by Mike Golding
The lift had a digital lock. The code was the same one you needed to get in and out of the building. Remembering it was a test, like those questions they used to ask Dad about what year it was and the name of the prime minister. Questions he doesn’t know the answers to anymore. I tapped in the four-digit number and went up to the first floor.
*
I was driving at ninety miles an hour. I looked at the clock on the dash and thought, perhaps I won’t be late. But the wind beat hard around the car. The rhythm numbed me. My eyes wanted to close. I slowed to seventy and moved into the nearside lane, lowering the window to let cold air blast onto my face. A road sign. Twenty-one miles to the services at Ferrybridge. Fifteen or twenty minutes. I only had to stay awake for fifteen or twenty minutes.
But by Ferrybridge I was bushed. I couldn’t make sense of the signs for the car park. And the arrows painted on the road had been worn away. I took the turn at the last moment, and too fast, struggling to control the car as it lurched over the potholes. I eventually found a space near the main building, turned off the engine, reclined the seat and closed my eyes. Ten, fifteen minutes would do it. Then I’d be as right as rain. Then I’d call him.
I dreamt I was in the dark wood. The trees reached up and blocked out the sky. I was walking beside my father. He was stooped over, holding himself up with a walking pole. He looked like Moses in those pictures we used to look at in Sunday school. He was mumbling but I couldn’t hear what he was saying.
Something woke me. The hard ringing of a telephone. The Old Phone ringtone I had chosen from my mobile’s menu for its suggestion of traditional values. Of reliability. I fumbled to answer it.
‘Well,’ said the voice, ‘I’m sitting here at Ferrybridge Services. Where the fuck are you?’
‘I’ve just got here,’ I said. ‘Roadworks.’
‘Roadworks, my arse! You’re half an hour late!’
I got out of the car and struggled to get into my jacket as it flapped about in the wind, unable to find the sleeves with my arms. Twisting and turning in a mad dance, I finally pulled it on. I grabbed my laptop case and thought, here we go.
*
The smell was a fetid mix of stale urine and the air freshener they use to try and mask it. My father wasn’t in his room. One of the care assistants and I started to look for him. He was wandering, which they say is what he does now. We found him on another corridor, stooped over and pushing the walker along with grim determination. ‘Hello, Dad,’ I said, and touched his shoulder. ‘It’s me, Dad. It’s Paul.’
But he ignored me and kept shuffling along. I kept pace with him. He was talking to himself, and I bent down to try and hear what he was saying.
*
Laurence Davis was sitting by the window. Some overweight men look comical, but not Laurence. He was just big. He’d marked out his territory on the table with a very large cup of coffee, a Maximo, an A5 notebook, two mobile phones and his open laptop. He’d taken his jacket off. He was wearing gold cufflinks and his tie hung over his gut.
I circled around to the coffee concession and bought a Largo, which is really just a regular-sized Americano. Then I went over to Laurence’s table and put my jacket on the back of a chair, my coffee and laptop on the space he’d left for me, and sat opposite him. I got out my notebook to show I was ready for the meeting. He looked up at me from whatever he was looking at on his computer, and I took a big gulp of the coffee.
‘You still like the Audi?’ he said, tilting his chin out towards the car park. From where he was sitting he could see my car, and I realised he must have watched me sleeping. He let me take that in, smiling to himself as he turned the laptop round so that I could see what was on the screen.
‘Look at that,’ he said. It was a picture of a blonde woman wearing a bikini and leaning against a rock on a beach. Her name was Olga; she was 36 years old and she was an Aquarius.
‘Very attractive,’ I said.
‘Russian women,’ he said, ‘know how to look after themselves. Desperate to meet men. They’re not like the women here. Do you know that in Russia there are ten million…That’s right, ten million more women than men!’ He took a swig of his coffee. ‘She’s not very attractive…she is fucking beautiful.’
‘You looking for love then, Laurence?’ I put an edge in my voice, but he didn’t seem to notice, or care.
‘I’m Internet dating. It’s the only way to meet women. Most of them are just gagging for it. Got some Viagra online as well. Fantastic stuff. Puts the blood where you need it. When you need it. But these Russian women are something else. You still married?’
‘Yup.’
He looked at me and I looked away to avoid his eyes.
Behind him a young woman of about twenty was sitting alone, smiling to herself as she worked the keypad of her phone. I could see her legs under the table. They were tanned a deep brown and reached up from the floor towards a faded denim miniskirt. She stretched them out as if she was a cat. I felt guilty, as if my eye was pressed to a keyhole. As if I shouldn’t have been looking.
Laurence turned to see what I was looking at.
‘A bit young for you, Mr. Married Man!’ He looked again. ‘Mind you, I’d give her one.’ He had seen himself in me and I hated him for it. ‘Sales figures,’ he said. ‘Let’s talk about sales figures.’
