Conversations with The Bearded Man (9) – Being There (part two)

Continuing from part one, published yesterday.

…Strange how different a house looks when it is full. Well, I say ‘full’, but that’s a bit of an exaggeration really. Even in a house as tiny as this, it would need a lot more people to actually fill it. Certainly a lot more people than I knew. As it was, most of the guests today were officially ‘Sara’s friends’. Until Sara came along, the most people I had ever had around here was one – and then only if you count the postman. Only once in my life had I been hugged by more people: when I scored in the Over-35’s indoor football final and, strange as it was, I preferred the hugs I was getting today. They were far more fragrant, softer and, if I’m honest, less masculine. Hearty back-slapping was noticeably absent. Even at fifty, there is so much to be said for an unsolicited hug from a member of the opposite sex.

I had never before been the recipient of such a gift: a surprise ‘combined fiftieth birthday and one year since you met me’ party hosted by Sara. I had never before been so completely taken in. (Well, as long as you don’t count the bloke with the ‘lottery tickets’ on the Costa del Sol.) Even after I had walked into the darkened room to find, when the lights snapped on, it filled with people all ‘raising a glass’ to me, it took quite some time for me to process what was actually happening. It took me even longer to equate the party with Sara’s recent ‘suspicious behaviour’, followed by, perhaps, a twenty nano-second gap before the searing embarrassment of knowing that I had ever allowed myself to suspect her hit me with a 300 degree roasting down the back of the neck.

I was hell bent on apology, but she had other plans. “Come on Jim,” she said. “Close your mouth: you look like somebody’s stolen your cigar. You’ve got a lot of people to meet. You need to tell them how grateful you are to have met me.” And off we went on a round of all the people who were now our friends. They all congratulated me on my good fortune in meeting Sara (with which I had to concur) and reaching fifty years of age (which, given the lifestyle I had led for many years was probably an achievement worthy of comment) and, eventually, I found myself back where I had begun, a glass in each hand, staring into the eyes of Lorelei. “And of course, you know Christian,” said Sara, kissing my forehead and wandering away to be elsewhere.
“Christian?”
“Don’t you like it?”
“I thought it was Lorelei. That is you, I thought you were Lorelei.”
He smiled, moving slightly to allow me to stand beside him. “I’m sure I am,” he said.
“And Christian?”
“Almost certainly.”
“I don’t suppose you ever actually told me your name, did you?”
“Did you ever ask me?” he asked, and for the life of me, I couldn’t remember. “She’s quite a woman, isn’t she?”
“Sara?”
He frowned until, quite suddenly, he realised that I was joking.
“How do you know her?”
“Oh, you know, we just bump into one another from time to time.”
“Like you bump into me?”
“You make me sound dreadfully clumsy,” he said.
“You were with me when I first ‘bumped into’ Sara in the park and when I re-bumped into her in the cinema.”
“We’re quite accident prone aren’t we, the three of us.” He was cradling a small crystal glass tumbler – the best one we had, I noted – of Scotch in his hands and I hoped it wasn’t the rubbish that I normally drink. His collarless white shirt was spotless and he was the only person in the world that I could think of who was capable of wearing a waistcoat with style. I remember feeling shocked that, like everyone else, he had left his boots at the door. Unsurprisingly his socks were immaculate. It was no surprise when Sara appeared, carrying a bottle of the kind of Malt Whisky that most of us only ever see on our fiftieth birthday, to top up his glass. He smiled benignly, and Sara glowed perceptibly. I wondered how many other people he regularly ‘bumped into’. How many other lives he had saved… Now, there was a strange thought. Had he saved my life? I don’t think he had done anything so dramatic, but he had helped me piece it back together. And Sara? Why had she needed him? Oddly we had never spoken about him, despite the fact that we were both conscious that it was he who had brought us together. Had he saved Sara?
“She is a remarkable woman,” he said, inside my head as always. “I was at such a… loose end when I met her. She gave me a purpose. She brought me peace whenever we spoke whilst you, you brought me… variety. You asked me questions that had to be answered. You made me think about what my answers should be…”
“You always seemed to have all the answers,” I said.
“Perhaps you just asked the right questions.”
“Ok, then here’s my question for today; do you believe in guardian angels?”
He looked down into his whisky, swirling it slowly in the glass. “Yes,” he said finally. “I believe that I have two…”

