British Winters Read online

Chapter Nine

  Sign Me Away

  Anyone who has ever worked in a bar, or any kind of work with similar hours, will understand the surreal and time-bending sensation of working a late and then the following day working an early. The time between the two shifts is an empty void; you recall leaving but don’t recall getting home. You forget what you ate. Did you eat? You vaguely remember the comforting glow of a TV set; maybe yours, maybe a friend’s. A want and a willingness to sleep in your unmade bed rattles around your thoughts but it fades in and out merging with the sound of footsteps; the footsteps are of you walking back to work. Then the visions fade and you are standing in the same spot you were a few hours ago.

  “So, Noel, the bottle is still in my office.” I’m not totally sure if that is a statement or a question but it looks like Kev is waiting for a response.

  “You think the piss fairy’s gonna take it and leave you a nice shiny quarter?”

  “No, I was thinking that Gladys, the paid cleaner, would have removed it.”

  “Firstly, I’m guessing when she saw the half-full bottle of your pee she didn’t think it was pee. Because why would a fully grown man pee in a bottle in his office. Secondly, if she did know what it was, I’m thinking she’d feel it was above and beyond the call of her minimum wage duty to dispose of her boss’ piss bottle.”

  “So, I’m supposed to sit in there with that thing on my desk like a poor man’s lava lamp?”

  “No, you should go in there and get rid of it.”

  “But it’ll be warm.”

  “If that thing’s still warm you need to go to the doctor.”

  “Come.” He gives me the ‘follow me’ gesture with his index finger, which is so degrading. It’s something you do to a child; it says I have so much power I can make you follow me with just a finger - not even the hand - one finger. The only thing worse would be a toe and I don’t even know how that’d work.

  I follow the shaved baboon into his office where he points at the devil’s own receptacle, his eyes wide and his lips tight.

  “No fucking way, Kev, I’ll take the sexually explicit comments but I ain’t disposing of your fluids.”

  “I know you wouldn’t, I’m not saying that. Look, it’s been sitting in the sun, it’s reheated pee.”

  “It’s the end of December. How much can the sun do?”

  “Did you not take science? Sun, glass, heat.”

  “Yeah but you’re cheap, the heating’s off and the pub is freezing.”

  In the end Kev slipped me a fiver and I prodded the bottle into the office bin with a pencil. Gladys will get it in the morning. And so the tale of Kev micturating into a bottle comes to an end. It’s the kind of tale that you try to tell anecdotally at a later date but you never really convey the real ups and downs of the moment.

  With Kev content to sit in his office, the offending item now out of sight, the rest of my shift continues without incident to the point of tedium. The regulars wander in, speak little to me and nothing to each other. Hobo Joe uses the Gents to freshen up, giving me a cheeky smile on his way out and sometime around eleven o’clock we run out of Worcestershire sauce flavoured crisps.

  The relief member of staff is Kyle. We have a textbook co-worker relationship; each of us knows the odd random facts about each other and relentlessly brings them up to appear friendly to make the shift change-over as pleasant as possible.

  “Why hello, Hans Noelo.” A while back Kyle noticed I was wearing a storm trooper T-shirt - that’s a Lucas storm trooper not a Hitler one - and saw me as a lover of the saga.

  “Hello, right back at ya, Luke Kylewalker.” And I have concluded that he is also a follower of Lucas.

  “Just listening to the Gallagher brothers,” Kyle announces as he takes his headphones off. And this is where his dependence on T-shirts, being a way to know a man, falls flat on its face. Last week I did have an Oasis top on but only out of necessity. A saucy meatball had escaped its sub-roll prison and rolled down my Bob Ross ‘Happy Trees’ T-shirt forcing me to don the Oasis top, which I had acquired from the lost property box.

  “Cool.” I’d rather fake it than explain it to him.

  “So good. People think they’re all over but musically I think they just got better and better.” I haven’t bought an Oasis CD since Live Forever.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  We switch sides, making him the barman and me the patron. We exchange some day-to-day chatter: weather, main headlines etc. and I’m free to go. I wish for a day where I can just say, “Hey, you know what, we’re just co-workers not friends, if it was gonna happen it would’ve by now, so how about we just nod at one another as we pass each other by?”

  “I didn’t know you were old friends with Jenny Weir.”

  “What, you know Jenny?”

  “Sure, we go way back.” Kyle mimes smoking what I believe to be a large joint implying that back in the day he and Jenny used to get baked together.

  “And she mentioned me?”

  “Only in passing, said you two bumped into each other, talked about a meet up.”

