Before All Else Read online

  “What is it?” Marcus struggles to remember something Paul had shown him that afternoon.

  “What’s it called?” The Chair drops his head slightly to one side as if to say, Don’t expect me to help you, Buster.

  “Social – er, social media. That’s it. That’s what we need.” Marcus recalls the photographs Paul had posted of that afternoon and the discourse he had given of the use of such social media in the promotion of blah blah blah. Truth be told, he hadn’t really been listening. But he must have taken on board enough to allow the following thought: “We could advertise our event online, get everyone involved, post pictures, get contributors to put their information up, keep everyone informed of progress. Er…that sort of thing.”

  “Splendid.” A few round the table nod their approval.

  “Right, well, Mr Blatt, we shall leave that to you, shall we? I now call this meeting to a close.”

  The meeting is suddenly and gloriously over. While Marcus ponders what it is exactly that he has let himself in for, and what he might have thought his qualifications are for the task, Eveans busies himself closing down his laptop and selecting a pocket, of which there are many, for his multifarious phones.

  The corner empties.

  Should he offer to buy Cecily a drink? Would that be considered a bit forward? A loud bark comes from the games room. Martha is cueing up. That young man is pretending to drop chalk into her drink. She prods him with the end of her cue. In contrast to their laughter and movement, Marcus feels wooden, awkward, and even more desperate for the Gents. Cecily stares ahead, also watching the antics in the games room.

  “They don’t have any of our hang-ups, do they? None of our inhibitions.”

  Marcus smiles weakly, too polite, too inhibited to excuse himself.

  Eveans lifts his buff rucksack to his shoulder. With a curt nod, he walks through the exit, his knee-high Roman sandals clacking slightly on the stone flags.

  “What the blazes was that? Did you see what he was wearing?”

  “Kazuo Ortega.”

  “Beg your pardon? And what’s that got to do with bunting and bangers?”

  “Kazuo Ortega. That’s what he was wearing. His Folie de Pierre collection. Premiered on the London Student LoSt Show last year. Destined to become a big name in the international fashion arena.”

  Marcus gazes on Cecily in awe. She definitely isn’t one of Velda’s lot. Might even be worth putting up with the village’s marrow envy or whatever it is that compels them to put on this wretched summer fair, to get to know her better. Just a crying shame that faulty internal plumbing should strip him of that opportunity at this very moment in time. He shuffles awkwardly past her. “Excuse me. Excuse me. Sorry. Sorry,” leaving her alone at the table, staring fixedly towards the bar.

  9

  Cecily – and Marcus? No chance

  Cecily leans against the work bench in Gray’s Garage. Young Bob cleans nozzles with a rag while Old Bob voices his opinion from underneath a car, knocking away at a crank shaft. “Doesn’t bring his cars here for servicing, does he? If you live in a village, you should support that village, that’s what I say.” Cecily is inclined to agree but, looking around at the ivy making its way in through the skylight in the asbestos roof, the old analogue instruments rusting away on shelves and the oil-drenched drawer that serves as a cash till, she has to acknowledge that the Major might not feel that his top-of-the-range SUV is best served in this small, rural garage that still has three decommissioned Fina petrol pumps on the forecourt.

  As with most of the village that day, they are spending a pleasant half hour discussing the events of the previous evening.

  Old Bob compares the Major – not Colonel, as it turns out – to an irresistible force of nature. “He has no respect for the old way of doing things. Was a time when you waited to be invited to do something, especially if you were an incomer. You’d be quietly given the nod. Told that you’d be given favourable consideration if you were to, I don’t know, put in for something.”

  And why is Eveans, ‘spelled P-O-N-C-E’ – the two Bobs had laughed when she relayed this joke – even bothering with such a small event as their summer fair? There was a time when the village’s ambitions amounted to no more than a run on a few pots of jam and giving the headmaster a soaking in the stocks in order to sponsor a child in Africa and buy a few silks for repairs to the kneelers in the church.

