The Otto Bin Empire (2 page)

Clive, too, was drawn to Sal, although he sensed the tragic figure that lay beneath the bright façade she presented on the afternoons she turned up at The Corner.

‘Hello, Madge. Hello, Clive.'

If they were present upon her arrival she would always single them out, giving Madge a warm hug, blowing Clive a flirtatious kiss, before lighting up a smoke and starting on her takeaway coffee. Bright and breezy, she would initiate chats with all those who had become family to her. But her company, despite being pleasurable, presented a dilemma for Clive. She reminded him altogether too much of his daughter, or rather his daughter as she had been seven years ago – Jodie was now twenty-five, engaged to be married, her life all in order.

Sal was intelligent and pretty and fun, but if she continued upon her current path there appeared only one way she was likely to go, and Clive didn't want to think about that.

Jodie was intelligent and pretty too, but she was no longer fun, at least not with her father, and Clive didn't want to think about that either.

‘What you've done to Mum is unforgivable,' Jodie had hissed over the phone. Those were the days shortly after he'd left Rosemary and taken to the streets; the days when he hadn't admitted he was homeless; the days when he'd answer the phone that vibrated in his top pocket, even though he'd turned it to silent and vowed to ignore it. He could never help checking who was calling though, just habit, and he didn't respond to work colleagues or friends, but when the caller proved to be daughter Jodie or son Joshua, he felt compelled to answer. Well, in those days he had. He'd long since turned the phone off and it lived in the bottom of his backpack. The battery would be flat by now. He had the requisite lead and could easily have charged it at one of the Neighbourhood Centre's outlets. But he hadn't.

‘I presume you're shacked up with her, whoever she is and wherever she lives, neither of which I give a damn about personally, but you could at least do the right thing by Mum,' Jodie had continued, her anger pulsating in his ear.

‘And what exactly would that be, Jodie?' he'd asked calmly. ‘Your mother kicked me out, remember? She had every right to, of course, and I don't blame her, but she made
it quite clear she doesn't want me back. If I attempted to make contact I'd be interfering in her life.'

His composure had only increased his daughter's anger. ‘But no-one knows where you are, for God's sake. Josh says you won't tell him either.' Jodie was a young woman who liked to be in control and her anger was born of frustration, the current situation having rendered her powerless. ‘You can't just disappear from the face of the earth – it's irresponsible.' No reply from her father exasperated her further. ‘You do realise that, don't you, Dad? You're shirking your responsibility!' More than accusatory now, she was damning. ‘You're running away, that's what you're doing!'

‘Yes,' he'd agreed, surprised that the answer really might be that simple. ‘Yes, I believe you're right.'

That was when Jodie had finally exploded.

‘Well, stay with your girlfriend, see if I care, but don't bother turning up at my wedding. I don't want you there, do you understand me? Josh can give me away. You're no longer my father.' She'd hung up then, and Clive had had the feeling that she'd probably burst into tears afterwards. He regretted the fact but felt incapable of doing anything about it. The apparently irreparable schism that now existed between him and his daughter only heightened his sense of being adrift in a world of his own making. There was nothing he could do about anything really.

Josh wasn't as condemnatory as his sister. Twenty-seven-year-old Josh had tried very hard to be the voice of reason.

‘Look, Dad, I know the marriage is over and you're not coming back,' he'd said over the phone, ‘and I know that's the way Mum wants it. But to break all ties with everyone … I mean with us, your own family … with your friends and your business … Hey, man, no-one knows where the hell you are … I mean, that's not healthy … You need some form of human contact … Well, I know you've got your new girlfriend,' he'd added hastily, ‘but you get where I'm coming from, don't you? I mean, you can't just leave your past behind. What say we meet up and talk about this, eh? Just you and me, what do you say?'

