I wrote my first short story in ages last week, well the first draft and here's the second. If you like it let me know. Or you can tell me to go fuck myself.
My City Eyes.
It was the day Johnson said we
had to take personal responsibility from now on. That wasn’t a phrase I
particularly cared for. Not that that would be an opinion I’d express in the
pub or online. You could just tell that about me if you took a close look at me
and my life. Not even a close look. More than a passing glance but nothing
forensic. Just a brief stare. At my flat. My finances. I had to venture into
the city to buy some funeral clothes. My dad. I was still processing it.
Monday night
heading into the city. Half hour on the bus. This time of day, this time of
year, you can get on a bus in sunshine and alight in darkness. Cities shed the
day people and absorb the night folk. Ties and name tags coming out, overalls
and drinkers coming in. And me, with money for a black tie and white shirt and
black trousers. My dad dead in a box, waiting for the morning.
I used to live
in the city. Had a beautiful flat just out of the centre, expensive area. I
liked that version of me though I knew I was pretending. I wasn’t a coffee
person, I wasn’t an expensive haircut guy, I didn’t do service washes and deli
takeouts. I didn’t belong there but it was nice pretending I did.
The city has
changed in my absence. I was surrounded by skyscrapers that weren’t there
before. Ghosts on every corner. The bus station looked clean and efficient. The
row of desperate charity shops and vape shops and cheap sandwich shops had been replaced with some sort of Information Centre
which was now closed.
I made my way
almost by the stars, even the streets had changed shape. I walked towards
Hoolahan’s, an Irish bar which I had once frequented, but it was gone. I
remembered my mission and promised myself a Reward Pint somewhere once I was
suited up.
Up the High
Street, past the places of my younger self. The Palace had gone too. That was
the place a guy one time took a dump out the bathroom window when he found the
cubicles full. No one I knew but it was funny at the time. The Balmoral. The
Parish. Ah, the Parish. Still here. It’ll never close. Every city needs a bar
where no one gives a fuck who you are or how you’re dressed, as long as you can
pay for your drinks and don’t puke, you’re welcome.
I met her at
the Parish. The one that got away. How is it that you can tell all kinds of
woman you like them and would they like to hang out and build on that and not
tell the one woman who stopped you dead in your tracks and made you feel like
you had entered a new part of life, like there was Old You and New You. Old You
was cocky, calm and collected. New You just stood and stammered and said
nothing and then it was too late.
The more
people around me, the lonelier I feel. Crowds made their way from shop to bar
to home, the streets were lit with human company, and none of it for me. I
thought about the nights I could walk into practically any bar and know someone
there. All of that was a long time ago and the memory brought no comfort.
I had done my
research. By which I mean that I had phoned my daughter and she told me to head
for Primark. Got myself the lot for 25 quid. Guessed my sizes but I kept the
receipt just in case. Came out of there and thought about going for a drink so
I went for a drink.
Where to go?
The Clarion. Gone. Robinson’s. Revamped. The Guppy Inn had gone that way too.
Oldest bar in the city, original 16th century frontage and dingy as
fuck inside. My kind of place. Steak sandwich and a Guinness for 3 quid back in
the day. Now it looks like everywhere else. I don’t know where to go. I don’t
want to be alone. Not tonight.
For a start,
it’s Monday and this ain’t the nineties. Remember them. You went out six nights
a week minimum. You and all your friends. McJob after McJob. You didn’t care.
None of you had any plans bar lasting the week at whatever
job/relationship/shithole apartment you had at the time. There were twenty or
so of us doing the rounds. You went from call centre to call centre. It was
like The Grand Tour but for poor people. You went from recruitment agency to
recruitment agency. No one gave a fuck. They all knew that you’d fuck it off
the sooner some new cunt showed up offering slightly better money and perks.
All that mattered was getting some loser on the phones. And we were that loser.
Gas.
Insurance. Satellite. Mobile. Directories. Internet. Water. Electric. I did
them all. You shopped around, you’d hear some place would be doing a six-week
training induction fully paid and you quit the job you had because training is
basically being paid for sitting about and pretending to listen to some dude
and it’s always a dude in these places telling you about how great this
opportunity is and how exciting it will be to start with this company where they’re
always looking to promote People From Within. Six weeks training? Six weeks
paid holiday.
I could do
that spiel in my sleep, I’d heard so many versions of it and eventually I did do it too, stood in a room with a flip chart and a power point and a nice suit
telling you the shit I heard from some other place. That was when I had suits,
of course. Having a suit or two is where ambition gets you. Ambition, that was
the thing that did for my friendship group. The worst disease in the world.
There were
rumours of a new call centre. Someone had gone to an agency to complain that
their pay had been fucked up and had caught wind of a new operation in town.
The money was the best anyone in town had ever offered, seven quid an hour and
this was in 2000. Nobody was paying anything like that kind of money. Not in
this neck of the woods. That’s why they set up shop here. All the heavy industry
gone, what’s left but nothing but people who’ll take whatever shilling they get
just so they can stay close to something that feels like home. The government
would even pay companies to set up shop here so they got to keep even more
money for your shareholders.
