Narcissism for Beginners

by Martine McDonagh

The county of Devon is in the southwest of England, in the peninsula of Devon and Cornwall. On the map it looks like an elephant’s trunk. Torquay – pronounced Tor-key – is a small beach town on the south coast and Mrs C lives there, on a street called Daddyhole Road. I almost piss my pants when I read the address, but once you get over the name of the street it’s really kind of picturesque. Considering my reason for visiting it’ll be kind of ironic to walk up Daddyhole Street, Road, whatever.

  The GPS on my phone tells me it’s a thirty-eight-minute walk from Torquay railroad station to her house. There is no mass transit option known to Google and I don’t believe in riding in taxis, which is maybe why I don’t see them coming when I’m crossing the street.

  I walk much slower than usual – dragging my heels, Thomas calls it. The sky is totally 3-D and the clouds have all been drawn with a straight edge at the bottom. There’s no real reason to be nervous about meeting an old lady, I met a bunch of them when working my high school community service hours at the Sunrise Home for Senior Citizens in RB (cruel optimism, right? Should be Sunset, surely). If they acknowledge your existence at all they’re generally nice to you in case you’re a relative they forgot about. Sometimes they smell bad, and sometimes they’re cranky, but who can blame them – it can’t be fun going back into diapers after you’ve experienced the trajectory of a whole life without them, right? Maybe I’m nervous because I expect old English ladies to be different. Or maybe I’m psychic. Like my dad believed he was.

  Mrs C’s cottage is pink and faces the sea, or at least it overlooks a small park that runs from the front of her house to the edge of the cliff you’d need to throw yourself off to get to the sea. It’s kind of a relief to see a bike chained to the fence in front of her house. I’m thinking it means she already has a visitor, another human presence to absorb the impact of my arrival. (Mrs C has no phone number so she doesn’t know I’m coming, and I’m anticipating excitement on her side. I learned at the Sunrise that excitement in old people can be fatal.) Her neighbour’s house is blue and I kill a few more minutes admiring the straightness of the line dividing the two colours. There is no actual line, just two colours bumping against each other. There’s a large basket in front of the bike, wound through with yellow and blue plastic flowers, all faded by sunshine and greyed by road dirt, and I use up another few seconds speculating about who the bike belongs to. Daughter? Niece? Kindly neighbour? Grocery delivery girl? Turns out none of those is correct. At eighty-three years old, Mrs C considers herself too old to drive a car, but not to ride a bicycle down the hill every morning to the market and back up it again with a full basket of shopping.

  I’m still stood there, pretending to admire the bike and my general surroundings, when I realise I’m being barked at. If barking is the right word to describe the noise that’s coming out of the mouth of the small, long-haired creature with a bow on its head and a plaid quilted comforter fixed over its shoulders. Its hot, excitable doggy breath is steaming up the glass in Mrs C’s front window. It has good reason to be angry, dressed up in that lame outfit, but once you zone in on the noise it’s making, it’s horrible, like a chainsaw stuck in a tree. The GD would not approve.

  Behind the dog, hidden in the dark space between the white lacy drapes, is Mrs C. Or at least there’s an old woman, with a pale, pinched face, who I assume is Mrs C, seeing as she’s in Mrs C’s house and she doesn’t fit the description of any person I had imagined riding the bike. Gawping at me slack-jawed like I’m the ghost of Hamlet’s father’s son (Hamlet).

  We’re held in a kind of staring contest; I’m waiting for her to disappear and reappear seconds later at the door; she’s waiting for me to disintegrate into pieces of silvery nothingness. Meanwhile the dog is getting super-hysterical so I break the deadlock and let her know that I’m not a ghost or a passing member of the Vintage Bicycle Admiration Society by knocking at the door. At which point the dog goes apeshit, literally starts throwing itself at the glass, and finally Mrs C quits staring and moves away.

  Somewhere near my right hip there’s a harsh squeak and a voice says, ‘Who is it?’ She’s talking to me through the mailbox. I never knew Brits have their mail delivered through a hole in their door, and I guess there’s no reason I would know that, except that it’s the kind of trivial comparison favoured by a certain Mr T Hardiker – and it’s not the voice of a frail old lady, all wobbly and polite and only too aware of her vulnerability, but the breathless squawk of a fairytale witch.

