Songs of malaise
A day became two days and a week became a waste. The dogs lost two kilos through endless cross-country searches for answers. I didn’t drink anything like what I should have. I ate far more than I intended. I pined for Gabriel. I pined for me because everything I liked about me had gone with her.
I created a new song selection on my iPod to wallow in her memory (and to drown out the ceaseless gunfire in the valley), called it ‘Soundtrack of the Solitary’. Using the mix I created last time Gabriel and I broke up for good as a solidly morose foundation, I built it into three hours of full-blown meandering melancholy adding: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Abattoir Blues; Adem, Waves; Alex Lloyd, Black the Sun; Jay Smith, The Road I Left Behind; Keane, Atlantic; Bright Eyes, First Day Of My Life; Babyshambles, Lost Art of Murder, UnBiloTitled; Arcade Fire, Crown of love; Breaks Coop, Settle Down; Babybird, Bad Old Man; Tarentel, Two Sides of Myself, Parts One and Two; Saints, All Fools Day, Love Or Imagination, Just Like Fire Would; Doves, The Man Who Told Everything, The Cedar Room; Broken Social Scene, 7/4 (Shoreline); Ray LaMontague, Be Here Now; Genesis, Mad Man Moon; Guillemots, Trains To Brazil; Snow Patrol, Shut your Eyes; Arctic Monkeys, Only Ones Who Know, Do me a Favour, Jose Gonzales, Heartbeats; and Richard Hawley, Coles Corner, Born Under a Bad Sign, Room With A View, Darlin’, Oh My Love, The Only Road, On The Ledge, You Don’t Miss Your Water (Until Your Well Runs Dry), and It’s Over Love. There was rather a lot of Richard Hawley.
Rarely were the headphones off my head. Rarely was I not singing/ murmuring/blubbing along; rarely was I far from the dogs; never in that first week was I far from tears.
On the Saturday, The Times reported an eerie unease and lingering sense of disbelief in Skipton-le-Beans as, one by one, residents shunned the Hoggs for their own safety. A Lloyds TSB spokesperson was quoted as saying, ‘Sadly, to ensure the welfare of all Lloyds TSB employees, we have asked the Hoggs to end what has been a very happy relationship with Lloyds TSB.’
I wasn’t the only one feeling ostracised and alone. And all I’d done was perform a protracted illusion of wealth. Insecure? Perhaps. But not sinister. Or nasty. Or relationship ending. Not one animal had been harmed while performing this charade. Girls. You make them feel cosy and secure. Then, when the walls of their nice family fortress turned out to be a little flimsier than they’d been led to believe…
The whole charade was a bit like a pizza. If you went to an authentic Italian restaurant with authentic Italian pizza chefs, you were going to see dough spun in the air. It didn’t make the pizza taste any better, but you liked the flourish. I liked the flourish. I’m convinced Gabriel liked the flourish. She liked to see dough spun in the air. So I spun it. Who cares if I didn’t turn out to be Italian?
She’d come round.
And I’d stop feeling sorry for myself. Eventually. There were, after all, others far worse off. The starving millions. I dwelled on the starving millions as I poured half a bottle of Gabriel’s old chardonnay down the sink. I dwelled on the shocking waste half a bottle of wine represented and felt suddenly guilty, just as I’d done last time I poured soured wine down the sink. ‘This is appalling wastage, Gabriel,’ I’d said. ‘Then stick it in an envelope and send it to the starving millions,’ she’d said. ‘Mmm,’ I’d said. ‘Aside from the obvious impracticalities, I’m not sure they should be drinking on an empty stomach.’
Hardship was relative though. If I didn’t know where my next meal was coming from, Gabriel would be the least of my problems. I had food. I had shelter. Which left all my energies to focus on a higher, equally debilitating emotion – heartbreak.
Ten days after she walked out of my life, Gabriel came round. Kind of. It was the next best thing.
She emailed.
Dear Bailey
I have had a week to think about our future and Im (sic) afraid there isn’t one. I feel utterly betrayed and stupid for believing in you. What else have you been lying about? How could you think it was okay to pretend to be rich?!! And why? Thats (sic) not just sad its (sic?) creepy. Youre (sic?) one sad, sad bastard and I honestly dont (sic) want anything more to do with you. What really worries me is why you found it necessary to portray yourself that way. how (sic?) insecure are you? And what does it say about your attitude towards ME. (sic) Did you think I was a gold digger? Or were you the gold digger? Thats (sic) what really scares me the most. You came here not for me but my parents (sic) money. I stopped doing really stupid things when I was seventeen. Double that! Double that (sic) Bailey! I should have known there was something really wrong with you when I found out about you advertising battery hen eggs! How two faced are you? Do you even love animals or is it just something you use to pull girls? Like your stupid librarian glasses and your Fu Manchu. Do you even need glasses? Hate is too strong a word. Pity is what I feel. I pity you and whoever you lie to next.
Goodbye and good luck. You’re going to need it.
Gabriel
PS: Not that its (sic) any of my business anymore but do yourself a favour and watch that video. Get a spine Bailey.
PPS: If you think Im (sic) ever coming back, forget it. Im (sic) already seeing someone. Maybe you should too. (sic, sic, sic!)
