excuses, excuses

Violent diarrhoea, that’s the excuse I plan to give as I mosie into the warehouse shortly before ten - messy, splattery shit that no one will want to ask too many questions about. ‘Sorry I couldn’t phone. I’ve been on the loo for an hour clutching my guts and pebble dashing the bowl. But I thought I’d struggle in and see how it goes.’

I hope they’ll send me straight back home until it ‘clears up’. That way I’ll get sick pay. I’ll be able to recover properly from my hangover and then take Sam up on her offer ‘to pop round later.’ I’ll also avoid having to avoid Sophie. Not that we are an item or anything. But I still somehow feel like I’ve cheated on her.

As it happens, I don’t even have a chance to try out my excuse. The moment Colin the warehouse manager sees me, he abruptly cuts short his conversation with two trolley rats and beckons me over. He looks really sombre and I can tell from his awkward manner that something major is up.

“You need to go straight to Barbara in Personnel,” he says.

I don’t need to ask why. Don and Len have undoubtedly informed Personnel about my leap from the cage a couple of evenings earlier. Brett has probably told everyone about my outburst in the social club. And now I’ve waltzed in nearly two hours late. You don’t need to be an expert in employment law to know where things are heading. I’m tempted to walk straight out, and not bother to go and see Barbara. But I’m owed a few days wages, and I guess they’ll pay them, even if they are going to give me the boot.

It’s strange. Even though the job is shit, I still don’t want to leave. Don’t get me wrong, I have no plans to stay at Bakers and Macey forever - slowly working my way up to Chief Warehouse Rat. Far from it. Each Thursday I scour the job section of the Westing Chronicle searching for a way out. Trouble is, I’ve been looking for weeks and still haven’t found anything I’d rather do.

As I trudge up the stairs to the Personnel Office, there is a feeling in my guts like I’m falling from the cage. But I know it’s too late to start flapping my arms. When I get to the office, Barbara is on the phone. She smiles when she sees me and gestures, in quite a friendly way, for me to sit down.

A ray of hope flickers. Maybe they’re planning to give me a stern ticking off and an offer of ‘one last chance’ if I’m seriously prepared to mend my ways. Then I remember a documentary I once watched about executioners, and the way they liked to befriend their victims to make things easier all round. And I guess hers’ is just a hangman’s smile.

When Barbara has finished her call, she looks at me for a moment, then looks down at the paperwork on her desk. Oh shit, here we go. She raises her head.

“We’ve been trying to reach you all morning.”

She doesn’t seem really annoyed. She is just searching for a side entrance into the conversation.

“Yea, I’m sorry. I’ve been really unwell for the last couple of days. Stomach upset and all that. I was going to ring this morning, but they’ve disconnected the phone in our flat and, without going into too many details, I was trapped in the loo.”

She nods.

“I’ve had an urgent call from your family. They’ve been trying to reach you since last night.”

Shit, that’s all I need, mum getting all neurotic. She must have looked up the number in Yellow Pages. I shrug.

Barbara stands up. “I’ll wait outside while you call them.”

I am confused. I don’t want to seal my fate, by asking ‘don’t you want to sack me first.’ But at the same time, I hardly need to call straight away to apologise for missing dinner.

“It’s OK,” I say, “I’ll do it later.”

“No, you better do it now,” she insists. “It sounded urgent.”

Fine. Be polite if you want. Prolong my agony, why don’t you.

Barbara lifts the receiver and places it in my hand. “It’s nine for an outside line,” she says and leaves the room. Weird woman, I think, and dial home.

My brother answers the phone, which is doubly weird as he lives in Nottingham. I check I’ve got the right number.

“Hi, is that Max?”

“Where the hell have you been?” he snaps.

“What the fuck’s it got to do with you?” I respond.

I concede, it is not an Einstein-like exchange, but we never really see eye-to-eye and it’s not our fault that we’re both named after famous physicists. After our brief ‘meeting of minds’, the line goes quiet, and I start to think Max has cut me off. I’m just about to put the phone down, when I hear muffled voices in the background like a crossed line.

Then my mum comes on the phone.

“Hello Newton?”

“Yea hi. Look, I’m sorry about last night, I...”

“Newton, I’m afraid I’ve got some very bad news. It’s dad.”

I feel my knees buckle under me, and I lean back against the desk, as she starts to sob on the other end of the line.

“He said he was feeling tired last night after dinner, and went for a lie down. And I’m afraid when I went to wake him...” her voice dissolves into a high pitched squeak. But I don’t need her to finish the sentence. I stare at the carpet, my brain totally blanked out, not empty but muffled by a blurring rush of thoughts.

I hear myself saying, automatically, “I’m so sorry. I guess with the stroke and everything it was going to happen eventually.”

The phone goes quiet.

“Mum?”

She sniffs loudly and I hear her take a deep breath. It feels as if my head is being sucked into the receiver.

“Oh Newton...It’s not Reggie. It’s your dad.”

She’s getting confused, I think.

“No, mum. You mean grandad.”

