A chance encounter between two men brings back memories......
Peter
I’ve popped out for a quick bite. Tired of hanging around the cab office. It’s never much fun there – the other drivers are years younger than me and call me ‘Granddad’. I’m parked by a fast-food café, finishing a substandard burger, wondering what exotic variety of food poisoning it might give me. Then the radio goes.
‘Control to Four-Nine..?’
‘Four-Nine receiving,’ I reply.
‘Rydesdale Golf Club, to Sudbury Grand Hotel. Be there in half an hour. Nice little earner, eh?’ purrs Glenda the controller. ‘Never say I don’t look after you.’
‘I’d never say that,’ I chuckle.
This town’s a dump. Nothing much happens here, there’s not the normal action you’d get in a town centre of a Saturday evening. I laugh bitterly as I remember how we moved here years ago, back when I was still expecting a cushy retirement. Then, the fact that there wouldn’t be much weekend revelry seemed like a plus. Not now it isn’t. And with negative equity I can’t even sell up and move back into the city.
I pull out onto the near-deserted streets.
Edgar
I’ve had a long, tiring day on the links. Followed by an equally long, but more enjoyable, session at the nineteenth hole.
I’m sipping a drink and looking round the bar. God, this club has gone downhill. Just like the country. They’ve got a jukebox now for Christ’s sake. And I’ve seen people here wearing the club tie who look like they should be behind the counter in a corner shop. It was bad enough when you got the wrong sort working here.
But to let them join….!
And then that oik Bertram, from Consolidated, walks up to me. I’ve not seen him in years. He’s sixty, same as me, but hasn’t aged too well. Still wearing that cheap aftershave, still looking as if he gets his clothes from a market stall. I try to move away, but it’s too late, he’s already seen me.
‘Haven’t met you since – well, since your old firm folded. Shocking, that was,’ he says.
I wince. So much stuff had happened since over the past few years, that there are far more recent things to talk about. The Trexco bailout, the Controm takeover….all make my little contretemps look like a few pounds missing from a church fete.
‘Well, I landed on my feet,’ I reply warily. ‘I keep a low profile. Quiet place in the sun, hardly a soul knows who I am.’
Bertram calls out to a group of men at the other end of the bar. Getting up, he says to me, ‘Don’t go, we’ve got to talk.’
I don’t want to get sucked into a lengthy chat. I ask the bartender to call me a cab.
I order another drink, sit back and muse over my few days in England. It’s been fun, seeing a few friends, visiting old stamping grounds. But it’s time to go. The next half hour whizzes by.
‘Cab’s waiting for you outside, sir,’ say the bartender. I finish my beer and get up.
As I make for the door Bertram comes rushing over.
‘Leaving? Did you drive?’
‘No, got a cab. I’m at the Sudbury Grand Hotel.’
‘I’m too pissed to drive home. Can you drop me at the station?’
‘Okay…’
We stagger out into the dusk. The cab’s parked just outside the main door to the clubhouse.
‘Cab to Sudbury Grand Hotel?’ the driver asks.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘The gentleman here will come down at Rydesdale station, then I’ll go to the Grand.’
The Mondeo’s definitely seen better days. Its back bumper’s peeling, and its paintwork is in three different shades of blue
‘You’d think they’d have been able to send a better cab than this to a golf club,’ I grumble, hoping to put Bertram off asking me about my affairs.
‘So who’s your accountant then, Edgar?’ asks Bertram.
‘That’d be telling….’
‘Come on, tell me. Consolidated could go tits-up any minute now. Your company goes bust, pension fund goes to the wall, and you stash away enough to get a home in the Caribbean and offshore accounts all over the world. I need someone who can work that sort of magic.’
‘Tell you some other time, eh?’ I slur, acting more drunk than I really am. ‘Got to go back tomorrow – can’t stay here long.’
‘Tax residence and all that, eh?’
‘Yeah,’ I reply. We laugh together.
Just then the cab driver pulls up at the station, and Bertram gets out.
‘We’ll talk later,’ he says.
‘I’ll email you,’ I reply. He walks off, too hammered to remember that we haven’t exchanged any details. That suits me fine.
‘Let’s go,’ I say to the driver.
Peter
I pull out into the road with a lurch.
‘Steady on,’ says Edgar. ‘I’ll complain to your firm and you won’t get a penny.’
I wrench the radio from its cradle, and snap the central door locking on.
