One Pace Away, a short story by bebirdo. Times viewed: 264
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- Intro: A successful young lawyer's life begins to unravel as the Credit Crunch sees him lose his job, his home, his fiancee and his grip on reality. He decides to end it all but allows himself some final few moments to reminisce about happier times.
It was the longest I had ever driven without the radio or a CD on; three hours from South London to Suffolk in near silence. The only sounds that I experienced were the manly roars and groans of my BMW's engine as I bulleted up the A12, the monotonous drone of the tyres on the tarmac and the whirring of my throbbing mind's rusty cogs, still trying to fathom out where it had all gone wrong, trying desperately to comprehend the situation that I was now facing. I could have turned some tunes on at any time during the journey - my car's sound system was none too shabby, thank you very much - but I didn't feel like it. I know they say there's a song for every occasion but even if there was one that hit the proverbial nail squarely on the head and was tailor-made for that very moment in time, I would have passed. I wasn't in the mood for music. I wasn't really in the mood for anything but driving and scowling at the road ahead of me through the windscreen. Not that I was paying particular attention to my driving, mind you. But The Highway Code couldn't have been further from my mind to be honest. You see, I've had a bit of a rough ride of it recently. Well, that's an understatement when you consider that in the last couple of months my whole life has unravelled like a cheap woolly jumper snagged on a rusty nail. And so here I was on my final journey. My name is Chris Oldfield and I'm suicidal.
It's funny how the human mind works sometimes. I mean I'd been almost trance-like for the entire journey but then all of a sudden - Bang. Some in-built sixth sense told me that I had almost arrived at my destination and shook me out my zombified state. And true enough, when I scoured the horizon I could see the structure - the water tower - that had brought me here. Despite still being a mile or so off it dominated the landscape, being by far the tallest structure in the area. There it stood like some humongous mushroom-shaped temple enticing me towards it. There was some kind of magnetic force to it. I can't explain, I really can't. It was almost as if this concrete monstrosity was the Mother Ship and I was returning to it to enter its bowels to be beamed upwards towards my home planet or some such nonsense. This building was far from my saviour, however. Well, in a fashion I guess it was, as it was this construction I had chosen as the one I would end it all from. And save myself from the nightmare that was my life. I continued driving towards it; homing in on it. The sun had barely risen and in the dawn light it took on a dark, almost sinister appearance, enhanced dramatically by several crows winging around its summit almost reminiscent of the disappointing ending of Spielberg's War of the Worlds. As I edged ever closer, and having being offered a bit more light by the ever generous sun, I realised that the true colour of the tower was not so much a malevolent black as a dour, uninspiring beige. But those evil old crows didn't care what colour it was as they continued to dart back and forth and intermittently dived earthwards, no doubt in an attempt to catch the worm, as is the entitlement of the early bird. It was a hell of a beast, rising up some forty or fifty metres into the lightening sky. About three quarters of the way up the walls curved outwards giving it the gigantic, lonely mushroom effect or - I had always thought - the appearance of a huge torch. Most would agree that it was not a thing of beauty, it was after all a structure designed to hold thousands of gallons of water - A functional building, not an exciting one. To some it's a landmark, others might consider it an eyesore - a blot on the horizon. For me the tower had a certain something, a certain Je ne sais pas. This is why I had chosen it.As it was the crack of sparrows on a Sunday morning the traffic had been practically non-existent. In fact since leaving Essex behind I had barely seen another vehicle on the road - the odd coach and occasional white van but it did seem that, by and large, people were tucked up in beds - and contentedly so - with their cars locked away in garages or standing motionless in car parks and the like. It was almost as if everybody had given up on me. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't expecting crowds of folk to cram the sides of the dual carriageway, waving their arms all over the show in an attempt to flag me down and tell me that all was right with the world and everything was going to be OK. I don't know what I was expecting to tell you the truth. I didn't ponder long and hard on it either. The reason being that I knew that not everything was right with the world and everything was not going to be OK. In fact, I knew as sure as eggs is eggs that the world, my world at least, was a stinking pile of crap and nothing was ever going be what I would consider OK again. No, I was best off out of it. I had, of course carefully considered my options and had been racking my brain, almost to the point of going insane, trying to work out what I was going to do. How was I going to right the wrongs that had infiltrated my life like cancerous cells spreading fatally through a body. It was no use, though. There was only one option left. I was too tired to fight it any longer. My mind was frazzled - too much thinking; too much drinking. It was too painful to even keep on trying to work things out in my mind. I'd had enough of weighing up the options and eventually dismissing each and every glimmer of hope that I could dream up. I had considered a lot and always it came back to the same thing. Suicide. The easy way out? I'm not so sure, but the only way out? It seemed so. The only other options - moving back in with my parents and starting from scratch or worst still, living on the street - were ultimately non-starters. I was never going to be a happy hobo and as for moving back in with my parents, I just wasn't interested. Don't get me wrong I love my parents dearly, I really do, but the idea of going back there and sponging off them was the epitome of accepting that I had failed. I had spent the last few years trying to convince everyone that I was a success, almost to the extent that I wanted to ram it down their stupid peasant throats, so to put my hands up and accept sweet charity and say ‘OK, I failed' and then deal with the fallout was just too implausible for me to stomach. No, the only way was to take myself out of the gene pool. Alright, it too was accepting that I'd failed, but at least I wouldn't be around to deal with the fallout.
