Ring Road

by Ian Sansom

  But then Sammy would wake up from the dream and be sure there was a smell in the room, only to find that he had soiled the sheets himself. It was a terrible judgement that his body was wreaking upon him and he was completely unable to cope, was totally overwhelmed, in fact, and, naturally, he had started to drink.

  He found himself unable or unwilling to comfort or be comforted by Sharon, who said she didn’t blame him, but she did, really, and he knew she did, but he couldn’t talk to her about it and she couldn’t talk to him about it, and he had also spurned the comfort of his family and friends, preferring instead to spend time in the pub. He avoided the Castle Arms, though – anywhere he was likely to meet any of us, or any of his friends – and started drinking in the Armada Bar, which is a Spanish-styled place up by the station with flaking bullfight murals and a plastic imitation vine, a bar 30 feet long and only 5 feet wide, a bar shaped like a ship, with no tables, with stools only, where you can buy wine by the carafe and single cigarettes, and where there is only country on the jukebox, and which is the bar where people tend to go in our town when things have gone wrong in their lives, and which usually makes things about a thousand times worse.

  Colin Rimmer, the editor of the Impartial Recorder, which had caused Sammy and Sharon so much grief after the death of Josh, made the mistake of calling in to the Armada one night for a drink and to catch up with local gossip, and when Sammy saw him he got up, dragged Colin from his stool and punched him hard in the face, just once, catching him off balance and knocking him down on to the floor and wiping the lopsided grin from his face.

  Sammy was about to start in on Colin proper when Niall the barman got a hold of him. ‘You’re barred,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Colin, getting up painfully from the floor.

  ‘Not him,’ said Niall. ‘You, you lowlife. Now get out.’

  Sammy didn’t pay for another drink all evening.

  And so, within a year of Josh’s death, Sammy had lost his wife, his house, his business, and he was busy drinking in the park from seven in the morning and in the Armada till late at night, seven days a week, returning to his bedsit down at the bottom of Kilmore Avenue only to sleep and to dream. He stank and, to be honest, he felt that it was all that he deserved.

  It is as much a surprise to Sammy, then, as to anyone else, that within two years of the death of his son he has remarried and started up again in business, although this time not as a plumber.

  Sammy and his new wife and business partner, Cherith, now run a small shop, a studio and offices opposite the car park, next to the Quality Hotel. And last week was the grand opening.

  We were all there, a lot of us, to celebrate a new beginning for Sammy and for Cherith, and to wish them well.

  Like Sammy, Cherith has been previously married also, of course – to Francie McGinn, the minister at the People’s Fellowship. It remains a popular little church – and Francie remains a popular minister, still, despite everything. He decided right from the start to stay on and brazen it out, and God and his congregation seem to have forgiven him.

  Cherith, though, had not. She had not given Francie a second chance: it can be much more difficult to forgive the pious than to forgive the average sinner, and actually Cherith was secretly delighted at not having to be a minister’s wife any more. She went on another diet that actually worked, took some exercise, and took to wearing cropped tops and bumster trousers, and after the divorce came through she started going out more at night, to pubs and clubs, and she had started to drink and meet young men in Paradise Lost who wore aftershave and owned fuel-injected cars, but that was too depressing, and after a while she started to stay in more, but she kept on drinking, and she was getting through about a bottle of Chardonnay a night, plus a couple of lager chasers to clear her head, and two or three large glasses of Amaretto during ER, after a bath, and maybe a drop of Bailey’s Irish Cream on the cereals in the morning – she was a sweet-toothed drinker – and in the end she kind of washed up at Alcoholics Anonymous, where she met Sammy, and the two of them clung to each other like two ships without a port.

  The business was Cherith’s idea, after she and Sammy had sobered up and had got themselves back on their feet, and they’d got married at sunrise on a beach in Thailand, and they had enjoyed aromatherapy and saunas and therapeutic massage in their luxurious honeymoon hotel. We’ve never had anything quite like that in our town and Cherith was quick to see the gap in the market, and thus was born their business, the Oasis – not quite as luxurious, perhaps, as the place in Thailand, and lacking the same sunny aspect, but with good intentions nonetheless.