‘That’s about right then,’ I turn round and look Edgar in the face. ‘I never got anything from you the first time, did I, SIR Edgar Willis?’
‘What the hell do you mean? I don’t know you.’
I put the cabin light on, and turn round again, briefly.
‘I wish you wouldn’t take your eyes off the road like that,’ Edgar whines. ‘And I still don’t know you.’
‘Burdett Industries,’ I say. ‘You were the Managing Director when it went bust five years ago…’
‘And?’
‘We all went on those marches – trying to get backing from the government, trying to get them to help save our pension fund. You were with us all the time…’
‘Oh - you were one of the staff…?’
‘ “One of the staff?” Only your chief foreman – and head of the Save Our Factory campaign.’ We’re out in open countryside now, and I’m going well over the speed limit.
‘P-Peter er, F-Foster…?’
‘Forbes, you prat. Even when we worked for you, you always had to look at a name badge before you could remember who we were.’
‘ I-I always wondered what had happened to you… it’s been years..er, how’s your wife?’
‘Don’t bullshit me,’ I snap. He always was crap at small talk. ‘You don’t care one bit. If you must know, she left me after Burdett went down the pan….took off with a guy selling double-glazing. Said I spent too much time at home sat on my arse moping, not enough looking for a new job. She was right I suppose ….’
‘Sorry to hear that…’
‘The hell you are. We all read in the paper about how you’d retired to your “modest country cottage in Yorkshire,” ’ I sneer. ‘Well, with our pensions gone down the drain, and bugger-all redundancy money, most of us couldn’t even afford that. We had to do shitty jobs like this – if we could get them. All the while you’d salted the money away so you could still live the high life.’
‘Okay, so you feel hard done by….’ Edgar sounds nervous. ‘I-I understand. L-l-look, everyone’s got to look after number one. No point in everyone losing out. Th-there was only one plank in the shipwreck, and I grabbed it. Nobody wants to drown, you know.’
‘Some people want to though,’ I say, taking a sharp turning.
In the mirror, I see him fiddling with his mobile. I step on the brakes - classic emergency stop. His phone flies from his grip, landing in my passenger foot well. As I speed up again, I pick the phone up, check that he hadn’t got through, and then chuck it out of the window.
‘You bastard!’ he shouts. ‘Do you know how much that phone cost?’
I laugh.
‘Wh-where are we going, anyway?’ Edgar asks. ‘This isn’t the turning for Sudbury.’
‘We’re going to meet some of the other ex-Burdett employees,’ I say. ‘Rajesh Kumar and Steve Monkton – they were foremen too - ring any bells?’
‘N-n-not really,’ Edgar said. ‘Look, I’ll have nothing to say to anyone. Pull over – I’ll write you a cheque…’
‘That won’t do all the others any good.’
‘Can’t you just put yourself first for a change?’
‘Worked for you didn’t it? No, we’re going to meet the others.’
‘What, they live out here? Bit out of the way for a couple of city factory workers…’
I snort. ‘Me, Rajesh and Steve used to walk to Reacher’s Point. We did it one year to raise funds for the Benevolent Fund, and after that we did together once a year for a laugh. Well, there was damn-all to laugh about after Burdett’s closed- we never found the time to meet. Rajesh was the first – he couldn’t feed his wife and all his kids. Two years after the closure – he chucked himself off from there. Then, last year, it was Steve…he jumped off there too, they never found the body, just like Rajesh….’
Edgar
I’m resigned to the fact that he’s going to take me to some of his old comrades and that I’ll get a beating. I can only hope that they won’t kill me. I comfort myself by thinking of how I’ll get back to the Dominican Republic, and I’ll hire some heavies to find them and kick their arses. Big time.
I’m not really listening to him ranting any more, but just then I hear him say something about how Steve and Rajesh jumped to their deaths or something.
‘What bullshit is this?’ I snap. ‘How can you be taking me to meet people who’re dead?’
Peter laughs. ‘Well, I’m not planning on tapping tables to speak to them. Look out of your window.’
I look. There’s a sign saying, ‘Reacher’s Point – 5 miles.’
My mouth goes dry. The famous suicide spot…..
‘N-n-no, you can’t mean it - you’ll never get away with it!!’ I’m almost screaming.
‘Who said anything about getting away with it?’
My blood runs cold. He’s crazy. You hear about nutters in the Middle East prepared to top themselves while taking someone else out – but this is England for God’s sake.
