by Gary Locke
When I opened the door though, still holding and rocking Jack, it wasn’t Mr Dennis. It was a man I had never seen before; a man who sent a chill down my spine straight away. I later found out, from Clive, that his name was Andy Taylor, but he never told me himself. He was only of medium height but my first impression was one of intimidation. He was dressed completely in black; black shoes, black trousers and a longish black coat that was zipped up right to his neck. His head was shaved and you could clearly see five or six different scars on top of his skull. I could also see that he had a spirally tattoo that cascaded around the area of neck that wasn’t covered by his coat. It was hard to make out exactly what it was but my guess is it was some kind of snake that was slithering around his neck. But the most striking thing about him was his eyes. They were also black. Black as coal; cold, almost lifeless.
He was very polite. He said he was sorry to bother me and he was looking for Clive Ford. I told him he was at work and asked if I could help. The strange thing was, as soon as I opened the door, Jack stopped crying. He was just intensely staring at this man who had knocked on the door. The man said I could help by getting the £250 that we owed him. I had no idea what he meant. At first he thought I was lying. His voice became a little aggressive, he said that Clive was two days late in paying him back and that he had come to collect: “one way or another”. Four words that made me imagine all kinds of terrible things; four words that haunt me to this day.
It was then that I understood what had happened. Two weeks earlier Clive, on his day off, had returned from shopping with lots of brand new stuff for Jack. A new cot, which we desperately needed as all we had was the second hand Moses basket that we’d bought at the charity shop before Jack had been born. An electric monitor that we always said we were going to get as soon as Jack could go into his own little bedroom. Some new baby grows and quite a few, cute little toys. I’d asked him at the time where he’d got the money from and he said they’d got an unexpected bonus from work because their unit had been the top performers in the area. It felt like we’d got a nice little break, like you sometimes do in Monopoly if there’s been a bank error or it’s your birthday. But it turns out he’d actually borrowed the money from this …… loan shark.
It’s no wonder Clive had looked so pale when I told him that the car insurance was due earlier in the week and that I had cleared our joint account and paid it at the post office.
Clive never said anything to me though. Ever.
And he never has.
Even after I told him about Andy Taylor’s visit and how I’d agreed for us to pay the money back, he just acted like it was something and nothing. All I knew was that he had lied to me. He was the man that said he would always protect me, and Jack, and yet he had lied to me and left us in a position where this man was at our front door and threatening us.
I never really told Clive how terrified I’d been because I didn’t want him to think I was weak. But Andy Taylor had scared the living daylights out of me.
He stood there, this man dressed in black, calling me a liar, and saying that he wanted his money there and then. If I continued to lie to him then he would come into the house and take £250 worth of goods. If he couldn’t find £250 worth of goods then he would take it some other way.
He reached out to Jack and grabbed him by the hand. I started screaming for him to let go and Jack started crying again. This man said that he couldn’t let people get away without paying him; his business would fall apart if he did. He said he may just have to take a “different” payment and that he sometimes accepted fingers instead of cash: “£100 per adult finger or £50 per child finger” – he said that as he stared at me - and held Jack by the hand.
I screamed hysterically.
This man was threatening to cut fingers off my baby’s hand. I shouted that I would call the police if he didn’t go, straight away, but he just stood there staring at me, those black eyes not showing one sign of emotion. I must have screamed and shouted at him for a good few minutes and yet not one of our neighbours appeared to hear. If you have your radio volume on higher than number 5 then people come round knocking on the door complaining; especially bat-eared Mr Dennis who was always complaining about something; and yet not one of them “heard” anything that morning, when I needed them.
As my screaming turned to tears, I begged this man to leave us alone; to take whatever he wanted but just to leave me and Jack alone. He pushed us back into the house, still holding Jack by the hand as he continued to cry, and came in after us.
I feared the worst. I told him the only thing of any value that we had was the cot and monitor that Clive had bought with the money he had borrowed. I told him to take them, and whatever else he wanted, but to please, please, please leave us alone.
And then something strange happened. He began to gently bounce Jacks hand up and down in the air.
“It’s ok, little fella.” he said. “I won’t hurt you. It’s ok.”
His voice was different now. He was talking like someone who had experience of being around little children, his tones were soothing and Jack responded to them, and he stopped crying straight away. The man smiled as he continued talking gently. “That’s a good boy; a clever boy. Who’s a clever boy?”
After about a minute of playing with Jack he then looked at me.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked.
I shook my head, my face was sore from the screaming and the tears.
“You don’t need to then.” he said. “I lend people money. They pay me back..... one way or another.”
He stared at me as he spoke, but his eyes had changed. They weren’t black and cold anymore, but looked a bit more blue; a bit warmer.
“What’s this little one’s name?” he asked.
I told him.
“Hello Jack” he said bouncing Jacks hand up and down again. “I’ve got a little one just like you back at home.”
He looked at me again.
“I’m sorry to have scared you. It’s the business I’m in; I need to know if people are lying to me or not. I know now that you’re not.”
