The Long and the Short of it.

by Jan Ruth

  He texted back ‘I thought I was your prize prick?’

  Charles was full of idiotic office politics and the sort of pompous, posturing and procrastinating that had the rest of the company squirming with embarrassment and indignation. It was all a cover. He knew very little about Tom’s job, so basically, Charles just threw his weight around instead.

  It seemed appropriate then, that Helga came into sharp focus.

  ‘High tide at 15:10.’

  For a moment, Tom was distracted by her heavy make-up, the long beak nose, and the way she almost barked the information at him.

  ‘No need to worry about that,’ he said smoothly, ‘we’re only going as far as the monument.’

  ‘I’d check another route back, if I were you.’

  ‘Right…’

  Tom had no such intention.

  A quick chat with Border Collie Braithwaite, and they set off at a much smarter pace with no photo opportunities or toilet stops for almost an hour and twenty minutes. When they reached the monument, they were only slightly behind schedule and Tom allowed himself a small glow of satisfaction. He liked to hit targets.

  The group spread themselves out on the sparse grass, some of them with full picnic paraphernalia and all manner of rugs and collapsible seats. Tom sat slightly apart on a suitable rock under the lime trees and took a long draft of water. He had no inclination to join the conversation. Listening in, it was mostly boasting about grandchildren or bemoaning the problems of plastic joints. Certainly, anything medical assured a captive audience. Dot said, ‘I feel a lot better since I’ve been on these new tablets.’

  ‘What are they, then?’

  ‘Some sort of acid.’

  ‘Acid?’

  There was a short silence as Dot went through her pockets and produced a tiny bottle, then peered at it for some time. ‘I was right. Frolic acid, that’s what it is.’

  Tom sniggered at this and hunted in his bag for an apple. He remembered Amanda taking folic acid when she was pregnant. For a moment, he settled his eyes on the muddy horizon and thought about his children. Since they’d been born, three together in quick succession, his home life had become a living nightmare of sleepless nights and arguments. His marriage was a constant uphill struggle, a domestic battleground created by a demanding toddler and a set of colicky twins.

  The kids screamed at Amanda, and Amanda screamed at him.

  He felt trapped, she felt trapped. His salary was pretty good, but that meant he was mostly exhausted from the job, thanks to Charles snapping at his heels and wanting his balls on a plate. Tom felt almost disgusted with himself that when the call had come from his mother, he was relieved. Amazingly, Charles had been uncharacteristically sympathetic for once and insisted that Tom took some compassionate leave. It meant he could leave the office and escape a particularly tricky presentation. Another text from Melanie: ‘Problem.’ He ignored this for a while, knowing it would be business. Let Charles sort it out, he was meant to be the boss. Tom looked across to the picnic area. The group were in high spirits, full of Dot’s granddaughter’s wedding.

  ‘Oh, I’m not wearing a hat,’ Dot was saying, ‘it will only spoil my hair, so I’ve been searching for one of those incinerators instead.’

  ‘Don’t you mean a fascinator?’

  ‘Oh… do I?’

  The conversation turned to the expense of it all, and Tom thought about his own wedding, six years ago. Their parents had bankrupted themselves to give them an amazing wedding, when all along Amanda and he would have been happier with none of it, or at least a lot less of it.

  Tom sighed, partly with the overall stress of his messy life, but mostly with a feeling of dread making him wonder if he was maybe building up to the classic seven year itch. He’d already intimated to Melanie that Amanda didn’t understand him. His secretary had pulled his strings accordingly and at first he’d been flattered, but now he had to admit, it was becoming… not a problem exactly, but the affair had moved up a gear. No, he had to be honest; he was balanced on a knife-edge with it all.

  Tom gave the group a furtive glance and sidled into the shrubs to relieve his bladder. He pushed through a thicket of gorse; no sooner was he in an uncompromising position when two things happened. First of all he spied Helga’s unmistakable shape through the trees, but there was something else unmistakable too. What the… what on earth? She was stood, braced, like a man taking a pee. Helga was clearly, unmistakably, a man!

