Читать книгу Living Upside Down - John Hickman - Страница 9

THE LAST FAREWELL

Friday, 12th March, 1971.

The house sale has fallen through at the last moment, whatever will we do, Roger?”

Roger is beside himself. Fretsaw’s words echo in his mind. Government rules state everything has to be sold and finalised before they leave. That is a cardinal rule, no loose ends, no unfinished business.

“I refuse to let this stop us, Sue; and there’s another thing.”

“What?”

“Well, if migrants have been known to disappear to Australia leaving debts behind, why wait until the damned house is sold? Maybe we should get a move on!”

Unwilling to put the kibosh on their plans at the eleventh hour, they leave the house and unsold contents in the hands of the local estate agent.

“What if we get caught out?” A worried Sue asks Roger.

“Pounds to Pesos I don’t see how they can. Not unless we tell them.”

“Okay,” Sue takes a deep breath but her look is one of relief.

“History shows we shouldn’t take governments too seriously. After all the best way of creating a famine, surely, would be putting any government department in charge of agriculture.”

They arrive in London the day before their departure with limited time to do last minute shopping, sightseeing, and people watching prior to their big event. They find the city too noisy, too crowded. Amid horns blaring, they took in multiple deep breaths of diesel fumes.

“Even Lord Nelson looks pensive in Trafalgar Square, stood on his giant granite shaft.”

“Worried because of all those damned pigeons crapping all over him,” Sue replies. “He’s wearing a wig of bird poo that’s visible from down here.”

At the Telecom Tower, boredom settles around them like a thick coat. There Roger plays with Jayne by pretending to be a lift operator.

The lift is a rocket, even too fast to bother with music.

“Going up,” he announces, “25th floor Ladies lingerie, Men’s apparel and Children’s shoes.” Jayne giggles. Sue smiles. James grunts.

The distraction with their children helps to take Roger’s mind off his fear of heights. He looks to Sue for sympathy.

“It’s hereditary,” he explains, “it always amazed me how my Dad could climb up into a Lancaster bomber, let alone fly one.”

As they hurtle skyward he tries behaving as normal while the pulses in his neck threaten to burst out over the lift walls. His legs and feet begin to tingle and lose feeling; all he wants to do is sit in the foetal position on the floor in a dark corner and rock himself to his happy place.

Jayne and James show no fear, even when they reach the top floor. Poor Sue is bravely stifling her sobs.

The lift doors open revealing Sue and Roger leaning heavily on each other, each clutching onto a child for support. If it had not been for their false pride, Roger would have been out and back in that door, like a honeymoon dick. Blind paranoia has Sue by the throat like an enraged boa constrictor.

“Using children as an excuse for covering our fear of heights is pathetic,” Roger mumbles.

“Agreed, but doing it crouched on the floor of the lift is not a pretty sight either,” Sue admonishes.

“This entire outing is becoming even more of a cluster fuck than I envisaged!”

“It was your silly idea to visit this damned tower.”

“Experts say with heights you need three points of contact.”

“You should be alright then, because counting your knees and forehead — I count seven.”

Sue makes a dash for a security rail, and then pauses before venturing towards the entrance to the skywalk.

Roger meanwhile resembles a giant crab unwilling to leave the security of the lift wall. It is only after he has circumnavigated the lift more than once he chances to exit. If only the message he is sending to his feet would not be ignored.

Less than one minute in to their visit Sue turns to Roger.

“I have to get down now,” she is dragging Jayne and James back in to the lift. Roger is hot on her heels. A couple of people pass them without making eye contact.

“The nightmare trip down seems interminably long.”

“Where the hell is the ground?” Sue sobs.

He is so nervous by the end of their trip down that had there been a water feature out front he would have been tempted to use it as a lavatory. Dimes to doughnuts he feels as jittery as an old maid balanced on a picket fence.

Madame Tussauds completes their outing of outings.

“It delighted me as a younger man,” Roger explains optimistically.

