Tim Connor Hits Trouble (11 page)

The shop came into view and he pulled the car over to the curb. The shop sign read:

FISH AND CHIPS AND CURRY

‘Curry, that’s new,’ said Gina. ‘I think I’ll go for one.’

‘It’s fish, chips and mushy peas for me and Mum. She’s not into curry.’

‘Surprise, surprise,’ smiled Gina, perking up at the prospect of food.

Inside the shop smelt of fried fat, salt and vinegar and hot sugary spices.

‘What can I get you?’ the young woman behind the counter spoke with an Eastern European accent. ‘All food are freshly cooking this evening.’

Tim gave the order and was quickly served. Minus the thick end of twenty quid he returned to the car nibbling on a hot juicy chip.

‘We should wait to eat with your mum,’ suggested Gina.

‘Of course, but if I don’t have a couple of chips now, I might flake out before we get home. I’m famished.’

Gina looked like she was going to contest the point. Instead she changed tack.

‘Ok. Pass me a chip then, you can have a taste of curry later.’

Score draw thought Tim. No, better than that, positively friendly.

A breath of fresh air and more than a few tasty chips livened Tim up. As usual his faculties came on stream as he drove the last few miles into his home town. Familiar landmarks replaced the endless samescape of the motorway way. First up after the chip shop was the old pub, the
Yorkshire Arms
just off a roundabout that channelled traffic one way into the centre of Whitetown and the other towards the North West. Tim swung the car northwards to skirt the town. Within a minute the football stadium where his father had played came into sight; a shiny monument to the team’s glory days and hoped for triumphs to come. But for the moment, a temple of failure.
Can’t put two wins together or if they do, they lose the next four
. Not far from the ground was a temple from a different epoch, St. Thomas’s church, its unusual broad hexagonal tower solid on the skyline. His dad had occasionally attended mass there.

It pleased Tim that his father had never been a ‘good Catholic’ in any formal sense. He was sure his dad had been a decent man but without concerning himself much about religion one-way or the other. Not so Tim who had spent much of his early adolescence in pious agonising. Puberty brought a deluge of scruples. God or masturbation? Tim smiled at the sad irony of it all as he gazed from church to stadium. He’d certainly got more out of football than religion, but not as much as his dad. Football was his dad’s life. He was proud of Dominic’s achievements. A losing cup final, though he’d scored in every round, and a victory playing for Scotland against England when he’d also scored. Tim had wanted to emulate his father and had shown some serious talent before he’d lost the plot in his tangled early-teen years.
Be honest you were never a patch on your father
. But if his father had lived long enough to coach him, maybe…

Next the road passed a long stretch of parkland, the grass and a few shrubs broken only by a dowdy ornamental pond, host to a dozen or so bog-standard ducks and a couple of bored looking swans. Dale Park was one of the first municipal parks in England and even now was held in great public affection though few spent much time in it. There had been an outcry when the council announced its intention to grant planning permission for a residential development on the parkland. The struggle resulted in a popular victory celebrated by the unexplained appearance of a large block of concrete next to the pond. On it was carved a clenched fist with the words ‘Power to the People’ etched across it. Shortly afterwards at the arrival of spring, swathes of daffodils appeared for the first time along the park’s edge. The Council denied any knowledge of who had planted the daffodils and declared the victory block illegal. It was duly removed, only to be mysteriously replaced by another one similarly inscribed. This happened several times until a smoother looking erection appeared inscribed with the words ‘The People are Powerful.’ That was how
the matter rested, with both parties seeming to feel that they had made their point. It was never discovered who carved out the compromise.

At the end of the stretch of road passing alongside the park, came the first of two sets of lights, next they crossed a railway bridge, before passing through the second set of lights, then they took a sharp right, then a left, from where they were only a few tarmac covered yards to home. It was a good sign that the house gates were open. It meant that his mum had remembered that they were due to visit. Last time they were up Teresa had forgotten to carry out the gate-opening ritual – a sure sign that she was fading.

‘Looks like she’s looking forward to our visit,’ said Gina. ‘What’s the betting she’s got the tea-tray laid out just like she used to?’

‘That would be nice but I doubt if she’s up to it these days.’ Tim squeezed the car into the tiny driveway, leaving Gina just enough space to get out on the hedge side. They picked up their travel bags and a bunch of carefully wrapped flowers from the boot of the car. Gina had bought the flowers as she always did. She handed them to Tim. ‘Here, you give them to her. She always appreciates them more coming from you.’ Tim took the flowers with only a minimal show of reluctance. He had long since become shameless in taking advantage of Gina’s practical caring.