  ‘Mrs Henry?’ I say, bending at the waist. ‘My name is Sonny Agelaste-Bim.’ I’m aiming for speedy recognition by using my dad’s last name.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ she says.

  She calls out to her dog – did she say Binky? – and finally the stupid mutt quits jumping at the window. The barking gets more distant but doesn’t stop. It must be delightful living next door to Mrs C; hopefully her neighbour is hearing-impaired. By this time, I’ve decided the bike belongs to someone else entirely and figure this is probably a rare event and that not too many people come to the door to set Binky off, and I feel bad for Mrs C until she opens the door and stands there in a fog of what appears to be cigarette smoke.

  ‘I shut the dog in the kitchen,’ she says. ‘Don’t like strangers.’

  Mrs C’s hair is not white and softly curled like the customers of Noreen, the visiting hair stylist at the Sunrise, but wiry and grey (except for where it’s stained yellow in the front) and hacked into a longer version of the buzzcut that is the speciality of Jim, the barber who also visits weekly to tend to the Sunrise men. (Noreen and Jim dispense uniform ‘styles-’n’-cutz’ at ‘special discount’ prices for those no longer able to venture out of doors and so have no idea how much a haircut costs any more. Noreen drives a Hummer, Jim a vintage Mercedes in tiptop condition.)

  Mrs C’s wearing a kind of plaid coverall in shades of once blue and green with a heavy-knit grey vest over. Her front teeth are stained brown. My mind makes the unnecessary calculation: cigarette smoke plus brown teeth equals heavy indoor smoker. Yuck. No wonder the dog has such an annoying bark; it probably has throat cancer from breathing in all the second-hand smoke. But who am I to judge, right?

  A single black hair coils from under her chin, so I guess her near sight isn’t so good and there’s no Noreen to pluck it out for her. I try to estimate how far it would stretch if you pulled on it – two, maybe three inches? The shiny black leather shoes on her feet don’t fit the picture.

  She doesn’t invite me in and I actually would prefer not to get any closer, it looks kind of rank in there, but I’ve come here to brighten her day and so I persist. I introduce myself again and she cuts me off, says she heard me the first time.

  ‘I think you knew my father when he was a child,’ I say to the shiny shoes. ‘Robin Agelaste-Bim? I was hoping you might be able to help me with some information about him. About his childhood.’

  Above the shoes her legs are bare, her skin grey and mottled. I force myself to look up at her face again and smile. And I immediately know how Willy Loman must have felt in the face of extreme commercial disinterest.

  ‘I suppose you’re trying to find him, but if you think I can help you you’re mistaken. I haven’t seen him for more than fifteen years. I’ve no idea where he is.’

  I didn’t plan on being the one to break the news of my father’s passing to anyone. I assumed they’d all know. I don’t want to be responsible for causing Mrs C to have a heart attack right here at her door, she doesn’t exactly seem to be in the best of health, so I decide to not tell her yet.

  ‘No, I’m not looking for him. I’m collecting information about my family history, for a kind of summer project. It shouldn’t take too long. I could meet you somewhere else tomorrow if you prefer?’ (Did you pick up on what I was doing there? Passive-aggressive manipulation, a skill I learned from a master, my aforementioned father.)

  She raises two nicotine-stained fingers to her lips and then drops them again immediately when she re
members there’s no cigarette between them. ‘Come back tomorrow morning,’ she says. ‘I’m usually home from church by nine. I’m not sure what use it’ll be, though, if you’re not trying to track him down.’

  I’m trying to work out if she just contradicted herself when she starts closing the door. I lean sideways so she can still see me through the closing gap and thank her for her help. While we’ve been speaking, Binky the dog’s voice finally gave out and its bark has reduced to a rhythmic squeak like a dying car alarm. On the subject of cars, I also have a least favourite word: lube. Makes me want to vomit.

