British Winters

by Andrew Turner

Chapter Seventeen

  A Night for the Nothing

  December 30th, one day until the last day of the year, so if there is anything you want to clear up before the year is out then the clock is a ticking. If you’d promise yourself that you’d learn an instrument, most likely a guitar, and have yet to learn a single chord then unless you’re ready to sell your soul I’d say you’ve broken your promise. If this is the year you intended to write that book you are always going on about and you are still on the first paragraph, it’s fair to say Tolstoy has nothing to worry about. If this is the year you were going to put some old grievances to bed, well there is still time but the ticking goes on, tick, tick, tick.

  My shift at The George has been like one of Sam’s, the white Rasta’s, art pieces - a collage of ripped up moments of the same place. The day is not a re-run of a day that has already passed; it is a clips show, a collection of different moments that have already acted themselves out. And don’t think of it like a highlight reel; it’s a series of banal events: Benny ordering the same drinks with the same limited interactions; and Kev using an old sexual innuendo, which is unlike him, as he is normally an inspiration when it comes to vulgarity. Other things give out shimmers of déjà vu: a barrel running dry just as I finish pulling a pint; a two-pence piece falling through my fingers and rolling under the chilled cabinet; and Hobo Joe giving me a cheeky wink as he makes his way to the Gents.

  It’s not déjà vu, it’s life running out of scenarios to play out within these walls. Toby asked whether I loved or hated this place and I couldn’t give a proper answer and I still can’t. I do, however, now get the feeling that my time in this place has run its course.

  “Joe, how about a soup and a roll?”

  “Michael.”

  “Yeah, I know, but as you feel that my acts of kindness are empty gestures, then I figure I can call you what I like and you’ll still take the soup.”

  I was right; Hobo Joe did not take enough umbrage, at someone going out of their way to name him inaccurately, to turn down the soup, which is winter veg. I can see the cogs going round in his head; he sees no guilt on my face. I neither wait for nor want a thank you sincere or otherwise. All he sees is the devilish twinkle in my eye. I’m doing it to fuck with him, to put askew his view on society, his prejudgement of everyone and their acts.

  “Is the soup alright? It doesn’t taste funny or anything?”

  “No, it’s good.”

  And with a big smile on my face I say, “What’d ya know Joe, a thankless task. Must be that Christmas guilt you were talking about.”

  He just frowns and drops his eyes down to his soup. I was hoping to irk him with my chosen dialogue, but unfortunately the dialogue was a bit shit and didn’t altogether convey the pop and pow I’d wished for. I’ll ponder on it further and hope to get a zinger before he leaves, or I’m going to end up buying him another sodding soup next time I’m on. The bar doors open and in walks Toby with Miss Doris ‘the deviant’ Sidebottom on his arm. The two are as happy as a couple of young teenagers; is that the right saying? Toby orders a pint and Doris orders an iced tea. I think to myself, ‘Now, now love, come on, time to give up the goat and order some tequila slammers and we’ll do shots out of your cleavage.’ As they chat back and forth always including me in on the banter I find it hard to focus. Hobo Joe is mopping the last of his soup with the remains of his roll and I have no zinger.

  “How about a pint?”

  “You just poured me one,” answers Toby.

  “Not you. I’m talking to you, Hobo Jackson, do you want a pint?”

  “Go on then, I’ll have a...”

  “A pint of the cheap stuff coming right up.”

  Toby and Doris inform me that they are going to have something to eat and head over to an empty table. I pour Michael a beer.

  “On me, again, for nothing.”

  “Cheers, Noel.”

  “Least I can do, the weatherman said we may get snow before the year’s out.” Shit, I’ve gone all wrong again, my initial intent was to put the ungrateful git into a world of confusion. Now I’m pretty much telling him to lap it up, soon he will be outside in the snow, death moments away.

  Toby returns to the bar to place his order. He orders our gourmet burger, gourmet meaning a slightly fancier bap and a side order of large onion rings. “And the lady will have the scampi.” Lady, that’s a bit rich. Me thinks this constant inner monologue of insults, aimed at Doris, is based more on jealousy than on any actual sense of her being some kind of trollop. Why don’t I ever meet these kinky sorts? Come to think of it, Deb did recently tie me to a chair and strip for me before I shut the thing down. So I do get some kinkiness, I just have a habit of putting a stop to it before any fun can be had.

  “What’s the deal with you and that bloke?”

  “Don’t concern yourself, a plan popped into my head and then fell on its arse.”