They gave the front door bell an extended ring. It had been fitted with a sound amplifier to combat Teresa’s serious deafness. They retreated from the raucous noise and waited. A couple of minutes passed. Tim moved forward. Pressing his face against the frosted glass section of the door he was able to make out the shape of his mother edging towards them. She was pushing something in front of her.

‘Christ! I think she’s using a Zimmer.’

‘I’m not surprised. Look don’t make too much of it. It will only upset her.’

By now Teresa had reached the door. She was struggling
to unhitch the safety chain, trying to open it while still clutching her zimmer-frame. Tim pushed gingerly from the outside.

‘Ooh… careful or you’ll have me over.’ His mother’s voice sounded weaker than at their last visit.

‘Mum, move back a bit and leave me to open the door.’

Teresa inched slowly backwards dragging her zimmer-frame with her. Finally there was enough space for Tim and Gina to get in.

‘Good to see you, Mum.’ He eased her from her zimmer-frame and gave her a careful hug.

‘Thank God you’re here. I was out of my mind with worry. I thought you might have crashed. That motorway’s not safe.’

Gina took Teresa’s anxious tone as a cue to engage.

‘Teresa, hi. You haven’t forgotten who I am, have you? I’ve been so looking forward to seeing you again.’

‘No. It’s you Gina, isn’t it? It’s my eyes. They’re not as good as they used to be. I’m always glad when you come. You’re such a kind person, not like that woman who brings me my meals.’

They made their way slowly into the living room. The tea tray was conspicuously absent.

‘Tim, you chat with your mum for a few minutes and I’ll make us all a pot of tea.’

Gina was used to Teresa’s kitchen being in a mess but what she found this time was a shock: several half-drunk cups of tea, some caked with fungus, a couple of cans of soup already opened and beginning to smell, crumbs and stains everywhere, an unsealed loaf of mouldering cheap sliced bread, and most worrying, the ancient gas cooker thick with inflammable grease. In the fridge was a carton of curdled milk and not much else. This was mess turning to decay. She went back into the living room adopting as positive a tone as she could muster.

‘Tim, I’m going to pop to the shops at the top to buy a
few things,’ adding in an aside, ‘just take a quick look into the kitchen while I’m gone.’

The chaos in the kitchen and the rest of the house galvanised Tim and Gina into a flurry of phone calls and visits to social services, including Teresa’s ‘dedicated’ social worker, and two remaining friends from her own generation. Neither of the latter was able any longer to manage more than an occasional visit to Teresa and even then they might not be recognized. One thing had become clear. The argument about whether Teresa should go into residential care was over. Hate it or not – and she hated it – she would have to do so. ‘I’d rather die than be put into a home,’ she had often said, ‘but Catholics aren’t allowed to kill themselves, are they?’
Holy mother church, where are you when we really need you?

The decision that Teresa should go into full-time residential care was unavoidable but it proved more difficult to organise the transition than Tim anticipated. Apart from the problem of Teresa’s resistance, a suitable place had to be found and eventually the family house would have to be put up for sale. In the short term the best he could do was to increase meals on wheels from one to three times a day and set up a morning and evening visit from a carer. As it turned out all this was nothing more than a band-aid to a steadily, sometimes scarily deteriorating situation.

But it was not all bleak. Teresa had not completely lost her capacity for simple pleasure. Sometimes even forgetfulness was a help, allowing her to live in the moment. She was at her happiest when the three of them went out together. Tim and Gina got reflected pleasure from the old woman’s enjoyment of the meals they shared, sometimes driving out to country pubs familiar to her. Most of all she looked forward to the short walks they took together, mere tokens compared to what she had managed even a few years ago. Whitetown had several parks all of which Teresa knew well. Taking an arm each they would support her on
an assisted totter for a few hundred yards in one or other of them before finding a pub where she could sip what she still referred to as ‘a gill of ale.’

For a change they would sometimes walk by the local canal or go down to the renovated docks. There on one occasion, Teresa briefly threw off the manacles of age and dementia. The three of them were relaxing, leaning against the iron rails of the harbour as they watched the evening sunlight play on the water and boats. Gulls wheeled and glided, occasionally crying eerily as they swooped down, skimming for fish or settling softly on the water. Tim began to reminisce about how the docks had once been a vibrant hub of the town’s international trade. For many years Whitetown had been one of the country’s main importers of bananas that were then packed at the local Fyffes plant before distribution. Not, he mused, that bananas ought to need much packing. Drop them into a cellophane bag and they’re ready for off, presumably minus a few substandard ones. His train of thought brought to mind a calypso that he thought might be called ‘The banana boat song.’ Inspired by the warmth and well being of the evening he half spoke, half sang the old dock workers song: ‘Hey Mr Tally man, tally de bananas.’