If I wasn’t shaking so much I might have taken this as a personal insult; he had come inside our house and decided that we had nothing of any value in there.
“I have a reputation to uphold.” he said to me. “An image to maintain. Without that I cannot continue to do what I do. Do you understand?”
I nodded my head.
“But I don’t do what I do because I want to see young families suffering. I am not an animal..... well, not all the time anyway. You can call this an administration error, but I now believe I may have accepted that your husband could pay me back weekly. So, you will pay me back at ten pounds per week. I will come round on Wednesday mornings, for the next twenty five weeks, and you will be here, ready with ten pounds each time. If you fail to pay, ever, then I will be using the alternative collection methods I spoke of earlier. If I have to do that your husband may need some help writing a letter. Do you understand?”
I nodded my head.
“Also, your husband will never come to me again to borrow any more money and neither of you will mention this new agreement to anyone. If just one person finds out about how I am letting you pay…..”
He didn’t finish his sentence, instead deciding to look at me and letting me work it out for myself.
He bounced Jack’s arm up and down one more time, gently saying, “I will see you next week little Jack, yes I will..... yes I will!” before nodding at me and walking back through the front door closing it behind him. I sank to my knees and began crying again. Strangely Jack didn’t. He was now calm and happy.
I’m not sure why but I’ve never gone into that much detail before; not even with Clive. When he got home, just to see his face; I couldn’t help but cry. I just about managed to tell him that I knew he’d borrowed the money, that I’d arranged a re-payment plan, and to call him a liar; before I needed to get away from him – before I hit him. Beca
use for putting me and Jack through that, I wanted to hit him again and again and again ….
We’ve never really spoken about it ever since; because I can’t face talking to him about it.
That was the low point.
And I’m not sure that things have ever really recovered from it.
Jeremy stared at Gayle, who was visibly shaking after reliving that “low point” moment with him. For a good few seconds he wondered whether there was anything he could say to make her feel a little better. After a while he realised he had no idea what words may help and so he looked down at his notes again to see Clive’s rather short and somewhat different answer to the same question.
CLIVE
Tell me about your relationship low point.
The day Gayle burnt my oven chips.
Chapter Twenty Four: The Pact. (8 Years Ago)
The stairs creaked, as they always did, as Clive tiptoed down them after reading Jack a story and tucking him into bed. Clive shook his head as he recalled the number of times that Gayle had implored him to do something about the groaning steps; to somehow “fix them”. Who did she think he was, one of Nick-bloody-Knowles’ crew?
“I’ve done your dinner – it’s on the table.” Gayle said to him as he entered the kitchen. “Did you get him off ok?”
“Yeah, he’s sleeping like a..... baby!” Clive said, pausing on the word baby, seeing as his “little man” hadn’t been a baby for a long time and seemed to be growing up faster and faster. How did that happen so quickly?
He walked into the small extension room behind the kitchen that doubled as the dining room and laundry drying area, picked up his plate, knife and fork and re-entered the kitchen.
“It’s ok; I’ll just have it on a tray in front of the TV.”
Gayle shook her head; for two reasons. The “dining room” was hardly ever used anymore despite them promising each other when they moved into the house that, once the room was done up, they would eat every single meal in there. Also, despite her spending lots of time and effort to make a lasagne from scratch, Clive had come home from work, turned his nose up at it and proclaimed he “just wanted pie and chips”. It brought back memories of the time when he had treated her to a Michelin star meal and then proceeded to complain about his sushi starter “not being cooked properly”. It was like living with a bloody caveman.
Clive removed his cushioned tray from the cupboard, (so comfortable – why would you eat at the table when you can have padded luxury on your lap?) placed the salt and vinegar and brown sauce on it next to his plate and cutlery and walked through to the front room. He had been fantasising about this meal for the last couple of hours of his overtime at work. Sometimes, even when Gayle has made one of her famous, delicious lasagnes, your body just needs a good serving of stodge.
He turned the TV on and plonked himself down on the sofa, accompanied by that “oouughh” sound that you have to make when you finally sit down after fourteen hours at work.
Then he noticed it, right there on his plate: his oven chips, though pleasingly well numbered, were not that nice golden, yellow colour that you see on the picture on the bag, but brown. Not a light brown colour that you may see on a well varnished soft maple, wooden table, but rather a darker, dirtier brown that you may see on..... well, burnt oven chips.
How the hell do you burn oven chips?
You take your frozen chips out of the freezer and place them on a baking tray, put them into a pre-heated oven for twenty minutes, and then take them out – end of instructions. You leave them in the oven for twenty-five minutes and they are burnt. It’s hardly bloody Masterchef stuff.
Gayle entered the front room as Clive crunched into his first chip, wondering if it may be best, before continuing, to make sure that he had his dentists’ phone number on speed dial.
“Do you fancy opening a bottle of wine and watching a film when you’ve finished that?” asked Gayle wondering if she should tell Clive his chips were slightly over-cooked because the timer on the oven had broken again, despite Clive saying that he had fixed it earlier in the week; which was pretty consistent with everything else he fixed around the house.
