Fourteen
At least the bus station was where I had left it. Foregoing the old route into town, we had taken a right down Spring Lane and swung around the edge of a car park belonging to a pristine supermarket. At first I’d assumed that the bus had been forced on a detour, but when we pulled up at a bona fide stop and almost all my fellow passengers got up to get off, I knew it wasn’t so.
They’d closed the High Street too. Instead of rumbling past the old cinema we took another right, out-flanking the main shopping drag on a road that used to be little more than a back alley but had now been transformed into a small well-tarmac’d mini-bypass. There was another stop - this time for a bright, over-large pelican crossing - before we eventually came in sight of the terminus.
I wasn’t now surprised to find the draughty old building I’d once spent so much time in had been replaced - though only by a draughty new one. The buses were still green, though no longer the subtle dark and under-stated green to which I had once been accustomed. Now the livery was lurid. At night you could have probably left the street lights off and still seen one coming a hundred yards away. Heard it too. Progress seemed to have contributed little in the area of noise abatement here, and even less in terms of air pollution.
Strange how the changes had seemed to manifest themselves all of a sudden. For the previous three miles - those miles between towns - the journey through little suburbia was pretty much as it always had been. Of course some things had changed - like the name on the big factory down by the river, or the colour of the Bingo Hall’s brickwork - but it was still my old town. Not that there’s anything in that. Had I been given the option then it certainly wouldn’t have been “my town” at all. I’d have chosen somewhere with more character, some history; a place of interest. But I didn’t get the choice. Maybe none of us ever do. I suppose I shouldn’t have been so surprised at the metamorphosis, certain that my naïveté didn’t endorse the absurd assumption that it was only in big towns that things happened. Of course there would be supermarkets, car parks, pedestrianisation. I knew that. But even as I descended from the bottom step of the bus, I also knew that I had’t expected it here. Not really.
I took a few paces forward - to the middle of nowhere really - then dropped my bag. I checked my watch. It was still only twelve or so. From my top pocket I pulled a packet of Marlboro and lit one. One of my changes. I found myself taking the first puff almost over-publicly, as if I were displaying my own brand of defiance: "Hey, I can change too!"
I had time to kill. I’d said I’d be there around one or so and still found myself not wanting to be early. There was change and then there was change - and I hadn’t got used to this first dose just yet. I decided to walk up the High Street, the newly pedestrianised High Street. I’d have time to go at least as far as the cinema (almost to where the last bus stop had been) before needing to track back.
The pub on the corner opposite the Bus Station had lost the image I naturally associated with it. Instead of the rather peculiar fifties character it had once boasted, it was now bathed in bright purple neon lights and vibrant signage presumably intended to entice people in. I walked up to one of the windows. They had been blacked out from the inside with the kind of material that turns glass into mirror so that you simply end up looking at yourself. If historically I used to think twice about going in there, I’d certainly not have trespassed now. Sure, as I paused there for a second staring at myself, I could see that I’d changed too; but with me it was just age, not a full character make-over.
A couple of doors away, the old paper shop I’d frequented as a child was now a mobile phone shop. High tech out-pacing the low I guess. And it seemed the same story over and over. There’d been a large camping and outdoor clothes shop that was now a brash and bold MacDonald’s. Like the newsagent’s, this transition seemed strangely apposite. The old wool shop that had supplied my mother with endless balls of double knitting and ‘chunky’, had become a second-hand shop, its windows home to at least two or three hand-knitted garments whose source material may well have once been purchased from those very same premises. "What goes around, comes around", I found myself noting in a flight of mental obscurity.
In what felt like the ultimate attempt at meeting past and present head-on, I decided to go into the Bookmakers near the cinema. I’d worked there for a while after leaving school, trying simultaneously to forecast what I’d do with the rest of my life alongside the 11:07 dog race from Hackney. Don’t think I ever managed to get that dog forecast right - which seemed pretty much in keeping with the rest of it really.
I’d progressed about half-way, with both cinema and Bookies now in sight, when there was a tug on my arm. I stopped and turned. Facing me was a man, about my age; he was slightly shorter than me, with pale, thinning hair, and a strange smile on his lips. Just beyond him, a woman also stood looking at me. I looked back at the man. His smile spread a little further.
"Mike!"
There was a degree of recognition in his voice as undeniable as it was forceful. The fact that he’d got my name right led me to the instant conclusion that I was probably expected to respond in a similar manner.
"Hi!" I heard myself saying, offering my hand as I did so. As it was taken, I tried to imagine my assailant with a little more hair and a little less weight; tried to take a few years off him to see how he would look.
"It’s been a long time!" he said, his voice carrying a slight nasal twang. That twang did it.
"Sure has, Pete. Must be ten years."