“The Chamber of Horrors looks awfully macabre, Roger.”

“That’s because it is, Sweetheart. It’s not widely known but they used to run competitions with prizes for anyone who could stay in here alone all night!

Few were successful unless they downed enough whisky to put Falstaff to shame.”

“It is very dark, Roger.”

“You’re right, maybe a bit too realistic with all that imitation blood and gore and creepy noises.”

“And their spooky music! Really? Men hanging from obscene hooks isn’t a place for an impressionable young child, Roger. Actually, it’s no place for any child. Not for me either! I refuse to venture in, with or without, the children.”

Even Roger feels disturbed; they peruse the less controversial exhibits. Even those are daunting to younger minds, and that done, decide to call it a day.

On the way back to the hotel, they sport themselves a taxi to avoid the hassle of buses and tube trains.

The driver speaks what sounds like the English language but being dragged through a pit filled with sludge. Roger has difficulty understanding what he is saying.

“I take you — only £5.”

“Can you improve on that?” Roger asks hopefully.

“How’s about £10?”

Their fare-inflated route further boosts the meter with the taxi inching forward at the pace of an asthmatic snail.

“His gearbox has a whole lot of gears slower than the postal service,” Roger whinges aloud.

“Not helped by his clumsy left foot,” Sue replies.

While forward progress is accompanied by the odour of burning oil, the driver tries to become, albeit temporarily, part of their family.

Roger is intrigued. He notices the driver has a strange name, and wonders if his swarthy complexion precludes western European origins? An Asian appearance, or Arabic maybe? He is certainly not dark enough to be Nigerian.

The taxi stops with greater ease than it moves.

Genuinely curious about the driver’s background, paying him Roger asks, “What nationality are you?”

Surprised, his injurious response is, “I’m Engrish!”

“Good to know,” Roger, covers his faux pas with a handsome tip they can ill afford, at which point the cabbie’s frown softens into a leering gap-toothed grin.

Roger barely manages to close the taxi door before he speeds away leaving devils in his wake.

As they enter their hotel bedroom, Roger feels moved to postulate.

“You know, if ever we needed a more fitting epitaph of our final night in the old country,” he spouts on, “I doubt we’d find anything better than being told by a toothless, migrant cabbie, ‘I’m Engrish!’”

“Oh well, sums it up, but on the bright side at least we found out why Tooting Bec is so called.”

“Agreed. Who would have thought it’s named after Bec Abbey in Normandy as part of the land carve up after the Norman conquest. Such evidence of bottom line shenanigans is everywhere in the Old Dart, even back then.”

Exhausted after their day’s misadventures and apprehensive, they try to sleep.

Finally their big day arrives.

Roger stares into the bathroom mirror absent-mindedly. His thoughts instead of about money, sex, and food, are about Australia. A strange land down under to where they are about to transport their small family.

“My shoulders feel tighter than balls of wool held together with knitting needles,” Sue confides.

Nervously they take deep breaths and enter Heathrow Airport.

“It appears functional,” Roger comments, “not an attractive place.”

“I’m sure most airports are ugly, Roger. ‘As pretty as an airport,’ isn’t an appropriate saying anywhere!”

“I’m amazed at its bluster, people everywhere, and all in a hurry.”

Roger is a little solemn, “As our suitcases are headed to Australia, I suppose we are too.”

“Take heart,” Sue offers, “if half what we hear is true many might have just discovered their luggage has not landed with them.”

“Oh, the full horrors of tourism. No change of undies for some!”

“James being one year and seven days old qualifies him for his own seat on the plane, today,” Sue beams.

Roger smiles at his son. “You get a birthday each year, James.”

“I want one too,” Jayne declares.

“It’ll be expensive but we’ll stretch to one each year for both of you, provided you behave,” Sue smiles warmly.

Their formal goodbyes are confined to a few family members gathering around to hug and kiss them and their babies.

Roger’s grandparents are absent but excused, as they would have had difficulty with the return journey by expensive convoluted public transport.

