Fireflies

by Menon, David

  ‘You sound like it’s all over, Simon’.

  ‘Well it feels like it is, Harry’.

  ‘You’ve had some fun though’.

  ‘Oh I’ve had some fun but could you have got through your life just on fun?’

  ‘Point taken’.

  ‘Thank you’.

  ‘Well you did get investigated by the clap clinic that time’

  ‘And even then I was given the all clear’ Simon lamented. ‘I’m so bloody insignificant I couldn’t even catch a sexually transmitted disease. I was the only one in the chain who wasn’t infected’.

  ‘I wish you’d been able to find someone, mate’ said Harry. ‘We all do. We all think you deserve to have someone and we wish we could make it happen’.

  ‘There was Mitch’.

  ‘Yes, but he wasn’t gay or even curious’ said Harry. ‘He couldn’t have given you what you needed’.

  ‘You knew what we were like when we were together’.

  ‘Yes but it was a bromance’ Harry pointed out. ‘Like you and me have always been’.

  ‘I wonder what Mitch is doing now’.

  ‘There’s no point in you wondering that, Simon. You’ll only make yourself feel worse. You’ve got to get through today and then move on with your life’.

  Simon had heard all this before from his friends. They all went on about how he’s got to look on the positive side but it was alright for them. They all had someone to look on the positive side of things with. They all had someone to help them through the bad times. But he didn’t and he was lonely. He had plenty of friends. He was swimming in bloody friends even though some of them lately had somewhat disappeared from view. But every time he’d ever wanted to move beyond the limits of friendship and follow through on his desires it was never possible for one reason or another. And the older he got the more difficult and the more painful it became to put on the brave face and bury his disappointment deep down inside where nobody else could see it. Other people seem to be able to find love so easily and yet for him it remained as impossible a dream now as it had been thirty years ago when he was first started out on the adult stage of his life’s journey. He’d really had enough of it all. He’d been worn down by life. He’d turned into the kind of man who everybody comes to for advice on their relationship but who never has one of his own to talk to them about. In that way he was a bit like a Catholic priest advising married couples. Perhaps he should’ve gone into the priesthood. At least then he’d have been able to blame his single status on the fact that he was already married to God.

  ‘Anyway’ said Simon. ‘Next time I’m going to come back as a girl in Australia who marries a big hunky farmer in the outback’.

  ‘Except that it wouldn’t work out like that for you, Simon’ said Harry. ‘You’d come back as some poor girl in Africa who has her switch twitched with a rusty knife when she’s too young to resist’.

  ‘So you’re telling me there’s no hope for me in this life or the next’.

  ‘Simon, I’m saying you’ve made some big mistakes and you’ve also been dealt some pretty cruel blows’ said Harry. ‘But you’ve got to concentrate now on getting the best out of the rest of this life instead of fantasizing about what you’d like to happen in the next because there are no guarantees for any of us. We’re all just doing the best we can’.

  ‘Easy for you to say when you know what it feels like to be loved’.

  ‘I know, Simon, I know. I’m just trying to … ‘

  ‘…we’re almost there’ said Simon who could see the county court building that appeared to him in the middle distance like a scaffold. He’d wanted to cut Harry off because if he’d sprouted some bullshit about not knowing what’s around the next corner he might’ve hit him.

  ‘I’ll pay for this’ said Harry. ‘You’ll be shelling out enough today as it is’.

  ‘Thanks, Harry. Nearly seven hundred quid to go bankrupt. There must be an irony there’.

  ‘And you do know that I’d have you come and stay at mine until you got on your feet again but with me and April only just starting out … well you know’.

  ‘Yeah, I do. I don’t want my nose rubbed in gooseberries as well as everything else’.

  ‘Now come on, cheer up. In a year’s time, or even less than that, you’ll be looking back on this period with a renewed sense of self-belief and optimism’.

  ‘Yes, Harry. And Cheryl Cole can sing’.

  ‘April really likes you, you know’.

