Dead Man: 3

The bus was crowded, as usual. Workers heading into the city, like himself. John sat downstairs at the back, over the engine, in the warm odour of combusted diesel, and settled into the journey... along the High Street, up past the shopping centre, the cinema, the library. The pavements bustling at this time. It isn't over-warm, but he sees several people in t-shirts and shorts already. Lots of new-looking tatts on show for the coming summer. People mooching along, waiting at bus stops, sitting in coffee shops. Many are engaged with their phones, of course. It still seems, to him, such a strange transformation in human behaviour. He imagines a conveyor belt full of lifeless, blank-eyed people standing in a line, the belt slowly moving them along. Then a robotic hand appears and slots a phone into their outstretched hands - and suddenly they switch into life and start walking along looking at it, like they'd just had a battery installed and could now function. He feels lucky to have lived through his youth before these things took over. He has his own phone, there in his rucksack, ready for use. But he undoes the zip and takes out his book instead. He slips the rubber band off the cover and opens it where he left the pencil the night before. An old habit - using the pencil as a bookmark, leading to lots of misshapen books. Pencil-lined books, too. He'd always done it since childhood, underlining words he needed to look up, or passages that either hadn't made sense then or had struck him in some way. Interesting metaphors, things like that.

Vituperative

Animadversion

Ratiocinate

In her tracksuit, Mrs Jenkins looked like a sleeping bag full of footballs.

At school, they'd called him 'Professor'. Even the teachers - him saying it was obtuse to call a triangle obtuse, because it was just a triangle and had no sense anyway. Just like trigonometry, he'd always thought. Stupid.

Kate used to get niggled by the habit – the bulges in books, the marks everywhere. Vandalism, she'd called it. But it looks like it's been properly read, he'd counter. Like a house that looked lived in because people lived in it properly – not maintained it like a show-piece for others to see.

He looked at the marked page – the cross where he'd finished last night. He tried reading on from it, but nothing registered. He knew he should have read to the end of the chapter before bed – got the whole thing set in his mind that way. So it was no good - nothing for it. He turned back the four pages to the chapter's beginning and started again.

Beckett dressed in the dark so as not to disturb his wife, though he guessed she was probably awake anyway. She'd be listening to him pull on his pants and socks, slip his trousers over them, cinch the belt hard over his bulging gut before buckling it. Then on with the shirt and tie – her catching every slight hiss of fabric, bone-crack, hushed curse, muffled fart. He knew this because he did the same to her when she was on earlies. This week she was on lates. By the time she got home, he'd already be asleep. That was the way it seemed to work for them now...

The bus pulled up for a new influx of passengers. One of them, a young woman in jeans and puffer jacket, sat beside him. Her music thrummed from the huge pink headphones she was wearing – something with a hammering pulse. Like listening to bees with boots on, trapped in a can, kicking the sides to get out. Sighing, he closed the book. He wanted to say something. But would it be worth it?

Would you mind turning it down a bit, please? So that just you and you alone can hear it. Not the people in France.

Last time he'd asked someone they'd just turned it up instead.

He'd tried those little wax ear plugs – the ones that feel like a marble going in, but soften like Play-Doh once the body heat gets to work. They worked alright when he was trying to sleep and the old girl next door had her TV on late. No good this close, though.

Put up and shut up. Or move. Nowhere to move to now. Standing room only.

Put up, then.

He looked at the cover of his book instead.

Dark Spring by R. S. Maitland.

It was the cover that had first caught his attention at the library. A woodcut design in black and white showing a footpath running up over a hill between tall pine trees. On the summit is a large house with lit windows. In the foreground is the figure of a man, heading up towards the house.  Lines suggest a radiance beyond the hill – the sun rising or setting.  John is reminded of a picture he’d seen as a child showing Pilgrim heading for the Celestial City – except this man doesn’t carry a burden. And there’s something not quite right about him. The downward attitude of his head, maybe. The long coat with the high collar. John can’t put his finger on what it is, but it’s like he doesn’t really fit the scene.  Like he shouldn’t be going where he’s going, and has the wrong intention for going. It’s unsettling, somehow – as it’s meant to be, probably. Whatever, he found it a striking image. It suggested something – like a deep and ancient memory, or a dream he’d once had.