*
Pat, Dad’s social worker, came out of the lift holding a long white stick. She was blind and her guide dog was a golden Labrador with sad brown eyes.
‘Look at that dog.’ I said to my father.
‘What dog?’ he said.
*
Laurence called my name.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but I was somewhere else.’
‘Last year you were selling quite well. The year before that, really well. But not now. You must be feeling the pinch in your commission. No romantic trips to Paris with the missus.’
He was right. Once I would have been getting congratulated about my performance. Second, or at least third biggest order book in the company. And Laurence and I would be sneaking looks at the blonde in the miniskirt and giggling. Give her one? You bet!
Greetings cards should sell themselves. Births, birthdays, marriages, deaths. And the rest of it. New house, new job. The whole of life marked out in little celebrations. And someone somewhere was opening a card and a cheap bottle of Prosecco. Laughter. And some tears. But my heart wasn’t in it. The wholesalers didn’t want to buy all that stuff from a man whose joie de vivre wasn’t jumping up and down in front of them. And the stuff wasn’t as good as it used to be, but no one wanted to hear that.
*
‘Look at that dog!’ said my father suddenly.
I bent to stroke it, to feel the warmth of its animal body. Pat’s eyes, visible through half closed lids, flitted from side to side.
‘Are you alright, Paul?’
‘We’re not getting on today,’ I said.
*
In a daze I looked out of the window at the white sky and saw black birds wheeling above the car park. I heard them through the glass. The craw-craw of crows looking for whatever had died or been killed.
‘A murder of crows,’ I said. ‘Evil fuckers.’
‘They’re not evil,’ said Laurence. ‘They keep the world clean of rotting flesh. And dead meat.’
I looked at those legs again, golden against the pale blue of the floor. I realised, with disappointment, that my interest wasn’t sexual. My eye was up against that keyhole to spy on her youth and her optimism, and I saw the distance between us.
I wanted to say, I’ve lost it, Laurence. I wanted to blurt it out and I wanted him to use all his powers to make it better. I wanted him to take me to a bar so we could get drunk together, laugh like old mates and chat up women.
What was he going to say? Hand back the car, the contract phone and cut me off from everything? The road, the mission. For fuck’s sake.
‘We can’t count on what happened yesterday. It’s today that counts,’ he said.
I used to see myself as some kind of western hero roaming this part of the country, along the motorways, the A roads and the B roads, searching out the wholesalers. I had built up a territory of customers. It was something I owned and I was angry that he was going to ignore it all. I stood up to leave.
‘Paul,’ he said. ‘I’m not the bad guy here.’ My laptop was nearly back in its case as I looked over at him. ‘I let you sleep, Paul. For at least half an hour.’
I made a kind of upside-down smile and mouthed an okay. I sat down again.
‘I’ve got to tell you how it is, haven’t I? You must know that you’re costing the company.’ He looked me straight in the eye. ‘Basic salary, car, phone, etcetera. Can you get it back, Paul? The magic?’ He looked away and back again. ‘Three months. Can you turn it around in three months?’
*
I switched off the engine and the wipers stopped mid-wipe. Thick drizzle covered the windscreen and the building opposite distorted into a grey blur. There used to be something magical about these trading estates. They were scruffy and uncared for even in the beginning, but there’d always been the smell of money about them. And I’d felt part of it. Now they were just worn-out places, at the edges of towns that had seen better days.
Betta-price Gifts and Giftware was a single storey building with a crumbling brick façade topped with peeling woodwork. The young Asian woman on reception was wearing a hijab, and a short floral dress over jeans. Abdul Choudary seemed to be pleased to see me, dressed as ever in a suit with a cardigan underneath, which he wore even in the summer. We went into his wood panelled office and the receptionist brought us coffee in mugs on a tray. It was always Nescafe at Betta-price Gifts and Giftware.
‘When I came to this country,’ Abdul told me, ‘Nescafe was a mark of English sophistication. Very exciting for a young man from Pakistan. Now my son tells me that it is rubbish, for old men only. It is all cappuccinos and Americanos now. I am sorry, if all this time I have been giving you a very bad beverage experience!’
I laughed at his joke. Abdul had started out as a newsagent in Bradford during the 1970s and had branched out into wholesale, supplying the sector with giftware and greetings cards. I had known him for nearly twenty years. He leaned back in his chair and put his hands together.
‘I am retiring,’ he said. ‘My son, Rushdi will see about the order today.’
Rushdi was a handsome young man with a close-cropped beard. He wore a blue and white striped shirt with white collar and cuffs, the cuffs turned back to show off a large wristwatch. He was a man of the moment; I could tell that by the way he shook my hand. He looked through my portfolio cases on his father’s desk. He flicked the pages quickly, scanning them half-heartedly. I could tell that he was only going through the motions for his father’s sake.