"More like fourteen!" Pete said, pleased to be closer to the truth. He’d been a prat and I’d hated him, but now I found myself offering him the chance to be right about something. As I recalled it, when we were younger he’d seldom been right about anything. Pete motioned the woman forward. "This is my wife", he said proudly, introducing her as if she were some kind of possession. "Meet Rusty, our Doberman" he might have said with equal effect. She smiled weakly. "This is Thelma" other men would have said, or "Thelma, meet my old pal, Mike". But not Pete.
"What are you doing now?" he asked, relegating Thelma (or whatever her name was) into the background again.
"Me?" I paused. "Oh, I’m between things at the moment, What about you?"
Pete, it turned out, had become an Accountant - well, he was never going to be a professional footballer or astro-physicist, was he? - and was working for a small firm on the industrial estate just outside of town. I wanted to ask him how far he’d travelled in his life; to discover the length of the invisible cord that tethered him to this one-horse town. Maybe he’d left it once and had met Thelma. If that had been my experience, I’d certainly not have wanted to take the chance of leaving the place again. Yeah, I know that’s unfair. Maybe Thelma was the chord and he’d never left the place.
After a couple of painful minutes, I made my excuses. Pete offered me his hand and Thelma smiled. I walked away grateful that I’d managed to escape without the fatal exchange of addresses and phone numbers.
The external facade of the Bookies was one of the few things that hadn’t changed much, except they’d put a new pictures in the windows and had the old doors replaced. As soon as I walked inside this stability proved to be illusory. The counter had been moved and re-shaped, and where I’d once walked up and down on a Saturday, marking up the whiteboard with prices and results, there was now a huge wall of television screens, each displaying pictures and numbers and information in bold, bright letters. It was all there, and all at the same time. Screens changed by the second. A price fluctuation was there instantly; a result immediately known. Marking those up had been my job, and now look at it.
I had planned to stay a while - even try a bet at Hackney - but I found I couldn’t. I scanned the rest of the place quickly. This wasn’t what I remembered - nor what I wanted to remember. Behind the counter, a woman looked up. It was Margaret. She had been my old Manageress, and she was still there. Suddenly she looked my way, and I caught in her eye a flicker of recognition. I turned and left.
Walking round behind the cinema, I crossed the same road the bus had driven along and made my way into the park. It was a strange hybrid between that and a common. Parks usually have railings or hedges that define them, and gates you go through for access; but this one didn’t. It was immediately open, all of it, stretching the length of the road - and open to the roads on two of its other sides, as if it was common land. But it was compact, too park-like to be a common. Fitting, somehow, that it failed to be either.
In the middle of the park (I’ll call it that; after all, I had for years) was an kidney-shaped expanse of water. It was too small for rowing boats and canoes, but on Sunday mornings would be populated by brightly coloured model yachts being raced around tight little courses by their remote control wielding owners. As a kid I’d always wanted one of the big yachts, wanted to race on the lake (though ‘lake’ was a misnomer too!). My dream didn’t come true. Walking alongside the water, I discovered that it was so dirty that - even though it was just a few inches deep - I couldn’t see the bottom like I’d once been able to. And there were hundreds of small jellyfish floating near the surface; small, live, transparent jellyfish. They must have come through the inlet from the creek.
I walked up the bank at the far end of the park and on towards the church. My bag was getting heavy so I stopped, put it down, and lit another cigarette. As I paused, I took in the squat, red-brick church that faced me. It seemed a strange kind of a place, more like a hall than a church; an impression made even stronger by the fact that the clock tower stood alone to the side, not quite joined to the main building. Once, in the narrow gap between the two, a girl called Angela had let me feel her breasts. It felt an industrial construction rather than a holy one. I’d never been inside of course, and had always found myself trying - and failing - to imagine it as a place of worship and celebration. The confetti that sometimes lay outside I used to think had been planted there just to prolong the illusion.
Leaving the pavement, I cut across the grass in front of the church and headed for what had once been the Vicarage. Like the church, this was a squat, square building, but at least it bore the hallmarks of being a place someone might have lived in - rather than the considerably more dubious claim of being the temple in which one was supposed to worship. No-one had lived there for a while, at least not in the context of the church. Now it was a hospice.
I waited at the foot of the six stone steps that led up to the front door and dragged slowly on my cigarette. From somewhere I heard the sound of a bird, and glanced back to the three lime trees that stood at the rear of the church. It was an instinctive, almost defensive movement. The cigarette felt warm in my fingers and I looked at it before letting it fall to the ground. I pushed my shoe hard against it, picked up my bag, and walked up the steps.
There was a small desk in the hallway with a little brass bell and a large brown book on it. The desk was unattended so I rang the bell. From a nearby doorway a woman in a dark blue uniform appeared. She smiled professionally.
"Can I help you?"
"I’m here to see David Wilshire."
"And you are?"
"His brother."