“No, Newton, your dad. The ambulance came. They were very nice. But there was nothing they could do. They said it must have been pretty instant. We’ll have to wait for the autopsy, but the doctor was fairly sure it was his heart.” She starts to go on and on about heart valves, but I’m not listening. I just crumple to the floor and sit with my back to Barbara’s desk, staring at the carpet with the phone grasped in my lap.

The room spins, and then becomes super-real. I find myself staring at the twill in the carpet, the scratched black metal on the edge of the desk leg. It’s as if I am looking through a telescope. I suddenly snap out of it, and realise I am sat on the floor in the Personnel Office. I must explain to Barbara what’s happened. I start to get up, composing the words in my head.

“Barbara, I’m sorry my dad’s died. I need to go home…I…”

Tears start to stream down my face; not in a flood, just a slow, steady, confused trickle.

I look down. My hand is still gripping the phone, as if I am dangling from its wire above a canyon. Everything is upside down. I slowly lift the receiever to my ear. I can hear distant voices, but cannot tell what they are saying. I reach up to replace the receiver, and pull the phone down onto my head. I ignore the brief jolt of pain and return the phone to the desk.

I should ring them back, I think. I must have misheard what mum said. It seems so unreal, but her words are scratched into my frontal lobes, dad, dead, ambulance, autopsy. The words loop and loop and I sit there on the floor feeling them carve deeper and deeper, like the blade of some jammed machine, going over and over the same spot in my brain.

Barbara comes in a couple of moments later.

I guess she must have helped me to my feet and checked that I was OK. I guess I must have been OK and walked to the bus stop. And I guess I must have got on the bus, because the next thing I know I’m getting off outside my mum’s house. But I honestly can’t remember any of it.

a drop of oil

The house looks like it always does. It is a typical thirties four-bed semi - the type of home that ‘ordinary’ families used to own before house prices went bonkers. I see John’s BMW parked in the road, mum’s old Tipo on the drive in front of dad’s Laguna estate. The white and purple of the first crocuses on the lawn. The wheelie bin in front of the garage. The curtains are half drawn. But nothing else suggests anything untoward. For a second, I wonder what I’m doing here. I’m convinced I’ve imagined it all.

I no longer keep a key, but the door is on the latch. I enter without shouting a greeting, and go straight to the sitting room. The standard lamp is off, and everyone is sat there - silent and still like dummies in the window of a shut shop.

Jenny is the only one actually crying, sobbing quietly into a handkerchief. But the others all have red, blurred eyes. Grandad looks up and smiles grimly. We exchange a small wave, our hands tilting at the wrist like cats flaps briefly disturbed by a furtive tabby.

The look John gives me makes it clear I’ve been cast as Abel to his Cain. I raise my lip in an Elvis sneer. We are both about to say something, but both think better of it, when we see the look on mum’s face. I squeeze in on the sofa beside her. She looks pale and drained.

“Oh Newton,” she says, and lays her head on my shoulder.

I tentatively put my arm around her. But this unfamiliar closeness seems somehow artificial, and I let my hands drop limply into my lap the same as everyone else’s. After a couple of minutes I start to have a kind of out-of-body experience. It’s nothing spiritual, just a strange sensation that I am looking down at us all sat there.

I know it sounds dreadful, but I really want to laugh. I have to bite my lip to stop myself saying, ‘Where’s dad then? Is he joining the prayer meeting? Or has he gone to buy some light bulbs from B&Q.’ I actually start to giggle. I turn it into a cough, as if I’m all choked up. But it’s no good. I have to get up and go to the kitchen on the pretext of making everyone tea.

In the fridge I discover my dinner from the previous evening. It is on a plate covered in kitchen foil. I close the fridge and go out into the back garden. That’s when I see it, the bike, leaning against the shed, where dad left it. I walk across the lawn. The dampness of the long grass - uncut since October - seeps into my socks through my split Pumas.

Beside the bike, among snowdrops and dead leaves, is a half-opened tool box. A yellow sponge sits in a bucket, half-submerged like a dumpling in a soup of grease and silt. Spanners lie lined up on the grass, spelling out some coded engineer’s epitaph, beside an oil can that sheds a single viscous tear.

cunt wipes

Colin seems surprised to see me, as I stroll into the warehouse on Friday morning.

“Hello mate,” he says. “How are you?” It’s like he’s greeting some long lost cousin.

“All right,” I say.

“Now you take it easy, OK? You get any shit from any of the other lads, you let me know.” Colin thrusts a finger at me and looks as if he would rip someone’s head off if they so much as pulled an odd face.

“No honestly I’m fine,” I say. “Business as usual.”

He nods grimly.

“Well you just take your time, mate. Plenty more bodies to go in the cage.” He raises his hand to his head, ashamed at his faux pas.

I wave away his apology.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s not a problem.”

“Look, seriously, if you don’t want to go up in the cage today...”

“It’s OK,” I say. “I’d rather keep busy. You know, take my mind off things.”

“Well, it’s up to you,” he says.

