The Breezes (4 page)

Devonshire signed me for an exhibition on the strength of
one piece which he displayed and immediately sold: the love chair, which consisted of two ash seats with splayed legs connected by a mutual arm. Calling the piece the love chair was Devonshire's idea, not mine, but I was happy to go along with his suggestion – what could be wrong with love? Pa's favourite work of mine, though, is the pew, a kneeling-stool attached to a small desk where the supplicant might rest the elbows: a prie-dieu. I finished it about eight months ago and to my surprise he expressed a liking for it.

‘I like it,' he said. ‘I really do. I think it's the best thing you've done.' He circled it slowly, examining it. ‘I could use a chair like this,' he said. ‘I could use it when I say my prayers.'

I smiled. I was pleased that someone like Pa, who actually prayed to God, saw practical value in the chair. I was surprised, too. I had not foreseen that someone might appreciate the object so literally.

‘I could put it in the spare bedroom upstairs,' Pa said. ‘I could go up there when I needed some peace and quiet, some time for myself.'

Pa could not have the pew, though, because I had promised it to Angela as a gift. There it is over there, next to the fireplace. She uses it as a platform for her plants. It does not look particularly good that way, obscured by the fern, but it's hers now, and if that's what she wants to do with it, that's fine by me. That's the great thing about Angela: everything she does is fine by me.

‘Well, anyway,' Pa said, lifting his glass, ‘here's to the exhibition. You've earned it, son. You've worked hard and you've gotten what you've deserved.'

I returned the gesture with a hollow smile. I did not say anything to Pa about the exhibition because I did not want to upset him, not now. I'd wait a while. I'd wait till things started looking up for him.

Things looking up: how was I supposed to know what was going to happen?

Let me say this: Angela's place is not an easy place to cool your heels. This is a studio apartment. Aside from a small bathroom and a kitchen, there is only one room – the living/bedroom, which as a place of entertainment is a dead loss. The television is broken, I have read the books and heard all the records. The kitchen is no better: the bread is stale, the cupboards are empty and there's nothing in the fridge. Usually you can count on finding some ruby orange juice or a tub of pasta salad from the delicatessen, but not tonight. There isn't even any milk. You'd think that Steve had dropped in.

Angela must be pretty busy at work to allow things to get this way. They really drive her hard at Bear Elias, and if she does not go into the office at the weekend it is only because she has brought work home. When she gets back in the evenings, the first thing she does is head straight for the sofa and bed down for an hour. Only then, when I have brought her a cup of tea and rubbed her feet and warmed her toes, does she have the energy to talk. And, as if her job were not demanding enough, she has taken to going to the gym. At least three evenings a week she works out at the local fitness club, courtesy of her corporate membership. I'm not complaining, she has never looked better. But just lately arranging to see her has almost become a question of booking an appointment.

She is now forty-five minutes late.

There will be a perfectly reasonable explanation for her absence. As occurs in a million appointments every day, an innocent delay has arisen. She is late, and that is all there is to it.

For the sake of variety, I climb up to the bed – climb, because the bed is a king-sized bunk which hangs from the high ceiling on big white-painted chains. When Angela first moved here, three years ago, she and I had a private sentimental nickname for this loft: the love-nest, we used to call it.

I lie down on my back with closed eyes. I breathe deeply.

There is so much room up here that three people could stretch out in comfort. In fact, it took Angela and me a little time to become accustomed to the space. In the year before she moved in here – our first year together – when I was living at home with Pa, we did our sleeping together at her old place, a cheap flat by the docks. Angela had a single bed, one as narrow as a train berth, and when the underground passed below and sent vibrations through the house, the two of us lay there rocking like journeyers on an overnight express. Who is to say that the sensation of travel was not an appropriate one? After all, we were going places. I was about to embark on my chair-making venture and Angela had just started her MBA, and like motorists entranced and quickened by new cities tantalizingly pledged on highway signboards, during those shaking nights our quickly looming futures kept us awake for hours, talking, talking. Fired up, emboldened by the rich proximity of our goals, we travelled easily through the hours of darkness, all the while wrapped up together like a package, our legs intertwined, our arms locked into bear hugs. We hung on like this all night. We had to – the bed was so small that we couldn't roll over without falling out.

I open my eyes. Jesus, I hope she's all right. I hope nothing's happened to her.

I rise with a start and climb down the ladder. I'm damned if I am going to worry. The chances of Angela not safely returning home must be at least a million to one. Only a professional nail-biter like Pa would get worked up by those kinds of odds.

But if I were him, I would be fearful of long shots, too.