  Simon wondered why the fuck Harry was telling him that. Did he think that knowing his straight best mate’s new girlfriend liked him would somehow help him over the fact that he was about to go bankrupt for a mountain of debt? He genuinely liked April and they got on really well but she’d been gushing to him the other day about how Harry was so attentive and so passionate and never stopped telling her how much he adored her and loved her. Well bully for fucking you, Simon had thought. Nobody had ever told Simon that they loved him, not even his own father. He’d love to know what it felt like.

  ‘That’s nice’ he said.

  ‘Where will you go when you’ve finished here?’ asked Harry.

  ‘I’ve absolutely no idea’.

  ‘The world is your oyster’.

  Simon laughed at the ridiculous nature of that comment. ‘You’re forgetting one very important fact, Harry. I have no money’.

  ‘Have you heard from any of your family?’

  ‘Family?’ Simon scoffed. ‘Now there’s a fucking joke. I haven’t heard from any member of my family since I told them all I was having to go bankrupt and would be losing my house’.

  ‘Give them time, Simon’.

  ‘I haven’t got time to give to them or anybody else, Harry! That’s what everybody is consistently failing to grasp about this whole situation. I’ve lost everything. I have nothing for the future. I’m in the deepest fucking shit imaginable and it doesn’t seem like it’s getting through to people on any fucking level. You say I’ve got to give them time when next week I could be trying to sleep in some bloody hostel?’

  ‘They’re embarrassed, Simon. They don’t know what to say’.

  ‘Well the poor little darlings! When I’m sleeping in a shop doorway I’ll forgive them for leaving me there because they’re embarrassed. How the fuck do they think it feels for me?’

  ‘That’s what people are like. They can’t deal with this kind of big stuff’.

  ‘Well I’ve got to. I’ve got to deal with it. You say I’ve got to give my family time? If I’d told them I’d got cancer they’d be rallying round competing to claim the Oscar for best family member in a supporting role. They’d all be fighting to have me stay with them so they could be seen to be looking after me. But go bankrupt and it’s not only your material possessions that you lose’.

  ‘I don’t know what to say, Simon’.

  ‘I’m terrified, Harry. I’m fucking terrified. I’ve earned a fortune over the years and I’ve spent every penny of it and more which is why I’ve got into this mess. I’ve spent all my money looking for something I never found. And now here I am. I’ve fallen off the edge of life, Harry. And I don’t know if I’m ever going to be able to get back on my feet’.

  ‘You won’t … do anything stupid?’

  ‘I’ve done a lot of stupid things when it comes to money, Harry’.

  ‘You know what I mean, Simon’.

  ‘Well if I did do away with myself would everybody be standing around at the funeral tearfully regretting that they never offered me a place to live for a while? Because it’ll be too fucking late then. But of course that’s what people do, isn’t it. They spew out their meaningless love for the person after they’ve committed suicide instead of helping them when they were still alive’.

  ‘What about Eric? I mean, he is helping you?’

  ‘He says he’s going to do his best whatever that means’.

  ‘We’re here’ Harry announced when the taxi pulled up outside the county court buildin
g. He then turned to Simon. ‘I am sorry about all this, mate. Really I am’.

  ‘I know you are, Harry’.

  ‘You do believe it though?’

  ‘Yes, Harry, I do believe it’.

  Simon did believe it. Harry didn’t deserve to be on the receiving end of his resentment. Harry had been as true a friend as he could’ve been.

  Shortly after Simon signed his bankruptcy papers with the court and paid the fee Harry had to go home to meet April. So Simon went into a cafe across the road and ordered a medium sized plain white coffee. He sat in the window looking out at people who were going up and down with shopping bags and mobile phones attached to their ears and although Simon knew they probably all had problems of their own it didn’t help his feeling of complete and utter desolation. His life had gone. He used to have an active social life. He used to be invited to parties all over the place. But it had all dried up since people knew of his money troubles. His daily existence felt like somebody had laid the table for breakfast but forgotten to buy any food.