In case you have read this with no idea of what it is all about, first let me assure you, you are not alone and secondly, let me direct you to the previous episodes featuring these characters:
Episode 1 – An Introduction
Episode 2 – A further excerpt
Episode 3 – A further further excerpt
Episode 4 – Lorelei
Episode 5 – A pre-Christmas exchange
Episode 6 – Newark
Episode 7 – Helpline
Episode 8 – The Cinema
Episode 9 – Being There (part one)

Conversations with The Bearded Man (9) – Being There (part one)

…Sara left the house while I was still in bed, not sleeping, but just keeping my head down, because I knew from the way she was preparing for the day that she didn’t want to speak to me. There had been a few days like that lately. And mystery phone calls. If I asked who they were from she would say “No-one” and if I asked what they were about, she would say “Oh, nothing.” I was closing in on fifty years of age and though, I must admit, never the most intuitive of souls, even I could see the signs. Problem is, I had no idea what they were the signs of…

I climbed out of bed as the car pulled away and went downstairs to make coffee. Sara’s phone was on the table. I stared at it for a while and thought about opening it to examine her call record, but not for long: whatever the circumstances, that felt like a betrayal. Besides, if her phone was in the house, she couldn’t take any mare calls, could she? Leaving the phone where it was, I went back up the stairs. “Only me,” she shouted on her return, just seconds later. “I left my phone. I’m expecting some important calls today,” and with that she was gone.

Sara had moved in with me six months before and we seemed to be getting along just fine. Cross words were few and we laughed a lot, but her behaviour had changed lately. She seemed distracted, she sighed resignedly whenever I did anything stupid, but did not comment even when I dressed especially to provoke a reaction. She passed over the hated corduroy waistcoat with nothing more than a raised eyebrow and even the pale green chinos prompted nothing more than a silent ‘tut’.

…Knowing that I would otherwise spend an unproductive day feeling sorry for myself, I pulled on my running gear and headed out for what I fancifully called ‘a jog’ around the park – the very place where I first met Sara, probably a year or so ago now. The fresh air would clear my head and the steady thump of my feet on the tarmac would soothe my soul, but there was a slight drizzle in the air and I almost turned back before taking my first stride, when I saw the supermarket delivery man next door and his cheery wave ensured that I had to keep going: lack of moral fibre seriously affects delivery times around these parts.

By the time I reached the park gates, a hundred yards or so along the road, I was already approaching death: my chest burned with every rasping breath, my eyes misted over, my heart had moved up into both ears and was banging, arhythmically on my eardrums, the muscles in my legs were trying to tear their way out. I headed towards the top of the hill and a shaded, hidden corner that housed a small memorial bench tucked, discreetly, behind a bush of unknown genus: its very isolation one of the reasons why the park had to close at night. It was the perfect place for me to gather my what-passed-for thoughts whilst I sucked some air back into my lungs; to rest my weary bones and count down the twenty minutes that I would allow before reappearing, looking for the world like a man who had just jogged all the way around the bottom of the park on the other side of the hill. As it was, I had to walk a little before I got there, but I managed to effect a quite passable limp, so no-one was any the wiser.

