Before All Else Read online

  “Wait a minute, sweetheart. Only joking. How are you, anyway? Everything alright?”

  He’d kept her on the line. Asked her general questions. Had she really sensed a sudden disappointment in his voice when he finally realised who she was? Or was it just her bitter imagination?

  “So, how are you, Jerry?”

  “Yeah. Really busy, like. Never know where I am from one day to the next, you know.”

  “You said you might be coming through this way day after tomorrow.”

  “Did I?”

  “Yes. You did.”

  The line went quiet.

  “Jerry?”

  “Yes, hello, love. Still here.”

  “You did.”

  “Oh, right. Yes, the thing is, see, my rota has changed. Only just found out. Would have let you know. Can’t make it. Sorry, love. See you around. OK?”

  “OK. Bye.”

  And it might have been alright. Things might have turned out very differently. OK, so she was down for a couple of days. Maxed out on the crisps and cider. Missed Mum even more. Tore off a few more strips of wallpaper from the back bedroom. Cried to a George Clooney film.

  God knows, she’d been there before. She knew the routine. When the sun came up on a new day, suddenly she was no longer such an attractive prospect. By the time the Alka Seltzer had left its chalky residue on the glass, she’d become a skin-of-your-teeth escape, a tale worth telling the lads at the bar. She’d seen what the lads in the post room said about her on Facebook.

  Why did she even bother?

  Why didn’t she leave well alone?

  The list of contacts in her phone flattered her. She never deleted anyone. They were all hopefuls once. They were all might-have-beens once. Who knows?

  So she got the fright of her life when her phone went off in work about two months later. Tentatively she answered it. Technically they weren’t supposed to have phones at their desk, but everyone did. She caught a glimpse of Sandra in the cubicle opposite. She was listening, but pretending not to. She must have emailed Gladys and Elaine and all the rest, because when she put the phone down, they were all looking at her. Silent.

  “What?”

  “Who you talking to?”

  “No one.”

  “So, you’re meeting ‘no one’ at eight tonight are you?”

  “Never you mind.” She pretended to go back to work but the nudges and winks and silent looks rained down about her like sackfuls of rose petals.

  They’d arranged to meet at The Engineers. Not her first choice of pub, being as it was the wrong side of town and a bit of a dive. Finally he turned up at quarter to nine. She’d had three ciders by then and they were curdling in her stomach. A better woman would have gone long ago, she knew that. A coarser woman would have waited for him and slapped his face before leaving, she knew that too. A more confident woman would not have been there in the first place. But she was none of those things.

  She’d waited quietly, hopefully, demurely, and it was a smiling face she turned towards him when he eventually approached her table.

  “Alright, love? What you drinking?”

  He offered no apology or explanation for being late.

  He’d turned to the bar before she had chance to ask for another cider. His return was less direct. He downed a pint and then asked the barman for a second. While it was being poured, he disappeared into the gents, stopping at the slot machine in the corridor before collecting his second drink. Is this how people behave? she asked herself. What should I do? Stay? Go? Is this right? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.

  Jerry straddled the stool the opposite side of the table.

  “Looking very nice, love.”

  “Ta.”

  Voices were chattering away inside her head. She couldn’t think straight. Grace at work had told her to lean forward, focus on his mouth when he spoke. Eileen had said to do no such thing. He’ll come on to you quick enough without any encouragement. Mum. What would Mum say to do? God, she missed Mum.

  “Not very talkative, are you?”

  “Er, no.”

  Jerry leaned an elbow on his knee and peered behind him around the bar.

  “Bit of a dump this place. Why did you say to meet here?”

  “I didn’t. You did!”

  “Oh, did I? Forgot.”

  She looked at his face in profile as he continued his rake of the public bar. Obviously nothing like George Clooney. More like the fat one in the comedy pair you used to see at Christmas on the TV variety show. He obviously hadn’t spent two hours getting ready and half a day’s wage getting a new frock and across town by taxi. But, he was there. Sitting in front of her. Exuding a masculine aura. Exuding something, at least.

