by Mike Gayle
The young woman stifled a laugh and Hubert looked at her quizzically.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly, “I know it’s silly. It’s just that when you said that, a picture popped up in my head of you sailing down Oxford Street in an ocean liner!”
Getting the joke, Hubert smiled but then immediately regretted it as his bruised upper lip began to throb.
“I know what they’ve been doing,” said the young woman, meeting his gaze briefly. “Everybody does. It’s not as if they’ve been keeping it a secret. Bragging about it as if it was something to be proud of. They did it to the last Caribbean gentleman we had down here. Drove him out within a fortnight with their tormenting they did, poor soul. I don’t think it’s right myself, but what can I do? I just work on the shop floor.” She threw away the blood-soaked cotton wool in her hands and tore off a fresh strip. “Anyway, that’s enough talking for now. I’ve got to concentrate on this next bit. You’ve got quite a nasty cut on your forehead and I need to get you cleaned up.”
Closing his eyes, Hubert allowed himself to be tended to by the young woman. Her fingers felt soft against his skin and every time he breathed through his nose he caught a hint of her perfume. It was something sweet and floral that he imagined was exactly how the English countryside he had heard so much about must smell in the height of summer.
As the young woman rustled about in the first-aid tin, she filled the silence between them with good-natured chat about life on the haberdashery counter. It was fun for the most part, getting to see and touch all the latest designs from Paris and beyond, and the girls she worked with were good company and sometimes they all went out together to the pictures on a weekend. The only fly in the ointment was her manageress, Miss Critchlow. She was a hawk of a woman, a stickler for presentation and punctuality, never overlooking an opportunity to tell the girls off for even the slightest infringement.
“Mark my words,” she said as she finished attending to the cut above Hubert’s eye, “she’ll be sending a search party out for me in a minute and talking about how much to dock my pay for wasting company time. Mr. Coulthard will put a good word in for me, though. Despite all his noise and bluster he’s a good sort, and for all her airs and graces, I reckon Miss Critchlow’s actually a bit sweet on him!”
As if summoned by the mere mention of his name, Hubert’s boss stormed into the break room and Hubert got to his feet straightaway.
“Mr. Coulthard, me can—”
“Save it, lad, it’s all been dealt with. I’ve sacked that lazy so-and-so Vince and I can’t say he’ll be missed. As for the others, well, right now they’re cleaning your locker. And take it from me, there won’t be any more trouble.”
He sighed heavily, then checked his watch.
“Dinner break is over in five minutes. Don’t be late clocking back in or there’ll be trouble.”
Without another word he swept out of the room, leaving Hubert and the young woman alone. She raised an eyebrow.
“Vince Smith, sacked! Who’d have thought it? Good riddance, that’s what I say.”
She closed the first-aid tin and returned it to the shelf.
“You’re all fixed.”
Hubert gingerly traced a finger over the cut above his eye.
“Thank you, thank you very much.”
The young woman smiled.
“You’re welcome Mr.… in all that kerfuffle I don’t think you actually told me your name.”
“Hubert, Hubert Bird. And yours?”
A faint smile played on her lips as they shook hands.
“Joyce,” she replied, “Joyce Pierce.”
5
NOW
Hubert didn’t often leave Bromley; in fact, he couldn’t think of a single occasion over the past five years when he had left its confines, and yet here he was, Freedom Pass at the ready, boarding the 10:42 to London Victoria. Relieved to find the train relatively empty, Hubert congratulated himself on having avoided the rush hour, and with the pick of seats to choose from, he selected a window seat with a table and surveyed his fellow passengers. Across the aisle there was a young man wearing a black baseball cap, reading a thick paperback, and opposite him two young women, both with brightly colored backpacks, were chatting animatedly to each other in a foreign language.
As the train pulled away Hubert settled back into his seat and with a heavy heart recalled the details of last night’s unscheduled call from Rose and the delightful and yet daunting news she had delivered.