  “Well, as long as it didn’t cost you anything.”

  “I’m down five pounds sixty-two pence, so far.”

  “Ok, thanks for the drink and the soup,” says the homeless jerk. He’s won again. I’m out of pocket and look like a dick again.

  “Can I… say that it was my pleasure, Michael?”

  “You working tomorrow?”

  “No.”

  “Oh right, I’ll see you in the New Year then, bye for now.” The little Irish bastard disappears through the pub doors. You win this year Hobo but next year I’ll have a whole new set of tricks; like I’ll piss in the soup.

  “Why have we got an Irish tramp anyway? If he can’t afford a house, how did he pay for the ferry?”

  “Immigrants come to foreign shores for a better life and it just doesn’t work out,” says the journalist

  “It’s not New York in 1920, foreign shores indeed! How old is he anyway – fifty, fifty-five at the most? And that’s not taking into account all the extra years living on the streets would have put on his face.”

  “Your point being?”

  “Well, that would mean he was born around the sixties, meaning he’d jumped on the ferry in the late seventies.”

  “And?”

  “Why leave Ireland in the seventies?”

  “Civil unrest, religious conflict, the IRA or he could have just fancied a change.”

  “Well, yeah, and erm fuck you, Ireland heritage society, the guy’s had a sandwich, two soups and a pint out of me and he doesn’t even say thanks.”

  “He did say thanks.”

  “Oh fuck he did, didn’t he? Anyway, you were here the first time he put me in a very awkward position.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  When I tell Toby that I’d better go start his meal, he expresses concern at the idea that he is not only putting his life at risk but the lovely Doris’ life, too. I take it as jokey banter, though something in his eyes tells me there is a little truth to his claims of fear. Some time ago The George was blessed with a cook; unfortunately, the past three were women and did not stay long. It was, in fact, the quick resignations of these cooks that led to the unwritten ‘no women staff’ policy. And since the last one quit, I believe because the manager could not get over how funny a particularly long squash was, The George has been without a cook. This did not result in the bar staff having to leave their post, as I had told Toby, but something much worse.

  “Hey, Kev, time to put your chef’s cap on.”

  That’s right, in the absence of a real chef, the American who can’t keep a straight face when looking at anything remotely phallic is sent into the room with many a rude shaped vegetable. If I were Toby I’d stop worrying about my inability to cook and start worrying about the fact that there is a good chance that before his cucumber is sliced and placed on his gourmet burger, Kev will have most likely sucked it off.

  “So that’s Toby’s new squeeze?”

  “It is. She’s a teacher.”

  “Yawn, how boring.”

  “No love for the
educators, Kev?”

  “I dated a teacher once, no fun.”

  “I don’t think Doris is the same kind of teacher.”

  “Her name is Doris?”

  “And she’s a Maths teacher.”

  “Oh poor Toby, all teachers are awful company, so dull.”

  It seems teachers are Kev’s Kryptonite. I have never had a conversation with him that has lasted this long, where Kev hasn’t in some way gone x-rated. Had he been emotionally hurt by a teacher? Or is it that they just bring out this censored version of him, that their mere presence makes him feel so inhibited.

  “Regimental, stuffy and boring. It’s not their fault, it’s the job - all those timetables and rules to follow. Everything is about good marks and so everything in their life becomes about getting it all right, all gold stars if you follow me.” Is he saying what I think he’s saying? Oh, please go on, Kev, say it.

  “Neat, everything in its place. It’s like OCD.” Damn it.

  “They’re such control freaks.” Nearly

  “Yep, teachers are just so,” go on, “anal.” Yes, yes. What a moment, Kev announcing something so easily spun into a sexual pun and not taking the bait and to refer to Doris as ‘anal’ without knowing the details is priceless.

  Returning to my place at the bar I start clock watching; thirty minutes until staff change over. By the time Kev has finished cooking, there will be just enough time for me to serve up the food and have a little chit chat with the lovely couple and then Kyle will take the burdens of a working man off me; though to call a 30th December day shift at The George a day of toiling may be a tad off the mark. I like to think I’m getting paid for the hours of tedium rather than the sweat off my brow. No sooner does Kev say, “Order up” like he’s living out some 1950s highway café fantasy, I scoot right over to my man Toby and his innocent enough looking femme fatale.

  “Gourmet burger for the gentleman,” I say in my best French accent, which is also my worst. “And scampi and chips for the missus,” I say in my over the top, yet, flawless northern accent.

