******
The day started off suitably dismal. It was odd being on the outside again after so many years. I became fascinated by the other vehicles on the motorway. I’d seen pictures in magazines of course but it somehow had no relevance. To be honest, I was more interested in looking at the girls that were draped across the bonnets as if to say, “Buy one and get me free”. Full of promise. Seeing the cars on the roads was different. It was like this was Fantasyland - not Inside. It’s amazing the changes in cars in just 8 years. Even the motor we were travelling in, which wasn’t exactly state of the art, had electric windows, traction control, air-conditioning, remote locking and a whole shed full of spec that would have cost bare money before I went inside. There were cars passing us that would have been in some sci-fi film ten years ago: rounded, opalescent, and sleek with low profile tyres.
The very fact that I was in a car and not in a regulation sweatbox was something! It was probably on account of me only having a few months left to do. That and going to a funeral.
“How you feelin’ son?” That was Roddy. He hadn’t spoken since we’d stopped for a McDonald’s. I hadn’t eaten. The smell of the food made me feel sick. I’d said nothing. You learn to suppress your feelings.
“I’m O.K.” I replied.
“Listen son,” he went on, “When we get to the… when we get… you know, once we’re there, I’ll take the bracelets off if you’d like. I shouldn’t do it but… you know.” He coughed – partly a smoker’s cough - partly to cover up his embarrassment.
Years ago I’d have grabbed that one. I’d’ve made him work so hard to spit it out. I’d’ve told him that, no, I didn’t know. I’d’ve asked him exactly what he meant and then I’d’ve said, “No thanks. Leave the cuffs on boss” - make him stand next to me at the funeral and feel a prat.
I just said, “Yeh, thanks, I’d appreciate that.”
He nodded then looked out of the window. There was a stretch of blue sky splitting the clouds just above the hills ahead. The driver turned off the windscreen wipers and depressed a button on the steering column. The radio came on playing some old song.
“So when you leave me again,
You will feel just the same,
It’s a pleasurable pain
But it’s a lonely morning with you on this lonely dusty lane.”
We pulled off the motorway to this piano driven nonsense and headed for my hometown.
My hometown - a cultural and economic backwater if ever there was one. It had been conceived in the nineteenth century on the back of a thriving steel industry. There were rich coal seams at hand and a wide natural harbour that opened out from the three main docks. There must have been a time when the place was bustling with activity: coal was moved from pit to dockside or directly to the iron and steel foundries. Pit props were shunted from the quays to the mines - dense foreign wood to support the narrow tunnels that ran beneath the cold North Sea. Engines, running on numerous tracks, pulling the pig iron, the scraps, the wood and coal in a never ending weave of smoke and steam, and hoots and whistles, as these caravans made their way back and forth in the production of quality steel. Steel revered the world over. Steel for ships, for girders, for bridges, buildings and pipelines. Steel for tanks and shells, for aircraft and bombs. Steel, ultimately, for money. The poor got work and the rich got richer but the whole thing was eventually abandoned. It no longer made any economic sense to the fat-cats and consequently it made none to the politicians. Coal, steel and ships could be bought elsewhere at a fraction of the cost. Nothing, it seemed, made any economic sense to anyone, including the townspeople, anymore.
When I left my hometown unemployment was rife. The Docklands, with their huge cranes, rusting in the cold north wind. The Steelworks, no longer even dormant, were reduced to heath-land as the grass fought back. And the old Town centre was nothing but broken brick and rubble – just left there like the pattern of an ancient settlement - a huge scar between the housing estates and the beach. The main railway line no longer ran through this town and the sad faces of old men, trawling round the streets with their hand-carts crying, “Rag-bone, Rag-bone,” as a kind of penance for some unrecognised sin, summed up the state of this whole abortion that was my hometown as I remembered it.
“You going to show us the way?” This was the first time in six hours that the driver had spoken.
I directed him a circuitous route towards my old manor. Fred Marsden’s toy and sweet shop, Pickles, the butchers – now selling fruit and vegetables, Parks, the bakers and then down Stonesbrooke Avenue to number 61. I asked him to stop. The driver got out of the car raised his hands in the air and arched his back. Roddy opened the window for me and I stared out. Nothing had changed; the privet hedge, the wrought iron gates leading into the narrow, sloping driveway, the pruned rosebushes in the tiny front garden and the curtains drawn upstairs in my mum’s bedroom. There was a time, I thought to myself, that curtains would have been drawn all along the street as a mark of respect. I didn’t bother to look round. I didn’t know the people who lived round here anymore. I’d probably never known them. Everything remained the same and yet in a curious way I recognised nothing. It was as if my imaginings were more concrete now than the reality. Home truths.