Through all the pain and mental anguish, Roger is trying to remember his Dad fondly. Named William Edward, everyone calls him Edward, rather than Bill.

Once his best friend, Edward had always talked with his son, even confided about his career as a Lancaster bomber pilot in WWII, telling Roger the gory truth about war. Often at dinner parties when others told jokes, Roger would tell one of the wartime stories his Dad had told him. This suited him well as he is incapable of telling any joke successfully, usually forgetting the ‘punch-line’.

Any father and son relationship involves communication and right now that is finished. They are both stranded on an island as if attempting to decipher smoke signals. Problems include the wind blowing them to bits, smashed to smithereens by Edward’s greed in the family businesses and by his second wife, Zelda. A woman proven to have a flexible relationship with the truth.

“It is a shame, Roger, because, from what you have told me, your supportive mother, Alice, kept him in line wanting him to keep a proper job.”

“Even as the crooked, manipulative bastard of a father he became after Mum died. He always saw me more often while I was growing up than every third Saturday, and then only on an outing to somewhere like a zoo.

He changed dramatically after he met Zelda and she drew out his dark side. They might as well have been married by an old, blind holy man on a donkey for all June cared, it happened so fast.

Never mind. Drum roll! Now we’re gallivanting off to Oz without a proper job to go to. Mum would have been displeased. Crestfallen even.”

To Roger’s mind, any doubts about how badly they were treated at the first hotel business were reinforced tenfold at the second.

Sue’s mother Minnie, now a sad and lonely blue rinse widow, has made a State visit to Heathrow. Her entourage in tow, she exudes charm greeting with, “There’s a cup of tea and a biscuit waiting for me at home, dears.”

“Would you like Roger to get you a cup of tea?” Sue offers.

“Oh, don’t go to any trouble, dears,” Minnie is thoughtful, “I’ll just have half a cup.”

Silly woman, thinks Roger. Same difference!

“How are you, Mummy?” Sue asks as she nervously picks at the cuticle on her right thumb.

“When lately have you seen me happy, dear?” Minnie lets out a long sigh. Lately she has been letting out many long sighs. She turns her painted smile to Roger, which he finds insipid. Holding that smile is one of the hardest things Minnie’s done in a while.

“And dare I ask how you two are getting along after that dreadful hotel business of your father’s?”

Roger braces for any pre-emptive nuclear strike. “In a regular job, Minnie; we don’t actually see as much of each other during the working day as we did at the hotels. But we have a much better home life.”

Minnie becomes frustrated and begins rummaging in her handbag; she pulls out her cigarettes.

“That must have been quite suffocating, dears.”

She glares at Roger. “A gentleman always lights a lady’s cigarette, Roger. Or have you forgotten?”

“Sorry, Minnie. I don’t carry a lighter anymore because I’ve given up smoking. Here, allow me to use yours.” As he takes Minnie’s lighter to her cigarette, his hand shakes slightly with nerves.

For what seems an eternity Minnie inspects the lighted end.

As does Roger. He is sorely tempted. If this keeps up he might need a distraction; a cigarette.

Sue’s younger brother Philip has combed his hair to commemorate the solemnity of the occasion. Devoid of his transistor radio, usually adjacent to his ear monitoring the unintelligible gabble that is air traffic control, he appears lost.

“The fun just never stops,” he mumbles to no-one.

Auntie Audrey, God bless the old crone, is dressed all in black, which seems appropriate to her under the circumstances.

Sue’s dear cousin April with husband Kevin are part of the entourage.

As April possesses a disproportionately large natural bosom, she has always been a favourite of Roger’s.

Despite an age difference of some ten years between Sue and April, they behave as though they sisters, lovingly joined at the hip.

Husband Kevin, an ex-merchant naval man, shakes hands solemnly but with a gentleness that is faultless. Well muscled and of middle age he wears a white buttoned shirt, subdued tie and charcoal slacks. An easy twinkle in his eye for the ladies, Kevin is renowned for saying all the right things.

