Soothing Music for Stray Cats

First impression: 2009

© Jayne Joso 2009

This book is subject to copyright and may not be reproduced by any means except for review purposes without the prior written consent of the publishers

Published with the financial support of the Welsh Books Council Alcemi is represented in the UK excluding Wales by Inpress Ltd — www.inpressbooks.co.uk. In Wales it is represented by www.gwales.com

Editor: Gwen Davies

ISBN: 978-1-84771-532-6

Printed on acid-free and partly-recycled paper.

Published by Alcemi and printed and bound in Wales by

Y Lolfa Cyf., Talybont, Ceredigion SY24 5AP

e-mail [email protected]

website www.alcemi.eu

tel 01970 832 304

fax 832 782

For Mum

‘The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.’

Henry David Thoreau as quoted in Kurt Vonnegut - Timequake

‘Human life lasts but an instant. One should spend it doing what one pleases. In this world fleeting as a dream, to lie in misery doing only what one dislikes is foolishness.’

Samurai, Tsunetomo Yamamoto - Hagakure

Chapter One

february 2005

Keep passing the open window

My name’s Mark Kerr, I’m 35, and one of what my dad calls ‘Thatcher’s youth, and the generation who thought they could have it all’. I don’t even know what that means anymore, I’m not sure I ever did. And now that my friend, Jim Jakes, has jumped from a window on the twentieth floor, all I do know is, I’ve been living the wrong life. I guess Jim was too.

When we were kids, me and Jim, we dreamt of writing songs together. We should have tried, should have given it a go, and written the songs, and lived the lives we wanted to.

The thing is, you’re supposed to keep passing the open window. But once you need to keep passing it, in some ways it’s already too late – because you start to notice it in that particular way, and then you notice it more, and the pull gets greater, and then you’re stuck with finding ways of passing it, dodging it, putting it off, until finally it pretty much sucks you out. That’s what happened, I guess, what must have happened, to my mate Jim. ‘My mate Jim’. That statement feels so awkward, because it isn’t entirely true. We were mates, when we were kids, teenagers. I’d never really given it much thought, but we must have been friends for quite some time, in fact right from being little kids until we were about eighteen. That’s why his sister, Julie – Jules, had tracked me down. In the end she got hold of me through my dad. He was the only one who’d never moved.

Jim’s family had moved to the other side of town when his dad got a promotion, it had meant they could afford a semi, and later they planned to go detached. I guess me and Jim would have been about seventeen then, so it must have been just before I moved away to university. I think Jim stayed more local for that, truth was, neither of us ever dreamt of going to university, it was just that time when suddenly every Tom, Mark and Jim got the chance. Anyway, like I said, Dad was the only one who’d stayed in our old terraced street. I think he’d got stuck, specially after Mum left, and more so once she’d passed away. The big ‘C’ as people call it. And it hit Dad hardest because it meant finally facing the fact that she really would never come back. While she was alive he’d managed to fool himself that she just might come back, one day. She would never have come back, but people have to tell themselves lies, stories, that make life easier to deal with. And the possibility of Mum’s return was his. In the end the house was all he had to hang on to. That and his mates. — He’d been there so long he’d taken root, and the only memories he thought to be of any value at all, belonged to that house. He couldn’t ever contemplate the idea of new dreams, stuff that might make more good memories, he was too loyal to the past. Sad in some ways, but that’s how it was, that was Dad. And that house contained the only sense of life he’d known or ever wanted to know. He loved it. I think ‘I’d’ loved it, well, sort of, but it was always too quiet after Mum had upped and left. Quiet, that uneasy, queasy sort of quiet that gnaws away and messes with your nerves — Dad said he liked it like that. But I think he just didn’t have any way of filling in that empty sound without her around. It was as though it would have been an act of adultery, a betrayal somehow, to tune the friggin’ radio in, or get a sodding disc player.

