All stories

The last time he’d been to Glastonbury, he smoked some weed his son was passing round, the first he’d smoked for years and been subsequently enveloped in shrouds of sleepy melancholy all weekend.

His tent leaked, the old faithful canvass had seen many conquests of women who now ran the BBC but wouldn’t give him a show. He’d always relied on a body of contemporary mates, The Desperate Brothers, Duncan Disorganised and Annie Doolittle, the whole lower half of the 80s Alternative comedy bill basically.

He’d turn up in the illicit all night bar run by a mate in Circus Field Camping after all the shows were done and someone would buy him a drink.

This year, none of them seemed to be there, it was all young people. He’d had to spend more of his own money than he had planned for and now had nothing left but a fiver and some loose change.

His body felt tired from all the trudging in mud and his show, at two pm in the comedy tent, had, sadly, taken place in this year’s one brief three hour period when it wasn’t raining. His hoped for wet weather bonus of a packed house of shelterers, was replaced by 12 students, sleeping or on their phones and nobody, least of all him was listening to what he was saying.

He’d been to the Circus Green Room and danced to Ranking Roger’s Beat in a desperate attempt to show himself as a free spirit who didn’t need company but then his back started to hurt. “If there’s a smile on my face it’s only there trying to fool the public” sang Roger as he left. Everyone’s an ironic, observational comedian these days he thought.

he’d been woken three hours later at 6am, by a desperate need for a piss and had rushed out his tent only behold the hideous sight of Octogenarian Actor, Dudley Sutton, Tinker Dill out of Lovejoy, stark bollock naked in front of his own tent in the gathering dawn.

At this point he realised he was stark bollock naked too.

“Morning!” said Dudley Sutton cheerily as the both relieved themselves onto opposing pieces of mud. He scowled back and wondered why the old fool still bothered.

That could have been another funny sketch but he was too miserable to notice it.

And now, a few years later Dudley Sutton was dead and Ranking Roger had cancer.

And he had given up comedy because he actually didn’t find anything funny anymore.

He’d moved house, sold his flat in London, moved back to Cardiff, with the mortgage paid off and now worked in a nice Wellfield Rd café, where no one knew he’d once been a comedian on the telly, apart from a very rare, “Didn’t you used to be”.

He was happier than he’d been in years! For unlike Dudley Sutton who lived his whole life inside showbiz and was always bound to die there. He’d taken up comedy to waste time one summer and it had become a job like any other.

And now it was time to do something else.

He was staring at her. At first she’d thought he’d just zoned out in her general direction, but his eyes followed her lickerishly, unblinking; leg jiggling, hand unseen, breathing fast through an open mouth. Steph squirmed in her seat.

Three stops.

Outside it was dark, late. Rain trickled sadly down the windows and the harsh fluorescent light inside the bus illuminated Steph’s reflection in the glass. The last bus. Sometimes she felt she spent most of her life here, scrabbling for loose change, avoiding the weirdos.

She took in her pale skin, the circles under her eyes and the hopelessness behind them, before realising she could also see the man behind her, still staring, still jiggling. His t-shirt was stained, and his jeans were torn, his age indeterminate. His coat was draped over his lap, hands submerged beneath. Steph felt sick.

The bus stopped, but nobody else got on. Behind the softly lit curtained windows were families, tucked up in bed or watching Lovejoy or Antiques Roadshow reruns. Being together. Steph thought of her own damp beige flat and envied their warm banality. Then the bus inhaled loudly, like a builder assessing dry rot, and pulled off.

Two stops.

When Steph got off the bus she knew, without turning, that the man was behind her. She could hear his wet breathing and the lurch of his uneven stride on the pavement.

Don’t look, keep walking. It went through her head like a mantra. Under the streetlights his shadow fell long reminding her how close he was, how tall and lumbering. He could overpower her in a heartbeat. She clutched her keys, jagged edge poking out, ready.

As she neared her flat she quickened her pace. He did too. The keys felt slippery in her hand.

Twelve doors and she was home.

“Excuse me”

There it was. His voice was low, with the slurred speech of a practised drinker. She pretended she didn’t hear.

Four doors.

“You...you left your phone on the bus, but I’ve got it.”

