Came

Harry Came had beaten the rest. Out before dawn on a mute November morning where sleep lay over everything, he parked with his engine running, outside the lone end bungalow of a swerving cul-de-sac that only the necessary went near. A local wind had got up, hurrying the leaves and raking the puddles, yet he was so fixated on a persistent memory, he let his friend Keith slip out of the bungalow unnoticed.

Harry sighed and decided to leave his memory at that:

`Same little boy, same little man,’ he uttered in a scornful tone, watching Keith shutting his gate with the heavy caution of a man not used to being out for a whole day.

And it was true. With his rectangular glasses on his bristly domed head, and a headwind expression animating a wealth of gum tissue, Keith did seem to be the same, but as he drew nearer, Harry saw the changes. There was now a giddy uncertainty about him, an unsteadiness in his stride, and his skin was white as if he’d been roughed up by a surplus of silent fears.

`Hello Harry,’ Keith said, opening the door and hesitating, admiring the car’s interior with that peculiar interest of people who don’t drive.

`What the hell were you thinking?’ Harry said.

            `You know me I’m…,’ Keith was about to say `impulsive.’

            `I do know you. You’ll be a wiser man once I’ve finished with you. Get in.’

This heated start hurt them both, but Harry and Keith were lifelong friends, and the healing rays of reunion soon bonded them again.

`How did you hear about me?’ Harry said.

            `Our John showed me your Twitter,’ Keith said, his voice trailing off, remembering his fears of rejection the night before.

            `You’re on Twitter?’ Harry grinned. `I’m doing four talks a week now, I can’t believe how its’ took off.’

`Who to? Who are they?’

`Teenagers mainly, sixth formers, dropouts, parent’s drop them off…’

Keith listened bright eyed with his mouth open, like he was listening to a fairy-tale, enjoying the novelty of being alone with someone for any length of time. They left The Wirral at six and headed for Cumbria northbound.

Harry was suitably plump, with inflamed cheeks and a thin mean mouth that said mean things. His white hair, thinning evenly all over, was soft brushed like a baby’s, barging forward at the front towards round steel rimmed glasses. His uniform contrived a black pinstriped suit with a scarlet waistcoat, a stiff white shirt and a silk tie featuring a thunderbolt, an impending meteor and anything else spectacular the sky had to offer.

            `I do like this car Harry,’ said Keith, basking in its interior again as if it were gilded, `I remember these from when I was a kid.’

            Harry ran his hands along the steering wheel as lovingly as he could.

`Cars today don’t have the style,’ he said, `no personality, no lines, just shapeless heaps of metal. What can you do? We’re in the last days of the combustion engine.’

            The car was a two-seater 1980 Mercedes SL class, in Milan brown with a hood. Bought by Harry in a happy state of panic when things had just started to whizz, and he felt the irresistible urge of a middle-aged man wanting to make it show. Yet, in his haste to crowbar himself into a new golden age of luxury, the car didn’t quite have the sand he was looking for, and now on the long drives, he could feel himself sinking deeper into the widening craters cast by the rumps of its five previous owners. To counter this insoluble thought, Harry tricked himself into thinking it was a courtesy car paid for by the teenagers to whom he was about to deliver his word on a wing. Today it was a converted YMCA in Workington.

Somewhere between Orrell and Preston, Harry began flicking through the radio; Talksport, Greatest Hits, sixty-second news and weather, and a debate about climate change on Radio Four that he turned off and tried to focus on his talk.

Just when he’d quite forgotten about his friend, the sound of flagging, heavy breathing grew louder in Harry’s ear, and there by his shoulder, was Keith’s tilting head, with its serious brow and clamped mouth describing the resolute expression of much needed sleep. Drawn in by that strange and magnetic quality of people sleeping, Harry scanned him further; with his coat twisted in the bottom half, one foot doubled up under the seat like a crash victim and a training shoe coming off the other, he began to wonder if bringing Keith and his sloppy socks along was a good idea.

