The Last Minute

by Eleanor Updale

  The digger’s reversing alarm starts up again. In the café, little Max joins in with the ‘Beep, beep.’

  As two customers dive for a table that’s becoming vacant, Sam clears it for them, picking up half-empty mugs and discarded chunks of carrot cake. The total value of the undrunk coffee and uneaten food left by just these two customers is probably about the same as half an hour’s pay for him. No wonder the coffee chain is doing so well.

  There’s no time for Stuart to get home to change his trousers. He can feel the cold wind through the split in the seam. He wishes he hadn’t worn his lucky Mickey Mouse pants today. They must show through the gap. He sees the bike on its doomed course towards Mrs Wilkins, and he doesn’t want to get involved.

  The flight attendant can see the shape of a mobile phone in the recalcitrant passenger’s top pocket. She guesses that it is switched on, too.

  TICK

  43 seconds to go . . .

  ‘STRETCH! FIVE . . .’ WITH her back to the window, Maggie knows nothing about the photographer.

  Stuart tries to pull down his jacket to cover the split in his trousers. There’s no hope. It’s too short.

  In his flat above Doreen’s Dreams, Terry Potts, the art teacher, is still listening to his friend, but he’s also wondering what it’s like to be a digger driver, and whether he’d have the nerve to hold everybody up like that. As he contemplates redundancy, he’s not sure what he envies most: that the man gets to drive a digger, or that he has a job at all.

  The mourner reaches the cash machine before the taxi passenger, and the taxi driver decides that in case the man is not back before the traffic starts to move, he will risk mounting the pavement for a few metres, dodging round the digger, and pulling in to the petrol station on his right to wait. He might even get some diesel while he’s there. Before embarking on his daring manoeuvre, he presses the button to wind down the nearside window and leans across, ready to shout to his passenger to explain.

  In the coffee shop, Max is trying to say, ‘Attention, this vehicle . . .’

  Juliet Morgan has reached the front of the queue. She’s been waiting ages, because of the time it takes the school-run mothers to choose for themselves, consult those toddlers who can talk, find their purses in their giant bags of nappies and toys, and steer their massive chariots away from the counter. Juliet has been watching them, biting her tongue to stop herself telling them to sign up for the diet plan that has so transformed her own size. She’s back on real food now, after months of living like an astronaut on packaged powders, but she knows she must still be careful. She’s experienced an exquisite mixture of envy and contempt as one woman after another has been handed doughnuts, pastries, croissants and scones. Now it’s her turn. ‘Just a black coffee,’ she says, with proud determination. Juliet would normally steer clear of the temptations offered by the coffee shop, but she’s had to nip in today. The café has free WiFi and, held up on her way to work, she needs to get onto the Internet quickly. She wants to bid on a designer evening dress that’s coming up on an auction site. It’s exactly the right size for her new body, and in the photograph it looks like a perfect match for the colour of her favourite shoes. The dress would normally be way outside her price range, but unless there are lots of last-minute bidders, it will be a real bargain. It would be perfect for the Christmas cruise she’s booked as a reward for all her efforts. She wants to spend the festivities with people who never knew her old, fat self. She wants to make new friends – perhaps even one special friend.

  The auction is due to end at 09.22.20. Juliet has already switched on her laptop and logged on to the site. The red countdown timer is showing just over a minute to go. She knows from experience that it would be a mistake to put her bid in now: it will only force others to counter-bid and push up the price. She needs to slam in her maximum offer when they no longer have time to respond. She’ll press the button just seconds before the time runs out. So now she’s balancing her computer in her arms as she waits to be served, glancing at the screen from time to time, ready to click ‘return’ twenty seconds before the end of the auction, at 09.22.00.

  Upstairs, Mariam screams, recoils from the jet of water and gropes for a towel.

  Through the wall, Noel Gilliard curses her for stopping her song just when he wanted to write about it.

  At the mouth of the car park, Anthony Dougall is pointing at the white van and shouting. The policeman reaches for his radio. Bernie assumes he is asking someone to find the name of the owner of the van – though it’s hard to imagine what good that will do. Even if it turns out to be someone they all know, how will they find him? Where will he move the van?