  “Looks lovely.” She really does seem quite delicate. So, she’s willing to take it up the pooper, that doesn’t make her some ravenous beast or some kind of slut-bag, it just means even the good girls can be full of surprises.

  “How did you make this and serve at the bar at the same time?” Toby is always the inquisitive reporter.

  “Because I’m a professional, this is my job, I know how to time manage.”

  “Who’s in the kitchen?”

  “Kev.”

  “Ugh!”

  “Don’t fret buddy, he’s been doing it for a while, he’s getting good at it… better at it.”

  “I’m sure it’s ok, Toby.” Ah, how nice to have someone new around, an innocent who doesn’t know Kev too well.

  “Ok.” Toby submits and I walk away.

  “You may want to remove the cucumber.”

  The tick tocking of the clock has stopped; quite literally the clock that I have been watching is still reading half past one. I’m a man out of time; has that clock just stopped or is that from the night before? I desperately want to ask Benny for the time, but what if he says twelve or earlier? He’d be sending me backwards. I’ve done those hours; do not make me live through them again. Toby and Doris are here for lunch, is half one kind of late for lunch? No, yet she is a teacher, they have to eat at twelve, right? That’s the rule? Wait, no, she’s not in term time. She can eat at any time she likes. Kyle casually steps through the door and glides to the bar.

  “Kyle, the clock’s stopped I need the time.”

  “It’s two. I’m here to relieve you of your post, General Skywalker.”

  Moments of foolishness litter the landscape of my life, but frantically asking the relief staff the time, so I’ll know when he’s going to arrive is a real Mr T, ‘I pity the fool,’ doozy. After some nerdy back and forth exchange with Kyle; an unnecessary verbal goodbye to Toby and Doris that eats into my personal time - I think a friendly wave would have sufficed - and I’m out on the street, a free man and, oh no, it’s Deb.

  “Hey, Deb.”

  “We need to talk. Can I give you a lift home?”

  I want to turn the lift down. I have a distressing image of Deb driving us off a cliff screaming, ‘It’s because I love you!’ but, like a dog knowing this is his last trip to the vet’s, I accept my fate. We walk three streets down to where she has parked her car, three streets down in the opposite direction to my flat, which seems somewhat counter productive. We don’t speak, which doesn’t bode well. She wants to talk, yet she’s not willing to do so until I’m in the car and there it is, Deb’s car, a lime green VW Beetle. It’s one of those new ones, well, new back in ’98. Ah, 1998 I was still technically a teenager back then… Sorry, let me get back on track. What I mean to say is that it wasn’t your classic VW Bug, loved by hippies and Nazis alike. Talk about covering your bases. Surprisingly, I’m not going to slag off Volkswagen for the repackaging and bastardising of an old classic model, as I like it, due to it being one of the few cars on the road I can tell apart from the others. I miss a time, a time that I was not actually born in, where cars had a bit of variety. I fear cars are going the same way as pretty much everything else, plain looking and samey, all part of the Borg Collective. And whilst I am on my soap box, with no motoring credentials, I’d like to say or better put admit, that I like the PT Cruiser. Yep, that’s right, the car that for some reason everyone else I talk to seems to detest. And I like it for the same reasons I don’t mind the new Bug, it looks different. Yeah, I know they’re just ripping off an old 1920s’ car but I’d rather that than what seems to be happening:

  “What, a new model? What have you done this time?” asks the excited auto executive.

  “I managed to smooth out another edge,” replies the auto engineer.

  Great, soon we can all be driving about in identical metallic blobs with different names: the Ford Sphere XY3, the Honda Silver Curve and the Citroën Blobanator. Give me something ugly with character rather than these insipid shapeless vehicles. It’s all under the hood I know, I know, but how about a little panache? Getting back to the VW Bug - I stated that I didn’t hate it - however, I do hate its owners, sorry Deb. The Bug is now just a chick car and it’s not that I’m hating on lady drivers, I just don’t care for anything that becomes gender specific. Sure, there are of course exceptions like tampons and condoms but they are gender specific in design. But the idea of a car meant for one gender is just so annoying, maybe only to me but nevertheless so annoying. Annoying because it encourages people to act out their stereotypes: making men into motor mad, pint guzzling, tit obsessed, football loving Neanderthals; and turns all girls into ‘shop ’til you drop’ drones who think pink isn’t a colour it’s an expression, that flashing a tit isn’t degrading, it’s using sex as a weapon and then this plays out until life starts feeling like a bad Carry On movie. And where does the Bug fit in? It fits in because every time I see a girl driving one I see that big fake flower by the steering wheel in its little built-in-to-the-dash tube; a tube that seems to have very little purpose other than to house this flower and whenever I see this flower a little play starts in my head.