“You’re… you’re… you’re… coming home?”
“Yes, I’ve finally done it! I’m taking a sabbatical, albeit a short one! I’ve booked the tickets and I land at Heathrow just after midday on the first of August.”
“But that’s…” He did a quick calculation in his head. “… that’s just four months away!”
“And it’ll fly by in no time!”
Overcome with emotion, Hubert had bitten his lip in an effort to hold back tears. After so long away, his darling daughter was finally coming home. In a short time she wouldn’t be just a voice at the end of a phone line, she’d be someone he could touch, hold, and see face-to-face. It’s what he’d dreamed of, hoped for, for the longest time, and at last it was happening.
“Dad… I know I’ve been a terrible daughter, leaving it so long to visit. I didn’t mean to but with one thing and another I just haven’t been able to make it over until now. But you’ve never once moaned, you’ve always been so patient, so encouraging of my career. That’s why I’m coming home for a good stretch of time. Six whole weeks! I want to make it up to you. I want to spend some proper time with my wonderful dad. I want us to visit all the places we always said we’d go. Take a tour of Buckingham Palace, go shopping in Harrods and have tea at the Ritz… how amazing would that be, Pops? Me and you taking a fancy la-di-da tea at the Ritz! We could even invite your whole pensioner gang to join us!”
She’d let out a little squeal of delight, but at the mention of his fictional friends Hubert’s stomach had lurched violently.
“Rose, come now. There’s… there’s no need for that kind of extravagance. It will be fine just the two of us.”
Rose had laughed as if Hubert had been making a joke.
“Oh, Dad!” she’d chided. “What are you like? Tea at the Ritz is the least I owe Dotty, Dennis, and Harvey after all they’ve done for you. I mean, how about the time Harvey took you to the hospital for your cataract operation and stayed with you while you recovered? Or the time you had that terrible cold and Dotty made you the pea soup with the bacon bits in it, just how you like it? And don’t even get me started on the time Dennis surprised you with tickets to Lord’s to see the West Indies play. It was all you could talk about for weeks!”
It was more lies of course. With no friends to help him, Hubert had no choice but to attend his cataract operation alone, even though he’d been terrified that it might leave him blind. The time when he’d had the terrible cold, the nearest he’d come to pea soup with bacon bits was a tomato-flavor Cup-a-Soup he’d found languishing at the back of the cupboard. And as for watching the West Indies play at Lord’s, Hubert had as always listened to the match on the radio while sitting alone at the kitchen table.
“Dotty, Dennis, and Harvey have been there for you, Dad,” Rose had continued. “There for you in ways I haven’t been able to be myself, so of course I want to thank them! To be honest I want to kiss and hug the lot of them and treat them to a good night out too. It’s the least I can do. They’ve taken care of you, Dad. And anyone who looks after my dad when I can’t be there myself is certainly a friend of mine.”
Hubert had felt sick.
“Rose, this is lovely of you but there’s no need to be making this kind of fuss about me friends. Truth be told, my dear, them are all old and stuck in their ways. Me tell you, them sooner stay in and listen to Gardeners’ Question Time than take high tea at a fancy West End hotel.”
Rose had laughed.
“Surely they can’
t be more stuck in their ways than you, Pops! You get twitchy if you’re forced to eat tea any later than five o’clock.”
Hubert had tried not to sound frantic.
“Look, darling, just come as you are and leave my friends out of it. Then just the two of us can have a nice time together.”
“Oh, Dad, I know what this is all about. And I want you to know that you don’t have to worry. You’re worried about me spending money, aren’t you? But there’s absolutely no need, Dad. I’m not poor. I’ve got a great job, no dependents, and plenty of savings. Plus, I got a good deal on the plane ticket and this trip is long overdue—”
Hubert interrupted.
“But you’re forgetting… August is holiday season here in England. There’s a good chance Dotty, Dennis, and Harvey will be away.”