“Would you like a drink, Kevin?” Roger asks, “something a little stronger perhaps than tea?”

“Sure. I’m a drinker of opportunity,” Kevin grins, “I get my hands on it, I drink it.”

They all adjourn to a café come bar but Sue and Roger are too highly strung to partake of food or drink. Kevin is busy looking about at people. He spies a Jamaican with dreads and a crocheted wool cap. “What d’you reckon of him, Roger?”

Roger is thoughtful. “What, the Jamaican who’s wearing a tea cosy on his head?”

Kevin smiles smugly at Roger. “I’ve been Down Under a few times back in the day on the ships. They’ve a great sense of humour the Aussies. I’m sure you’ll do well there. You do know what they’ll call you?”

“I have no idea,” Roger smiles invitingly.

Kevin looks mischievous, “If they like you, you’ll be a ten pound pommy bastard.”

Roger grins. “And if I’m unpopular?”

“Be like pissing on your own fire, Mate. Ten pound bastard pommy, but with an unfriendly emphasis on the word bastard.”

April behaves as if Sue is a comet about to leave its star for a lonely trip through the cosmos. “No sign of Roger’s family today, Sue?”

“No. True to his word he’s given his Dad and Zelda the Ernest Hemingway treatment as in stoic silence.”

As far as Roger is concerned they are unaware of their departure, but irrespectively, Zelda’s presence would only have proven antagonistic.

Better they be at each other’s throats than lunging at mine, Roger thinks.

“Probably for the best,” April sighs brightly. “I wouldn’t accept a reverse charges call from that man if he was haemorrhaging to death on the pavement in front of me.”

Audrey at 72 does not look a day over 90. She wears a pale blue coat, her hair tinted to match. “And that awful German woman he married. What’s her name?” she asks, biting out the words.

“Zelda,” Sue replies.

“Yes, she’d even complain Nuns pray too much in a nunnery.”

“She and staff go together like frogs and lawnmowers,” Roger offers not to be outdone, “I can vouch for that.”

“Why did he marry her? I didn’t think he liked Germans. He must have killed thousands of them during the war.” Audrey states in an icy, condescending tone.

“If you ask me,” intones Minnie, “the only good German is a dead German. I’ve never forgiven them for what they put us through. And what about all those poor Jewish people. It was a disgrace. She should be ashamed to be German.”

“I do believe Dad’s intentions were good,” offers Roger, “as he wanted a Mum for June.”

After he speaks, he realises with some surprise that he has actually defended his Dad when really he wanted to reproach the lying bastard for his back wages.

“It could always be worse,” Roger offers with a sigh.

“Worse! How?” Minnie asks.

“Well, he could have married a Japanese,” Roger suggests with a brief smirk.

Mostly Audrey ignores Roger. “How’d it go with Roger’s family?” she asks Sue. “I see that none of them are here.”

“Oh, you know. Tears, the usual hysteria.”

To Roger at that time his wife’s voice is as welcome as a fine summer breeze.

Audrey glares.

“Oh, not me,” Sue replies with a forced smile, “that’s Roger.”

“I’d have liked to have seen June,” Roger adds, “but she’s only fourteen years old I couldn’t see her, without Dad and Zelda.”

Audrey turns her attention to Roger. “Just because I look at you when you’re talking, Roger, don’t think I’m interested in what you have to say.”

“Oh, this just keeps getting better and better,” mutters Philip under his breath.

A long moment passes.

Sue looks on in embarrassed amazement.

“If Zelda was here might she speak German?” Philip asks Roger with an impish smile.

“Probably, but only complicated German stuff,” Roger smiles back. “Like mein linker blinker ist kaputt.”

Philip’s face is alight with interest. “What’s that mean?”

“My left blinker’s not working,” Roger replies dead pan.

Auntie Audrey is looking at Roger as if he is wearing a live fish on his head.

Well meaning though their intentions doubtless are, our emigrants could have done without any of them. Having to make polite conversation, while trying to overcome their apprehension and concerns about what lay ahead.