  “So, how have you been keeping? Been busy?”

  Mandy nodded. “Yeah. Not bad. You?”

  He didn’t seem to hear her. Her question fell on the table midway between them. In fact, he was starting to look annoyed, bored.

  Quick, quick. She must think of something to say, something that will get his attention back.

  “What football team do you support? We used to live in Woolwich so I used to support Arsenal. I don’t go so often now. My dad’s from Bolton, so he used to take us there when we were kids, but it got a bit violent in the seventies, so we stopped. Do you remember those funny score draws on TV on a Saturday afternoon? God they were boring weren’t they. Like, who would bother, ha ha. Have you been anywhere nice for your holidays? Not been anywhere myself. Can’t really afford it. Went to Scarborough with my mum just before she died. My mum died, you know. Cancer. Dreadful it was. And sudden. Much quicker than you would expect. So I live on my own now. In the flat we had. Mum’s room’s just like it was. Haven’t managed to clear it. Expect I’ll get round to it some time.”

  He was looking at her mouth. As if each word were a pebble falling from her lips. As if she were sitting there with a pile of stones in her lap, weighted to her seat, unable to move. The more he looked the more the pile increased. Words. Words. Words. None that he wanted to hear. None that flattered him. Or flattered her. Just a stream of words. Because, after all, when did someone last sit opposite her? Nice Dr Hattersley had, but there was a big sign behind his head that said that every appointment was limited to one patient, for ten minutes, and one medical issue only. Well, how can that be? When life was so difficult? And how do you say what your one problem is when it’s all one big problem with about a thousand opposable and independent, uncontrollable legs of its own?

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Mandy stood up and shuffled out from behind the table.

  Jerry stared into his drink. He made no move to stop her. He didn’t grab her wrist. He didn’t sit her down. He didn’t find a tissue and get her a nice rum and pep. He didn’t put his arm round her and take her out into the fresh air. He just sat and stared into his drink while she sidled away.

  So, that made it all wrong then. It wasn’t Jerry who called her perfume Hartlepool Nights. Because she never saw him again. So, who was it? And who had stolen her money?

  Cecily

  A car door slams and a shriek zigzags through the air. Someone has slipped, lost their footing. The sound briefly recalls to Cecily’s mind the events of the previous night. Everyone knows Ned has a time of it. Nobody knows why he sticks with Mandy. Is it old-fashioned integrity? Cowardice, perhaps? Probably not. He just seems a great guy. It doesn’t seem fair somehow that promiscuity, jealousy, neuroses aren’t barriers to holding on to a true and constant husband.

  Mandy

  At last Ned comes out of the bathroom. He leaves the light on and the door open. “Bathroom’s free.”

  “Evidently.” Mandy makes her uneven way to the light.

  “Don’t be like that.”

  The perfume bottle sits heavily in her hand, its contents darkened
and sour like a truck driver’s piss thrown from the cab in a plastic bottle into the gutter. The stopper is rimed and crystallised and won’t go back in.

  She hitches her pyjama shirt to sit.

  “Close the bloody door, can’t you.”

  She kicks the door shut and lobs the bottle into the wicker basket, the last few precious, heavy, greasy droplets spilling onto the floor.

  Ned. Ned. After all, he had done the decent thing. Funny old-fashioned Ned. Who thought that it was a fair and honourable exchange. A woman’s virtue for a man’s protection. A fuck for food, basically. She’d never seen ecstasy like it. His face. It was written all over his face.

  If only Ned could have been her first, like she was his first. They might have had a chance then.

  He’s dressed and leaving the bedroom. “Come and lie with me, love.”

  He turns and looks disdainfully in her direction.

  “Please. Just for a few minutes. Need a cuddle.”

  He sighs but approaches, balancing on his right side close to the edge of the mattress. She tucks in behind him and gazes at the short hairs on the back of his head lifted by the collar of his clean shirt. She runs her finger over the sharp cut ends. They feel like Mum’s false lashes.

  3

  Marcus

  Finally, at half past four on the Wednesday afternoon, the two burly men from Reno’s Removals take the last box out of their high-sided van and plonk it in the hallway.