Clive had smiled as he listened to his son: ‘I mean', ‘hey, man', ‘what say' … There were times when Josh sounded distinctly American. It was his job of course. Joshua was an exceptionally bright IT man and had recently been appointed head of marketing at a major publishing house. Given the change from print to electronic media that was still moving at such a pace, he was revolutionising the company's website and electronic marketing methods, the new whiz-kid on the block – no wonder there was an American sales pitch to his manner.
Good for you, mate
, Clive had thought fondly.

‘I'm not breaking all ties with you, Josh,' he'd said, ‘that's not my intention, I promise. It's not my intention to break all ties with Jodie either, although I don't think she realises that. It's just that I need to be on my own for a while.'

Do any of them realise I really do mean ‘on my own'
? he wondered.
They all seem to presume I'm living with Barbara. Well, let them
, he decided.

Telling the truth was not an option to Clive. God forbid it might appear a bid for sympathy or a plea for forgiveness, both of which were the last things he wanted. He accepted entire responsibility for his current situation. Besides, Barbara wouldn't have wanted him to shift into her life. He wouldn't have wanted to shift into hers either, such an option had not occurred to him once. All ties had been broken with Barbara too. She was another whose calls had gone unanswered, and it didn't take long before she'd stopped ringing. Their relationship had been a six-month casual affair, pleasant dalliances that suited them both, just like the other affairs he'd had throughout his marriage. A weakness, of course, but he'd rarely been able to resist a woman who made it obvious she found him attractive. There had been no conscious intent on his part, he'd never sought out women for the purpose of seduction; things had seemed simply to happen. In the early days when he and Rosemary had still shared a passion, she'd seen his infidelities as betrayal and threatened to leave him. He'd practised discretion after that, escaping detection for the most part, or so he'd thought, and as they'd drifted into the complacency of middle-age he'd assumed that whenever she suspected a brief affair was afoot she was content to turn a blind eye. He'd been wrong. This latest fling, only recently discovered, had pushed Rosemary over the edge. And who could blame her?

‘How long's “a while”?' His son's voice had jolted Clive from his reverie.

‘I don't know, Josh. I truly don't know.'

A pause. ‘What are you going to do about the business?'

‘Oh, I think your mother's more than capable of handling things,' he'd replied. And she was, of course. The business had been Rosemary's from the start – Rosemary's idea, Rosemary's passion, even Rosemary's money. She'd invested the entire $50,000 left to her by her grandmother in order to get them started. The company's very name, ‘Barnett Creative Landscape Design & Maintenance', was of her invention. A bit fancy in his opinion, he would have preferred simply ‘Barnett Landscaping'. They'd worked equally hard to get the business up and going, it was true, and the company was registered in both their names, but Clive had always considered it Rosemary's. He wanted no part of it now. He wanted to turn his back and walk away from it all.

‘So how long will this go on, Dad? I mean, when do I get to see you?' Josh's ‘voice of reason' now held an element of impatience that he made little effort to disguise. ‘I mean, when do you intend to get back in touch with the real world?'

‘I'll get back in touch when I've sorted myself out, mate, I promise,' Clive had said, although even as he did something deep inside told him he wasn't at all sure he could honour the promise.

They'd said their goodbyes and that was that.

Over the ensuing weeks Josh had phoned several times and the conversation followed similarly frustrating lines. Jodie, too, had made further contact, but not verbally, preferring instead to send text messages damning her father. Finally, Clive had turned his
mobile phone off altogether, dumping it in the bottom of his backpack. He'd thought of throwing it away, but some sixth sense had warned him not to.

As time passed and he came to accept his homeless state, Clive was surprised to discover that his life had taken on a bizarre form of routine.

There were those whose gardens he tended on a semi-regular basis and who he'd come to know – Mrs Cookson and Mrs McPherson (who insisted he call her Florence) and several others besides. There were Saturday afternoons watching Oskar the Pole play chess and Sundays doing the crossword with Ben. There were those occasional afternoon chats with Sal, whom he suspected had come to view him as something of a father-figure, and of course there was Madge, whose conversation never ceased to stimulate.