She felt in her pocket. Her phone wasn’t there. She looked and he was holding it out to her with hands that shook and juddered almost uncontrollably. She glanced at the man’s face. His eyes were screwed up, jaw set in concentration, forcing himself to hold steady.

As soon as she took it he plunged his hands deep into his trouser pockets with relief.

“Thank you. I really appreciate this.”

“I’m s...sorry if I scared you.”

Steph could hear the stammer in his voice, the concentration it seemed to take just to stand still and speak to her.

“Was this your stop?” she asked. The man shook his head.

“You mean you got off just to give me the phone? How are you going to get home?”

He shrugged.

“Well at least let me make you a cup of tea. To say thanks?” For the first time the man met her eyes, just for a second, and smiled warmly.

And as Steph took two mugs from the cupboard instead of one, her damp beige flat suddenly didn’t seem so lonely after all.

She looked tired, just come off a late shift probably and not the first one this week. She had that faraway look they sometimes got. Nurses especially, but this one wasn’t a nurse. She looked more like a bar manager or a cleaner with her black tights and zipped up hoody and glazed stare

She sat opposite him and he watched her, leaning back, lazy, not pretending he wasn’t staring. He saw her look down at the old scruffy coat thrown over his knee and his jiggling leg - loose change jangling in his pocket, saw her look of revulsion as she shifted back into her seat and gazed pointedly out of the window.

The bus rattled and gasped its way along, stopping for breath at traffic lights and bus stops, though nobody else joined them. They were completely alone.

The bright strip lights of the bus sealed a wrap of darkness around the windows trapping them there together in an sealed box of sticky floors, stained furry seats, chewing gum, graffiti, damp, greying wet smears along the floor. Brilliantly lit for all the world to observe from the outside, with only their reflections and each other for company.

He knew she could see him watching her in the reflection. Good.

It was easy to slip her phone from her pocket as she picked her way past him, easy to follow her silently and wait for the perfect moment to let her know he was behind her. He adopted a terrifying, loping gait that urged him forward almost uncontrollably, casting his long shadow over hers as they walked, her low heels click clacking, his heavy tread, lumbering, weighty.

He knew they were getting close when she sped up and gripped her keys tighter in her hand. This was his favourite part, the moment it had all been building to.

“Excuse me?!

He saw her tense and choose to ignore it. They always did that.

“You...you left your phone on the bus, but I’ve brought it for you” he told her, or something like that. Any old bullshit would do from now on. When she saw the tremor of his hands and finally met his eyes he knew she was hooked.

He watched her walk up the stairs ahead of him. She was thin, too thin to be pretty, but easy to hold. He could sense her excitement. How long had it been, he wondered, since someone besides the TV license man had been up here?

She turned on the lights and showed him to the settee while she made the tea. The room was sad and dull, a sad dull life for this sad dull woman. A few paperbacks, cat hairs, Lovejoy series 2 through 5 on DVD. A half drunk bottle of Pino with the cork wedged back in. He heard the sound of two cups placed on the laminate countertop and realised he was already bored of this. He stood up and waited for her to turn around so he could see her face as she realised her mistake.

Mum could not come with us to the park because Lovejoy was on. She couldn’t make the post-game celebration either. I put down the phone and edged my gaze to face my wife. She was looking incredulous.

‘Lovejoy?’

‘It’s a good one, apparently. An unsavoury stranger comes to the village and Tinker finds a rare coin in his loose change.’

‘Lovejoy??’

‘That TV programme, with the antiques dealer.’

‘I know what Lovejoy is! She’s not going to watch her first grandson in his first football game because of a thirty-year-old show about some dodgy geezer with an even dodgier mullet?’

A few days later I had a brainwave. I did next day delivery, Lou wrapped it and then we went around there together. Mum insisted on making the tea, despite the present wrapped up in gaudy paper on her coffee table. She dithered in the kitchen, some of the water eventually making its way into the teapot, and only then did I get her back into the lounge.

She regarded the gift doubtfully.

‘Is it my birthday already? Where’s the rest of the presents?’

‘It’s a little spontaneous gift,’ I said. ‘Do you want me to open it?’