  “Nice work, lads,” Marcus nods, reaching into his back pocket for his wallet. Velda had already, in her efficiency, paid the removal company’s invoice, even before the move, as if to make absolutely certain that they would turn up this morning and remove this loathsome creature and his pathetic belongings from out of her sight.

  The sight of a wallet, like a plate of steaming food arriving at the table, seems to magnetise the two men, who stand and stare into it. Marcus instantly regrets the thick wad of notes folded within the confines of the leather for making it look as if he has double the amount he really has. Secondly, they might think it worthwhile mugging him. After all, who knows he is here? Only one monumentally disaffected soon-to-be ex-wife and his old drinking chums from The Ambassadors. Not exactly enough to form a guard of honour, were he to be found, skull stoved in amongst this stash of unpacked boxes and in need of a hasty burial.

  A sharp memory comes to Marcus of the way Velda used to mime what she called Marcus’s 'forays' into his wallet, shaking her hands in the air and blowing on her fingertips as if the thing had a protective heat shield around it. 'Very funny,' he almost says aloud. Maybe he had said it aloud as the two fellows look rather askance at him.

  “Yes. Nice work. Appreciate everything you’ve done. Here’s a fiver.” He registers their rather disappointed looks as he rifles through notes of a much larger denomination. Oh, alright, he concedes. “Each.” There was a slight lifting of their shoulders, but really not much.

  Well, for goodness’ sake, Marcus exclaims in his head. The journey along the A304 had been perilous enough. The black oil from the van’s exhaust had nearly asphyxiated him the eighty miles from London. There had been moments when he had feared for his life’s possessions; only one hefty gust of wind off the fenlands would have been sufficient to topple the flimsy conveyance over, his belongings skittering down the road and into the ditches before you could even say uważać, uwaga! Watch out!

  The burly chaps depart, leaving a pall of thick black smoke in the market square, a trail of cigarette butts between the pavement and his new front door, and grubby coffee cups lined up, helpfully, on the telephone stand in the hallway.

  Marcus stands for a moment. For the first time in a very, very long time, he is surrounded by peace and quiet. Everything is stock still. Where to start? Does he really want to unpack? After all, what would he find? Over the past few days Velda had in a single act of unselfishness (or was it really selfishness?) boxed up all that she could find that was, undisputably, his. His World of Warhammer magazines. His boxed sets of rock anthems. His schoolboy football trophies. His history books. Other things, ownership a bit more vague and uncertain, were squabbled over and treated a little less roughly.

  They’d bought a Clarice Cliff lookalike jug and sugar bowl in Hebden Bridge, in happier days. It had come to represent no-man’s land. Neither wanted it but neither could really understand why the other wanted it. Even on their very last evening together, they spoke between gritted teeth. “Not very macho, is it?” Velda scorned. He turned the pieces over in his hands. “I just like them, that’s all.”

  “Yes, but why?”

  “I don’t know. Just do. You’ve got the…” and he waved his hand airily towards the china cabinet. “Set…thing…you know…your mother’s.”

  “The ‘set, thing’, as you so rightfully call it, that is now significantly reduced in value since you knocked the handles off two cups and chipped a saucer.”

  “That was Christmas, and if you’d not been so bloody insistent that I do the washing up, then it wouldn’t have happened.”

  “As usual, it’s always somebody else’s fault, never your own.”

  “Oh, blow this, I’m going out.”

  “Run away – as usual.” she’d shouted to his retreating back.

  So, that hadn’t gone too well. He would be mildly intrigued to find out, when he got round to unpacking, who had won that particular spat. He had gone out, as threatened, but, he had to concede, probably not much missed, and come back six hours later, cold, wet and pissed, to find a bastion of cardboard boxes in the garage awaiting collection early the next morning. Despite the acid beer and the high emotion, he had allowed himself a momentary spasm of guilt at the thought of Velda heaving and groaning as she dragged the boxes from the hallway to the garage. He was being expelled like the contents of a pustule. He had wanted to acknowledge her huge effort but, as usual, it came out wrong.

