by Dan Tyte
Click.
The room fell silent.
Trent was expecting to look back at a slide detailing the target media for our campaign. Instead he found Banquo’s ghost.
At first, I think the money thought the fading passport page was part of our presentation. Some clever, creative representation of the Everyman we needed to convince of the curative powers possessed by waste. But it slowly dawned upon the three that the slide they saw before them wasn’t the work of our graphics team, but an eight-year-old 45 mm by 35 mm likeness of the man who was stood before them shucking his big idea. The hair a little less expensively cut, the hangover from teenage acne evident around the mouth, the nose a little wonkier, but the same green eyes. The same Trent.
Or the same Kevin Fisher.
Three pairs of eyes moved back and forth, royal box at centre court style, while Kevin’s face remained steadfast sepia. Trent’s, a little tighter, drained whiter and in inverse proportion to the red hue washing over Miles. And like that, he bolted around the oak table and shot through the double doors. Miles mouthed an apology and followed him.
Shocked silence.
‘So, ladies and gentlemen… remember, trash can,’ said Jill.
Now, you may think I failed in my responsibility to Morgan & Schwarz but that, dear friend, would be short-termism. Sure, okay, we’d bombed the beauty parade, but there would be others. There would only be one Kevin Fisher. And it was time for him to come back to life.
Trent.
Tick.
Post-pitch euphoria usually began with the simple pleasure of a piss. After an hour of selling strategies through see-through smiles while caning the caffeine, draining the lizard was the only release on my mind. But this was no conventional cruise up the catwalk.
Miles had the same idea.
I walked into the men’s room to find his Prince of Wales-checked back to me. He was pissing in the middle urinal of three. I sidled up next to him.
‘So… I thought that went well,’ I said.
What happened next needs no embellishment.
Miles peered up from the porcelain and realised who his bathroom buddy was. The soothing splash of pee hitting pan was overawed by a deep guttural tsunami of rage from the pit of Miles’ stomach. He lurched towards me and, grabbing me by the lapels, smashed me against the cubicle door. Perhaps I should have used these instead.
‘What in God’s fucking name?’
‘Wait, Miles, WAIT.’
His huge cock – turns out it actually was – flung back and forth like an angry metronome as he slammed me repeatedly against the closed door. Specks of urine splashed on my Italian brogues. I wondered if I could put the cleaning bill through expenses.
‘Miles, put me down and I’ll explain,’ I pleaded. He dropped me onto my heels. I could empathise with what Jesus had to go through. This saving souls shit was hard fucking work.
‘You were driving the deck, Bill; you must have known the content of the slides.’
I agreed.
‘Every last one of them, Miles.’
His nostrils flared.
‘Then I can’t think of anything in the world you could possibly say to me which is going to save your arse right now.’
‘What do we do, Miles? I mean what do we really do. And don’t spin me those lines about “solving problems” or “adding value” or “helping organisations reach their potential” because you know what, Miles? It’s bullshit. Bull Shit. Buuuuuuullshit. What do we do, Miles? We sell an image. We perpetuate a lie.’ The lavender of the washroom freshener stuck in the back of my throat. I hocked and spat on the floor. Miles didn’t move.
‘We’re not offering the answer to a happy home life; we’re selling washing powder. The oil company isn’t a big friend of the community; it couldn’t give a flying fuck about them. That suspect sheikh who we really shouldn’t have set up to meet with government ministers. This is not a noble way to earn a living, Miles. We shouldn’t be walking around with our heads held fucking high. Although it’s probably the coke that does that.’ His eyebrows arched.
‘Don’t fucking look at me like that. On more than one occasion I stole a bump from your desk drawer. A 12-year-old could pick that lock. Nothing felt finer than racking up big fat lines and snorting them off your desk through crisp fifties. The drugs and booze – oh, there was a lot of booze – took the edge off the reality of what we were doing. What we are doing. I was either too fucking high or drunk or both to care. But now I do care. And so should you, if you were any kind of man at all. That’s why I did that to Trent. To Kevin. He needs to face up to the reality of who he is. We all do. You’ll thank me for it.’ I took a breath.
