Operation Sea Lion

It's not right, her ringing me up in the office like that, giving me
lectures about 'getting back into the real world.' It's not on. I never
go round that bloody florists when she's working in there, telling her
to sort her life out. Maybe I should start. 'Julie, are you blind?
There's no future in flowers. Get a life.' See how she likes it with
the shoe on the other foot.

I'm glad to be out of work for today. Even if the rain is bucketing it
down on top of me. It's not just the rain that makes it a dismal day.
It's London as well. London in November lacks colours. If you can be
sure of one thing in your life, it's this: come November, the colours
of the rainbow melt and dissipate and greyness descends. This pavement
is grey. The sky is grey. The rain water that's collecting in puddles
is grey. Christ, even the snot that's forming in my nose is grey. I
wonder how many people who live here ever stop to think how drab and
bleak this city can be. Especially in November. It's a bad month, all
right.

But I'm refusing to feel despondent on this walk home. Despite a
niggling worry that I may be just wasting my holiday entitlement, I'm
still smiling. I've taken a half-day. As soon as that big hand hit one,
I was out of that office with a grin wider than the Severn estuary. No
one wished me a pleasant afternoon, not even Tim. I heard a few
sarcastic remarks such as 'oh, you're slacking off then' or 'you lucky
bugger' but no one took the time to say 'You enjoy yourself, Adam'.
Well, I haven't forgotten. The next time one of those miserable sods
embarks on a holiday or a long weekend, I'll feel fully justified in
printing out the latest air accident statistics off the internet and
hand delivering it to them as they're about to leave.

Let those sourpusses stew in their own dejection. I'll not let them
bring me down with them. The whole afternoon is ahead of me and I'm
free to catch up on a few things. That short story on Operation Sea
Lion is just bursting to get out of my head and onto the page. It's a
winner. One of those 'this is what would have happened if' stories.
It's a narrative from the point of view of a German solider landing on
the beach at Eastbourne in an ultimately doomed Nazi invasion of
England. I'm excited at what I can come up with in that one. I'm not
sure whether to kill him off with the orthodox rapid machine gun fire
or low-flying British planes spraying mustard gas over the beachheads.
Probably the latter I think. A slice of controversy. The shock
factor.

My hair is plastered to my skull and the rain is slipping down the back
of my collar as I open the front door. Forgot the bloody umbrella
again, just to cap it all. The trouble is I couldn't hurry home because
of this dodgy knee. It's been playing up for a while now. I'm half
limping as it is. Helmut, with typical Teutonic pragmatism, thinks I
should go and see a physiotherapist. But the way I see it, this country
didn't get where it is today by following German advice.

I check through a pile of mail. I have two letters. One is a phone
bill, the other is a brown envelope marked 'urgent'. I recognise it
instantly. I know exactly what to do with this missive.

Shit, I have to climb those stairs now. Stairs put a lot of pressure on
this knee. I live on the first and second floors of a Victorian
terraced. As I lumber up the stairs, I hear a door open down below
me.

'Meester Finley!'

It's Mrs Banks, the Polish landlady. She lives on the ground floor.
There's often a strong reek of boiled cabbage that rises up and settles
over the walls and carpets like the discharge from a napalm bomb. She's
the widow of a Second World War RAF pilot. I tried to glean a bit of
information about him off her once but she just eyed me suspiciously
and asked why I wanted to know. I was just being friendly that was all.
And, of course, doing some first hand research for that Battle of
Britain story. It's a shame really, up until I moved into this house, I
always held the Polish nation in high regard. Stood up to the Germans
even if they didn't have the modern warfare equipment. Kept an
underground army going throughout the period of occupation.
Unfortunately since I ran into Mrs Banks, instead of conjuring up
images of heroic freedom fighters, the mention of Poland merely makes
me think of pots of boiling cabbage.

I halt, slowly and painfully turning around. She's stood at the foot of
the stairs, minus her walking frame. She is incredible really. It takes
her forever and a day to totter off to the shops with her frame but
when she's on the prowl for rent money, she's out of her door quicker
than Linford Christie. She wears chunky glasses that magnify her eyes
threefold. I still reckon she can't see me properly though.

'Yes?'

'I haven't had zis muntz rent money yet.'

'I'll have it to you by tomorrow, Mrs Banks.'

'But you are always late, Meester Finley. Meester Helmut always payz on
time. I will have to have words with my zun about zis.'

'You do that, Mrs Banks.'

