Fifty One

Had it been armistice day? That the sudden urge to get out of bed and stand for the two minutes silence had been too much for him. That the resulting heart attack that killed him meant he'd never quite made it.


I'd just moved into my first house, a squalid nightmare of unfurnished lettings amidst a shining hope of the optimism that better things were just five minutes walk away. It was during these bold times that I began it all. Began, by living the kind of extreme lifestyle that you can only get by having exactly two pieces of furniture.

I don't remember why I'd contacted him, maybe it was just the excitement of those heady days. There were no more pressing reasons by then. An end to those awkward meetings in scattered public houses that dotted our overlapping ranges. The text message had been short and unconventional. Just an invitation. Warning an ageing hippy of a return to sitting on the floor. Ending with the line...

“I don't have any furniture”

John had agreed to visit, commenting enthusiastically on the civilised proximity. Although there was bad news. I never met the man, I just knew of him by proxy. I knew him quite well just through that. There was a house that needed to be cleared. Perhaps this was the first of a line of spooky coincidences, because everything had to go.

A fortnight later, John had arrived. An early witness to my new found independence. A tour of the house perhaps? The triumph of rising damp and the almost supernatural adhesion of a cistern tank that clung precariously to the wall. Steps so steep and treacherous that the very contemplation of negotiating them could encourage you to fall and suffer a fatal brain injury. Even the screaming children next door had obliged me with a live performance for my guest. Although the family of friendly mice declined to make an appearance.

The boiler had squealed and rasped while it did it's best to make the central heating live up to it's name. John had tried to fathom the strange noises emanating from within, but despite his temperament for mechanical things, left none the wiser. Just like I did three years later. Though these were brave new beginnings. A man of wisdom and insight, John might have agreed. After the rough, you'll know the difference, and only then can you recognise the smooth.

The ceilings were so high that they might have given me ideas by themselves alone. Though I was tired of talking about art while it still drifted in ethereal sketchbooks and conversations about the total width of the roll. The sheets of purple fabric suspended aloft, the practicalities and handing ornaments. I'd decided that these ideas were best left unspoken until their fruition.

For this sombre business such conversation would have seemed out of place.

The journey to Leicester had been unfamiliar, although it was still the same car as last time. Not one of the log string of motors that preceded. All gone to make way for relocation to the west coast. His mother was ill, and it was high time to finish what he had set out with the best intentions to do. Even the famed recovery truck had gone now, John had told me. No more fun at the lights, leaving the Corsa's and Saxo's standing. Their occupants making rude gestures.

Getting to Leicester, we'd joked about the prison as we sped past.

The car pulled up in a darkened street. It was quiet here, although scenes from the journey had given most of it away. The rows of terraces looked overbearing in their suggestion that this was not the kind of place you wanted to be. The number on the door said fifty one.

I recalled much trepidation outside, as John fumbled with the door key. The number of the house had muddled me into a paranoiac descent, because it was the same as my own door showed.

Inside, the hall was dingy and thick with grime, and the front room stacked with eclectic junk. It was difficult to see at first, and the lingering smell of incense was strong enough to be distracting.

Farther up the hall, the ghosts of furniture were faintly visible on the walls of the sitting room. Boxes of junk framing one corner of a grubby rug. There was a pair of boots on the floor. From that distance, they looked curiously like the ones I was wearing. On closer inspection, they were just like my own. If it wasn't for being the wrong size, I might have ended up wearing them. That could have been wrong in some situations. Though here, with the atmosphere charged with a quiet eeriness. Anything might have seemed normal.

While he lit another incense cone, John tried to encourage me to take the mouldy looking sofa. I knew the floor had been too much for him. Although there was little appeal in it for me either.

There was even the suggestion of taking one of the three tall kilner jars of what John described as sloe gin. It was a dark red colour from what I recall. Back then, I wasn't sure what slow gin was, but it didn't sound amenable to keeping your vision. I might have been right. As John appended that on several occasions, no one had the balls to drink it.

I'd been standing there for some time, trying and failing to take it all in. Swamped by the unlikely coincidences that seemed to cluster around this place. Not least cluster around me.

There'd been a biro sketch lying about on the floor and I'd been talking about this while I had a look through the kitchen cupboards. Full of filthy cooking pots and baking trays and locally sourced pub glassware. Most clearly knackered, the remainder in need of a good clean.

No, came the reply, it hadn't been something he'd drawn.

The departed had been more into making wall hanging art out of sheet metal. There were none left here. I would've have liked one of those, I'd said. All those fragments of his life preserved in these. Still hanging on walls somewhere.

When I turned back, John was drying his eyes. I took the sketch with me anyway.