  It feels like the ably assisted Major is organising the Queen’s Jubilee Thames Regatta all over again. Isn’t that the trouble when men take something over, Cecily wonders quietly to herself? When Gladys and Iris Petty ran the show it sorted itself largely, almost like clockwork. This trumped-up Chairman, with his ABC in Events Management, his logarithms, Gantt charts, flow rates, pieces of coloured paper, is proving a bit rich for the old-timers. Rather like Long John Silver’s parrot, Captain Flint. And Stan the Man is looking decidedly deflated these days, all agree.

  Cecily isn’t sure where she stands in relation to the fair. She doesn’t want to be thought of as stuck in her ways, for sure. On the contrary. Given that she is about to give Marcus a lesson in social media, she is even ahead of the curve. For once in her life.

  But she isn’t looking forward to the morning closeted with Marcus. He is a nice enough chap, but he’s obviously a bit of a worrier. Might even have a touch of St Vitus’s dance the way his leg jiggled and bounced at the meeting last night. Perhaps a bit slow too. He’d offered to buy her a drink, which she’d accepted, par politesse, and it had taken him a good few minutes to gather himself up off his seat. What was that all about?

  “Has anybody set eyes on this Major character?” asks Bob Senior, still only identifiable by a pair of bent legs and his fourteen-eyelet Doc Martens.

  “Apparently he works two days in London. Used to work in Monte Carlo but told Madge that the centre of gravity of the financial sector is no longer to be found in these discrete, sequestered principalities but must be located in more open, transparent and regulated operations.”

  “Wha’?”

  “No, I don’t know what that means either,” confesses Cecily. “But Madge, for once, was impressed. Apparently he has the regulation Botox bunny for a wife and thread veins on his nose. And he’s a Major. Not a Colonel. Gets very cross if he’s called Colonel.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “Well, can you keep my old jalopy on the road for another year?” Young Bob casts a sneering glance towards the rusting Volvo waiting its turn in the MOT bay.

  “Given half a chance, I’d condemn it.”

  “Don’t be mean, Bob. Good for another hundred thousand miles your dad said, last time.”

  “And so it is, Robert. Mind what you say to our customers.”

  Cecily puts down the mug of coffee Young Bob had made her, trying to wrest her gaze away from the tannin-stained interior, the oily thumb mark and the gobbets of plastic milk spinning on the top. “Right, better go. Got a computer lesson.”

  “Bye, Cecily. I’ll give you a call when we’ve done the necessary.”

  She picks her way over the cold concrete floor, strewn with trolley jacks and tool boxes. When Marcus brought up the topic of social media at the meeting last night, Chris Eveans had reacted as if, finally, somebody was getting the message. Poor Marcus looked as if he were a sprat that had inadvertently wandered into a lobster pot. No way out and trapped on all sides with a hungry and angry-looking crustacean. When she’d leaned over to him and whispered, “Don’t worry. I’ll help,” he’d looked at her gratefully and given her a limp thumbs up.

  Nonetheless, it is a bit annoying that she will now have to spend the morning in close quarters with someone she hardly knows. But this seems to be the way that Mr Eveans operates. Networking. Issuing different coloured Post-it notes for different areas of responsibility. Some poor folks at the meeting looked like they’d been caught in the crossfire at
a paint-balling event. “There you go,” Chris Eveans had said, leaning over the table and slapping a coloured square in front of Marcus. “Lime for IT. You’re the man.”

  Who exactly is this Marcus? Last night at the pub, she had been trapped between him and the wall. With that odious Mandy twisting on her left stiletto and describing parabolic shapes at the bar in animated self-projection, she had not wanted to leave her seat. Oh dear, did he think she was riveted by his company? He had rather turned on the full force of his attention. It felt like she was being interviewed or in conversation with a quiz master. Question after question after question. How long had she been in the village? Did she have any children? She saw him drop his gaze to her left hand. Was he looking for a wedding ring? He laughed too loudly and too emphatically, seemingly more so once his eye had landed on her gold band. She might have told him about Henry and introduced him to Henry’s son, Tom, who had called in long enough to wrestle with her over a bag of crisps and flirt with a random girl in the pool room on his way to Amsterdam, but hadn’t felt inclined to. What with Mandy and the discontent in the village over the fair and one thing and another, everything seems fractured, broken, out of sync.