  “There you go, my darling, a pretty little car for your delicate little self,” says a doting father.

  “Oh, thanks, it’s so cute, just like me,” answers some idiot.

  “I know, and we’ve put little flower stickers on the side door and pink floor mats that match your tiny fuzzy booties.”

  “Oh, thank God, we won that fight for equality and now us girls are free to be stupid little girlie girls again. Girl power.”

  Oh God, it’s me, the world is fine, it’s me, I’ve gone all wrong. Note to self; never tell anyone about the ‘Stupid girl getting a VW Bug’ play.

  As soon as I am in Deb’s car my ranting inner monologue continues. She’s got beads hanging from the mirror and the floor mats aren’t pink, they’re baby blue and
yes they do match her fuzzy little booties. This is not a genetic female preset, this is nurture, society has cut this role out for you; the round peg goes through the round hole, don’t ask questions.

  These are the things that make me crazy. All I do is question whether I am the master of my own destiny or whether I am just reading the lines that I am given. Do other people do this? Looking around I see people so comfortable in their roles in the world; I look at them and the answer seems so obvious. I see life is a merry dance so very well rehearsed, I just can’t hear the music.

  “So, what I wanted to say… Noel, are you OK?”

  “Did that flower come with the car?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “No, my dad got me this car like two years ago. Why?”

  “No reason. You wanted to say something?”

  Deb then gives the talk: the talk of the hurt I caused; why it was wrong; why she has the right to be upset; who agrees with her; how my actions are unforgivable; and the ‘that in time’ she will forgive me. My abbreviated version of this makes it sound whiney and by God it was; however, that doesn’t make it wrong. Weaved within the moaning is a guilty truth, that like a snake I unfairly tried to sneak out of this relationship, like it was nothing, as if the ending of it was such a foregone conclusion that anyone who did not know that to bring it to its end was the most logical thing to do, is just plain retarded. That was an evil and selfish act. Yes, the dumping of Deb was not only the best thing for me but the best thing for us both… in the long run. Right now there is pain, there is rejection and there is loss. Whatever Deb and I had it wasn’t all bad and now it’s gone.

  I know that the last thing we will say to each other tonight will be, ‘Let’s stay friends.’ That’s not the way it will pan out, unless by friendship we mean never calling each other, never arranging a meet up and when we do cross paths it’ll be all awkward: ‘So, how are you? Kids, wow. A doctor you say? Well done, you.’ Actually, that does sound a lot like my friendships.

  “You don’t have anything to say?”

  “You’re bang on, everything you said is bang on. I feel bad, Deb, and not just guilt, I feel bad for myself. We did have something; I cared for you, a lot. I guess that’s why I did nothing, because I thought it was enough.”

  “And it wasn’t?”

  “No, because you’re young and happy and I’m old and sad. You’re a vibrant colour, Deb, and I’m making you pastel.”

  “God, you talk like you’re sixty! There’s only eight years between us.”

  “Yeah, and I’d kill a bus full of orphans to have those eight years back.”

  “You complain about wasted time, but you’re wasting time now. Fix what needs fixing, Noel.”

  “I know in another eight years I’ll be approaching forty and be singing the same old tune.”

  “What did Paul McCartney say about life? ‘Life is what happens to you when you’re making other plans’.”

  Alright so she’s got the wrong Beatle and that’s from Lennon’s solo stuff, but knowing Deb as well as I do I’m quite impressed that she knows it’s one of the Beatles.

  “You put things off, Noel, that’s your one and only problem. That’s the thing that screws you over, that’s what makes you so sad. Life is about doing not avoiding. And I think this is as good a place to start, as any.”

  “What?”

  I look out of the car window; Deb has pulled up in front of a house, a house I know well. I know its hedges, once so neat but now unkempt and overgrown; I know its red painted gate, last painted a few years back - painted by me, not painted so well but it was still appreciated. I know the unofficial house name, written in black italic calligraphy on a teak stained wooden plaque: ‘Ramree’; the name of my grandfather’s regiment in World War II, named after an island off the coast of Burma.

  “What are we doing here?”

  “I spoke to your mum, and she asked if we’d pop around to your grandad’s for a cup a tea.”

  “Before or after we broke up?”

  “After, I didn’t tell her, I’ll leave that up to you.”