  Bernie misses the next line of the joke. The beggar puts on the first of the two voices he’ll use to tell the tale. This is Jack, cast by Matey as a hefty cockney: ‘He said, “It’s great . . .”’

  TOCK

  42 seconds to go . . .

  ‘“ . . . TO SEE YOU, but . . .”’ The beggar is still setting the scene, and despite all the distractions, Bernie and Frank the undertaker have both got the picture: in the world of the joke, two old friends have run into each other unexpectedly.

  Stuart decides that buying a bar of chocolate is probably not a good idea. His trousers have told him that he’s had a few too many already, and he doesn’t want to display his lucky pants to the shoppers in the street. He turns to make his way up the hill, to kill the last few minutes before his appointment.

  The cyclist spits out a swear word as the bike comes to a halt, its front wheel less than an inch from Mrs Wilkins. Nick, the charity worker, finds himself automatically saying ‘Sorry,’ even though he knows he’s not in the wrong.

  Across the road, outside the bakery, Paul starts getting up from the pavement, his hand full of coins. Lotte puts down her carrier bags and tries to help him to his feet.

  On the coach, Rory Lennahan uses his teeth to break into a packet of salt-and-vinegar crisps. Beside him, Josh Johnson rummages on the floor and pulls a six-pack of fizzy drinks from his bag. Kayleigh is still shouting ‘Miss!’ but Miss Hunter is concentrating on the shoe shop now, half hoping the coach won’t have moved on when Lenny Gibbon and his mother come out. She would hate to miss the chance to glare at them – to let them know that she’s seen what they’re up to.

  Some of the mourners leave the coffee shop.

  ‘Ith wiverthin,’ lisps Max.

  ‘Anything with it?’ the girl behind the counter asks Juliet Morgan, not realizing the cruelty of the question.

  ‘ . . . and six . . .’

  Up at the church, the vicar, who knows he has neither the time to indulge in, nor any hope of winning, an argument with Ben Whatmore about ecclesiastical priorities, has also given up trying to get the painter and his ladder out of the way in time for the funeral. He turns back towards the church, ready to walk over and greet the mourners. He’s struggling to get into the right frame of mind to conduct the service. He knows that neither the dead man nor his family were believers, and doubts whether the finer points of the ritual will mean much to anyone. There was a time when he might have seen the event as a chance to change minds or win hearts, but today he can’t help hoping that this will be one of the last funerals he has to do before the blessed day of his retirement, only six months away now. As the bell tolls on, and the first notes of organ music drift over from the church, Reverend Davis cringes at the thought of the mawkish music the family have chosen: We Are Sailing, the theme tune from a TV drama, and the inevitable My Way. He guesses that few of the congregation will know the words to the only hymn. But he knows they will be reviewing his performance as if he were an actor in a play.

  The taxi driver yells across the street to his passenger, hoping to explain that he’ll pick him up at the petrol station, but it seems he can’t be heard over the din. The man does not respond.

  The gas foreman in the trench is also shouting, trying to tell his workmates something, but he can’t be heard either.

  ‘S
how me your phone,’ says the flight attendant firmly. The man still stares straight ahead. He mutters something in a guttural accent.

  Marco balances the valve on the bench by the dry-cleaning machine and stands up to deal with his customer.

  TICK

  41 seconds to go . . .

  ‘ . . . AND SEVEN . . .’

  ‘Good morning,’ says Marco, wiping his hands on his trousers. The valve rolls off the bench and onto the floor. The fumes are still escaping from the open pipe.

  Over the road, Matey’s whole body is transformed as he gets himself into character as cockney Jack: ‘“Why so sad?”’

  Frank, the funeral director, looks across at the alley. Dime and Dollar seem settled, and for now there is no prospect of being able to lead them out into the road. He can stay to hear more of the beggar’s tale.

  Bernie notices the look of concern on the face of the workman in the trench. Is he grimacing about the pain in his ankle, or is he worried about something else?