  “Yeah, I haven’t had the chance to call her.” Yes I have, don’t know why I haven’t. Guilt I guess. Deb is my girl and though this Jenny thing is just friends, I know I’d cave in if she gave me the right look.

  “You should call her, she seems a little into you.”

  “I thought she just mentioned me in passing.”

  “Still, her face lit up a little when I said I worked with you.”

  “Really?” See I’m caving in now and it’s Kyle who’s giving me the look.

  “Call her, Noelie Wan Kenobi, you’re her only hope.”

  I hate people who talk on their mobile phone whilst walking down the street. They shout as though they are talking to the guy across the road instead of the microphone which is only a few inches away from their mouth: ‘Sorry, I can’t hear you very well I’m in the street!!’. Then don’t make phone calls when you are out in the street. I know sometimes it’s an incoming call but can’t you just say, ‘Hey, sorry, I’m outside right now, I’ll call you back when I am somewhere a little less noisy’? I hate all those walk and talkers, always looking so casual and smug: ‘Oh hello, David, how’s your Betty? Loooooovely. Kisses’. They’re not having a personal phone conversation, they’re putting on a show for the world, a show called ‘How to Talk to Friends and Alienate Yourself from the Rest of the World’. Dicks.

  “Hey, Jen, sorry it’s a bit loud I’m by the road.” So I’m a hypocrite, name me someone who isn’t.

  “Yeah, it’s Noel, I was thinking about us meeting up soon.”

  God, sorry Deb, I’m scum. I’ve become like every other guy and I always prided myself on the fact I wasn’t like that. My dad was a cheater; I don’t want to be that guy.

  “Well, I was thinking about tomorrow evening?… Oh shit, of course it’s Christmas tomorrow.” Fuck, it’s Christmas tomorrow. Where is my mind?

  “Boxing Day? Yeah, I can do that, seven sound’s great… Yeah, I think The George isn’t the right place to meet up, how about the Parrot?… Ok, see you then.” I tried to plan a date with another woman on Jesus’ birthday - I’m less than nothing.

  The phone still in my hand vibrates and my ringtone, A Song for Jeffrey by Jethro Tull, kicks in.

  “Hey, Deb, yeah, I can’t talk I’m by the road; I can’t hear you very well. I’ll call you back.” Scum, sub-human scum.

  I swallow the guilt and allow it to kill me slowly from the inside. Today I have a mission; something I need to do, something I do every year, something that the Christmas season has forced me to do. But this year is the last time - this is the goodbye.

  The venue is a bar, like most of the venues of my life. Pubs are like the bumpers in a pinball machine bouncing me from one year to the next. The pub’s name is The Greyhound; an appropriate name as it conjures up visions of an old man in a flat cap stumbling from betting shop to pub and back with his only friend, a well-loved but t
atty looking greyhound and this is the kind of man the pub attracts. I head to the bar and take a seat. I know the bartender’s name - it’s Hank, Hank Walsh. He looks like a man who’s never had a dream, a born realist; grow up, get a job and die. Neither content nor unfulfilled he knows his place in the world and that place is behind this bar. I both pity and envy him, so sad to see one’s fellow man without hopes of a better life. Yet I see his life paralleling mine and I’m in hell; the job is a prison and my lack of effort is a noose around my neck. God, what I’d give to find my place in this world, no matter how boring it may seem, a place that fits around me like a warm blanket. Not that Hank sees this place as a warm blanket; I’m sure it’s still a prison but unlike me, he has no delusions of parole.

  “Two whiskeys, Hank.” Smile Hank, you are set, this is your life; no getting better or no getting worse, just need to ride it out. I see a pile of used scratch-cards by the till. I take it all back, Hank. I don’t know you any more than I know this sorry sight of a man who is sitting next to me at the bar. You’re miserable; you’d burn this prison to the ground if only you could scratch off a thin layer of silver and see those three cherries. The man next to me takes one of the freshly poured whiskeys I had just ordered and knocks it back.

  “Merry Christmas, Dad.”

  “Nice black eye. I guess you got that whilst you were sober as a judge?”

  “I did actually.”

  Dad and I don’t talk; I send him a card on his birthday and I meet him here every Christmas Eve. Whereas, I get a card every couple of years on the day after my birthday and he sits in this bar most of the year. A drunk? Sure, but it’s more than that. When I was a kid he’d fuck up and then bribe me with sweets or a trip to the cinema and that was enough for a fickle child. As an adult I just see a man who ninety-nine per cent of the time is not too pleasant a person to be around. He’s the dad but I had to put all the effort in; I had to try to get him to love me. He’d say that he was taking me out for the day and we’d always end up in some pub so he could indulge his demons. I recall a teary-eyed phone call to a woman, who at the time was my stepmother, to ask her to come and get us because instead of getting Easter Eggs we’d gone to the Horse and Cart so Daddy could get plastered. She got mad at me for letting him go to the pub and told me to get him into a taxi - I was thirteen years old. Later he tried to kill her so I guess what goes around comes around.