  Passing through the gate, my mind flashes back to the day I painted it. Minutes after finishing the last coat I turned to talk to my grandad, who was standing in the doorway. Without thinking, I began to lean back, suddenly realising I was about to lean up against the wet paint. I threw my hands back. This caused my hands to become covered in paint and with these same hands I pawed at my sweater to see if I had gotten any paint on it. I know what you’re thinking; why did I care so much about a sweater I had chosen to wear whilst painting? Well, because I didn’t know I’d be painting that day. I just turned up and he happened to have the task ready for me. I loved that top at the time and I tried ever so hard not to let that show in my face as my grandad chuckled at the idiocy of my actions. If I found that top in my wardrobe today I’d burn it, it was hideous. Looking closely at my finished paint work today, yep, you’d see a few cracks, the odd bit of bare wood now showing through. You’d see my flaws; thick edges and runs and you would also still see my finger prints, stamped on to this place forever or until someone repaints the gate or scraps it altogether.

  My grandfather never locks the front door when he’s in; he’s from that era. The era that didn’t have twenty-four-hour news telling you what kind of people are out there and what they intend to do to you and all the ones you love and exactly how they intend to do it… oh, and it’s going to hurt, but please don’t have nightmares. Naturally, I take no notice of the fear mongering of the twenty-four-hour news cycle, even though I did recently get knocked out over the lighting of a cigarette, but who’s to say that never happened back in the golden era. I do, on the other hand, fear the kind of scum that has always existed: the kind of scum that would take advantage of an elderly man who leaves his door unlocked; the kind of scum we’d like to think of as the bogeymen from cautionary tales, but it’s scarier than that - they are just normal people with friends, a husband or wife, maybe even kids. What a horrifying thought; a monster who can smash in the face of some old chap to steal his medals and then go home to watch the CBeebies with their kids. Ok, maybe that isn’t a realistic scenario; they come home and get high with their mates whilst their kids watch pirated copies of the latest slasher movies in a bedroom stacked high with duty-free cigarettes and booze.

  “You should keep that door locked, grandad.”

  “Hello, my mate. And Debora is with you, too.”

  Seeing me instantly lifts his spirits, though I see the pain return after the sentence is out. My mind goes back to the worries of a frail old man leaving his door unlocked. God, it kills me to refer to him as frail. Growing up this man was a symbol of strength for my family and the only positive male role model I ever knew. Seeing him like this takes none of that away, but to see the man who picked me up when I fell as a child, a man who could shield me from all the world’s ills, to see him now drained and thin, every breath a struggle that’s a kind of hurt I didn’t want to see and, more to the point, a hurt I didn’t want to feel, a hurt I went out of my way to avoid.

  Deb kisses him on the cheek and gently tells him that she can’t stay.

  “Just dropping off this one.”

  She smiles at me in a way that lets me know that she has now forgiven all and that this is when our lives will separate. Bye, Deb, I did enjoy our time together and as for me being an idiot, I’ll work on it. I don’t say any of this I just return the smile.

  With Deb gone I attempt to step into the role of grandson to find all my props have gone. When my brother and I visited, one of us would pick up one of the two papers our grandad used to buy - both tabloid crap, not that it mattered - we only picked them up to see how far he’d got in the crosswords. As I mentioned earlier, I don’t do well with crosswords, but my brother does and as the younger brother I like to mimic. The mimicking stopped around the time he sorted out his life and got the job, the wife and t
he kid, so I’ve been kind of winging it since then. The tabloids are not here - he doesn’t have the energy or care to siphon through the gutter press. Come to think of it, my brother isn’t here either. I feel like one half of a comedy double act; stumbling onto the stage, trying to make it on my own and then realising I am the straight man. Grandad used to bake, the house would always smell of baked goods. Now all I can smell is the synthetic aroma of one of those white plastic air fresheners. You know, the ones with green gel inside, green gel that slowly diminishes to nothing while they release a chemical fragrance that cannot be labelled as a distinct smell like vanilla or lemon so they call it things like winter fresh or summer blossom. They are like a fragrance version of synthesiser music, you know what they’re going for but they are in no way close. I wonder how many carcinogens that gel is shooting into the air? Sod the pipe smoking, Grandad, I reckon it’s those things that are killing you.

  “So how is my mate?” He always called me ‘my mate’ and it was only me that he said it to. One of my cousins once tried to take the title from me by starting to refer to my grandad as ‘mate’ but it never stuck and always felt false.

  “I’ve been better, been worse.”

  “You haven’t been around in a while.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that.”