  Outside the baker’s shop, Paul steps on the end of his scarf once more, and falls back down. Gillie Dougall is now carrying a large white box, and as she leaves the bakery, she almost stumbles over him. Gillie has accepted that she’ll have to live with the cake. There’s no time to get a bigger one now. She’s even feeling a little concerned about letting her anxiety show, and worries that she might have offended the baker, who has done such a good job, matching her specifications exactly. No, if anyone is to blame, it’s herself, as usual. She’ll just have to work harder to make everything else at the lunch exactly right: the balloons, the flowers, the canapés and the string quartet. But first she must get the cake safely into her car, for which she found a parking spot just before the way in and out of the car park was blocked by the white van. Peering over the top of the box, she’s looking for a way across to the other side of the road. She hasn’t spotted her husband shouting at the policeman, and he has not seen her.

  Standing at the counter in the coffee shop, Juliet Morgan eyes up the cakes and biscuits, mentally tasting the sweet, damp, warm puffiness of the pain aux raisins, even though she hasn’t actually eaten one for ages. She conjures up the words of her dieting counsellor: You only have to want to be thin one per cent more than you want to eat the cake. Think of the future. Think how you want to look there. Take a breath. Say no.

  Little Chloe smiles and waves her one gloved hand at Ritzi as her mother drags her pushchair backwards towards the newsagent’s. The dog is still straining to pull Bernie towards the park.

  On the coach, Miss Hunter is wondering what Calum and Rahil are up to, hidden behind the seats in front of them. She can’t see Josh, who is also hunched down, tearing through the plastic wrapper to get the drinks out for his friends.

  On flight GX413, Dorothy Long, the woman sitting alongside the troublesome passenger, looks anxiously at the flight attendant. Why is the man taking no notice of her? Is he dangerous?

  Across the aisle is a family of three, who were kind enough, during the flight, to take a look at Dorothy’s baby pictures. Their child, a small girl of about five, has been charming for most of the journey, though a bit noisy and whiny at times. Over the course of the flight she has insisted on swapping seats with each of her parents, and now she’s on the aisle. For some time she’s been kicking the back of the seat in front of her but, hearing the tone of the flight attendant’s voice, she stops. ‘Why is the lady cross?’ she asks her mother. Even she has started to sense the concern focused on the man in seat 42A.

  TOCK

  40 seconds to go . . .

  TERRY POTTS, STILL on the phone, is trying to distract his friend from his problems by describing how the bike ran into the old lady. He’s exaggerating a bit. He knows she wasn’t actually hit. His picture of the cyclist will be spot on though, if unsurprising: tight Lycra shorts, hairy calves, dark glasses, and a pointy helmet decorated with flames. Terry uses a bike to get about, but he hates fanatics like this bloke, who give cyclists a bad name.

  Marco turns in the direction of the clattering valve. He can hear the crucial washer rolling away in the direction of a gap in the floorboards under the tumble dryers. He’ll look for it as soon as the customer is out of the way.

  The digger driver lowers his scoop into the trench. Barbara Lapsom’s opposite number, driving the car at the head of the queue facing the church, is seventeen-year-old Kelly Viner, who passed her test only a week before. Like Barbara, she is wondering whether, or when, to move forward. She’s blaming herself for the traffic jam. Kelly had a feeling, when the temporary lights turned green, that the road ahead was blocked by the digger, but she didn’t dare disobey the signal. Now she’s no idea what to do: the lights are behind her, pointlessly changing colour while the road ahead is blocked. Surely the drivers queuing after her can see her problem? They can, but they’re all (including the taxi man, who doesn’t really want to move yet) sounding their horns in frustration.

  Lorraine Lee has reached the bus stop halfway up the hill. Her legs are aching with the climb. A flash of temptation penetrates the Scan-ner mantra. She could sit on the bench in the shelter for a little while – just a couple of minutes – long enough to get her breath back. But she mustn’t, not if she’s going to be ready for the marathon. She must resist the urge to take a break. She kicks against the slope again. Scan-ner.