Old bag. When she's not down Balham Catholic Church, she's poking her
nose around our flat. I've found her creeping around up there before,
checking out the state of the kitchen and that. That's the trouble with
old people. They have a problem with time. There's always too much of
it for them. They don't know what to do with themselves.

Mrs Banks has slammed her door behind her. Bet she's on the phone to
her son already. I hoist myself up the remainder of the stairs and drop
the brown envelope into a litter bin that Mrs Banks always leaves on
the landing. I enter my room. My coat is dripping wet. I take it off
and hang it on a hook on the door. Then I grab a towel from the
radiator and give my hair a rub. After I've done it I inspect the
towel. There are a few loose hairs dotted over it. Shit, I'm still
losing it. Twenty-nine years old and I'm almost as bald as William
Hague. The tragedy is that he managed to get himself a tasty wife. I'll
be the first person to hold my hands up and admit that I failed
dismally on that front.

I fix myself a meal that consists of a beef and tomato Pot Noodle and
three large frankfurters. Then I go to my bedside drawer and take out a
sachet full of flaky white powder. I stick a finger in and take a
couple of dabs. Base pharmaceutical speed. I don't do it for
recreational purposes, solely as an aid to writing. It tones up those
mental muscles, puts things into perspective. Some of my best works
have been produced under the influence of this stuff. Christ, they
filmed most of 'Apocalypse Now' on it. What better reference point do
you need?

I settle down in front of my computer, kick-starting it into life. The
hard drive is churning. I'm feeling positive. Positive and creative. I
flex my fingers. Operation Sea Lion is about to begin. I'm visualising
it. Think I'll start with a bang. The scream of the first wave of
Stukas coming in for a strafe. Sand spraying up as the bombs hit the
beach. Shit, does Eastbourne have a sandy beach? I'll have to check
that out.

Before I start, I think I'll check on abctales.com to see if my latest
story is up on the site yet. Took me a while to perfect that one. It's
called 'Westerplatz Under Fire'. It's about a young Polish sentry in a
remote Baltic garrison in 1939 who suddenly finds himself embroiled in
the very first arm to arm combat of the Second World War. He eventually
gets done in by artillery fire from the Schleswig-Holstein but not
before he goes down in history as the first person to kill a German
soldier in the entire global conflict. Very poignant account, that one.
Not a mention of cabbage either.

I log on to abctales. I've only just got into this website. Quite
addicted to it, actually. I like the idea of having my work displayed,
even if the whole thing is a bit arty-farty. I read some of the stuff
on there. Complete dross. Hippies writing about their drug experiences
and women writing about bloke problems. Tim at work suggested it to me
when I told him I wrote war stories in my spare time. He's one of these
literary types, went to Cambridge I think. I enjoy having those debates
with him. They can get quite heated. The little do-gooder had the nerve
to ask me once whether I had ever had any scruples about editing a
newsletter dedicated to the defence industry. He went too far that
time. But I enjoy winding him up, by giving him graphic descriptions of
the capabilities of the latest defence digitisation systems. How they
can track a target the size of a baby to the nearest metre from a range
of over a thousand kilometres.
Ah, here we are. Ten people have read my story and two people have
given it an average rating of?

Fucking bastards! One star! One fucking star! Are they taking the piss?
That story was a masterpiece. Fucking English Lit students. Probably a
butch lesbian who's into poetry about womancipation. I fucking hate
poetry. People only write poetry because they're either too fucking
lazy or brainless to get their heads down and write a proper
story.
I go to the poetry gallery and randomly distribute one star ratings
over eight or nine poems. Pretentious twats. Then I leave a message on
the discussion board. 'What's your favourite all-time contemporary war
novel (excluding The Naked and the Dead and Evelyn Waugh's Guy
Crouchback trilogy)?' That ought to get them thinking.

Then I remember that this morning Tim said he'd read my story. He said
it was good without going into any detail. I can't discount the theory
that he's guilty for one of those bad ratings. Let's see if our Tim has
any tales up there, shall we? I do a name search and sure enough, Tim
Dillon has been quite prolific. Even got some cherries to his name, the
little fucker. As I thought. A poetry boffin. I meticulously bombard
every poem he's written with a one star. Let that be a lesson to you,
Mr Dillon.

