British Winters

  Chapter Two

  The Working and the Homeless

  It's the day after the play. I wake up at 11:44am. No, that's not right, I have been awake since 3am; it's at 11:44am that I give up on the horizontal and go vertical, which is somewhat unsuccessful. Hunched over, I scuttle to the bathroom puffy-eyed and so bed-headed that I could win an award, if such an award were out there for me to win. This is real bed-head, not the kind of bed-head that the trendy crowd spend an hour of their time and several of their unearned pounds in some misguided attempt to make themselves look as though they have just rolled out of bed. This is the real deal; unstyled, uncool, and inexpensive. The right side of my hair has an impressive hair hump; it looks like I'm trying to conceal an empty toilet roll tube. On the other side I have one of those cool spiky bits. Unfortunately, it is limp and looks more like a miniature side ponytail.

  A shower is needed. I have slept in yesterday's clothes and honk like a darts player's armpit. Let me retract that last statement; I neither know, nor want to know what that odour would smell like but I am pretty sure it does accurately describe my morning musk.

  In the bathroom, two feline eyes watch me from on top of the cistern - an intruder in my home. An intruder I will talk more of later, all you need to know at this point is that he is there and I am uncomfortable. The shower allows me to enter and waits for me to reach for the taps, before releasing the small amount of water still left in its head from the previous shower. Now icy cold, it streams down my back and disappears down man's own canyon. I have attained the upright posture I tried for when first exiting the bed.

  I am a shower person which conflicts with my personality. Shower people want to be energised: the pounding of every drop stimulates their muscles and the water rushing across their face washes away any thoughts of sleep that may still remain. A shower person exits their tiny cubicle anew, the failings of the day before cleansed from their soul. A bath person wallows and I don't mean that in a bad way; they take it as a time to zone out as either a reward for a good day or to soothe away a bad one. They are the kind of people who are not off to save the world afterwards; the only achievement post bath time is successfully getting out of the tub. And don't start quoting Churchill: ‘Why stand when you can sit?’. I’m pretty sure he wasn't talking about showers and baths if he even said it at all. And if he was talking baths he was talking about 1940s baths; small, made of tin, and two inches of lukewarm water. Not your piping hot, bath bomb, Radox reservoirs of the modern age. Damn, I've lost the thread. Oh yeah, the point is bath people aren't action people, whereas shower people normally are. I don't fit anywhere in this weak untested study of shower people vs. bath people that I just made up. I am a creature of sloth no matter how I bathe.

  By the time I make it from the shower to the sink I am hunched over again. Staring misty-eyed at the reflection of the bath in the mirror I regret my choice.

  "I should have wallowed," I state aloud to no one.

  My bed head is gone but the aging of time is still there. I'm in my early thirties; let’s not put an actual figure to it. People tell me the beard doesn't help; they say a beard adds ten years, so the facial hair is putting me into my forties. Well, good, at least I look how I feel. In actual fact the beard hides any extra chins I may or may not have, so it really is a case of choosing your battles.

  "Do I look like a hobo? Is it bad to look like a hobo?" My reflection mimes my words and gives no answers.

  There are unwritten rules to everything; they may differ from person to person, nevertheless, we all carry out our action to a set of rules set by ourselves or our peers. A good example is the reuse of clothes, as defined by me. Any clothing item that comes into direct contact with any of the sweatier, stinkier areas has a one-day use. So that's socks and underpants. T-shirts are also in this group. Some folks may think this is a two-day item; they are wrong. Any kind of top that has nothing separating it from your armpits is going to get stinky and, more importantly, is closer to nose level than the other two. If you try to push a T-shirt to two days those around you will know the O is coming from your B. Leg garments, your jeans, trousers, cords etc. can have up to three days. Yes, they get dirty but if you're not rolling around in mud your only concern is smell and pants are protected by your underpants, as long as you follow the first rule. If you wear sweatpants and are wearing them for the right reasons e.g. an activity that might make you sweat, this rule does not apply and they become a one-day item. Jumpers also get up to three days for the same reason unless you are not wearing an undershirt, and what kind of backward ass yokel are you if you're wearing a jumper without an undershirt? The same statement goes out to those of you who go ‘commando’.