He jabbed a finger at the play button on his CD player and the plaintive mouth organ of Springsteen’s Nebraska began, transporting him, evoking his cowboy spirit, his love of adventure, the wilderness and new frontiers. To ride into a sleepy tumbleweed town with a ravine – always a ravine - and be the storm whose legend was embellished by crackling campfires in years to come, now that was something.

`Nobody knows,’ he said, and kept on driving.

Though something had been bothering Harry, a thought he hadn’t followed up on, a feeling he’d oppressed, or a warning he hadn’t considered before he loosened his tie at the end of the day, and now in the silent company of his only friend this uneasy melancholy encouraged him to take stock. He felt his sudden rise was like a delayed form of childhood stardom, cosmically ordered and greedily accepted, yet arriving too soon, and consequently, he hadn’t prepared the ground. Harry had found success if not his bearings.

Just then Keith woke, in a rush as if being attacked, and in his confusion of waking up somewhere other than his couch he panicked and shot out a stubby finger at Harry’s music.

`What are you…?’ Harry said, slapping Keith’s hand, his face twitching and gaining in colour.

`Sorry Harry I didn’t… oh no, oh God, I’ve got a headache,’ Keith said, undoing his seatbelt, so disoriented that Harry grabbed him by the sleeve thinking he was trying to exit the moving car.

`Are you insane?’

`Oh no, Harry I wasn’t, I wouldn’t, sorry I’ve just woke up’

`What is wrong with you?’

`I’m sorry Harry I was miles away.’

`I can take you back there if you want.’

And for a moment they seemed to be going faster, as if they were running out of motorway and confirming some fatal geometric law. With a slurry of rapid glances, Keith’s vision alternated between Harry’s ire and the glassy road ahead, as he desperately wanted to atone.

            `Do you know that statistically this is the worst time to drive?’

            `…What?’ Harry said, wincing in disbelief and feeling a sharp pain in his temples.

            `When the roads are wet and the sun comes out,’ Keith said gulping, sinking further into his seat with each word.

Three short black lines formed on Harry’s brow.

`Why do you say shit like that?’ he said, raging at his immediate vicinity as if he would tear it apart. `Dropping your doom and your misery like…like…’

But the words didn’t exist, so he put his foot down and they drove onto Workington in drastic silence.

The orange, white and mustard building was now an out of fashion business centre, set back behind peeling railings. Wasted building materials, once piled up, were spilling out onto a generous sized car park and a raw wind was blowing as a yawning boy with a five pence mole under his eye was opening up. Harry cleared his throat, fluent in abrupt.

`Day for night hey son?’

`Ha, what?’ the boy said turning gruffly, annoyed that his battle with the door was interrupted.

`I’m here to do the talk. Harry Came.’

The boy looked over Harry’s shoulder grinning as if recalling something, then gave him a look of mocking respect, the kind a tribute act might get, the kind Harry had gotten to know and knew how to turn to his advantage.

`Hang on,’ the boy said, barging the door open with his shoulder, checking once inside as if someone was standing behind it.

Keith led the way to the main room, glad to be useful, carrying Harry’s A2 size portfolio bag with the pride of a corner man parading the champ’s belt to the ring.

Harry’s room was a maelstrom of communal ideas, smelling of stale air and an almost religious odour of dust. Squared green lino covered the floor’s perimeter, inside of which aluminium carpet strips framed a decent chequered carpet, like a dance floor in design, but with its coverings in reverse. In its furthest cobwebbed corner, an old portable TV peered over a forward tilting wall stand, next to a dartboard, paired below with a nibbled yoga mat that doubled up as a makeshift oche. Harry set his flipchart on the tripod stand, then looking around with the all-seeing gaze of a director, quickly arranged the two-seater tables into classroom style rows, waving away Keith’s offer to help, who after a good start now felt like feint writing in a margin.