'A real page-turner,'  The Independent.

Well, yes... wasn't that what books were supposed to be? Wasn't that like saying 'A real water boiler' about a kettle?

'A peerless imagination,'  The Sunday Telegraph.

Hm. Praise indeed. It didn't seem bad so far, anyway.

The author photo was on the back cover. 'R. S.' stood for Richard Sinclair, it seemed. Why not say so, then? He never understood this thing for initials with writers. It struck him as pompous and self-important.  But anyway... R. S. looked very much the part. A semi-profile in monochrome – him staring out of a window and upwards into the day-lit sky, as if trying to decide if it will rain. A serious face. Thoughtful. And most definitely self-aware. Frameless spectacles. Dark hair pulled back in a tight, stubby pony tail – like the rest of it had been sliced off. A large ring in his visible ear with a feather dangling on a chain. The bio said he was 26 at the time of publication – which still only made him 33 now. John got that sinking feeling again then, with The Beautiful Blues of Godfrey Wise adding its tonnage of ballast. 26. And another two novels published since, so he'd read. And here he was, at 47, still struggling to get through his first after thirty years of trying. What was the secret of it? Was there one? He knew what to do, after all. He knew how it worked. But perhaps it was like his father used to say, in one of his crude put-downs. The eunuch in the harem: knows how it's done, sees it done all the time... can't do it himself.

Why did he let that weigh on him so much?

He slipped the book back into his rucksack and looked out of the window again. They were in a busy built-up area now, wedged in slow-moving traffic. A row of charity shops and take-aways, closed-curtained rooms above, sooty windows and brickwork. Down an alley, beside a boarded-up pub, someone was emerging from a sleeping bag.

A phone suddenly sounded somewhere close on the bus – a scream of diva pop. Nobody else seemed to notice. Most had buds in, anyway. It continued for several seconds, as if the owner wanted to hear the whole verse first. Then it stopped. Two rows over - a thirty-something woman in a blue nylon apron, denim jacket over it, name-badge lanyard, jet black hair wrenched up in a bun. She held the phone in front of her mouth like a wine waiter holding a tray aloft – her day-glo green nails looking like chisel heads. As he expected, her voice was loud, too...

...Yeah... Yeah... Alright... I know... I said to him he should of done it at the time, but you can't get it into his thick skull, can you... no... no, I ain't spoke to Angela yet... I'm still on the bus... nearly there now... no, I'm seeing Steph at lunchtime an' I'll ask her what she thinks about it... no... yeah... no, mum's got Harry today... yeah, I know... I know... yeah... yeah, I know he did... it's stupid's what it is... he's such a twat...

This is my life – have a part of it too, whether you want it or not. The full running commentary. On and on and on. John tried switching off again. Filter it out. Back to mundane things. The day ahead. The Imprest to do. Get onto the suppliers about that art room order. Team meeting at eleven. He'd bring up again about those broken lockers... other stuff. Nip to Aldi at lunch for something for dinner tonight. Pasta, maybe. Some tomatoes, a courgette, mushrooms, can of tuna. A bottle of Merlot would be nice. Watch a film later. See what's on Netflix.

Give Kate a ring? Touching base, that's all. Find an excuse... just to ask something...

Maybe not. Give it a bit more time. The ache was still there, like a broken leg mending, but not quite able to take the full weight yet.

Two years.

Funny that woman should mention those names. Harry. Steph. Clearly not John's brother and his wife. Funny, though. So now they were in his thoughts when he'd rather they weren't. Another broken leg, but not mending so well. Kate never understood it all – but then she didn't have siblings.

“It just seems so pointless to me, John. All this bitterness.”

“The pointlessness is not the point.”

Aware of how stupid it sounded, of course. Pig-headed. But then, so were they. Steph was, anyway. She ruled their little roost. What she said, Harry did - so feckless, he was.  How were they both the same blood and flesh? But that went both ways, of course.  Harry seeming to manage alright, maintain a marriage, be a father, keep the plane in the air – in spite of the occasional turbulence, stall warnings, nose-dives.  He obviously had something that John wasn’t born with.

