Mr Golightly's Holiday (3 page)

A
FTER FORTY-FIVE MINUTES OF FRUITLESS
struggle Mr Golightly had reached the view that the instructions for the up-to-the-minute stove had probably been produced and marketed by his business rival. He had not admitted this to anyone at the office, but he had been troubled, lately, by recent signs that his rival’s business was beginning to supersede his own. It was a business formed upon the back of his own global enterprise, and this made its proliferation especially galling. To distract his mind from this unwelcome line of thought, he began to check out the rest of Spring Cottage’s equipment.

He found the two convector heaters, slightly chipped and rusting, in the cupboard under the stairs. Well, that was a blessing, anyway. He could afford to take a more cavalier position with the stove. In one of the Formica cupboards there was a toaster, thank goodness with a plug attached; a broken machine, apparently designed for grinding; in the cupboard beneath the stairs an iron which had seen better days, and an impossible ironing board. There had been times when he might have gone in for grinding, but not on his holiday. Nor, since his secretary was not there to pass comment, was there any call to iron. Toast, now, was a different kettle of fish: toast fingers, with a boiled egg, was something which Mr Golightly was partial to…

It was nearly nine and a walk to the shop would give the opportunity to assess what provisions were available in Great Calne. He hoped not to have to drive too far afield. The Traveller could play up and he didn’t want the bother of having to find a mechanic who could fix it. Of course, he could always send for someone to come down from the office, but it was to get away from all of that that he had come away for his holiday.

Putting on a green parka, Mr Golightly walked up the hill towards the Post Office Stores where a young man with a straggly beard was stacking oranges in the window.

‘Good morning’, said Mr Golightly. And he spoke truly for the fully risen sun was unreservedly lighting the village of Great Calne.

‘Depends who you are,’ rejoined the beard, stepping back from the window. ‘Shit!’ as the oranges rebelled and rolled down and all over the floor.

Oh dear. Mr Golightly spoke only to himself. He had selected milk, fresh and ‘untreated’ – he didn’t hold with ‘dead’ milk in cartons – half a dozen eggs, some local cheese, tomatoes and a couple of brown rolls.

‘You staying at Spring Cott?’ asked the young man, cramming too many tomatoes into a tiny paper bag.

‘Yes, indeed. A pretty location.’

‘All right for toads! Damp as hell. Wouldn’t catch me there, that’s for sure.’

Why this is hell, nor am I out of it…

As Mr Golightly walked back down the hill, some words,
which had always struck him as particularly grim, rang in his mind. But better not to meet trouble halfway – there were boiled eggs and toast to look forward to, he was on holiday and here to revise his great work.

Many years earlier Mr Golightly had written a work of dramatic fiction which, after slow initial sales, had gradually grown to become a best-seller. In time, the by-products of this enterprise had expanded to form the basis of a worldwide business. The work had been based on his observations of human life – its loves, hopes, fears, lusts, idiocies, anxieties, false securities, vanities, dishonesties, fantasies, cruelties and general tendency to inveterate folly. Mr Golightly, in his droll way, liked to describe his work as a ‘comedy’; but in this, he had discovered, he resembled the playwright Chekhov.

Chekhov, attending the dress rehearsal of one his plays, was surprised to find that the director, none other than the great Russian Stanislavsky, was playing it as a tragedy. There were no laughs, Chekhov was tickled to find, except those provided by the single audience of the humorous playwright himself.

Mr Golightly’s magnum opus had something of
The Cherry Orchard
’s ambiguity. Perhaps it was this, or perhaps it was the gradually reducing sales – though to be sure it had had a good enough run: for years it had been an international sensation – which had determined him to rewrite the work. The idea had come to him when, one evening, he had turned on the TV and had become engrossed in one of the many soap operas which run there.

Mr Golightly’s business was so time-consuming that often he remained ignorant of the rapid developments of modern culture. His philosophy was that if a thing was going to catch on it would, in the fullness of time, catch up with him. That millions of people organised their lives so as not to miss their personal ‘soap’ was news to Mr Golightly.

But herein lay one of the gifts which made him unique in his sphere. Far from being shocked, or taking an ‘it wasn’t like that in my day’ attitude (a common trap among the older generation), he saw at once the advantages. His own work, he felt, after sampling the current TV output, had many of the features of a modern soap – it was merely the idiom and the episodes which needed bringing up to date. The characters in his original drama were only apparently unlike those of the present day. Human nature hadn’t changed, of course, but custom had, and the times.