At once the main doors burst open, bringing a flood of people and their bright morning chatter in from the cold outside. Feet shuffled and dragged, and names were given to the yawning boy, who checked their phones and crossed their names off his list with a bookies’ pen he’d just felt in his pocket. Girls hugged with excitable hope, encouraging others with a glance. Boys grinned and saluted their friends, as the room became infused with the radiant energy of a crowd ready to share in an exciting experience.

A boy wearing an ice hockey shirt with a helmet haircut was the first to be seated, ushered in by his father, a drooping man with a grey moustache that covered his entire mouth.

`See if you can do something with him,’ he said to Harry, absolving himself, in a spurned attitude, as his boy sulked and stared into the blocked middle distance.

Harry said nothing, just looked down from father to son as if they were the same person.

A girl and boy wearing matching stone coloured jogging suits made a beeline for two seats on the second row, as if they had reserved them especially, settling at their desks with the sharp looks of those who won’t be deceived. Strangers made small talk in short vague sentences, while others, sensing it was nearly time, talked in low hissing tones.

Meanwhile, Keith who had been enjoying the spectacle, now remembered why he was there, and seeing that he was keeping Harry waiting, felt his heart sink below his ribs.

`You paid sir,’ Harry said, pulling out a front row seat for him in the manner of a head waiter. Then Harry stood up to his full height and began.

`House rules are prison rules: no phones, no food, no fun, no bullshit. Anybody with a sensitive disposition is free to leave at any point, but I will be serenading you with my quitter’s bell…all the way to the door,’ he said, picking up a playground style bell from his table and holding it upside down like a plunger.

`Oh and no filming,’ he said, pointing his finger and thumb like a gun, making a popping sound with his mouth, then turning away unseen, he bit slyly on his lip, a private nod to the bootleg clip from which his legend had started.

He stood aside his flipchart gripping a blood red marker and asked the learners to shout out the current factors they believed were stopping them from acquiring their highest dreams and desires.

`Not enough time, lack of motivation, no confidence, not enough opportunity, good, good,’ he said, writing them down, cupping his ear and asking for more with his hand, `too tired, not enough money, family commitments, good.’ Harry’s marker squeaked and hissed for as long as he could bear, before he rounded off the list with a very full, full stop.

`Ok, ok, I think we’ve got enough, we’ve got the picture. Barriers and obstacles that you say are insurmountable, high walls that you can never hope to scale, but can I just ask you one question? It’s a simple one really. How can I put it so you understand me? I suppose what I’m trying to say is…’

Here Harry screwed up his eyes and tapped his foot on the carpet like he was broaching a sensitive subject and then he erupted:

`Are you people fucking shitting me?’

Without delay he seized the very air from above, crushing it and wringing it out inside big walnut knuckled hands that defied the wrath of the heavens. Girls covered their mouths with their palms as if appalled by some zany gameshow prank; boys laughed in recognition at harsh truths, their tonsils showing like pythons’ throats, while others wore serious expressions or pouted like sensitive children. But Harry hadn’t finished there. He turned on his heels as if he’d had a better idea, and in his destructive element, tore the list from the flipchart with such violence that its tripod stand toppled over. Lost in his own motivational mist, he charged over to the bin, ridding himself of these wretched excuses, stamping them into the bin, then kicking it across the other side of the room as if into an eternal abyss.

`Work-life balance,’ he said, back in the mocking tone, thrilled by the sight of so many eyes on stalks, `too much pressure and oh my precious feelings. But I’m so special and different. How?? Tell me, I’m in the dark. What is your life’s work? Netflix, The Kardashians, weed and wanking…Have you people ever listened to yourselves?’

Harry talked with great freedom, raising his volume then dropping it at the end of a sentence with a preacher’s rise and fall, walking up and down the aisles, chopping and dicing the air, ready to strike out at anyone who dared to doubt.

