Break From Reality. Daily.
Ned was in his bedroom playing a video game with his best friend Harry when his mother poked her head round the door.
“Ned, you know old Mrs Wilson’s moving?”
Ned was a psychopath slashing up Harry’s characters and seemed oblivious to the interruption.
“Ned!”
“What?” grunted an irritated Ned.
“I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with …” The boy searches the surroundings, lifts his face towards the sky, but forgets to use a distractor before blurting out: “C.”
“Oooh, that’s tricky, Porkchop. Er … could it be ‘clouds’?” The second boy punches Porkchop on his chubby arm.
“Ow, Mikey! What d’you do that for?!”
“You know — just because.”
John
Just to warn you in advance: you’ll be shocked by this letter and the news it brings. But me being British, it just wouldn’t be cricket not to explain things to you. So here goes. (I’m not telling you anything new here, of course. I’m just stating it to bring it afresh to the front of your mind, to establish the context for what comes next.)
It was the worst food Bernard had ever tasted.
“That lasagna was lovely, Helen.”
“Cannelloni, actually, but thank you anyway.”
The turkey was in the oven, the potatoes too, most of the veg had been prepared, and Natalie was whistling while she worked.
Then Michael came into the kitchen.
“Anything I can do?” he asked, his question merely a preliminary.
Natalie gave him a look that reiterated an incontrovertible fact: this was her exclusive domain — always had been, always would be.
Once upon a time, in a distant land, there was a queen — Queen Beyaz by name. She was a good queen, and we know that because she always wore white. Good queens wear white. Bad queens wear black. Or red. Or green, at a stretch. But this queen would never think of wearing anything but white.
And everything around her was white, too, just to make sure that people knew she was a good queen. So she had a white palace, with white walls and floors and ceilings and furniture — a devil to keep clean, but it was a price Queen Beyaz was willing to pay to keep up appearances.
“Ready?” I held the rope while Mary gripped it with her hands and legs.
“Ready!” she giggled, her lovely green eyes sparkling.
I let go and she swung out over the pond, shrieking now. She hung above the water for a split second then returned.
“Jump!” I yelled.
“No fear!” she yelled back.
First impressions can be deceptive. Take the building in which I’d rented an apartment, for example. The rather elegant façade belied the sorry state of the common areas inside, with paint peeling from the mouldy walls and the wooden stairs rotting in places. Then there was the concierge. Madame Fournier seemed sullen but it turned out that she was essentially a kind-hearted soul, if overly interested in the lives of others.
“Tell us about the island, Cap’n!”
Redbeard rolled his eyes.
“Avast, me hearties! No time for that. There be battles to fight!”
I’m six years younger than my brother; he’s the smart one.
For as long as I can remember, it’s always been Billy in the spotlight, totally eclipsing me. And this has always struck me as strange; it’s normally the new kid that gets all the attention, and the ones that are already here get jealous of all the “coochy-coochy-coo-ing” the little squib gets from parents and relatives. Maybe I received that attention in the early months of my life — I can’t remember, naturally. But then later, it was all him. All the time. Everywhere.
“Your turn.”
This and Sarah’s nudge in the back hit Thomas like a slap with a wet towel. He jerked his head off the pillow; by the bedside clock it was three a.m., meaning he’d been asleep for just two hours, and he had an important meeting in the morning.
“You go, love,” he groaned.
Sarah nudged him again, more forcefully this time.
“C’mon Tom! I went last night. And you said you wanted to share.”
“So, dad.”
Christopher fidgeted in his chair. His father eyed him from the sofa, then switched his focus to Dorothy, his son’s wife, then back to Christopher. Albert was old and not as bright as he once had been, but he knew an intervention when he saw one — although he wouldn’t have known the word for it.
“What is it, son?”
It is a very good company to work for. Almost like a family.
Colin, sir. I am an operating technician here. I always wanted to be a doctor but unfortunately … it was not possible. I am doing the next best thing, though. (We need to take this elevator.)
My job is to provide maintenance on Hummans and I have been doing it for … well, quite some time now.
I’m sure it’ll all work out fine, Sarah. But if for any reason I … I’ll tell you the story of what happened today. It’ll take my mind off the pain, as well. I’ve tried to call you, e-mail you, send you a message, but there’s no signal here at all. This is the next best thing, I suppose. I think there’ll be enough battery, so I’ll start from the beginning and try not to leave anything out.
“All right, my lovely. Just one more.”
The man pulled the thin blanket up to his daughter’s chin. Her short breaths came in tiny wisps of vapour. The cold air whistling in through the broken windows made the man shudder.