Gayle decided not to mention the over-cooked chips and/or the broken oven timer; she didn’t want to argue again.
“No, I’m going to bed soon – bloody knackered. Just going to watch last night’s footy highlights and then head off.” Clive said, again risking his teeth on another potato-less, rock hard chip shell.
Not bloody football again, thought Gayle, wondering if she should go upstairs herself and watch something a little less boring on the TV in their room. You know, something from the paint-drying or grass growing channels.
She took a deep breath and decided against it. She needed to make more of an effort. There was a time when they would always watch things together and not just things for both of them, like..... the X-Files box set. But no, Gayle would actually happily sit and watch football in the past, just to be with Clive. (And some of those multi-millionaire footballers were not too offensive on the eye.) And Clive would happily invest himself into things like the soaps and Strictly Come Dancing because Gayle liked to watch them. (Attractive female celebrities and dancers in short skirts and dresses did soften the mundane “entertainment” of the dancing.)
Instead Gayle stayed where she was and made another offer.
“What about tomorrow night then? Movie and wine? We could get a takeaway as well?”
“Oh, I can’t tomorrow. I’m going out with Knobhead..... I told you, didn’t I?”
“No, you didn’t.” sighed Gayle, disheartened by the fact that her husband spends as much time as he can with a man named “Knobhead” and, almost certainly, hadn’t told her about it – again.
What followed was four or five minutes of silence, well apart from the loud chomping sound of neglected oven chips, and possibly shattering teeth, and the unfathomable ramblings of overpaid “pundits” obsessing about every little detail about men in boys’ shorts running around after a leather bag of wind.
Finally Clive spoke.
“How was your day?”
Gayle was taken by surprise. She assumed that Clive, almost like her, had forgotten she was even there.
“Oh, pretty average as usual.” she began. “I did have a heated run in with Tina though. Do you know she has started using red and gold glitter pens when she’s marking up the paperwork she’s checked? When you come to look for anything through the filing cabinets – your hands get completely covered in pen and glitter. And it doesn’t just wipe off easily, you’ve got to go to the toilets and give your hands a good wash and scrub in hot water. Well, I’ve told her anyway – no more. She should just be using normal black or blue ink pens like the rest of us. We exchanged a few words but, hopefully, she’s got the message now!”
What the hell was she talking about? Glitter pens and paperwork? Was this the highlight of her day? The only thing worth relaying in a story about the events at work? Bloody hell; this felt like a new low in Gayle’s mundane, nine-to-five hell of a “career”.
Wow, those “dreams” of a music career, even if they were just the immature longing of a child who had fallen in love with music, were more than a million miles away from the eventual reality. Even the back up plans of being a songwriter, or working in a recording studio, or even just working in a record shop; anything to be around music all the time, felt like long, lost fantasies.
To make a living out of doing something that you really love – that’s the real key to a happy life isn’t it? But now all of that seemed like distant memories; thoughts that Gayle had no real right to have ever been thinking. Of course, these days, there were shows like The X-Factor that allowed anyone and everyone the chance to go and try out for that dream; but did she want to be the next past-her-best, over-weight, middle-aged dreamer to be laughed at by one and all. No thank you.
“What about you?” she asked Clive. “Did you have anything as remotely interesting as that happen to y
ou today?”
Clive smiled at Gayle’s exasperated mocking of herself.
“No, not really. I can’t compete with that! Well, it was pretty funny when Dave came back to the van and had walked in the sloppiest dog shit you’ve ever seen. And it stunk to high heaven. Well it was funny until we realised that he had climbed over the seats before noticing it, and got it all over the seat where I was sitting.”
As Clive thought about it more, it wasn’t actually funny at all. It took him ages trying to wipe his trousers clean, and the stench was at a level that would probably stay in your nostrils for a good couple of months. For Clive also, this was a moment of realisation that this, “highlight” of his day, was probably everyone else’s idea of a worst nightmare.
How the hell had he got stuck in this job? Out all day, in all weathers, quickly damaging your own body with the work load and miles demanded of you?
And for what?
To struggle through life with hardly two pennies to rub together?
He remembered his dreams of pursuing his love for art. Graphic designer, children’s book illustrator, anything where he was able to imagine and create. He had even daydreamed when he was younger of travelling around the world, maybe living on nothing more than the few coins you could make by chalking some pavement art in major cities. Just travelling when and where the mood took you; free as the wind and free of care.
Gayle sat staring at Clive, slowly realising that he was most probably smearing dog shit on her sofa – he certainly hadn’t gone to the trouble of changing his clothes. It was like living with a dirty, disgusting caveman.
She was in her own house and yet felt more trapped than she ever had in her entire life; even more so than when she was forced to move as a chid, to a place and a school where she knew absolutely no one, and almost had to start her life again.
“We need to talk, Clive”. She said, accompanied by a huge sigh. “We need to talk about us.”