Two things: One – her punctuation was atrocious. Two – why would a girl who had supposedly already moved on devote so much time (not only was she a bad typist, she was a one finger typist) and energy (such rants aren’t committed to paper without quite draining emotion) if I was nothing but a memory? If there were pubs to go to? People to see? New boyfriends to court? Why would she sit alone in a room somewhere and devote precious single girl time to such a vicious mugging? Because she was missing me? Mmm, I’ve love to say yes. Somehow the tone of that email was not of a girl trying to winkle her way back in.
Anger? Revulsion? Frustration? Spite?
Definitely. We’d been together long enough for all those to have been factors once the true mechanics of The Flourish became plain.
Closure?
I lay flat on my back on the Court Room floor. I stared at the judge’s stand. I stared at the stool Gabriel had sat on all those seemingly simple, but chatty nights; nights which suddenly leapt out as some of the sweetest nights of my life.
Our Happy Hours.
Then, after a brief, tight eyed, tight lipped, face full to bursting fight with the facts, my depleted forces of de-nial surrendered, the dams broke and I cried. God, did I cry. I hope I never cry that hard again. It felt life-threatening. It was epileptic. It was convulsive. It was wailing in a quite Middle Eastern sort of way. It was crawling round the floor caked in snot and tears. It was shuddering gulps for air. It was two anxious dogs run-ning to my side, in my face, licking and whimpering. It was my spent form finally still on the Court Room floor cuddled up to those dogs and, ultimately, finally, thankfully, falling into a deep, deathly coma-like sleep.
*****
The phone woke me. I had no idea when; it could have been day or night, this century or next, such was the almost drugged stupor I had to battle myself conscious through. All I knew was I was asleep on the Court Room floor, that the floor was cold, I was cold and that Kurt and Courtney were rousing beside me. I had no idea how any of us had got there. It took until about the fifth ring for me to realise the phone was ringing at all. By the eighth ring I was trying to get up. Then it all came flooding back and I slumped back on the floor. The phone went to answer phone on ring ten.
‘Sorry,’ said a Dawn-like voice courtesy of BT, a voice I was able to hear as plain as day having moved the answer machine from the downstairs hall up here where I spent most of my time hiding and waiting for Gabriel to leave a message. ‘Your call can’t be taken at the moment. Please leave your message after the beep…’
I lay, listened, pleaded: ‘Please, please, Gabriel. Let it be you.’
‘Hi, Bailey. It’s Fergus!’
*****
One of the many delightful devices slaughterhouses use to coax animals to their end is what they call a Judas Goat. A Judas Goat is a goat trained to fraternize with sheep and cattle in slaughterhouse yards, winkle its way into their confidence and, ultimately, lead them to slaughter while its own life is spared. This morning a Judas Goat led Charlie Chabot to slaughter.
‘Look, Bailey,’ Blaine said into my message machine as I lay on the floor listening in a wave of panicked guilt – I hadn’t yet touched the Asok Marauder brief. ‘I had a chat to Charlie this morning about the JAS 360 brief situation and he’s agreed to let us go straight away. Well, when I say agreed, I didn’t really give him any choice and we were just freelance. I think he’ll be okay in a couple of days if you want to give him a call then and say thanks. Between you and me I wouldn’t rush into it because he kind of hung up on me and I think he was a bit upset at the short notice. Not that we’ve exactly been in there much the last couple of weeks, but you know what he’s like. He said he was about to brief us on an urgent job that had just come in and that he was going to have to work all night. Anyway I think you’ll agree, Bailey, this is the only way to go, it truly is. We can either do both jobs badly or do one really well, and I don’t know about you, but, long term, I want to be with JAS, don’t you? This is a big opportunity, Bailey! Anyway, bye! Oh! You haven’t got my number! Ummm…I’ll call you tomorrow. Bye!’
*****
I was in the Volvo driving before I fully realised I was in the Volvo driving. I didn’t know if I’d locked the house. I didn’t even know where I was going. The dogs were in the back, so, wherever I was going, I obviously wasn’t planning on being back in a hurry.
I drove aimlessly into the night, Dawn off duty, road slick, jaw slack, mind in meltdown, thoughts random in a consistently negative, naval-gazing sort of way, driving, up, down and around the dark, greasy backcountry luge-like lanes like a gerbil through a long intestine. Suddenly out into the screaming lights of the dual carriageway, driving faster, straighter, but just driving, no coherent plan, no coherent thought, no past, no future. Just driving, driving, driving…
‘Hi, Charlie.’
Charlie Chabot jumped behind his shambolic desk. He had been asleep, head down on a sketch pad when Kurt, Courtney and I snuck in alarmingly easily off the street at nine o’clock at night; admittedly with a key card for the front door, but with the mere turn of a knob into the bowels of a still, otherwise empty Creative Solutions.
‘Bailey! Sorry! Gosh!’
He leapt to his feet, rubbing at his face and hair and scurried around the desk. ‘You’ll be looking for your things. I’ve herded them into a little pile—’
He stopped because I stopped him, back-pedalled because I was pushing him, sat heavily back in his chair because I’d sat him back there.
‘Do you want a coffee?’ I said.
‘I’d prefer a tea.’
I sat opposite him and raised an eyebrow. ‘Really? I think you might need something stronger than tea, Charlie. There’s work to do. And you and I are in for a very long fucking night.’
