I nod and follow Brenda through the door into a small lobby with four further doors leading off it. The silver-haired woman seems less sociable and disappears beyond one of the other doors without a second glance in my direction.
“Stockroom, toilets, kitchen and the office,” Brenda says while pointing to the various doors.
We take the door into a small kitchen that immediately reminds me of the tatty staffroom at RolpheTech. Brenda flicks the kettle on and pulls a mug from a cupboard.
“Tea okay?”
“Please. Milk, no sugar.”
“We don’t get told much about the people who volunteer here so maybe you’d like to tell me a bit about yourself?”
I decide that showing her my letter from the shrink is preferable to an awkward conversation.
“Might be easier for you to read this,” I say as I hand her the letter.
She takes a pair of glasses from a case in her pocket, puts them on and studies the letter. A minute passes before she silently hands me back the letter and returns the glasses to her pocket. The silence is broken as the thin woman joins us.
Brenda makes the introductions. “Emily, this is Craig, our new volunteer. Craig, this is Emily, my assistant manager.”
Emily holds out a bony hand attached to a stick-thin arm. Judging by her featherweight frame, it’s clear who has first option on the custard creams.
“Nice to meet you young man,” she says politely.
I gently shake her hand, trying not to crush her brittle fingers.
“Craig here has been in hospital for best part of a year,” chirps Brenda.
“Oh, nothing too serious I hope?” Emily asks.
Brenda interjects. “He’s had some sort of trauma. Can’t remember fuck-all about his life, can you love?” her west country accent softening the edges of her ‘fuck’ to an almost socially acceptable level.
“You don’t have any memories?” Emily asks with some concern.
Still somewhat taken-aback by Brenda’s language, I shake my head.
“If he doesn’t remember anything,” Brenda helpfully adds. “He might be one of those sex monsters you read about.”
A look of horror descends on Emily’s lined face.
“You’re not a sex monster are you?” she splutters.
“Jesus. No, I’m not,” I protest. “I just can’t remember much about my life before I was admitted to hospital.”
Brenda starts to chuckle away to herself.
“I’m pulling your leg, Emily,” she laughs. “We should be so lucky.”
Emily glares at me suspiciously and mumbles something before she turns and leaves.
“Sorry about Emily,” Brenda says. “She’s a lovely woman but a bit uptight if you know what I mean.”
“Right, I’ll bear that in mind.”
“So you really can’t remember anything?” Brenda asks, changing the subject while she makes the tea.
“Very little,” I lie. “But I used to work in a shop though. That much I do remember.”
“Good. Some of the fucking idiots they send us don’t have the sense they were born with,” she says casually.
She turns to hand me a mug of tea, apparently unabashed and unapologetic for her language.
“Drink that and I’ll show you around. Then we can find something useful for you to do. See if you can put whatever is left in your head to good use.”
With a warning that she’ll be back in five minutes and not to nick anything, Brenda waddles out of the kitchen. I stand and sip my tea in silence, glad that on first impressions, my quirky colleagues should be a welcome distraction from more troubling matters.
Almost ten minutes pass before Brenda returns. She gives me a quick tour of the shop and then leads me into the stockroom. I can’t quite place the smell but it’s somewhere between sweaty armpits and a dank cellar. The space is about twelve hundred square feet with no natural light. Half of the back wall is taken up with a wide roller shutter that gives access to a delivery area at the rear of the building, Brenda informs me. Tall shelving units run all around the other walls with two further units stood back-to-back in the centre. Every shelf is crammed with bags, boxes and assorted bric-a-brac.
“I call this room hell’s toilet,” Brenda says. “Cos’ the little devils like to deposit their shit here.”
Noting my puzzled expression, she expands her analogy.
“People seem to think that because we’re a charity, we’ll take every piece of crap they no longer want. You name it, we’ve had it: everything from soiled underwear through to used sex toys. Seen it all I have.”
I squirm at her words. Brenda notices, and delights in embarrassing me further.
“Emily once opened a carrier bag and amongst all the clothes she found a huge black dildo. Gave her quite a fright it did.”
I remain speechless.
“Funny thing was, I don’t know what happened to it. Maybe Emily snuck it into her handbag but I never saw it again. Shame, we could have used it to display watches on the counter.”
Brenda lets that image sit for a moment before she turns and looks up at me, her expression stern.
“And just so you know Craig, if I catch you stealing sex toys, soiled underwear, or anything else, I will call the police. We clear on that?”
I offer a weak smile and nod, not entirely sure if she’s serious.
“Good lad. Let’s get you to work shall we?”
For the next three hours I learn first-hand why Brenda gave the stockroom its nickname. My task is to sort through the shelves and put aside anything that might be saleable, while everything else has to be dumped into a skip in the delivery area. Even with the roller door fully open, it’s as hot as hell and the smell is horrendous. I sort countless bags of unwashed clothes, boxes of tired bric-a-brac, and scores of unsafe electrical products. It doesn’t take long to realise that the crap in the shop is actually better than ninety percent of what I’ve unearthed. By the time I’ve half-filled the skip, I’ve gained a new respect for those who volunteer to work in shops like this. It’s a shitty, thankless job.