  Unwritten rules like this plague my mind in place of some more useful information. The clothes I slept in are all voided; it's all fresh stuff today. I choose my favourite pair of faded blue jeans from a stack of faded blue jeans, a red T-shirt that says: ‘My Other T-Shirt Is Blue', a pair of black socks and Spiderman underwear that were meant for fat kids but happily fit a fully grown man and his gut. The trainers are my blue Adidas Campus that always kill my ‘Why do you feel the need to wear name brands?' argument, which I start and the recipient ends by pointing out my hypocritical footwear.

  A red light flashes beside a green one; how festive. It’s my answering machine and four calls await me. At least two are going to be my mother calling to scorn me for not attending Hannah's play. One will be the girlfriend and the fourth will either be another scorning from mother or an unknown. The curiosity of the unknown is why I press ‘play’.

  "MESSAGE ONE, RECEIVED YESTERDAY AT 11:22AM"

  "Hello, it's mum, where are you? It’s about to start. I am going in. If you come in late stand at the back so you don’t disturb anyone."

  "BEEP! MESSAGE TWO, RECEIVED YESTERDAY AT 2:19PM"

  "So we’re home and Hannah's mad. Why weren't you there, Noel? She wants you to see it more than anyone. She says no matter whether your dad and I were married, it's you who's the bastard not your brother and today I agree. Oh, and thanks for teaching my little girl the definition of the word bastard."

  "BEEP! MESSAGE THREE, RECEIVED TODAY AT 10:36AM"

  "Hi sweetie, it's the love of your life. I'm done with Uni for Christmas. Yay! Come around and we'll have some afternoon delight. Skyrockets in flight… "

  "BEEP! MESSAGE FOUR, RECEIVED TODAY AT 11:20AM"

  "Keys! Sorry, bud."

  "BEEP! END OF MESSAGES. TO DELETE ALL MESSAGES, PRESS ‘DELETE’. MESSAGES DELETED. BEEEEEEP!"

  The last message, the unknown, is Nails, one of my co-workers at The George; the public house where I am employed. Don't ask me why we call him Nails because I don't remember and I have a feeling that he wouldn't want me to recall. By ‘keys!' he means that last night when I closed up he left his set of keys inside, making it impossible for him to open up today. Hence, I have to go meet him outside The George and let him in. Today's my day off, which explains the apology.

  The George is the local watering hole and it’s a family place; somewhere the family can go to have their weekend lunches, somewhere they can relax and have a pint and send the kids out to play in the ill-constructed playground by the busy main road. But today is a weekday and the weekday patrons are low-level drunks; society's not-so-cool loners.

  "Cheers, Noel. I do it at least once a week."

  Nails' real name is Leonard Richmond and he ticks off the whole list when it comes to the salt-of-the-earth workman type. He reads the wrong kinds of papers and can sometimes be a little rough around the edges, but he’s the most decent and honest guy you could be lucky enough to meet. Yes, every now and again he makes comments that seem either sexist or even a tad racial but I can tell you now, the guy judges no one.

  His younger brother's best friend came out of the closet a few months ago; his family disowned him and even Nails' kid brother turned his back on him. Then one night this kid walks into the bar all black-eyed and busted lip
ped and orders a whiskey. Nails pays for the drink and has been letting the kid crash on his couch ever since, which is a real testament to the guy because even though I wouldn't call Nails homophobic I also wouldn’t say he’s willing to fly the rainbow flag for the friends of Dorothy. He’s a good guy and a joy to be around which is why with options of a) begging forgiveness of a nine-year-old, or b) having day sex with my girlfriend, I chose c) going to my place of work.

  "Hey, how did your sister's thing go?"

  "Good, I mean for a bunch of kids touting a load of pap."

  "I thought you co-wrote it? You writing pap these days?"

  Nails is taunting me and my past delusions of wanting to be a writer. I have the first chapters of six different books and the first paragraphs of two more. I have numerous half started scripts and a plethora of note pads filled with haikus and childlike poetry. I'm not a writer; I'm an eco-terrorist. Acres of pulped rainforest litter my flat with the dobbings of a madman etched on them.

  "I'm writing nothing these days. Hannah asked me to help with structure."

  "A nine-year-old asks for help with structure, does she know what structure means?"

  "No, she's heard me say it once so it was more quoting than asking."

  "From what I hear she was doing a little quoting at the end, too."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "‘Let the gods worry about the religions' sounds more like you than a nine-year-old."

  "You went?"

  "Nope, but I did read today's paper. Mr Barsky got the story he wanted."