`You know your parents had high hopes for you. You’ve got to work, plan, persevere. You’ve got to be disciplined and don’t rely on motivation. Discipline eats motivation for breakfast. There’s no shop on earth that sells a good attitude kids.’

Needing a focal point, he picked out three boys sitting at the back who looked like they could take it.

`You three, the character actors. What have we here?’ Mmm, The Slob Taxi Driver in shorts, Terry-Ten-A-Penny in his white van and `Sir, do you want fries with that?’

He picked on Fries, a pale, slim lad, with spiky black hair longer than his forehead and a beard masking a waxy birthmark on his neck.

` What do you want to be son? Talk to me, I was a nice guy too once. No, I was, seriously you would have liked me.’

Layers of relief and ready glee washed the room, as people breathed freely, glad the spotlight was on someone else.

`He wants to be Magnus Carlsen,’ said The Taxi Driver, sitting up with a goonish smile, which Harry returned with a sarcastic one of his own to silence him.

`Chess, Magnus Carlsen…yes, I know it. You any good?’

It wasn’t for Fries to say, but White Van Man vouched for his prowess.

`Have often do you play?’ asked Harry, `Online? At a club?’

`I play online, erm about fifty games a week.’

`Play five hundred, I’m serious. Join a club, play for money, that’ll sharpen your senses. Play against better than you… find some geek in his basement in Utah, kick his arse.’

Harry went and stood at the front, imploring the learners by sinking halfway to his knees, releasing the burden of all he had to say in one last great sigh.

`Don’t you people see? It’s easy, it’s so, so easy.’

They got back to The Wirral at four and parked by the marine lake in West Kirby with a view of The Dee’s incoming steel waves. Harry undid his seatbelt and looked out onto the promenade at the wholesome couples walking languidly along, dispensing their playful chatter through happy clouds of breath. This was the time of day when his thoughts troubled him most, that his dad used to call `the limbo hours,’ and it was from him that Harry had inherited the serious man’s distaste for sleep and idle leisure.

He got out of the car lost in his memories, and sunk his hands into his pockets, feeling the chill of the door as he leant back against it.

`Sleep when you’re dead,’ he said to himself.

He turned to see if Keith had heard, but he was busy masking his struggle against a tight chest and unpleasant sensations in his heart. Unused to any spiritual or psychological excitement, his normal equilibrium had been disturbed by the events of the day, and now in the car, he felt hungover and trapped, as if there wasn’t enough air to breathe. Yet outside the vastness of the landscape overwhelmed him and made him dizzy. He got out, rigid toed, with heavy feet like stones.

`Won’t be a minute,’ he said to Harry, crossing the road, not knowing where he was going or what would happen, his thoughts flowing in one worrying direction.

Across the way, he found an obscured park and carrying on down its sloping ramp, his momentum took him onto a bowling green being stamped on by a man in crocs and an Iron Maiden t-shirt. Feeling his heart beneath his coat and irritated by a couple laughing at the little yellow jack in the gutter, he went away and found a bench in the corner. He took out his angina spray, clamped his mouth over the nozzle and sat up as straight as he could, taking in several mouthfuls, thinking this wasn’t the place he wanted to die. Two minutes later he got back in the car, feeling cold and utterly miserable in body and mind. Harry glared at him in the marble darkness. By now the promenade was empty and the view of North Wales seemed to him just an ordinary skyline, humdrum and commonplace, as if outside was somewhere that only existed when you were in the mood for this world.

`Sorry Harry, I just went the shop,’ Keith said, gulping.

`Do you think I haven’t saw you with that spray? My dad had angina. You need a cane,’ Harry said, starting the engine, `I’ll get you one, a good one.’

And he did. A stylish one, which Keith liked, with a pistol grip handle and ash wood grain that reminded him of his favourite snooker cue in his twenties.