Finally I arrived at the water tower, which was situated a little way back from a largish roundabout. There were three parking spaces immediately outside of the perimeter fence around it and I pointed the nose of my BMW towards the middle bay whilst glancing at the chain-link effort for the best way over. Or through. Yes, through it was the best option. I chucked the car into second gear, floored the accelerator and with an almighty crash of twisting and snapping metal wires, a sound that would have raised Cain had he not been tucked-up and slumbering as soundly as the rest of the land, ploughed straight through the barrier. I was in. Decelerating I pulled up mere yards from the base of the tower. My final car journey was complete.
After a brief delay I switched off the ignition, climbed out of the car and, with stiff joints that made me feel far advanced of my twenty-four years, stumbled towards the building before me. Sliding the car keys into my hip pocket I glanced upwards at the tower that I was imminently going to climb. The whole thing was a mass of concrete and, although beige from a distance, I could tell from up close that it was made up of a variety of colours - admittedly mostly brown - in the shape of millions of small stones. Some were extremely tiny pebbles and the largest that I saw was almost as big as my thumbnail and split on the outside, giving it a flat edge well suited for skimming. I ventured closer to the construction and made my around it in an attempt to find my means up. As I strode around I reached out my hand and touched the outer wall, feeling every stone, every bump as I circumnavigated it. Eventually, almost the complete opposite side of the tower from where I parked, I found the ladder. Again I glanced up. This side seemed taller somehow and the ladder appeared to go on forever despite not even reaching the very apex of the structure. It led instead to a steel ledge that encircled the building just below where the walls veered away outwards and above me. I knew that it would take one hell of a climb - I'm not incredibly unfit but I'm certainly no toned athlete being rather too fond of the demon drink, especially since things started sliding. I grabbed hold of the sides of the ladder with both hands, placed my right foot, neatly encased in a Kurt Geiger slip-on - I wanted to be a well-heeled corpse - onto the bottom rung and with an almighty inhalation of breath, braced myself for the ascent. No turning back now.
After what seemed like an age I pulled myself onto the steel ledge. I was so exhausted that I could have died. Ironic or what? I realised now that as physically gruelling as the climb had been the hardest step was to come. And it was just that now. One step. One pace away from sweet relief. On the ascent I was fastidious in ensuring that I didn't glance over my shoulder. ‘Don't look down' I kept prompting myself. Here I was - a desperate man on his journey to meet his maker and yet I was determined not to, I don't know, get the jitters. I've never been afraid of heights. Never. But I've also never killed myself, naturally. Perhaps I was thinking that if I slipped on the way up, alright the results might be the same, but it would be a bit of a balls-up of a suicide. You get one shot at this and I wanted to ensure that I made a good job of it. So on the way up I was very deliberate with my footing. I damn near fell off once, though. The ladder was all moist with the early morning dew and despite me being as careful as I possibly could be one of my Kurt Geigers got away from me. It spurted off of the rung with a squeak reminiscent of what you might expect from the last throes of a sacrificed mouse. Thankfully my grip was tight and I was able to regain myself. My life, for the interim, was saved. I hadn't actually gone that far by that point, mind, ten metres at most. At that height the fall may not even have been great enough to kill me. Sure I would have suffered some nasty injuries - broken bones, internal bleeding, bump on the head, that sort of thing - but I still would have been in the land of the living and facing a lengthy spell relying on the services of the NHS. Now that would have been a balls-up.