Upstairs, it was mostly empty. Even the enormous cupboard. There was a half dismantled wardrobe in several pieces. Clustered in one corner of one room. And a basket containing a pile of packets of magnetic fridge letters.

The bed he died in was still there too. If this wasn't strange enough, the spookiest part was the sheets of fabric pinned to the ceiling above it.

Back downstairs, it was time to take the small collection of charitable and mainly serviceable belongings back home. Hung above the door, there'd been a horse brass, showing three horseshoes. When I'd asked what exactly it meant, John had simply taken it down and given it to me.

Back out the door, John had explained a few things on the drive home.

Our late friend had devised a plan to walk out of that door one day. Get in a truck and drive to Sri Lanka. This had been his retirement plan. It was going to be some sort of adventure at first. Mostly because he was going to have to wait a couple of years for any pension to be paid. Just a little wait, while he ducked and dived. The final, masterful tribute to a lifetime of ducking and diving.

The house was ready to be sold, and he'd acquired a large army surplus truck. This was to be his mobile base, and he'd been fixing the inside out so he could live in the thing. Getting everything just how he wanted it. It was a tricky job.

While renovating, he'd fallen off the roof of the truck and broken his arm.

Not long after, he'd cut the plaster from his arm, to carry on with his plan. An obstinate bastard to the last as John had remarked. The empty cast was there, for all to see. Amidst the boxes of junk in the sitting room.

Though this mishap had set him back a bit, and he'd been delayed. Not likely to be there for Christmas anymore. Carrying on regardless. Missing his planned departure date, still without the truck exactly how he wanted it. But on the eleventh of November, all of those plans of relaxing on the beach in Sri Lanka came to rest.

And although this was how it went, had it gone the other way. That while sleeping in that truck parked at the back of the beach he'd have been killed in a tsunami. John had said that heart attacks were much more favourable to this.

Distracted

Was it that word? But in exactly what context? Surely not the most lurid of meanings, that would be absurd. Although before you could consider it, you'd find your mind wandering. Not in any daydreaming sense, but in some curiously detached feeling of deja vu.

Just wandering...

...Wandering along the darkened streets of in the chill air, clouds of breath rising in front of your face. Walking amidst the shadows of the factories, with their ranks of windows. The chimneys rising as black silhouettes against the bright moonlit sky.

And on the corner by the canal bridge, Mill Street. Although there were no mills on Mill Street, just rows of terraced town houses. Along here and opposite this, a concealed alleyway. Those people who knew where would find a heavy panelled door. It's black paint peeled and blistered about the edges. As if from the tales of Ali Babar, the right words would open this door.

Inside, you would be greeted by a slight man with exotic clothes and yellow skin. His dark hair protruded from beneath a silken skullcap. Some suspected that he was nearly blind, for his spectacles covered eyes that seemed half closed. I never understood his name, although he would greet you as his “honoured guest” and usher you inside. Here, he would offer to relieve you of you hat and coat; and for the required fee, would offer you an embroidered jacket before barking something in his foreign tongue. The boy would scamper in with this, before rushing to get the coals and prepare.

Despite all the exuberant greetings and clapping of hands. The curious reverence with which you were treated. Despite the faces that looked out from the shadows behind half closed doors. I never lost sight of his stout friend who sat by the base of the stairs. Who sat in such a way that his grim look and foreboding silence might disguise his stature.

In good time, you were escorted up the stairs, where the familiar smell grew thicker and more enticing. The curtain on the landing revealed the richness of another culture. A topic of discussion here, that Mr Conan Doyle himself had visited this place. On examination, the gentleman had contested that that the exact image of this establishment had been described with astonishing accuracy in a story published in the Strand Magazine. Although much nonsense was often spoken here.

The landing was wide, with a long Persian carpet covering the obscuring the dark wooden floor. The wall had been split into a row of arches, with rich velvet drapes between the flickering gas lights. A silk curtain covered the doorway. Before it, a haze of white smoke hung in the air. Beyond it, the sound of bubbling water, and the smudge of orange glowing through the silk.

A familiar scene in the dim gas lighting. Armchairs encircling the pedestal tables, their french polished surfaces showing the occasional burn. The green velveted chez lounge along the wall furthest away from the fireplace. Billowing silk suspended from the ceiling and the white smoke mist that hung in the air at waste level. There were oriental pictures upon the green walls, with their simple form and delicate detail.

There, on top of the table, a gilded shisha. The hose adorned with much tassles, braid and finery. Smoke rising from the bowl in whisps that gathered around a greying coal. When he offered tea, I waved the boy away, and sat down to smoke.

There were no people here this time, save for a young woman with dark hair, who seemed to remain here. Unthinking and in some state of permanent distraction.