‘Are we not men, Miles?’
I looked up. Miles had tears in his eyes, or at least I thought he did.
‘Oh, and Miles, put your cock away, will you?’
I left him there; half naked, silently sobbing.
It would probably be the last time I ever saw him.
Miles.
I may have to find new employment.
That deserves a tick.
Out in the corridor, a short, sharp tapping noise bounced off the polished wooden floor. It was similar to one heard in the office. One that drove me slowly insane. Jill was tapping her heels. Louder now as I got closer. A death stare from ten paces. Unlikely yogi Jill. Crazy cat lady Jill. Louder. Cyanide sarcasm Jill. Naughty at forty Jill. Louder. In desperate need of a stiff one Jill. LOUDER.
‘You little stinking fucking toer…’ I grabbed her by her shoulders and planted a wet juicy smacker on her thin lips. It was that or punch her out and the waste management people seemed like they had an active HR department.
‘Bill…’
‘Jill…’ Her death stare had gone, her eyes different now, adolescent even. It was 1986 and she was behind the bike sheds. I wore a denim jacket and stale cigarette smoke. The bell rang for double biology. This was a Jill I had not seen.
‘I’m taking the afternoon off. Don’t wait up.’
The tapping had stopped.
Jill.
Tick.
I’d be back to Morgan & Schwarz for Christy. It was time to sort out my domestics.
Chapter 30
The pool car was parked erratically in section D1 of the car park. As the only model who’d not had a drink to take the edge off this morning, I’d been designated driver. The others had been too on edge to ask why. Even sobriety couldn’t fix my reversing. Damn shakes. Jill, Miles and Kevin were going to have to ride on a one-way ticket. Anyhow, I had a feeling they’d be a while.
The interior of the car was the usual manifestation of the eccentricities of my colleagues, on wheels: a stick of nicotine gum (Miles), suspect white stains on the rear upholstery (Kevin), and a compact disc entitled Spirit Voyage (Jill). Pete had clearly returned the Sting CD to his home hi-fi system to soundtrack a Sunday afternoon DIY session.
I pressed play. A solitary flute whistled through the stale air of the hatchback. Chimes then. The ghost of a teenage whale called for its mother. I eased up the gears calmly. This felt good. The whale called louder. I buzzed the window down. Children ran by the window. Trees bloomed. Bells now. I stopped at an amber light. There was no spaceman. No Janie Jones. No dancing in the street. But fuck, man, this was cool. I turned it louder. I had no idea why Jill was always so stressed the fuck out if she listened to this stuff. If someone had given me this instead of The Queen is Dead when I was a kid my life might have been a lot easier. Actually, who am I kidding? I’d have punched them in the eye.
My existing emotional state was probably a touch more receptive.
Pete had a date, Carol had a benefactor, Trent was Kevin, Miles was cry-wanking, Jill was a woman again. My yin and yang were perfectly aligned. If the strung-out wastrel who woke up in the psychic’s bed could see me now, he’d cross the road in a flash. I was abiding to my Ten Commandments, or at least my own interpretation of them. Sister Gina would be proud.
The soul was sapp
ed out of the sky as the wheels turned into the cul-de-sac, a waking nightmare of new builds and neo-cons. My mum was in the front garden tending to a hanging basket. Her hair was tied up. The sounds from the stereo roused her attention. The teenage whale had found his mother.
‘Bill, what are you doing here?’ I stepped out of the car.
‘I came to see you.’
‘About what?’
‘About nothing…’
‘Oh…’
‘…and everything.’
‘Whatever do you mean, Bill?’
She looked old, the sunlight resting in the cracks around her eyes.
‘Come on inside,’ I said, ‘and stop looking so worried.’
‘Okay, love.’ She took off her gardening glasses and placed them neatly on the step. The front door was open. Sounds of the Sixties could not be heard blasting from the back room. Barry was not at home.