I nod and go to collect my stock refresh list - special requests that are sent down manually each day from the shop floor. It is all stuff for the Toiletries department, a mixture of toothpaste, bath stuff and sanitary protection.

I find most of the bath stuff OK, expect for the one litre bottles of Mint and Tea Tree shower lotion, which have been out of stock ever since I started working in the warehouse. However, there’s one other item on the sanitary protection list I can’t even find a shelf number for - feminine hygiene refreshment towels. I look and look and can’t find anything anywhere that matches this description. In the end, I give up. Colin’s not sure either. He suggests I pop up to Toiletries to check it out.

“But do us a favour and do something with that hair first,” he says.

I pop to the Gents in the warehouse and tidy my ponytail, peering dejectedly at my sallow face in the soap crusted, cracked glass. I look shit. But, I console myself that no one would expect me to look good at a time like this.

To get to Toiletries, I have to pass through the Perfumery Department, which is always slightly intimidating. It is all bright lights and mirrors, with lots of little counters selling different brands of make-up.

The ladies at each counter wear different uniforms, and their giant promotional perfume bottles are all slightly different shapes. But essentially the ladies and the cosmetic displays are all pretty much cast from the same mould - masses of lipstick, mascara and foundation, trying to appear sophisticated, but just looking tacky and cheap.

I scuttle past to the Toiletries Department, where the ladies and the surroundings are more relaxed. Even so, I still feel rather out of place in my warehouse coat and trainers. I approach the deputy manager, a prim and very well-spoken lady called Karen.

“Hi,” I say. “I wonder if you can help? I’m just getting your order ready down in the warehouse. In fact, I’ve just about done it. But there’s this one item I can’t find anywhere.”

I hand her the stock refresh list and point to the handwritten line that says feminine hygiene refreshment towels. She grins.

“That’s Adrian again,” she says haughtily (Adrian is the Department Manager). “Follow me,” she says, and I traipse after her to a sparsely stocked shelf of sanitary towels.

“Here,” she says. “He means the cunt wipes.” She hands me a flat green packet. “Next time try under V for vaginal. OK? And be quick as you can with the Super Plus.”

“Yea, fine,” I nod.

And she turns and walks away without so much as a flicker of embarrassment.

Predictably enough, back in the warehouse, I have barely bundled six bumper boxes of Tampax into the cage when it freezes in it’s tracks forty feet from the ground.

I am still dangling there as everyone else heads off for their tea break. But, really, I am quite relieved not to be joining them.

I don’t particularly want to bump into anyone in the dining room, least of all Sophie or Brett. Partly because of dad, partly because of my liaison with Sam (which already seems quite surreal) and partly because of my failure even to attempt to become a triathlete. Also I’m quite grateful to have some time to myself to think about dad, the funeral and everything.

I really don’t feel like going to the funeral, as, obviously, I’m largely responsible for dad’s untimely demise. No one has actually said as much, not even Max. But I know everyone is thinking it.

Of course, it’s impossible to say exactly what killed dad. The exertion of adjusting the gears on grandad’s bike. The quick test ride he’d done up the hill to the main road. The anxiety caused by my non-appearance at dinner. Probably, it was a bit of all three, combined with a heart valve defect no one ever suspected he had.

Apparently, the valve problem could have manifested itself at any moment. So, I guess it isn’t entirely my fault. But that still doesn’t stop me feeling like I put a 45 against his temple and pressed the trigger.

However, my unintended manslaughter is still no reason not to turn up at dad’s big day. Even murderers feel compelled to witness their victim’s internment, even if only from behind a group of Cypress trees on the other side of the graveyard (or does that only happen in old episodes of Colombo?).

Sadly, I can remember watching Colombo with dad when I was about seven, on a fuzzy black and white telly with a coat hanger for an aerial. But I can’t remember the last time I really talked to him in the last six or seven years.

Sure, we grunted the odd pleasantry at each other. We had the odd slanging match about the colour of my hair, my lack of academic appetite, his naive racism and shares in privatised utilities. We were even on the same side at Cluedo last Boxing Day (was it your son in Sam’s bedroom with his thoughtlessness? Ha-bloody-ha). But we knew nothing about each other any more.

Dad’s colleagues at the Engineering Research Centre all knew him. Mr Krishnamurthy next door knew him. The postlady, the newsagent and the staff of every bloody toolshop in Westing knew him. But not me.

Each of those people had a genuine reason to be at his funeral. He was always so supportive, so polite, so enthusiastic, so friendly, they‘d say. And do you remember the time he (insert anecdote that in hindsight appears mildly poignant)? No, I don’t remember. Don’t ask me. I was never fucking there.

Worse still, I cannot say (hand on heart) that he particularly entered my thoughts at any moment in the last decade. Dad was just one of those things that you totally take for granted. Water will always come out of the tap. There will always be tins of beans at Tescos. Dad will always be there in his shed tinkering with something.