  “I need you to sign something for me.”

  “School trip?”

  “I’m thirty-two.”

  “It was a joke.” I slide the papers down the bar.

  “You’re changing your name, taking your mother’s?”

  “I’m taking Grandad’s name, it fits better with me.”

  “The guy hates me. You hate me. I guess you’re right, that is a good fit.”

  “I don’t hate you. I just don’t want to know you.” That kind of statement should make you feel better. I mean a person who you thought hated you doesn’t. And hate is the worst emotion you could have for someone. But for somebody to not even want to know you, that’s soul destroying. Because most people, being the fucked-up species that we are, would much rather someone completely loathe them than be unknown; than be overlooked.

  “You don’t even need me to be the person to sign this, anyone could do it, so I guess this is a real ‘fuck you’ to your old dad. I think that shows there’s a little hate, son.”

  “It just seems fitting that it’s you who signs, that it’s you who helps cut the last connection. After today we’re all done.”

  “It’s not very Christian of you, son, it being Christmas Eve and all.”

  “Firstly, I wouldn’t call myself a Christian. Secondly, I’m guessing you won’t be spending tomorrow any differently than you spend any other day.”

  “I’ve met someone actually.”

  “Ha! Have you told her to sleep with one eye open?”

  “You’re filled with bitterness, son. I’ll sign your form because I know that I failed you, and your brother. But you’re failing yourself now.”

  “I’m glad that in this brief and parting conversation you’ve mustered up the courage to admit your failings as a father and teach me the error of my ways. Why not go the whole hog and drop the bombshell that you’re a drunk.”

  “You don’t know what you are talking about, Noel.”

  “Come on, ‘Hello I’m William Winters and I am an alcoholic’. Come on, Dad, let us part on a real breakthrough.”

  “I know what I am. Here are your bloody forms.”

  “Thanks, Dad, thanks for signing me away. Hank, get him another.”

  I walk out knowing we’re not done. His blood runs through my veins, I see his face every time I look in the mirror. See you next year, Dad.

  I love the sound of vinyl, the dull crackle as the needle makes contact with the black surface of the record. It sounds like hearing an explosion being muffled by cotton wool. I love the crystal clear sound of a CD, oh the joy of getting to rip the cellophane off the newly re-mastered classic like Raw Power or Highway 61. Music purists may condemn them but I just love the music and I want to lay back and hear the clarity of each instrument. My heart swells with the nostalgia of the days of mixed tapes, hand crafting a playlist to fit its purpose: road music, walking music, fornicating music. Today we have MP3s and, yes, the sound is compressed, its quality reduced… so what? I get to walk around with my entire album collection, 160GBs of eclectic tunes. The god of electronics created the shuffle option many moons ago for this very day. In the past this was an unused novelty. I don’t like rearranging the order of an album; the band chose that order for it to be played that way, but now, now I’m shuffling 20,000+ songs. I go from The Smiths to Miles Davis; I go from Davis to the Beta Band; from the Beta Band to The Band and where do we go from here? The answer is anywhere; Bowie, Coltrane, Public Enemy, The Faces, The Raincoat, Jazz, Rock, Rap, Punk, Blues, no Reggae. I adore my MP3 player as it makes me listen to albums I haven’t heard since I bought them and now I like them even more. A good example of this would be Laurie Anderson’s Big Science. I bought that back in ‘96, I would have been fifteen or sixteen at the time and I purchased it because of an interview with Lou Reed where he talked about it and rated it as a must buy. I put it on and hated it; didn’t even get past track three. Then one day I wake up, my MP3 player plugged into my alarm, to Oh Superman - it was surreal and it turned the early morning grogginess into a semi LSD trip. I now love the album and not only because in the right condition it has drug-like qualities but because I had musically matured. Nearly two decades had passed and in those years things had changed me: I don’t know why and how but I now dig that album. Thank you, technology, and thank you for again helping me in my quest of fully disconnecting from everyone. You gave me an answering machine to keep the world at bay when I’m at home; you gave me the TV so I may ignore them when they have infiltrated my lair; and now you have given me a portable music device that can hold so much music that if I were to listen to the first track to the last one and do nothing else I’d die of dehydration. This device is my bubble, my shield from the world; I hear nothing but the sounds of music. This is the bubble that could have prevented my black eye. In my bubble I walk oblivious to the world’s evils. Laurie Anderson’s electro melodies drift me away.