  It’s open now, just a week old – you can go in yourself and have a look. In Oasis, the Shop, Sammy and Cherith offer a range of books on subjects such as shamanism, life coaching and reiki healing, and a wide range of loofahs, seaweed scrubs and scented candles. From Oasis, the Office, they plan their dolphin retreat adventures, and classes in warrior yoga and belly-dancing, but it’s the Oasis Aqua-Studio, which overlooks the car park in front of the Quality Hotel, that really is the centrepiece.

  Cherith and Sammy have invested in a spa pool from America, called the ‘Oasis’, which is top-of-the-range, and in which and through which they now offer aqua-massage, water dancing and Dynamic Movement Therapies. Sammy plumbed the whole thing in himself – it was a big job, the pool is a monster – and they had to have the floors reinforced and fulfil all kinds of safety regulations, and it took about a month to get it up and running properly. But finally it was done and the room fixed up with dimmer lights, and decorated in tasteful soothing aqua colours, and it sits there, the spa pool, in the middle of the room, with a view to the car park out front and to the People’s Fellowship out back, like a beached vessel stuck in the middle of town, or a tiny liquid sea, and when you switch it on and you turn down the lights, it has the pleasant sound of a bubbling brook, the sound of water running away from you in the dark.

  Billy Nibbs got to try it the night before the big opening last week – he was the first customer. Sammy and Cherith had invited him specially – Billy is Sammy’s oldest friend and he is certainly someone who looks like he needs some time in a brand-new top-of-the-range relaxing spa pool.

  Like most of us here in town Billy is in the habit of looking gift horses in the mouth and he’d taken some persuading, but in the end he had agreed to come and give it a go, and he slipped off his clothes and slipped into the warm water, and as he lay there looking up at the ceiling, bubbles all around him, he thought about the recent past; and Sammy, who had been stocking the shelves downstairs with books about Emotional Intelligence and Wisdom Traditions, appeared at the door and gave him an embarrassed little wave.

  ‘How is it?’ asked Sammy.

  ‘It’s good,’ said Billy, getting up to get out.

  ‘You’re supposed to stay in and relax,’ said Sammy.

  ‘Right.’ Billy had never been in a spa pool before. In fact, lately he’d hardly ever been in the bath.

  ‘It’ll do you good.’

  ‘OK.’

  Billy closed his eyes and tried to relax. He was at a pretty low ebb.

  After the bookless book launch he’d gone to meet his publisher, and the train was two hours delayed, and there was no buffet car, and the windows did not open, and the trolley service was suspended, all of which had made Billy feel very Philip Larkiny, and he had consoled himself by stroking his thick black beard and trying to imagine his book, the book he was about to see and claim for his own.

  He imagined it produced in beautiful dark-blue thick board covers, the embossed imprint of his publisher running along the spine. He also imagined a cheap paperback edition, distributed worldwide, with a beautiful cover designed by a famous artist, an artist who probably also happened to be a personal friend. He felt sure he’d have got on with Damien Hirst. He imagined launch parties in several European cities and big limos at airports, a ticker-tape parade in New York, the Nobel Prize even – well, he was maybe getting ahe
ad of himself there.

  He found that thinking about all this cheered him and aroused him – made him forget about the lack of ventilation on the train and the shortage of hot and cold snacks and beverages – and he snuggled deeper into his seat, his eyes closed, tucking his hands between his legs, and he could almost feel himself fingering his book, he could feel its coolness, the weight of its white wove pages between his fingers, the fulfilment of so many years’ ambition and desire.

  Thinking about it left him feeling deeply satisfied and exhausted, and he fell into a deep sleep, and when the train arrived at its final destination he awoke refreshed, bought himself a street map and hurried off to his publisher’s offices, his anticipation turning finally to excitement.