  Tom’s mobile suddenly sprang to life, but before he could silence it, the theme tune from Live and Let Die filled the small copse with a dramatic burst of music. Helga quickly turned and met his eyes and for a nanosecond of embarrassed shock, both men stared at each other.

  Tom fumbled with his flies, then with the phone. It was Melanie. Fighting his way back out to the beach with one finger in his ear to drown out the raucous laughing of the group, Tom tried to make sense of what she was saying; something about suspenders?

  ‘I can’t hear you! Slow down and speak clearly.’

  ‘I’ve been SUSPENDED!’ she yelled, ‘Is that clear enough? We’ve been found out, Tom. Uncle Charles wants your cheating head on a plate.’

  Tom walked part way down the beach, his mind numb. A sudden chill caused him to untie his sweater from around his waist and shrug it on. The change in the climate was like someone had flicked a switch. Then he realised that the wind had got up because of the incoming tide.

  Shit! It was coming in all right, in more ways than one.

  ‘Look, Mel, stop panicking. He can’t prove anything has gone on.’

  ‘He’s known for weeks, apparently, and that’s only part of it,’ she went on, ‘the accountant’s here, crawling over your office.’

  Tom stopped in his tracks, as his mind ran over and over his sales reports. They weren’t exactly false. It was just that he was very good at deception, and his secretary was very good at filing everything away. It was more along the lines of out-smarting the company, by way of some clever computing.

  Melanie was scathing. ‘And how stupid of you to log hotel bookings on your diary.’

  ‘I had to, to claim expenses!’ Tom hissed back.

  ‘Like I said, he’s been through everything.’

  ‘What should I do… Mel?’ he said, mostly to himself.

  She’d disconnected.

  Tom hurried back towards the group. They were packing up and the atmosphere was distinctly subdued, hardly surprising in the wake of impending doom via drowning. Helga was reapplying lipstick, watching his every move with hooded eyes. She thrust a map, folded into a small bulky square towards Tom. He dragged his eyes from hers and tried to focus, but his thoughts and fears were diving all over the place, each one fighting for supremacy. The footpath symbols swam like a network of spider’s webs in front of his eyes, and it was difficult to concentrate. Damn it! He was backed into a corner through his own lack of care, in more ways than one.

  Tom checked the tide again, just to reassure himself that retracing their steps presented too big a risk, but his fears were quickly confirmed. The boats tethered opposite the pub on the jetty, which had been haphazardly lodged in silt at the start were now bobbing furiously on an incoming choppy sea. He scanned the huge bay, noting with a shiver that a lot of the coastline path was bordered with towering limestone cliffs, so no escape there, but potentially a dangerous situation for anyone not too quick on their feet.

  He felt his stomach lurch at the idea of sixteen senior citizens clinging to the rock face with angry waves nipping at their feet and then the sea rescue helicopter, festooned with pensioners swaying from safety ropes. No, that was his imagination in overdrive.

  Fortunately, the war memorial beach was also accessed by a single- track lane providing access to a few cottages and caravan parks. Somewhere along this service road it seemed there was a footpath heading over the farmland and back to the pub. It was a shorter route and although the wooded contours were a ser
ious cause for concern, it seemed there was little choice.

  Sensing his defeat, the group followed Tom and began to tackle the gradient in virtual silence, all no doubt concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other and breathing at the same time.

  Old age was horrible he mused. His father seemed to have aged ten years since his last visit. He dreaded to think what Derek Winterton-Smith would make of his carry-on at work. He’d only been retired from the police force for a couple of years, lumbered already with health problems and a son who’d messed up his entire life. With each tread, Tom felt his heart grow heavier.

  ‘Mr Winterton-Smith! Wait up!’

  Tom stopped and turned to see the rest of the group pushing through a huge, wild hedge of hawthorn. He’d marched straight past the stile, unseen because it was so overgrown. It didn’t bode well, the fact it was clearly unused. ‘Please, call me Tom,’ he said, holding back some of the more vicious looking brambles. No one called him anything.