  I feel a change in the wind. I see the faces of the people in front of me turn to horror but it’s the appearance of a spinning tyre that appears in my periphery that alerts my sense of danger.

  “Fuck me!!” I scream as I drop to the ground and watch an off-white Ford Fiesta fly over my head. It smashes to the ground at the curb facing me, sliding on its side; it crashes into a lamp-post and then spins on to the sloped grass verge by the road, where it lands back on its wheels. What just happened? Standing back up I can see that other cars have stopped, their drivers getting out to see the wreckage but there’s no sign of how the vehicle had become airborne. You can’t see the passengers of the car, well not from wh
ere I’m standing. I can see blood though. It runs down the white door of the Fiesta then drips onto the grass; red, white and green - how festive, huh, a festive Fiesta. The paramedic makes me sit in the ambulance when the emergency services arrive. I tell him I’m fine. Maybe he’s just killing time while the fire brigade cut the real victims out of the car. His partner is over by the car’s window talking to the person or persons within. I’m too far away to hear what she is saying or if she is getting any kind of response. A catastrophe like this needs all the services: paramedics to tend to the wounded; firemen to cut them free; and the police to take down statements and redirect the traffic. What a circus - one car’s mistake taking up all of these resources.

  “Bet it’s a drunk,” the onlookers say. “Bloody boy racers!” So much judgement at the sign of a tragedy; seasonal good will appears to be absent even this close to the day. My over concerned paramedic is called over by his counterpart and he abandons me as I notice a tyre mark on the shoulder of my coat.

  “Holy fuck, the tyre grazed me. Hey, mister, maybe you should check me over.”

  They’ve got the car’s roof off. My paramedic runs back to me and pushes me aside to grab a gurney. He says sorry but I am no longer his concern. It’s a little boy no older than Hannah; they rush him into the back of the ambulance. Oh God, it’s Jonathan, the boy from Hannah’s play, half his face broken and ripped, the swelling making one of his eyes invisible but I can see it’s him. I hear my paramedic ask, “What about the dad?” The other paramedic just shakes her head. No drunk, no boy racer. Sorry, judgemental crowd/mob, just a little kid and his dad.

  “Oh God, are you hurt?” Back at the flat Deb has come over after hearing the news second hand from my mother and I had only told her so she’d have time to work out how to break the news to Hannah.

  “I’m fine. A near death experience never killed anyone.”

  “It’s not funny, a man died.”

  “I know, I was making light of my situation not cheapening his.”

  “It’s just your weird way of dealing, I know, I know.”

  I show Deb the tyre mark on my coat and tell her about the shock of it all.

  “I ducked a flying car. That’s like action movie shit.”

  We talk about Jonathan in the hospital; machines keeping him alive, a child, half-orphaned, fighting for his life. There are no tears, none from me that is, but I am screaming on the inside. Deb somehow sees it in me; she always does. Others don’t see the wounded side of me but she does. She kisses me tenderly on the mouth like she always does when she sees that side of me. Maybe she likes this side of me, the vulnerability is a turn on or maybe it’s all she can think of doing to heal the pain. Our eyes close, our mouths lock, I feel my shirt unbutton. My hands roam; her body is so much younger than mine. Age and gravity have not had any effect so far. When I was her age my chest was bare, apart from the odd sprouting follicle, now it is a dark hairy forest worthy of an eighties action hero. I imagine it is coarse against a soft delicate skin. My aging out-of-shape body is an offence to her beauty. She breathes heavily, “I love you.” And I think, ‘You shouldn’t.’ Afterward we spoon in silence for what feels like hours but I’m sure is only minutes. She stands to get dressed, thinking I am asleep. A kiss on my forehead indicates she means to leave.

  “Where you going?”

  “To my mum’s, you can come if you like.”

  “No, I’ve got my own family stuff.”

  “Ok, I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon then and I can give you your present.”

  Another kiss, this time on the lips. My beard prickles her face but she doesn’t pull away. She loves me and yet I mean to betray her. As I touched her during the sex I thought of Jenny Weir; as we kissed I wished they were Jenny’s lips not Deb’s and when I climaxed it was Jenny’s face I saw which only faded when I heard Deb’s distinct moans. I hear her close the door and then I let my weariness in. You never recall the moment that sleep comes upon you, you just remember the sad feeling you get when it fades.