  He’d had to walk for what seemed like a very long time down residential streets, past blocks of flats and houses being refurbished at ridiculous expense, having all their original features painstakingly replaced, and all the fine modern fittings removed and thrown into skips – in which he had, of course, a professional interest, and over which and into which he cast a professional eye – and in the end there was nothing to indicate that number 47 on the Dublin Road, a large three-storey terrace which remained unrenovated, was a business premises at all, except that taped under the doorbell, on a scrap of stained white paper, was the name, written in biro, the name that he had imagined a thousand times running down his spine, and on his title page: Byrne & Co.

  Billy rang the bell. There was no answer. There was another piece of paper stuck below the bell. It said, ‘Bell not working. Please knock. Loudly.’

  Billy did as was suggested and eventually he heard movement from within the house.

  An elderly man opened the door, dressed in green jumbo cords and a T-shirt featuring a cartoon drawing of a man with wild staring eyes and chattering teeth and the words ‘Caffeine High!’. The man wearing the T-shirt wore tartan carpet slippers and was completely bald, except for the hair growing from his nose, and his ears, and up around his throat, and the back of his hands. A pair of glasses dangled from a rainbow-coloured cord hung round his neck. There was the unmistakable smell of gin and cigarettes.

  ‘You are?’ asked the man.

  ‘Billy Nibbs.’

  ‘And this affects me how?’

  ‘You’re publishing my book.’

  ‘Ah!’ said the man.

  ‘And I haven’t received any copies of the book yet, and I ...’

  ‘Goodbye!’ said the man, slamming the door and bolting it behind him.

  ‘Hang on!’ shouted Billy.

  ‘Go away!’ said the man, retreating off into the hallway.

  Billy shouted through the letter box, but his calls went unanswered. All the curtains in the house were drawn – there was no way in, or round.

  Billy stood on the doorstep for a long time before he went away and started the long walk back to the station, past the skips and the houses, and he only realised gradually – could only allow himself to realise slowly, to save himself the pain – exactly what had happened to him.

  He felt sick. He felt like an idiot. He felt like crying. He felt as though someone had cleaved away the innermost parts of himself and left him hanging like an empty carcass. There was no publisher. There was going to be no book.

  The journey home was different from the journey down, although it was just the same train, going backwards, and the same scenery in reverse. The weather outside had taken a turn for the worse and Billy found himself staring out of the window, watching his too solid and semi-permeable flesh fast disappearing in the rain. He looked at his reflection and what he saw suddenly did not look like a writer. All the great writers look like writers. Evelyn Waugh in his tweeds. George Orwell in all that prole gear. Beckett in his roll-neck. They’re always done up – the men in particular – as if they know what they’re about, like applicants keen to make a good impression. With his beard and his earring and his novelty tie Billy Nibbs did not look like a writer. He looked like an eccentric council employee, a man who tended to skips and bins and bottle banks, and who read books in his spare time, and who wrote bad long poems.

  When he arrived back in town Billy headed straight for the Armada Bar. He recognised most of the people in there, but no one spoke to him, and he did not speak to them. The Armada was not a bar where conversation was expected, or encouraged, or condoned.

  By the time he left the Armada he was feeling a lot worse. He had that feeling, that feeling like it’s three or four in the morning and you’ve been drinking since about six and you’ve been at a party and you’re walking home and it begins to rain and you’ve no coat and there are no buses and you can’t afford a taxi and you think about the countless ways you’ve let yourself down at the party and the good time all the other people were having and you sit down at the side of the road and hold your head in your hands and there’s a bunch of young blokes you hadn’t noticed before in a bus shelter on the other side of the road, and they all have shaven heads and are wearing sports-casual clothing and baseball caps, and they are all staring at you. It was that kind of feeling.

  That’s what literary failure feels like. It feels like you’re about to get a kicking.