  ‘Do you want topping up?’

  Simon looked up. One of the women who worked in the café was standing next to him. She and her colleagues were all middle aged and married and tended to treat their job as an escape from what they saw as the tedium of their lives with their men. He’d overheard them talking that way so many times.

  ‘Oh, yes please’ said Simon who’d done a mental calculation in the seconds before answering and decided he could afford another one. ‘That would be great’.

  ‘I’ll bring it over’ she said as she lifted his now empty cup and saucer. ‘Two more weeks and then I’m off to the Dom Rep’.

  ‘The Dom Rep?’

  ‘The Dominican Republic’ she explained. ‘It’s a really nice heat there and they speak English. It’s not like Egypt where we went for Fred’s fiftieth three years ago. It’s not a nice heat there and besides, they’re always kicking off about something. You’d have thought they’d drop it all in the tourist areas though, wouldn’t you?’

  Simon wasn’t quite sure why this woman was furnishing him with her holiday plans and opinions about Egypt but he couldn’t help but respond. ‘Well if you’re fighting for your freedom and liberty then I don’t suppose someone else’s holiday plans are exactly top of your list of priorities’.

  ‘Well I don’t think it’s very considerate of them’ she repeated. ‘But I’ll get you that coffee’.

  Simon had spent two years fighting to keep his house and he’d lost. He’d gone from loan to loan, line of credit to line of credit, he’d paid over the odds for work he’d had done on his house because he had the eye for the builder. The rainy day had always seemed light years ahead of him but when he lost his job the rainy day drowned him. It all happened so fast. He couldn’t keep up with the payments to all his creditors, including the mortgage company. He’d borrowed on the equity of the house until there was none left and it had gone over into negative. The friendly letters asking if he’d forgotten his repayment date had turned into nasty ones threatening him with all sorts. He became scared to answer the door, scared to pick up the phone when it rang. It had taken less than a year to get to the stage where bankruptcy was his only option according to the Citizens Advice Bureau. Everything he’d worked for would be lost. Everything about his lack of savings haunted him in the still of the night. He’d fucked up. He’d been a fucking idiot with money which in recent years had swept through his hands from what he earned to what he owed like a running tap. He’d lost his job. He’d lost his mother to suicide when he was still a baby. She’d thrown herself out of the bedroom window with him in her arms. She’d died but he’d survived. They’d apparently called it a severe case of post natal depression. He’d grown up with a father who’d never got over the loss of his wife. Simon sometimes wondered why he’d survived and his mother hadn’t. What had life spared him for? Was it really to go through all this shit? Do some people have to take all the pain whilst they watch others take all the joy? That’s what it seemed like to him.

  ‘Your coffee’ said the waitress as she placed it in front of him. ‘Pay when you’re going out, love’.

  Six months ago he’d called in one of those house clearance people who come and buy the contents of someone’s home after they’ve died. He’d sold them the dishwasher, the cooker, the fridge, and the washing machine. Together they were worth over a grand when he bought them but he’d settled for one hundred and twenty in cash because he’d desperately needed the short term gain in cash flow. He then had no choice but to buy a lot of takeaways which kind of defeats the object when you’re short of cash. Going to the supermarket and stocking up on groceries to last a few days is a much cheaper option but he no longer had any means of properly storing anything. It had frustrated him to say the least because he’d always been a reasonably good purchaser of food. He could easily make a chicken last two meals, one hot, one cold, and a sandwich on the third day for his lunch at work. But he didn’t know when those days of doing ordinary things like stocking up the fridge would ever come back. He’d never grasped before how much the cost of living for the poor was so much more than it was for the rich because the poor lack basic resources to make things last. And with all those takeaways, including fish and chips for a fiver, it’s no wonder the poor suffer such disproportionate levels of ill health. He had to include himself in those numbers now but it was hard after spending years not worrying too much about living a comfortable lifestyle. Whilst there’d been a credit card that wasn’t up to the spending limit he could always have just about whatever he wanted. His house had been full of impulse purchases that he would never need. But the purchase of them had made him feel better at the time. And for that he now felt absolutely pathetic.

