'Dead Ends'
A little fiction before the summer break
‘Stiff Upper Quip’ will be taking a break for August. I’m hoping to prepare some columns for autumn, socialize a bit, and get myself in good trim for the big 4-0 in September, or at least prepare my revolver and note.
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In the meantime, to give you all something nice to tide you over, here’s a previously unpublished short story from my London dating days.
Dead Ends
So much had been given to him. He had been brought up at a time of relative peace and stability, had excelled in his studies, had made many friends. And yet his mind turned endlessly to those few things he did not have – a girlfriend, for example, or success in his chosen profession. The fact that these were the things he desired most in the world was by-the-by; the fact remained that he should have been celebrating the joys of his existence, not lamenting its slight oversights. But somehow they hurt him.
Actually, one day in the office, when he was honestly quite bored, he really did take one of the company’s official letterheads (‘Market Solutions. For All Your Market Solutions’) and begin to write. He wrote a list of the positives and the negatives in his life. Soon his pen was choking the positives column, recording his wide social circle, his recent holiday to Corfu, his often hilarious London flat share. He thought about sitting at the kitchen table one morning, and his flatmate passing him, leading a girl back to his bedroom, saying, ‘Alright Sam.’
‘Alright Dave,’ said Sam, raising his coffee cup.
He had written only two words in the negatives column when he was alerted to the presence of his boss. Peter Such was standing there, short grey hair and a black T-shirt, one hand on his jacket and the other pointing at a girl. ‘Sam,’ he said quietly, ‘I’d like you to meet Katie Liew.’
‘Hi Katie,’ said Sam, looking up from his list. It was then that he saw her, a cherubic-looking young woman with an immaculate fringe.
‘Hello,’ she said in an unusually soft Australian accent. ‘Sam?’
‘Sam Hammock,’ he said. He pointed to his office toy, a little dog suspended in a handkerchief hammock. ‘That’s why…’
‘So cute!’ said Katie.
‘Katie is joining us from the Malaysia office,’ said Peter. ‘She’s been doing some fantastic work on urban mobility. You know,’ said Peter – he was the type of boss, Sam observed, with little in the shape of clear instruction and much in the way of amorphous values – ‘It’s difficult to sell cars in high-density urban areas. But somehow Katie is finding a way.’
‘How’d you do that, then?’ Sam asked.
Katie laughed; she was on the spot. ‘Well – I like to emphasize the green qualities of the vehicles we market, and also that they are optimal for carsharing. Even if that sadly doesn’t take place so much in actual reality.’
‘Guess how old she is,’ said Peter.
‘What kind of a question is that?’ said Sam. ‘You should never try and guess a lady’s age.’
‘I’m twenty-five,’ said Katie. She was blushing.
‘What a moment to join Media Solutions. You’re like a player joining us at their absolute peak. You’re like Asprilla coming to Darlington.’
‘Darlington…?’ said Katie.
‘Asprilla was a footballer,’ said Sam. As for Katie, she started giggling, and he smiled at her, a big spreading smile accompanied by actually leaning back into his chair.
‘Well, Katie, let’s go and meet the rest of the team. Sam here – well, Sam is almost part of the furniture. How long you been here Sam?’
‘Nine years,’ Sam said. ‘I came straight after Uni.’
‘Like I say, reliable,’ said Peter. He moved his arm towards Katie, but left it just behind her shoulder, as if he were going to touch her but never would, of course not. ‘Come over here and meet Udo.’
Just as she was about to turn Katie’s glance met Sam’s and in that moment he tried to say so much with his eyes, attempted to really tell the story of his life, put those thirty-three years in a look, the childhood, the ambition, the pain. But that proved in itself too ambitious and he only succeeded in a goonish twinkle before she turned away leaving him unsure as to what her first impressions of him had been.
That’s it, he thought, having been no stranger to relationships. That’s what we want; to know what someone else thinks of us. As for him, clearly he had found her beautiful, funny, perhaps shy, all qualities he loved. But it had been hard to interact with Peter there. He looked back to the open spreadsheet and then down to his list of negatives where just two words had been written: ‘career’ and ‘private life.’
Sam cycled to work. Lots of his colleagues teased him about his bike helmet, which was a striking maroon colour, but Sam enjoyed the teasing and thought it went well with his clean blue suit. In his desk below the hammock bear he kept a bag with trainers and he’d slip these and a pair of tracksuit bottoms on each night before he stood up from his desk, cracked an energized parting joke and galloped downstairs to cycle back home.