  They plodded on, through fields thick with autumnal mud and heavy with crops, or curious heifers. After an hour or so, the contours began to make their presence felt. To make matters worse, the path almost petered out into a huge, mostly uphill overgrown tangle of gorse, nettles and bramble. Tom wiped his arm across his brow and considered the situation. Basically, he was in a cold sweat for a number of reasons; he was also hungry, thirsty and thoroughly sick and tired of the whole expedition.

  Ironically, his mother rang to say that his father was out of the woods. Tom laughed, albeit in a hollow kind of way.

  ‘That’s good news, Mum, very good.’

  ‘Why are you panting?’

  ‘Oh, nothing to worry about,’ Tom said, watching Helga swashbuckling her way onwards and upwards, using the walking poles like machetes, forcing her way through the shrubs. Tom flipped his phone shut, and at Helga’s suggestion, they both went ahead to test the reliability of the route, whilst the rest of them collapsed into a silent huddle on the ground.

  After just ten minutes, battling with an ever steepening incline and with the vegetation becoming thicker by the minute, Tom was about to admit defeat when his feet lost their traction. The edge of the path if you could describe it as a path, had given way to a crumbling edge of stone, loose shrub and God knows what evil mass of shallow-rooted thorn bushes, most of which went along with him for the ride.

  Then it was three seconds of sheer panic.

  He fell, slipping and sliding, shouting out, grasping at stones and saplings. It seemed to last forever, the feeling of helpless fear, not knowing where he would finally stop. Three seconds was a lot of falling time. It was enough time to find himself several metres down an escarpment; his hands ripped open and his trousers torn in several places. He could taste blood. The shock was the worst feeling, and Tom lay flat on his back, staring at the sky, fighting the nausea, his heart racing.

  ‘You okay down there?’ Helga shouted.

  ‘Yeah. No… not really. Just give me a minute.’

  Slowly, Tom shifted himself upright. Impossible to fathom where he may have ended up had he not stopped falling. Looking at the horrible gash on his leg, he felt almost suffocated by a huge, childish well of emotion. It had been years since he’d given in to sobbing, and he wasn’t about to start now. Interrupted by another burst of Live and Let Die, Tom managed to get hold of his phone, grateful for the sobering distraction.

  Charles calling… no real surprise there. How did he handle all of this? In reality, and hypothetically, he was halfway to killing himself. Should he jump before he was pushed? Tom kicked at some of the loose scrub, and a shower of small stones went hurtling down noisily, then fell silent.

  ‘Charles! What can I do for you?’ Tom said loudly, unable to keep the heavy sarcasm at bay. He’d wanted to be rude for years, and this was his chance.

  ‘Monday morning; my office 9am,’ Charles snarled.

  Tom pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘I… er, that won’t be necessary. We both know what this is about, so I’ll say it first. I’m not sorry in the least about your stupid, fucking flow charts, but I am sorry I ever started an affair with your niece. I resign!’

  An angry tirade burst down the speaker. Tom flipped it shut, and without thinking, flung the phone with all its incriminating messages and that shaming picture of Melanie, the one where she was wearing just three Post-it notes; to a certain death. He heard it smash, and allowed a breath of relief to escape his parched mouth. Yes, that felt good, cathartic even.

  On hearing voices, Tom looked up to see the group had congregated; a sea of worried faces peering down. ‘Oh, Mr Winterton-Smith has had an accident!’

  ‘I’m all right,’ he shouted, ‘I can easily climb back up, it’s not far,’ he said, trying to reassure, then for good measure added, ‘I’m a Celebrity; Get Me out of Here!’

  This was ignored, treated with the contempt it probably deserved.

  ‘He looks awfully white,’ Dot said, and there was a murmur of agreement. It wasn’t surprising really, an apple and a bottle of designer water was no substitute for a pub lunch. And then, the old trainers he’d elected to wear had done him no favours either. Tom was aware they were all discussing this as he attempted to get to his feet, clutching whatever he could do to steady himself in the process.