I flinched in the full glare of that Mum stare that was straight out of forty years ago. Lou stifled a snort.

Mum rose and fetched a pair of nail scissors from the sideboard. Very carefully, she cut the pieces of Sellotape, unwrapped the gift and then began to fold the wrapping for reuse.

I held out the present to her. It was a DVD boxset.

I said, ‘It’s every single episode of Lovejoy. Now you can watch it whenever you want.’

She peered at the picture of the cast on the back.

‘Don’t they all look so young. He’s dead now, you know, Tinker, the sidekick who wore the beret.’

‘Yes, but in here, he lives on. You can watch them on the DVD player we got you for Christmas.’

‘That’s nice dear. Tea?’

I said, ‘Mum, Friday evening, Georgie has a school play. Will you come?’

‘Friday? Oh, I can’t do that. Your father and I never miss Lovejoy.’

Lou and I looked at each other. She shook her head, pointing at me as if to say, “your mum”.

Ever so gently, I said, ‘Dad’s not with us anymore.’

Mum treated me to a withering look.

‘Do I look that dotty? Of course, I know your father’s dead. But we always said, no matter where we were, if Lovejoy was on we’d watch it together. So that’s what we do. We settle down and we watch Lovejoy.’

I took hold of Mum’s hands. They felt small and withered and lost within my own.

I said, ‘Mum,’ and waited till she looked at me with a vague smile. ‘Mum. Dad’s in heaven now.’

Mum rolled her eyes.

‘Obviously. I was at the service, you know.’ She freed her hands and regarded me with another of her Mum stares.

‘But don’t you know the first sign aliens will have of us is television signals? I think they’ll reach as far as heaven, don’t you? Honestly, Louise, he must drive you to distraction.’

The screen flickers, hisses, buzzes, flickers once brightly and then finally closes its eyes for ever. You should probably contact ITC. Except to do that you have to raise a ticket. On the computer. With the broken screen. Instead you wander over to the coffee machine and scramble through your pockets for any loose change. Hot water 5p. Tea and Coffee 30p. You have 27p of course. Sighing you wander back to your desk. This is it now. This is everything. All day. Every day. Just slowly unravelling like your favourite cotton jumper caught on a loose nail of life.

You try and remember the alleged wild youthful days everyone had, as you add another layer to the robot drawing your scribbling on your 3pm meeting agenda. But nothing comes up, you can’t remember when those days happened, if they even did. Everyone said their twenties were wild. But when you think about it, when you had actual legitimate fun all you can picture are flashes of scenes from television. You remember being hungover of course. So you know you defiantly drank a lot. Other than that it’s like trying to remember a concert you didn’t go to by someone else describing it. It all sounds great but your not convinced it happened.

You remember starting here, how much you wanted to be different, a debonoir Lovejoy character; footloose wangling deals left right and centre, doing things your own way. Now look at yourself stuck self narrating your own dishevelled mundane life. Wishing you’d bought the next size up trousers. Wondering if you should need the toilet this often. Hoping someone else can come along and change your life for you, because you’ve forgotten how.

You check your phone for the 12th time. She hasn’t messaged back. Of course. What would you do if she actually did? Probably keel over with heart failure, it’s probably about time for your first heart attack. If you didn’t die it might at least pay off the mortgage.

Besides she was top of everyone’s ‘partner list’, understandably. She was intelligent, funny, hardworking, and stunning but not over the top; subtle, the dream partner. You might have had a chance, if this was three years ago, full of energy and vision for the company now you are just another unsavoury stranger to her. You staple a post-it note to the mouse mat. Just because.

Then your phone flashes. You’ve turned off notifications on your Clash of Clans game, and your fantasy football app. No one else ever texts.

You stand up. Look away towards the lifts to the fourth floor where she will be sat, or probably stood demanding something important of someone down the phone. Maybe. Maybe she saw something in you. A glimpse of what you could have been; the elusive potential, that is so sought after and so rarely achieved. You grab another secret biscuit from the draw. Triple chocolate this week.

You reach out and pick up the phone.

Hi, remember it’s your dental appointment on 01/03/19 at 14:45. If you can’t make this, please call us to rearrange. Thanks.