Anyway, had my shave and told Harry I was off. I stood in the doorway a minute, fiddling with the business cards pinned up on the noticeboard in the office. I wanted to tell him. I wanted to tell someone, someone who wouldn’t laugh or take the piss. He looked up from the job book—he wasn’t doing anything with it, of course, just leafing through it, being busy.
“You all right, eh?” His glasses had slipped down onto the very end of his nose, right on the tip they were. I wanted to step forward and push them back up. Instead, I jangled my keys, my pathetic half-bunch of keys, now minus the ones for my house.
“Me? Yeah, fine. I’m fine.” I tossed the keys high in the air and caught them left-handed. Not a care in the world.
Harry looked back down at the job book.
“See you later then. D’you want something from the van for lunch? Or will you be back by then?”
The van. The sandwich van. An oasis in our barren, humdrum little lives. The prospect of food and a little flirtation, what more could a man want? But, ah, the stresses the modern-day executive has to contend with: shall I have a chicken baguette? Tuna mayo on brown? A BLT? Cheese salad on a bap? So many decisions. It’s non-stop thrills round here, I can tell you. She, the sandwich girl, lady, thingybob, comes round between half-eleven and twelve. She makes three stops on this estate and we all come pouring out like ants to a honey jar. She’s always got a smile for me and is up for a bit of banter, but she doesn’t dawdle long—a couple of times I’ve had to chase her down the road, so you want to get out there smartish soon as you hear her toot the horn.
“Dunno, Harry.” I dig out some coins and put them on the edge of his desk. “Better get me a roll just in case. Cheese salad roll, yeah? And a cake. And an apple. That’ll do. Cheers, mate.”
“Cheers.”
* * *
So I drive to the surgery where Gail works as a receptionist. She does four days a week, well, more half-days really. Drops Rosie off at school on her way in.
I stop outside the glass double doors a minute, watching her. She’s standing with her back to me, looking through a filing cabinet. From the back you’d think she was only about twenty. She’s very slim still and her hair’s sort of light brown and shiny, shoulder-length. My stomach starts churning—no breakfast, or nerves, or both. I wonder how she’ll look when I walk in—angry or icy or maybe her face will soften and she’ll smile and I’ll know it’s going to be all right after all. I hang back, wanting to cling onto that hope, however crazy it might be, for a few more seconds. Then a bloke comes hopping towards the doors on crutches so I open it for him and then there’s nothing but air between me and Gail at the desk and I’ve run out of reasons not to go in.
There’s two people ahead of me, but I know she’s seen me. The muscles in her face have gone tight, like they’ve been strained on wires. She’s smiling at the woman in front of her, but her smile’s too deliberate, too bright and her voice sounds high and unfamiliar.
“Please take a seat, Mrs Connors. Dr Wojczek is running about fifteen minutes behind.” She turns to the man next, who’s holding out a small piece of paper. “Repeat prescription only, is it? Yes, you can go straight to the dispensary—just along there, OK?”
A person watching her now would think how polite she was, how helpful, how concerned. Ha!
“Gail.” I rest my hand on the edge of the counter and fiddle with the leaflets stacked in the rack. “Stressed?” it says at the top of one. Tell me about it. “Sexual problems?” says another. You could say that. “How’s your heart?” stares back at me. Crap, thanks, but cheers for asking.
“What do you want?” She won’t look at me and her voice is so quiet I can hardly hear her.
I shrug.
“To talk of course. Just to talk.” There’s something else I meant to say, something I’m supposed to say. What the hell is it? “And to
apologize.”
She sits down at the desk and taps at the keyboard, eyes staring straight ahead at the screen.
“Did you have an appointment?” she asks in her nice, calm receptionist voice, then drops to a whisper, but it’s a whisper with teeth and claws all over it: “What? You say sorry and you think you can come back now, as easy as that?”
“Course not.” The very idea. What the hell else does she want from me? “I was thinking you could have me publicly flogged in the High Street.”
“I’m glad you find it amusing.” Her voice is cold, as though I’m a stranger bothering her on the street. “It must be lovely never to have to take anything seriously. Still, the answer is no, I don’t want to talk to you. Probably not ever again.” She turns away and bends down to riffle through a filing cabinet.
“Gail!”
She turns back towards me.
“Ah, about your
specimen,
is it?” She raises her voice and a couple of people look up from their magazines. Time to go, I think.
“I’ll call you later.”
This is not part of the master plan.