To be fair (not that I deserve any fairness, but) I should point out that in the last decade dad paid me little more attention than I paid him. He was more concerned about the funding for the Engineering Research Centre, which (ever since I was able to understand the meaning of the word budget) consumed every dinner time conversation. That and his latest pet project - a mini traction engine for Max’s birthday, some mechanism to prolong the life of Mrs Krishnamurthy’s tumble drier, anything that involved a set of microscrewdrivers, a spring and a hand-tooled lever.

It wasn’t that Dad didn’t care about me, or I didn’t care about him. We were just both involved in totally different worlds. His held together by nuts and bolts and solder, and mine...well fuck knows. It doesn’t really matter now, anyhow. It’s a bit late for us to build that particular bridge. But, what does matter, what’s important to me, is that there was a time when we did inhabit the same world, a time before we were strangers. And, that’s the person I need to say goodbye to. I just don’t know how to.

Fortunately (for I am not too good with formal arrangements) Max and his wife Amanda are taking care of the funeral - undertakers, phone calls, that kind of thing. My mum and Jenny are continuing to comfort each other and do the whole grieving bit. And Grandad has taken on the role of rock-steady older male. Grim and tearless, he is biting the bullet, squaring his jaw and stiffening his backbone, the way people who’ve lived through war always do.

Personally, I understand very little about the etiquette of death. I feel no particular emotion and have no natural role to perform (other than confused younger son, which I believe I play admirably). However, I need some way to demonstrate the connection I once had with the deceased. And, as I hang there alone in the cage, it occurs to me that maybe I could say a few words at the funeral.

Obviously, I can’t run the idea past Max. It’s not that we have officially fallen out. I haven’t been issued with any certificate to indicate that I am formally persona non grata at my parent’s (sorry, mum’s) house. However, in the circumstances, we are observing a kind of brotherly truce, and I don’t want to do anything to fuck that up. Not that I give a shit about hurting Max’s feelings. I just feel I owe it to Mum and Jenny and Grandad.

Probably I should ask mum about it. It’s her husband, their funeral. Really, she should decide about hymns and readings and stuff. The thing is, I don’t really want to bother her. I’ve been calling her every day, but only to say hello, and to ask stupid questions such as ‘all right?’ and ‘how are you?’ We haven’t really talked properly about anything. Now is not the time to get all sentimental, and ask her about some half-baked elegy. Perhaps it would be better to drop by and talk to Reggie about it.

I’m so busy musing things over, I hardly notice when the cage finally jolts back into life, and Nob lowers it to the warehouse floor. And I am still in a daze as I meet him coming out of the security cabin.

“Who rattled your cage?” he asks, and smiles with pleasure at his own little joke.

Sophie, Sophie, Sophie

“Newton, Newton!” The voice is insistent, right behind me, but I don’t react. I’m not ignoring it on purpose. I’m just still in a daze, wandering round the town centre at lunch, like some half-cut junkie, drunk on death. “NEWTON!”

Finally, the loudness of the shout in my left ear, startles me into life (a little like the cage shuddering back into action), and I turn to see Sophie peering at me, all anxious and flushed. She is wearing a smart three-quarter length coat and one of her smooth sweaters.

Despite everything that has happened, as soon as our eyes meet, I can’t breath and my fingers begin to tingle. I have that plunging feeling in my stomach and my heart goes totally frantic (making me hope that dad’s condition isn’t hereditary, although, knowing my luck, it probably is).

“Hughhho” I gurgle (an attempt at hello).

“Newton, you don’t have to keep avoiding me.”

Sophie seems a little cross, which makes her look even more beautiful than usual.

“I’ve been a bit busy,” I mutter. I sound so bolshy, I startle myself.

“Oh,” says Sophie, miffed by my abruptness. But then her frown quickly softens, and she starts to smooth the awkwardness between us as if it were a rumpled cushion.

“I was so, so sorry to hear about your father,” she says.

Father, I think to myself, father?! I never had a fucking father - barely a dad.

“It must have been a terrible shock for you.” Sophie pauses, straining to find adequate words. But there are none within her softly furnished vocabulary to address the shitty awfulness of death. I stare at her blankly, and ponder how pathetically inadequate the formalities of death are. It’s not all polished black horses and hearts of woven carnations. Not neat white shirts and gleaming shovels. Death is dog shit trodden into the carpet of your life. Bird shit on your windscreen. A choking fart in a stuck lift.

“I’ve been looking out for you,” continues Sophie. “I don’t want to intrude, but I wanted to know you were OK.” She emits a small self-conscious laugh. “Selfish really. You must be feeling dreadful. You look quite pale. Sorry, sorry. This isn’t helping is it?” She looks dejected.

Oh Sophie. I’m sorry too. All I want to do is reach out and take you by the hand. Find some half-deserted cafe somewhere, sit like we did in the pub that night, knees touching beneath the table, and sip coffee all afternoon, just to be with you, because it is so nice being with you, so nice. But instead here I stand like I’m playing statues, my face frozen, my jaw locked and my tongue all numb.

“I’ve been hanging around,” I mumble, “in the cage. Fucking thing keeps jamming.” I sigh miserably. “But what’s new hey?”

Sophie tries to grin. I plunge helplessly down a manhole of guilt and self-pity.

