Don't Look Round

It is best not to look round.  I can’t, now.  It’s impossible.  I believe there is a restraint holding my head.

 

After an interview, they make you sit in a seedy staffroom waiting for the news.  “Would Mr X or Ms Y like to come through to the Head’s office? The rest of you can just go away.”  They don’t say exactly that, I know, but it’s a banishment, a casting-out.  So, for anything up to two hours you can be sat there, your head on the same spring as the wretched door, jumping round every time it opens, to see if they want to employ you.  

 

They never did want to; didn’t want me.  I could write a letter, get an interview; but nothing more.  I took a supply job. No one expects anything, then; you turn up, they pay you, you leave at the end of the day.

 

I shouldered my way in.  Not the sort of place where anyone stands to let you past; more like rush hour on the tube, but smellier.  Adolescents are unpleasant. My purgatory was to have a class of twenty eight of them for two hours.  I can't even remember the name of the subject.  The room was fairly typical, with piles of paper slipping from surfaces, scuffed furniture and broken window blinds.  It smelt of sweat, sour milk and cheap deodorants.

 

They arrived in twos and threes.  The girls got out makeup and phones; the boys just got out phones.  Two hours later, nothing much had changed, except some of them had wandered off, and one had fallen asleep: uniformly vile, ugly and stupid.  Cheap jewellery, inaccurate makeup, no more than pathetic wannabes with no aspirations worth the name.

 

A bell rang in the corridor outside.  They deserved nothing from me, so why should I say goodbye to them or talk to them at all?  Continuing to ignore me, they left.  I felt a dull, sour hatred at the pit of my stomach for the whole repulsive tribe.

 

If I could be bothered, I could go up to the staffroom and drink a cup of cheap instant coffee from a filthy mug.  I resisted the temptation.  After all, I was in the same room until lunchtime. 

 

The jolt of the second hand round the clock seemed to slow down.  I remember it as odd; it is the way of a break to speed past, but this one didn't.  It got sticky, and slow.  

 

The window looked out on a greyish, beige-ish brick wall.  A trapezoid of sky was visible at the top left hand corner, also grey.  Scraps of litter blew around as a door flapped open and closed.  I continued to have the sensation of time slowing down.  I shifted my position a little, moved the uncomfortable plastic chair to the side of the desk, and tried to stretch my legs.  Nothing moved.  Including the second hand.  

 

I’m not sure you’ll understand the next thing – because now there is no next thing.  A bell begins to ring, and continues, a corrugated sound of muted panic; feet thump into the room, and out, and across – they make a throbbing percussion, looping on, not quite regular, but not stopping either.  Papers rustle, re-rustle, whisper – none of that stops either.  I can still see the grey trapezoid and the bricks, but the flapping door is a blur, its thumps are matching my heartbeat, on and on.  Myself, I am not moving.  I try to turn my head, lift myself from the chair. Nothing.  The sounds continue, augment, repeat. There are layers of voices.  I want to look at the second hand, but the clock is behind me, and I cannot turn my head. I can hear its jolting tick – prolonged, like everything else, into a repeating noise. The tick is a dusty cough, cough, cough, cough.

 

I believe I have been moved, because as of now I sense that what I see is a picture, and what I hear is a recording, though neither appear fundamentally to have changed.  Trapezoid of sky, bricks, bell, papers, feet, thumping door, coughing clock, voices.

 

There is a slight chafing at my chin where the restraining strap holds me.  I can just move my eyes sufficiently to see my hands.  There are straps across my wrists.  I would like the noises to stop.

 

 And I would like you to go away.

An Unexpected Break in the Journey

Under that great big sky, it is easy for the rest of the human world to slip away; the space has a calming and clarifying effect.  Ellen had always liked it, being a native.  However, Antonia was concentrating on her Blackberry, working hard and seeing nothing else. Ellen shifted in her seat, working her shoulders, so she could see a little more of the horizon, her lovely big sky.  This car was a delight - it was Antonia’s latest purchase, she’d said she’d only had it a month.  It was smooth, quiet and powerful, and it was a lot more than Ellen would ever afford.  It was gorgeous.  The leather seat held her shoulders as she stretched again, loving the firm expensive feel of the steering wheel in her hands.  Was all of this real? A fabulous car, Antonia, maybe even some prospects.  Antonia indeed.  Ellen sneaked a look sideways.  The sharp eyes, focused on the phone, and an almost audible hiss of cerebral static as that academic brain did whatever it did that paid so well.  God, this sky, this car, this woman. Really?

Antonia looked up for a moment, snagged on a thought.  Saw the road winding and unwinding ahead; dips, rises, fields.  She quite liked Norfolk and Suffolk, but it did take a lot of driving to get anywhere. Her driver?  A chance encounter in the bookshop, a drink, an evening.  Ellen was engaging and entertaining, if penniless.  And she appeared to drive rather well, which was..