  When he finally made it in safely through his front door he made a cup of tea and sat down and stared at the reproduction of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers which hangs heavily in a snap-frame above his flimsy blue Formica-topped fold-out kitchen table. The picture is one of Billy’s favourites. He also has a reproduction Matisse in the hallway – one of those blue blobby women – a stained Escher in the bathroom and a blurry Monet thing above his bed. In our town, this virtually constitutes a gallery. But the flat is not a gallery – it’s a bedsit down on Kilmore Avenue, with its own separate kitchen and bathroom. ‘This is Luxury You Can Afford,’ said the landlord when Billy came to view the property fifteen years ago.

  The landlord was Frank Gilbey. Frank liked to call personally to collect the rent once a month and Billy could understand that. There is no real satisfaction in a standing order. If you’re a landlord you must want to see that look of fear and anger and frustration in the eyes of your tenants as they hand over their hard-earned cash to you to keep your children in private schools and your good self in fine clothes and cigars and vintage sports cars. In fifteen years, Frank Gilbey had never once asked Billy Nibbs how he was, or who, and he ignored every one of Billy’s requests for maintenance or repairs or rent rebates. The place was gradually deteriorating, but it didn’t matter to Frank Gilbey, because he was just sitting on the property, waiting to sell it on for redevelopment when the time was right. In the meantime he could afford to let the place just fall apart.

  Which, arguably, Billy was too: he had no book, no woman, no prospects and nothing to show for it, his thirty-odd years on this earth. At this moment he felt something of an affinity for Van Gogh, the difference being, of course, that Van Gogh was a genius and Billy could still see the colours in his sunflowers, in a poor reproduction, over one hundred years after he’d painted them, even in the dark and under the influence, while Billy’s cup of tea looked a pathetic grey already, like the walls in the flat and his own miserable insides.

  Billy stared at his walls and finished his grey tea, thinking about Van Gogh.

  (Van Gogh chopped off his own ear, didn’t he? But it wasn’t his whole ear. It was his lobe. The lobule. It couldn’t have been the whole thing, because you lose your hearing: it sort of funnels the noise in, doesn’t it, the fleshy bit? Billy couldn’t remember how. Sometimes he wishes he’d listened in science at school, then he might be able to remember useful stuff like that, like how birds sleep and why penguins’ feet don’t freeze, and how mirrors work, and why the moon is round. Or even basic stuff, like the names of clouds and birds and body parts.)

  Billy rinsed his mug in the sink and made his way unsteadily to his bedroom-cum-sitting room, pausing only to kiss a lovely blobby blue Matisse breast along the way.

  There were books and papers piled high on the f
loor, which in the dark looked a little like artful piles of bricks, or stacked tyres, and there were clothes spilling out imaginatively from the wardrobe, whose numerous constituent MDF body parts had long since parted company from each other, peeling apart as if possessed by demons or by the thing in The Thing or the alien in Alien. The duvet was very limp. On the desk there were bits and pieces of poems, and some congealed scrambled egg and bacon on a cracked plate.

  Looking at the mess that was his life, Billy wondered for a moment if perhaps he could wrap the whole thing in cellophane, or set it in plaster and sell it wholesale to some collector in New York, or to Charles Saatchi – £10,000 would do him for a year. Or £5000. Or actually, Billy would probably settle for some free cinema tickets and some extra points on his Sainsbury’s reward card, and a few celebrities at the gala exhibition opening. He’d take whatever second-rate champagne swillers were currently on offer. Oh yes. Bring ‘em all in. Kill the fatted calf. Come and feed your faces on canapés, ye Mighty. And as they all gathered to admire his handiwork, all the critics and the publishers and the editors, Billy would rise to address them and he would say … He would say … Do you know what he would say?

  He opened his eyes. He was still there, lying in the spa pool. And looking out of the window, he saw the offices of the Impartial Recorder, its big red neon lettering staring at him, lighting up the night sky.

  And suddenly he no longer felt self-pity or frustration. He no longer felt like a poet. The pool had entirely cleansed him of those feelings. It felt like a tide had gone out on his emotions, washing away all the murk. Now he only felt clear, pure white anger – anger towards his publisher and towards Frank Gilbey, and towards all the other people who had treated him wrong in his life. Suddenly he knew what he wanted to say. Suddenly the way seemed clear.