Speaking of balls-ups, as it turned out I couldn't actually get onto the very top of the tower as I had wanted. From the ledge there was a doorway that I supposed would have taken me inside where a further ladder or set of stairs will have led to the very summit but it was locked and, despite my best efforts - given that I had exhorted an awful lot of energy on the ascent - remained stubbornly closed. I paced around the perimeter probably a couple of times, keeping my eyes glued to the tower and rubbing the concrete rather foolishly hoping for a secret passage or something until at last I gave up. This would have to do, but it was by no means how I'd planned it. I wanted to go to the very top and jump, but it was not to be. I tentatively peered over the ledge and, wide-eyed, fully appreciated just how high up I actually was. I could see my car, a silver BMW convertible that I was so proud of, parked haphazardly where I had left it just a short period before. I had left the driver's door of the car wide open as a gesture of sorts that all hope was lost for me and I wasn't coming back. I had briefly considered but then discarded the idea of leaving the engine running or the keys in the ignition though. I had to trample over a lot of people to get the money for that vehicle and I didn't want one of my very last actions on this mortal coil to be to hand a free set of wheels to some opportunist passer-by. It was a flash motor, yeah, but it was emblematic of the life that I had created for myself. Just a few short weeks before I was considered something of a whizkid at the law firm where I worked. Despite my relatively junior years I had made a bit of a name for myself in my just-over-three years with the company and gained a couple of lucrative promotions. My secret was my ability to asslick and dump on people simultaneously. On my first day at the firm, with the ink on my law degree barely dry, I had given myself a pep talk that I was not there to make friends but to make a career for myself. I broke that rule on the first week - the first day even - by getting matey with a group of similarly aged people. It couldn't hurt to make a few friends, a few allies, I had thought. And they served their purpose, I suppose. The more established ‘friends' that I had made showed me the ropes and taught me a few tricks of the trade, those who started at a similar time to me became my fodder and I took every opportunity I could to climb on their backs up the hierarchy. After I had moved up the chain then the friendship was over. But they had served their purpose. Before long I was chummy with a different crowd - bigger hitters.
One of my proudest memories came one Friday evening a couple of years back, just prior to the smoking ban coming in. It had been a particularly lucrative week for the firm and so a good few of us - maybe twenty - had all piled into the pub this Friday. The night was to go down in folklore at Anderson, Anderson & Crawley as the night when I lit a cigar with a twenty pound note. I'd had a bit to drink by this point - Guiness and mojitos mostly - and noticed some Cohibas for sale behind the bar and just went for it. It's not like I was absolutely minted at the time; well, I was some way off millionaire status despite my decadence. I didn't even smoke! But it was something I had often though about doing. I guess I'd seen someone do it on the telly or in a film or something. I figured that I had earned that moment. I deserved the right to make such an opulent gesture, reflecting the power I believed that I wielded at that point in my life. I remember, as I exhaled the first few clouds of acrid smoke into the air and extinguished the remains of the note by swiftly waving it through the air in front of me, glancing across the crowded pub and witnessing the disbelieving faces of punters reflecting upon the arrogance I had just displayed. Of course, some of my ex-friends - those minnows that I had hooked and discarded back into the stream to swim another day towards selling the Big Issue or whatever - witnessed this and shot disapproving looks in my direction. I didn't really give a tinker's cuss about their thoughts though. Well, saying that I was actually delighted that they disapproved. I really was. As for the current in-crowd that I was rubbing shoulders with, they thought it was great - throwing their heads back and roaring with laughter. Someone, more senior than myself wanted to top me and light a more expensive cigar with a fifty pound note, but the bar-staff didn't have a fifty, or if they did they wouldn't hand it over when he thrust two twenties and a ten under their nose. That was a great day. That was when times were good. That was the evening that I met Claire.
Claire was everything that a young, egotistical, shallow show-off like me could have ever wanted - blonde, petite, svelte, full, glossy lips, big green 'come to bed' eyes that you just wanted to take a running jump into. She had grown up in France - in a suburb of Paris - before moving to London at the age of eighteen in a bid to improve herself. She was an only child and possessed the kind of single-mindedness that only kids with no brothers or sisters do. It was exactly that sort of spoilt, precocious, ‘Daddy's Little Princess' mentality that stems from not having to share anything, be it toys, clothes, money, sweets and the like, with siblings and always getting what she wanted. As a result she was extremely high maintenance and could turn from a sweet, charming angel into a foul-mouthed banshee at the drop of a hat until she got exactly what was demanded, regardless of the cost - to me usually - and without so much as a passing consideration for anybody else. I loved that about her though and she was well worth the effort, as girls who look like that tend to be. There were so many things that I loved about her. Yeah, she could be an absolute nightmare and you'd want to sack her on the spot when she had a hissy fit because you'd eaten the last banana or if you filled your glass of wine before topping hers up or, heaven forbid, poured the wine before it was chilled to the correct temperature. I guess the latter is a French thing. When you'd see her there with her arms crossed and a face like thunder you'd seriously question whether the whole thing was worth the effort. But then she'd do something like ask you to pass the cucumber with that sultry French accent that just had sex dripping from every syllable; or she'd bend down to brush dried grass off of her trainers on a sunny day and her white trousers would cling so tightly to her gorgeous behind that you couldn't help but stare like a pervert; or she would give one of those glorious little Gallic giggles at some car insurance advert on the television that you would never think was funny in a million years but then every time you saw it after that you would remember that giggle and couldn't help but smile. I was always so proud to have her on my arm when I walked into a nightclub or had her sitting in the passenger seat when I tore around town in my now abandoned BMW with the top down and some tunes blaring out.