And then there was that delightful notion of a holiday…

Mr Golightly had been taken by an item concerning ‘stress in the office’ which had followed
Neighbours
, the soap his secretary watched and for which he had found he himself developing a liking. Stress, it seemed, was a recently discovered malady and one, Mr Golightly couldn’t help feeling, that he could be a candidate for. It seemed there were all kind of palliatives available to combat it – t’ai chi, reiki, Pilates, yoga, reflexology, hypnosis, homeopathy, psychotherapy, acupuncture, massage – but something in Mr Golightly baulked at these remedies which, so far as he was able to grasp them, struck him as somewhat invasive.

But a ‘holiday’ was a different story: that harked back to a former era – a time when he had been able to rest on his laurels and had taken delight in all he had achieved. And what better plan than to combine a long overdue rest with a reworking of his great enterprise?

No one but an artist knows the peculiar delight of being summoned by a work which, as yet unborn, lies, with all its potential undisclosed, within the dormant darkness of the creating heart. Mr Golightly’s tread had a secret bounce as he made his way down the hill and towards his awaiting soap opera. He would boil the eggs, pour a mug of coffee, with the unpasteurised milk he had bought at the miserable young man’s stores, and set up the laptop, the use of which Mike had instructed him in before his departure.

Mike, it was agreed by all at the office, was a perfect angel. His patience was a byword and he had promised, if necessary, to come down to Great Calne himself should Mr Golightly encounter any technical problem with the newly installed e-mail system.

Mr Golightly had drunk his coffee, from the Spiderman mug he had found among the medley of crockery, before he opened up his laptop to check his e-mails. Mike had explained that the system called for an e-mail address and something called a ‘server’. He had set up [email protected] which allowed, he suggested, for expansion into a website. For some time Mike had been of the view that a website would make a valuable innovation for the Golightly Enterprises and was hoping to take advantage
of this holiday to persuade the boss of its commercial advantages.

Connecting the laptop to the phone involved some fiddling about with the leads which Mike had had the foresight to include, so that by the time Mr Golightly was ready to dial up it was past ten o’clock. Plenty of time, though, to start work – the day was still young.

Several e-mails, accompanied by a sound effect, appeared on the screen. The first was a message from the server, cosmos. com, and offered Mr Golightly the benefit of bargain travel services, including a cheap offer to go diving in the Red Sea.

In his younger, more forceful, days Mr Golightly had often visited that part of the world. But the greener, less turbulent pastures of England, were, he felt, a more soothing environment for his recreational plans. The Red Sea would take him too far down memory lane, a route to be avoided when one was set upon change.

The second message was from Bill, his handsome PA, and concerned some charity, to do with Third World aid, to which Mr Golightly had agreed to lend the firm’s name.

The third was from no recognisable name or address.

by what way is the light parted?

was the disconcerting message.

Scientific questions had not troubled Mr Golightly greatly over the years. In the past, when questions had been asked at all, it was he who had tended to do the asking. His
secretary, Martha, the one who had put him on to
Neighbours
, would probably say that this was ‘very like a man’. Comments along these lines from Martha had been more forthcoming lately. She had worked faithfully for the Golightly firm for many years but latterly she seemed to have picked up the modern woman’s tendency – an unfortunate one, Mr Golightly couldn’t help sometimes feeling – to criticise the male; or perhaps criticise him openly was more accurate, since Mr Golightly was too shrewd a judge of human nature to suppose that men had ever, in women’s private thoughts, got off scot-free.

What would Martha make of the enigmatic question which now confronted him? It seemed to contain a sly play on his name. And who on earth could have sent it? His usual movements, for the purpose of the smooth running of the firm, were shrouded in a certain mystery; he was unused to being confronted with barefaced questions, especially ones which touched obliquely on his own person.

Mr Golightly had set up his computer on the gateleg table with a view on to the garden and down to the field below. Looking out, he saw the horse standing in the sun, taking the benefit of its warmth on his chestnut coat. There was something reassuring about the horse’s stance. Not quite meaning to, Mr Golightly got up from the table and wandered outside.

Samson, observing activity, walked over to investigate. Mr Golightly felt regretful again over the sugar lumps. But no doubt the horse’s owner would anyway disapprove. It
was discouraging how few of the world’s prodigal comforts were nowadays available for enjoyment. Mr Golightly had been cautioned by Martha against exceeding the recommended number of ‘units’ of alcohol he drank in a week. There had been times when her boss had supped of the vine in a manner which would throw a modern health practitioner into a frenzy, and yet, Mr Golightly couldn’t help feeling, he was not obviously any the worse for his past excesses.