The incident in the pub this morning. Now that's what I call a dark horse.

Pa and I had just sucked down the remains of our beers and were about to make a move when, pushing through the crush, a man suddenly came forward and pointed at Pa. ‘I know you,' he said. He kept pointing. ‘It's Breeze, isn't it? You're him. You're Gene Breeze, aren't you?'

Pa glanced at me nervously and said, ‘Yes, as a matter of fact I am.' He turned to the man. ‘How – how can I help you?'

‘I thought I recognized you,' the man said. ‘I said to myself, I know that face from somewhere.'

It is important, here, to point something out: the most remarkable thing about the newcomer was his size. He was a midget. He could not have been more than four feet tall.

I picked up my coat and said, ‘Let's go, Pa.'

The man said, ‘You want to know if I've got any problems, Breeze? You want to know if I've got any complaints? Well, pal, I do. I've got a whole pile of fucking complaints.'

He put his beer down and stood at the end of the table. Pa was cornered.

Pa said, ‘How can I help you, Mr  
…
'

‘Don't worry about my name, Breeze, you're the one with questions to answer.' Again he jabbed his index finger in Pa's direction. ‘You got that, Breeze?
You're
the one doing the answering around here.'

I could not believe it. This runt, this
titch,
was threatening two fully grown men.

‘How is it,' the man demanded, ‘that I'm late for work almost every day of the week? Eh, Breeze? How is it that I spend two grand a year on fucking travel and still I get to stand in a crowded, dirty train every morning – if I'm lucky?' He wiped the small wet hole of his mouth and started moving towards Pa. ‘Well? I only live fifteen miles from Rockport: so why does it take me, on average, one hour to get into town?'

Pa, his face yellow-grey again, was completely lost. He started shrinking into his anorak as the stranger slowly advanced like a miniature gunman, punctuating his sentences with absurd stomps of his cowboy boots. The stranger said, ‘You haven't got much to say for yourself, have you, Breeze? Eh? Why do I spend half my life freezing on a fucking train platform? Well, Breeze? Sorry – well,
Gene
?'

‘I …' Pa said. ‘I …'

I decided to intervene. ‘That's enough,' I said. ‘Listen, I don't know who you are, but…'

‘Enjoying yourself, Breeze?' the man sneered. ‘Having fun, are you? I am. I should do this more often. I should
liaise
with you more often.' Now the midget's red face, bright as a stop light, was directly below Pa's. ‘I tell you what,' he said. ‘You
want to know how I feel, Gene, old boy? You really want to know how I feel?'

The man spat straight into Pa's face, the saliva spurting up and sticking with a tacky splash on his eyebrow and on the frame of his glasses.

The man drew back. ‘There you go, Gene. Stick that in your report.' Then, before I could react, before I could snap his fucking dwarf's neck, he walked off.

‘Pa,' I said. ‘Pa, Jesus, I…'

Pa had not moved. He was still frozen in the corner with shock, the spittle now slowly dripping down on to his lips.

I took out his red linesman's handkerchief and wiped his face and glasses. ‘Come on,' I said, stuffing the handkerchief back into his pocket. ‘Let's get out of here.'

That fleck of shit spat at Pa because Pa is the manager of the Rockport Railway Network, Northern Section. He is the man responsible for the smooth running of two hundred and sixty trains a day. It's a large responsibility which has not been lessened, it has to be said, by the poster campaign which the Network has recently embarked on. Plastered over every train and every train station in north Rockport is a photograph of my father holding a telephone. It is not a very good photograph: his hair is uncombed, his cream tie clashes with his brown shirt and grey jacket and, worst of all, his face bears an apprehensive and culpable expression. The caption reads:

Hello, I'm Gene Breeze, your Network Manager. If you have any comments – good or bad – about the service we provide, let me know. I want to know how you feel to help me meet your requirements. So don't hold back. Liaise with me or my staff on Rockport 232597.

The network motto, ‘We're getting there', has, of course, become something of a joke, because everybody knows that the Network is getting nowhere. It has personnel problems, rolling-stock problems, signalling problems and investment problems. Above all, it has delay problems – delays that have been attributed to such malign agents of nature as swans (flying into the overhead lines), leaves (falling on the tracks)
and rodents (gnawing into cables). Staff morale is low and passenger dissatisfaction is high, and for an hour at the end of every day Pa has to listen to the abuse and anger of the Network users. That is on top of the nine hours he puts in trying to run the railroad itself.

It angers me to think of what he goes through. Not long ago, I tried to talk him out of fielding the complaints personally.