We'd been together coming up for three years and had moved into the flat that I had purchased, initially on a shared ownership scheme. It was a new-built, two-bedroomed, top floor apartment in Bromley. Identical in spec to those flats on all of the other floors, but I referred to it as a penthouse apartment nevertheless. It was tastefully decorated with plenty of neutral colours and chrome. There was wood laminate flooring throughout, with a fantastic - and fantastically expensive - Turkish rug in the lounge overlooked by a copy of Edvard Munch's The Scream. Not a single item was purchased from IKEA - a fact I was proud of. I did have a colander and a house plant from IKEA but the latter was a gift and, well, I needed a colander and my parents had this one spare. Claire was a hairdresser and earned a modest wage in comparison to me but didn't once contribute towards the mortgage repayments or the rent that I needed to pay until I successfully purchased the remaining 50% of the flat in the mistaken belief that this would prompt her to chip in. She did, however, want to be put on the deeds and screamed bloody murder when I told her that I wasn't going to do it until she started contributing to its purchase - or at least paid some of the utility bills. She eventually calmed down when I told her that I had done as she had wished. I hadn't, of course, but I baffled her with a handful of legal terms - some legitimate, although used in the wrong context, and a good few made up just for my own amusement. She fell for it hook, line and sinker. Although she was an absolute belter to look at she was never the sharpest tool in the box, and I knew that full well. Still, you can't have everything. The money she did earn - plus a hefty proportion of what I had left after all of the bills and the like had been paid - went on her clothes, shoes and make-up. Thank God she got her hair, nails and tans for free at the salon where she worked, otherwise I would have hit skid row long before I did!
I started to turn my attention back towards the water tower, cursing my luck that I couldn't get to the very top as I had wanted but was distracted by something out of the corner of my eye. I glanced in the direction of the disturbance and noticed a flock of geese heading past me in a perfect ‘V' formation. Mother Nature can sure serve up some wondrous sights when all you want to do is chuck yourself off of a tall building. I watched them as they neared the tower, flying North to South, and caught, for the first time, a wider view of the Suffolk countryside surrounding me. As you can imagine it was pretty scenic, with rolling fields stretching out in every direction. Amongst the greenery I could see the road that I had travelled up on snaking in both directions as far as the eye could see, meandering across the relatively flat, lush, landscape and continuing past the twisted remains of the fence beneath me onwards towards Norfolk. A white van came into view - I heard it before I saw it - from the same direction as I had arrived earlier, heading onto the roundabout with its indicator blinking away despite the fact that there was no other vehicle or pedestrian around to notice it. As far as I knew the only people who were aware of it were the van's driver and me. I watched as it exited the roundabout and accelerated past me, paying no attention to the mangled perimeter fence or my car, parked where it had no right to be. A puff of white exhaust fume spurted out behind it, exaggerated by the early morning chill. I stared, almost transfixed, as it got smaller and smaller and quieter and quieter until it was pretty much inaudible. Silently it veered left and I lost sight of it behind the trees that lined the road, only catching the occasional white flash where the branches were thinnest, awaiting the early spring buds to bloom into full-blown leaves and cover up their stark, wooden nakedness.
