Part dubious, part expectant, Alicia and Davie looked from one parent to the other.
'Dad's moving back in. For the time being he'll continue to sleep on the…'
'The best news ever!' Davie rushed to hug Dad. He held out an arm, coaxing, welcoming his daughter to the embrace. She buried her face in her father's shoulder. In contrast to Davie's intense, warm squeeze, Alicia felt flimsy and lifeless. Many things needed time.
'There's one condition to this,' Ian stated, smiling down at his boy and girl, 'and he's called Sherlock.'
'Let's all go pick him up,' Cathy said, wiping away her single tear.
Some pressing concerns were slightly alleviated when Ian got a part-time job in the supermarket and, more notably, considering the peanuts he was paid, got rid of his motor. 'You know what, Davie?' he said, stuffing a roll of notes into his jeans as the buyer drove off. 'I can't say I feel sad to see it go. It isn't like I'm losing the limb that I always believed a motor to be.'
'Are you kidding yourself or me, Dad?' Lifts on demand had been Davie's kind of thing.
'Shanks's pony has its merits.' Ian patted his slender midriff. 'Come on, let's move it. I'm getting cold out here.'
Though the heating was off, Davie noted that he couldn't see his breath. Hoping that it didn't get any colder, he vanished up the stairs. Ian went into the front room. He nodded and his wife marked a cross on a document and put it in a pink ring binder file that Alicia no longer used. Its front cover featured Disney characters playing jazzy musical instruments. 'Plenty more to bite the dust,' Cathy said, summarily.
'It won't be long before Dan's house is ready to go on the market. And the quicker we get done and it's sold, the sooner I'll be paid for helping to spruce it up.'
'The day can't come soon enough.'
Their combined wages weren't combating the cost of living and, because they'd vowed to stay clear of credit as much as possible, life had a feeling like packing explosives into a homemade time bomb. Not essentially different to when they'd gone wild with the never-never. It was hard to see how you could win, despite the politicians' boasts on TV of an imminent recovery. Their statistics meant nothing, except they were always slyly trying to erase your actual experience from your memory. Ian's growing conviction that boom had always been for one kind of person while bust was for many others certainly helped to explain why the world got more unfair.
Ian and Cathy agreed that cutting back too austerely could make their family unbearably suffer. They all got one chance at life and they had to live no matter what kind of blasts, crashes or earthquakes shook and devastated the world beyond their control. Deliberately depriving themselves would create their own tremor of misery that, once and for all, wrecked the family's foundations. It would then cost far more than paper notes to deal with damage beyond repair.
'The closer you get to having nothing, the clearer it becomes that money isn't everything, but without it…'
'…You can't do a thing.'
The 'real' world that Ian had once believed in with all the assured bluster of a man of that world - and therefore 'reality' - looked more and more like the set of a B-movie that had the significant particulars wrong. As absurd as igloos in Africa. Why had he fallen for it? Because he didn't otherwise know what reality was and everybody needs a story that explains why things are as they are. Hadn't the papers and TV news bulletins peddled a narrative as if it was a secular gospel that, after all, turned out to be as rooted in superstition as any religion? Invisible hands and invisible deities, pah! Ian was learning to live on his senses, reorienting, changing his perspective; it was no longer acceptable to live grudgingly by the myth that whoever has money somehow has the deepest understanding of what's best, so let them get on with it.
Christmas drew ever closer. One evening, Ian realised that Cathy was intensely studying his face as he read his book's final chapter. He looked up. 'What is it?'
'These will raise some funds,' she replied softly, keeping her eyes fixed on him as she spread two gold necklaces and two gold rings over the coffee table.
A diamond in one of the rings sparkled and winked, and though Ian knew it was a trick of the light, he scowled, envisioning the bogus, romantic pomp of the man who had presented the jewellery to his wife.