“It was a freezing winter and —”
“Once upon a time, daddy.” The girl’s voice was a whisper.
Peterson enters. He’s wearing a crumpled grey suit with a grubby scarlet tie and carrying a heavy-looking reel-to-reel tape recorder.
The man sitting behind the desk, wearing a much better suit, puts down the red folder he’s been looking at.
“Well, I haven’t seen one of those for a long time,” he says, indicating the tape recorder.
“Me neither, sir. For some reason he was putting it all on tape.”
Peterson places the machine on the desk with a dull thud.
“Probably being careful,” says the man behind the desk. “You can hack into anything digital these days.”
I won’t say that Doris was asking for it — at least not what she got exactly — but the fact is that she really was the most annoying person.
I’d only been in the home an hour or so and she was at my door, poking her head and nose in.
“So, first day then?” she asked, knowing full well the answer.
“That’s right,” I said, trying to be as cold as possible; the last thing I wanted in this place was the interest, let alone company, of a doddery octogenarian.
“I’m Doris.” She hadn’t caught the animosity in my voice. “And this is Pickles.”
Daphne did everything in slow motion these days and moved about the kitchen very carefully.
The vegetables were done and keeping warm on a low flame. She’d had a look at the half-breast of turkey — no point buying a whole one these days — and it looked about ready. She got some of the juice she’d taken from the tray earlier, mixing some gravy in a small pan on the stove.
Then she took the turkey breast out of the oven, poked it with a sharp knife and decided that it was perfect. She used the knife to cut slices off.
“To-om!”
Daphne realised the mistake as soon as the name left her lips. She shook her grey-white head at her silliness; Tom had been missing for days.
A bustling hall: men in their standard tight, grey suits with high collars on the jackets and pencil-thin ties, women flaunting the elegant gowns they’ve bought for the occasion. The vibrant colours of the gowns glitter and gleam in the light from the grand chandeliers that hang low from the ornate ceiling.
Here and there small groups have formed. A constant flow of people, flutes of champagne in their immaculately manicured hands, enter and leave through side doors, looking for friends or groups to attach to.
Gentle music wafts through the room from a string quartet, discreetly positioned in a corner. It’s little more than background to the steady hum of conversation, punctuated by bursts of laughter.
Heat haze rose from the lush meadow, bathed in sunshine, mottled here and there by the shifting shadows of clouds.
In counterpoint to the warmth of the scene was the mood of the couple lying there: Christopher and Jennifer, on their backs, side by side but miles apart, his right hand scant centimetres from her left.
All around them sounds, some of summer: birdsong from the trees on the edge of the meadow; the buzzing of large bumble bees on their last sorties of the day; the chirping of the first of the evening’s crickets.
And Jennifer’s quiet sobs, making her chest rise and fall in tiny jerks.
One fine day I found a penny.
I don’t know about you, but I pick up money when I find it, no matter what the value. “See a pin and pick it up, and all day long you’ll have good luck,” is how the old saying goes, isn’t it? But that was for the old days. For my purposes, when I come across money in the street, I say to myself softly “See a penny, pick it up”, hoping that the rest of the saying goes without … saying.
My method for picking up money is the typical one: I crouch down and pretend to do up my shoelace, then take the coin — or if I’m very lucky, the note — in my fingers, move it to my palm, close my fist, get up and walk on. I don’t put it in my pocket immediately, though; that would be a dead giveaway.
The queue stretched around the block but Norman was next up. He mused on the irony of it all: here he was queuing to ask the Time-Giver for more time, and he’d just spent four precious hours doing it.
A woman came out through the dull-grey metal door, beaming a new-lease-of-life smile. She gave Norman the thumbs up.
“Five years!”
“Oh, well done, you!”
Norman was pleased for her. The four hours had given him a chance to get to know her quite well (the man behind him in the queue was a taciturn chap, so Cynthia had had all of his attention).
A flurry of snow sneaks in while the door is open and, when it’s closed, falls to the doormat at the feet of a slight, balding man in his fifties. He places his brown leather valise on the floor with a dull “clunk,” rubs his hands together and shudders.
From behind the reception desk, William, in his mid-twenties, takes in the scene without moving, a pencil poised above a crossword. The man looks over and gives William a pleasant smile. The young man drops his pencil and hurries out from behind the desk.
“Good evening, good evening! Welcome!”
“Good evening, or rather, very bad evening!”
William forces a laugh. “Indeed.”
