With a smile and a parting wave, I head back down the path to the street.
Bolstered by Father O'Connor’s words, I set off down the road. If I’m to survive this mad world, I need to embrace my own madness.
16.
My favourite video game of all time is Call of Duty: WWII. It’s what’s called a first-person shooter, whereby you take on the role of a character and make your way through an immersive world completing various tasks and challenges.
The game itself is set in the historical events of Operation Overlord, and features a squad in the First Infantry Division. When I’m crouched on a landing vessel just off the coast of Normandy and bullets are zipping past my head, the sense of realism is uncanny. You truly experience a rush of adrenalin, the chaos, and on some level, even the fear. So intense is the battle, I’ve lost track of time and reality on countless occasions.
Patently I know I’m not a young solider amid the chaos of the D-Day landings, but while I’m playing the game, I live it as if I am. That is the same mindset I need to employ here. I need to treat it like the set of a video game and just play along.
However, unlike a video game there’s no instruction manual or online mission hints available. I’ll need to make this up as I go.
My mind turns to the reason I’m here — Vernon, and his photo of Gwen. Presumably, the couple are currently enjoying their fledgling marriage, unaware of the tragedy awaiting Gwen this afternoon. I could, I suppose, spend however long I’m here just pottering around and enjoying the novelty factor but Gwen’s face in that photo won’t let me. She’s so young. Too young to die.
If I’m to play this world like a video game, my ultimate aim is to save Gwen Kirby. It shouldn’t prove too difficult stopping her from entering that Post Office — if I could remember her exact address. I’ve no idea what happened to my horrible uniform but the slip of paper Vernon gave me is still in the trouser pocket. I’m sure the address featured Cumberland Street but I can’t for the life of me remember the number.
That’s the first problem, and I’ll have to come up with a solution while I make my way to Cumberland Street. The second problem is finding Cumberland Street.
I ponder the problem for a minute and conclude every solution leads back to a much bigger problem — no Internet. I suppose I could head back to Barlow’s and buy a map but with limited funds and no means of adding to those funds, I need to watch every penny.
Shit. I need to go old-school on this.
I pass a bus stop where two pension-age women are deep in conversation.
“Excuse me,” I interrupt. “I don’t suppose you know where Cumberland Street is? I’m a little lost.”
“You are lost,” the first woman replies. “It’s on the other side of town.”
“Oh. And how would I get there?”
She turns to her friend.
“Is it the number twenty-eight?”
“I’m not sure, Maude. Isn’t it the thirty-two?” she replies.
The first woman, who I now know is called Maude, turns back to me.
“Head to the bus station and they’ll tell you.”
“Right. And where is the bus station?”
“In the town centre.”
I’m confident the town centre is no more than a mile away. I could get the bus but I’ve got time to kill and money to save. And besides, I have a nasty feeling the buses won’t have air conditioning.
“Thanks, Maude. You’re a star.”
“I beg your pardon.”
Presuming she’s hard of hearing, I repeat myself.
“It’s madam, or Mrs Greaves to you, young man.”
“What?”
“It’s pardon! Good grief — what is the world coming to? Youth of today have no manners and even less respect.”
“Err, sorry.”
Clearly offended, Mrs Greaves huffs a deep sigh and turns her back on me. My ears burn for the next hundred yards as I flee the indignant pensioner.
As I wind my way through the streets towards the town centre, I check my watch — or more specifically, my wrist, as I no longer have a watch. Our ability to check the time whenever we please is like a security blanket, and you only realise how much you miss it when it’s no longer there. I don’t like it. Without my faithful iWatch, all I know is it’s still Friday morning, and Gwen’s fateful trip to the Post Office is around three this afternoon.
I press on.
By the time I reach the outskirts of the town, Father O'Connor’s aspirin have fulfilled their painkilling remit and the worst of the headache has ebbed away. So too has the nausea; only to be replaced with hunger pangs. Food is now my priority.
I reach the intersection of two busy roads and scan left and right in search of a fast-food outlet. The typically ubiquitous signs are absent in every direction. I’ve no idea when the fast-food franchises first crossed the pond but none of the usual suspects are here yet. It’s also unlikely I’ll find a Starbucks or Costa either, and I could murder a cherry mocha Frappuccino.
I turn right and pass the imaginatively named, Jill’s Cafe; a dour-looking establishment with a handwritten menu in the window. Famished, and in the knowledge this is likely as good as the dining options get, I enter.
Within seconds I regret my decision. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the cafe itself; a dozen tables are neatly laid with chequerboard tablecloths and the patrons seem affable enough. The reason for my regret is the haze of cigarette smoke hanging in the air. Four of the nine customers are puffing away; oblivious to the poison they’re coughing into the air and the harm they’re inflicting on everyone around them.
“Can I help you, love?” a woman who might be Jill calls over from the counter.
“Um, do you have a non-smoking section?”
“You can have a table by the door if you like?”
“No, you’re okay.”
I turn around and leave.