  “I guess you’re busy at The George, with it being Christmas and all.”

  We both know that isn’t the truth, but I’m not going to correct him. He doesn’t need to know that it’s because I was terrified to see him like this; that I’d rather face death myself, than to see it in his eyes. I used to say I was fatherless, that I had a single parent upbringing, yet here he is, my father, in the truest sense of the word. If there is anything I like about myself it came from him. I finally see him as the father I thought I never had, at a time that I know I will soon lose him. Life really is a shitty affair.

  “Yeah, busy.”

  “I’d make you a drink, but...”

  “I’ll get it.”

  I make him a brew in one of his oversize mugs, one that I had bought him as a child. The mug had a grandad poem on it; it wasn’t a very good poem. It had a line that said, ‘He taught us how to add’ just so it had something else to rhyme with dad, sad and bad - like you need to throw in something so obscure, to find something to rhyme with them: had, glad, mad, lad etc. I think I bought it because it had a picture of a pocket watch on it - he never wore one but it was just something in the imagery that made me think of him. Halfway through my drink he still hasn’t started his.

  The atmosphere of the room is dreamlike, in that I know I’m in my grandad’s house but nothing fits right; normal comforts are absent. The first thing my ‘mate’ would normally do when I walk through the door is to berate me about not shaving: “I get up, have a shave, take Bruce for a walk, get the paper and make a tea, but first thing I do is have a shave.” And here I am, with a full beard, and no comment.

  Oh shit, Bruce, another one of my props is now missing. Bruce was a black Labrador cross that was like an uncle to me growing up, and he was my favourite one by a long stretch. That dog was my grandad’s best friend, his confidant. He would take Bruce out over ten times a day. “He’s looking at me,” my ‘mate’ would say, as if he was being put out and then, “Come on then, lad, just once around the block.” That dog enjoyed the walks but it was my ‘mate’ that wanted to get out of the house. He’d walk Bruce around the block and feel at peace no matter what the weather. A man and his dog walking the streets, feeling they’d found their place in the world. Sometimes I’d walk with them, Grandad would ask me to come, it was an honour really and I should have appreciated it more. Bruce was his lighthouse when Gran died, a constant light to keep him off the rocks.

  I remember tears when she died; I first cried for myself, it was a good, strong cry. I saw her at the undertakers; she looked small and fake, like one of those resuscitation dolls. I regained control of my emotions on the way back to the house, until I saw him.

  He asked me to walk with him and Bruce; I felt the tears bulge in my lower eyelids but didn’t cry. He told me of how he and my grandmother met. World War II had just ended and after days of being stuck on a ship in the Liverpool docks because of a matter of quarantine he was finally back in his home town of Dukinfield, Lancashire. And so, like any good soldier back from war he headed out to the pub. The first one he went into was quiet, which was fine by him, as he wasn’t in a partying mood; he just wanted a pint in a British pub. Unfortunately, this old chap came over, after learning the news that my grandad was a soldier back from war, not much to deduce as my grandad was a strapping young man of twenty-four in 1945 post-war Britain. The guy wanted to talk of the glories of winning the war and as my grandad had spent a good few years living the horrors of trying to survive the war, it was the last thing he wanted to do. So he downed his pint and moved on to the next pub. This pub and the next two were filled to the hilt so he got on a bus to Ashton-Under-Lyne which is about a mile north and it’s the town where I was born. It was in the town of Ashton that he met Meg, who recognised him from a photo she had been shown months earlier by a mutual friend. A week later my grandad was bedridden with malarial fever. I guess they should have kept him on the boat a little longer. Anyway, Meg became his nursemaid and then his wife.

  I got back in from the walk and the story and ran to the bathroom. I cried so loud that different parts of the country could hear me. I had cried for myself but it was not a tenth of what I cried for that man, my ‘mate’. I couldn’t bear his loss. He had Bruce, though. He still had his best friend and confidant and I was sure that dog would get more trips around the block than ever before, now that the house was empty without Meg. Bruce died about two years back. I remember the call, a call he made himself. He never did that; he’d tell other people that you hadn’t called him in a while but he would never call you himself. His voice was crackly and faint. I stayed strong for less than a minute and then began to bawl. Now, the household was just him; a loving husband and doting father of four, now in an empty house with not even his dog to comfort him. Mortality punishes you for how much you love. I think it was the last time I cried, the day Bruce died. I needed Bruce now. I’d sit on the floor with him, to be at eye level. I’m not above you Bruce, I’m not even your equal; you did the job that a whole family couldn’t do.