I phoned her later, at home, but she let the answerphone get it so I’m saying, “Hello? Hello? Gail, come on, love, pick up,” talking to thin air like a total wally. Then I turn up at home, but she won’t open the door.
“At least let me see the kids then. You can’t stop me seeing the kids.” I can see her face through the frosted glass panels. The pattern’s called Arctic. It’s all right but all the world and his wife’s got it. I’ve been meaning to swap it for something unusual, etched glass maybe, sort of Victorian style.
“I can do whatever I like, Scott. You’ve forfeited any rights you may have had.”
Well, that’s not true, is it? She can’t do that, can she? I’m not a wife-beater for chrissakes, though I’m thinking of taking it up. Joke. And I’ve certainly never laid a hand on either of the kids. I’m the last person on the planet to do that. She can’t keep me away from them.
“You can’t do this!” I’m shouting now.
She shushes me and tells me to listen.
“Scott, calm down a minute. You can’t see them because they’re not here. Nat’s got late practice tonight and Rosie’s over at Kira’s.”
“Can’t you just let me in so we can talk?”
There is a silence. She’s coming round. She realizes we have to talk, that she’s just been making a mountain out of a molehill. She’s going to open the door. We’ll go into the kitchen and have a nice calm chat.
“No,” she says, “I’m too upset to see you or talk to just now.” She doesn’t sound remotely upset to me, just cold and hard and horrible. “I’ll call you when I’m ready.”
“But what am I supposed—?”
“Just go away now, Scott. Please, just go away.” Then she walks away and I see her shape retreating down the hall.
I think of going down the side path and banging on the door of the back porch, pressing my nose to the glass, making silly faces. If I can make her laugh, if I can only make her laugh, then she’ll have me back, I know she will. But I haven’t the heart for it. I can’t bear the way she looks at me now, like she’s never seen me before.
I sit in the car, wondering what the hell to do next. Then I drive up to the pub and go in and have a pint. I spread the paper out in front of me, but I can’t read it. The words are just black bits on the page, like an army of ants frozen on the spot. I turn the pages, a man catching up with the news, dropping in for a quick pint on the way home to his wife and family, looking forward to a home-cooked meal and a warm house, having a well-earned break after a hard day. Is that how I seem? Or do I look like a man who’s managed to lose his wife, his kids and his home, with a ho-hum job, a crap car and nowhere to sleep tonight? And I’m sodding starving.
I pick up a burger and fries in town and eat them sitting in the car parked on a double yellow till a warden tells me you can’t park here, didn’t you see the lines, you’ll have to move on now unless you want a ticket. Why do they say that? Who would
want
a ticket? Though in my case, frankly, it’s the best offer I’ve had all day. It’s the only offer I’ve had all day. Life not miserable enough? Have some rubbish food and scoff it down in your car in 30 seconds flat so you get indigestion and have a bit of an argy-bargy with a traffic warden. Another excellent plan from the man who just chucked his entire life down the toilet.
So I head back to work, stopping off at that petrol station on the way, the one with the jet wash. My car’s filthy and God knows I’ve got nothing else to do with my life, I may as well kill time and wash the bloody thing. Least then I’ll have a clean car. I’ll still be a miserable sod, true, but at least I’ll be a miserable sod with a clean car. It’s important to have some standards, right?
I don’t know if you’ve ever been on an industrial estate at night. Probably not. You’re probably someone who’s got a normal life that doesn’t involve sleeping at work, having your spouse chuck you out on the street at midnight, or creeping about industrial estates after everyone else has gone home. Anyway, if you were thinking of trying it, I shouldn’t bother. First Glass is on an estate a couple of miles outside town and it’s dead creepy at night, not a soul to be seen. There’s security lighting of course so the parking areas are all bright as a floodlit football pitch, but it’s quiet as a graveyard. I manage a chirpy whistle and jangle my keys noisily to scare anyone off who might be lurking. Really scary that, a man jangling his keys. Is it a gun? Is it a knife? No, it’s a man, fully armed with a set of … keys. Terrific.
I do the alarm and slump into my chair in the office. On my desk there’s a cheese roll and an apple and a banana muffin. My lunch. Cheers, Harry. The burger didn’t do much to fill me up so I chew my way through my late lunch and think about whether I’m going to phone Colin or Jeff.
Jeff’s basically a decent bloke, but he’s never grown out of playing air guitar to godawful old rock music and since his wife flew the coop the house is a bit of a pigsty. Jeff’s one of those people who likes to leave the washing-up till later. Much later. Till it starts crawling towards the sink on its own it’s so desperate for a wash. So I opt for Colin. Yvonne answers. Of course. Thank you, God, no chance of your playing on my side for a while, is there? If it wouldn’t put you out too much. You know, just for a day or two would be nice.