I met Will in the shop doorway we shared one winter. He turned up one night with his bundle and stood there, staring down at me. I’d seen off plenty of pretenders to my minimally sheltered spot, but there was something about him that I warmed to, if “warmed” is really the right expression, given that nights regularly dipped below zero that year.
We’d spend our days begging at the city’s best location, the docks; tourists going back on their cruise ships would get rid of the coins they wouldn’t be able to use at the next stop. We wouldn’t share the money we got, but the smack we scored was split right down the middle. When we thought we had enough cash, we’d make for our favourite dealers; he preferred an old hippy out on the coast road, while I was loyal to my man in the centre. But we’d always meet later and cook up together, giving the other a dose if one of us had had a bad day with the begging bowl.
“Fifteen-two, fifteen-four, two’s six and six is a dozen.”
Andrew pointed at the cards as he counted. Sarah glared at him across the glass-topped coffee table that separated her armchair from the sofa.
“That’s the third dozen you’ve had!”
“I know.” Andrew leaned back on the sofa and beamed. “I do believe that’s £1.50 you owe me.”
“For now.”
There was a cat that came around to the back yard some mornings. It only appeared when Leandro was alone on the back porch, maybe peeling potatoes for his mother or fixing something for his grandfather, or simply sitting and enjoying the low morning sun.
When Leandro saw the cat poke its head warily through the bottom fence and take a first tentative step into the yard, he would hurry to the kitchen, rummage in the bin for scraps of meat or fish, and hurry back out, laying the food on a flat stone to one side of the patch of threadbare grass that passed for a lawn. Smelling the food, the cat—a ragged tabby—would scamper to it and scoff away, letting Leandro stroke its head and back. Once finished, it remained for a few moments, purring with pleasure, before padding off and back through the fence, on its way to whatever important business it had that morning.
A quiet suburban side-street and a man, munching on a banana as he walks, holding it out to his side after each bite to avoid besmirching the gleaming white jacket he’s wearing. He finishes the banana and drops the skin on the pavement. It sits there, like a large yellow spider with less than its fair share of legs. Lying in wait for …
… this second man, perhaps, striding confidently along the same street. He gets nearer. And nearer. And nearer the banana skin.
And stops.
“I don’t know. Some people!”
He stoops and picks up the skin, gingerly, between finger and thumb, looking around for a rubbish bin but finding none.
“Typical bloody council! It’s no wonder …”
I don’t want to spoil your day, and I apologise in advance for any distress I may cause. The fact is I have to confess something, and it has to do with death and suicide. I’ve separated those two because, well, they have different places in my story.
My wife died. Two months ago. In a hospice bed. “After a long battle with …” the newspapers would put it. But the battle, if any, was only at the beginning, after the diagnosis. As soon as the aggressive treatment began, and in due course proved futile, she was willing herself dead. I didn’t want her to go, naturally—she was my whole life—but to see her torment as she went from bright, active soul-mate to bedridden shell, writhing in a pain that the drugs could not entirely deaden, was to feel a similar torment.
And so Jen left me. In the following days I occupied myself with the welcome task of arranging the funeral—‘welcome’ in that I had something to take my mind off the black hole of loss that had opened up at my feet. The funeral itself was lovely, in the circumstances. She’d helped me to plan it while she was still compos mentis enough. It was simple and humanist: the celebrant was a friend of hers, her best friends gave tributes, and her favourite music was played at key moments in the ceremony.
“I work at the zoo. With spiders.”
“What?! Brrr! I could never do that. I’ve got a morbid fear.”
Sarah leaned over the bed to insert a digital thermometer in Ben’s ear.
“Ah, but that’s because you don’t know anything about them.”
“I know they go for me at home!”
Eissler smiled at the irony of the situation: here he was, huddled inside the tiny space behind the false wall, hardly daring to breathe for fear of being heard by the British troops clomping in and out of the bedroom.
He’d been resting fully-dressed on the bed when he heard the boots on the stairs and rushed into the space, pulling the ply-board panel closed behind him, flush to the rest of the false wall, and fixing it with the catches. The panel was covered with the same floral wallpaper as the four walls of the bedroom and virtually undetectable, unless you knew what to look for.
By the dim light of a single bulb hanging on a nail, Eissler observed the space: a strip of about a metre wide that ran the length of the wall opposite the door. The panel through which he’d entered had two handles he’d used to pull it towards him to close the space. He sat next to the panel now, listening.
He could hear voices in the bedroom; one of them sounded like it belonged to an angry officer. Eissler’s English was poor, but as far as he could make out, the officer was ordering his troops to carry on searching because “he must be here.”