He was struggling to recall the lyrics when Teresa interrupted. ‘Bananas! What a funny topic for a song. I know a nice poem about daffodils. I’m going to recite it for you.’

She turned her back to the water, leant against the railings and cleared her throat. Tim and Gina respectfully withdrew a couple of yards, taking up their position as audience. In a quiet but firm voice, moved but composed, she began to recite Wordsworth’s famous poem: ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud…’

She smiled, proud and happy as she completed her recitation. It wasn’t the whole poem, but the lines she remembered from Wordsworth’s famous verses were delivered word perfect and without a moment’s hesitation. Tim and Gina applauded enthusiastically, impressed and moved
by Teresa’s recitation. Like the poem itself the incident hovered precariously between bathos and the sublime. Another of the poet’s phrases came to mind, his definition of poetry: ‘emotion recollected in tranquillity.’ Thanks for the memory.

The rest of their stay was spent trying to find suitable residential care for Teresa and in doing their best to ensure that she would be safe and comfortable until it became available. They tried gently to get Teresa used to the idea of the move and to nudge her towards some kind of consent to it. What little progress they made was soon reversed. Teresa could seldom remember what she had agreed to from one day to the next.

She was even more edgy than usual as they packed the car to leave. They had done their best to explain the new regime of care and safety now in place, including providing her with an outline of the main points in double-sized print. But Teresa was beyond reassurance. Her response was to become more anxious. She had lost the ability to maintain her old routines and was unable to grasp new ones.

Tim stopped the car outside the front gate to wave a last goodbye. His mother, stood at the front door, somehow found the strength to smile.

Henry Jones woke up feeling more than usually lousy. His mouth was dry and furred and pain was pulsing through his eyes and temples. His stomach, normally durable against abuse, gurgled and groaned. For once, even he was nauseated by the smell of stale alcohol and excremental gases. He peered through the semi-darkness at the bedside clock. Five thirty! He needed a piss and probably a shit if he could manage it. Then he would go back to bed.

He rolled over slowly to the edge of the bed, levering his legs onto the floor one at a time. He sat for a moment, recovering, cupping his hands over his eyes.
Sweet fucking
oblivion!
But not for long. He lowered his hands planting them on the bed and pushed hard. He shot quickly into a standing position. Even more swiftly he catapulted back onto the bed. A repetition of the routine was more successful. Apparently upright he aimed himself towards the bathroom. As usual he broke his resolution to avoid looking into the bathroom mirror before breakfast.
Didn’t you
used to be?
He didn’t bother to finish mouthing the cliché.
The once handsome visage resembled a fruitcake inadvertently left out in the rain. Was this the face he now deserved? Probably. He thumped onto the toilet.
All energies seek release
. Thank God for that! Relieved he stood up, more easily this time.

Once out of the bathroom he got back into bed. He knew he wouldn’t sleep again. He rarely slept well without the help of alcohol. Afternoons were an exception when he seemed able to sleep anywhere, most particularly in his office. Even that privilege was now denied him. Swankie had ‘requested’ him to move out of his old office following the so-called job rotation with Steir and now he had to share a room with another colleague also considered to be on the way out. He shifted around in bed for a few minutes, his head still throbbing and his chest tight. Should he risk going into Annette’s bedroom and slip into bed beside her? He knew that would be the last thing she wanted. A couple of years ago she had insisted on separate bedrooms claiming that ‘his erratic habits’ kept her awake. After a few months of sleeping separately she announced that their sex life was over. He replied that he had worked that out for him-self as they hadn’t had sex for over three years. But he had learnt to avoid sarcasm with Annette. She always hit back with twice the vitriol. And she was lethally clever with words. Sometimes the full import of her put-downs only dawned on him much later, like the delayed impact of a physical injury. Her crueller remarks could upset him for days. He felt he ought to hate her but knew he still loved her. Why? It was beyond logic. He was trapped. His dogged attempts to rekindle communication only increased his feelings of hopelessness as he met an ice-wall of rejection. He concluded none too cleverly that Annette didn’t want to know. He was now depressed most of the time except when he was on an alcoholic high or sometimes when he was with friends. But there seemed to be fewer of them these days. There was Fred but he was in London. He liked the new guy, Tim Connor. He thought they had got on well when
they met in the Mitre before term started and on the handful of times they had met-up since. But Connor was of a different generation. Things were pretty desperate if he had to trawl for friendship among new appointments.
What kind of mess am I in
?