But stop. I wasn't here to admire the view. I shook myself to my senses and, disgusted with myself, turned my back on the scenery and examined, once again, the task ahead of me. I absolutely had to reach the top. It was my destiny, my right as a human-being to kill myself in the manner that I wanted and I had envisaged hurling myself from the summit of this water tower. Nothing else would do. I didn't want to jump from a ledge three quarters of the way up or from half-way up the ladder running up the side. I didn't want to entertain doing this in a half-arsed way for Christ's sake. Why in God's name should I have to compromise on the very last act that I undertake as a living entity? It just didn't make sense. I mean, I was only talking about a locked door for Christ's sake. People knock down doors all the time on the telly just so they can rescue a dog from a fire or steal a memory stick from a computer or something. I've seen it on any number of television shows. It looks easy. I backed up as far as the narrowness of the ledge would allow me and place a couple of well-intended shoulder barges to the locked tower door. This only served to bruise my arm and cause me physical pain to go hand in hand with my mental anguish. I momentarily leant with my back against the locked door and dejectedly slid down it, slumping to the floor and sat there defeated. I rubbed my face with both hands and asked myself, on the brink of tears, why I was there. Why? The reasons were clear, of course. And I had gone over them time and time in my mind. But here was an opportunity to think about them one last time before I ended it all. I would take myself to hell, dragging up the sorry mess that my life had become in the last few months, before sending myself plummeting off of the tower, ending it all.
A mere three months earlier things were fantastic. I had my flat, my car, my job and my girlfriend. I had also purchased an engagement ring from a jewellers at Hatton Gardens - a lovely little number with the biggest diamond I dare afford. It was, I had noted, bigger than one that my friend, colleague and rival, Alex had bought for his fiancée. I had started planning a trip somewhere so I could propose in an exotic location. Having ruled out hiring a pod on the London Eye because it was too ‘local' and proposing atop the Eiffel Tower because it was too clichéd I began to explore going somewhere tropical where we had never been before and doing the job properly. In style. Suites at the Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai were too expensive even for my decadent tastes, but I was going for something along those lines. Mexico I considered; The Maldives; Thailand. Thanks to the ‘credit crunch' or the ‘economic downturn' or whatever it was called this week, there were some absolute bargains to be had as holiday companies tried to flog flights and hotel rooms to anybody who had money. And I had money.
But then one day, that changed. There had been rumours going around the office for a couple of weeks that there were some cost-cutting measures to be introduced. When the talk died away after a few days I thought that they had proven to be just that - rumours. Then, suddenly, the talk intensified and the rumours became reality. It started when a couple of temps that we employed turned up one morning and were promptly sent home again, before they had even had a chance to take their coats off. Then I spotted a girl that I knew had not been there for more than a matter of a few months heading for the exits with a cardboard box full of her stuff and a long, tear-stained face. When the rumours had started I had considered myself untouchable. I wasn't.
I remember my phone ringing and the caller ID indicating that it was the PA to one of the senior Partners. I had the Kuoni website on my monitor, looking at trips to Madagascar - Claire had loved the animated film. First I minimised it to stop people from seeing that I hadn't been working. Then I decided to close it. Only after I had done this did I answer the phone and after barely uttering a word I was heading obediently to see Andrew Crawley of Anderson, Anderson and Crawley. As I neared his office I noticed Alex looking a decidedly unpleasant mixture of smug and relieved talking to Mandy, the PA who had called me. I deduced that he had been in to the boss and had received his stay of execution. I considered myself pretty much on a par with Alex in terms of experience and ability at the firm. If he was safe, I thought, then maybe there would be good news for me as well and my trip and proposal with Claire would still be on. For a split second I even convinced myself that, after this scare, I would go all out and get that suite in Dubai. That was just for a split second though. As I neared the door, Mandy waved for me to go straight in. Alex, despite standing mere yards from me didn't acknowledge me. He barely even looked at me. I tried to catch his eye but there was an element of evasiveness in his actions that said it all - Alex had been saved at my expense.
To be fair to Mr Crawley he was gutted to let me go. At least he appeared to be. I pretty much sat there and listened while he explained what I already knew. He explained that he needed to save money, make difficult decisions, let people go, hardest period of his life, he'll give me a good reference, all that crap. I can't remember if I asked why I was sacrificed while Alex was retained or whether the information was volunteered to me but, apparently, the reason was that Alex was on marginally less money than me. I smirked for a second to think that I was outearning this guy - my rival. Of course as soon as I left that office his salary trounced the wages that my unemployed status afforded me. The smile was well and truly wiped from my face. I'd had it too good for too long and before long everything else unravelled too.
In my mistaken belief that I would only be unemployed for a matter of weeks I decided that it would be best not to tell anybody about my status. Not even Claire. I had been leaving the flat at the same time every morning as if on my way to work but heading instead to employment agencies and the like. I thought that it would be a stroll in the park to get another job, I mean I was still a Hotshot. The situation was the same everywhere though- they were letting people go rather than taking them on. At first I had been offered some jobs on a lot less money than I was used to but I turned them down flat, holding out for the bigger bucks. It didn't take long before even those opportunities dried up.
