘What are you doing at the moment?’
‘Making my weekly list. Records to be played on different days. Beatles tomorrow and a bit of Van Morrison, Miles Davis on Wednesday, then as we approach the weekend Nina Simone and a splash of Ella Fitzgerald finishing with Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday on Friday. What d’you think?’
‘Sounds fine,’ said Martha. What else could she say? Matching music with the days of the week was new to her.
‘Good. Now I’ll get on with the sandwiches. A list of the week’s fillings. What’s your favourite sandwich?’
She stopped typing and considered the question. ‘Roast chicken. I like it when the chicken’s still warm, with just a touch of mayonnaise and some lettuce. Or just plain tomato, thinly sliced with a dribble of olive oil and pepper.’
He frowned, thinking about this. ‘Good sandwiches. Of course, it all depends on the bread.’
‘Absolutely,’ Martha agreed and continued typing. Thomas Markham (75) disappeared 20th March 1967. Found 28th February 1969.
‘Could you take a letter to go with that?’ said Charlie. ‘It’d be good if we could get it in the post tonight along with an invoice.’ He coughed. ‘It’s to Mrs Patterson, Thomas Markham’s daughter. Just say, here’s my report and invoice and I hope she finds everything satisfactory. And tell her not to worry, and her father is well and would like to hear from her. Yours sincerely, Charlie Gavin.’
‘You want me to write the letter, then?’ said Martha.
‘Well, put all that stuff in, but nicely. Remember you are writing to someone who has been confused, worried and probably guilty.’ He got up, whistled and jerked his head towards the door. ‘C’mon, Murphy. Time for a walk.’
He leaned on the doorpost. ‘Lives in suspension. People going through their daily routine, work, meals, sleeping, and all the time they’re waiting. And they don’t always know why this happened. Why the person they’re waiting for went away. So be kindly.’ He left.
Came back again. ‘Just write the letter you’d like to get from someone like me.’
Martha waited. Called out, ‘Remember to tap the nameplate.’
‘Tapping has been done,’ Charlie replied.
She went out into the passage. ‘Why do you do that?’
‘It’s lucky.’
‘You’re superstitious?’
‘Only slightly. But why risk the wrath of the unlucky gods when a tap will keep them at bay. To tap or not to tap. I choose to tap.’
Martha shrugged and went back to her desk.
She pulled some files from the filing cabinet hoping to get an idea of Mrs Florey’s kindly writing style. To Mrs Hutchinson whose husband, a bank manager, missing for four years and found living in a cave on a remote Scottish peninsula, she wrote: Please don’t worry about him, he is warm and quite comfortable. He has built some amazing furniture from driftwood. He claims to have found peace watching the sky and combing the beach at low tide. I know you must be puzzled by how he has chosen to live. But, please, when you think of him, think of him kindly.
There was an escapee teenager, a serial runaway who’d regularly been brought home, drunk and shouting abuse, by the police. Her final bid for freedom had been successful. She’d disappeared. Charlie had found her in a convent training to be a nun. Mrs Florey had written to her parents: Your daughter has found her soul and is serene in her new vocation. You must be proud. Hold her kindly in your thoughts.
On and on it went. In file after file there were people whose friend, husband, wife, lover, mother or father had either turned up in the oddest of places or had swapped one ordinary suburban life for another ordinary suburban life. Mrs Florey told them all to be kindly when thinking of or contacting their lost ones.
Martha closed the files and sat, hands folded on the top of her desk, wondering. How had Charlie done that? How had he traced a wild child to a convent? What made him suspect a bank manager might be living in a remote cave? He’d said people left trails, there were clues to their present in their past.
She visited long gone conversations she’d had with Jamie. And found them to be empty. They’d spoken about what was on television tonight. What had been on television last night. The neighbours. Evie. They’d talked a lot about their daughter. But before she’d come along, had they had deep conversations? Martha didn’t think so. Now she thought about it, Jamie had never revealed any secret longings and ambitions. In fact, he hadn’t spoken much at all. She’d done all the talking. She’d prattled. He’d flicked through a newspaper saying, ‘Oh,’ and ‘Right,’ and ‘Hmm.’