His thoughts slipped back to Annette. They had first met over twenty years ago when both had arrived in Wash, she as a postgraduate student and he as an academic. He had been appointed as research supervisor to her thesis on gender in the work of Marx and Engels. Back then the institution was a large college rather than the small university it had become and attracted only a handful of research students. Few staff could plausibly claim adequate credentials for research supervision. Henry was at least thought to be ‘brilliant’ and on the cusp of making a name for himself. Even so he was a little insecure in the role of research supervisor and compensated by playing the charismatic don with his new student. And in those days he was attractive in a chunky De Niro kind of way. More importantly from Annette’s point of view, they clicked academically. Their tutorials fizzed along as they contested the merits of radical feminism, Annette’s perspective, with the socialist
communitarianism
that Henry favoured. These days he was less certain of what he did believe, although emotionally and in public he clung on to his radical image. If he was less sure of solutions, he was certain that all manner of evils flowed from the triumph of global capitalism already re-establishing itself, as he saw it, after the financial crash of 2008. Once in a while in the lecture room he could still produce a bravura critique of ‘the system’ but the charisma that used to draw his young audience to him was gone. Most students liked him well enough and found him entertaining, but few related much to the content of what he said.

It had all been utterly different a quarter of a century ago. His lectures were invariably well attended and he was in great demand among students for small group and individual tuition. Most of all he looked forward to his tutorials
with Annette. Their energy and intensity spilled over into sessions in the coffee bars and pubs of the city. Ideas and events seemed all important then – from wrestling with the subtleties of structuralism to celebrating the deliciously heartless dumping of Thatcher. Then they believed that somehow they could change things or be part of change. Now he doubted it. And he was beginning to feel his age. Time had been called on his personal hopes and political dreams. Things were falling apart and he could not see how to put them together again. A cultural ethos of dynamism and expectation had somehow transformed into one of confusion and uncertainty. If he understood it, he certainly did not like it. Much of what he had believed in had become a standard political and media reference point for irrelevance and feeble idealism and was perceived as such in the popular mind.

Despite their growing mutual attraction, Henry held off from making a definitive move towards Annette. He did not particularly buy the conventional wisdom that academics should avoid becoming personally and sexually involved with students although he had more than once witnessed the emotional mayhem and professional disruption this could cause. As he debated and flirted with Annette he was not even sure that he wanted to take their relationship to a more intimate personal and physical level. Was he being cautious, playing a waiting game or perhaps not playing any game at all? He had some notion, half-baked he admitted, that if you stood outside the power games, things came more easily to you. Yet almost two years passed and, for all their pleasure in each other’s company, nothing of a romantic or sexual nature occurred.

In the end it was Annette who made the decisive move although he was a willing enough accomplice. Late one night they had gone to her flat after seeing a movie. In her no-messing-about way, she had asked him whether it wasn’t time that they slept together. Taken by surprise he found himself readily agreeing that it was. Yet the sudden
prospect of transition from friends to lovers momentarily seemed to non-plus them. They undressed separately and got into bed. From then things slowly gathered momentum. He still remembered her cool nakedness as their bodies closed together, first awkwardly and then eagerly. They made love with tenderness and affection into the quiet of the morning. That was a long time ago.

Sometimes Henry persuaded himself that he had not changed much from those days; that his ‘real self’ was still intact, that he was still worthy of attention and affection. As much as ever, he needed to share his love with Annette. But he knew that she did not feel the same. He might persuade himself that there was no good reason why their relationship should have changed but he could not persuade her. How often had she told him ‘to stop kidding’ himself? As he stuttered and declined she had grown in confidence and found fresh challenges. Their lives arched off into divergent directions. What they had imagined to be their future together proved simply to be an illusion spawned at a point when their trajectories had crossed. She had now begun to articulate their early relationship almost in psychoanalytic terms. At first she had mocked her mother’s sharp comment, offered without the aid of Freudian theory, that he was ‘nothing but a father figure.’ Even now, she could not accept that their relationship could be reduced to such a banal proposition, but she had come to realise that Henry had been something of an archetype for her, the intellectual as sage and fearless iconoclast. The reality was a straw man, a vacuous old windbag. How could she have been so fooled?

