surge of dread and dismay up from the depths, worse than the bailiffs, maybe it was Howard, fucking Howard come to make some claim on him. He doesn’t want to see Howard again if he can help it.
Eventually he has his Gmail account up and as he waits for the first of the selected emails to open he decides to make a cup of instant coffee. It isn’t an especially big room, but even so, some days the distance from the sofa to the fridge seems immense, partly because the pain in his leg has flared up again, partly just because his sense of scale is diminishing. The kitchen is an ordeal away, upstairs an Everest, the front bedroom a distant country, and yet the whole of time and the whole of space are within easy reach, all there on the computer screen a foot away.
The kettle is empty, meaning he has to go all the way to the kitchen. Once a week he fills up a five litre plastic bottle of water that he uses to make coffee and tea, rehydrate the value pot noodles, moisten the bags of value muesli that he more or less subsists on these days, except for the occasional bit of toast.
He gets up and goes to fill the kettle, stands with it in one hand, the water running, gazing out of the window at the wildly overgrown garden, the dust and pollen rolling over it in the sunlight. It has actually stopped raining. There’s one last teabag in the box, meaning later he will have to go to the shop. He still owes them twenty quid for the tobacco he got on tick a month ago. Ah, now then. You thought that emailed fuck off to Alex Hargreaves would be the end of it, but he is a tenacious wee fucker, is he not?
He will have to go upstairs. That upstairs bathroom though, eh? He won’t be able to resist popping his head round the door for a peak at that, will he? See how the mould on the shower wall has been coming along.
I don’t wanna fucking think about the dead, he says out loud. Not the fucking dead.
Those cunts. He sits down on the floor, back against the cooker. Then again, he doesn’t want to think about the living either, fucking Howard, for instance. He could very happily get through to the end of his allotted though increasingly unlikely looking four score years and ten without clapping eyes on Howard again. He owes nothing to this shiny-faced, sharp-eyed little hustler with his brogues and his World War I flying ace haircut up from London, Alex Hargreaves, but he should probably have warned him off ever going back to see Howard.
Castleford. What was he thinking? They hatched some mad plans didn’t they, back then? Reality seemed to be there for the taking. Too long spent living in the Crescent, thought they could take on the whole world, transform it.
Ah, the glorious folly of youth.
Folly of youth, folly of age, folly after folly. The past. He’d get drunk if he had any money. Good job he is skint. Another smart move that.
The kettle boils, he pours, stirs to try to blend the floating granules in, winces his way back to the living room, sniffs the milk then pours some, breaks through the light crust and adds two heaped teaspoons of sugar from the sticky bag, sips at it, rinses it round his gums. Perfection.
The email has finally opened. Really, unbelievable it has taken so long. He responds to Alex Hargreaves, who has sent him seven emails since the day before. He’s keen.
He sends a message back.
I don’t know how successful you are going to be in this search around for Vernon’s work or trying to write whatever you plan to write about him. But you’re not going to find it without help or information. And I have that. So we need to cut some kind of deal.
So, then, upstairs.
He stands again and his left leg throbs, his knee a bit wobbly, a sharp point in his groin like someone trying to poke a crochet hook between the muscles. The front bedroom is an assault course of broken and unwanted furniture, boxes of crap, bags of clothes, his old bike, piles of records, magazines, tapes. He chartered a van to get it all up
Eventually he has his Gmail account up and as he waits for the first of the selected emails to open he decides to make a cup of instant coffee. It isn’t an especially big room, but even so, some days the distance from the sofa to the fridge seems immense, partly because the pain in his leg has flared up again, partly just because his sense of scale is diminishing. The kitchen is an ordeal away, upstairs an Everest, the front bedroom a distant country, and yet the whole of time and the whole of space are within easy reach, all there on the computer screen a foot away.
The kettle is empty, meaning he has to go all the way to the kitchen. Once a week he fills up a five litre plastic bottle of water that he uses to make coffee and tea, rehydrate the value pot noodles, moisten the bags of value muesli that he more or less subsists on these days, except for the occasional bit of toast.
He gets up and goes to fill the kettle, stands with it in one hand, the water running, gazing out of the window at the wildly overgrown garden, the dust and pollen rolling over it in the sunlight. It has actually stopped raining. There’s one last teabag in the box, meaning later he will have to go to the shop. He still owes them twenty quid for the tobacco he got on tick a month ago. Ah, now then. You thought that emailed fuck off to Alex Hargreaves would be the end of it, but he is a tenacious wee fucker, is he not?
He will have to go upstairs. That upstairs bathroom though, eh? He won’t be able to resist popping his head round the door for a peak at that, will he? See how the mould on the shower wall has been coming along.
I don’t wanna fucking think about the dead, he says out loud. Not the fucking dead.
Those cunts. He sits down on the floor, back against the cooker. Then again, he doesn’t want to think about the living either, fucking Howard, for instance. He could very happily get through to the end of his allotted though increasingly unlikely looking four score years and ten without clapping eyes on Howard again. He owes nothing to this shiny-faced, sharp-eyed little hustler with his brogues and his World War I flying ace haircut up from London, Alex Hargreaves, but he should probably have warned him off ever going back to see Howard.
Castleford. What was he thinking? They hatched some mad plans didn’t they, back then? Reality seemed to be there for the taking. Too long spent living in the Crescent, thought they could take on the whole world, transform it.
Ah, the glorious folly of youth.
Folly of youth, folly of age, folly after folly. The past. He’d get drunk if he had any money. Good job he is skint. Another smart move that.
The kettle boils, he pours, stirs to try to blend the floating granules in, winces his way back to the living room, sniffs the milk then pours some, breaks through the light crust and adds two heaped teaspoons of sugar from the sticky bag, sips at it, rinses it round his gums. Perfection.
The email has finally opened. Really, unbelievable it has taken so long. He responds to Alex Hargreaves, who has sent him seven emails since the day before. He’s keen.
He sends a message back.
I don’t know how successful you are going to be in this search around for Vernon’s work or trying to write whatever you plan to write about him. But you’re not going to find it without help or information. And I have that. So we need to cut some kind of deal.
So, then, upstairs.
He stands again and his left leg throbs, his knee a bit wobbly, a sharp point in his groin like someone trying to poke a crochet hook between the muscles. The front bedroom is an assault course of broken and unwanted furniture, boxes of crap, bags of clothes, his old bike, piles of records, magazines, tapes. He chartered a van to get it all up
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