  "Fuck, he got it into this week's paper?"

  This is when I get to read about the play: "A British Winter: Kids open seasonal banner wide enough for all of us." As feared there are no tears, there’s something in my throat though, which is something at least. I feel something. I feel bad and even though I always feel bad that’s normally self-pity rather than guilt. Sorry, Hannah Banana.

  "And I'm guessing by that look you didn't go either."

  "Nope."

  "Scumbag."

  "Yep." Nails leaves it at that; he knows nothing he could say would make me feel any worse.

  "Hello, fellas. Christmas is upon us. I got some mistletoe in my office. How ‘bout we head in there and make sexual harassment just a seasonal moment?"

  This is Kevin Lightwater, my boss; an American who is not gay yet still spends most of his working time making sexually explicit comments to his predominately male work force. There is only one female member of staff at The George; this is not sexual discrimination, it's lawsuit protection. Kev is a happily married man and is in no real way making sexual advances on his staff, male or female, he just cannot help the fact that lewd comments which make his male staff intensely uncomfortable just happen to be the one thing in life that really tickles him. To comment on the fact that he can see Nails’ nipples through his shirt amuses Kev, and to be fair it is humorous. To then further add, "Let’s see if we can get ‘em to lactate," has him doubled over in fits of hysteria and has the rest of us feeling a great sense of unease.

  Oh, and the one female member of staff I mentioned is Gladys, a sixty-seven-year-old lady who cleans the place to top up her pension. Kev has been warned not to enter the premises until she has left for the day; this rule has been enforced by Kev’s wife, Julie, after an incident where he told Gladys that if she would be willing to take her teeth out she could make some real money.

  "Whoa, whoa, whoa! Why am I paying for two members of staff on a Friday lunch time?"

  "You’re not. I left my keys inside again. Noel was just kind enough to let me in."

  "Lenny, didn't you tell me if you did that again you'd dress up like an Asian streetwalker and let me spank you?"

  "No, I didn't, you said if I did it again you'd dress up like an Asian streetwalker and let me spank you."

  "Win, win, then."

  "You said you'd let me and I declined the offer."

  "Ok, you tease. I'll just head to the dungeon and spank myself, if you know what I mean."

  "I’m assuming that you mean you’ll be going into your office and calling in that wine order?"

  "Yes, I do need to do that. Thanks, Noel. Want to join me for some…?"

  "Nope, I've turned down sex once already this morning and I don't think you are going to change my mind, Kev."

  "Your loss. Oh, I do need a word though, so come see me before you leave."

  I have worked for Kev for over five years and I am at the point where nothing he says shocks me. Well, nothing but the fact he doesn't seem to tone it down no matter who the crowd is. Could be Benny Hill or the Virgin Mary, Kev is never censored. Kev disappears into his office; Nails turns to me rolling his eyes.

  "At what point do we complain? If we were girls, by now we’d have sued him out of this place and both be co-owners."

  "I don't know about you, but I couldn't keep a straight face in court."

  "Yeah, ‘Is it true, Mr Richmond that Mr Kevin Lightwater asked if you wanted to ride his face like an untamed steed?'” And yes, Kev has asked me that.

  "I can top that, he once offered to gargle my balls and then acted it out using two grapes."

  "He does love to use props."

  "He ended by saying, ‘Hey, you're British, you like tea, you must be up for a little tea bagging.' No joke.”

  We compare war stories like that for a while as the pub's daytime regulars slowly drift in. Nails attends to their needs and I sit with a hot tea - I am, as Kev stated, British after all - and start a crossword puzzle in the local paper which is called The Reader; that's the paper not the puzzle. The crossword was Christmas themed, i.e. ‘Who sang the 1969 Christmas Number One Two Little Boys? (4,6)’ or ‘Gold, blank and Myrrh (12)’. I'm awful at crosswords, even ludicrously easy ones like this. I always start off well then three questions in realise I don’t care enough to finish; that by knowing the answers to a bunch of questions which I'll only ever need for the purposes of finishing this crossword, or another just like it, will bring me little or no pleasure.