That was another thing, he lived in a different time. He even called the radio a sodding ‘wireless’; it felt like he did it to annoy me, even me granddad never called it that, that word was well gone even before me dad’s time, in fact that word’s so well gone it’s looped right round and come back in again — anyways, me dad, he was stuck, and not even in a time warp that was his, more a sort of pre-warp. And he lived it for real too, no ‘half measures’ with Dad (those old phrases crack me up, they sound totally lame now). But me dad, he did genuinely, and I suppose, legitimately, still inhabit a time when you bought stuff and kept it forever and fixed it when it got broke. I kept telling him, no one, Dad, no one lives like that anymore. He never listened. And in some ways he was right, I could see that, and really, what was the point in finding more ways to make a bleedin’ racket, when you didn’t make use of what you’d already got? And he always added ‘son’ in that tone of his. I didn’t mind. He was stuck, that was all. And what’s so wrong with that? Thick with dust, his radio was. — Anyway, the reason I’d gone back up there, was ’cos Jules wanted me at her brother’s funeral, ‘Best mate he ever had,’ she said. I must have looked as uncomfortable as I felt because she said it again, I suppose to reassure, ‘His best mate, you really were, Mark.’ Yeah, right. Like I said, she meant it nice, but I’m telling you, when the guy’s just chucked himself out of the glass of a twenty storey building, and the last time you saw him was… was? I don’t even fucking know when it was. How long ago? Years. Years and fucking years. So ‘nice’ just doesn’t come into it. Wasn’t his fuckin’ mate when all that happened, was I? Wasn’t around when he jumped – to stop him jump. — So where was I? — And just what the fuck was going through Jim’s stupid bastard head? I wasn’t his mate, not anymore. I’d moved on. That’s how it is. We’ve all got opportunities now, so-called opportunities… yeah. So things get all separated out, people move away, and lose touch. That’s what happened with us. It was my fault. When I had a moment to myself I thought it through again, trying to make sure – exactly how old was I when I left? And was that really the last time I’d seen him? I bit into my lip. Tried to calm my breathing. Yeah, I reckon we’d just turned eighteen the last time we met, thirty-bleedin-five this year, seventeen years back.

I’ve always been useless at keeping in touch. Even with me dad. I go up from time to time but not that often. And no one sends letters anymore, I’ve never done cards, and Christmas, dunno but somehow that’s always been more of a bird’s thing. I suppose now though, I could’ve emailed, sent the bastard a text, but we didn’t have all that then. Tell the truth, I don’t care for texting much. It’s not my thing. People send messages. I read ’em and I mean to reply, but then, then I can’t be arsed. I’d made my lip bleed. Should have kept in touch. Should have done something. I read the details in the paper, Dad had kept the clipping. There wasn’t hardly anything to read, it was like Dad said, ‘Don’t write nothing special about you do they, not if you’re no one.’ I looked up and half smiled, agreeing. ‘Sad that,’ he added. And then he noticed the date, ‘Jim died on the Monday – February Seventh,’ he said, with some depth of meaning as though I ought to realise the significance, ‘That was Ellen MacArthur’s day, the sailor.’

‘Who?’ I said, but Dad wasn’t listening.

‘They’re making her a dame, 71 days, 14 hours, 18 minutes and 33 seconds.’ He got up and went into the kitchen, I could hear him shuffle through the recycling bin (recycling was one of the few things Dad approved of in the ‘modern world’), he gave a few disgruntled sighs and then a hushed and contented ‘Yeees’, as he found what he was looking for. He practically waltzed back in, saying, ‘They described her as, diminutive,’ and he smiled approvingly, as though he was proud, like on a personal level, as though she was someone he knew. ‘The fastest person to circumnavigate the globe, ever. Don’t suppose it matters much what size she is, eh?’ and he laughed awkwardly, the way people do when they aren’t really sure about jokes, how to make them, how they work, the timing. I laughed along to keep him company, but he was no Dave Allen. And then I thought back to when I was a kid, and how I used to hide behind his chair; he’d forget I was there and think he’d already sent me to bed, but I’d be curled round the back of his armchair distantly taking in Dave Allen on the telly, and Dad would be laughing along, bottle of beer in hand to Dave Allen’s fag and whiskey, but you can’t get comic genius just from watching it, you can’t time gags like Allen if it ain’t already streaming through your veins. And despite smoking and drinking being the best punctuation that ever was, it don’t make every fag-ash-Harry and barfly a bleedin’ comic, despite all our delusions. — Dad was still on about Ellen — icebergs, oceans, whales, and he was right, ‘What a bloody achievement!’, and normally the whole Moby Dick thing would grab me, but I couldn’t stay with it just now. Too much other stuff had just happened, and I’m not like Dad, I can’t push it all away and pretend like stuff ain’t happened. I don’t blame him for doing that, in some ways I even envy him, but me, I don’t quite know how to do it. Can’t push death away. — I wanted a fag, and Dad knew I did ’cos he kept noticing my leg twitching. ‘Not in here son,’ he said in that disapproving, whispered tone, ‘best go outside.’ I felt like the bleedin’ dog sometimes, as though he thought I was gonna cock my soddin’ leg or something. We didn’t even have a dog.