“For six whole weeks?” scoffed Rose. “I didn’t know you’d all been doing the lottery together. Where are they going, Monte Carlo? And anyway, didn’t you tell me that Dotty didn’t like to go away from home for too long because her cat stops eating whenever she puts him in a cattery?”
Hubert had never wanted to box his own ears more than he did right at that moment. Why had he lied to Rose all these years? And more importantly, why had he gone into so much detail? All that nonsense about Harvey and the hospital trip, Dotty and the soup, and Dennis taking him to the cricket! He’d made a rod for his own back with those lies and now they were taking the opportunity to beat him black and blue.
“The cat’s dead.”
“Dead? When?”
“Yesterday. It was sudden. She just woke up and the cat was gone.”
“Oh, poor Juju! And poor Dotty too! She practically worshipped that cat, didn’t she? And didn’t she have him from when he was a kitten? I think I remember you telling me she bought him after her husband died. Oh, how sad. Give me her address and I’ll pop a sympathy card over to her.”
Hubert had shaken his head in disbelief. Every time he’d tried to dig himself out of the hole all he’d done was sink deeper.
He tried again.
“She’s… she’s… moving house and me haven’t got her new address yet.”
“Oh. Is she moving far?”
“Not really… she’s… she’s what you call it…”
“Downsizing?”
“That’s the one. Anyway, when me get her new address me give it to you but in the meantime me need to go because…”
Hubert’s mind went blank. What excuse could he give to cut this conversation short?
“Me need the loo something desperate. It’s not easy being an old man.”
That night he’d barely slept a wink for tossing and turning with worry. Why hadn’t he just come clean? Why hadn’t he simply told her the truth? How could he have been so stupid? How was she going to react when she turned up in August only to find out he’d been lying all this time?
But on waking, Hubert suddenly remembered something his mother always used to say when he was a little boy and troubled by a situation. “Hubert,” she would say, “you need to spend less time fixing on the problem and more time working out what you’re going to do about it!” And as he lay there in bed it occurred to him that she was right. Lying around feeling sorry for himself wasn’t going to sort anything out. What he needed was a solution to his current predicament. A way forward. A plan.
And then it hit him. His daughter was undoubtedly going to be angry once she discovered that he’d been lying to her about Dotty, Dennis, and Harvey. So what if in their place he presented his old friends? Gus and the Red Lion crowd. Surely she wouldn’t be quite so angry once he had explained that he’d gone to the effort of reconnecting with them just to please her?
With this in mind, Hubert decided that the best place to start would be with his old friend Gus. But when he tried calling, all he got was a message saying that the number was no longer in use. Refusing to fall at the first hurdle, Hubert made up his mind to get the train over to Brixton and visit Gus in person.
Despite having made the journey from Bromley South to Brixton countless times over the years, he felt strange being back after such a protracted absence. Looking around, he wondered what might have changed, but the truth was everything—from the modern-looking benches on the platform to the signs pointing in the direction of the exit—seemed new and unfamiliar.
Following the crowds, Hubert made his way out of the station, only to struggle to get his bearings. On the one hand, it seemed a lot like the Brixton High Street he had always known, but on the other it was very different. Shops had closed down and reopened as something else, road markings had changed, even the people passing by seemed unfamiliar. He saw people of races that weren’t immediately recognizable, heard languages and accents that he couldn’t quite identify. It almost seemed like another country.
As he stood wondering which way to go, Hubert heard people tut at him for blocking the way, and one young man even swore and told him to move. Finally, he realized that he needed to be on the other side of the main road and so, heading to the traffic lights a little farther on, he pressed the button and crossed over.
Ignoring the overtures of a young man staffing a bright yellow gazebo with the letters AA emblazoned across it, Hubert carried on walking until he reached the first of a series of drab-looking low-rise flats. Coming to a halt in front of the third block along, Hubert slipped on his reading glasses and consulted his address book several times to make sure he had the right number, because the ground-floor flat that was supposed to belong to Gus didn’t look at all the way he remembered it.