Claire, for her part, continued to spend money like it was going out of fashion. I half-suspected that she knew that I had got the boot and yet spent, spent, spent anyway. Eventually, I had to tell her. I had to reveal my secret and promote her to breadwinner. She came in from work and there wasn't even so much as a look of surprise that I was home before her. She was emotionless when I spilled the beans about everything - losing my job; deceiving everyone; getting behind on the mortgage repayments; letting other bills slide. I kept it to myself that I had bought her a diamond engagement ring. And then sold it to pay the phone bill. Her phone bill. I did explain that as the sole earner in the household she would have to bail us out, at least until I got myself another job. I hadn't expected all out emotion, that wasn't Claire's style, but the response I received was nothing short of extraordinary. She cursed me up and down in that delightful French accent of hers, telling me just how much of a loser I was and how much I had screwed up both of our lives. She said that she couldn't afford to pay the bills and when I suggested that we could cut back on a few things like clothes and make-up then that was it. The argument intensified and projectiles were hurled. I ducked. Things missed me. Then I let another cat out of the bag. I told her, in the heat of the moment that her name wasn't on any of the documents related to the flat. Not one. I let her know in no uncertain terms that the flat wasn't hers in any way, shape or form and that if she wanted to go, she could go. Twenty minutes later, she was gone. Five weeks later, after another defaulted mortgage repayment, the flat didn't belong to me either.
As I sat there with my back to the locked door twenty-odd metres above the Suffolk countryside at the beginning of what, judging by the progress the sun was making in terms of burning off the early morning mist, promised to be a glorious day, I imagined what my funeral would be like. More specifically I tried to imagine how Claire would behave. If, indeed she would even bother to attend. In my mind, of course, she was there, looking stunning in a simple black dress that accentuated her near perfect body. A wide brimmed hat with matching black veil - the type I swear you only get in American TV drama series - completed the elegant, yet simple, outfit. One thing that I couldn't decide upon, despite straining in an attempt to picture it, was her expression. I couldn't decide whether she would be devastated, whether she would be mildly upset, whether she would be shedding crocodile tears whilst hiding from those gathered the fact that she wasn't actually bothered that I was dead. I sat there rubbing my temples, torturing myself trying to decide which she would be. Certainly the last time I saw her - a fortnight after she had left the flat - she wasn't too pleased to see me. I had suspected that after a cooling off period she would be more accommodating and called round to the flat that she had moved into with her friend, her parents still living in Paris. I couldn't have been more wrong though. Yet more projectiles were hurled at me and, despite my good fortune with ducking previously, this time she scored a direct blow with a shoe - one of her friend's shoes. Based on that evidence you'd think it unlikely that she would come and bid me one final farewell but I was trying to convince myself that she would. I just couldn't for the life of me work out how she would behave at my funeral. Not surprising really, I could never work out how her mind worked in those years that we spent together.
All of a sudden I was startled by the sound of a dog barking. It stood to reason that if there was a dog about then the chances would be that a dog walker wouldn't be too far away. Nervously I peered over the railings in the direction that I believed the noise had come from. Sure enough, there was a dog - a chocolate Labrador - sniffing about in the car park on the other side of the fence. The fence that I had mutilated with my car. I started to wonder if that was really necessary now. I mean, I could have simply parked up in a bay and climbed over the fence or found another way in. Still, too late now. I moved round the tower a tad, away from the dog, whilst craning my neck to try to spy the person walking it. I had to lean over the railing to spot them, a few metres behind their pet. It looked like a middle-aged man wearing a Barbour jacket and a tweed flat-cap. Very country gent. He had his hands plunged deep into his pockets. All that was required to complete the look would have been a twelve bore shotgun flung over his shoulder and two or three freshly dispatched pheasants hanging from his belt. I was grateful, at least, that he didn't have the gun. He did have, I noticed, a striking pair of white trainers on. The look of the squire was shattered. For some reason I hadn't considered what would happen if someone should happen upon me and yet now it had happened it totally threw me. My first instinct, it had turned out, was to hide. I got in a real panic that I might be, or might have already been, spotted. My heart was racing as the dog started sniffing around the hole in the fence and inquisitively, as dogs do, entered. Once inside it looked twice at its owner to gain his approval. I looked as the country gent in sneakers appeared to accelerate towards the dog and the mangled wreckage of the fence. And my car. Christ, I'd almost forgotten that my car was still there, looking as out of place as a pickle in a biscuit barrel. It was clear that it was the vehicle that caused the damage. And I'd left the stupid door open which again now seemed like a reckless thing to do. The police were bound to be called now for sure. I skulked to the opposite side of the tower so that I could no longer see my two new friends, or more importantly so they could not see me. I really didn't want the police to be involved. Not at this stage at least. Alright, once I'd done the deed it was inevitable that they would need to investigate and inform my parents, that sort of thing. The fact was that I didn't know how long I was going to be up this tower. I wanted to jump, but I wanted to jump in my own time. I'd already had to make one compromise in that I couldn't get to the very top and had to jump from this poxy ledge. I'd already been up here for around fifteen minutes and if you thought that I was going to leap to my death before I was ready, or worse still, when there was a crowd of coppers and dog walkers rubbernecking, you must be insane. When I did get round to jumping it would be because I wanted to jump at that moment and the one person who found me better have the decency to cover me up straight away. I didn't want people looking at my splattered remains.