His world seemed strangely complete, without threat or demand, and he was forced to admit that perhaps he didn't really want to ‘sort himself out'. Perhaps he preferred being adrift in a world free of all responsibility other than that of survival. His daughter had been quite right when she'd accused him of running away, he'd decided. He was too cowardly to try and resurrect a new life. Upon coming to this conclusion, he didn't particularly like himself, but before long, and without too much difficulty, he'd managed to shrug off a sense of worthlessness and embrace his mindless routine.

Then one day something happened to break the routine, something quite mundane.

He'd finished a morning's work for Florence, painting some kitchen cupboards that didn't really need painting. He'd told her as much, but she'd insisted they be done. The kitchen would be neater that way, she'd said, and besides, she'd be able to get rid of the unsightly tins of leftover paint that had sat in the garage ever since Cyril's death. Clive had wondered why the unsightly tins needed to be got rid of at all as the garage was never used; it wasn't even seen by anyone from what he could gather. But he'd been grateful for the work. With autumn on the wane, gardening jobs were harder to come by, and as the weather had grown colder he'd incurred extra expenses: a warm fleece-lined jacket, several pairs of thick winter socks, a woollen beanie and a spare army blanket, all purchased from St Vincent de Paul. The regular nightly nooks of his choice were not as cosy these days, but he had determined not to seek refuge in one of the shelters for the homeless – that was the domain of the truly needy, and he was not one of those.

After leaving Florence's, he'd bought three steaming hot meat pies on his way to The Corner – one for him, one for Madge and one for Sal, just in case she was there. If she wasn't then he'd eat two. As it turned out she was, and the three of them had stood around their Otto Bin, downing their pies with liberal serves of tomato sauce from the bottle Madge had fetched from her bedsit. She'd also fetched a longneck of beer in a brown paper bag. ‘What's a pie without a beer,' she'd said, and she and Clive swigged from the bottle while Sal stuck to her takeaway coffee. Sal didn't drink, not even beer.

When they'd finished, the women lit up their cigarettes – Madge one of her roll-your-owns and Sal one of her tailor-made Dunhills. While they chattered away Clive
ceased to listen and drifted off, gazing distractedly out at the street that led down the hill to the docks, his mind a blank. And that's when he saw her.

She was an attractive woman, in her early to mid-forties he guessed, and wealthy by the look of her: shoulder-length hair stylishly highlighted; dark glasses that he presumed to be Gucci because they looked so like the pair Rosemary had; and a well-cut beige suit, obviously designer label, with a knee-length skirt showing off a fine pair of legs. She was striding purposefully up the hill in the sort of high-fashion shoes few women could manage, and that was what caught his eye above all else. He did so like a woman who could strut her stuff in high heels. Frankly, he'd never known how any of them could, but it seemed so few were able master the art these days.

But even as he admired her assured gait, he realised that something wasn't quite right.
She's a bit wobbly
, he thought,
and it's not because of the shoes
. He smiled to himself as he realised the problem.
She's pissed, that's it. I bet she's been to lunch at The Pier. She wouldn't have been drinking at one of the dockside pubs, that's for sure, but there's no two ways about it, she's pissed.

Then, as the woman neared the Otto Bins and was less than ten metres away, she suddenly fell. One of the heels wobbled a little too much, her ankle gave way, and she landed in an awkward heap on the sidewalk.

The several others congregated at The Corner, including Madge and Sal, didn't see her fall, but Clive leapt instinctively to her aid. Within seconds he was beside her, helping her to her feet.

‘I'm fine, thank you, really, I'm fine,' she insisted, gathering up her Louis Vuitton shoulder bag and the Gucci glasses that now lay on the pavement. But she was nonetheless forced to accept his assistance as, in struggling to her feet, her ankle once again deserted her.

‘I think you might have a sprain,' Clive said, ‘better come over here and sit down.'

‘Yes, yes, all right.' Wincing with pain and accepting his support, the woman allowed herself to be led, limping heavily, past the Otto Bins to the tiny communal park with its patchy grass, its several scrawny trees and its two wooden benches, both badly in need of a coat of paint.