Taking a pen from the pocket of her uniform, she opened the book and offered me the pen. As she did so, I showed her my driving licence; I had been told to bring ID.
"If you could just sign in please, Mr. Wilshire."
There were carefully ruled columns for the visitor’s name, the patient’s name, the date, and time of entry and exit. I filled in all of them except the last. She put out her hand and I returned the pen.
"If you’d like to follow me."
She led me through the hall and up a broad staircase to the second floor. As we moved along a corridor I caught a glimpse of the church through a window; it looked no less industrial from here.
"If you could just wait a moment."
We had stopped outside a room - there was the number ’14’ in brass on it - and I watched her open the door, walk through, then close it behind her. A few seconds later she emerged.
"I’m afraid your brother’s asleep. Would you like to wait downstairs, or come back later?"
I found myself glancing at my watch.
"I don’t really have the time," I lied, "if I could just see him. I’ve come a long way."
"Very well. But please don’t disturb him."
She pushed open the door and I went in.
"Remember," she whispered as she was about to shut it behind me, "no noise."
I nodded, and there came the soft ‘click’ of the door catch as it shut. I placed my bag against the wall. The curtains were drawn and without a light on, the room had a nocturnal feel to it. I could make out the bed and the fact that there was someone in it, but that was all. I went to the window and eased back the curtain a little. Outside, the clock tower stood straight and erect against the sky, proud in its geometric accuracy. As I stood there the clock suddenly chimed. My watch was on the hand that held the curtain back; I could see it was half twelve.
From the bed there came a sound, the rustle of someone moving. I froze, half-expecting to hear David’s voice call my name; but there was nothing, just the movement. Pulling the curtain closed a little, I allowed enough light in the room for me to be able to see. By the bed was a single chair. I walked to it and sat down.
David was laying on his side, the covers of the bed pulled up towards his face. I could see the top of his pyjamas, their dark blue a violent contrast to the pale of his face. He was thin and drawn. He had always been a striking individual, but now his cheek bones and strong jaw line offered nothing other than to give him a haunted look. They had cut his hair close, and for a second I imagined I might have been looking at a survivor from the Holocaust.
He had been through his own holocaust in a way, though I didn’t really understand much of it myself. Older and brighter than me, he had left school as I started my last year; went off to college, and off to a bright future and a brighter life. Where I had struggled, he had flourished. Those things I had found difficult, he found easy. As I rebelled, he climbed ever upwards. I had idolised him, envied all the things that he could do. I had wanted to be like him; wanted to be top of the class; wanted to be the best cross-country runner in the school. I had watched him training - sometimes doing lap after lap around the park, the lake and the church - and I had hated him for it too. When I failed in the things I tried, I had wanted him dead. And now he very nearly was.
When I moved away - pursuing my first failed career - we began to lose touch. It was an easy enough thing to happen, especially after mum died. He used to write, but then stopped. I blamed myself and tried harder to keep up my end of the deal, but there was no response. There were rumours - mainly from unreliable third parties and distant relatives - that David had come off the rails. Some blamed a woman, some blamed drink. Drugs were never mentioned. And then there was the letter from Simon, "a friend". He had promised David that he wouldn’t tell me, but he just thought I ought to know. I don’t think I got all the story, but I got enough - for me, at any rate.
I didn’t know what to expect. I had come with a bag full of clothes - in case I needed to stay - and a head full of memories. Perhaps I had thought I might have needed those too. By now though the town had wiped most of them away for me, and here we were, just me and my big brother. And though he was no more than a shell of his former self, even lying there he was still capable of kicking the shit out of whatever memories I had left. Even dying, he was more than a match for me.
I thought about waking him, but didn’t. The nurse had spoken. And if he had woken he might have wanted to know about me, about my life; and when I told him how I had failed it would have been like old times and I would hate him for it as if it was still his fault. I didn’t want that. Part of me did want to hear what had happened to him; wanted to understand, to know the story. I knew how towns changed, how roads became pedestrianised, how progress marched; I could see that. But I didn’t know how people changed, how my big brother had come to be back here, in our home town, dying in this bed. I caught a glimpse of my face in the mirror that stood on the cabinet by the bed.
I went back to the window and looked out. A little boy was walking with his father towards the lake; the boy was carrying a small, white boat. I closed the curtain.
Back in the hallway I looked for my entry in the book. The nurse appeared again.
"He’s still asleep," I said as she handed me her pen.
I checked my watch and filled in the last column. She followed my hand. Fourteen minutes. Fourteen; like the number on the door; like the number of years since I’d seen David. I offered her a smile as I returned her pen. She didn’t respond. I picked up my bag and left.
Back at the bus station I checked the timetable for the bus back. It would be another thirty minutes or so. There was a concrete bench nearby. I dropped my bag on it and lit a cigarette. Then feeling a sudden gust of wind, I pulled the collar of my jacket high against my neck.