“It must be difficult being back at work. I don’t know. Is it? It’s never happened to me. I mean my parent’s are still...” her voice trails off.

I shrug. It’s strange watching Sophie dissolve. I’ve only ever seen her totally in control before, totally comfortable with each situation. I want to help her. But I have no comfort to offer. I am in total darkness, up to my neck in shit.

Having given up on words, Sophie reaches out to touch my arm. I recoil like she is wielding a cattle prod. I guess I am reminded of Sam. I hold up both hands as if warding off an evil spirit.

“Sorry, I’ve got to go.” I turn and barge my way through the crowds of shoppers and office workers, who swarm around me, like rats in the sewer.

an invitation

I’m at my mum’s house, plucking up courage to put forward the idea of doing my little speech, when Max appears brandishing the phone.

“It’s for you. Some girl.”

I take the receiver, puzzled.

“Hello,” I say. “Who’s this?”

“It’s me.”

“Who’s me?”

“Sophie.”

“Shit...Sophie, sorry, Hi. How are you?...Sorry, couldn’t work out who the hell it was for a moment there.”

“Do you get lots of calls from mysterious women then?”

I squirm like a worm on a barbecue.

“No, no, of course not...Just wasn’t expecting it.”

“I just wanted to check if you were all right.”

“Yea, yea fine,” I say nonchalantly. Amanda is standing right next to me having a good old listen.

“Are you sure, you’re OK?,” persists Sophie. “After the way you walked off like that...I was worried about you. You looked so...”

“Yea, sorry about that...I’m fine honestly. Just the funeral and everything.”

“I understand,” says Sophie. “It must be really horrible for you.”

There is a pause. We both start to speak at the same time.

“Go ahead,” I say.

“No, you,” she says.

“No, honestly, it was nothing important...”

“Well, I just wanted you to know,” she says. “If you need someone to talk to I’m here. You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but...”

“No that’s very kind of you.” I’m conscious that I sound terribly cold and formal. “No, honestly, I really appreciate it. It’s lovely of you.”

“Well, just so you know.”

“Thanks,” I say.

I look up. Amanda is staring at me.

“Look I better go,” I say. “Just in case someone needs to call. But I do appreciate it.”

“That’s OK,” says Sophie.

“Look, I’ll see you soon, OK?”

“Hope everything goes well on Wednesday.”

“Wednesday?”

“The funeral.”

“Oh yea, yea. It’ll be fine...Speak to you soon then.”

“Remember, I’m here if you need me.”

“Thanks, yea...I’ll see you soon then.”

“Take care of yourself.”

“Yea and you. Thanks for calling. Bye then”

“Bye.”

I hang onto the phone listening to the dialling tone, before gently returning the handset to it’s cradle.

Amanda looks at me enquiringly.

“What?” I say indignantly.

“Your girlfriend?” asks Amanda?

“She’s not my girlfriend, she’s just a...”

“Friend who is a girl...” says Amanda.

“Well yes, but we’re not you know...”

“Will she be coming with you on Wednesday?” asks Amanda. I see she has the seating plan for the crematorium in her hand. “There’s not too much room on the front pew. Mind you I still don’t know why on earth Paula is there. She’s not even family. So we could always ask her to move back a row. But you know what she’s like.”

“Look, Amanda, she’s not even my girlfriend.”

“So she won’t be coming then?”

“No, of course not,” I say.

“Well Gavin’s coming.” Gavin is Jenny’s latest man of the month, an apprentice mechanic who she met when he did the MOT on her Fiesta, and no doubt gave her a very thorough service.

“It’s not like that.”

“Go on give the girl a call,” says Amanda.

“Why?”

“Just call her,” says Amanda. She stares me in the eye. “You need someone to be there. For support”

I stare back at her. ‘Actually, Amanda,’ I think to myself, ‘my whole family will be there. My family, not yours. So, I don’t think I actually need anyone else for support.’

I realise, of course, that she is right. There is a barrier between me and everyone else, the kind of transparent, but impenetrable, barrier that separates the families in the viewing gallery from the evil perpetrator in the execution chamber.

“Jesus,” I mutter. I pick up the phone. “I can’t remember her number.”

I suddenly wonder how Sophie got hold of me at my mum’s house. But I’m not really surprised. Sophie’s good at things like that. I clutch the receiver tenderly to my ear and smile with pride.

“You’re hopeless,” says Amanda. “Just do 1471.”

She sighs, takes the phone from me, taps away and then hands it back. I hear the ringing tone.

“What did you do that for...?”

Sophie answers.

“Hello,”

“Hi, it’s me.”

“Oh, hello you,”

“Uhmm, I was wondering, or should I say,” I look pointedly at Amanda, “my sister-in-law was wondering if you would mind kind of coming with me on Wednesday.”

Sophie was silent at the other end of the phone.

“No, sorry, it’s a stupid idea. I explained you weren’t my girlfriend or anything. Not that I wouldn’t want you to be, of course. I mean, who wouldn’t. But Amanda insisted that I should ask.”

“Do you want me to be there?”