After a minute or so of what I can only call it hiding I built-up the courage to investigate once more, moving back around the tower in a clockwise direction so that I had completed yet another circuit of it. Thankfully the dog and the squire had moved on. My car door was now closed, however. I don't know if the squire had closed it, and if so, why, or if the dog had been trained to close open doors and was obediently complying with its master's wishes. Whatever the reason, the door was no longer open and the dog and walker had exited the scene, having crossed the road and entered a field opposite. Perhaps my luck was in and the guy decided not to call the cops, opting instead for an easy life. Or maybe he had called the police and they would be along any second. I didn't know for sure but I knew that I had to get on with what I was doing before any other distractions occurred.
But then I again allowed myself to get distracted. Big time. I don't know why I hadn't noticed the coast before - the tower was a half-mile or so from the sea - but all of a sudden it filled my vision. The Suffolk coast could hardly be described as dramatic - it's extremely bereft of the coves and natural nooks and crannies that enhance the shores around Cornwall or the Jurassic Coast - but still I thought it was majestic in an unrelenting kind of way. As far as I could see to the left and right of me the coastline offered relatively straight lines, perhaps arcing slightly out away from me to create a very subtle bay some two miles wide. Looking out to sea I witnessed the creamy white tops of the waves as they relentlessly homed in on the land, breaking on the sandy coastline. I closed my eyes tightly and strained to hear what I joyously thought was the sound of the waves crashing onto the beach but realised that it was in fact the wind howling in my ears. My disappointment didn't last long, however, as these same gusts filled my nostrils with those salty marine smells that cannot fail to be accompanied by nostalgia. For me the memories were of childhood holidays up the coast a few miles in Norfolk. My eyes remained shut as I recalled images of walking down the promenade at Great Yarmouth with my Mum holding me tightly by one hand and a soft toy won by my Dad in the other. Those were the real good days for sure. I inhaled deeply in an attempt to delve deeper into my past and pick up some of those other key scents - fish and chips; stale beer emanating from pubs, smelling alluringly sordid to a young, impressionable boy; pickled seafood, which I was, and still am not, particularly keen on; my favourite though was the sweet smell of doughnuts, freshly cooked before your eyes. I used to watch mesmerised at my Mum's side as she ordered the treats from a greasy-faced teen hanging out the window of the stand. Watching open-mouthed as the machine squirted out fresh dough onto a conveyor belt submerged in hot oil, turning it over before delivering it, deep-fried to perfection, into a tray loaded with sugar. The vendor would then toss it around in the sugar, coating it generously, before loading it into a bag with five others and passing it to my Mum in exchange for fifty pence. I always wondered why the machine never went that extra mile and performed the sugar-coating process too. Perhaps it was to keep the young girl or boy that probably were dreaming of a job a million-miles away from doughnut-shop steward amused. I wonder how much a bag of six doughnuts would go for now in this money-obsessed world.