I try and get started on the story but I've lost the urge. There's
nothing more damaging to my creative faculties than negative criticism.
After a few shoddy attempts at an opening paragraph, I give up. I
switch off the computer and sit down in front of my portable
television. I don't even turn it on. The speed is starting to work now.
There's a pulse in my temple. My tongue is feeling dry and I'm starting
to chew the inside of my mouth. I close my eyes and take deep
breaths.
The telephone in the hall starts ringing. I decide to ignore it. It
rings for about ten times then stops. Then it starts again. I jump out
of the armchair and rush towards the door, forgetting about the pain in
my knee. The joint is stiff and swollen. I hobble out there and snatch
up the phone, furious.

'Hello!'

'Is that you, Adam?'

Oh god, it's her. Julie.

'Yes. What do you want?'

She sighs down the phone. Well, it's more than a sigh actually. More
like a light groan.

'You could at least make the pretence of being civil to me, you know,'
she whines.

'Why should I? You're the one who walked out on me.'

'Adam, I did not walk out on you. I thought we'd agreed that this was a
mutual?'

'Mutual decision, my arse!'

There's a long silence on the other end of the phone. Then she says
casually: 'What are you doing at home anyway?'

'I took the day off if you must know. Not that it's any of your
business anymore. The day you walked out that door, you relinquished
all rights to know why I'm doing anything. What do you want anyway? To
give me the latest update on the flower industry? Make it snappy, I'm
busy.'

There's more silence and for a second I think she's hung up on me. It
wouldn't be the first time. She became an expert at it once she left
me. But she's still there. Her voice is slow and deliberate.

'I didn't call you to have an argument. I called you to find out if
you've read those documents that my solicitor sent you.'

'Haven't received them.'

'You are impossible!' she shouts. 'Listen Adam, I know you've got them
there, you must have. This is the third time my solicitor's had to send
them out to you. Something doesn't get lost in the post three times,
Adam. When are you going to grow up?'

'I don't have to listen to this,' I start to say, but she's on the
attack again, exacting and relentless.

'Yes you do! Listen Adam, I've just about had enough of your silly
little games. I don't know what goes on in that warped mind of yours
but I don't care anymore. I want this divorce and I'm going to fight
for it. Get it into your pea-brained skull that it's over between us.
I've moved on. If you want to remain locked in the past, fine, but
don't drag me back there with you.'

I'm about to slam the phone down until I realise that she's beaten me
to it. I leave the receiver off the hook and go back into my
room.

My head is full of cruel thoughts and memories. Freeze-frames of our
wedding day in Bilericay, the day we moved into the house, our first
Christmas together. I collapse into the armchair. Julie is serious. She
wants to break off from me. I thought this trial separation was just a
game of who could hold out the longest before begging the other to come
back. I mean, I know she's my wife and everything, but she's hardly an
oil painting, Julie. She's short and dumpy, like a milk bottle. I can't
imagine that she's found another bloke or anything. I mean, the only
blokes she'll meet in that flower shop are the ones already in
love.

But for all that, I miss her. Me and Julie went well together. We had
different interests and that, but we kept each other company. I've been
lonely since she went. Haven't really known what to do with myself. In
some ways, it's been good because I've had the time to pursue my
hobbies. The writing. The running. Although I haven't been able to do
that since tripping over that dog lead on Clapham Common. I should have
sued that silly old cow with the Doberman.

I don't know if this is the kind of life that I want to live. I used to
feel warm and cosy with Julie in our semi-detached, watching videos
every night (one night war, the next romantic comedy), driving down to
the coast on her motorbike at weekends and getting Chinese takeaways on
a Saturday night, both agreeing to forgo our diets for another week.
Watching 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire' with her and astounding her by
getting all the military questions right. For a moment I'm tempted to
go back out there and phone her back, tell her I'm sorry for the way
I've been acting and persuade her that we should give it another go.
Wipe the slate clean and start afresh. Me and Julie. Together again. As
it was always meant to be.

I make a move to get up, but feel a blinding pain in my knee. I slump
back down in the chair. It was a weird pain, like an electrical charge
shooting up my leg and exploding on the joint. It must be some kind of
sign, a wake-up call. I believe in signs of providence. I'm not meant
to do it.

My head is whizzing now. I can't keep my thoughts down for more than
five seconds. It's no use. I'm going to have to write something down. I
ease myself up carefully and plonk myself in front of the computer. No
shooting pains that time. I get tapping. Images are bouncing around in
my mind like pinballs. Hang on, I could be on to something here.

'Helmut heard the grinding scream of the Stukas as they soared over his
head towards the (sandy) beach in the distance and he knew that
Operation Sea Lion was underway.'

If the real world means horticulture, solicitors and comedies about
love, then Julie can keep it. I smile to myself. My fingers get
working.