That was the last time I went up there. The funeral. — Jim had done well for himself, was how Dad put it, engineer, fully qualified and everything. ‘It’s not good,’ he said soberly, ‘not good at all’, and after that he didn’t say too much else about him. He looked at Mum’s photo a few times, but he didn’t mention her, and I didn’t. Didn’t know what to say.

I met up with Jules in the pub, it was the day before the funeral, she said it was going to be a burial, and Jim hadn’t left instructions – instructions? – so they’d thought that a ‘proper funeral’ was best. Jim hadn’t got as far as thinking about all that. Guess you wouldn’t. Guess he just wanted to be ‘gone’. — Jules had known his girlfriend, and at first I was curious, but the more Jules talked about her the more I didn’t like her, and the more I wished I hadn’t asked. Girlfriend, total fuckin’ witch more like. And what the hell kind of a name is Trudy anyway? — So, there we were, sitting in the pub, I had a pint, and Jules had a rum and coke. It didn’t matter, but it felt weird somehow, like we should’ve been drinking something else, I don’t mean like tea or coffee or anything lame like that, more as though there should be something… something different that you drink when something so big and tragic happens. But there isn’t anything, not that I know of. Bastard Britain. So there I was, sat in a friggin’ pub with a pint and a dead guy’s sister, and her rum and coke. I stared at the ashtray. — Jim had been depressed, yeah, ‘depressed’ was how Jules put it. Proper, full on depressed, I think the docs call it depression when it gets that bad. I ran the word round my head, swilling the last of my beer round the bottom of my glass. Better get another round in. But Jules’ glass was still full — Depression. Makes sense, the word, I thought, like you have a de-press switch or something and somehow it suddenly gets flicked, full — on. The whole thing had been getting on Trudy’s tits, Jules said. And it was weird, I couldn’t tell what Jules really felt. Not about her brother, not about Trudy. She carried on talking.

My glass was empty now. I’d have to get another, but Jules still hadn’t hardly touched hers. I’d have to wait it out a bit. It was fine, we both smoked, loads in fact — funny the things that cover over the cracks, the time and distance, my guilt at losing touch, not knowing what had been going down, but it was easy with Jules somehow, it was like smoking covered that stuff over. It fills up pauses. Smokes ’em up. I took another drag. I never know what non-smokers do about all that, how they deal with pauses, awkward stuff. Guess they just sit there, knowing there’s a fucking great awkward pause hovering, waiting to crush you or swallow you up. But then there’s drinking. People drink a bit more I guess, that would cover it well enough. So, Jules talked, and I listened, both of us smoked. Match made in heaven, ’cept it was more like a graveyard. — We were back to talking about Trudy’s tits again. And Jim, getting on her tits. Bitch. Jules said this bird had tried and tried, tried everything… but Jim, he was still fucking miserable, Trudy had said as much. I stabbed my fag out, that one hadn’t tasted too good. I looked into the distance. I didn’t want Jules to cry. Looked like she’d cried for England already. It’s awkward when girls cry. I don’t mind, but I think they do, and I think they feel awkward. I’d wait a minute. She’d got a tissue and that, I could see from the corner of my eye, she was dabbing. Yeah wait a minute, don’t look at her, that way she’d get herself together again, composed I guess you’d say – then she’d be alright, then she’d carry on.

I thought it was time for another fag at least. I was feeling pretty crap by now. I should have kept in touch. I ought to come and see Dad more often too. — Jules still hadn’t finished her drink but it was no good, I couldn’t wait any longer, besides, I thought the time alone would suit her, she could sort herself out while I was at the bar. ‘I’ll get another one in,’ I said as I got up, and I didn’t look at her. I feel a bit bad about saying this, but frankly I was glad to have some time-out at the bar, I just didn’t like sitting there seeing her hurting, and I felt like I should cry, but I couldn’t, and it all felt weird. To tell the truth, I drew the time out quite a bit chatting to the geezer behind the bar, letting him wag his tongue about local shite, all that ordinary stuff that holds a place together.