The woman stopped her inane phone conversation at last and hung up.  John looked over again and noticed the man sitting next to her.  A regular on the bus. He usually got off at John’s stop, but then went a different way, towards the law courts.  Whatever he was in his job, it demanded the wearing of a suit.  An air of weightiness and significance about him, emphasised by the neatly-trimmed hair and serious spectacles.  He had his black folio case on his lap, as usual. The monogrammed initials in gold lettering: CDP.

CDP.  John had often wondered about it.  He liked the rhyming of the letters.  CDP.  Like DDT.  Or BCG, DVT, EEC… CCCP.  He’d often wondered, too, what those letters stood for.  A Colin he looked like – whatever Colins look like.  But yes…definitely a Colin. Colin… David? Desmond? Donald? Colin Donald… that was it.  Then what?  Peters?  Peterson? Piper? Patterson?

Pollock?

Yes!. Colin Pollock. Colin Donald Pollock. One of twins, maybe. The Pollock Brothers. A right pair. And their father Dick between them in the photo. John smiled to himself.  He loved word-play like that, imagining things, giving people a whole back-story and personality based on little observed details.  Kind of a Sherlock Holmes thing, but not scientific in that way.  More of a prejudgment, really - which he didn’t actually care for, if he was honest.  But everyone did it, didn’t they?  Everyone… whether they’d admit to it or not.  What on earth possessed her to wear that in public?  He must have cut his hair himself… with a bread knife, from the looks of it. 

He turned to look at a shop they were passing, and for the first time he noticed he was sitting by the emergency exit door.  And here was another thing that made him smile.  Someone else on his wavelength, maybe. The lettering on the sill by the door had been doctored…

   MER    CY EXIT

Brilliant!  A nice bit of darkness in it.  He tried to imagine a circumstance in which the door might need using. A head-on crash with a jack-knifed artic. The bus toppling over on its side after colliding with a train on a crossing. Apron woman’s phone bursting into flames and igniting her hair, and then the jacket of Colin Donald Pollock next to her.  But a Mercy Exit?  Hm. He remembered reading about someone who’d used a train crash to fake their own death and start again. A reclaimed life. The light beyond the trees over the summit of the hill. Perhaps that's where the man on the cover was heading, after all.

            They crossed over a bridge and into the last stage of the journey.  The huddle of high-rises, grey in the distance, like a mountain range. A jet flying over, the sun glinting off it.  So much movement and light – the whole day in motion out there.

    MER     CY  EXIT

            The bus finally pulled in at his stop.  Then came the awkward apologies, the nudges and bustles as he made his way towards the door behind Colin Donald Pollock.

            And then it’s out and into the street at last.  The freedom of it.  The bright and bustling city day, with everyone going somewhere.  Colin Donald Pollock heads for the newsagents by the lights – his importance emphasised by the manner of his motion, his purposeful tread.

            John walks along towards the school, past the grocery store with its big display spreading out over the pavement, like in a market – apples, oranges, bananas, grapefruit, pears.  All looking so fresh and ripe, their colours so vivid – like they’ve been painted by an impressionist.  A box of pineapples there – their tops like spiky haircuts.  He can smell them.  Grapes, shiny and wet-looking.  Carrots so clean and orange, like they’d been scrubbed.   He can’t pass them by.  He has to get some.  Some fruit for his lunch.  A couple of apples, in a bag. An orange.  Some tomatoes – red as cherries – for the pasta later.  The courgette and mushrooms, of course.  He has them weighed, pays for them, bags them, steps out to the street again. He walks up to the crossing.  Colin Donald Pollock’s there, too – his newspaper under his arm now, his cigarette alight, dragging on it like it was a tube of pure oxygen.  Sweat on his brow, too.  John sees it – shining there, above his glasses.

He checks his watch.  8:29.  Early.  Good.

He watches the traffic passing as he waits.

He steps out when the beeps start and the gap comes.

And then… everything changes.

Everything.

(to be continued)  https://www.abctales.com/story/harryc/dead-man-4