“Yvonne! All right, angel? Is Col around?”
“Is that Scott?” How long has she known me? Unbelievable.
“Yes, it’s me. How’re you doing?”
There’s a baffled laugh from the other end of the phone.
“I’m
doing
fine, thank you, Scott. And how are you? How’s Gail and the kids?”
Go and get Colin, for chrissakes. “Fine, thanks! We’re all fine! Is Colin there?” “No, he’s round at his mum’s. Won’t be back till late.”
“OK then! Not to worry!” My jaw aches from trying to keep a smile in my voice.
Jeff it is.
“—'lo?”
Cheerful as ever. This is going to be fun. “Jeff mate, it’s me. Scott. How ya doing?” “'m OK.”
I can feel my shoulders sagging just listening to him. “Fancy a pint tonight?”
“All right.” Don’t get too overexcited now, will you? “See you in the Coach & Horses in twenty minutes?” “All right.”
This is not my life. This is someone else’s life that I’ve fallen into by mistake. I’ve slipped through a black hole or a time warp or something and I’ve become Mr Sad, ringing up his depressed friends so we can be depressed and drunk together rather than being depressed and stone-cold sober on my own, being chirpy and nice so’s I can talk some other sad sod into letting me doss down on his settee for the night rather than trying to sleep on my desk or under my desk or on a workbench or just slitting my wrists somewhere and making an end of it.
So I meet Jeff in the pub, we both have more to drink than’s good for us and I tell him my life’s fallen apart and he says it’s the women, always the women, and he’ll never get over her, never, and do I know that she broke his heart, do I know that. And I say I do know that, Jeff, I do, and I silently hope to hell my life will never be as lousy as his because I wouldn’t bother getting up in the morning. Then we roll back to his house and it’s even worse than I remembered, but I’m so tired and also had just a little bit too much liquid refreshment maybe. But not drunk. No, I’m definitely not drunk. And he says course I can stay, I can stay any time, he’d do anything for me, his old mate, I can have his old bedroom, the one he used to—the one he and his wife—where they—he can’t sleep in it any more, he’s in the back room, course I can stay there, no probs, as long as I like, any time.
I have a slash, then blunder through to the bedroom. The quilt’s covered in blue flowers and the chest of drawers has got one of them little china statues on it, a whatsit, a figurine. It’s like a little boy sitting on a stool with his hands in front of his face and his head bent forward as if he’s sobbing his little heart out, you know? Also, he’s been dropped or chucked across the room at some point ‘cause he’s got these two ruddy great cracks in him and been glued together again. If I had that in my bedroom, I wouldn’t want to sleep in there either. Anyway, I pat the little fellow on the head and say, “Know how you feel, matey. Don’t worry—things can only get better.” Then I shed my clothes in a pile and slide under the quilt and the last thing I hear is Jeff stumbling about, cursing at the door, the wall, the toilet and anything else that gets in his way. I slip into sleep, telling myself it’s all just a bad dream and every-thing’ll be all right in the morning. When it’s tomorrow, it’ll all be OK. Roll on tomorrow.
If I let him back tonight, I wouldn’t have to tell the children. I wouldn’t be standing here with my insides churning away like a cement mixer, trying to think up fairy stories as to why their father’s suddenly disappeared without trace. We could go to see a marriage guidance counsellor, talk to someone about his problems in an adult fashion. I picture it in my head—me, sitting legs-crossed and very calm, my voice low and reasonable. I am saying that he’s betrayed my trust, and I feel as if I mean absolutely nothing to him. Also, as well as carrying on with another woman, he’s irresponsible and leaves me to do everything plus I can’t remember the last time we had a real conversation. I rest my hands, one neatly across the other, on my leg, and say we rarely make love and when we do, it’s a routine, as predictable as loading the dishwasher: slot everything in their correct positions, add powder, close door, twist dial and push in. All systems go. He starts by nuzzling my neck, murmuring into my ear. Then he moves to my breasts; he tends to favour the left, because he’s right-handed, I suppose, but then he might say, “Oh, and I mustn’t neglect you, must I?” That’s him, talking to my right breast. He does that, chats to them as if they’re cute little pets. He keeps one hand on my breast, tweaking the nipple or cupping the whole thing in his palm as if he’s trying to guess the weight of the cake at a village fête, while the other slides lower, following its inevitable route downwards as surely as a swallow heading south for winter.