Scourge of The North

As I try to shave one of the purple spotlights above the bathroom sink has started to flicker. I can’t face Hyde with a bad shave. Everything must be right when we go face to face. I can’t afford to show him a single flaw.  I take a cold rollerball pen to the bags beneath my eyes and apply anti-ageing moisturiser over my face and neck. I stare hard into the mirror, at the grey hairs that have secretly infiltrated my black crew-cut overnight, at the deep creases that I am unable to smooth away. I am thirty-three now but look about forty. I will look even worse when the kid arrives. That’s what kid’s do isn’t it, make you feel old, make you grow up? Well, we shall see. Katie does not move whilst I am dressing. Today, I go for the most expensive business clothes that I possess: Eton sky blue shirt with black onyx cufflinks, a Brioni navy blue suit, a thin silk black tie and a pair of Berlutti shoes that I have worn only once. The clothes are ostentatious, clichéd I know, expensive cloth and leather, worn only to serve one point and that is to show Mr Hyde that I am superior to him in every way.

 With my car keys and my Blackberry in my suit pocket, I descend the stairs down towards the pavement. The street is quiet and soulless. The sky is a passive, a pale blue grey.  I call the car with my key and open the heavy silver door. The car’s interior smells of stale tobacco, which reminds me that I need to stop at some point to buy a packet of cigarettes. The nausea, which had been dormant throughout the night has freed itself again and gets worse with every movement that I make. However, I have a feeling that this time tomorrow, when Hyde and the North are finally dealt with and this psychodrama has come to its end, that my symptoms will have cleared but until then it’s just a matter of clinging on until the close of play.

The M6 had been kind to me this morning until I reach Junction 14. The traffic has frozen and a column of thick black smoke is now gently twisting up into the air. Emergency services career up the hard shoulder on the Southern carriageway. It’s 7.15 and I need the crawl to become a sprint. I come off the motorway at Stafford Services with the hope that when I re-join it I will be looking at clear road. I pull up at a pump and head for the shop where I buy a packet of fruit pastilles, a packet of Durex, Rennies, a tuna and mayonnaise sandwich and twenty cigarettes. The kid who serves me at the counter stares at the diversity of merchandise I have dumped down in front of him. I check out his name badge; ‘Mo.’ He scans the condoms first and smiles, the pastilles and so on but it’s all too much for me. ‘They’re for the kids, they’re off to a festival.’ Mo rises up on his tip-toes and looks over at the empty BMW; ‘any fuel sir?’ I remain silent; my impatience is growing, as the transaction seems to take an age to complete.  I then attempt to pay with my fuel card. Mo smiles again. I gather my purchases and he bids me goodbye. As I am walking out the shop, I raise my elbow slightly and knock a stack of neatly arranged column of high-energy drinks to the floor. As the commotion caused by the tins stops, I clear my throat and in my best supervisory voice, I say, ‘Best clear them up Mo. You’ve got customers waiting and as you’ve been undoubtedly been taught the customer  is king.’

In the car, I turn the cigarette carton over in my hands and for once, it’s not the picture of the man with his throat cut but a picture of a premature baby with wires protruding from its chest. I ignore the message and wonder if I now have the full pictorial set.

 I leave the motorway at Junction 18. The sky is slate grey, the early morning sun has disappeared, light rain specks the windscreen, the temperature in the car has dropped by a degree, as I drive alongside miles and miles of flat dirt fields to the now defunct factory and toward the near redundant Lewis Hyde.

Hyde is in his office affixing white labels to brown boxes and does not seem notice that I am standing in the doorway behind him.

‘I can feel your breath on my neck John. I’ll make us a coffee. Machine’s gone so it’s instant okay? Suppose you’ll be taking the kettle back to Birmingham with you as well?’ The Rennies have not done the trick, the nausea is back and my gut is churning. He hands me a cup of scalding black coffee in a floppy white plastic cup.

‘Good journey?’ I avoid the question and ask him to sit down. Sitting there, he looks like a big red bloodhound; corpulent, dewlapped, tomato red hair and bulging green eyes. He fingers his Disney necktie as I formulate the best way of breaking the bad news to him.

‘Well.’ He thinks he knows what’s coming before I have even started. ‘John, I know what’s coming. You can’t afford me can you? Look I’ll take a very, very minor cut in salary if you give me a lump sum similar to the maximum redundancy figure and if you also buy out my remaining holiday entitlement.’ He wants cash; about eight grand. Well, he’ll get that anyway as soon as he is jobless. Problem solved.

‘Lewis there is no job for you.’

‘What. Come again. Did I hear you right. ’ His brow glistens with sweat as he tries to wrestle with the reality of a new set of circumstances. Puzzled; he looks at me in absolute disbelief. ‘Come again.’ I do not repeat myself. Louder. ‘Come again?’ Like a mad mynah bird he keep repeating himself over and over again. ‘Come again? There’s no job in Birmingham. No job?’ The pennies are dropping one by one, falling ever quicker, until they drop in one almighty cascade of realisation.