  Bored with the futility of the tabloid twittering, my eyes coast across the room to the different people in the bar; all in a social venue, all have come alone and sit alone. Benny sits at the bar, a fixture more than a customer. I've served him so many times he now no longer orders, he just comes in sits down and gives the bartender a half smile through his large unkempt moustache. Like I said before, I've worked at The George for over five years and I've been in the company of Benny that whole time; yet I do not know who this man is. Do you have a family, Benny? You don't seem to have any friends, at least none that drink with you. Many times I've tried to engage him in conversation only to get an ‘aye’ or a shrug of the shoulders, maybe a half laugh now and again but no more. I know Benny likes crosswords; he likes general knowledge. He never misses a pub quiz, sitting as he is now, in a team of one, scribbling on his answer sheet, giving the odd shrug or laugh and he wins. Most times he wins. I find it fascinating that people can find joy in retaining a wealth of knowledge in basic trivia but have no interest in the larger questions of the whys, the whens and the hows of humanity. I guess a guy who sits alone in a bar every day thinks he's found his answer.

  Bob, Carl, William and Linda are some of the other weekday regulars. I don't have any surnames; I don't really know how I got their first names, it's not like we chat. Look at them all sitting apart from each other in this one room, all together yet all alone.

  Hobo Joe, another regular, one that never buys anything; bar prices are just too steep for the homeless. His name isn't Joe, or Hobo for that matter, he’s just a nameless tramp who every day uses the pub’s toilet facilities. Kev is fine with this as long as he never talks, or more importantly, never begs the paying patrons. He never does, he just walks in, and then five minutes later he walks out. Hobo Joe is no different to me than the other barflies; he’s just at an alternate stage of the development like fly and larval maybe. I should exchange the word development w
ith decline.

  "Hey, Joe!" I almost unconsciously shout in his direction giving a hand gesture for him to come over. Undeterred at somebody calling him over using the wrong name, he heads in my direction. Hey, maybe that is his name; it would make sense, the nickname has to have come from somewhere. Wait it came from me - one night Kev said he needed… well, he said he needed sexual favours and I said, “I'll bet Hobo Joe would do it for half a ham sandwich and a sip of whiskey.” I feel kind of bad now; maybe he's been on the street so long he doesn’t remember his own name?

  "The name's Michael. What can I do for you, it’s Noel isn't it?"

  "Yeah, sorry Michael, I heard it was Joe."

  "I know, Hobo Joe, it's a joke name."

  "Course it is, I'd like to buy you a meal." Why do I want to buy him a meal? It's not guilt; the guilt started after I asked him over, it's something else.

  "I don't know, Kev said…"

  "Kev said, ‘No begging in the pub’, I'm offering you a soup and a sandwich."

  He takes the offer and he orders a ham and cheese sandwich and the soup of the day, which is also ham; ham and pea soup, so it's good Hannah isn't around. I must tell her that there is more to Judaism than the non-consumption of pork and that only the devout Jews follow that particular rule. I wonder why he is not questioning my generosity and yet I am.

  "Michael, aren’t you curious why I'm doing this?"

  "Christmas guilt?”

  "Really?"

  "I don't know, this time of year folks seem to give more. The folks who normally give nothing throw me their coppers and the ones who give coppers now give silver and so on."

  "Oh, I didn't really think it was that."

  "You don't know why?"

  "I suddenly thought, I don't know, that a small act from me would be a big act to you."

  "Christmas guilt."

  "Huh? I guess it is. So Christmas is a good time for the homeless?"

  "Yeah, we just love sleeping in the cold, while everyone else gets pissed in front of the fire."

  The sarcastic tone is too much for Benny who is sitting beside us.

  "The guy bought you a meal and you're giving him grief?"

  I guess in all those years of trying to start up a conversation with him all I needed to do was feed an unappreciative homeless man. Nails is now stood watching the show, along with everyone else after Benny's outburst. Nails is beaming with a great big smile across his face, highly amused at the odd situation I've gotten myself into.

  "No, no, Benny, he's right, Christmas on the street must suck, even with the freebies."

  "They’re not freebies; you feel guilty so you make a little gesture."

  Benny sounds off again.

  "Don’t you like the food ’cause we can take it away?" This is an empty gesture as Michael, at this moment, is slurping the last drops of the soup from the bowl.

  "All done, thank you kindly, Noel, and merry Christmas." And with that he stands up and walks towards the door, then a pause. Has he come to his senses? Has he realised that he is quite literally biting the hand that feeds him? Not the biting of course, just the feeding bit.