The next cafe I find is even worse. Just a cursory glance in the window is enough to confirm my lunch will be served with a side order of emphysema. I shudder at the sight of a woman feeding a toddler — spoon in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
What is wrong with these people?
Eventually I come across a cafe with a few tables outside. I take a seat and study the menu. The options are limited and virtually everything is fried but I’m past caring now.
A dumpy, blonde-haired waitress appears.
“What can I get you, sweetheart?”
“I’ll have the cheese omelette with salad, please. Oh, and a Red Bull.”
“What’s a Red Bull?”
“It’s … never mind. I’ll have a sparkling water.”
“This is a cafe, sweetheart. The only water we serve comes out the tap.”
“I’ll have a Coke then.”
“You want bread and butter?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Do you want bread and butter?”
“What for? I’m not planning an omelette sandwich.”
“No need to be sarky,” she frowns.
A slip of paper is slapped on the table.
“It’ll be ten minutes.”
The waitress waddles away.
To kill time, I inspect the menu again, and the alien pre-decimal prices. At no point in my twenty-nine years have I had any need to understand how money worked before 1971 — until now. Rather than pounds and pence, each item on the menu is followed by a fraction of some kind with my omelette 5/1 and the Coke 2/2. I’ve no idea how those numbers relate to the ten-shilling note in my pocket, or what a shilling is.
Ordinarily, I’d whip my phone out and Wikipedia would provide an answer within seconds. The only option now is a trip to the library to pour over an actual encyclopaedia.
I stare at the menu a few minutes longer in the hope I can crack the code. I give up when the headache threatens a return.
With nothing else better to do, I take to people watching and it occurs to me that my own parents could wande
r down this very street. If they did, and I accept the chances are slim, I’m not sure I’d recognise them as they’d both be in their late teens.
I let that thought stew for a moment — my parents are actually living their lives somewhere in this parody, yet I’m a decade older than both of them.
My thoughts are interrupted as a plate is unceremoniously dumped in front of me.
“One omelette with salad and a Coke.”
Judging by her surly expression, the waitress is still clearly pissed with me.
“Thank you, and sorry about earlier. I’m having a bad day.”
She finds a half-smile.
“Don’t fret, sweetheart. I’ve had worse customers.”
Bridge mended, she hands me a knife and fork wrapped in a napkin, and disappears back inside the cafe.
I crack straight into my lunch and clear the plate within a few minutes. The omelette proved delicious but the salad just a few limp lettuce leaves and a tomato cut into quarters. The highlight though, was the Coke; ice-cold and served in a glass bottle with a straw. The recipe can’t have altered that much, but it tasted so much better than the Coke I had at McDonald's last week.
The waitress returns.
“Everything okay?”
“Good, thanks.”
“That’ll be seven and three then, please.”
“Sorry?”
“The bill. It’s seven and three.”
“Oh, right.”
I offer my solitary note which she tucks into the pocket of her apron. Four coins are returned.
“Two and nine change, sweetheart. I hope your day gets better.”
The waitress bustles away, leaving me to examine the coins in my hand: three silver and one copper. Two of the coins are marked ‘one shilling’ and before lunch I had ten of those — I now have two which means I’ve blown a large chunk of my budget on an omelette and a Coke. Bollocks.
I scuttle away before the waitress returns for a tip which isn’t there.
It seems whichever time period I’m in — real or otherwise — money issues are a constant. The key difference in this existence is I’m virtually broke and there is no safety net. I can’t get an overdraft as I don’t have a bank account, and I can’t secure a payday loan as I’m certain they don’t exist in this era — perhaps no bad thing. I don’t own anything I can sell on eBay, even if eBay existed, and I don’t know anyone I can borrow a few quid from.
For the first time in my life I am genuinely concerned where my next meal will come from.
Based on Vernon’s theory, I’m only here for forty-eight hours but I need to eat, and I don’t think the four coins in my pocket will fund another cafe visit. If worst comes to the worst, I suppose I could visit a food bank.
For now though, I need to find the bus station, although I’m beginning to wonder if walking might be the better option considering my dire finances. What a shitty dilemma: take the bus and starve, or walk a couple of miles in the blistering heat. I’m no fan of walking but I’m less a fan of hunger.
Decision made, I’m back to square one in that I still don’t know where Cumberland Street is. I guess the library will have local maps and I do at least know it isn’t far.
After a two-minute walk, and with the sun approaching its zenith, I reach the library. As I step through the doors, I try to recall my last visit. I think it might have been to complete a half-term school project maybe fifteen years ago. Bizarrely, that memory of my past is the current library’s future, and it includes yet-to-be-installed air-conditioning. The digital media room is also absent; including the rows of beige computer monitors I recall from my last visit. I remember thinking how antiquated those computers were for the time; yet what I wouldn’t give to access one now.
However, what isn’t absent is the stench of cigarette smoke. Of the two places I assumed smoking wouldn’t be tolerated, one would be where people eat and the other would be in a room chock full of highly combustible material. It appears both my assumptions were incorrect.