Jamie had spent his free time in the garden shed. At the time Martha had thought that’s what men, well, married men, did. They also did manly chores like unblocking the sink, mending fuses and anything that required going up a ladder. She, being a woman, cooked, did the washing, ironed, and chose the curtains. The more she thought about it, the more she doubted her marriage.
They’d both been role-playing, an easy, unexciting husband-and-wife routine they’d picked up from magazines and sitcoms. They’d hardly communicated. They’d become boring. Not even halfway through their twenties they’d embraced being Darby and Joan. They could have sported matching beige cardies and fleecy-lined slippers.
Martha put her hand to her mouth. My God, if she’d realised all that at the time, she’d have run away, too. Of course, she’d have taken Evie with her.
She typed out the letter telling Mrs Patterson that her father was now living in Manchester with his new love, Eleanor Harris. She’d been a barmaid at the pub where Tom drank and played dominoes. Your father claims to have found domestic bliss Martha wrote. She looked at the photo Charlie had taken of the couple. They were sitting on a green-and-gold striped sofa. He wore pale trousers with a green shirt and yellow tie and seemed to blend in with his background. Why, he was almost camouflaged. He was smiling a small smile. He looked a little tired. Eleanor Harris, face heftily made up, thighs bulging from a red mini skirt, beamed and glowed. Martha thought, Oh well, good luck to them.
She wondered if Jamie had found bliss with a similar woman. A floozie, her mother would call her. She sighed. All this wondering was getting hard to bear. She was beginning to understand what her mother meant about thinking. It wasn’t worth the pain.
Thomas has instructed us to tell you that he’ll be in touch when he is ready to talk.
We hope you are pleased with our work in finding your father. And please, when you think of him, be kindly.
Yours sincerely
Charlie Gavin.
She put the letter
on Charlie’s desk for him to sign. Paused and looked at his lists. Along with the lists of music and sandwiches for the week, there was a list of shirts he might wear, a list of possible suppers, a list of chores, a list of people to meet and phone calls to make and a final list: Things I dread: weak milky coffee, not having clean socks, the small man, people reading my lists, stop it, Martha. She blushed. He’d doodled squiggles and odd comments down the side of the page: What if . . . could be. Ah, Jesus wept. Sore days and sorry days. The things people do. Of course I couldn’t take the small man – he is too bitter, too disappointed. But we’re all disappointed one way or another. People have to forget themselves and then become the person they wanted to be all along. Except me, I have to forget myself in order to become the person I ought to have been. It’s hard.
Still blushing from having been caught out snooping, Martha returned to her desk and was sitting upright, typing furiously, when Charlie returned with the dog. It took up its place on the sofa. He smiled to her, said nothing about his lists, signed the letter and told her he was going out for the rest of the day. ‘Stuff to do.’
On Mondays he shopped for groceries and visited his aunt’s grave. He couldn’t break his routine. He was a man of habit. He just didn’t want Martha to know that.
Two minutes after leaving, he was back standing in the doorway patting his pockets, mumbling, ‘Keys, notebook, pen, cash, hanky. Yes. OK. Right. I’m off.’
Seconds later, he stuck his head round the door. ‘Put the guard in front of the fire if you go out.’
Martha said she would. He shut the door. Opened it again. ‘Is the gas off?’ Martha said it was. He told her once more he was going and shut the door. Martha waited. But no, this time Charlie seemed to have made it to the street and was finally on his way.
She spent the afternoon sorting out the filing cabinets. There were three of them, all stuffed with files labelled by Mrs Florey. She’d had her own take on filing, proving to Martha that Mrs Florey had her own take on life. Cases were placed in alphabetical order. But it was an alphabetical order based not on the names of the people Charlie had been looking for, but on Mrs Florey’s opinion of them and their tragedies – A for awful, agonising and adorable. B for boring and beautiful. On it went through D for disastrous, H for hippies, I for I can’t believe how stupid people can be, J for jolly nice outcome. Among the files labelled S were stupid people, sorrowful people, sweetie pies and stinkers. T was divided into sub-sections of tragedy – abominable tragedy to unbelievable tragedy and weepy tragedy and wince-making tragedy. The stories the files revealed were of people who had run away because of debt or some kind of shame. And escapees who felt driven to slip away from unhappiness and start a new life.