These annual holidays were the reason that I had the connection with the tower that I now stood upon. Many times had I driven or been driven past it on my way to and from Norfolk. As a young, excitable child I used to let my vivid imagination run amok and convinced myself that the structure was a giant's torch. On homeward journeys, which would invariably be some time after dusk, I used to look up at the cloud-filled, darkening skies and almost will the torch's owner to reach down from the heavens, rip the building from the earth, turn it on and pour illumination all over the land again prompting my father to spin the car round so we could continue our holiday. Eventually, once I had become older and more inquisitive I asked what the structure that we were approaching in the early morning gloom was and what it was for. My Dad explained bluntly the true purpose of the giant construction - the water tower - and my childhood hypothesis was discarded forever. On the homeward journey I barely glanced at it. It was almost as if it had let me down. There never was, and never would be a great ogre from above reaching down from the clouds to prolong our vacation. Alright, I could have carried on believing that it was a torch but the fact remained that it was full of water. Torches don't tend to work when they're full of water!!All of a sudden the wind died down and I could just make out the ever so faint sounds of the sea lapping at the land. I could hear the gulls too, cawing as they soared and dived looking for food. Again I closed my eyes and attempted to listen to the sounds that I couldn't hear. I wanted to hear the sounds that went hand in hand with the fish and chips and the stale beer and the oh-so-sweet doughnuts. A grin that had no right to be on the face of a man on the brink of suicide spread across my face as I imagined the sounds of the seaside - the gaudy music of the carousel controlled by surly operators who probably couldn't wait to pack up and go home; the incessant beeping of the vending machines full of stuffed toys where success with the claw is only too occasional but if you won and passed the gift to your loved-one you were then free to strut victoriously away as your sweetheart wielded it like a badge of honour; the shrill screams of kids having the time of their life, running in and out of crowds with ice-cream smudged faces not giving a tinker's cuss about anyone else but themselves; the laughter ringing out of the same pubs that smelt of stale beer, seeming to offer an air of self-satisfaction that you only really get when you're on holiday and all your cares and worries are as far from your thoughts as could possibly be. How I craved to hear those sounds again, smell those smells again, see those sights again. How I wanted to stroll through the amusements armed with a pocket worth of two pence pieces and try my luck at the penny pusher, delighting when the clattering of coins in the tray signified that I had won a grand total of 18p. How I wanted to amble slowly along the beach struggling to finish a bag of chips that just minutes before I had been so hungry that I absolutely had to have a large portion of. These were the things that I loved. These were the things that I had lost sight of.
I realised that I no longer had a smile on my face. It had faded and in its place were tears. It then dawned on me that despite everything that had gone wrong in my life recently this was the first time that I had cried. And it wasn't an all out bawling sort of a cry, more of a gently sobbing. So gentle that I hadn't even realised that I was doing it because I was so busy walking carefree down the promenade that I had developed in my mind. Too busy taking one last stroll, albeit an imaginary one, before I ended it and took away the pain and the suffering. But I realised now that it wasn't too late to actually witness these things again, to experience the sights, sounds and smells of my youth. Alright I'd lost a lot, but I still had opportunities to see them. It was just a short drive up the road. And that was just the start. After I had smelt the fish and chips and watched some doughnuts being made and won a handful of coppers on the penny pusher - I'll leave the claw for the meantime - I could go and move back in with my parents. I hadn't written a suicide note so they would never know about my near-miss, never know how I stared over the edge of this tower, gazing into the jaws of death. Man, I was excited all of a sudden. A matter of minutes before I felt that there was just one more thing for me to do and that was to sign out permanently. Now there was a whole host of things that I felt that I needed to do. It was almost as if I had been presented with an opportunity to live my life again. And I couldn't wait to start.
Hastily I moved around to the ladder and after peering over the edge to confirm that my car was still there began to descend, noting that the dew had almost been burnt away by the sun. I told you it was going to be a glorious day. My head was racing with the possibilities of my new life. I could get a job at the seaside. I could be one of those folk in the doughnut stands. I would be the only cheerful one in the resort because it was what I chose to do. Alright the money wouldn't be great but my parents owned a chalet nearby so I wouldn't need rent, just a bit of cash for electricity and food. It was perfect. In the winter time I could move back down to Kent to live with my parents and get a job as an elf in a Santa's Grotto or something. The world was my oyster all of a sudden. My pace quickened, I started to take two rungs at a time I was so desperate to get started on my new life.
But it wasn't to be. About half way down the ladder, where the sun hadn't had a chance to evaporate the dew and the rungs were still slick, I heard the sound of that sacrificed mouse again. This time though, because I was in such haste my grip wasn't so sure. I grasped desperately for the ladder as I toppled backwards but it was no good. I gave up and resigned myself to the inevitable, deciding to fill my last thoughts with images of my now impending funeral. Claire is there wearing that stunning little black number. Now I can clearly see her face behind her black veil. She is dabbing her tears with a white tissue but, to be honest, I'm not too fussed about her anymore. In front of her are my parents and I am far more concerned with them. I can't see Mum's face, she has it buried in my Dad's chest, but I can tell by the way that her shoulders are moving that she is crying. She is howling. She is devastated, as a mother who has lost her son has every right to be. Dad is holding her and trying his utmost to console her, trying to remain strong. But he is failing. He looks ten years older than when I last saw him.
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