‘He’s at the post office, love. Taking some packages for his friends off of eBay. He spends an awful lot of time talking to them on that computer.’ I bet he does. I smiled at her. She smiled back. Good old reciprocation.
‘Let’s sit in the posh room shall we, Mum?’
‘Okay, love.’ I pushed the glass door open. ‘I’ll just get the kettle on… Oh, and take your shoes off will you, love?’ she called from the kitchen.
I kicked my brogues off. The shag pile tickled my toe through a hole in my socks. A minute or three passed. Deep breaths.
‘Here you go, love, it’s hot,’ she said, handing me a cup of tea.
‘Thanks, Mum.’
‘You look very smart today, love.’
‘Thanks, Mum. We pitched for a big new client.’
‘Did you win?’
‘We’ll win in the end.’
‘That’s good, love.’ She took a sip of her still-steaming tea. Worry lines clustered on her forehead like the contours of an Ordnance Survey. There were more than I’d ever noticed before, although I rarely got this close to her. The last time I’d asked her for a chat had been… had been God knows when. We didn’t ‘chat’ in our family. We just existed next to each other, the constant coming together eroding edges onto the smooth pebbles we once must have been.
I took a deep breath.
‘Do you remember you and Dad always used to tell me to be true to myself?’
They never had told me that. We barely spoke. And certainly not in a rules-to-live-your-life-by way. It just seemed like an appropriate opening to what I was about to tell her. Verification that we were getting up close and personal because that was her parenting mantra come to fruition. Warts and all because that’s how she wanted it.
‘Well, that’s how it’s going to be from here on in. I’m going to be true to myself,’ I looked her in the eye, ‘and to you.’
She nodded silently. The lines grew deeper.
‘Whatever it is, love, you can tell me,’ she said. ‘What is it, Bill… are you…’ she smiled reassuringly, ‘…gay?’
I spat the cuppa out all over the shag pile. This was becoming a fucking trademark.
‘Bill?’
‘Mum.’
‘It’s okay, love, it’s…’
‘I did not sit you down to tell you I’m gay. Jesus.’ My trouser legs were damp with tea.
‘It’s okay, love. Barry has a nephew…’
‘I AM NOT GAY, MOTHER,’ I stood up and shouted, flinging the teacup across the carpet. A neighbour appeared in the window. They gathered this was not a good time.
‘Okay, Bill, okay. Sit down will you?’ I reached down to pick up the cup and saucer.
‘Leave it, love, I’ll clean it up later.’
I counted to ten, or at least two before she started again.
‘So if you’re not gay then, love, what is it…? Drugs?’
‘Mum!’ I screeched.
I was fourteen again.
‘Well, it’s either that or the other these days, isn’t it?’
‘Mum!’
‘Well, it’s always in Barry’s paper.’
‘Mum, okay, well, it is drugs. Or was drugs.’ Her face paled. ‘WAS. It was a lot of things but it’s not anymore, it’s just me, Bill, trying my fucking hardest to be a functioning member of society, doing good, thinking of others and trying to make up for all the bad things I’ve done over the years. Drink. Drugs. Women. Drugs. Drink. Bad things. Bad people. Bad places. But not now, mum. Not now. Now it’s just me. Bill. Trying to be that little boy you told to be true to himself.’
And with that, I collapsed in her arms, tears running down my cheeks.
I was exhausted.
I don’t know how long I lay there for but when I came around a cup of hot tea sat next to the remote control on the faux marble coffee table in front of me. The air smelt of carpet shampoo. Hoovering could be heard from upstairs. Herman’s Hermits hummed in from the conservatory. These new houses had paper-thin walls.
This was their home. Mum and Barry’s. And you know what, I was happy for them. Or if I wasn’t quite happy for them, I wasn’t quite so mad. I’d drink my tea and leave them to it.
Mum.
Tick.
Barry.
Tick.