Next door, Ellen Thomas was lying on her sofa. She looked out to where the rooks were dredging the fields clean of the new-sown wheat. A saying of her late husband’s drifted into her mind. ‘Forbear not sowing because of the birds,’ he had used to say, when counselling against needless caution. Her new neighbour, with his big head, reminded her a little of Robert. She might give him some of the duck eggs, azure, like the sky’s watery reflection in the puddle which had collected on the upturned barrel she had put outside for some purpose she couldn’t now remember.

What did ‘remember’ mean? Robert had told her this once, too. Wasn’t it putting back together the body’s members which had been torn asunder…?

I
T WAS
T
HURSDAY
,
AND CONSEQUENTLY THE YEW
tree was not a safe hiding place for Johnny Spence. The Reverend Meredith Fisher was at home and would be back and forth, sticking her nose into other people’s business or attending to her parish duties, depending on your point of view. Johnny’s attitude was laissez-faire: he didn’t mind what the lady vicar did so long as she didn’t interfere with his use of the churchyard.

The concept of sanctuary is an old one and in using the environs of the Lord for this purpose Johnny followed a long and venerable tradition. But he was not the first to be ousted from safe-hiding by one of the Lord’s appointed. Who can say how far the Lord Himself, were He to be consulted, would sanction the attitudes of those who undertake to speak on His behalf? As it was, Johnny had to look for an alternative place of concealment.

Great Calne’s church, with its square Norman tower, stood flanked on one side by the rectory and on the other by the Post Office Stores. A little way down the hill, on the opposite side of the road, lay Spring Cottage where only the previous day Johnny had watched the arrival of Mr Golightly.

Johnny had practised being invisible since his mum took up with his stepdad. Like all early training, this stood him in sound stead. At school his absences were so regular as to
be generally overlooked and often his name was omitted entirely from any official register. A conviction that one is nothing acts as a powerful charm against being perceived, but Johnny was experienced enough in the ways of the world to know that you mustn’t take anything for granted. Despite the fact that, to the authorities, he didn’t exist, that didn’t mean he should be careless. Like a young tomcat, he whipped down the street and inside the gateway of Spring Cottage. He felt cautiously well disposed towards the bloke he had spied on and he wanted, anyway, to get a closer look at the Traveller.

The sky had turned indigo and the sun set up at once a contesting sheet of light. A cloud of rooks, with the mysterious concordance of flocking birds, rose, hovered in the petrol-coloured sky, gathered together again, then, as suddenly, parted into factions to flutter like confetti from some Satanic wedding on to the fields, or settle in the stands of reddening beech. Splashes of sunlight on the birds’ plumage made fitful, darting gleams. And now the sky, as if surrendering to an eloquent seducer, cleared rapidly again, stretches of blue wash appeared and scraps of cloud, as picturesquely puffed as any on a painted Italian ceiling, began to scud wantonly across the renewing sky.

Mr Golightly, sitting before his laptop, watched this drama. It was amazing what could be accomplished if you simply left a system to run itself. This was the policy he tried to operate in his business. In the early days, he had held the reins more tightly, managing everything more or
less single-handed. But that was before the catastrophe which had changed everything. These days, as the office knew, delegation was his watchword. And it was precisely this which made it possible for him to take this holiday and rewrite his great work into the soap opera, which he had decided to call – he was a little proud of the title –
That’s How Life Is.

But, how, in God’s name, to begin?

For a start he needed the cast of characters. Until recently, he would have written these down in a small, leather-bound notebook, which he still carried about with him in case he should wish to jot down a passing thought or useful saying. But now that he had the services of a computer he supposed he’d best adopt new practices…

He opened a file, as Mike had shown him, and ‘saved’ it as ‘THLI’. Then, typing slowly, he spelled out ‘Cast of Characters’ and paused, debating whether that didn’t belong better in a file marked ‘Prelims’ – a piece of technical advice about organising his material which he had picked up at the office, from Muriel in Accounts.

Muriel was less in the forefront of office affairs than Mike, or Bill. She was a retiring soul, who kept herself to herself, but she’d been part of the firm since its inception. Muriel had a capacious memory. If Mr Golightly wasn’t one hundred per cent sure how a word was spelled, he would check with Muriel. Thinking of her, he remembered he must rescue his
Oxford English Dictionary
, which he had jammed under the passenger seat of the Traveller. Bill had suggested that Mike
could load on to the laptop a CD-ROM of the
OED
, which would apparently furnish every word in the English language anyone could wish to check. But in Mr Golightly’s view, a computer screen was no substitute for a solid book you could get your hands around. It was his habit to read the dictionary in bed, an activity which he suspected neither Mike nor Bill would fully understand. Slightly evasively – he didn’t like to have to defend his preferences – he had stuffed the two volumes of the
Shorter OED
into the Traveller at the last moment of departure.