  Presently, a lifeline materialised in the form of a mostly black banana, carefully lowered down on a length of binder twine, followed by half a bottle of Pepsi. Really, the situation was just too embarrassing to be laughable, but the sugar did hit some kind of spot and then without too much effort, Tom managed to scramble back towards the path. Helga pulled him over the final, awkward overhanging rim and Tom was grateful for her masculine strength. She also handed him an extra-large sweater and a cup of coffee. The rest of the group hung back, letting him recover and no doubt slightly suspicious of his burgeoning friendship with Helga.

  Tom considered the life changes he had managed to elicit in the space of five minutes. With no job or mobile phone hopefully that meant no mistress too, however, the fact remained he was lost with sixteen pensioners, all of them thoroughly pissed off now but too polite to say. Except maybe one of them. Helga topped up his coffee.

  ‘Why did you throw your phone away?’

  ‘Ah… it’s symbolic.’

  ‘I heard you shouting into it too.’

  ‘Ah… that was meant to be private.’

  ‘I have some stuff I’d rather keep private too.’

  Tom nodded, ‘Yes, yes of course.’

  They retraced their steps, Tom limping and bleeding, and begging to borrow a mobile phone. If they could all just get back as far as the road and if he could just call Amanda, then she could just call her brother and have him send the minibus from his taxi firm. Braithwaite obliged with a mobile, and Tom made the call home.

  When his wife answered and he heard the babies in the background, Tom had to fight to keep his voice steady. Amanda sounded tired, as usual.

  ‘What’s the matter? Have you had an accident?’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ he said, as cheerfully as he could manage.

  ‘Well, it’s just… well you never normally call me in the day, that’s all. It’s not your father, is it? Tom?’

  ‘No,’ he sighed. ‘It’s me. I’ve…’ He almost lied, he almost said he’d been made redundant but thought better of it at the last minute.

  ‘I… I’ve resigned from Williams & Sons. I hated the job, and… well, it was only a matter of time before I was pushed. Not needed you see… company’s dead in the water, has been for years. Amanda?’

  There was a horrible silence.

  ‘What will we do?’ she whispered, ‘And where the hell are you? I can hear cattle.’

  ‘I… I’ve lost my way,’ Tom said. ‘I’ve lost my way… that’s all.’

  THE END.

  Christmas Present

  Christmas spirit; is it a present, or a presence?

  Sylvia knew wh
y they were doing it of course. They were concerned about her being alone for Christmas in a huge, falling down farmhouse at the end of a private track, in the midst of a bleak valley. She had no idea why they all worried; her grown up children that is, she’d never given them cause to. Since their father had gone, Sylvia had discovered she relished the challenge to just... be herself.

  It wasn’t loneliness; it was the appreciation of solitude, wasn’t it?

  It sounded like her husband had died; to keep saying he’d gone. Well, Ted had done no such thing, he’d had a very late midlife crisis and run off with another woman who lived in a house with running water and central heating. That’s what it amounted to; it was all about Sylvia’s refusal to leave the farm and go to live in a flat or a bungalow. Ridiculous!

  She rubbed half-heartedly at the coffee stains on the bedside table and hoped that Helena, her son’s other half, wouldn’t mind the little boxes of mouse poison in all the corners of the rooms and the dead moths that sometimes fell out of the curtains. If she was honest, she didn’t really get along with Helena. She was terribly fussy about hygiene... and then her daughter’s husband, well! She didn’t know where to start with Will. What was that daft saying he kept coming up with?

  ‘Where there’s a ‘will’ there’s a way’. That was it; that was his mantra for everything.

  He was asthmatic, so she’d have to stop all the dogs going in the beds although it got so cold at night she couldn’t really see anyone objecting.

  A car horn heralded their noisy arrival, spoiling her afternoon nap. They were far too early, filling the hall with all their bags, parcels and expensive coats and shoes. And it was all a terrible fuss really, trying to keep the dogs from jumping up and the hall table from falling down.

  ‘Tea’, that’s what she said and hurried from them all.

  She shouldn’t have been surprised to find that her eyes were actually filling faster than the kettle; she really would have to get Will to take a look, but when she looked at her reflection in the kitchen window she was astonished to see she was... well, she was smiling.