After the meeting four
of us, Nick, Andy, Lucy and I went round to one of the old pubs on the high
street where Chris had got himself a job, refusing to go back
to teaching, imagining I suppose it was an easy option despite all
the conversations we’d had saying low pay didn’t mean you could take it
easy, quite the opposite, it was just more stress, more micromanaging for
less money: there are no jobs where you can drift anymore, if there ever
were. But still he had determined to do it and spent the first week
scouring local pubs for work. I thought that Chris might
volunteer in the Laundry too and had the vague idea
that the others would be impressed with my capacity to get things
done, be a problem solver, if I could get him to
sign up for a Saturday.
Perhaps I hoped to
impress Lucy who spent the polite hour or so she stayed enthusiastically refusing a drink
and tapping away on her phone when she wasn’t nodding engagedly along
with whatever Nick and Andy said. She had her own reasons for
being there, or half being there, her own agenda though it
was hard for me to figure out what it was, that defensive
innocuousness that so many young people around that time had
developed was a real contrast to Nick Boscombe’s way of interacting,
my own. The difference was generational I suppose, I recognised in him all the characteristics of having grown up in a small
town, a tough town; sarcasm, directness, deliberate bluntness of
speech combined with default scepticism. Attack first, don’t let
them find your weak spots. Whereas Lucy was so wide open it was
hard to locate her, any attack would sail right by.
They reminded me of
the Japanese in a way, that younger generation. Be as neutral as possible, always
try to respond in a way that is least likely to cause offence, default enthusiastic
agreement with everything, no polarising topics, and for a long, pained second
I wondered why I hadn’t just gone there when she told me she wasn't coming back
this time, swept her up, submitted myself to her need to build a life that
resembled a traditional one in some ways. Did I think some greater glory was
still mine to claim? What was I so scared of. For some reason, doubts
surfacing, I instinctively knocked back the half I had allowed myself, an old
reflex, and instantly Andy, hoping that I might be a fellow drinker was waving
his empty pint glass in my face. Fancy another?
Just a water
for me, I said to his evident disappointment. I’ll get them in. I
didn’t want to oblige him to get a non-alcoholic drink at the bar.
Another old reflex.
You just missed the
fun then, Chris said as he poured a pint. Good timing. He looked nervous, but
then he always looked nervous, lowered his voice almost to a whisper as he
always did when discussing anything vaguely contentious. Group of guys started
giving some students a hard time. Chinese. Asian anyway. Might be some of your lot.
How serious?
Loud comments, you
know.
What, “fuck off back
to China” stuff? You got in there and sorted them out did you?
He shrugged.
You sure you’re cut
out for pub work I said. There is a job going in the laundry.
No teaching hours coming
up in September? he asked. And there it was, his resolve had lasted a week.
I’ll ask. I said. What
about the laundry?
You doing a shift?
Good question, was I?
What was a shift after all?
Yes, obviously, I said,
went back to the table, drank my water as Nick Boscombe laid out his plans. Spoke
at length about the local rivalries within the council that I was to grow much
more familiar with, the scale of his ambition, micro and macro level and how it
would all synthesise if the circumstances proved right.
Around ten I made my
excuses and drifted back to the house we had rented, past the pokey riverside flats, across the bridge over the Lune, my usual disquiet at the difficulty of it all
and the commitment needed for even the smallest steps to be taken washing
through me. Down and around into the rows of anonymous terraced streets, more
or less empty except for someone sitting on what appeared to be the doorstep of
number 28. Our door. One of the local kids that seemed to run or bike aimlessly
but noisily around the area, just as I had done back in Barrow when I was a child.
How little the patterns of life change really in these stalled, tucked-away
places, the circuits and the ambit life barely shifting even as the world
elsewhere was transformed.
My eyesight was poor
and I hadn’t yet had corrective surgery and so it was only when I was a few
feet away and preparing myself to find out what they were doing there that I realised
it was Jay.
No comments:
Post a Comment