She made no attempt to keep her disappointment to herself but occasionally even she was shocked at how harsh she could be. The best she could do was to pity him. Poor Henry. She had endowed him with far more heroic qualities than he possessed. Yet he had once had a certain presence and conviction and even now could occasionally cut the figure of the ancient savant, especially when he was drunk. But
that was about the size of it. She conceded that there was an element of tragedy in his decline. His failure, as she saw it, was due to flaws of character rather than lack of talent. His ability to analyse ‘the system’, albeit with little reference to leading thinkers of the last twenty years, was at times still dazzling. But not only had he become almost completely politically inactive, he was unable even to manage his own career effectively. When she was twenty-seven and he was in his early forties his title of ‘Senior Lecturer’ had seemed rather grand. Now the same title was annoyingly unimpressive. At first she had assumed the world of academe would rise to Henry’s brilliance. When this didn’t happen she encouraged him to publish and otherwise put himself about. As he seemed unable to respond, doubt slowly began to set in. Finally she lost faith that he would fulfil his potential and loss of interest followed. She could perhaps have lived with his career failure and physical decline, repellent though she now found him, but she could not bear the sense that he was a wasted man, a pathetic human being. Love, if that was what it was, had turned first into doubt and anxiety and then into disillusion and contempt. She could barely look at him without wishing she didn’t have to. Increasingly she saved herself the trouble.

Her own academic career had developed as his stagnated. She had found a job at South of England University, a more established and higher status institution than Wash University. By the time she was thirty she had published a couple of articles in highly rated journals, followed a few years later by a book based on her research thesis. There had been other publications and she had recently been appointed to a Readership with a brief to promote feminist research. Currently she was working with a joint group from Wash University and South of England University on a collection of essays on the theme of ‘why feminism is relevant to the current generation of young women.’ Later in the day she had a meeting planned with the Wash section
of the collective. Feminism aside she had come to prefer working on publishing projects with women rather than men. Her experience was that women were more cooperative and more supportive: friendship and work seemed to integrate more easily.

Still in bed, Henry stared bleakly at the ceiling. Dark blotches and thin spidery lines danced before him. Lurching forward in an attempt to grab a dense looking giant floater, he was left squinting into his empty hand. He let loose a fart, strident with discontent but faintly comforting as it wafted across his backside. Suddenly conscious of his half-addled state he felt a surge of frustration. It was time he asserted himself. If he did intend to steal into his wife’s bed he better do so soon. Once fully awake she would certainly repel him. Even if he succeeded in getting into her bed he realised that his options would be limited. She called the shots between the sheets these days and they were few and far between. What he really wanted was a cuddle, some affection.
You sad old fart
. He stumbled out of bed again. He briefly considered taking off his pyjamas, contemplating a
tour de passion
. Instead he opted for caution, leaving his pyjama trousers on and replacing the top with his cleanest dirty shirt. Fortified by this compromise he stumbled towards his wife’s bedroom.

He opened Annette’s bedroom door softly. She was still asleep and conveniently facing the wall on the far side of the room. Defying his hangover Henry managed to cross the room unheard and slip unnoticed into bed beside her. For fully fifteen minutes he was able to gaze at the back of her head: the blond hair shading in places to grey, the slim, vulnerable neck and the lean, determined shoulders. Should he seize the moment and gently wake her or stretch out his fragile fantasy of intimacy for as long as possible. As ever the choice was taken from him. Abruptly Annette spun to face him her hazel eyes cold.

‘Henry, what the hell are you doing? Separate beds remember. Otherwise it just leads to complications. We’ve both got to function at work today. I don’t want another row. They exhaust me.’

‘I don’t want a row either. I still have feelings… I just thought,’ Henry knew he sounded desperate and pathetic. He attempted to embrace Annette. She jerked away from him.

‘Henry, you stink. You’re probably still drunk. Where’s your pride? We can’t go on like this.’

‘Annette, please. Let’s talk. Why are you doing this?’

‘Why am
I
doing this? You’ve got to be bloody joking. Go and take a look at yourself in the mirror.’

‘I already have.’

‘Well?’

‘Well what? I can’t help getting older?’

‘You know quite well it’s not that. Henry you’re an alcoholic. You’re a fucking shambles.’

Annette paused, softening slightly.

‘Look, I’m sorry. I really am. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that. It upsets me to see you like this. But it’s been upsetting me for years now. You won’t change. I need to live my own life. I’m only just waking up to what I can do, to what I want to do.’