  She won’t offer him biscuits. She will put the laptop on the kitchen table. Offer him an instant coffee. That would be it. And keep the phone by her and the back door open in case she needs to holler for help.

  Oh, it is all just a bit too wearying. What is she worrying about? He had looked a bit pathetic, to be frank, not predatory at all. Did he really only have the one jumper? It would be time for him to think about buying another one soon as this one seems to be unravelling past the cuffs. She recognised in him the air of the newly separated. A certain gung-ho zest for the ordinary, as if buying basic provisions had never been so fascinating. The rapid scanning of a crowd looking for that one special person (or their potential replacement). Ingrained habits, like the courtesy of opening a door when no one is following, over-ordering, a steadying outstretched hand when there is no one to protect from oncoming danger.

  She should know, after all.

  Young Bob

  Young Bob picks up the mug Cecily left. It has the faintest streak of lipstick on it. “Just going for a smoke, Dad.”

  The small meadow at the back of the garage is overrun with emerging buttercups softening and illuminating the piles of rubble and tyres scattered about. Bob no longer beats himself up for not clearing up this patch of land; it has become an old, tired regret, worn thin. Nature could do his work for him. Before long there will be the new season’s nettles and thistles, tall, on the move in the gentle breeze, thrusting themselves in the gaps between the debris.

  He sits heavily on the wooden bench and pulls his cigarettes from the top pocket of his overalls. Shaking his lighter, which refuses to flame, he curses out loud. It always unsettles him to see Cecily. She has that unmistakable de Mare stamp about her familiar to him since schooldays. The same bearing, the same sense of the absurd, kindly eyes. But, whereas Cecily’s face has become harrowed over the intervening years, her style more assured, it is the memory of Amelia at the age of nearly twenty that he reaches for.

  The scene always comes back to him of the two of them at the railway station at Bremen. It’s on a permanent loop. How long ago is it now? Twenty years? More? A gap year they would call it now. Then it was just an adventure. They’d been travelling for nearly three weeks. They were going to see Europe, travel through North Africa and maybe head back on up to Turkey. No time constraints, just take off. When he looks back now, he yearns for that optimism, courage, happiness that bound the two of them together. They were so unbelievably naïve, bombproof.

  He’d turned to her on the platform, the hand holding his yellow phone card trembling. He felt sick and had to sit down on the wooden bench, dropping his rucksack to the ground. “I’m sorry, Melly. I’m so, so sorry.”

  She knelt beside him, her hand on his shoulder a small and pitiful offering against the storm raging inside him. He lifted his head but his eyes didn’t see hers. His hand didn’t cover hers. She was already out of the picture. “I’ve got to go home. Dad’s not well. It’s all too, too soon. After Mum, and all.”

  They sat on the bench together for two hours. She watched the pigeons hop and peck and squabble. He pressed his hands into his belly and rocked back and forth, tears spreading over his cheeks. The sleek trains became fewer and fewer, the sleek commuters fewer and fewer, till the station was taken up with night staff: shift workers, postal workers, security guards. They fell asleep. Where did all the pigeons go?

  He wanted her to come back with him. Get Dad settled again. Give him a few more months. After all, they had all their life in front of them, didn’t they? It had obviously hit Dad hard, Mum going.

  It had been hard to catch Aunty Jane’s words over the hiss and clang and chatter of the railway station. She said his dad had had some kind of a breakdown, just sat in the chair and stared at the cold fireplace. If you asked him to do anything, he would do it, but in such a low-key way. “Bob. Come to the table and eat your tea.” “Bob, bedtime now.” He’d gone docile, not senile. He wasn’t asking for his son to come home, but what could he do?

  It was long after she’d gone, left him on that platform to make his own way home while she continued on her way, that he began to doubt her feelings. Maybe she just hadn’t loved him enough to postpone her plans for a month or two. Hadn’t they been inseparable at school? Hadn’t their discovery of each other meant the discovery of Love in its whole mystical entirety? Hadn’t they both been each other’s key to the Wonderland?