Chapter 31
They say a man’s home is his castle. It was a shame that mine looked like it had been ransacked. It was hard to feel the security and privacy alluded to by the proverb when the kitchen had fleas and the shitter came with a viewing gallery.
I pushed the door of number 35.
The house smelt of incense. My mind jumped to a memory from a few months and a million years ago. Bad music played through the floorboards. Bad clothes draped up the mouldy carpet of the staircase. Craig and Connie were the only couple in the world for who The Levellers was sex music.
Today, the kitchen table displayed half-empty cans, rolling tobacco and a copy of the I Ching; proudly, ornamentally. I ripped a page from the back of the book, took a pen from my top pocket and wrote:
Dear Connie and Craig,
Sometimes a man just needs a roof. An umbrella from the elements, a guardian from the night, a cover from the cold. You gave me that when I needed it the most and for that gesture I will be eternally grateful. Man can survive under a roof forever. Correction: some men can survive under a roof forever. Some men need more than a roof. The cold kept out for only so long until internalised. Until a chill wind blows right through on the cosiest of nights. Winds lead to warm fronts. It’s time for my weather to change. You have helped me more than you could ever know but now I need to help myself. I have left a month’s rent in the cutlery drawer. Use my scant possessions as you see fit. I don’t need them where I am going.
Yours
Bill
PS If you ever want to rent the room out again, you seriously need to sort out the bathroom floor. Not everyone is as desperate as I was.
Craig and Connie.
Tick.
Chapter 32
The room had been booked for a week now. I’d spent lapses in between prepping for the waste management pitch searching online for somewhere special. The criteria wasn’t an Egon Ronay award or a TripAdvisor top-rating. There were many factors to take into consideration. Everything had to be just right. The time had come.
I told Christy I had something important to tell her. There was no need for a PR spin on that statement. It was 110 per cent God’s honest. I’d pitched it as a ‘buddy session on tour’ so as not to scare her off. It wasn’t strictly by-the-book Morgan & Schwarz HR policy to hold these pastoral sessions in a hotel bar on the outskirts of the city, but then I never could quite cut it as the company man. The location had been methodically chosen specifically for the night that lay ahead. No one could know us. We needed to go incognito, blend in just as any other couple would. Our relationship had developed since those nervous getting-to-know-you meetings, awkward silences broken up with Health and Safety protocol, time management tips and unexpected soul bearing. After spending more and more of our time together outside of the offi
ce, I knew what Christy needed even if she didn’t. She needed this even if she didn’t want it.
The hotel was a good 20 miles northwest of the office along the dual carriageway which fed traffic in and out of the city, ideally located for two-bit salesmen and out-of-town conference goers to hit the bar and the hay before a day in the smoke. In my drinking days a trip this far out would have meant expensing taxi cabs there and back but my new found steadfastness put the pool car at my service.
It was getting darker. The lights of the cars flew by, white passing my windscreen, red ahead. I tried not to let the symbolism of following the red lights faze me. I was doing the right thing. I flicked through the radio dial to take my mind off what lay ahead. I’d run over this moment in my head times once, times twice, times infinity. I knew what to do. I had visualised the result.
This would happen.
The fly in the ointment could be the side effects of sobriety. The ever-present bead of sweat on my temple and nervous gut rot were not desirable traits in a man. Yeah, sure, me and Christy had got closer but I don’t think we were at the ‘poo in each other’s company’ stage just yet. When a girl had smelt the traces of your rotten insides lingering around the porcelain, it was hard to get the magic back. No one told you the wagon would be so hard.
‘Arrive at destination on the left.’
We were here.
Well, I was here.
But you’re here too, right?
I couldn’t do this alone. Even James Dean would have struggled to make a big entrance in a roadside, 3-star, chain-hotel. I pulled down the sun visor to check the mirror. A sushi take-out menu (potentially anyone’s) fell out. My eyes weren’t as tired as I’d expected. Hell, I’d venture to even say that once I wiped the sweat away, I looked good. The truth was a peerless effervescent.