“Well, of course, I’d be really like you to be there. But I can understand if...”

“Newton, Newton. For once in your life, just say what you want to say.”

“Look, I’d really like for you to come with me on Wednesday. I know it’s not exactly a hot date (excuse the pun). But it would be really nice if you were there.”

“I’m supposed to be at work on Wednesday.”

“Oh well, I just thought I’d ask. Stupid really...”

“Can I call you back in a moment?”

“Yea, of course, sorry...”

“Speak to you in a bit then.”

“Yea.”

“Bye.”

I put the phone down.

Amanda shakes her head.

“What are you like,” she says. And, shaking her head, she goes to the kitchen to make tea, as I hover by the phone.

As soon as it rings, I grab the receiver as if carrying out some reflex test.

“Hello.”

“That’s fine,” she says. “I had Thursday off, so I’ve swapped with Cheryl.”

“Great,” I say. “If you’re sure you want to. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot.”

The entire planet breathes a sigh of exasperation.

“Yes,” she says. “Are you sure?”

“Very sure,” I say.

“Good,” she says. “Then, we’re both sure.”

“Great,” I say.

“Great,” she agrees.

“Look, I’m sorry, I’ve been rambling a bit. But...”

“Newton,” she says.

“Yea?”

“Enough,” she says.

“Sorry.”

“Where should I meet you?”

“Hold on.” I cover the receiver with my hand, and call to Amanda in the kitchen. “Where should she meet me?”

“The service starts at eleven. If she can be at the Crematorium by ten thirty that would be perfect.”

“Ten thirty at the Crematorium.”

“OK,” says Sophie.

“I’ll wait outside,” I say.

“OK.”

“See you ten thirty on Wednesday then.”

“See you then.”

“Take care.”

“And you... and thanks”

“OK, bye then.”

“Bye.”

I know, I know. It’s a bit off inviting Sophie to my dad’s funeral, and getting all pally and close with her after shagging Sam. But I was very drunk and loneliness is a great aphrodisiac, and besides I’m only inviting Sophie as a friend. It doesn’t mean anything. And even if she is only coming with me because she’s being kind. Well, so what? It makes no difference in the great scheme of things. It really doesn’t.

the gates of heaven

I skulk outside the crematorium gates in that suit, which I’ve borrowed again from my housemate Paul. I was going to nick one of dad’s from his wardrobe (but that would have been too ironic, even for me). So here I am, back in the ash grey bank clerk number, the one I first met Sophie in what seems like ten years ago, but is actually nearer ten days.

I peer up the avenue outside the crematorium, looking out anxiously for Sophie’s blue Nova, and start to shiver - not a little shiver, but great big spasms like I’m turning epileptic.

The shivers aren’t helped by the fact that I’ve had my pony tail lopped off, like some kind of sacrifice, exposing my neck to a biting breeze. I’m nervous too. Nervous about Sophie, about the funeral, about my reading. I’m just not sure what people will think.

As I go through my speech in my head for the thousandth time, a hearse came down the street. This is not entirely unexpected, as I am standing outside a crematorium. It’s not until it sweeps past me - followed by a black Volvo limousine containing my family - that I actually realise who is inside the coffin.

I shudder and feel like I’m about to chuck up on the pavement. Fortunately, I’ve had no breakfast and a gust of chill wind hits my face just at the right moment. I’m grateful - a shirt and tie set decorated with last night’s Prawn Korma would not add to the gravitas of my reading.

I’m glad I’ve wormed my way out of travelling in the funeral cortege (on the grounds of having to meet Sophie), vacating my seat for Auntie Paul. She isn’t actually a real aunt, just an old friend of my mum’s. She isn’t a transsexual, either, she just prefers the abbreviation Paul to Pauline, which she thinks is too Eastendersish, (although I’m sure Pat Butcher always calls Pauline, Paul, when she bumps into her in Albert Square, so it doesn’t make much sense).

Either way, Auntie Paul is welcome to my place in that distended Volvo saloon. It’s bad enough catching a quick glimpse of the coffin. I don’t think I could have faced following it for miles through town (not without showering everyone in half-digested Sag Aloo).

There is still no sign of Sophie, and I get the feeling she’s not going to show. I wouldn’t be surprised. She hardly knows me. Not really. And, to be honest, after a promising start, our fledgling friendship has just descended into her politely dealing with my increasing moodiness. So, you couldn’t blame her.

I give Sophie until ten fifty-two, then begin to walk down the long driveway toward the Cypress-fringed chimney of the main building. I imagine this is what it must be like to approach the gates of heaven, a long lonely stroll past a lot of grey angels. A murmuring crowd waiting for you at the other end of the road.

I wonder if this is what dad is about to face. I picture him walking lost and childlike up to the heavenly gates to meet St Peter. And I feel this first pang of something dig between my ribs, as a piece of emotional chainmail pops open.

