Family Business

by Mark Eklid

  ‘Here we go. White 13-amp single pole switched double socket. Is that the one?’

  He tried not to sound too triumphant, but these were the moments he lived for in this job. There wasn’t very much else going for it.

  ‘Oh!’ The fat man took the packet and stared at it, incredulously. ‘That’s it. I can’t have seen it. They should be labelled more clearly.’

  Graham glanced back at the white label which read ‘White Switched Double Socket £4.97’ and at the half a dozen pale blue boxes on the shelf just above the label, each of which had the words '13-amp single pole switched double socket’ printed in black on it.

  No. I think that’s pretty clearly labelled.

  ‘Is there anything else I can help you with?’

  The fat man was still staring at the packet in his hands.

  ‘No, that’s all I wanted.’ Still without attempting eye contact, he then uttered a grudging ‘Thanks.’

  Graham smiled.

  ‘Not a problem. Hope you enjoy the rest of your day.’

  He knelt again in front of the chrome-effect round internal door knobs. In the short time it had taken him to walk down to Electrical and back, another customer had put an aluminium knob amongst the chrome ones.

  He looked down at his watch. Still more than three and a half hours until the end of the shift.

  3

  The first raindrops dotted the windows of the bus just before it got to his stop. By the time he had pressed the button to request the driver to pull in and stood, ready to disembark, he could see the rain practically bouncing off the road ahead of them.

  It had been a miserable summer so far. Was it really almost July?

  Not only was he greeted by pounding rain as he stepped off the bus into the premature gloom of early evening, it was whipped into his face by a chilly wind. It felt more like October.

  Graham hadn’t far to walk from the stop to his home but it seemed a lot further than usual as he zipped up his inadequately thin jacket and tilted his head into the face of the wind, the rain plastering his hair to his scalp and swimming over his glasses as it ran to form droplets on the end of his nose.

  By the time he turned off the main road and on to Seathwaite Street, the rain was easing off. It was only a squall and he cursed the bad timing which had brought him a damp, yet fitting, end to another spirit-sapping work day. He felt soaked, cold and disconsolate. All he wanted was to cover the remaining 300 yards of his walk quickly and get home so he could close the day away behind him. Then he would get changed out of his wet work clothes and try not to sound doleful when Janet asked him how his day had been.

  Oh, you know, the usual, he would reply. That seemed to cover it. How was yours?

  What else are you meant to say? It was mind-numbingly dull. It’s a mind-numbingly dull job. It was mind-numbingly dull today, it was mind-numbingly dull yesterday and it will be mind-numbingly dull tomorrow. There would be no point talking like that. It wouldn’t change anything.

  Janet usually got home from work three-quarters of an hour earlier than he did. She took the car because her place was harder to get to by bus. That’s how they worked it when Graham was still at the library, which was in the centre of town, and that was fine. There was no way they could afford to run two cars.

  He could make out the shape of the red hatchback on the drive in front of their neat little semi-detached as he moved briskly closer and felt comforted by what lay just ahead. A change of clothes and a cup of tea. Right now that was all he needed. He swung his sodden backpack off his shoulder and began unzipping the front pocket of it to retrieve his house key but stopped when he heard the sound of a voice behind him.

  ‘Hello. Hello. Is it Graham?’

  A man holding a black umbrella was moving in a half-run towards him from the other side of the street. Graham could not make him out properly because his glasses were still spattered with raindrops but he did not think he recognised him. He certainly could not place the voice. He faced the advancing figure warily, half-expecting something unwanted.

  The man slowed as he reached the other side of the street and stopped at the edge of the drive.

  ‘Sorry, are you Graham?’

  Graham unzipped his jacket and took off his glasses to wipe them dry, as best he could, against his black polo shirt. He wanted to see this person properly.

  They were of similar height but the stranger was plumper and considerably smarter dressed, in a suit and tie. He was quite a bit younger, maybe thirtyish, and his round, tanned face was clean-shaven. His fixed gaze bore into Graham’s eyes so intently that the scrutiny made him uncomfortable.

  But reassured that the person opposite was far too well turned-out and nowhere near stealthy enough to be a mugger, Graham felt it safe to respond.

  ‘I am.’

  The man took tentative steps forward, as if hoping not to frighten away a small animal he wanted to try to pet, and slowly raised an outstretched right hand, edging forward until he was little more than that arm’s length away.

  ‘My name’s Andreas, Andreas Johnson.’

  Graham leaned forward to accept the handshake. His hand was gripped firmly and the stranger held tight for so long that Graham began to feel it a bit awkward and wanted to pull his hand free.

  ‘You have no idea how glad I am that I’ve managed to track you down.’

  Track me down?

  ‘I’m sorry, should I know you?’

  The stranger became suddenly aware that he had held the handshake for too long and released his grip.

  Graham could still feel the pressure of it as he withdrew his arm to his side. Who was this guy and why is he making this odd approach on my driveway? He no longer felt threatened, just utterly confused. This was not normal. He could not think what to do, what to say. He could make no sense of it but then he looked properly into the face of the man opposite him for the first time and their eyes met, locking on each other like the opposite ends of two magnets brought close enough to fix to each other.