Brenda eventually rescues me and I’m sent on my lunch break. I spend several minutes scrubbing my hands with soap and hot water but the smell of the stockroom lingers on my budget clothing. Despite the pungent smell that follows me down the road as I go in search of a sandwich, I appreciate the positive feeling born from doing something worthwhile with my time. It may be a nasty, unpaid job but I do welcome the sense of purpose it brings.
I treat myself to a crayfish and rocket sandwich which I eat on a bench in the cool confines of the shopping centre. I sit and watch the people passing by for twenty minutes, maybe with the faint hope I might spot the old man again. No such luck. I make my way back to the shop to find Brenda waiting for me.
“Good news. You’ve got a second pair of hands to help you out this afternoon,” she grins.
“Oh, okay. Who’s that then?”
“Me. Ready to re-enter hell’s toilet?”
I doubt her offer is negotiable so I reluctantly follow Brenda back to the storeroom.
As we open the door we’re hit with a stinking wave of humid air. Brenda snaps her hand to her mouth as I turn my head in disgust.
“Best get that shutter open,” she mumbles from beneath her hand.
I dart to the end of the room and wait while the painfully slow mechanism raises the shutter. Sunlight slowly creeps into the room until we’re both bathed in the sun’s rays. On a beach in the Mediterranean it would be blissful. Here, stood amongst bags and boxes of trash, not so much.
“Right, I’ll sort and you shift. Okay?” Brenda orders rather than asks.
For the next two hours we work like dogs. Despite her advanced years and over-sized frame, Brenda whirls around the room like a small moon orbiting a planet. I start to warm to her boundless energy and affable nature. Her broad use of industrial-grade language, delivered with a Cornish twang, is as amusing as it is inappropriate. I think I quite
like Brenda.
We eventually stop for a breather.
“Right, my love. I think we both deserve a cold glass of squash.”
She bustles off to the kitchen and I arrange a couple of plastic crates as makeshift seats. Brenda returns holding two large glasses of orange squash.
“Here, get this down you,” she says as she passes one of the glasses to me.
We plonk down on the plastic crates and both take large gulps of ice-cold squash.
“That hit the spot. We’ll take five minutes and get cracking again,” Brenda says, her enthusiasm relentless.
We sit in silence for a minute. I’m hopeless when it comes to making small talk and scrabble for something to say. Thankfully Brenda beats me to it.
“This memory problem of yours. Does it mean you can’t remember your family either?”
This is not a topic of conversation I’d want to discuss with anyone, let alone a virtual stranger.
“My parents think I’m dead,” I reply, hoping the brutal answer will quash any further questions on the subject.
Brenda takes a sip of her squash and seems unfazed by my frank statement.
“When did you last see them?”
“A long time ago,” I sigh. “I don’t even know if they’re still alive.”
“And you’re not just a little bit curious?”
“Truth is Brenda, even if they are still alive, I’m fairly sure they wouldn’t take my reappearance well.”
Brenda turns and puts a hand on my knee. “Don’t you want to know if they’re still around?”
All I know is that I don’t know. Yesterday’s damning revelations suggest I might be better-off not knowing anything further about this new timeline I created. This cat can’t afford to be curious.
“I don’t know Brenda. It’s complicated.”
She looks at me, a sympathetic smile creasing her already heavily-lined face.
“Ever heard the term war baby?” she asks.
“A baby born during the war, fathered by a serviceman?”
“More or less. There were other names back then, far less polite, but they all meant the same thing. Anyway, you’re looking at a genuine war baby.”
I don’t know what I’m supposed to say in response to this revelation. I try a curious expression.
“I never knew my father. All Mum ever told me was his name and that he was a Canadian soldier. She died when I was nineteen so suddenly I was in the same boat as you are now, more or less. I had one remaining parent but he didn’t know I even existed.”
Brenda appears to be going somewhere with this so I sit and listen patiently.
“I got married a year later and had kids of my own. It was hard, not having parents to share my life with but you just get on with it. Then before I knew it, the kids are grown up and leaving home. Then my husband died, poor sod was only fifty-two. Suddenly I was nineteen again — alone, just a helluva lot fatter.”
She pauses for a moment, her smile fading a little.
“It got to 1998 and I finally plucked up the courage to look for my dad. I managed to track him down with some help from the Canadian Veterans Society.”
“Did you meet him?” I ask with genuine interest, hoping for a happy ending to Brenda’s tale.
“I was too late, my love. He died in 1996 — I missed him by just under two years. My son bought us tickets and we flew over there to visit his grave. I got to meet his family though and my three new step-brothers. Funny thing was, they told me their dad always wanted a daughter. Maybe if I’d got off my fat arse a few years earlier he’d have discovered he already had one. But I was too worried about the consequences, and I suppose I was scared of being rejected. That fear cost me the chance of meeting my dad.”
I feel a lump bob in my throat. “I honestly don’t know what to say Brenda.”
“Nothing to say, but you should know it taught me a valuable lesson; it’s better to regret doing something than to regret doing nothing. Whatever you’re worried about, don’t let it fester too long. If you have even the slightest inkling your parents are still around, find them sooner rather than later. Trust me, regret hangs around a damned sight longer than any worries you might be having.”