“I didn’t know you ran,” said the voice behind me.
“You!” I said. I didn’t need to turn around. I somehow sensed that this was the moment for Lorelei’s reappearance. I acknowledged – if only to myself – that actually, I might have been looking for him. “What are you doing here?”
“I was just passing through the park,” he said, “on the way to do a little errand, when I saw you limping and thought that you might need a little help.”
“I wasn’t actually limping,” I said.
“I know,” he replied. “You weren’t exactly jogging either.” Infuriating. “I understand that you and Sara are together now.”
“How do you know that?”
“Is it a secret?”
“No.”
“Then that’s how I know. How is she?”
“Sara?”
“Is there somebody else?” As usual during these conversations, I began to understand the sensation of being a rabbit staring into the headlights of an oncoming lorry.
“No,” I said. “…At least not for me.”
“Ah,” he said.
“What do you mean ‘Ah’?” I snapped, not unreasonably I thought at the time.
“Just ‘Ah’… Would you like a mint?” He held out the pack and I took one, mainly to make certain that it was real.
“Are you a figment of my imagination?” I asked.
“I don’t believe so,” he said. “What makes you ask?”
“You only ever seem to appear when I’m troubled.”
“Perhaps you only notice me when you’re troubled. Perhaps for the rest of the time, you just don’t see me. Maybe you’re a figment of mine.” I looked at him, the long white hair, the neatly trimmed white beard, the long black coat and the snakeskin ‘cowboy’ boots he always seemed to wear. Was it even possible to not see him? “So why are you troubled?” he asked.
“Did I say I was troubled?”
“Well yes, I believe you did.”
“Ah,” I sucked my mint. “It’s just that…” I bit my tongue. “There’s something she isn’t telling me.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know, do I? That’s the whole problem.”
“Well, do you know why?”
“Why what?”
“Why you think that there’s something she’s not telling you?”
“She’s just acting strange…” I looked into slightly disapproving eyes. “…Strangely… distracted. And she keeps getting phone calls: won’t tell me who they’re from or what they’re about.”
“Oh, I see… Can we walk, I’m getting cold?” We strolled back down the hill towards the park gates in silence, mine brooding, his contemplative. “Does she often keep secrets?” he asked as we walked out onto the street.
“Well, I wouldn’t know, would I?”
“I suppose not, no… Why do you think that’s what she’s doing?”
“Have you another suggestion?”
“Perhaps it’s just something she wants to keep to herself for now. Perhaps just be patient for now. Just be there.”
“That’s all very well, but…”
We had reached the steps that led to the house. It used to be my house, but it became our house within seconds of Sara moving in and now I couldn’t picture an inch of it without her in it. He laid his hand lightly on my arm. His touch felt like an electric shock: an intravenous Espresso. “Just be there,” he said. He held out a small envelope. “This is for Sara. …My little errand,” he said by way of explanation. I took the envelope, knowing that no amount of explanation was going to make any sense to me now, and he turned to leave with a smile and just the slightest of nods. Of course he knew where Sara lived – of course he did – but how could he have an envelope for her? What kind of message was in it? “But…” I started.
“Just be there.” he said and he was gone.

I weighed the note in my hand. Was it possible that he was on his way to deliver it when he accidentally encountered me in the park? That wasn’t the way he usually worked. Why was he sending her messages anyway? The envelope was not sealed and I knew that I could just open it and read whatever was inside, but I also knew that he would know and that was all I needed to resist the temptation. I placed it on the mantle and when Sara returned from work I told her that I had found it on the doorstep when I got back from jogging. She read it quickly, slid the paper back into its envelope and pushed the envelope down into her pocket.
“Who’s it from?” I asked.
“No-one,” she said.
“Well what’s it about?”
“Oh, nothing…”

Part Two follows tomorrow

Greater Things

I have been working on greater things – not, I hasten to add, in import: simply in volume – and my mind has got itself lodged across the bigger page. I cannot, for the life of me, think of anything worth the saying that does not run to at least a couple of thousand words: if it’s worth the saying, it must be worth me throwing a bucketful of adjectives at. I have fallen into a ‘more words good, less words bad’ mindset that means that I am writing nothing I can use here. My ‘Blog Reserve’ has been used; I have nothing to fall back on, and I now have to ‘write on the hoof’ if I want to keep publishing to my self-imposed schedule. And I do: it is important to me.

Other than when I have something that I really want to get off my chest, I very rarely write my posts on the day of publication. I like to check them. Occasionally, if I am feeling particularly frisky, I like to drop a little joke in here and there. I like to re-read when enough time has elapsed to stop me making the same mistakes again. I need to read like everybody else: with no idea of where it is going, so that I do not slip into the trap of assuming that everybody knows what I am talking about – even when I know that I don’t. Even when writing for a readership that (although of infinitely higher calibre) would comfortably fit inside Robbie William’s cap*, I like to do things to the best of my ability and, for me, that means reading things through until they squeak.

But I have cost myself that privilege. I have taken my eye off the ball, my foot off the gas, and the lid off the scotch. I have found too many other things to do that have swallowed up the time I should have set aside for this and I’m not entirely certain of how to remedy the situation. I would really like to revisit my old friends Frankie & Benny, but they need time – I need a post or two in hand before I can give them the room they need. I think I would probably also like a little run of Dinah & Shaw, The Meaning of Life, The Writer’s Circle and even The Bearded Man – if I can find my way back to him – time to tell a few stories. They are my favourite things to write and, without fail, my least popular posts – possibly because they are longer or, more likely, because they are not very good – but, as things stand, I do not think it is at all possible for them to harm my statistics any further.