  On the park behind me, a couple kids aged eleven or twelve or so are playing football. A regular pair of homies, riding their pants low to show the top of their chonies. As I walk towards them their ball swerves my way so I chip it back and drop a gnarly pass on to the right foot of the other little guy, the one who didn’t kick it to me. Just flexin’, bro. Actually I’m not a bad player as it goes. Me and the other kids in Brazil played hours of barefoot every day, and when I was twelve and we’d moved to RB I was picked for the Galaxy Youth to play midfield. I killed it for a while, but I guess I’m not really a team player. And I think it’s safe to say that twelve going into thirteen was kind of a difficult phase for me. And that’s the definition of understatement, right there.

  I feel like goofing around for a while with these guys to get some blood into my muscles, so I say, ‘Hey,’ and stop to take off my backpack. My shoulders need a break from the weight and it feels good to get some air under my shirt. They’re cool. I show them a few tricks, a couple Touzanis, which they can already do well enough so I show them how to do the Rivelino Elastic and tell them about the Galaxy and how I could’ve trained with Beckham if I hadn’t bailed a couple years before he got there. They’re super-impressed by that even though it’s something I didn’t do, and if I’m entirely honest the Galaxy are crap, which reminds me of Thomas, ranting on about how the Brits worship mediocrity. Also on my unwritten list of things to do here: go to a real game, with real crowd noise made by real live supporters, instead of a recording played while the audience chats and crunches its ten-dollar popcorn.

  Maybe it’s because Mrs C was so underwhelmed to see me, maybe I’m knocked out of whack by the jet-lag, but for some reason I’m coming on to these guys like I’m The Dude. I hear myself and it’s pathetic. I try to cool it a little, make it more about them.

  I ask them how many balls get booted over the cliff in an average year, and they say thousands, so I tell them they are probably the sole (get it?) reason all the fish in the ocean are dying from plastic poisoning, which makes them laugh. Their names are Josh and David and they are both twelve and have been best buddies their whole lives. Their accent is like the villagers in Hot Fuzz (second movie in the Cornetto Trilogy) – the female villagers, that is; their voices didn’t break properly yet.

  They tell me that once a boy was chasing a ball so hard he ran right off the edge of the cliff. His body was smashed to a pulpy mess on the rocks below. The council put up a fence to stop it happening again and people tied plastic flowers to it, but then it all got blown apart in a storm.

  Somehow I twist the conversation round to SOTD and I’m stoked when they say it’s their favourite movie so I pull the list of movie locations out of my bag and tell them about my plan to visit them all, which gets them real excited.

  We take turns to count keepie-uppies.

  I haven’t yakked off like this in years; it’s like I never fell into the meth-hole. It’s the football: it bypasses all that shit and takes me back to being a kid.

  When it’s time for them to go home for dinner (they call it tea) they tell me I can get to my hotel quicker by walking along the cliff path and show me how to get on it. We walk over there together, kicking the ball in tight triangles, discussing the merits of certain pizza toppings and Lionel Messi, all the way to the other side of the park. We stop at a section of low wooden fence with two steps on each side to help the less limber climb over. They call it a stile.

  We high-five each other and they pick up the ball and run back towards the cottages. I’m kind of sorry to see them go. It’s like watching my old self running away from me all over again. Only my old self didn’t run so much as strap himself to a rocket.

  I send Thomas a panorama shot of the view so he knows I’ve touched down in Torquay. Thomas is partial to views. He texts back: Nice.

  It’s five a.m. and I’m awake. The sky outside my window is SoCal blue. By six I’m out of bed, in my shorts, vest and sneakers and ready to run the Agatha Christie Mile, which I learned about from a leaflet in my room. I never read anything she wrote but according to the leaflet, Agatha Christie is like the queen of murder mystery. Apparently she was born in Torquay and the Mile is a trail that links all the places she used to hang out and get inspiration for her stories.

  I don’t know if the Mile is an actual mile or a fictional mile, but I jog there and back along it four times (Torquay has palm trees!), which I guess is like eight fictional miles. It’s actually pretty sick if you stop to read the signs. There’s a beach right by my hotel where she almost drowned once, and a special garden where they grow all the poisonous plants used to murder the victims in her novels. I guess the best part of being a writer is getting to plan and commit murders without having to clean up the mess or do time for them, which is awesome, right?

  I’m showered, shaved and eating a Full English Breakfast long before it’s time to go to Mrs C’s. I’m dressed in my raggiest clothes. Not that all my clothes aren’t raggy, but these are the ones I’m gonna least mind getting stunk up by cigarette smoke up there on Daddyhole Road.

