Candles

A short story from my 2017 collection...

Candles

There is something magical and enchanting about the way a candle flickers. Like a mischievous sprite, or something that cannot be contained; a lively, leaping thing that defies description as it pirouettes in the small cone of air that embraces it. Perhaps it is inevitable that candles are used for celebration, to illuminate an event.

When someone - usually mother - walks into the dining room where people sit, they carry the birthday cake ahead of them, ceremonially. Perhaps the lights have been dimmed to exaggerate the spectacle as - with their movement through the air - the flames dance and jig even more than usual. If they could sing, surely they would accompany the loud and variously tuneful renditions of ‘Happy Birthday to you!’ or ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow!’ that might endorse such processions. There are smiles now, the reflection of narrow flames glinting in excited eyes as a face comes close; then, with an exaggerated expression, cheeks puff and a solid blow attempts to quell the flames. Cheers for those who succeed in a single attempt!

But the candles have already been victorious. Their malevolence has gone unnoticed. While they are sung to and heralded, they whisper amongst themselves that another year has gone, another year that cannot be reclaimed. They revel in their secret knowledge, marking the next step on an invisible countdown, aware that the honoured guest will be so overwhelmed by their celebrity role that the questions ‘Will I see a cake with candles next year?’ and ‘How many more candles are going to dance for me?’ are never asked.

As he sat on one of the pale green plastic chairs arranged in rows before the semi-private booths, he thought back just two weeks. The party - ostensibly for him - had really been for the children. Or, more accurately, for the grand-children. How they had cheered when Lizzie bought the cake in! How excited they had been to see him try and extinguish all those flames with his first blow - and how they rushed forward to add their own breath when he failed! He wondered if all revelations came at such moments of general excitement.

He shifted on the seat. There were three rows of chairs, each chair close to its neighbour, and each row firmly fixed to the floor. It was impossible to be comfortable. Looking around, there were only two others waiting: an elderly man with a long, sad, worn out expression, and a younger man in a white t-shirt with the number ‘6’ in bold red stitching on the front. He wondered what it meant, if anything. He wondered what they might think of him, sitting in his needle-cord trousers and short sleeve shirt. Adjusting his glasses, he was suddenly thankful that the place was not full.

"Mister Bolton," came a disembodied voice. "Cubicle six."

It should have been the young man in the t-shirt, number six, but it was his name - for now at least. He rose. The small booths were partitioned by dark panelling set at such an angle the from a distance they might have been mistaken as forming a single wall. A number - green like the chairs - was fixed at the entrance of each booth, and as he walked forward to his allotted cubicle he discovered another chair (free-standing this time) facing a cream-coloured table. On the other side of the table a man in a white shirt and loose tie sat waiting for him; he looked as if he might have been there for hours. On the table in front of him, various papers of different colours were neatly arranged. A number of them he recognised as being the forms he had filled in a week ago, his handwriting - executed with the wide-nibbed Mont Blanc he had received last Easter for twenty five years’ service at ‘Mason’s’ - bold and certain.

"Mister Bolton?" the man in the tie said somewhat flatly and without rising or offering his hand, "please take a seat."

‘What else was I going to do?’ he thought as he sat down. Looking behind him, he could see nothing of the others who were still waiting. There was a pause.

"I’ve never seen an application quite like this," said the Clerk, obviously feeling the need for some kind of opening gambit.

"Is there something wrong?"

"Wrong?"

"Have I completed all the necessary forms correctly? Do you have everything you need?" Bureaucracy was one of the things he feared, just as it was one of the things he now desired to be free from. He knew he could not ignore ‘the system’, that he had to work within it, with it, if he was going to achieve his goal.

"Yes, yes, of course" - he wondered what it was about Civil Servants that made them so obvious - "it’s just that your request is a little unusual."

"But it’s all right? I mean, I’m not breaking any laws or anything like that?" He tried to sound a little subservient; he wanted to give the Clerk the feeling that he was in a position to help him. Conflict would be counter-productive right now; this ex-youth sitting across the desk from him held the power to grant his request and send him out into the world afresh. Even in the depths of petty bureaucracy, in the end it still came down to individual people.

The Clerk tried to smile reassuringly.

"Indeed no. Your deed poll application is absolutely correct. In fact, I’ve seldom seen one filled out quite so accurately. So completely."

"So there’s no problem then?"

“Well” - an awkward pause - "I think I really just wanted to confirm that you were sure about the name you had chosen."

"Sure? What do you mean, ‘sure’?"

"It’s just a little - unusual." He fingered through the papers in front of him as if offering ‘Mister Bolton’ a chance to step back from the brink. Perhaps he thought that some reflection might lead to a change of heart. "Sometimes we get people who realise at the last minute."

"Realise what?"

"That it’s too big a step, I guess. Too much of a change. Maybe that they even like their old name more than they thought." The Clerk tried a small laugh to accompany his small joke. Both failed.

"But my name isn’t me," he said with certainty. Indeed, he might have added (if this had been a philosophical debate) "how can it be me? It was given to me; something that I have had to live up to, grow in to, be burdened by. And now, now I know who I am and where I am going, isn’t it right, proper, fair, that I should be given the opportunity to say ‘This is who I am. This describes me now’?"

"Mrs Bolton?" the Clerk offered, vaguely.

"Yes?"

"What does she think about this?"

He refrained from answering. There had always been the possibility that someone would try and complicate matters, to bring external influences to bear which - in his own mind at least - were irrelevant. He wanted no debate. He had wanted no debate with Lizzie, so he had simply refrained from telling her. She knew something was afoot, of course. You don’t get to live with someone for forty two years without gaining some degree of telepathy.

"Is there anything wrong with the application?" he asked again. After all, what business was it of this once-spotty Clerk whether or not he had engaged in extensive consultation about his plans? What had it to do with anyone other than himself? ‘It’s my name’, he thought to himself, as much now as he had many times before in the past two weeks. ‘I can do with it what I choose. If it is the thing that defines me, that identifies me, then why should it not be more - relevant?’ But he said none of this; the Clerk could only have picked it up if he had been naturally telepathic, and looking at him - seeing his bored eyes and lifeless lips - he knew this was not possible.

"No sir," said the Clerk, peering at him almost with an air of confusion.

"What do I need to do then?" He had completed all the forms; he had supplied all the requested information, proof, witnesses. The Clerk had been right about one thing: he had indeed been scrupulous. And devious too, like when he subsequently doctored the forms after their signing and before they were submitted.

Following a final pause - and, if he was not mistaken, a slight sigh of resignation - the Clerk explained that he would read aloud the declaration from a document in front of him. It was obvious that this must be carried out correctly; ritualistically, almost. It felt like a marriage ceremony. He was going to be joined in matrimony with his new name, his new identity - ‘let no man put asunder…’ The Clerk told him that once the declaration had been read, there was a requirement for him to verbally state that it had been understood prior to the final form being signed by them both. ‘Do you take this name…?’ ‘I do’.

"And that’s it?"

"You will receive formal notification in the post that all the necessary governmental records have been changed. This usually takes around five working days. Apart from that, you are basically free to start using your new name."

"Shall we get on with it then?" he said, aware that he was smiling slightly - after all, this was the first step in his plan to thwart the candles.