‘Some of these cards are too old fashioned for our customers. Your company needs to move with the times. Newsagents don’t just sell to old English ladies who are happy with pictures of racing cars and fishing rods for their grandsons’ birthdays. They need to compete with the internet and the supermarkets.’
He looked at me and I didn’t know what to say.
‘Just a small order,’ said Abdul. ‘For the few old ladies who still need that sort of thing.’ I got out my order book. ‘You look tired, Paul.’
I shrugged.
*
I showed my father a photograph of a young man in uniform. He stretched his hand towards it, running the tips of his fingers over the mouth. Over the toothy smile.
‘He looks as if he might have been me.’
‘It is you, Dad. It is you. When you were in the army.’
‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘I remember. Funny teeth.’
*
I booked into the Premier Inn at Wakefield and called home.
‘How are you?’ asked Sue.
‘He gave me three months. After twenty years.’
‘Leave it, Paul. It’s not worth it. Come home. Play golf. Walk the dog.’
I grunted and thought about the dark wood. And I remembered how it began. Retirement, losing interest. The plans that came to nothing because he couldn’t be bothered anymore. Everything was too much trouble. What happened to the man in him? Where did he go?
‘Emma’s nearly finished her course. Ruth’s getting married, for God’s sake! Call it a day. You deserve it.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ I said. ‘How’s the dog?’
‘He’s missing you. So am I. I love you.’
‘I love you, too,’ I said.
I threw the phone on the bed and lay down beside it. I looked around the room. There’s meant to be something comforting about a hotel chain. Same colour scheme, same pictures. The same breakfast buffet and the same coffee. The same television sets and the same remote controls. They try to make everything bright and cheerful, and I winced at the thought. It looked like a lonely dinner and then to bed to read Bernard Cornwell, with a cup of cocoa from a sachet.
I went to the hotel restaurant and had steak and chips and a glass of wine. Then I had another glass. And when I’d drained that I went into the bar. The barman looked bored. There was hardly anyone there, just a couple of women in their thirties, who didn’t even notice that I was in the room, and a man standing at the bar.
I ordered a large glass of red and he turned to me.
‘You in sales?’
I swung an imaginary golf club and made a clicking sound with my tongue.
‘Hole in one!’ I’d had a drink. I was back on form.
‘It’s not what it used to be,’ he said.
‘You’re telling me,’ I said and looked at him. He might have been a mirror image. Overweight, middle-aged and wearing a dark blue suit with an open necked shirt. The tie would be lying on the bed in his room. Just like mine.
I bought him a drink and we went and sat down. We looked over at the two women.
‘We’re not even on their radar,’ he said.
Neil was in pharmaceutical sales, and said that generic drugs were killing the business. I guess he meant he had to work harder for his commission, but I could tell he still had the fight in him.
He said he was going out for a smoke and I thought about the dark wood again. What was the date? Who was the prime minister? I followed Neil outside.
He was standing in the glow of the lights, blowing cigarette smoke into the night. ‘Can you spare one of those?’ I asked.
‘I didn’t think you smoked.’
‘Used to. Gave up. Still think about it, though.’
‘Once a smoker….’ he said.
I lit the cigarette. It was like old times. The flush of alcohol and the bite of tobacco smoke on the back of my throat. I inhaled and, at that moment, remembered my first cigarette. When I was fourteen years old a girl in a miniskirt and a push up bra had offered me one. I had taken it and put the filter tip between my lips as she held up a flaring match. I sucked in tentatively and tasted sulphur in the acrid smoke. I blew it straight out.
‘You’re meant to inhale it!’ she said. I did and all of a sudden, the world turned upside down as, in a dizzy spin, I fell over. This happened now as the nicotine rushed to my head, and I went straight down, landing on my arse like a circus clown. A pratfall.
*
A woman was shredding a tissue and the fragments fell onto the floor like giant snowflakes. I looked around at the other residents. Some were moving slowly and wordlessly, some were sitting and staring at the floor, or sleeping in their chairs, bent and awkward, with gaping mouths. The laughter and applause of a TV game show came from somewhere, and I realised I was trying to breathe without smelling the air.
‘Hello Dad. It’s Paul. I’m your son.’
He studied me carefully. ‘No,’ he said, ‘No, you’re not.’
And I thought, that’s it, I’m forgotten now. He leaned against the walker and looked at me.
‘Some people have it,’ he said, ‘and some people don’t.’
Mike Golding retired from academia in 2010 and graduated with an MA in Creative Writing from Newcastle University in 2012. Bad Magic, a psychological thriller written as A.M. Stirling, lurks in the bowels of the beast called Amazon. He is currently working on a short story collection and his work has appeared in Uncommonalities IV, from Bratum Books, and in Impspired Magazine.