I’m crying like a baby. Head in hands. But I’m biding my time. I’m buggered if I’m going to let some Trot psycho take me with him
‘Come on, you don’t want to do a thing like that,’ I say. ‘You won’t gain anything….’
Peter
‘Like I gained nothing when we went bust?’ I snap. ‘They’ll have to declare your estate, and then everyone will know where the money went. The Fund will sue your estate, and then such of us as haven’t topped ourselves will get something back. Oh, here we are now.’
We’ve almost come to the white wooden fence dividing Reacher’s Point from the road. I’m keeping a close eye on Edgar in the back mirrors. Suddenly he lunges forward, hands aiming at my neck.
I pick up a steering lock from the front passenger seat, and flick it behind me. It hits Edgar full in the face, knocking him backwards. The other cabbies take the piss out of me, but I’ve learnt a lot from them. Like to always have extra mirrors to keep an eye on what the punter in the back is getting up to.
‘You’re not the first to have tried that,’ I smile grimly. ‘Mind you, they’re just trying to get the few pounds I’ve got on me. You’re fighting for your life….’
‘Please – I’ll do anything…’ Edgar moans. Funny, for a man about to die, he’s holding his bleeding nose.
I speed up, the adrenalin pumping in my veins. This is it! The car crashes through the wooden fence and goes over the edge.
‘OH, SHIT!’ Edgar shouts.
I’m floating in the air.
Like an astronaut…
Edgar
No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No…….
This can’t be happening.
I’m flying through the air, falling to my death.
And in a crappy Mondeo!
I can hear a scream, the most horrible sound I’ve ever heard.
Then it clicks to me that it’s my own voice…
I seem to see two men in front of me. One Asian, one white…both about Peter’s age. They’re wearing casual clothes and walking boots, and smiling.
Steve and Rajesh? Am I remembering them from their days at Burdett’s?
Or am I seeing ghosts?
No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No…….
This isn’t happening…..It’s that dream, when you’re falling, it must be….any now I’ll wake up in my bed at Valverde. But what if it’s real?
People sometimes fall out of planes and live.
People get shot in the head and survive, don’t they?
I won’t die.
I can’t die.
Or can I?
No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No…….
Peter
I blot out Edgar’s screams. The sea rises up to meet us.
Steve and Rajesh seem to be standing in front of me – in hiking gear. They’re smiling. I swear Rajesh is giving me a thumbs-up.
‘Steve, Rajesh,’ I say quietly. ‘I’ve brought someone to meet you…’
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An excellent read.
Written by BrianRobertNeal (1195 comments posted) 3rd May 2006 | Most of the time it drives at an accelarating pace, slow beginning then faster etc. The latter parts could be trimmed a little to enhance the crescendo effect.
I don't recognise the name so welcome to GW,
Brian. | Good stuff
Written by johniebg (538 comments posted) 4th May 2006 | The thing i like about this site is you end up reading stuff you would never read anywhere else. Not because its inferior but because the subjects just dont sound hugely appealing. The beauty is of course that very often something about the writing keeps your eye moving to the next word and before you know it you have reached the end and enjoyed yourself.
A tiny bit predictable but no less enjoyable. |
Written by ndobiecka (20 comments posted) 6th May 2006 | I like it, I had no idea what was going to happen at the end.
I found it a little bit difficult to follow with the split between characters to begin with but like the way that works when it gets to the part where Peter's taking Edgar to the suicide point.
I like the way the character from the golf club lets you on to Edgar having something to hide and revealing it to Peter.
N | A gripping read
Written by Leigh (226 comments posted) 11th May 2006 | I loved this. Your technique of telling the story through both men's points of view is one I haven't come across before and it works fantastically. You get to climb into both characters' heads, as it were, without losing the pace of the plot.
This shows how effectively dialogue can be employed to reveal plot and back story as well as characters' feelings.
Great grisly ending too!
This may be just me, but it amused me how even when he's falling to his death Edgar's snobbishness comes through - that he's mortified he's going to meet his end "in a crappy Mondeo!" | Love the technique
Written by Eren (5 comments posted) 16th May 2006 | I love the effect you achieve by swapping between viewpoints, it gave the story real depth.
I don't usually like short stories but I found myself hooked into this one right to the (grisly) end, the prose has a sort of urgency to it that carries the reader along.
I'm enjoying your extended work too - looking out for the next instalment.
Eren |
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