  “Your mum says...”

  “Yeah, she says a lot, none of it matters right now.”

  “It matters to me. Smoking?”

  “Rarely.”

  “As far as I knew it used to be never.”

  “It’s a social thing.”

  “No, talking is a social thing, smoking is a suicidal thing.”

  “Lots of things are bad for you, Grandad.”

  “Yes, but it’s the smoking that’s killing me right now.”

  What kind of an arsehole am I? Trying to marginalise the dangers of smoking to someone dying of lung cancer? For my next trick I’m going to tell a paraplegic that walking is overrated. Ah, his John Wayne videos, they fill the TV stand cabinet. Oh, that overacting, one trick pony, God, I love him. I love him because my grandad does. John Wayne is the hero, no matter what the character does or says in the end John Wayne is the hero. And it is John Wayne that is the hero not Tom Doniphon or Ethan Edward or the Ringo Kid, it’s John Wayne, that’s the name the boys shouted when they came out of cinemas back in my ‘mate’s’ heyday.

  “John Wayne wins the day… but didn’t always get the girl,” my grandad once said that to me and then looked at my gran and smiled the biggest smile. Wayne was also a militant republican who voted for Nixon and was christened with a girl’s name, so make sure when looking for heroes you follow the ideas not the person; that whole ‘print the legend not the facts’ thing.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry, my mate, just stop. I know you and you’re just trying to be clever and when clever people are trying they always end up looking dumb.”

  “
I don’t know how to do this, Grandad, it’s all wrong.”

  “You don’t need to do anything.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Yes.”

  I tell him I’ll stop the smoking and that I’ve already stopped the drinking, which he seems surprised to hear was even a problem, so mum must have kept those worries to herself. Grandad tells me the girls have been working in shifts, by girls he’s talking about his girls; my mum and her sisters. They have been cooking and cleaning for him, helping him to bathe and putting him to bed, but the talking has been a little awkward.

  The way he put it was, “When death is the elephant in the room you can’t talk around it, no matter what you try to talk about you can see it in your peripheries.”

  My mother and aunts recant tales of when they all lived in the same house, tales to confirm he’s done a good job and that he’s pulled off the role of the father. You tell people those kinds of things when the job is done; trying to avoid the subject, they had ended up reading him his eulogy.

  “But you, Noel, you see the elephant and say…”

  “Hey, look, there’s a great big elephant in the room.”

  “Right.”

  I am that way, always have been. I’m the kind of guy who walks into a room and seeing how discomfited it is by the mass of words waiting to be said, I pop the bubble.

  “Ok, you used to date Tammy and now you’re fucking Hindi. Discuss?”

  I look at it as either, ‘It’ll be better all out in the open’ or that ‘I’d rather be in a room filled with a verbal scuffle than one of tortuous silence’. In most cases I just end up burning bridges, which in my current state of mind I see as a bonus. Today the elephant is death and I don’t want to see it. Unfortunately, like a literal elephant, the room is too small to avoid it. I’ve heard death being analogised in many different ways; I quite like it when it’s referred to as the great abstinence claiming life to be the great indulgence. I’ve heard some talk of life being like a war with those of us who have clocked up the most years on the front line and with every generation lost you get closer to the gunfire. This is faulty logic as it implies two lies; one, that death is only for the old and; two, that if you’re a good enough soldier you can survive. I see it more as an endless harvest, the combines spinning behind us as we try to run. Yes, your grandparents can push your mum and dad ahead and in turn they can try to push you further from harm’s way but at some point we all stumble.