'Believe you me,' she said, 'I'll be as pleased as you when they're gone. I…'
Ian refused to - couldn't - listen to another word. Drained of colour, he shakily got up, shambling out of the room like a man who'd suddenly put years on. It was exactly then that Cathy understood her husband's love for her was as strong as ever. Taken aback, she had to sit down. Not for the first time, she searched inside herself for her former affection. Even though her old feelings were truly dead, she smiled through her tears - through his forgiveness and gritty readiness to stand by his family, she had found a great respect for Ian that he had never previously commanded. Who knew what else might grow and blossom? If she had acted artlessly and others in her position would have secretly sold the jewellery, Cathy's heart glowed with an ironic gladness: didn't her honesty symbolically severe the link with the most recent, cheating past?
For the next two days they didn't speak unless the kids were around, and even then their curt, thorny words betrayed their strain. On Saturday morning, Cathy rose early, washed, dressed, and, without breakfasting or an explanation, got in her car and drove off. When Alicia came into the room with a plate of toast and honey, she informed Dad that Mum had sent a text saying she'd gone into Leeds. She waited for him to lift his eyes from the weather forecast on Mum's laptop. 'Why is she shopping?' the girl asked. 'I thought she was knocking unnecessary spending on the head.'
'It'll be for a bit of something she can't get locally.'
'Like what?'
'I don't know,' Ian answered irritably, throwing his arms in the air. 'Look, love, I'm going to walk Sherlock.' He rested the laptop on the coffee table and stood up. 'You going to be ok?'
'Davie's upstairs. Are things going back to how they were?'
The question stopped Ian in his tracks. 'No, they're not,' he replied, reaching out and gently squeezing his daughter's shoulder.
Cathy returned as the murky winter's day faded into night. 'Crack open this red wine,' she said like she meant business, pulling a bottle from her bag. 'We're celebrating.'
'Oh?' Ian reached into a kitchen cupboard for two glasses. His relief at her return consumed him - he couldn't draw out that silent treatment game for the world. 'In the name of what?'
'A profitable good riddance to bad rubbish. Over one thousand pounds, and I let them steal the deal at that.'
Cathy hadn't sunk her first glass of wine before she was listing some of her designer labels on E-bay. 'They've gone in no time,' she announced cheerfully, wrapping up the last parcel several days later. 'I'm happier in jeans these days,' she added when she looked up into her husband's puzzled face. 'And I'm about to list several pairs of shoes and my laptop itself. I'll make do with one of Davie's reconditioned models.'
'Now there's an idea. List mine as well. And let's cancel satellite TV. It's nothing but repeats, low-budget cheese and biased news - we're literally paying for propaganda.' And anyway, Ian was happier with his head in a book these days. Dickens, Hardy, Stoker; he'd picked up several nineteenth-century novels in a charity shop in town, starting on Dracula when everybody else went to bed the previous night. A few chapters in, he said to Sherlock, who was nestled beside him on the sofa, 'There's more than one kind of bloodsucker in this world and, from now on, they're going to find it more difficult to get at my veins.' And it was along such lines that he and Cathy next decided to go through the house and list anything unessential and saleable. 'It's a pity these unscrupulous bastards who rig prices for electricity, gas, housing, petrol and food can't be flogged. They'll charge us ordinary citizens for the air we breathe before they're finished…'
'Dad, you're ranting,' Alicia interrupted, 'and I don't l
ike it.'
'I'm sorry, kid, but the likes of me and your mum have worked all our lives and, before we know it, we'll have nothing to show for it. In the twenty-first century we shouldn't consider ourselves lucky because our lungs are cleaner than those of Victorian coalminers.'
'It's always ordinary folk that pay,' Cathy said, distantly. 'That's what my old dad used to say.'
'Nothing changes - your old man was too right! The wives of casino bankers won't be selling their best clothes. And these expenses fiddling politicians respond by manipulating the situation to cheat ordinary folk and ruin any service that…'
'Didn't we spend the money that got us into debt, Dad?'
'Davie, we were fooled. Sold a lifestyle that had no future and… Don't make me lose my thread!'
'Ok, Dad.' Davie grinned at Alicia and Mum when Dad paced over to the mantelpiece, shaking his head. 'Whatever you say, Dad.'