The office could tell you that when the boss got his dander up he could spit fire and hailstones, but these days, for the most part, Mr Golightly was a pacific sort and his inner state was reflected in his physical movements. Johnny Spence, who from years of cohabiting with his stepdad could detect a human tread quicker than any cat, only saw Mr Golightly as he came round the side of the cottage. Johnny shot under the Traveller and lay pulling the hood of his baggy top well over his face.

Mr Golightly stood for some minutes by the open car door, straightening out a dog-ear from a page of Vol. II Marl–Z. As he did so he whistled. He was senior enough to have tuned in regularly to a radio programme,
Whistle While You Work
, on the old BBC Light, and the injunction had infiltrated his habits.

Johnny Spence, crammed under the van, heard the bars from
Fidelio
and was strangely reassured. He was not familiar with Beethoven’s single opera, but those who fight for
freedom are joined by more than temporal bonds and Johnny perhaps recognised, in the long-departed composer’s music, a theme in tune with his own revolutionary aims.

Mr Golightly had finished smoothing out the crumpled page and, still whistling, paused a while longer to read the definition of a word he had forgotten. His memory, once capacious, had been playing up lately. He had disguised this from the office, but there were times when he found himself suffering worrying blanks and lapses when he couldn’t find a familiar word or place a name. But, he comforted himself, even the most efficient memory cannot retain everything and a less than perfect memory had benefits. It lessened the likelihood of grudge bearing. A tendency to bear grudges was a habit which, when he encountered it, embarrassed Mr Golightly; it reminded him too much of former times.

Johnny Spence lay dead still under the van. The old bloke hadn’t moved off – from where he was lying he could see his shoes, the kind with little holes in the toes, scuffed but posh leather. He needed a pee – what the fuck was the old bastard doing just standing there?

Mr Golightly’s attention had been caught by a word on the crumpled page of the dictionary: ‘uberty’, pronounced, as he now read, like ‘puberty’, it meant full of bounteous kindness, a state which he was disposed to approve of. Here was another forgotten joy of authorship: the chance to stow away a likely-looking word and make occasion to use it. A pity that the word was too obscure for his soap opera. Bill and Mike were too respectful to let it slip, but he had
picked up from Martha, whose pronouncements tended less towards ‘uberty’, that the language of his original work was considered antiquated and abstruse.

For all the forgetfulness, Mr Golightly’s mind still ran easily on parallel lines, and as he mused on the perils of authorship he wondered what to do about the young boy in the hooded garment hidden under the Traveller.

His first instinct on seeing Johnny duck under the van’s carriage had been to ignore him. Latterly, live and let live was one of his mottoes, and if the boy wanted to make the Morris a hiding place it was nothing to him. But a flashing impression of the face, as it dived beneath the van, had affected him. It brought to mind another boy child, so grippingly that he couldn’t tear himself away to return to the laptop.

Although he liked to think of himself as essentially creative, it was in fact many years since Mr Golightly had tried to put his ideas into effect. Perhaps he felt a certain forbidding fear at re-embarking on this insecure enterprise. Or perhaps it was the memory evoked by Johnny Spence which made him say, ‘I wonder whether you’d care for some refreshment?’

Johnny Spence did not at first take these words as meant for him. Without an introduction, Mr Golightly had adopted an over-formal mode of address. Hearing himself, he adjusted his style.

‘Hey, you, boy under the car, fancy a Coke?’

This was spoken in a tone which made Johnny shoot out
from under the Traveller before he was aware of what he was doing. He lay on the ground, half on his side, squinnying up at Mr Golightly. Sure as fuck the old guy would hand him over to his stepdad, or the social services.

The sun which had gone behind a cloud reappeared at this moment and casually dropped a ray upon the little earth, transfiguring the upturned face of young Johnny Spence. Mr Golightly swallowed hard and held out a hand.

‘There’s Coke in the fridge. If you want biscuits one of us’ll have to go up to the shop.’

‘Not me,’ said Johnny Spence. Ignoring the hand he got to his feet. Whatever was going on he wasn’t going to show himself out of school time to that Steve Meadows at the post office, thank you very much!

‘Well, if you can manage without…’ It had been Mr Golightly’s theory that the modern child only ate biscuits; but there was bread and Marmite and the Frank Cooper’s marmalade if the boy was hungry. With his still outstretched hand, he touched the boy lightly on his shoulder. ‘Come along inside, why don’t you?’ he suggested.