  In the coffee shop, Juliet Morgan is trying to be just as strong – trying to focus on how bad she will feel in twenty minutes’ time if she eats something forbidden. But before she can say no, the girl asks her again: ‘Perhaps a piece of shortbread or some cheesecake?’

  ‘Breathe! Eight.’

  Charmaine and Chenelle are doing hand jives in time to the physical jerks in the studio and the rhythm of their own cheeky song. Miss Hunter reckons it’s something she can ignore.

  Bernie shouts to the workman, ‘My letter!’ pointing at the envelope in the hole, as Matey shrinks his body back down and slips into a Scottish accent, so the other man in his story can explain why he’s unhappy: ‘Pete said, “I’ve just . . .”’

  TICK

  39 seconds to go . . .

  ‘“ . . . SEEN THE DOCTOR.”’

  ‘And one . . .’ Though the girls on the coach have picked up the timing, most of the women in the dance studio haven’t settled into the beat yet. Maggie is repeating the exercise. She’s only thirty but, though fit, she looks older. Her halo of frizzy curls, pink tie-dye headband and whopping hoop earrings are a little out of date. Exercise has been her lifeline since she dropped out of university, and she made teaching it her profession six years ago. She knows the science behind it – how the body releases its own happy chemicals when under physical stress – and she can see from her clients’ faces that some of them are in desperate need of those chemicals today. She’ll let her ladies relax and gossip after she’s put them through their paces, but for now, though sympathetic, she must be tough. They may be miserable – desperate to get back to bed after broken nights with fractious babies – but she knows she can give them the ammunition to face the day ahead. Like Lorraine on her run and Juliet in the coffee shop, Maggie is investing in the future: what’s a little pain now compared with contentment then? You can’t live for the present all the time. She knows her ladies will be grateful to her when the class is over.

  The architect outside lines up another shot. Deanna looks at her watch, even though she’s only seconds away from the coffee shop, and the slight delay caused by letting him take his pictures is hardly going to make any difference. But she’s desperate to see Paul. Maybe that wasn’t him she saw in the distance. Or perhaps he’s already in the café waiting, and wondering whether she is going to turn up.

  Kelly Viner can feel tears coming. Everyone seems angry with her, and she doesn’t really understand why, or know what to do. She was ecstatic when her parents gave her a car for her birthday. She’d always thought it would bring freedom and independence, and in some ways it has. How else could she be doing what she is
now – making her own way to a university open day? But she is still a new and nervous driver, and here, at the front of the line of traffic, she is suffused with embarrassment. The poor people behind her might be in a hurry. They may have planes or trains to catch. She can’t bear the idea that she is holding them up. If it goes on much longer, she might even be late herself, and for all she knows the university might make a note, and reject her when she applies. And she so wants to get in. It’s said to be the best veterinary course in the area. She’s always adored animals, and the idea of a lifetime spent looking after them is all that’s keeping her going through the A-level slog.

  Mariam turns off the bath taps, ready for another try at attaching the hose.

  Noel Gilliard changes the font of the piece he is composing.

  Setting off towards the church door, the vicar spots some confetti left over from a wedding at the weekend. It’s banned, of course, but people still throw it, and it never seems to decompose, no matter how hard it rains. Hardly appropriate for a funeral; even less so than the sign painting, probably. He’ll have to pick it up.

  Matthew Larkin dips his brush in the paint again. Nearly finished. Then, when he’s put the ladder away, he’ll be ready to set off for the airport to meet his daughter. He’s almost embarrassed by the joy that is building inside him. He knows what she looks like now, of course. They speak on Skype, and she sends photos in emails, but he still imagines her as the freckled-faced little girl with a kind heart and natural talent for art. That’s what first took her to New Zealand: her painter’s eye for the special light. Her paintings are rather different from his, he chuckles to himself, looking at the one straight red line he has completed over several months. It’s just an ordinary sign here in Heathwick High Street, but in her world of galleries and dealers, his work might be considered avant-garde!