Roger draws close to Sue, “I suppose emigrating is a bit like getting married,” he whispers to her, “part of us would prefer to slip quietly away.”

All around them similar scenes to theirs are playing out. It is as though everyone leaving Heathrow that day is emigrating.

“Had you been departing Ireland rather than England,” Minnie’s face is full of despair, “a wake may have been more appropriate.”

“Thanks for that,” Roger replies sensing more hostility. “Maybe this is reminiscent of the siege of Rorke’s Drift, Minnie. Just the overwhelming Zulu army didn’t have our resolve.”

“You’re talking in riddles again, Roger,” huffs Minnie.

“Where’s Rorke’s Drift?” asks Philip, “somewhere in Australia?”

“Good question,” Kevin answers, “No! It’s somewhere in South Africa.”

“Nothing at all to do with Australia, then,” confirms Minnie.

“Nothing at all,” Roger responds sadly.

“So,” Minnie swings her attention back to Roger. “I suppose this silly idea of going to Australia was your brainwave?” Minnie’s unblinking stare continues accusing him sternly as though he is a certifiable fool.

Roger panics but sees an out. “No! Actually, Min. It was your daughter’s idea.”

Minnie is thoughtful. “And when did you decide to go along with it, then?”

“Honestly?”

“Yes, of course.”

Roger considers the situation carefully and then decides to go for it. Like a hot knife through butter. Take some of the starch out of the old biddy.

“While I was sitting on the toilet taking my morning dump.”

Minnie’s smile falters and drops in wattage. Recovering well she continues coldly. “What job will you do when you get to Australia, Roger?”

Minnie states the word Australia as if it is a malignancy. Such is her attitude, it is nearly enough, to make Roger’s ears bleed.

“I haven’t got a clue. About my only preference is to steer clear of catering and pubs if I can. If it all works out, we’ll be better off than here. Otherwise Sue might end up living in a cave, eating tofu and sucking on tree bark? Interesting thought.”

Minnie ignores Roger’s response.

Kevin is quick to assist. “Will you get a job in pest control, Roger?” he asks, “they have plenty of bigger pests Down Under.”

Visions of Roger being chased by spiders so big he could hear their footsteps, and snakes of obscene proportions, terrifies Sue, “Oh, my God, Roger will we be inundated with flies at every turn, and carried away by the ants?”

“Pests here are surely smaller and less dangerous,” Minnie states with some satisfaction.

There is a prolonged uncomfortable silence.

Roger feels about as comfortable as sitting on death row waiting to do the last dance with Mister Hangman.

“Are you looking forward to the flight?” April asks sweetly.

“I’d rather be going by train,” Sue replies nostalgically, “that clickety-clack sound can be quite soothing.”

“Never mind, dear. I expect you’ll be eating the best of foods and off fancy china forever,” April continues. “It’s such a long way.”

Too late it occurs to Sue that as the children will be seated for such a long time they should have organised some strenuous exercise before the flight to tire them.

Realising it is too late to break away from the embarkation committee for a Herculean triathlon. That or instal Minnie with an ‘off’ button they prepare to depart.

They sit and gather their wits for a few more moments. So far the morning had been one to forget as far as Roger was concerned. Sue is looking drawn.

After they have exchanged a few awkward last hugs, they slink away like bilge rats abandoning a sinking ship. Waving their final goodbyes, they prepare to board their plane.

In accompaniment Roger hums Roger Whittaker’s recently released Last Farewell but adds his own words; “Our plane lay rigged and ready for departure…far away to a land of endless sunshine…far away from our land full of rainy skies and gales…”

Outside, the air is cold, the fat clouds holding the promise of snow or sleet. Behind them a sea of faces blur as they are herded towards their BOAC Charter flight.

Roger shuffles his feet the last few yards.

Sue giggles “Why are you walking like that?”

“In sympathy with those who’ve gone before us. I’m wearing ghost shackles.”