'Our problems are symptoms of the bigger problem not the cause of it. We're cutting back because - what do you know? - we were never paid enough in the first place. It doesn't bloody matter how they go on about two point nine per cent GDP, IMF forecasts and the rest! Consider the world's latest insanity! People are supposed to rest their weary heads in a home not be driven to blowing their brains out because of housing bubbles!'
'Ian, that's enough. Any more talk like that and Alicia won't be able to sleep tonight. We've heard someplace or other about the terrible state of the world, thank you. Going on in front of our kids won't solve anything. But while we're on the subject of houses, Dan phoned earlier.'
'I've spoken to him. I'm going round tomorrow night to help decorate one of the bedrooms. It'll soon be up for some luckless, hopeful souls to chain themselves to…'
Dan's decision to sell up had been made for him by the sporadic, unreliable nature of the work that was coming his way. He'd be asking more than four times than that he'd paid for the property, and though he was positive he wasn't illiterate when it came to money matters, he found it flummoxing that some average punter would expect to cover such a mortgage and enjoy life when the average wage in the area was so inadequate. It's too easy to see why things don't add up, he said, before confessing he felt lucky to be jumping off the mortgage merry-go-round because his missus had a roof over her head to share. Ah, thought Ian - dipping his brush in the creamy, pink paint - an audience! 'The system isn't set up for the likes of you and me. It's set up against us. If we get a good deal, it's a pure fluke.' He swished his brush on the wall, thickly daubing fresh paint over the horrible crimson that had roused the suspicion, when he first saw it, that biker Dan had converted to Satanism. 'You see the writing is nearly always on the wall for us and they just cover it up like we're doing. Everything's constantly whitewashed. Do you hear these politicians and corporate men trying to blind us with the 'science' of economics? The bottom line is they can't break with the cycle of boom and bust, but what comes and goes around for them is completely different from what comes and goes around for people like us.'
'And what are we 'hiding' with our paint?'
'The fact that this ex-council house isn't worth such a huge sum of money. And it was built to provide an affordable home.'
'The market…'
'… has something wrong with it if having a roof over your head costs…'
'Ok, ok. I get it. So shut it.' Dan couldn't stand the stale smell of boring politics, which his brother reeked of these days. Radical or middle of the road, Dan had no time for anything that doesn't do what it says on the tin. 'I'm going to finish off the landing. A length of skirting needs glossing.'
He hadn't been out there one minute when Ian switched on the radio, tuning into a station that churned out the sugary pop music his brother detested. 'What the hell do you call that?' Dan yelled. 'That stuff turns people's brains to mush. The music industry is a joke these days, I'll tell you. Anybody with a mind of their own who knows what to do with a real instrument, bah, they can forget it! They're going nowhere. Disposable puppets are flaunted before the gullible public for easy dough.'
'You don't say, you old headbanger?'
'I do say. Play something half-decent or turn it off!'
'How about the news?'
'Quit that sniggering. I hear enough news from you.'
'Peace out,' Ian grinned, pulling the plug.
'That saved your life.'
'Made any more progress on your life's dream?'
'It's blazing into action before you know it.' Dan stuck his head round the door. 'Since I've had it in the garage at Jane's place, I've worked on it every day, more or less.'
'How is Jane? It was great finally meeting her.'
'She's rocking. But the bike, yeah, another wad coming my way shortly. Don't I need it.'
'So, it's the end of your dream? I suppose Jane reckons you'll make a better domestic angel than you will a Hell's Angel?'
'Don't push your luck, sunshine.'
'Well, you were a blessing letting me stay here for such a time.'
'I've only one brother. And it's as well.'