‘I have to, son,' he said. ‘I have to. I owe it to the customers. It's not right that I invite them to ring me without me being there at least some of the time. They are my clients. They have a right to talk to me.'

‘But, Pa, you have a public relations team to look after that. Let them answer the calls.'

‘As the manager,' Pa said, ‘I am responsible for the complaints. The buck stops with me,' he said. ‘The way I see it, being answerable to the public means just that: answering the public.'

‘But the other network managers don't do that,' I said. ‘Pa, you're the only one who actually does what those posters say.'

‘You're right,' Pa admitted. ‘But then, it wasn't their idea to start this campaign.'

I said, ‘It was your idea?'

‘Yes,' he said proudly. ‘I was the one who suggested it to the directors. No matter what Paddy Browne says, I'm not devoid of ideas.'

Paddy Browne is the Network Secretary and, according to Pa, the man behind the moves to depose him. It was Paddy Browne who recently suggested to Pa that he should think of early retirement. That day, Pa came round to the flat and stood fuming in my basement workshop as I tinkered, for the sake of appearances, with a piece of wood.

‘Early retirement? Early retirement? You know what that means, don't you? It means the sack, that's what it means.' He started wandering around the room, weaving his way between the various obstacles. He uttered the loathsome name once more: ‘Paddy Browne.' He pointed at the door. ‘He wants me out, that's what he wants. No, no, I can see it with my own eyes,' Pa said, waving me down as though I had voiced a protest. ‘He undermines everything I do. Every time I say
anything at a meeting, Paddy's there with a ‘Yes, but”, and ‘Surely what you're trying to say is this …” It's eating away at me, Johnny, it's tearing me apart. Johnny,' Pa said wildly, ‘Johnny, he's after my blood. He won't rest until he sees me out.'

‘Are you sure you're not reading too much into it?' I said.

‘Listen, the man has commissioned a study of the management structure, he's bringing in people from the outside. The management structure! That's a good one! The management structure is
me:
I'm the management structure!'

I said nothing.

Pa said, ‘And I know what they're going to recommend. They're going to recommend my dismissal.'

‘You don't know that, Pa,' I said.

‘Just you wait and see,' he said. ‘I know how Browne operates. He's going to produce these bar charts and efficiency graphs which will show that I've got to go. Johnny, you should see the stuff he comes up with. It's all green arrows and red arrows and flow charts and diagrams. He goes around with this portable computer, this lap-top, as he calls it, and everything he writes comes out looking like – like the Ten Commandments.' Pa suddenly raised his voice. ‘You don't believe me? Here,' he said, stormily snatching a folder from his briefcase and flying sheets of paper into the air, ‘here, read this. Just read it.'

I took the folder and flicked through its contents, a twenty-page company report of some kind. The document, headlines printed in bold, key points emphasized in italics and statistics illustrated by multicoloured pie charts, was immaculate. The sentences were short and unambiguous and the concluding opinion was headed ‘Findings', as though unimpeachable discoveries of fact had been made. I handed the papers back to Pa. ‘I see what you mean,' I said.

‘What did I tell you? I'm right, aren't I?' Pa closed his briefcase. ‘I haven't got a hope against that kind of presentation,' he said. ‘Not a hope. Hell's bells, Johnny, all I know about is trains.'

I said cautiously, ‘Maybe retirement wouldn't be such a bad
thing. Think of all the free time you'd have. Think of all the things you could do.'

Pa swung around. ‘Free time? Are you crazy? I don't want free time! I want to work! Besides,' he said in a different voice, ‘I'll be honest with you, we need the money. If I retired, who would make the mortgage payments on this flat?'

‘Pa, sell the flat. Rosie and me'll be fine. Don't let us stop you.'

Pa said, ‘We were unlucky with this place. As soon as we bought it the market fell. They say prices never dropped so quickly in twenty years.' He shook his head. ‘We can't afford to sell now. We'd lose too much.'

Although Pa was telling the truth about the property market, I knew that he was just using it as an excuse. The fact of the matter is, Pa will never sell the flat so long as Rosie and I are still in need of it.

So there is something else for me not to worry about – the calamitous possibility of Pa being laid off tomorrow, the day that the management report comes out. Calamitous is not an exaggeration. My father without employment is simply unimaginable. His veneration of work is such that, whenever he picks up a newspaper, the first place he turns to, before even the sports pages, are the appointments pages.

‘Listen to this, son,' he says, reading out an advertisement in a low, reverential voice. ‘And this,' he says turning to another one, ‘just listen to this one.' He holds up the sheets to the light in wonderment. ‘Would you believe it?' he says. ‘Would you believe it?'