It felt like hitting the kerb, but it wasn't, because there was no kerb.  They both jumped. Ellen had her suspicions straight away. Nervously, she looked at her passenger.  Where the hell were they, anyway? And did they now have a puncture?  The lumpy thud was there for sure; Ellen coughed apprehensively and stopped the car. Wintry grey miles stretched out in all directions.  Cold.

“What have we stopped?  Did we hit something?”  Did something hit us?”

Antonia was looking at Ellen over the top of those terribly academic half moon glasses, in full interrogation mode. The Blackberry was extended as part of the question.

“It’s a flat, I think.  The tyre, I mean.  Pothole.”  Ellen was unnerved, uncertain, slightly aggressive, defensive.  In the wrong.

Antonia drew her breath in sharply.  It was obviously not good enough, and obviously Ellen’s fault.  A better driver would have seen and avoided the pothole.  Powered by the in-drawn breath, a long and untranscribable sound of frustration and disapproval was exhaled, slowly.  “Where exactly are we, then?”

“I don’t know exactly.  Somewhere between Reedham and Norwich.  We are on the right road, but..”

“You don’t know, do you? I’ll have to call the university, before anything else.”  With that, Antonia disappeared into her hard, bright world.  Ellen got out of the car and walked round to the nearside front tyre. A sad, grey bulge of rubber oozed between alloy rim and tarmac.  She was hardly dressed for this, but could, and would, sort it.  Summoning the AA, or whoever Antonia was with, would take time they didn't have, because she was expected in Norwich within the hour.  It was just about possible, if she got a move on, and if changing the wheel on this beauty was fairly straightforward.

Ellen knocked on the passenger window.  Again, the interrogation over the glasses.

“You’ll have to get out.  I've got to change it.”

For a long moment, Ellen doubted there would be acquiescence, because there was a horrible stillness in the car.  Then, reluctantly, Antonia stepped out, her black patent leather high heels edging a cautious path over the gravel of the verge and round to the safety of the tarmac. There, in her bubble, she continued her intercourse with the phone while Ellen found the spare, the jack, the wrench and the little plastic thing for the lock-nut.

Time passed; too slowly for Antonia, too fast for Ellen.

“Good to go.”  Ellen looked up from under her unruly curls, grubby and quietly triumphant.  They would get there, there was time.  The phone was snapped back into the shiny black bag; Antonia resumed her seat.

“We’ll make it, no problem,” said Ellen, thinking of what might be her reward...you were brilliant? I wouldn't know how? We've made good time?  No cause to worry, are you okay? We could have a coffee when we get there, if you like?

None of these did she hear; just the inevitable rattle of manicure on Blackberry, and the empty desolate wastes of Antonia’s exalted status.

The sky was impassive; a little more light, a little less cloud. The silhouettes of hard, wind-bitten hawthorns resumed their passage past the car.

This wouldn't happen again.   That was something of which they were both completely certain.

Marcus and the Train

An Autumn Ghost Story (working title)

Marcus and the Train

He sits there on the stile, thumping his heels against the wood.  It's a cold afternoon; his toes are cold, his fingers blue and numb.  His breath makes little puffs in the misty air.  But he can hear it, a change in the quality of the air, a push somewhere.  And if he listens, the rails will tell him. They'll sing.  Their own strange rising song as the engine nears.  Fog does strange things to sound.  Wee - oop; the whistle, from Wye, leaving the station two miles away.  Cold, but not long now.

He tugs at his socks.  His knees are red with the cold. Sharpens his pencil, blows the fragrant shavings out of the metal sharpener, tasting the wood and graphite as he does it.  The notebook is immaculate, neat columns of precise numbers, ruled and perfectly organised.

Battle of Britain class Light Pacific.  Bulleid Light Pacific - the "spam can".  Strange, boxy, low, absolutely beautiful. He stands up on the stile, swaying slightly to balance.  The rails are singing, and the thump of the pistons comes clear through the mist.  His whole world shakes with joy as the locomotive sweeps past.

He sits back down on the stile, everything - himself included - vibrating with the sheer exuberant power of the thing.  The cold is forgotten, the scratchy wool of his balaclava.  He has it. Six pencil digits in in his notebook.

Marcus hops off the stile.  Just one more thing to do...and he has no idea why he does it, only that it is absolutely essential.  He crosses the line, carefully planting his feet at right angles to the rails and the wooden planks of the crossing.  Once across, he touches the stile on the other side and then comes back.  Home now.  High tea; beans on toast and new cake.  Mum always bakes on Saturday afternoons.  The light is going now; soft blurred outlines of autumn colour as trees glow through the mist.  Warm, in his breast pocket, sits his notebook, pulsing with the captured glory of that great locomotive.

The ploughed fields surround him, exhaling the autumn air calmly; the air holds a memory of the steam, the tang of of it is still sharp.  Looking down from a great height, the rooks, clattering amongst their messy nests see a tiny figure labouring over the furrows up to the old water mill, and then, past the pub, home.