‘I have two kids. Do you have kids?’ I answer in the negative. ‘Well without kids you are nothing. Without kids you are not living and mine are with my wife and not me. You know, I wanted to offer her something, a new life in a new place, put the past behind us but you have ruined all that. You have ruined me. Tricked and used me. Well played John!’ He gave me a sarcastic round of applause. The falling rain beat out a hollow tattoo on the factory roof as Hyde raised his voice, ‘shot by both sides, played like a gud’un.  Fucked over. I have given ten years to this company and its people. I’ve done the extra miles for the old man and his retarded playboy son and what do I end up with.’ There is a pause as we both listen to the falling rain. ‘You know there’s just you and me here John.’ The atmosphere in the office has suddenly changed. ‘The security guard will be on the far side of the building at the moment. That’s a good ten minutes’ walk back to here. You could have an accident John, a little mishap in the loading bay.’ He stands up and puts his blazer back on and walks around the desk, ‘don’t worry I’m not going to hurt you.’ He pushes passed me, turns around and stands in the doorway facing me. ‘John, do you know what, I hope that you have a real shit life. What you have done will all come back to you, twice as hard. God help you my friend.’ I reach for a cigarette but I have left them in the car.

‘Lydia where are you?’

‘North Midlands – I have a meeting with a client at twelve.’ The signal drops out and then she returns. ‘Junction 14. What’s up?’ Our signals get lost briefly in a roar of lost words. ‘Lydia, Lydia.’ She comes back with a postcode and I punch it into the sat-nav and wait for the map to appear. ‘Okay, I’ve got you. See you in a bit.’

My head is a mess as I keep replaying the scenes from of an hour ago. I try to rationalize the fear that I felt in Hyde’s office but I can’t shake off the feeling that something bad is going to happen now. I turn on Radio 3 and try to relax but everything that he has said comes biting back. The pre-Bank holiday traffic is thickening, caravans and mobile homes clog up the inner lanes. I call the office and give Forsyth an edited version of my meeting with Hyde. There are no thanks, no well done or ‘we owe you one John’ all I get is some long winded speech about how he’s already identified the next target, the next strip before he starts to reel off all the details of where he is holidaying over the next week. The sky blackens up, a sharp shower pounds the roof of the car and Forsyth’s voice crackles and disappears.

The sat-nat delivers me to another grey industrial estate in Cannock. Amongst the parked cars, I spot the Amazon green Nissan 370z Roadster. Eventually I see Lydia walking across the tarmac towards my car, dressed as usual in black trouser suit, a laptop case in one hand, a lever-arch file in a head lock under her other arm, she raps on the window and sits down in the rear of the car. She brushes her blue-black hair from her eyes and puts it into a ponytail. We swap plastic ‘hellos’ and précis’s of what we have been doing. We both know what will happen next; I slip my hand between her thighs and she raises her eyebrows as if to say ‘what do you think you are doing.’ I will kiss her hard on the mouth and she will resist. I will touch her breast, she will scold me, and on it goes.

We arrive in our separate cars at a Travelodge in Rugely and book a double room. After an hour of textbook book sex we are finished. Our meetings are getting shorter and the sex is becoming studied and staid. Lydia rises from the thick white linen sheets and goes to the bathroom. After about ten minutes she returns with her make-up re-established –

‘You okay John; you look a little green around the gills.’ I study her as she takes up her jewellery from the bedside cabinet – a ring for the right thumb, a cherry red garnet on right hand index finger, a gold band and a big coral coloured stone pendant, which she hangs deftly around her neck.

‘Things haven’t been too good workwise. You know how it is?’

‘But you weren’t like this yesterday. You were, you know, really into it. Today you seem distant. Disinterested. Inconsiderate.’

‘What are trying to say? That I was rubbish today is that what you mean.’ She quickly buttons up her white chintz blouse, pulls up her trousers and put her heels on.

‘John there’s something that I have to tell you.’ The day was getting worse by degrees; first Hyde and now Lydia. ‘I can’t see you anymore. I’m seeing someone one else. It’s a proper relationship, you know one that I think could last. I’m not getting any younger and whilst I enjoy what we have, I need some stability in my life.  Christ, I am tired of living on my own and I know John that you have someone as well don’t you? I can smell her on your skin when we sleep together.’

Naked I walk over to her and rest my hands on her shoulders.

‘What, that’s it?  Just like that. You can’t do that. We can’t stop. We have an agreement?’

‘Not anymore we don’t.’

I squeeze her shoulders with my thumbs. Two red marks are left behind. She struggles and tells me to stop. The sick games are over. But I can’t stop I clamp my hand around my windpipe and throttle her. She slaps me across my face and I feel one of her rings brush my cheek. I push her back toward the bathroom door. She stumbles and falls, and bangs her head against the plywood door and the noise resonates all around the small space and finally peters out.

There were no tears on either side; it was a cold and emotionless parting of the ways. I watched from behind the thick net curtain as she confidently strode across the car park with her phone to her ear. I sat on the unmade and waited for ten minutes to call her again. I rang three times and got her voice mail. I listened to her voice, to her clean and clipped words, a neutral colourless language so different from the filth that she used to whisper in my ear.

 I hold the phone tightly in my hand and I delete her existence.