As soon as the door opened, Sherlock placed his paws on Ian's shins as if to push him back out. The pup's tail wagged frantically and his soft brown eyes gazed up with thrilled yearning, doubly reflecting his master's image in miniature as he crouched down. 'Ok, little buddy,' Ian said, petting Sherlock, 'we'll be walking when I've had a coffee and got out of these dumb clothes.' Drawing upright, Ian kicked off his shoes and in odd socks - one black, one blue - walked across the hall and through to the kitchen. Sherlock followed. Ian unbuttoned his denim jacket and rummaged in its inside pockets. Producing his slim wallet, he put it and his key on the work top. Bar the kitchen clock's faint ticking, a hush had fallen over the house. Cathy was at work and the kids were at school and college. Bless them. Since that day he'd been made redundant, hadn't they all rode out a tough, emotional journey? Even after its challenges and soul-searching, they'd travelled nowhere so much as a few steps in the general direction they might once and should have taken.
The more Ian had considered it, the more he'd seen that they'd lost their way because, over time, when the kids had left infancy behind, it had become less and less clear what they were working towards other than an image of flash, heroic ladder-climbers - the dream of classlessness peddled from every official outlet and which, like most dreams, had just tenuous, twisted links with reality. How the plant's harsh economics and Cathy's nightmare romance had made them open their eyes! Life had become a maze of wrong turns with spotlighted, slick welcome signs and sensational, irresistible mirages - all credit cards accepted - that stirred such reckless, selfish desires that the family's heart and soul was ravished along with everything else. Is it possible to recover from that? One thing was certain; whether they'd learned lessons too late and too painfully or whether they'd dig deep and unearth the resilience to adapt and develop stronger bonds, they had no option but to keep on stumbling ahead into the weeks, months, maybe years, trying, somehow, to find a more navigable, prosperous path. It was impossible to name their destination let alone know if they'd ever arrive, but, perhaps, Ian thought, no one ever arrives in life because the point of life is the journey. If that is the case, his and Cathy's rediscovery of a too often forgotten, age-old wisdom might put them in good stead for the remainder of their passage. People - and not possessions - make a family home and define where you're from and, if not where you're heading, how you should conduct your attempt to get there.
The crazy thing was that the goods they'd coveted when they'd wed had been supposed to make life easier, more comfortable, and then, when the credit the banks threw around had allowed them to own such luxuries, they'd actually come to resemble instruments of destruction and bondage, not least because of the bloody repayments. It was undeniable: much of the problem stemmed from their confusion of dreams and reality, and from what they'd chosen to believe despite the contrary voices of their better judgement constantly nagging away at the b
acks of their minds.
That the world was rushing into a permanently sparkling future in which swaggering around shopping malls - rather than reading your moral compass - indicated you were on the right tracks was a most incredibly enchanting delusion. The more other people appeared to be bedazzled and blinded by advertisements' fake promises and intimidations, the more terrifying the idea of being left behind, and so, like everybody else, they'd abandoned themselves to the mad race for instant gratification and dubiously-earned status. In the process, they'd neglected to coolly look up and spot the obvious con and the desert ahead. It shouldn't have taken any great insight to pinpoint danger. Just a quick, thoughtful inspection of their pay-slips would have told them that nothing added up unless they were meant to be excluded from the free for all or they were bang on course to crash…
When all was said and done, they'd only just dazedly climbed out of the wreckage, dusted themselves down, nursed their wounds, and picked out a way to go about life that had no signposts and, doubtless, more pitfalls than ever. Ian understood the world was a lonelier place for his family because so many people were still pushing and being pushed in the same lunatic direction that had been to their utter detriment. And those who run things couldn't or wouldn't envision any other way. Maybe, if everything went wrong, the members of the Randall family would make it without each other, though it was far more probable that one or two or all of them would fall by the wayside. They only had one another and that meant trying to stick it out together come what may…
The flat ring of the phone dragged Ian from his reverie. Another cold-caller? Maybe he'd better take it in the event something vaguely meaningful was involved. He stepped over Sherlock and went through to the living room to pick up the receiver. 'Hello… Johnny! How are you keeping? It's good to hear from you… I'm getting along in my own way… Yes, I've got your books. I can get them to you… You want people to go where? I'll have to think about it - I've never seen myself doing anything like that…' But then, the problem with that argument was almost everything he had seen himself as being and doing had turned out to be other identities and causes that didn't suit the wearer.
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