  There was something in those eyes. Something.

  ‘We’ve never met, but...’ The rest of the sentence stalled in the throat of the stranger. He seemed as if he was on the verge of being overcome by his emotions.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I have something really important I need to tell you. Can we just sit for a minute and talk – in my car, if you like, if you don’t feel comfortable letting me into your home.

  ‘And that’s OK, by the way,’ he added hastily. ‘I understand.’

  Graham was disarmed. Intrigued now rather than suspicious.

  ‘Sure,’ he said.

  The younger man began to edge away and then turned back, remembering his manners and offering the shared shelter of his umbrella. The rain had just about stopped but Graham accepted the gesture with a grateful smile.

  They walked silently together across the street. As they neared it, Graham heard the click of car doors unlocking on a long silver Jaguar parked a few doors up on the opposite side. The car’s hazard lights blinked three times, welcomingly, and the stranger steered them towards it.

  Whoever this guy is, he appears to be doing well for himself.

  ‘Please, get in. It’s open.’ The stranger held the umbrella over Graham until he gripped the door handle and pulled it open before sinking into the passenger seat, feeling self-conscious of his wet and bedraggled state and it’s potentially detrimental effects on the soft leather seats.

  The stranger opened the back door to toss his dampened umbrella into the foot-well and then climbed in through the front door behind the steering wheel. He looked at Graham and smiled, warmly.

  ‘Sorry, Andreas, but what is this all about?’

  The man paused for a second, making sure he delivered his words right.

  ‘Do you remember the name Lena Christopoulos?’

  Lena Christopoulos.

  A name like that will stick in the mind. The mention of it immediately evoked youthful feelings of shame and missed opp
ortunity in Graham’s.

  They were on the same history course at the University of Leeds between 1980 and 1983. They were in the same tutor group occasionally, too. She was a quiet girl. Half-Greek, as he recalled, with dark Mediterranean skin and dark eyes, which qualified her as quite exotic at a time when there were not as many overseas students as there seemed to be these days. He did not consider her especially attractive, to be brutally honest, in either looks or personality but she was nice enough. They talked a few times but not very often. Just chat. Course stuff, mainly. They never mixed in the same social groups outside the lecture theatre or the tutorial room.

  Then there was the party.

  It was the night before the final year results were posted on the faculty notice board and in an environment where the flimsiest of excuses was seized upon as a cause for a piss-up, that was an unmissable reason for everybody to drink away what little flexibility still remained in their overdrafts. They were about to find out the reward for their hard work over three years or, as in Graham’s case, to be reminded that they really should have worked harder. In a few days, the course would officially be over and they would all go their separate ways to hit the real world.

  That night, though, Graham and his mates hit the pubs and had already lost count of how many pints of Tetley’s were swilling around in their systems before they got to the party, which was in one of the halls of residence blocks.

  They took with them two four-packs of Stones’ bitter as a token contribution to the general party booze stock but it was not tinned beer that Graham had his eye on as they swayed into the dimmed light and stale air of the common room area. On a grey metal-framed table which appeared in danger of sagging under its weight sat a large punch bowl, astonishingly vulnerable to displacement from any one of the many erratic drunken students who crowded the room but, for now, two thirds full of a sloshing orangey liquid with chunky pieces of fruit floating on top.

  For reasons unknown, the sight was instantly appealing to Graham. As his mates took their four-packs to the designated bar area and began to sift through the selection for something better to drink than the cheap stuff they had brought, Graham felt compelled to take a white plastic cup from the stack and dip it into the bowl.

  A few drops dribbled down the side of the cup and dripped onto his fraying Green Flash trainers as he took his first swig. Not bad. Maybe the Tetley’s had numbed his taste buds but he made the swift assessment that it wasn’t much more than orange squash with a bit of a kick to it. He swigged down the rest of the cupful and, just to be sure, dipped in for a refill.

  It was all right. Tasted worse.

  ‘What do you think of our punch?’

  There was Lena, holding a can of Skol. The details are a bit hazy now but Graham noticed she was wearing a skirt and that was strange because she only ever seemed to wear jeans. In the half-light of a room shaking to the sound of Simple Minds and with the best part of double-figure pints on board, he thought she looked good. What’s more, she was smiling at him and talking to him, which not many girls were prepared to do at parties, in his experience.

  ‘It’s OK but it’s a bit weak. What’s in it?’ He had to lean towards her to be heard above the noise made by a ghetto blaster turned up to top volume.

  He turned his head for her to yell her reply into his ear.

  ‘Wine, vodka, whisky, Pernod – anything we could get hold of really.’

  Graham looked quizzically at the orange liquid and swigged down the rest of the cupful. He ruckled his nose and filled his cup again, sinking the contents down in one and giving Lena the same unconvinced expression of suspicion. For whatever reason, his tasting session had quickly escalated into a chest-thumping game of machismo.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he mouthed.

  Lena hunched her shoulders, as if now doubting the evidence of her own memory.

  He dipped in the cup again and took another gulp.

  ‘I don’t feel like I’m getting drunk at all.’