I pulled my wallet out of my back pocket to pay him, and as I opened it a piece of paper fell out; it was ripped out of my old notepad with a name and a phone number scribbled on it, only I didn’t recognise either. It was my writing for sure: Ron Pope, I ran the name round my head, I hadn’t got a clue, but then I vaguely remembered writing it, and I remembered copying it from an email, a chirpy looking mail in blue, but I couldn’t remember anything else, not even who’d sent it to me. I was feeling pretty frazzled. — When I looked up again I realised the guy was still waiting for some dosh so I passed him a twenty and shoved the paper back inside my wallet, couldn’t be that important and maybe it would come to me later.

Jules seemed a bit better when I got back to the table, just a bit lost looking, and now I worried that I’d been too long at the bar. — I sat back down and lit up again. It turns out that Trudy had encouraged Jim to take a promotion, in a city he didn’t know. He found a bedsit. Jules said it was a hole, but the idea was that it’d be easier to save more money that way. Trudy didn’t go with him, she couldn’t leave her friends, and anyway he was good at making friends, he’d be alright, the move was what he needed, it’d be good for his CV, his career, and later he could come back, and it’d be so much easier to get a bigger first home after he’d been earning decent money for a few years, then they’d have a ‘substantial deposit’, get on the property ladder, get started; and it wouldn’t be such a hardship them being apart, she’d come up at the weekends, when he wasn’t working through, well, some weekends, she’d got her pilates class and the gym, oh, and her mates.

So there he was, in a hole, with an a-hole job, in some fuck-wit city. On his own. Staring at the walls. Saving up to get started. I was glad I’d got another beer. Then Jules said he must have got really down, really down, he was on Anti-Ds though he’d said they didn’t suit him. He’d lost a load of weight; he’d never been big, not fat or anything, but ’cos of his height Jules said the docs might have miscalculated the dose, she said she’d looked into it since… and then she stopped talking. She looked down and fiddled with something, her fingernails I think, dead agitated. She could have done with a beer mat to tear up, that was always their best use, only there weren’t any. I leaned back in my chair and let her be. This stuff wasn’t easy for her to get out, and to be honest, it wasn’t easy to listen to. It seemed like we had to do it in stages, steps. Slow, easy steps. I thought it best to leave it alone a while. For a few moments I tried to listen in to the conversation at the bar, really it was too far away but some of the blokes were a bit pissed and acting up so I could catch some of it. Then after a while Jules took up from where she’d left off, saying as how, yeah, it might have been too high a dose, specially with his weight loss. Who knows. She finished up her drink and stared at the second one. We both watched the ice slipping. The pause was hellish long, neither of us said anything for ages. I scanned the floor, as though a pub’s stinking, piss and beer ridden planks were gonna pass up any wisdom, jerk, but what can you do? And then the sun streamed in, all cheerful, and right there and then even that felt annoying. I turned my back to it. Then it fell across Jules’ face and she tried to force a smile, but only for that moment, only to be brave, and maybe she was thinking the same as me ’cos then she shifted round and turned her back on it too.

She said she wished she’d known how far down he was, and known more about the drugs – sorry, medication, at the time, but then she wasn’t sure what she’d have done about it anyway, maybe nothing. But at least she could have told him that sometimes Anti-Ds make it worse. Anyhow, even if Jim had known, he wasn’t really in a state to deal with it, any of it, and most guys just don’t do that kind of thing – ask loads of details, side-effects and stuff, that’s just how it is. And I guess no one realises you’re not in a state to deal with things until, well, until it’s too late. She wasn’t sure if anyone was to blame about the anti-depressants, and maybe it wasn’t them, but at the time Trudy seemed to know more about that kind of stuff, and she’d said it would probably do the trick if you took them long enough. You probably just needed a high enough dose and to ‘stick with it’ in order for them to work.

When it got really rough Trudy took a day off work and went up there. So, she did her best. Jules was grateful, it can’t have been easy. She’d offered to go, but Trude said it was something she needed to sort out, and in any case, she knew Jules was too soft, she’d probably get him to quit his job and move back home, and then everyone would just be back at square one. Square one — yeah right, and we can’t have that, ’cos fuck knows, if we have people back at square one the bleedin’ sky’ll fall in! — Trudy spent three days with Jim, from Friday through Sunday. She knew he’d