Pete Hobson
was the first to go. He came into work one morning cocky as fuck and telling
everyone he was off to this new company paying serious money. By serious money
he meant serious money for Round Here. Not money that anyone in London or
Manchester would consider serious.
I can’t help
myself.
“They’re all
the same, mate. You will be back here with the rest of us in six weeks.”
This was
projection, I knew. This particular call centre we were at, Directory
Enquiries, was the easiest time you’d ever do. The money was shit but the work
was easy and my shift was 8-4. Sweet times. Breakfast in the canteen at first
break. In the pub by 4.15. I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want anyone else to
leave either. Hobson was that bird in Animal Farm. Was it a crow? Telling
everyone there’s good times the other side of the hill. Hope is dangerous, you
can’t wear a mask around that shit, and it’ll kill you in the end.
The company was called 1Bill. You remember them. The advert - "Put your payday feet up and chill. Everrything's covered with 1Bill." A load of good looking couples in places you could never afford sat on the sofa smug in the warm glow of having paid a load of bills.
Sign up to them and everything other than your rent and council tax was covered in 1Bill. They’d find the cheapest bundle for you, internet, gas, water, electric, insurance, car insurance and wallop, come pay day it’s all dealt with. Some big American company. They’d done a Wetherspoons and built this brand-new call centre where the city courts had once stood.
I wasn’t going. We had a good thing going here, we all did, why leave?
Then Hobson
plays his joker.
“Mate, I’m
going in as a Team Leader.”
Turns out that
experience of working in all the call centres in all the sectors in town did
have value after all. Hobson was going in on a 20k starting salary. In our
heads we all made calculations of who we might be with almost double the pay we
were on now.
Hobson plays a
second joker.
“I’ve been
asked to ask friends if they have the right experience.”
Panic ensues.
An unseemly rush to get CV’s printed, polished. People buying Interview
Clothes. Only one not to get excited was her. The One That Got Away. And now
I’m torn. If I stay, I can be nearer her and maybe build up the resolve to
finally tell her everything I feel, everything I’ve always felt. On the other hand,
there’s a Proper Job with Proper Money and I am sick of my damp bedsit, my shit
telly and even drinking six nights a week instead of looking after myself has
begun to take its toll.
My CV is with
Hobson the next day.
A few days
later TOTGA says to me, “Are you going?”
“I don’t know.
It seems like a good opportunity but can you imagine it? Me, in a suit. Being
important. Doesn’t seem right to me.”
She says
she’ll miss me and makes me promise I’ll still go to The Parish after work.
You can guess
the rest. I got the job. I never went to The Parish. I became somebody I wasn’t
meant to be and moved to an expensive part of town. I started having my laundry
done. I met a woman who lived by the sea and married her. I never saw the one
that got away again. She isn’t even on Facebook. Later I got found out by 1Bill. I wasn't nearly as good as I thought I'd be. I lost my job. I lost my wife. I lost the flat and ended up right back where I
started.
My dad was big
on personal responsibility. He shaved every morning. He wore a suit every day.
His house was his own and he’d paid the thing off by the time he’d retired. He
never criticised the choices I made; he didn’t need to. His expression whenever
he dropped round said it all. He was a respected man, a man who’d done all that
was expected of him and that brought him a sense of achievement, I suppose.
He dropped
dead in the middle of Tesco’s a fortnight ago. Pushing the trolley round.
Collapsed against the fish counter. A girl in a hairnet and apron came out with
a defibrillator but nothing could be done. I got the call from my brother, who
got the call from my mum, who got the call from the hospital.
Tomorrow we
will all go to the local crematorium. He had it all planned ages ago, the
service, the songs, the will. And here I am in the last minutes of shopping,
with a brown bag containing the things I will wear to send him off. Not knowing
if these things will fit. Not knowing what to do if they don’t. Making my way
into a pub full of ghosts. Thinking about the one that got away. I will only
have one pint and then I will only have two. I will take a seat by the window,
away from the bar. No one will know me and I will know no one. I will watch the
night cars on the night road outside. The headlights will remind me of the
bright lights of my youth. The dazzle of a Saturday night with all the promise
of the life to come. The pub smoke the club strobe the red taxi meter pounds
and pence in my city eyes.
I will think
about writing these thoughts down. I will grab a burger when I miss the next
bus. I will put the key into my flat door and go straight to bed. The rain
outside will keep me awake. I will oversleep and only just make it to the
service in time. I will hug people in the car park and at my parents’ house. I
will make excuses. I will leave. I will wonder what could have been if Hobson
hadn’t told us all of Sugarcandy Mountain. I would have stayed where I was, is
what would have happened. That’s what I tell myself halfway through my third
pint. I would have told the girl how much I loved her; how much I had always
loved her. We’d have left our jobs there and then and gone and rented a cottage
in west Wales and somehow saved up and opened up a café cum second-hand
bookshop. We’d have been so happy. Then I’d have got drunk one time and cheated
on her. She’d leave me broken hearted and sometimes you’d see her in The
Parish, she’d look like shit, like she’d really been through something. My
fling wouldn’t have led anywhere, I’d lose the café, end up owing quite a bit
of money and running away and coming back to where I started out. I’d get a
phone call from my brother. I’d have to get some funeral clothes. My dad was
dead after all.