If I miss a post or two along the way, I apologise. I’m sure you will manage perfectly well without me (although this is not my plan). One way or another I will be attending to the matters I need to be attending to whilst ignoring the matters I ought to be attending to. And when I’ve done it, I’ll tell you about it, at length…

*Last week my total readership was smaller than during a couple of weeks in May 22 when I didn’t publish anything at all. Perhaps that’s what I need to be doing…

Friends Like These

As the more dedicated amongst you are fated to discover over the weeks ahead, I have started to revisit some old friends in order to discover how they are faring in this straitened world of ours. Some of them have allowed me back into their lives much more easily than others. One or two of them had locked and bolted their doors so securely that I had to both warm and butter the spoons before I was able to prise my way in. Making new friends is instinctive – the world was built on co-operation – but keeping them is a learned skill. Friendship can, with neglect, all too easily disintegrate into disagreement and, if we’re not very careful, to hatred. Our world will, one day, be destroyed by enmity. None of us want to be BF’s with someone who would seek to conquer the world, but there is, I suppose, a temptation to want to be on their side if they should succeed. My own friendship groups do not tend to contain ‘world conquerors’, most of my friends struggle to get on top of their TV remote.

People rarely change fundamentally. Time brings small changes to us all, but essentially we remain the people we always were. I am a man – I can check if you insist – and I have many of the same friends that I have had for the past fifty years, even if I have never really seen them in those intervening decades. We will not have changed enough to not get along and if we have major differences of opinion, well it’s easy enough to ignore those isn’t it and talk about school. I have friends I have never met but with whom I know I would get along swimmingly if ever I did. I am an open book, a man of bottomless shallows, I do not have sufficient character to make enemies. The worst I normally engender is apathy.

Some of my old friends here require far more time and attention than others. The Bearded Man, for instance, uses far more energy than Frankie and Benny. He needs me to pick over every word and phrase, he needs the kind of precision I do not usually possess, he needs a reason whilst the two elderly besties need me only to listen in every now and again. They will go wherever they like. Dinah and Shaw have popped into these pages more often than anybody else, but I can only ever visit them when I am in exactly the right state of mind and, when I am, I generally have nowhere else to go for a while. The man in the lovat coat* is the man I hope never to be, but I fear, from time to time, that I might become.

I think all of our friends carry with them elements of ourselves: some we find desirable and some that we do not, whilst we carry with ourselves elements of all of those with whom we spend any time. We devote most of our time to those we enjoy, whilst those we try to avoid are those most like ourselves. I wonder if it is possible to actually have nothing in common with anybody, and if it is, I wonder if we could still be friends?

Perhaps I’ll ask around…

Envoi – some of these friends (in particular The Bearded Man and Dinah & Shaw) once they have let me in, do not let me go until they are ready. Their posts are longer and, if I’m honest, there is little I can do about it except release them sporadically and, possibly, on Fridays to give you the weekend. I hope it works…

I will drop the first of these tomorrow in my normal slot – please accept this as a friendly warning…

*The Meaning of Life

A Little Fiction – Super-Nigel and A Covid Adventure

Who needs an excuse to use this wonderful Hunt Emerson cartoon for ‘The Globe-Trotting Adventures of Nigel Tritt’ one more time?

For crispinunderfelt.

These characters were all created by myself and my great buddy, Chris (the afore-mentioned Mr Underfelt – his own blog is here) for a long, long ago radio series called The Globetrotting Adventures of Nigel Tritt (which I have written about previously here and, at the end of which, you may notice, I promised to never mention again). In keeping with the ethos of this blog, I felt that it was high time that I looked in on them to see how they are all coping with advancing years in this age of ‘New Normal’ – in short, how they are getting on. This is what I found…

Super-Nigel Tritt tucked himself tightly within the folds of his tartan ‘Slanket’, becoming increasingly agitated as he fiddled with the buttons of the TV remote. ‘Corinth, Corinth!’ he called, ‘Can you do something with this TV? The remote is not working and all the programs seem to be in Bulgarian.’

Corinth walked into the room. She still held the pneumatic promise of a twenty-something, although it did appear to be deflating in places. ‘That’s the telephone’, she said, taking it from his hand. ‘The TV remote is on the coffee table next to your glasses and your pills, which you haven’t taken as usual. The man on the TV is Danny Dyer – he always sounds like that.’