The weeks passed and the friends settled into a routine. Together, like bought rabbits in a cage, they assimilated parts of each other’s characters; Keith subdued Harry enough to make him a bearable companion, while Harry’s zealous car-spun wisdom re-ignited the spark in his friend. Bucket list ideas that had budded if not blossomed in Keith’s mind, now became longings that shaped into particular desires, but as his health worsened, his loyalty to Harry soon became a burden. Imagined scenarios or suitable moments where he could tell his friend of his wish to move on never quite played out, so that the act of telling became too much and got lost in the fog of his mind.

New sounds, feelings and thoughts found Harry too, and he began to gain a firmer grip on the theories and ideas that had been swimming around his conscience. With that yearning for knowledge that visits many uneducated men, he read with vigour books on philosophy, religion, sociology, and communication techniques, ashamed by his ignorance and serious in his desire to set the house right. Meanwhile his Twitter page had become a battleground on which a war was waged between his disciples and detractors. Harry resented being spoken about as if he were a caricature by opposing sides with the same voices of conviction and vitriol, and through his triumphs and testimonials, and at the height of his relative fame, he fought a new and irrational desire to be conquered.

Though in his talks, Harry would not relent. He saw in the young a fear and apathy which diluted their spirit, making them oversensitive and shy of criticism. He knew they were his people, but how could he get through to them? The answer came to him gradually, as a need for a new language, softer yet potent, an improvised and intuitive way to connect with every heart and mind.

On a bleak Friday in December, when traffic was reduced to a crawl and cars turned their lights on early, Keith took a turn on the way back from Chester. Harry noticed his eyelids were heavy, and his expression was tense and strained like he was stifling severe pain. He stopped the car by a walk-in centre, but Keith refused to go in, giving him a look of such abrupt sadness and fear that Harry relented and took him home.

            At the front door, Keith was out of breath as he looked for his key. Harry helped by taking his cane, accidentally kicking a metallic dog bowl in the dark.

`What’s that, you’ve got a mutt now?’

            `No…one visits. Forgive the mess,’ Keith said, stepping inside.

He turned on a naked light bulb in the hall and asked Harry to settle in the lounge as he went to the kitchen.

Harry pushed the door open with his finger, and pausing in the doorway, witnessed the disorder before abandonment of someone who cannot cope. On the floor by the couch, was a pair of jeans in a bather’s pile, taken off while sitting, then stepped on afterwards. In front of that a moat of letters that looked like moonlit stepping-stones, were arranged around a too large footrest crowding out a sideboard, a TV and a computer desk.

Harry dropped into the armchair with a here goes attitude, resting his leg over the arm, not seeing Keith who was standing in the doorway and smiling at this old habit of his.

            `I’m glad you’re doing well Harry,’ he said, dropping onto the couch, happy the day was over.

            `You can always do better,’ Harry said.

And they caught each other’s gaze, finding it easier now to talk in the dark.

            `Do you ever want to meet someone?’ asked Keith smiling warmly.

            `Sometimes,’ Harry said, stretching out his legs in front of him. `Now and again, you know. There are worse things in life than being alone.’

After Carol he hadn’t bothered. He remembered the rows they’d had over her sister letting herself in uninvited and the bitter silences that followed afterwards.

`I should’ve said sorry, but I don’t miss it…You become like the rest…’

            And for a moment, Harry thought about Keith with a woman; a sisterly type, kind and caring enough to drop in on him and look out for him, but over the gloom he heard his sporadic breathing and realised that would never happen now.

            Oppressed by the doom of being in a sad and miserable home, he got up and went to the bathroom. A tug of the light cord laid bare more confusion, and the helping aids of old age, clinical in white, made him shiver at his own mortality. He turned on the tap and splashed his face in the small sink, looking closely at himself in the mirror, with his nose touching the glass, as if something might be revealed. Outside a car door slammed, followed by another dense thump as if in response, that Harry dully connected with the car, but when he opened the door to the hall, he saw Keith had fallen and was on all fours like a wounded animal.

`What happened?’ he asked, rushing across the hall to the lounge. `Did you fall?’