I head for the reference section and locate a town map. It’s telling I’ve never used a paper map before and it takes a few minutes to get my head around the grid system. Eventually I locate Cumberland Street and work out a route from my current location. The map also identifies the Post Office where Gwen will head in a few hours’ time, according to the library clock. The walk should take no more than half-an-hour which means I’ve got two whole hours to forge a plan. Without knowing her precise address, I’ve somehow got to prevent Gwen from being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I find a chair in a quiet corner and let the significance of my task sink in.
Until now my subconscious mind has remained in a state of denial, which is understandable — experiencing life two decades before you were born tends to fuck with one’s head. It’s as if I’m trapped in a surreal but incredibly vivid dream in which the lines of reality have become increasingly blurred; to the point my mind now appears to have conceded acceptance. Maybe it’s a coping mechanism — better to go with the flow of insanity than swim against the tsunami of reason.
Certain facts are undeniable though: a woman will die this afternoon, and I’m the only person who can stop it. That’s more responsibility than I’ve ever had to shoulder and I can’t help but feel a little nervous.
This shit just got real, as they say; or will say.
17.
My time in the library proved constructive. I forged a plan to keep Gwen out of harm's way and found a reference book which explained the system of imperial currency. My finances are still dire, but at least I know precisely how dire because I discovered there are twelve pennies to a shilling and twenty shillings to a pound. It’s no wonder my ten-shilling note didn’t go far as it’s roughly equal to fifty pence in modern money.
Lesson learnt; I depart the library.
A few streets away I pass an estate agent's office. Curiosity gets the better of me and I stop to look at the properties advertised in the window.
“Holy shit,” I blurt.
Dominating the window is a display for a new housing estate currently under construction: Broadhall Rise. It’s an area of town I know well as a former schoolmate grew up there and I’d often drop by to play video games. In the centre of the display sits an artist’s impression of the boxy homes and an illustrated street scene which bears little resemblance to the estate I remember. I always thought it ugly, and the houses too cramped together.
Most striking of all though is a list of plots and the respective prices. A three-bedroom semi with a garage is just shy of four grand, and a detached house with en-suite bathroom just under five grand. Incredible.
I shake my head and move on.
As I stroll through the streets, there are moments when I could almost forget not where I am, but when I am. Broadhall Rise aside, the vast majority of homes in our town were built before the Second World War so in that respect the scene is unchanged. Patently, the cars parked on the road are a world apart from their modern counterparts but other differences are more subtle. Virtually all the suburban semis I pass still have a front garden rather than a tarmacked parking area, and there appears to be a great deal of pride taken in those gardens with neatly trimmed hedges and manicured lawns aplenty. There are no wheelie bins, no satellite dishes, and not one house has been fitted with plastic double-glazed windows. It feels tidier, nicer, I guess.
I’m sure there’s a reason: these houses are all owner-occupied.
My generation is still in the grip of the buy-to-let boom where the already-comfortable buy second homes to provide an additional monthly income and bolster their pension pots. That increased demand pushes up house prices so the likes of me can’t get a foot on the ladder but it also has the effect of creating letting ghettos — areas where a growing number of homes are occupied by tenants. You can tell when you’re walking through a letting ghetto because the signs are obvious. No one cares if the front path is overgrown with weeds or the exterior of the house
needs a lick of paint, and no one cares if their old sofa has been dumped on the driveway for weeks or the gutters are blocked — no one cares full stop, and why would they? Chances are they’ll move on in a matter of months when the landlord raises the rent again.
Strange, but I didn’t expect to encounter envy on this journey. Granted, my parents had to put up with people smoking everywhere and baffling coinage but they had the opportunity to own a slice of the suburban dream. I’ve always maintained their generation had it so much easier — seeing these lovely houses first hand and knowing how little they cost only backs up that argument.
To quell my property envy, I return my focus to the people I pass in the street. Most are conservatively dressed; the men in sharp pressed trousers and shirts, with a few wearing jackets, and every woman wearing either a blouse and skirt, or a dress. A few younger men are decked in jeans but I don't see anyone in jogging pants or branded sportswear. People seem to have a greater sense of pride in their appearance, or maybe it’s because I’m wandering through a better part of town. Hopefully I won’t be here long enough to witness the dark underbelly of sixties fashion; if there is one.
As I close in on Cumberland Street, the scene changes with suburban semis giving way to rows of terraced houses similar to those opposite Trinity Printworks. I stop a random woman in the street and ask the time; careful to mind my manners. She confirms it’s ten to three.
I reach my destination; another street lined with terraced houses. All very ordinary and all very quiet for a Friday afternoon. I walk to the end of Cumberland Street and stop on the corner. Whichever house Gwen Kirby emerges from, she’ll have to pass me on the way to the Post Office. From that point onwards my plan has a few unknown variables but I reckon it’ll work.
Leaning against a lamp post, I try not to look conspicuous while I wait. In such circumstances, the standard method of showing the world you’re waiting is to stare at a mobile phone. All I can do is tuck my hands in my pockets and stare at the pavement. Turns out pavements in the sixties are no more interesting than those in the modern era.
Tuned Out Page 14