  "And, Noel, sort your beard out you look like a hobo, ha." He continues to giggle as he vanishes through the pub doors. I don't know whether I’m amused or angry. My payment of goods was accepted but the notion of my good deed was rejected. Had I done it all for my own gain, to make me feel better? Because if all I wanted to do is give a meal to a hungry man, then why do I now feel ripped off? I achieved that goal. Michael was more than happy with the meal, he wanted it but he wasn't going to allow me to pat myself on the back for a half-hearted gesture. He has been coming in here for months now and I had never acknowledged him. I've passed him in the street and never dropped a coin and now I buy a meal, and what? I expect to be the Messiah of the homeless? Good on you, Mike, you're right, you called me on it, no matter what it cost you. And what it cost you is a soup and sandwich next Christmas.

  The regulars now find themselves in quite the conundrum; they feel an overwhelming inner need to whisper and grumble about what has just happened to the person next to them, but as they all came alone; there is no one next to them, just an empty chair. To gossip to the nearest person would be shouting not whispering. Is gossiping an evolutionary trait? In today’s society it's an evil heckling of the bullies; crowds spitefully spreading a person’s flaws. However, all cultures do it therefore mustn't it have a Darwinian purpose? Maybe spreading the flaw of a weaker female would make the dominant male not breed with her. Or by spreading rumours that the dominant male has a weakness, it would make other males challenge his control. Is the gossiping trait meant to remove weakness out of the gene pool or is it a defensive attribute for the weak - the chameleon's camouflage, the poisonous skin of Mantella frogs? Nature is not about good and bad, only actions and the success of those actions.

  "I wouldn't let him in again, Noel." Benny states, then taps on his empty pint glass to tell Nails to pull him a fresh pint.

  "Not my call, Benny."

  "Aye." And then Benny and I are back to shrugs and half-smiles.

  Kev's office is a den of sin, a pit of sordid sexual fancy. Not really, just a normal if not a tad cluttered office. It's Kev's brain where all the sin lives. On the wall, hung with pride, is the old ‘Stars and Bars’, with one star missing. It is curious to me that such a proud American won’t fix this; it goes unspoken though. It's best not to instigate a conversation with Kev for reasons that I'm sure are now obvious to you.

  "You wanted a word?"

  "Yeah, January first."

  "I did it last year."

  "Leonard's turn?"

  "What about Kyle?"

  "Kyle? I can't even get him to do Sundays."

  "Then Leonard's turn it is. To be honest, I don't know why you even bother opening."

  "The regulars come in and they're the ones that keep us afloat. You need to tell Leonard."

  "What, why?"

  "Because I'm the boss and I said."

  "Real reason?"

  "I don't want to see the look on his face."

  Spying the flag again, I question Kev's patronage to the colonies; he talks a lot of trash about us limeys. When Kev bought this place it was called the King George, he removed the King part and replaced the hanging sign of the former soviet with that of the first founding father, George Washington. Yet, here he is in good Ol' Blighty having married British, Earl Grey in a china teacup, and in his periphery the US flag, looking decidedly sullen, having fallen into disrepair.

  "What do you think the republicans would have to say about that?" I point to the flag.

  "I don't follow?"

  "The missing star."

  "It's not missing."

  "Yes, it is."

  "Ok, it is missing if you're saying there are fifty states."

  "And I am saying that."

  "I don't count Hawaii."

  "You don't count Hawaii?"

  "The place is a holiday resort, not a state."

  "Tad harsh, Hawaii went through many years of violence and hardship before becoming a state. Cruelty ruled by plantation owners, the statehood was pretty much forced on them as it was the only option to get some control."

  "I just don't trust them; their word for hello is the same as goodbye. How do you know if you are coming or going with these people?"

  "Actually, ‘Aloha’ doesn't mean either; it's a word of compassion, love, a sign of good will. It’s Westerners that have taken it as a ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’."

  "Why do you know all this?"

  "Wikipedia or maybe Q.I." Which one depends on whether or not that statement is fact.

  "There's just bad blood that's all, let's leave it at that."

  Leaving Kev's office I start to feel that I've had enough of the real world and I tell Nails that, more or less.

  "Back to the safety of my flat for me, Nails."

  And in saying so, I leave a pub full of strangers, a de
viant boss, and the salt of the earth behind me and head home. Wait, nearly forgot…

  "Hey, Nails. You're working Jan first!"

  "Fuck me, I did it last year!"