It’s at this moment that Sophie hurtles past me. I wave at the tail gate of her Nova, but I don’t think she sees me. I guess with the hair cut and the suit, I’m just another funeral rat. As I reach the small group of people outside the crematorium I feel like I’m sleepwalking. In fact, not even walking, but floating or falling or flying, as if I’m being taken somewhere, propelled by an outside force, held in the grip of the moment. But I guess that’s the way we all feel at times like these.

Sophie stands awkwardly a short distance from everyone else - stunning in a dark purple two piece suit. My head fills with the opening riff of Smoke on the Water over and over again. She is wearing glasses. I’d never seen her wearing them before.

“Hi,” I say.

“Hi,” she says.

“I never knew you wore glasses.”

“I thought my contacts would steam up.”

I smile.

“You look very nice. Lovely in fact.”

“Thank you,” she says.

She raises her eyebrows slightly to suggest that a crematorium is not necessarily the best place to start getting flirty.

“What do you reckon to my scalping?”

I turn my head slightly and ruffle the hair at the nape of my neck where my eight inch pony tail has been shaved to half an inch.

Sophie nods. “Very smart.”

I introduce her to my family.

They all nod politely. Jenny is still sniffing into her handkerchief, nose and eyes bright red from a week’s worth of grief. But everyone else is projecting a kind of artificial optimism (like footballers preparing to take the pitch against a team they know is going to whack them twelve-nil).

Sophie does her best not to act embarrassed. I do my best not to vomit.

the reading

A man I don’t recognise (but guess is some kind of plain clothes vicar) is rambling on about another man I don’t recognise. I’m not really listening. I’m transfixed by the site of the coffin draped in half-a-dozen wreaths lying on a conveyor belt in front of a pair of red velvet curtains.

The coffin looks like it has been manufactured by the same people who make those slightly upmarket pine wardrobes. It is all real wood, and the brass fittings have a certain sturdiness, but you can tell it’s fresh off a production line, one of thousands.

I decide, when I go, I want to be put in a six foot Jiffy bag, scrawled with the words Return to Sender in blue chalk. None of this soil or flames malarkey. Just let me decompose in peace in a forgotten corner of some parcel depot. No ceremony, no Victoriana, no oak casket.

I’m so transfixed by the bloody coffin, I don’t even hear when the ‘preacher man’ calls me up to the front to read my bit. Sophie has to elbow me in the ribs. My heart is going twenty to the dozen as I ease past Max and Amanda. I feel like I am in suspended animation.

I straighten my tie, pull my speech from my pocket and step out in front of everyone, and begin to read to the swimming faces. The first couple of sentences go fine, delivered with a calm confidence, in a voice that doesn’t sound like mine at all.

“Good morning everyone. Many of you will know me, but for those of you I’ve not met before, I’m Geoff’s younger son, Newton. Firstly, on behalf of my family, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone for joining us today and to say a few words about my dad.

During the last few months or, to be honest, years, since I left home, I haven’t spend that much time with my dad. And, I’m sure many of you, his work colleagues, neighbours and friends, knew him better than I did. However, I still have vivid memories of him from when I was a child, and I just wanted to briefly share one or two of those with you.

When I was three, I remember he used to take me and Max to the local swimming pool...”

I swear, up until the moment I say the word ‘swimming’ I feel solid as a rock. In the back of my mind I am already congratulating myself on the impressive and manly way I have handled the ceremony. But by the time I finish saying the word ‘pool’, I have totally fallen apart. My emotional chain mail finally explodes, along with my brain, my heart, my guts and my bowel.

Suddenly, it all comes pouring back. I am no longer twenty-four, I am three. I can smell the chlorine in the old Central Swimming baths. I can feel my dad’s vast back beneath me, feel his stubble on my inner arms as I cling onto his neck. I see pink crumbs of polystyrene pass in the darkening water, as the shrieks of the other children grow more distant and we plough on towards the diving board end.

I start to sob like a three-year-old. Christ knows what all dad’s friends are thinking. The preacher bloke asks me if I want to continue, and I thrust my speech at him.

Sophie and Amanda slip past Max.

They take an arm each and guide me back to my pew like some wounded soldier from the First World War. And I sit slumped between them, wrapped in hair and breasts and arms.

party time

I wouldn’t let go of Amanda and Sophie. I just wanted to hold onto them forever, hiding from the remains of the ceremony, until mum and Max physically prised me away. I didn’t even hear the preacher finishing my reading, telling everyone how me and dad used to play football in the park, and looked for glow worms in the wood, and about that holiday in Devon when we got cut off by the tide. But it seemed to go down OK.

At the ‘party’ afterwards, back at my mum’s house, quite a few people (most of whom I don’t recognise) come over and tell me how ‘right it was’ or how I had ‘perfectly captured him,’ - whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean. Actually, I do know what it means. I’m just not in the mood.

Even so, I find myself drawn into a long chat with Reggie, some of dad’s work colleagues and a couple of his old school friends - men who I’ve never met before, but who talk about dad like they are eleven years old.