  “Good on you, Velda dearest!” She had given him a poisoned look that suggested any further sarcasm on his part would likely end very badly. He took the hint. “Night. Wifey!” He watched as she climbed the stairs wondering if, even if just for old times’ sake, there might be some point him climbing the stairs too. No encouragement was given, so he turned resignedly on the bottom step and made for the front sitting room and the lumpy camp bed, for the last time.

  What a strange feeling it had been when he had finally awoken to the fact that the house he had called home for the last twenty-two years was no longer to be his refuge. The woman he had called his wife for the past twenty-seven years no longer felt herself to have any duty of care for him. The children, Martha and Paul, both in uni, what did they think of him exactly? Had he become, in their eyes, the silly old duffer that Velda thought him to be? The old geezer who merely came along, usually reluctantly, to carry the coats and pick up the tab?

  “Yeah, awesome,” he’d said to Barry down at the pub when he told him he was moving out of London and to East Anglia. “Going to start again. Fresh start. A new life, all on my own. All on my own,” he repeated, as if to numb the shock. Put like that, it didn’t sound too bad. But on the long, wobbly walk home, it began to feel a bit different. His head began to fill with a plethora of practical problems. Where does one buy a microwave from? He was vaguely aware that bachelor chappies lived off boiled eggs and beans on toast but even that seemed a most complicated operation. Didn’t you have to prick the egg with a needle stuck in a cork that was kept in a small lidded tin in the utensils drawer in the kitchen? At least that’s what Velda did. But which end? And where would you get a needle in a cork? A small lidded tin? A utensil drawer?

  He was being shipwrecked, finding himself on a remote beach with a few scattered, unrelated possessions that were meant to keep him alive, clean, safe, sane and fed by dint of sheer resourcefulness and a will to live.

  So, why this village and not somewhere rented just round the corne
r where he could keep an eye on Velda and the comings and goings of their student offspring?

  Good question and one, typically, that he could not answer that precisely. “Not too good at direct questions,” Velda used to say of him, even to his ageing parents, as if he were some kind of foster placement that had arrived on her sofa, carting with him all the ills of his dysfunctional upbringing. “You have to wait, until he’s ready to speak.” Which is why arguments were never very successful as each witty retort took time, each cutting riposte needed fashioning to be economical yet incisive. But, usually, by the time his response had been delivered, slowly and articulately so that no nuance could be missed, the moment had passed and Velda had moved on to vehemently chopping carrots or flicking the pages of a magazine.

  So now the removal men have gone and the mess is all his own. Boxes teeter on top of boxes. Muddled items spill out of split and broken containers.

  It will take him a little while, he supposes, to get used to living on his own again. Not only that, but living without Velda, who has been a constant in his life for almost half his life, certainly more than half of his adult life.

  She’d actually looked a bit tearful as she stood at the front door. “Right, I’ll be off then.” He’d expected less, maybe that she would ‘go shopping’, or have the tribe round to shout derogatory remarks over their shoulders from the living room as he struggled out of the house with the last of his few possessions. A weighty tear trembled in the corner of her eye, about to reach its critical mass. He felt inclined to offer his handkerchief but decided against the gesture. They gave each other a short arm hug. “Take care of yourself then.” The removal van was waiting on the road, the air around filling with an acrid smoke. “Just hope we get there in one piece,” he joked. Velda nodded, a half-smile appearing on her face. The tear nodded too. “Maybe we could email, or something?” Velda nodded again, silently. Marcus bent in and placed a kiss on her powdered cheek and allowed himself the briefest moment to breathe in her oh-so-familiar smell.

  Velda followed him to the car and stood, eyes downcast, as he reversed it out of the drive. She closed the gate behind him; he tooted the horn and gave her a cheery wave. “For goodness’ sake, Velda, buck up old girl. You wanted it this way. What you looking so upset for?” He spoke aloud, as he would catch himself doing many times, her presence and familiarity a hard habit to break. He glimpsed in the rearview mirror for a last sight of Belvedere Road, NW11.