  She hadn’t said very much, just waited for him to come to his decision. Her decision must have been made in the inner space of her own mind. She would go on. Or maybe she would have come back with him, if he’d asked her to. But he wouldn’t. It was something she had to volunteer. Which she didn’t.

  Both battling simultaneously; both arriving at different outcomes.

  Cecily

  At eleven precisely, there is a firm knock at the front door. Trueman barks loudly in response, matching the rhythm. “Shh, boy. On the step.” Trueman lugubriously makes his way up the stairs, sitting on the fourth step, resting his front paws on the third. “Quiet!” He looks at her with apparent disdain for failing to understand his purpose. She kisses the top of his head, reiterates a silent warning with the end of her finger and opens the door to Marcus, who makes an elaborate show of wiping his feet. Trueman jumps to the hall floor in one bound and curls his lip, silently, at the intruder.

  “Oh, my goodness. What a…what a…dog!” Marcus pants. Perhaps Trueman understood the situation better than she had given him credit for. By standing between the two of them, this removed any obligation to offer the man a kiss or a handshake.

  “Come through. Don’t mind the dog.”

  “Er, perhaps easier said than done.”

  Cecily, making her way down the hall towards the kitchen, turns to see Marcus still firmly planted on the doormat reluctant to move past Trueman sitting on his haunches, technically quiet and technically still but nonetheless emanating a degree of menace.

  “He won’t hurt you. Soft as a brush. Basket!”

  A flash of insight passes between the dog and the man. Trueman, happy that he has made himself understood, lowers his upper lip, barks once and leads the way into the kitchen.

  Marcus sits at the square wooden table and accepts Cecily’s offer of a cup of coffee. Cecily notes that he has taken the seat furthest away from the dog basket and seems reassured by the distance and quantity of woodwork between the two of them. “Lovely morning.”

  “Yes.”

  Cecily fills the kettle, bracing herself for what promises to be a long and difficult morning. It is going to have to be the good coffee to see her through and, despite her earlier intentions, she reaches for the cookies she’d made the day before. “Would you like one? They’re maple an
d pecan.” Marcus takes the two largest ones and starts to chomp before she can offer him a plate.

  “So good of you to give me a hand with this. Don’t really understand how I got co-opted.”

  Cecily smiles her understanding and is about to offer some reassurance before Marcus takes off again.

  “As you know, I’ve only been in the village a few months. Wasn’t sure if there was anything I could do to help. It was my son, Paul, who put the idea into my head. We’d been out that afternoon and he’d taken some pictures of the local sights. And posted them on this site he uses.”

  Cecily listens to Marcus as she pours the coffee. He seems unstoppable, as if he hasn’t really spoken to anyone for ages.

  “Paul’s our eldest. He’s twenty-four. Then there’s Martha. You might have seen them? They popped up a couple of days ago. Nice really. Their mum and I have separated. Thirty years together. Married for twenty-seven. It was her decision. Didn’t really have a say in it.”

  Cecily sits back in her chair and absorbs the flow of words. A picture builds in her mind. Velda as Tribal Mumma. Marcus whittled away till he is stick-thin. A flash of ethnic print. Earrings like chandeliers. Marcus as failed warrior. Children leaving to catch their own wildebeest. The end of his civilisation.

  “It’s not as if I didn’t provide for her and the family. Don’t think anyone really realises what it’s like journeying up to London every day, the crowds on the trains, nowhere, nowhere, nowhere to just be, to breathe, to walk in a straight line. Bloody awful it was, for years. I know Velda didn’t have it easy, what with the kids and everything. I know they can be a handful.”

  So, as Marcus clickety-clacks up and down the track, the track moves over the face of a clock until at the pre-appointed time, the train stops, Marcus steps down into the terminus. There are no more trains. There is nowhere else to go.

  Marcus leans into the table and pours himself another cup of coffee and grabs two more cookies. Cecily slides a side plate under his chin, but he doesn’t notice. “Strange feeling, when you don’t know where you belong any more. I’ve always liked this part of the country, but I sometimes get the feeling people look at me as if I’ve landed from outer space.”