  Without hesitation, she leaned towards him again and he turned his ear towards her.

  ‘I’ve got a bottle of Cinzano in my room, if you’d like.’

  Graham could not recall being taken aback at the suggestion in the invitation or unduly elated at the opportunities it might bring. Nor could he have claimed he was trying to play it cool but, in his inebriated naivety, he simply said ‘OK’, set down the remainder of the cup of punch on the table and followed her up the stairs to the second floor.

  Two along on the left of a row of brown doors down a long corridor, Lena stopped and took a key out of her shoulder bag. The room was as compact as a cell, with a single bed down one side and a desk on the other. Above the desk was a shelf of text books and beyond the bed was a large poster of a Salvador Dali painting and a smaller one advertising a gig at the students’ union which must have been well enjoyed and was fondly remembered. At the foot of the bed was a built-in unit with a sink and a mirror on one side, a shallow wardrobe on the other and cupboards for storage space above.

  Lena tugged at the stiff single window to open it a couple of inches at the top and then dragged closed the brown curtain. For the first time, Graham realised this was beginning to look a bit promising.

  She opened a drawer next to the desk and took out a bottle of Cinzano Bianco, then picked up two half-pint glasses which looked suspiciously as if they had been lifted from a pub and took them to the sink to give them a bit of a clean. Without speaking and without asking, she opened the bottle and half-filled the dampened but still murky glasses.

  ‘Here you go.’ She handed one to Graham and sat down on the bed. He sat beside her and took a sip of the drink. Despite his newly discovered taste for indiscriminate drinking, it struck him as pretty nasty but he tried not to show it and put the glass down on the floor beside him.

  They must have talked for a while but he had no recollection of what they said. Almost certainly, that was because his accumulated and rapidly accelerated intake of alcohol swiftly took its toll on Graham’s ability to recall normally and the rest of the night swam in front of his memory in a sea of kissing and fumbling before giving way, inevitably, to unconsciousness.

  What he did remember was waking up in the morning.

  His right eye was the first to bravely allow the intrusive shaft of bright sunshine to stir his still barely functioning brain and his left eye reluctantly followed seconds later. The sun was on the rise but high enough to sit fully above the three-storey halls building opposite them and it peeked through the gap between curtain and wall directly on to his face as if his was the visage of the blessed one. He lay on his right side and raised a hand to shield his sensitive awakening pupils from the glare, then turned slowly to face Lena, who was pressed between him and the wall on what little remained of the small single bed.

  She was still asleep and still, as far as he could tell from what the thin blanket covering her to just above her waist allowed him to see, fully dressed.

  Graham remained oblivious to any recollection of what, exactly, had gone on but he knew one thing. He had pulled. He was in bed with an actual girl and that was such an unusual experience for him that it had far from lost its novelty value.

  He eased slowly back to his right side, trying as hard as he could not to wake Lena so that he could savour the moment of his conquest. Raising himself on his elbow, he pulled the curtain back a little further and looked out to the clear blue sky of a beautiful June morning, saw the shadows cast on the maze of footpaths and dewy lawns by the buildings of the campus and listened as a single small bird, unchallenged by the silence around it, chirped its melodic greeting for a glorious day to herald a future filled with new possibilities.

  Here, in the heart of the Leeds suburbs, he had found paradise and he absorbed it all. It was magnificent. In a few short hours, he would have confirmation of his grade and be entitled to write the letters BA (Hons) after his name, would be clear to complete the formalities on the job offer he had already receive
d from Bradford Council and would soon be bringing in a wage. Earning money!

  He had a girl by his side and the world at his feet and in the very moment he bathed in the shimmering light of his exaltation a realisation dawned, rising higher than the rest of his thoughts and bestriding them like a Colossus.

  I am going to be sick.

  That was unmistakably the case. The only course of action open to him was to act quickly.

  Graham attempted to roll off the edge of the bed without making a jolt or a noise which might disturb Lena and rose to his feet as sturdily as a new-born calf, bringing down his socked foot on a wet patch of Cinzano beside an overturned glass at the end of the bed.

  Where are my jeans?

  Once his eyes had readjusted to the dark of the room, he saw them on the floor near the waste bin and leaned against the wall as he pulled them on to reduce the possibility of falling in a heap in the act. He then attempted to wiggle into his still-tied trainers as he moved towards the door, conscious that every second counted, and eased down the door handle as quickly as he dared, glancing back for a moment towards the bed.

  She hadn’t heard him. Good.

  He cushioned the door closed again and increased his pace. Where are the loos? There must be one on each floor, surely.

  Dashing down the corridor, his eyes darted to either side looking for the vital sign as the curdling sensation in his stomach increased to crisis proportions. He was going to have to find a toilet soon or the consequences were going to be very messy.

  Almost at the end of the corridor was a door with no number and no sign on it. In desperation he began to run towards it, his hand over his mouth as the first heave of his guts filled his throat with foul-tasting regurgitated liquid, some of which seeped between his fingers.

  This has to be it.

  He yanked open the door. Groping desperately on the inside wall, he located a light switch and turned it on. It was a store cupboard.