Brenda clambers to her feet and necks the remainder of her squash. I remain seated, letting her words sink in.
“Come on then, time to get back to it you lazy sod,” she chuckles, any latent sadness from our conversation well masked.
I get to my feet and step towards my stumpy colleague.
“Thanks, Brenda.”
“You’re welcome, my love. I’m not as daft as I look you know.”
Despite having received eleven months of professional therapy, a five-minute conversation with the manager of a charity shop finally changes my mindset. My task over the coming days is to find out what happened to my parents. I’ve got to face my fears or spend a lifetime living in blind regret.
Short term pain — long term sane.
8
As if Mother Nature has decided to set an appropriate backdrop to my first task of the day, I walk briskly down the street under sombre grey skies. My destination is the local council offices, or more specifically, The Department For Births, Deaths, and Marriages. I’m fairly certain I’ll be their first visitor who has experienced all three first hand.
I can’t say I’m relishing this task but my chat with Brenda, and a ten-minute call to Stephen last night, has fuelled my resolve. This is now a process of elimination. It doesn’t appear my parents are living in Farndale any longer so the next, and most perturbing possibility is that they’re no longer alive. It’s not a possibility I want to explore but I have to discount it if I’m to move forward. I’m praying I won’t find a record for either of my parents, but even if my worst fears are realised, a definitive answer has to be better than this tortuous limbo.
I arrive at the council offices just after ten and enter a bright foyer with a vast maple reception desk in the centre. Enormous framed prints of local landmarks hang on the smooth white walls that abut polished granite floor tiles. It all feels a little too decadent, too corporate for a municipal building. I wonder how many council-funded services were sacrificed to pay for all of this.
I approach the desk and ask a faceless woman for direction to The Department For Births, Deaths, and Marriages. She flashes me a plastic smile and points me towards the lifts in the far corner with instructions to go to the fourth floor. I return an equally insincere smile and squeak across the polished floor to the lifts. The lift is just as indulgently designed as the foyer with lots of chrome and mirrors, but it makes for a pleasant, albeit brief ascent.
I arrive on the fourth floor and follow the wall-mounted signs down a corridor and through a door to an anteroom. A row of six chairs are lined up against one of the walls, sat opposite a small table laden with various pamphlets. The nondescript space could as easily be a waiting room for a doctor, dentist, or optician. But this is a waiting room for people to register one of three significant life events; two joyful, one grave. I’m here for the latter.
I approach a service window at the rear. Beyond the glass is an office with four desks, three of which are occupied by council minions, all staring blankly at computer monitors, oblivious to my presence. As I wait for somebody to assist, I try to calm my growing anxiety by taking deep breaths. Three seconds to inhale, three seconds to exhale. I manage twenty-seven breaths and calculate a wait of one hundred and sixty-two seconds before somebody finally approaches the glass.
“Can I help?” says a plump, middle-aged man. His hair is almost gone, and judging by his expression, so has his will to live.
“I was hoping to check the death records of a couple of people if I can?”
“I need names and the death dates,” he replies dryly.
“I don’t know the death dates I’m afraid.”
The man sighs and is about to say something I suspect won’t be helpful.
“It’s my parents. I’ve been in hospi
tal for nearly a year and lost touch with them. I just need to know,” I plead.
His expression softens slightly.
“Janet and Colin Pelling. Please.”
A few seconds pass while the man contemplates his next move. He eventually grabs a piece of paper and a pen which he slips under the window.
“Write their names and dates of birth. I’ll take a look. I assume they were both residents of Farndale?”
I nod and scrawl my parents’ names on the paper. I know both their birthdays but I can only provide an estimate of the year they were born. I jot the info down and slip the paper back under the window. He snatches it up and plods over to an empty desk where he collapses onto a chair and grasps a mouse. I watch him as he switches his focus from the paper to the keyboard, then to the screen. My anxiety returns with a vengeance.
Get the fuck out of here Craig. You don’t need this.
The anxiety develops into panic as my trusted breathing technique proves futile. The man continues to jab away at the keyboard, frowning several times in the process as he squints at the screen. There surely can’t be more than seconds remaining before he delivers the news I might not want to hear. I turn away and my eyes focus on the door I entered a few minutes ago.
Do it Craig. Run.
I take a step forward. From nowhere, a reminder of the last time I ran away pings into my mind. The very reason I’m stood here is because I tried to outrun fate minutes before I left 1986. I turn back to the window and the now-empty desk where the man was sat. I lean forward slightly to improve my line of sight and my head thumps against the glass. Three faces turn in my direction as I clamp my hand to my forehead and curse under my breath. Stifled laughter, then they turn back to their screens. A door to the side of the window opens and the plump man appears holding the piece of paper.
“You alright? You’d be surprised how many people do that.”
I give him an embarrassed smile as a dull ache spreads across my cranium.
“Do you want to take a seat?” he asks, a hint of sympathy in his voice.
“No, thanks. I’m okay I think.”
He shuffles forward a few steps.
Beyond Broadhall (The '86 Fix Book 2) Page 6