  Belief in a God would be handy in a moment like this. I used to believe in God, never in the text of old, but a God who was there to watch over me. Then I lost a little of my certainty and became an agnostic. I told you I was a fence-sitter. Well, agnostics are the kings of the fence-sitters, whereas in other areas fence-sitting means, ‘Well, I just don’t know, they both have some good points’. Agnosticism is, ‘I’m one hundred per cent sure that there is no way to be sure and furthermore I’d like to talk you into not being unsure as well’. I don’t mean to knock agnostics; they’re right in the sense that you can neither prove nor disprove something that can’t be seen, heard, touched, smelt or tasted. This may lead you to believe the scales are at fifty-fifty but they are not. The God lovers will bang on about, ‘We have faith, what have you got?’ in an attempt to tip the scale, but we have got science. I don’t wish to raise an all too common science vs. religion ruckus but I do wish those not on the side of science would stop using any medication they or any of their family members are on; then destroy every device in their houses and rip out the electrical mains, because these things and so much more only exist today because of mankind’s need to know how everything works and that’s what science is, and you can’t start kicking up a fuss when it points to an answer you don’t like. Science and religion cannot stand side by side because they contradict each other and call me the fool but I’m going with the guys who can show me how it works, not the ones who say, ‘Trust me’. The scales are not fifty-fifty they are way over ninety per cent in our favour. I am an atheist. Toby once said, bearing in mind that he still thinks of himself as a Jew, that no one would choose to be an atheist, you just see the facts and that’s that. You’d love to go back because it is the worst of the three bad options; it means this is it. And I know that’s a downer but it’s what sold me. Darwin didn’t mean to discredit religion it was just something that came out of his scientific findings. He didn’t choose to be an atheist but the facts were there. The woman he loved was a devout Christian who had no doubts in her mind that one day they would embrace beyond those pearly gates. How he must have wished to have had those same thoughts. I trust in a man who speaks an unpleasant truth not a man who speaks a glorious lie. I didn’t choose to be Godless. Belief in God would be handy right about now but a cure for lung cancer would be even better.

  “So, how are the driving lessons going?” Months earlier I applied and received my provisional licence. I have yet to take a lesson or book a lesson or look for a driving instructor to book the lesson with. I had lied and told him I was taking lessons, and he is now wondering why I’m still a pedestrian.

  “Good, I’m doing well.”

  “You’ve not taken one lesson have you?”

  “No, I did mean to but…”

  “You’re a good-for-nothing lazy bugger?”

  “Something like that.”

  “So, I guess I’ll just have to give the car to Sean.”

  “Sean?”

  Sean is the dickhead of a cousin who tried to Bogart my ‘my mate’ status. The car he’s talking about is a white 1966 Ford Anglia that has a red stripe down the side of it just like Face’s does in the A-Team. Face doesn’t drive a Ford Anglia, of course. I mean to say that his car, a flash 1980s number, also has a red stripe. I don’t drive, I know absolutely fuck all about cars and I adore this machine. This is the car that picked me up from the hospital after I was born, so when I say it was my first car I mean it was my first car. Grandad had always told me it was mine, not that I’d get it when he died but that it was always mine and that he was just looking after it until I was old enough. I helped him clean the Anglia every weekend whilst I was growing up, even through my rebellious teens. People would stop and chat to my grandad, everyone in the area knew him, and he always stated that it was my car and then tell them the story of him picking my mum and me up from the hospital and how I wouldn’t stop my whining until I got in the car. In the back seat on my mother’s knee, tight in a swaddling blanket, the engine’s rumble echoing in the car interior like a metallic heart, I drifted into a tranquil slumber. Safe, now little Noel’s almost back in the womb. The sound of its engine was ingrained in my soul; I could not describe it to you but I knew when that car was outside the house without looking. I knew it was him, my ‘mate’, had come to pick me up, come to take me to this house where he would over feed me and I would sit cross-legged on the dog shelf, which is what my grandparents called the floor, and stroke and cuddle Bruce.

  Before I have the chance to put across my upset and distress at the prospect of the car going to my cousin, Sean, there’s a knock at the door. It’s my Aunt Lilith. She kisses me on the cheek and says, through her teeth, “What a lovely surprise.” She really is an unpleasant woman. I think she must have switched Christian teams just to justify her callous manner. The Catholics are way more judgemental than the C of E. I make up a fatuous lie about needing to be somewhere, a lie that I forget the moment it’s out; a half-hearted lie, a lie that you use on the spot and really don’t care if it’s believed or whether it will get uncovered at a later date. I really cannot tolerate that tepid idolater. I bend down to hug my ‘mate’ hunched in his chair; the man who taught me how to be a man. Some would say he failed, but I still give him points for effort. My hands run down his arms until they are both clasped around his right hand in a handshake without the shaking; just holding, squeezing it tight as though he’s hanging over a ravine and by letting it go means letting him go.

  His hands are still big but
have no strength in them; hands that in my childhood could throw me up into the heavens and catch me as I descended, as if he was gravity’s anchor. As his hand slips from my grasp, fragile as an infant’s, the car keys to the white Ford Anglia are left in mine. Walking down the garden path I turn at the gate to wave goodbye as I have done countless times. In the past I would see him and my gran, their arms around each other smiling, waving. Now no one stands in the door way, the door is closed. A tear runs down my face. I wipe it away and refuse to shed another.