  He’d called the house clearance people back a second time and they’d taken his bed, wardrobe, and chest of drawers from his bedroom. He was so desperate for cash to get through each day that he’d wanted them to take the bed from his spare room but apparently the mattress didn’t cover the latest fire regulations so they wouldn’t have been able to sell it on. He’d also sold them his books, his CD’s, his DVD’s and his bookcases. From that night on he’d slept on the mattress that didn’t meet the fire regulations. It would never have caught fire though. There was too much moisture in it. He was so stressed out all the time that he was wetting the bed some nights. Fifty years old and wetting the bed. He’d fallen that low.

  He’d kept the microwave so he could do some hot meals of his own and he’d switched to powdered milk. Any perishables like low fat spread (well he had to make some effort with the diet somewhere) he kept on the window ledge of the kitchen so they’d keep reasonably chilled if not cold, same for the occasional yoghurt or carton of orange juice. He’d taken a temporary job for minimum wage at a travel agent where they’d used his experience and situation for six weeks to get someone on the cheap to fill a junior post during a peak period. Nobody there had recognised the pattern he was drawing with his behavior or if they did they kept quiet. He’d have a hot meal in a local café at lunchtime and he’d ask them to make him up a sandwich ‘for later’. He’d take the sandwich home with a bag of crisps and that would be his evening meal. Slowly but surely, day by day, pieces had been falling off his heart and his soul sank deeper into the unknown. But he kept on the brave face. Even when the mortgage company rang him at work and said they were ‘very sorry’ but they ‘couldn’t put any more effort into helping him try to save his property’. He took the call in the corridor and went back into the office where he made everybody a brew, delivered to their desk with the usual smile. The day he’d sent the keys to his house back to the mortgage company he’d left behind everything that had remained after his clear outs and taken only some of his clothes. The suitcase he’d taken them in would become his home.

  ‘Have you ever been to the Dom Rep?’ asked the waitress when she came sidling by again.

  Will she ever just fuck off, he thought. ‘No’.

  �
�Oh it’s lovely’ she went on, ignoring the obvious signs that Simon really didn’t want to talk. ‘Fred doesn’t like it but it’s not up to him. He does as he’s told. He’s paying seven hundred and fifty each all in and the hotel is four star. Not bad is it?’

  ‘Sounds great’ said Simon who wouldn’t even be able to manage a day trip to Skegness now. ‘But you know, I’ve worked in the travel trade all my life and the trouble with those all inclusive places is that the staff working there get paid peanuts and have to work really long hours. It also means that no money is actually going into the local economy because all the guests like you never go into the local town because you’ve got everything in the hotel and all the money you’ve paid goes to the holiday company based here or in Germany or America somewhere. I don’t suppose you’ll be thinking about any of that when you’re sipping your fourth margarita of the day?’

  The waitress looked at him as if he was speaking a foreign language. That was the trouble with the upper working class, thought Simon. They have absolutely no solidarity with anybody else who may be struggling to survive. They were selfish. They were the perfect followers of Margaret Thatcher. They want what they want and they don’t care what others have to go through in order for them to have it. They go to department stores selling cheap clothes and don’t give a shit that someone in a third world sweatshop has had to pay the real price for them by going blind at the age of twelve. Then they blame everything that’s wrong with their sad little lives on immigrants and vote for the far-right political descendents of Margaret Thatcher.

  ‘But anyway I thought you said your husband doesn’t like it there?’

  ‘Well he doesn’t but like I said, he does as he’s told’.

  ‘But you’re quite happy to let him pay the bill?’

  ‘He doesn’t get any choice’ she insisted. ‘I’m not like my sister Marjorie. Her husband is doing an open university course off his own back and she’s devastated. I’d be putting my foot down’.

  ‘About what exactly?’

  ‘Well what’s he doing that for at fifty-seven?’