Harry scanned the floor around him to see what could be done in a hurry, slipping slightly on the letters as he got in behind him, gripping him under his arms as horrible nervous tremors passed over Keith’s lips.

`One, two, up’ he said, raising him with a huge effort, but as Keith put his feet on the floor, his limbs gave way and they both fell back against the couch.

`I’m ringing an ambulance,’ Harry said, on his back, feeling for his phone in his jacket pocket, forced down by his friend’s weight.

Keith’s body jolted and he tried to speak, but there was a gurgling in his throat, followed by a feint rattling, before a last small struggle like a fish returning to the water. With trembling arms Harry felt for a pulse, shaking Keith’s wrist with the helpless dismay of someone failing. He got out from underneath and to his feet, sweating and staggering, reaching out to the windowsill as if pursued by a bad dream, all alone in the great enormity of death.

He took out his phone and rang the doctor, and as the confirming words were leaving him, his senses became painfully heightened in the dark, and he felt a desperate need to move around in Keith’s world before he was taken from his home forever. His fingers found a lamp, and in its dim, shrinking light, he saw the faces of actors on the cover of a TV guide, alive like heralds, as if they had just spoken and had waited for the dark to die too.

He picked up a black and white picture of Keith’s parents, taken by the back door in their family home, standing at each other’s shoulder, younger, happier, healthier and at ease. A single tear fell from Harry’s eye, landing on the glass and resting in the groove of the wooden frame, taking him by surprise, and releasing the great tide of emotion that he tried to stem with his hand, but which soaked his palm with tears.

Death had arrived in the room, warmer now and achingly silent. John, Keith’s brother had arrived, composed like on the phone, as if he’d rehearsed this day in his mind and had resolved to save any emotions until after he’d carried out his duty. After Keith was taken away, John came back into the room and stood over Harry who hadn’t moved from the chair for some time.

`Harry, you can go now,’ he said, ‘You go and get yourself home. There’s nothing more to be done tonight.’

Harry stood up, angry that he’d been there often but only now heard Keith’s little gold carriage clock ticking for the first time.

`I keep wondering if I’d just,’ he said, but John stopped him, putting his hands on top of his shoulders, dismissing immediately any slight that Harry levelled at himself, assuring him that he had done everything right and well.

`You did all you could. You’ve been a great friend to my brother,’ he said, leading him to the door, with his hand placed tenderly on his back.

Outside Harry could still hear the door being shut behind him. He moved clumsily towards the gate, not feeling the cold, and stopped to look at the outlines of the houses and higher still at the vast blackness of the sky, trying to believe in his own memory.

Over the road, a reedy white mongrel was standing by the wheel of his car flicking its ears. Harry fixed his gaze on it, and came closer, crouching down and rubbing his fingers and thumb together as if he had a treat for it, as it shifted on its paws, hesitating as if to back away.

`You could be run over out here,’ he said, stroking its ears and shaking his head with bitter compassion. `They don’t care hey son?’ he said, seeing it was a boy and noticing it didn’t have a name collar. `They don’t care.’

Harry took it in his arms in one sudden movement, its’ thin bones creaking in surprise rather than discomfort, and its protruding round eyes so devoid of malice that they reminded him of a goofy greeting card. He opened the passenger door and lay it down on the seat, but as he was shutting the door, a strong feeling came over him, like he had forgotten something, something precious and important he might regret. Craving the keen cold air, he folded down the car’s hood as if it would air him of all the things done, and then he settled in his seat, sure and confident, yet not knowing how these things were happening.

The engine started and the car moved away, glinting in the streetlights, passing the parked cars, before turning onto bigger roads and into traffic that merged and parted in the starless night. And as all the magical things he had seen and treasured came back to life in his soul, Harry now caught himself in the mirror, raising his fist and holding it there, clenching it tighter, vowing to unearth in others the quality and grace that for all his life he had been seeking. To live on with invincible hope. Our eternal debt to the dead.