Nigel shifted uncomfortably in his chair: his leotard was giving him merry hell. ‘I don’t suppose you could just…?’

‘Again?’ asked Corinth, ‘I don’t know why you insist on wearing that thing these days. Just wait a minute whilst I go and get a couple of spoons.’

‘Remember to warm the cream,’ Nigel yelled at her retreating back. ‘You know what the cold stuff did to me last time.’

‘How could I forget,’ Corinth mumbled, with an involuntary shudder.

Covid isolation had proved to be particularly difficult for the retired Super-hero. Granted, his globe-trotting adventures had become increasingly rare in recent years – particularly since he now found it difficult to dodge anything more lethal than a speeding marshmallow – but this enforced isolation from his friends, How, the Professor and Freddie the Spy had left him low. They had tried Zoom calling on a number of occasions, but never with great success. The Doctor, as How preferred to be known, was struggling with his electric wheelchair – assembled from the bottom half of a Dalek – which had developed an alarming tendency to do exactly as it pleased. He suspected tampering by Davros, or possibly Huawei, but whatever the reason, he was seldom able to be at his laptop when the call came through – especially since his ‘assistant’ kept leaving it upstairs.

The Professor, the most technically gifted of the team, had become deeply suspicious of any post-millennial technology, believing that it was responsible not only for Covid, but also for the financial crash of 2008, the ceaseless seep of the gourmet coffee shop and a particularly persistent carbuncle with which he had been engaged in battle since 2013. Frankly, when they did manage a virtual ‘get-together’, his extreme moodiness ensured that he was never the best of company. Like Nigel, he desperately wanted to get back out into his world of do-gooding, but he had become, of late, concerned about How’s ability to pilot his time craft in anything approaching an acceptable manner; indeed, their most recent adventure, back at the dawn of time, was a perfect example. If Corinth had not somehow managed to bang two stray atoms together, Lord knows what might have happened. Besides, the on-board toilet arrangements were appalling and in no way equal to the requirements of four men with failing prostates and a woman whose pelvic floor was practically subterranean. In the Professor’s mind, it would be no bad thing if Nigel were to hang up his super-leotard for good.

The one member of the team who could always be relied upon to be present for their on-line chats was Freddy, although his paranoia had blossomed to such an extent that his many layers of auto-encryption meant that, in practice, it was almost impossible to see him unless you viewed the screen through a colander, and his voice emerged sounding something like a man-sized cockroach, which did rather set the teeth on edge.

Corinth herself, determined to confound her air-headed reputation of old, had studied every scientific home course available. As a result, she was perfectly capable of constructing a working nuclear reactor out of two kitchen spatulas and a selection of cutlery – although her efforts to work out what day it was still left much to be desired.

Even Nigel’s leotard, the seat of all his super-powers, had been less effective since Corinth had attempted to remove ‘certain stains’ by popping it into a boil wash, and it was only by dint of the ancient elastic going that he was able to struggle into its shrivelled remains at all. Yet despite its tendency to bring on the worst of his rashes, Nigel still liked to feel cocooned within its sagging mesh during times of stress – and times seldom came more stressful than these.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said to Corinth as she re-entered the room.

‘Oh gawd,’ she muttered.

‘We need to get the team back together. I have a plan to defeat this viral scourge.’

Corinth gazed into his glaucous eyes, for once sparkling again with a hero’s zeal.

‘Well?’ she said.

‘Well,’ he queried. ‘Well what?’

‘You just said about getting the team back together.’

‘Did I? I wonder why?’ he stroked his chin and small flakes of yesterday’s boiled egg fluttered down onto his lap. ‘Oh yes, my plan!’ he said at last. ‘My plan to save the world from Coronavirus. It is, I believe, infallible.’

‘I’ll make the call,’ Corinth stammered with genuine pride. ‘I always knew you’d come up with a plan… What is it by the way?’

‘What?’

‘The plan.’

‘Plan? What plan?’

‘To defeat Covid. You said you had a plan to defeat Covid.’

‘Oh that,’ he said. ‘Didn’t I tell you?’

‘No,’ she said, feeling the optimism drain from her like water down a dentist’s sink.

‘Oh bugger,’ he said…

I haven’t met these people in many years, but it took me no time to become familiar with them again. I enjoyed the catch up. I hope that I was faithful to their spirit.