Dad’s two school friends are called Mark and Colin. Mark is deputy head of a large primary school in Bristol. He has a neatly clipped beard and a dark shirt with no tie. Colin is an insurance broker. He is wearing a bright red jumper over a police-style white shirt and black tie, and has neatly cropped grey hair. They are both a bit misty eyed as they reminisce about growing up with dad on the Westingshire coast. Partly sad at dad’s loss, partly sad at their own.

“Do you remember the lobster pot?” says Mark jovially.

“Oh yes,” laughs Colin, spraying bits of sausage roll over his jumper. “Geoffrey’s famous eel.”

“Eel?” I say, wondering what the hell they’re on about.

Mark nods. “Your dad caught it in a lobster pot he found on one of his famous forays on the beach. We often used to go down there and see what the tide had bought in.”

“Looking for bodies,” says Colin. He dips his mini pork pie in a lake of salad cream, and stuffs it into his mouth, then chews with great enthusiasm.

Mark continues. “The afternoon we found the old lobster pot, Geoff decided he was going to set it out to sea and catch one. So, we ‘appropriated’ a rowing boat..”

“Not my idea,” interjected Colin.

“No, I believe it was Geoff’s idea,” says Mark.

“Well, you would say that wouldn’t you,” says Colin jokily. “Geoffrey not being here to defend himself.”

Mark looks apologetically at me. Colin looks anxiously over at the table where the food is, making sure no one has snaffled the last of the pork pies. He goes to refill his plate. The rest of us sip our wine.

“Hard to imagine dad appropriating anything,” I say. “He was always well, you know...”

“Straight,” says Reggie curtly.

Colin returns with a couple of porkpies and a small mountain of pasta salad. “Good Lord no. Not Geoffrey. He was always getting into scrapes.”

“Anyway,” says Mark, “we ended up tying this pot to a buoy with a length of old rope and your dad actually caught something in it.”

“Something being the operative word,” splutters Colin.

“It was some type of small eel. But Geoff, bless him, was convinced it was an electric one. Do you remember, he kept it in a tank in his bedroom with that sign on it.”

“Danger. Do not touch water, with a ruddy great zig-zag.” Colin laughs out loud and another piece of pork pie is propelled from his mouth. It pings off Reggie’s shirt. Mark smiles politely. Grandad pulls a face at me. He served on destroyers in the Navy. So, for him, having a lark in a rowing boat is nothing to boast about. And I can tell he’s had enough of politely serving wine and making small talk. He removes his blazer, his navy tie and his mask of politeness. Then he rolls up his sleeves to show off his mermaid tattoo, and stands there with a smile that borders on a sneer.

I can see why Reggie finds the situation uncomfortable. To be honest, he never did more than tolerate dad. He always made it clear that he felt dad had somehow shackled his daughter, trapped her like a wild eel in the net-curtained aquarium of his suburban blandness. I can sense his inner struggle. He doesn’t want to upset my mum. But he wants to express what sanitised shit he thinks this all is. And I know exactly how he feels. I am grateful when Sophie suddenly appears by my side (having extracted herself from a half-hour grilling by Auntie Paul), doubly grateful that when I grip her hand, she gives mine a little squeeze and doesn’t let go.

“So,” I say, assuming responsibility for breaking the silence. “What else did dad get up to when he was young? I guess he was always up in his bedroom making things.”

“No, not that I can remember,” says Mark. “He was more the outdoors type. Always into his sport - swimming, particularly. He was one of the best, maybe the best, in the year, wasn’t he Colin?”

“Oh yes. Geoffrey was mad on anything to do with sport - rugby, athletics, swimming. Wished we’d had him in our team on sports day. Won everything he did.”

“Really?” I say. This is all news to me. I know people tend to glorify the dead, turning learner pilots into daredevil stuntmen. Even so, both Mark and Peter seem pretty sure of dad’s athletic prowess. I am genuinely surprised.

Then Dad’s work colleague, Martin, suddenly pipes up, “I hear you’re following in Geoff’s footsteps?”

Now I’m even more startled. For one thing, I’m not expecting Martin to say anything. Until that moment he’s been stood a step back from the rest of us toying shyly with his sandwiches. Secondly, I can’t think of anything I do that in any way emulates my dad.

“The triathalon,” says Martin. “Geoff told me all about it, the day before he, you know...his last day at work. He seemed quite excited. He was going to help sort you out a bike, I think.”

I pull a face.

“We didn’t talk for long,” Martin adds. “But I could tell he was really proud that you were taking the sporting route. And rightly so. I mean triathlons - not for the faint hearted are they. What is it? A mile in the water and twenty miles on a bike and a half-marathon of running?”

“Yea, something like that.”

“Good on you,” says Colin. He gives me a small hug, leaving a small grease stain on my arm.

“How’s training going?” asks Mark. “I guess it must be difficult focusing.”

“You keep it up,” says Martin, his voice strained with emotion. “It’s what Geoff would have wanted.”

“Yes, you’ll be fine,” says Colin, with another embarrassing hug. “A chip off the old block.”

“More like a chip on the shoulder,” I hear Max mutter behind me.

“That wasn’t necessary,” Amanda snaps at him. But, I have to admit, Max does have a point.