The place seemed to have been abandoned. The paint on the woodwork was peeling, the once bright white net curtains at the windows were dirty gray and torn in places, and one of the panes of glass at the front was cracked and boarded over from the inside with a piece of plywood. In a small area to the left of the front door that corresponded with the balconies of the flats above, someone had abandoned a small yellowing fridge-freezer, two broken garden chairs, some dead plants in pots, and at least half a dozen full-to-bursting black bin bags.
Hubert could think of only one explanation for why Gus’s home had fallen into such disrepair: his old friend had moved and the people who had taken over the property clearly couldn’t care for themselves. The Gus he knew had always been so house-proud. Hubert recalled with a smile the day he first got this place, his first council home, at the age of thirty, having waited seven years for one to become available. “Smiler, man,” he’d said as they had carefully navigated a dining table through the front door on the day Gus moved in, “I’m going to turn this place into a palace!”
The building had been brand-new back then, smart and modern-looking, fresh and clean, the perfect starter home for single people or those with young families. Hubert and Joyce had been delighted for their friend and Joyce had secretly confessed that she thought this might be the beginning of Gus finally settling down. “You’ll see,” she’d said. “Now he’s got a home of his own, the next step will be to find a nice girl to share it with.”
Considering Gus’s track record with women, Hubert hadn’t been at all convinced, but this hadn’t stopped him from chiming in with his opinion. “Well,” he’d said, “me certainly hope you’re right, because me don’t like the idea of him living the bachelor life all his days.” He’d paused and smiled at Joyce. “He’s been such a good friend to me and me hate the idea of him ending up alone.”
Hubert considered the flat in front of him again. It was now in such a sorry state that you wouldn’t credit it with being the same building he’d helped his friend move into all those years ago. He recalled seeing a program on ITV about people who didn’t look after their homes and filled them up with rubbish. What were they called again? He thought long and hard but it was a good few minutes before the word finally came to him. Hoarders. That was what they called them. Hoarders. It was sad, really. These people would fill their homes—living rooms, kitchens, bedrooms, the lot—with all manner of junk because they were
n’t right in the head. And now clearly a hoarder had moved into his old friend’s home and turned this once smart place into a rubbish heap.
Hubert wondered what to do next.
On the one hand, if Gus had left a forwarding address and there was indeed a hoarder living here, then for once Hubert might be in luck. If anyone were to have kept Gus’s new address, then it would be a hoarder, surely! One knock on the door and perhaps the offer of a bit of help rummaging through the mountains of rubbish and Gus’s new address would be his. But on the other hand, if this person was a hoarder, then there stood a chance they might have all manner of mental illnesses and might, even worse, be violent too. It was a real dilemma.
Hubert reasoned that he had come too far to give up this easily and so, steeling himself, made his way up the path to the front door. Shifting a few of the bin bags out of the way, Hubert pushed the bell, only for it to fall off in his hands. Through the cracked frosted windowpane of the front door Hubert could hear the sound of a TV but could see no other signs of life. He knocked on the doorframe, fearing that a rap on the glass might cause it to shatter, but there was no response from inside. He knocked several more times, getting louder and louder with each one, but still nothing. Finally he decided to try the letterbox, but the flap was missing. Instead he peered through the gap to see what he could see. There were huge piles of newspapers in the hallway and yet more bulging rubbish bags but no signs of life. Hubert continued knocking on the door for a good few minutes before reluctantly concluding that he had done all he could. Whoever was living there now was either out or not interested in talking to him.
Hubert allowed himself to think about his old friend and where in the world he might be. Had he met a woman and moved in with her somewhere new? Had he simply decided on a change of scenery and moved to another part of London, or indeed England? Maybe he’d even won the lottery and returned home to Jamaica to live out the rest of his days in the sun.
