This is the lead story on my collection 'Twenty Bites'. It won its way into the final six of a 3000 entry short story competition. Hope you like it ...
His wife, his one and only love is dead. Bank manager William Travis has gone off on his own to think about the past and to consider his own future. How soon would they catch up with him?
Willie’s Place
William H Travis pulls down the peak of his baseball cap,
re-positions his forearms on the esplanade railings, sees the age mottled backs
of his hands as a mapped-out archi- pelago
of islands. He looks up at the moving sea, blurred now by tears. Oh Tina … Tina
… Tina He thinks about the years of marriage and mortgage and moderation in all
things and about Tina changing from girl-friend into mistress into wife into
mother into grand-mother. Now, this minute, he asks himself, how do you live
without her? Well, you just do, William Travis, he answers himself. Or you just
don’t.
He looked around. They’d missed
all this, Tina almost but perhaps not quite as much as himself. The open road and
the free of charge freedom, ever-shifting seas and skies and this iodine air,
this calling of the seabirds. The folk clubs and jazz festivals of their early
life together.
Oh yes, and the singing and the
songs. He tried to remember when and why the two of them had walked out on all
that; sold out, really. Security, they’d told each other, for once not looking
into each other’s eyes. Might they really have fallen off the edge of the world
or something if their feet and their minds hadn’t become so firmly fixed on the
so-called property ladder? If they’d managed without the nine to five career,
without all that stuff? ‘You’ve a lovely voice, Bill, everyone knows that, like
waves on the shingle,’ she’d told him, straight faced. ‘Pity about the way you
look. With better looks and a few more muscles – yes, you could have been a
contender!’ Cheeky monkey. He smiles, feels the cold drying of the tears in the
creases around his mouth and in his moustache.
But the music. Oh, the music! The
gift of hearing it, not just listening to it. Really hearing it, storing it in
your head, bringing it out anytime you wanted - even if only in the bathroom
like everybody does but perfect, note perfect. He shakes his head… bankers
don’t sing Hank Williams or early Elvis or Willie Nelson, not in public anyway.
William Travis’s right foot takes up the rhythm that comes uninvited to his
head. He hums the intro, sings that one of Willie’s, soft and slow; ‘Well, hello there… My, it’s been a long,
long time… How’m I doin’? … Oh, I guess I’m doin’ fine …’ He stops, blinking behind his glasses,
somehow aware he’s no longer on his own. He puts up his hand to remove any
vestiges of tears, turns around. She’s pretty, the girl with the baby buggy. Perhaps
about his daughter Deb’s age, mid twenties? Bit taut around the eyes and
dressed by no means well although neat and tidy enough. In her buggy looking up
at him there’s a round faced, round eyed baby, alongside it a six string
guitar. The girl takes up where he’s left off, begins to sing; ‘It’s been so long now … But it seems now …
It was only yesterday … Gee, ain’t it funny … How time slips away.’
William touches his cap, claps
his hands.
She says, ‘Thank you, sir. I
think, maybe we should sing together, no?’ Strong accent, probably eastern
European. Her laugh is tentative and without affectation. The long blonde hair
unfurls in the breeze, enwrapping the pale triangle of her face. She turns into
the wind, strokes back errant strands. ‘Sir, you know Whiskey River?’
William Travis strikes a Willie
Nelson pose, holds an imaginary microphone close to his mouth, tilts up the
brim of his imaginary Stetson, sings ‘Whiskey
river don’t run dry …don’t let her memory talk to me …’ As in all the bathrooms of his life, in his
head he’s listening to the audience reaction, the yelling and cheering
subsiding now so that they can hear the words as clearly as he sees them in his
mind… good, simple country words to drown out any bad memories; to tell them,
each one of them that they are not alone, help to explain the sorrows of the
world
The sea front café is nice and warm and heavy with the
odours of fried food. Their plastic seats are not un-comfortable. By the time
they’ve finished their second cups of coffee it’s raining outside and by then
the baby whose name is Hugo has let it be known that it’s time for him also to
have something. By then, too, William has learned that the girl is ‘legal’ - a
legal refugee, a young, recently widowed nurse who’d not that long ago come
here from Croatia carrying a foetus, a thing that had had nothing to do with
her and everything to do with the war in the Balkans even though, right now,
she’d grown to love it, her burden, very much. It, of course, had become him,
Hugo. And William has learned that her name is something unpronounceable
beginning with a P that she’s changed to Patsy out of deference to ‘my best
lady singer, Patsy Cline.’ In exchange the girl, P whatever, has learned about
his retirement and his ambitious, successful, adult children and his now not so
small grandchildren. Also about the life and the death and the recent funeral
of his wife, slightly delayed for the autopsy though he hasn’t said that. And
naturally he hasn’t told her anything about the circumstances of Tina’s death,
nor what could very likely be the eventual outcome, nor about why he’s here in Hastings waiting for the knock on his hotel room door or
the closing of the waters of the English channel
above his head; whichever might now come
first.