  There’s the occasional fluffy white cloud and the temp is like a warm spring day back home with no marine layer to put a chill in the air. A kite trapped in a tree makes me think of Thomas. When he was a kid, his father used to call him a daft kite, because he was always floating off and getting tangled up in things. I guess they gave up on untangling him.

  Real, not fake, church bells pealing in the distance (that’s what church bells do, right – they peal?) remind me I’m in England, on my way back to Mrs C’s house, and this time I’m nervous not because I’m scared of disturbing her, but the total opposite.

  I take the cliff trail again. There’s a heavy scent in the air, which I guess is coming off the yellow flowers on the huge spiky bushes growing either side of the path. A red and black butterfly flitting around above the flowers brings back the memory of the bow on top of that frickin’ Binky dog’s head.

  I get a bad scratch on my right leg when I step aside to make room for a dog-walking couple, but like a true English gent I swallow my pain. I suck in my breath and bid them good morning. Thomas would be proud.

  There’s some kind of kiddie football game happening on the park. I say ‘some kind of’ not because I’m SoCal inarticulate but because all the kids are wearing different jerseys and it’s impossible to tell who’s playing against who; they don’t even seem to know themselves. The players are all ages but I don’t see my Josh and David anywhere among them. I guess they’re off doing whatever twelve-year-old kids here do on a Sunday morning. Hopefully not the same as I was doing at that age.

  It’s a different Mrs C that opens the door today. For one thing she’s smiling, and inside that smile her teeth seem less brown, more a regular Brit yellow. Her fingers are more pink than yellow. As if she’s been up all night scrubbing all the brown stains off her body. The stupid Binky dog is even quiet, but probably because it’s being carried by its owner. Rule one of dog ownership: keep the dog at ground level at all times or it’ll think it’s the boss. I don’t say that out loud; we aren’t quite on those terms. She (Mrs C, not Binky) is wearing a floral dress with stockings and a white knitted vest. (Did I tell you Thomas likes to knit? He learned in prison, knits pillow covers and hats and all kinds of shit to sell at NA fundraisers.) The black shiny shoes look right today too. In context. Maybe an injection of God has rejuvenated he
r spirit. Maybe when I saw her yesterday she was in withdrawal and in need of her Godly fix. Or maybe my own anxiety altered my perception; it happens. I wish her a good morning and she welcomes me into her smoke-free home.

  The space around her is lit up by sunshine and it all looks somewhat inviting as she leads the way in to her old-lady lounge. The walls are decorated with framed pictures of all shapes and sizes with the floral wallpaper showing in between them – brown, old pictures of boats and people and people on boats or next to boats. And random close-ups of fish. And people with fish. It’s cosy, but a person could get seasick in here.

  With the stink of los cigarillos gone I feel bad for not wearing smarter clothes. Disrespectful.

  ‘I like your house,’ I tell her. It’s the truth: her house is awesome. Never lie to old ladies, they always can tell. Hopeful-looking china puppies perch all over the lounge: on shelves, on the table, on top of the TV – it’s like a kind of rescue centre for ornamental doggies.

  Mrs C puts her real dog down and it immediately jumps on to my lap. Yes, its name really is Binky and now it’s licking my hand. Nobody tell the Great Dudini. The GD is no lapdog and his tolerance of those who are is off-the-scale low. Mrs C – ‘call me Doris, dear’ – doesn’t even ask me if I would like to join her in a beverage, she just goes off into the kitchen to make it. Binky responds to a bit of a shove from me and follows her to the kitchen and I wipe the dogspit from my hand on the lacy cloth that’s draped over the arm of the chair.

  They’re only gone two minutes before Binky’s tongue reconnects with my hand.

  While she pours tea into floral cups Mrs C asks me if I’m staying at the youth hostel. When I tell her the name of my hotel I see her face morph momentarily into yesterday’s Mrs C, which triggers a memory that has nothing to do with her: me and another person – who I don’t recall – pissing our pants laughing because whoever it was said to me, ‘When you smile, the sun disappears behind a cloud.’ Okay, so we were probably high.