“O.K.” I said, “thanks.”
“Seen enough now son?” Roddy asked.
“I’ve seen enough,” I replied.
The silent driver got back behind the wheel and we headed towards the crematorium.
The sun was out but it was a chilly day. Me in a thin black suit, white shirt, black tie and my mum’s letter in my top pocket. It reminded me momentarily of a talk we were given during a junior-school assembly by Mr. Holly. He was some old buffer who was dragged in by the Headmaster to give out awards or certificates. He produced a Gideon’s Bible and told us the story of how he had been shot at during a war against somebody or other. The bullet had hit him smack in the chest but the bible had saved his life. I knew he was lying even then. The Bible he held up had no hole in it, the breast-pocket he pointed to was not where his heart should be (we’d done hearts in science the day before) and in any case I heard that same story loads of times since. Nevertheless, mum’s letter comforted me. It protected me from evil.
Roddy and the staff driver stood well back as I made my way into the main building and there was Abigail. Abigail the bitch. She was sat in the middle at the front left-hand side. She was on her own, blond hair brushed back and tied with a black, velvet scrunchy. I recognised her immediately even though she didn’t look round. I sat at the back and only then became aware of the muzak that lent a quasi-religious atmosphere to the burning we were about to witness.
An older couple came in and occupied a space equidistant from the two of us. Similarly, two women of about my mother’s age arrived, looked briefly around the room, acknowledged Abigail with a discreet nod and sat mid-way down on the right hand side. The music stopped and this guy appeared with a small notepad and an even smaller attempt at a reassuring smile. He spoke for a while about our reasons for being there and said a few words about a woman I didn’t recognise. He smiled again and explained the proceedings. The coffin, which I hadn’t noticed until then, maybe because it was camouflaged amongst the polished pine of everything else in the room, was suddenly moving, almost noiselessly, along the conveyor belt towards stage right. A metal door opened, like a car-park lift, and received the wooden box. It closed and the seven of us tried to sing ‘Abide with me’. This, ostensibly, my mother’s favourite hymn.
Outside, in the brilliant sunlight, I stood absently looking at wreaths and bunches of flowers that had been left out for some other poor fuckers. A song from childhood came unexpectedly into my head.
“Lavender Blue, Dilly, Dilly,
Lavender green.
When you are King, Dilly, Dilly
I shall be Queen.”
I put my hand on my breast pocket and let the tears fill my eyes. I vaguely remember one of the two women comin
g over to me and handing me a large brown envelope. She said something but I was unable to talk. I walked briskly over to Roddy and the silent driver.
“That’s it,” I said, “time to go home.”
I don’t remember the journey back except that it was dark and quiet; there were no hold ups and no emotion. Roddy tried to make conversation with the other screw a few times. He received nothing but one-word retorts. I held the large envelope on my lap. I didn’t want to open it, nor did I want to let it go. It was a souvenir of my day out. My little brown jug with ‘Paignton’ scrolled across it. My little stick of Blackpool rock. Roddy would take it off me when we got back, it would be vetted, and then I’d have it handed to me before bang-up.
I said a silent goodbye to my hometown. I expected to be back there later in the year but I never imagined, in all my imaginings, the things I was going to have to get my head round in the next few days. Nor did I guess how soon my return would be.
The night of your mother’s funeral is a good night to cut your sister up but, even though I didn’t know then who it was from, I couldn’t face tackling the written contents of the envelope. Not that night anyway.
Perspective is available in eBook and paperback
from www.pensup.co.uk and amazon.co.uk
and all good bookstores
“I was hooked as soon as I started this accomplished book. The central character is believable and sympathetic despite his obvious flaws. The storytelling twists frequently, surprising the reader and the ending is very satisfying.” Mike Procter
What a brilliant story teller Pete Howells is - this book is a very enjoyable read, skilfully crafted and unputdownable from the start. Colleen Slater
“This is a novel that has excited me more
than anything I’ve read in a very long time.”
Patrick Janson Smith. Blue Door (Harper Collins)
Also by the same author
Literary Fiction/Psychological Thriller A NOVELLA
YOUNG TEEN FICTION POETRY
For more details: www.pensup.co.uk
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends