Читать книгу Living Upside Down - John Hickman - Страница 5

ALWAYS AN ENGLAND

Sue dreams about making ends meet and a better life for her family. She is now fully awake and attending to her second child, baby boy James.

Roger is fast asleep searching for, of all things, Seal Flipper Pie.

His ridiculous dream has clipped along at a furious pace until a change in direction, as dreams often do. He encounters a brief loving chat with his mother whose ashes were scattered five years previous, then into a spectacular nosedive. His Father’s second wife Zelda, a woman devoid of any warm fuzzy feelings for Roger, scolds him over the failure of their family hotel business, as she blames him! She is over groomed and prissy as a pampered poodle while caterwauling at him in German.

At this point, in danger of shitting a gasket sideways thanks to Zelda and still bereft of his Seal Flipper Pie, Roger is waking up.

Feeling fuzzy and exhausted from his dreams, Roger cautiously opens one eye.

After a moment he realises it is a no-work-day, Saturday. All he has to do today is nothing if he can get that right.

Dazed, he is rubbing sleep from his other eye when Fred starts his panic whining. Thinking he must get to Fred quickly, Roger attempts to become Action Man. Hampered by bedsheets and blankets, he kicks himself free; his bleary eyes trying to keep up with the rest of him.

Before Sue can put the kettle down and attend to the dog, an animated striped pyjama of flailing arms and legs rushes through the doorway towards the back door.

Canine Fred is now in a state of panic and performing repeated u-turns.

Making contact with the newspapers laid down the night before as a precaution, Roger’s socked feet fail to gain traction. He slides, skips, and is sent airborne with a Nureyev double turn leap. Without a controlled touchdown, he lands spread-eagled on a sharp toy. Ouch! That has got to have hurt an important part.

Sue’s badly stifled shrieks of laughter prevent her from assisting the prone Nureyev.

“Oh, fuck!”

Sue glares, “Standards, Roger!”

“Bloody standards? I’ve nearly impaled my jewels,” hands clasping his gonads, “on…on, something.”

“Breathe,” Sue’s holding her hand across her mouth to stifle her laughter, “BREATHE!”

As if breathing will ease my pain,” Roger whines.

Not breathing certainly would ease Roger’s pain but now he feels like a complete Knucklehead.

Lying out prone, their back door rearing above him like the southern face of Everest, an excited Fred farts in Roger’s face.

Still clutching himself Roger exclaims, “Wow! That’s got some hang time!”

Sue screws up her nose, glaring at Roger. She is making strange noises. A little like those his Gran makes whenever she sees a live mouse.

Sue knows well that in the first thirty minutes of any day her husband’s cognitive abilities are quite similar to those of a toddler — not a very bright toddler at that, and not a silent one.

Sighing, Roger begins picking up the newspapers. “What an awful end for the News Of The World.”

Sue grins, “Maybe Fred’s fussy what newspaper he puts to the sword?”

“That’s a good, boy.” Roger praises him for not making a mess, then watches helplessly as Fred wees himself with excitement where the paper would have been.

Roger shakes his head in exasperation. “Damn! God’s being unfair, again!”

“Takes a lot of the fun out of it, doesn’t it?” Sue replies with a fixed grin, “Kettle’s boiled.”

Sue cracks open the back door, gently pushes Fred outside before shivering and quickly closing it again; exactly as she had intended before Roger’s fiasco.

Clutching at his sore jewels, Roger wraps himself in his heavy dressing gown over his winceyette pyjamas, shuffles back into his well-worn fur lined slippers.

“It’s snowed, Sue. Damn! Now we’ll need to buy more heating coal for sure.”

Sue turns her attention and considerable patience to preparing the first feed of the day for James.

Roger wears his proud father grin and tickles James under his chin.

James is unimpressed, maybe because he’s hungry. Roger remembers that when James was born, his stomach was the size of a walnut. Now it is a cavernous pit.

Under determined clear blue eyes, with her chubby cheeks pinched by the cold, James’s three-year old sibling, Jayne, is climbing a chair.

“Clever, Girl. Did you know it snowed while the sun was still in bed?” Roger says excitedly.

Jayne is three, going on seven, noticing everything and missing almost nothing of significance. Her curly hair shines the colour of sun-dappled straw.

James begins to jabber and point. An awkward, gummy smile playing about perfect lips he could not yet control.

“He’s big for his age,” Sue remarks, “with the prospect of him becoming a tall boy, just look at his long feet.”

Jayne is staring at James as if he has just hatched from an egg.

“Better let Fred in, Roger.”

Roger opens the back door but there is no sign of Fred. To avoid losing heat he steps outside where a gust of freezing wind whips up a cloud of dirty snow that sends an involuntary shiver up Roger’s already frigid backside. The bite of the cold wind snatches at his ears and turns them in to rocket fins.

Fred is now bouncing around as if on a pogo stick.

“Weak bastard Hound. Conjure up one last tinkle, or do a crap, and you can come inside!”

Fred casts that well-known hang-dog look while Roger wedges his bare hands under his armpits for warmth.

“Won’t save you. Just because you’re a dog, doesn’t mean you always get a bone.”

Back inside Fred wisely keeps a paw’s distance from what Jayne might have in mind for him, yet now wants to play with the big people.

Sue, wearing multiple layers of clothes and thick wool socks enveloping her feet inside her slippers is stating the case of the bleeding obvious.

Roger has not yet noticed that Sue is wearing more layers than an onion.

At twenty-five years of age, Roger’s idea of culture is a half pint of lager and a Z Cars marathon or Callan, but it’s too early for any of that. Instead, he stokes the fire in their lounge room before settling beside it and turning on their colour television set. While the set takes a few minutes to warm up, he reaches for a cigarette and lights up his first of the day.

Inhaling deeply he realises, too late, that not only will Sue be annoyed with his smoke but she will likely have another reason to avoid any polarising kisses.

The television emits its robotic noises, bleeping and zooming with piercing jingles, as the crash and tumble of advertisements commence.

Calling out to Sue in the west wing that is their kitchen, Roger carps, “That bloody Australian Government’s on the TV again. The amount they’re spending on this crap is not only excessive, it amounts to the equivalent of granting the entire population of the Democratic Republic of the Congo each fully paid Oxford university scholarships.”

Arriving with two welcoming cups of steaming hot tea Sue makes a face at his disgusting cigarette smoke.

Might two strikes out of two be not bad for his first try?

“Love your little bit of cigarette at the same time as my tea! If you must smoke, why don’t you do it outside?”

“Outside! Be fair, have you looked? We’ve had snow.”

With an involuntary little shiver, Sue kicks off her slippers and shuffles her covered feet closer to the fire.

“Bit over the top this Australian advertising,” Roger announces, while sipping his hot tea.

“What do you mean?” Sue asks whilst talking to her cup of tea.

He jounces at the television. “The amount they’re spending on this crap would bankrupt most nations. You know governments waste money. You’re always saying it’s because they’ve no vested interest in their expenditure.”

“True!”

“Might few in government have moral compasses? Day after day we’re being stuffed like geese with sun drenched beaches and bikini clad women.”

Nodding, Sue holds her cup in both hands, her nose just above the rising warmth.

“The catch,” Roger continues, “is you have to migrate. Go live Down Under in a penal colony.”

Sue glances sideways from the rim of her cup. Twenty-seven years old with curves in all the right places, she wears her auburn hair up; as when down, it is long enough to sit on.

As an ex-hair stylist, professional hair is like a religion to Sue. Top and bottom of the spectrum, hair and shoes.

Giving her husband an impatient look, her alert green eyes pack a wallop.

“They’re trying to attract liberal minded people like us, from the heart of the British Empire.”

“It’s not so long ago the Crown sent them for free.”

Sue becomes a tad terse. “Well, now they want £10 each.”

She is looking down for a moment so that Roger will not see the resentment reflected in her features. Sue is in an age when male chauvinism is expected and a certain amount of it is popular at this time. She likes him to lead but not totally dominate. It’s a fine line that sometimes Roger has difficulty with.

With his voice now approaching an audible level only to canines, “A whole ten quid! Ten to fifteen years more likely with a chain around their ankle. That’s more appropriate.”

Looking back up Sue forces a smile, replying in a comical way. “You think?”

Purebred canine Fred is impressed but unsure why. Jayne and James do not care.

“Today politicians spout on about getting tough on crime but as everybody knows that’s bullshit, as they genuflect to the left for votes. Not like in the good old days.”

Roger’s oration is interrupted by a colourful bevy of bikini-clad girls appearing on their TV, kidding about on a near perfect sandy white beach. A wash of colour makes the line between the sky and sea indistinct.

“Admittedly, it’s easy to watch,” he concedes.

Sue purrs as bronzed iron men from the surf join the girls. “They say it’s easy enough to apply.”

“Yes, I know. Moreover, if you qualify they’ll sponsor you, which means employment is guaranteed. They haven’t shut up about it. All anyone has to do is pack up their shit and move to the arse end of nowhere!”

Sue’s emerald eyes bore in to Roger. “They say Australia is a huge continent that’s only sparsely populated.”

Roger’s gut tightens and the feeling of cement shoes forms around his feet.

“I’m unimpressed. And anyway, much as some of the scenery appeals, don’t I have a good enough job here?”

“Yes, you do.”

Jayne! Don’t let Fred lick your face, Sweetheart, you don’t know where a dog’s tongue’s been.”

“£1,200 per annum, Sue, plus commission on sales; can’t sneeze at that.”

Sue counters, “When they don’t renege.”

“They have been known to move the goalposts mid game but don’t forget there’s a company car.”

“Luxuries are beyond our reach, admittedly a gap made wider since the failure of your father’s hotel businesses.”

Sue did not marry Roger for his money. Sometimes he wonders why indeed she married him at all.

Their agreement was to have children and at twenty-one years of age that was alright with him. A view currently shared by her, but she is finding him increasingly difficult to please.

“There’s not too many around here on that sort of moolah in their mid twenties. We can’t live on the square root of nothing. I’ve got two children under four to support, no degree or trade qualifications.”

Now the cement is inching up his calves.

Sue frowns. “But you don’t really like working in pest control, do you?”

“I wanted a profession. All those years of studying Latin and the General Principles of English Law, turns out now I just need money.”

“You’re not Robinson Crusoe, Roger. Most people are short of money.”

“Who’d have thought I’d end up killing vermin for a living. It’s not that I don’t like it. I’m physically repulsed, Sue. Frankly, some pests frighten the shit out of me. I have the odd nightmare of being trapped in a cellar, I can hear them but unable to find them. Then again as a consultant I don’t have a great deal of contact with them.”

Ironically, the cement is now reaching his throat.

Sue juggles James and her cup of tea. “I can honestly say I enjoyed hairdressing — every moment — I truly loved it.”

James grizzles.

“Not surprising as you were rubbing shoulders with stars of the silver screen,” Roger patronises, “but I’ve never done anything I truly liked since college, and I wasn’t rapt in that. To me a job is just that, a job. At the hotels I cooked, cleaned, served at table, bar, and now I’m chasing money, which is about as easy as levitating right now.”

“To most people going to Australia would be their adventure of a lifetime.” Sue fingers her nightie nervously. “Who knows? You might even stumble over a job you like?”

Roger shrugs. “Adventure? I don’t think so. For thrills I’m thinking milk a death adder, castrate a raging bull, or…” he pauses caught for another suitable example. “Or, go sing the Scarlet Flag outside Buckingham Palace.”

“Why?” she studies him closely.

He feels himself shrink from the scrutiny. “There’s a time to be boring, Sue, or being a man. Think of the adrenalin rush before being arrested.”

Sue takes a deep breath. “Imagine a life with sunshine, then.”

“I’m so fair-skinned, I get burned by the fridge light.”

“Then wear protection. It could be the best £50 you’d ever spend.”

“Fifty quid!” Roger shrieks. “How come?”

“Well,” Sue replies testily, “unless you’ve not noticed lately there are five of us in this family.”

Roger grunts, “Can Fred go for £10?”

“I don’t know,” for an instant Sue’s smile falters, it no longer reaches her eyes, “he is part of our family, isn’t he? We can hardly leave him behind.”

“That reminds me he’s due to be neutered at the vet.”

Roger lights another cigarette.

“Ignoring the vet taking a higher percentage of our earnings than the mortgage this month, I see my future prospects as reasonably bright. My region’s supposed to be expanding.” He chances a bright smile. “I have you, our two children, and the dog. I’m not complaining.”

Sue strokes his arm, “But we’re still without curtains.”

He now feels like a fully kilned concrete statue, ready for primer and paint.

“You could always pretend it’s deliberate because we’ve nothing to hide,” he tries weakly.

Sue frowns. “Heavy curtains would help keep the house warm.”

Not long and they’re back to another advertisement.

“Their beaches do look good,” Roger acknowledges, “I’ll give them that, but our local beach at Great Yarmouth is sandy enough, don’t you think?”

“Maybe our sand isn’t quite as white as theirs,” Sue smiles, “nor our sea or sky as blue. Although you have to admit beach life here does lose most of its appeal.”

“Why?”

“Well, being adjacent to the North Sea, for starters, it’s too damned cold.”

“Being unable to stand upright in a force eight gale, you mean.”

Sue looks at Roger triumphantly. She barks back. “Unless you’re congenial to being rugged-up to the eyebrows, it doesn’t make for a great day at the beach, does it?”

Roger pries himself reluctantly from the warm cushion of his armchair and reaches for the coal scuttle to replenish the fire. Tense as his wife is, he realises that she would likely go off as easily as nitroglycerine dancing on hot coals. He decides to tread carefully.

Certainly, their small two-bedroom brick veneer house, Casa Del Coxwell, is not remarkable by any means, looking out as it does over a street of identical small homes with small front gardens, ranging from immaculately tidy to jungles of death.

Tiny kitchen, living room and dining area combined. Their bathroom would suit Tom Thumb. The only people for whom the house is in any way special are Sue and Roger, as it happens to be the one they live in.

Coxwell is an uninspiring village by any name. Frankly, quaint though it may be, if it were on a main road it’s the sort of place you would drive through on your way to somewhere else. Rural with a shop, a pub, and an out-of-work windmill.

“When the children get older they’ll need their own bedrooms.”

Roger sighs his deepest sigh.

After the failure of his hotel businesses, his Dad had the perfect excuse not to pay Roger for all those years of hard work and to make matters worse, Zelda blamed Roger in part for the failures.

Roger was left in charge of a business that had already failed and, pending his Dad’s bankruptcy, the company chequebook had been surrendered.

“I should never have trusted Dad, Sue.”

Sue is gentle. “You both ended up directors of a failed business.”

“Yes. Dad went bankrupt, which sort of ruled out his culpability, but I’m still liable.”

“Liable for what? Surely as a director you’re in the clear?”

“Yes, except for personal guarantees. Banks insist on them in addition.”

Sue stares fixedly at Roger like a rabbit trying not to be run over by a car.

“Oh, Roger what will happen?”

“Well, they can’t get blood out of a stone, that’s for sure and so far we’ve heard nothing.”

“How long?” Sue is clearly worried.

“About twelve months now.”

“At least the bank wouldn’t want our furniture, and they can’t take curtains we don’t have.”

“Banks take everything, why not the furniture?”

Sue raises a shapely eyebrow. “Everything we own are hand-me-downs spread across the 1940s and 1950s.”

“You mean the furniture is worth fuck-all.”

“Yes.” Sue wraps James in a shawl and checks Jayne’s fingers to see how cold she is. “She can’t eat her breakfast wearing gloves, Roger,” her voice becomes tense when talking about the well being of her babies. “I hate the cold, hate it, hate it, hate it!”

“As if I didn’t know that by now, for Christ’s sake Sue, give it a rest. I know we’re on our uppers.”

When she leaves the house, Sue’s bones ache from the piercing easterly wind that is so lazy it seems to pass right through. She doesn’t like the English weather, not even in summer, and definitely not in winter. She never has, not even as a child born there.

“The Bible refers to forty days and forty nights as a disaster, but here that’s just an apt description of winter,” Sue reinforces adamantly.

“On the bright side maybe salt spray from the North Sea will blow further inland and melt the black ice on our roads this year,” Roger joins hopefully.

“We’re supposed to be coming into spring,” Sue comments over her shoulder, “it doesn’t feel like it.”

In a demonstration of brute strength, Roger limbers up. “I’ll stoke up the fire.”

He pulls a face like a smacked arse, which gets a good deep chuckle out of Jayne who by now is tired of climbing chairs.

“So you reckon compared to our Antipodean friends in their tight swimmers, we’re no match in our Arctic clothing.”

Sue draws a deep breath, “With our feet planted firmly in double socks. And don’t forget the Wellington boots and fleece lined overcoat to the beach.”

“Last time I went beach fishing at Great Yarmouth I was nearly toppled by a wind so strong I had to lean hard on the car door to get out. It felt like an Arctic wind; come to think of it even the seagulls sat quiet with their beaks huddled deep into their ruffled chests.”

“And that’s Autumn, not Winter,” Sue’s mouth is pinched into a thin line as she prepares to redress James.

Jayne is adamant, she points at James. “Can’t want him. Take him back.”

Sue grins at their enraged toddler. “Her new baby brother is too small to play with her. Without doubt, if he were bigger, she’d punch his lights out.”

After a brief game of Eeny-meeny-miney-mo Roger continues his tale.

“There I was all rigged up, struggling to the edge of the water in near hurricane conditions. A supreme effort and a great cast.”

Noticing he has the floor with three pairs of eyes on him, he goes for it.

“The wind was so strong it lifted my sinker mid cast and blew it right back up behind me on the beach.”

Jayne giggles. Roger sits her on his knee to continue with his story.

“Undeterred Daddykins puts on a heavier sinker,” he raises his eyes, “but it was so heavy now that the tip of the rod’s sagging from the weight.

Have you any idea the thrill of satisfaction Daddykins felt catching a fish for our dinner under difficult circumstances like those?”

Jayne shakes her head and says, “No!”

Roger makes another face. “No! You’re right and neither did Daddykins. Not even a herring! All was lost. So thoroughly fed up I came home.”

His audience laughs.

Seeing himself as an enlightened dictator in his own home, a left-over attitude from earlier in the century, pompously Roger feels the need to reinforce not wanting to go to Australia.

“For twenty-five years I’ve practiced the fine art of being an Englishman that has been my defining quality in life.”

“Good for you.” Sue is unimpressed.

Roger pushes, “Why would I suddenly decide to send myself into voluntary exile 16,500 miles away for Christ’s sake? That’s a bloody long way to go for a sandy beach and a job in a factory I don’t need or want.”

“We live from hand to mouth, literally. I do my best. I buy proper meat once a week, maybe sausages on another. I’m tired of the Israeli Army Diet.”

“What’s that?” Roger asks.

“It means existing on two days of cow cabbage, two days of cheap dairy products, two days of tinned sardines, and one day of fasting.”

Roger looks impressed.

Sue continues, “We’d discharged ourselves from the Israeli Army Diet by Week One but I’ve kept balancing two sardines on a lettuce leaf, topped with a few carrot shavings for colour and a sprig of parsley, as dinner. It’s cheap.”

“Mussels and offal are cheap, although I’d rather stick my dick in a blender than eat tripe.”

“That can be arranged.” Sue becomes serious. “There’s nothing left over from your salary for small luxuries.” She wrings her hands. “God knows how we’ll manage when the children get older.”

Sue draws her deepest ‘all is lost’ sigh.

“I’ll need to get a part time job.”

“What! No! Absolutely not!” Roger shouts. “Sue, when we married it was agreed you would be a stay at home wife and mother. I’ll not go back on that. No!”

“You’d miss me if I went out to work, wouldn’t you?”

“No more than I would my eyes,” Roger replies tersely.

Sue had agreed to be a stay home wife and mother, which was not unusual among their other family members. Roger never changed a nappy, nor got up in the middle of the night to attend to Jayne or James, because Sue saw that as her role. Roger is the breadwinner. He works. She feels it only right that he has uninterrupted sleep.

She breaks away to serve cereals, boiled eggs, and buttered toast for their breakfast.

“I suppose we could always sell a child.” Roger jokes in a whisper, to lighten the mood.

Sue is not amused.

“You wouldn’t mind though, would you?” Sue asks, as Roger clears table.

“Mind what?”

“I’d like to know more about Australia. You wouldn’t be too upset if I sent away for their brochures, would you?”

“Me? Upset? Course not. Why should I get upset? I’ve got balls the size of Planets.”

Sue pats him on the knee, much as she would pat Fred on the head. “In your dreams, Darling.”

The continual dull monotony of attempting to keep body and soul together in such a grey and cheerless place as England is getting Sue down. The bags of tiredness and stress under her eyes seem to swell whenever she speaks.

That night his dream searching for Seal Flipper Pie continues. He is walking through The Lanes in Brighton, every shop is selling Haddock testicles, and no-one knows anything about his pie. His dream ends with him chasing a bikini clad Sue along a sun drenched beach of white sand.

Monday Roger sets off to greet the start of his working week with lime enthusiasm.

After he has gone, Sue sits glumly at their dining room table, her temples throbbing from lack of coffee. Sipping some instant, the strength of such she can almost feel her pulse rise with each swallow, she recovers shaking her head at their predicament.

Looking out the window at the front of the house the view offers little entertainment. Living on one of the quietest streets in the Village of Coxwell, like her life, it was leading nowhere.

Hugging the cup, she wonders if she should send off for those Australian brochures.

It is as if her life is unravelling. She can feel it, sense it, like a big ball of string someone has tossed down a long flight of stairs and yet, that post box is just outside the Coxwell shop, and they do sell postage stamps.

She worries about Roger’s guarantees to the bank for his father’s loans, but as he said, no news is good news.