P whatever picks up her baby,
opens her coat, lifts up her sweater and applies an eager Hugo to a darkly
swollen nipple. William blinks, feels the hot skin-flooding of his face, looks
out across the road, across a now rain-ringed esplanade at the white topped
waves and wind-weaving gulls. Noticing his embarrassment this Patsy says, ‘You
not like? Oh, I am sorry, I should go out to ladies.’
He coughs. ‘No, please, it’s not
a problem. I mean, after my lot, you’d think…’ he coughs again. ‘I have to move
on now, anyway.’
‘Listen, you will come to our
club, please?’ she says, changing the subject in the way that she does.
‘Tonight? You like. It is good. Good country and western, yes?’ She leans
forward, her hand shielding the back of Hugo’s head against any possible
contact with the edge of the table. ‘Sometime I sing. This place, it is like
for you, because called Willie’s Place.’ She laughs delightedly. ‘Willie’s Place
in South Street.’
William Travis hasn’t wanted any
of this. It isn’t why he’s here. Now he wants to leave. He hesitates, feeling
awkward, looking away. ‘We’ll have to see but I don’t really know. Perhaps I’m
a bit too old for that kind of thing.’
‘Old? No, not old, William. Many old and many
young. Willie Nelson is old I think. And Johnny Cash. And Dolly, even. But it
is OK, William.’ Her face now settles into a kind of sadness. ‘I think maybe
you do not feel so good to have us here in your country; this I understand.’
The baby’s tiny fist closes about her forefinger.
Not like ‘us’ being ‘here’? Oh
God, he thinks, she’s probably right. Well, up to today she might have been,
but now does it matter how William Travis feels about immigrants? He pushes back
his chair, gets up, takes out a twenty pound note and puts it on to the table,
says, ‘Look, Patsy, please take this; you know, in case I can’t make it
tonight? I’d like to buy a drink or two for yourself and your friends. And
welcome to England,
Patsy. In time you’ll find us …’ He stops himself, tells himself to forget the
homilies. No more bloody homilies. Please. All his life he’s been dishing them
out: at the bank, to neighbours, to friends, to relatives. Not now, not any
more.
She shrugs, unsmiling, nods her
thanks as a down- covered cannonball of a head thrusts itself forward, again
and then again, settles down to the next slow pull. And whilst William H Travis
stands there his new ex-friend sings quietly the opening lines to Patsy Cline’s
Leavin’ On Your Mind, her English a
perfect Alabama American. Reverting to her usual voice she says, ‘You stay
good, William. It will be OK … for your wife, I am sorry … I know this already.
Listen, you sing good, very good.’ By then every one of the few in the place
has heard her music and seems to be doing their best to listen to what the
young girl with the baby at her breast might be saying to that old man.
They’ve tracked him down. Well, going on holiday without
leaving a forwarding address or a mobile on live is not the same as running
away, is it? All he’d wanted was a few days of time and space. He’d told Debbie
and George as much, hadn’t he? Bless them, no doubt they’d been happy for the
chance to slot themselves back into their own ludicrously over-busy lives. But
now the police have located him, probably through the hotel’s credit card
verification and he’s been quite pleasantly surprised by the care in their
approach. No uniforms knocking on hotel doors after all, just the phone call to
his room early in the evening, the very minimum degree of coercion in the
suggestion that he might perhaps like to help by coming down to the station?
It’s a woman’s voice; ‘Sergeant Palmer’, she introduces herself as. ‘Just a few
questions, Mr Travis,’ she tells him. ‘Something about the recent tragedy…
actually … and actually, Inspector Bellicom from Wood Green’s waiting here.
And, oh, there’s an unmarked police car outside the hotel, the weather having
turned so foul and all. Please look out for the white Mondeo, sir, is that all
right?’
Inspector Bellicom is dressed in
a well-cut civilian suit. He is male, black and friendly. The one who’d
telephoned, the uniformed Sergeant Palmer is very female, young, white and just
as friendly. Would he like a cup of tea and a biscuit? Yes, thank you, he tells
them; that would be most welcome. The sergeant picks up the phone to organise
it.
Introductions over now, the
Inspector says; ‘We’re sorry to bother you on your holiday, Mr Travis. Just a
few questions. Would you mind if we record our chat?’
‘I’ve no objection, Inspector.’
‘Thank you.’ He switches on,
then: ‘Time, eighteen ten; date, Thursday October twenty third; place, Hastings police station
interview room two. In attendance Sergeant Palmer and myself, Inspector Victor
Bellicom of Wood Green. And Mister William Travis. Just for the record sir, you
are Mr William Travis of 16 Muntjak Gardens, Wood Green in London?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘You are sixty one years of age
and a retired bank executive?’
‘That’s right.’ He smiles. ‘They
used to call us ‘managers’, Inspector.’
Sergeant Palmer: ‘Please help
yourself to milk and sugar, Mister Travis.’
‘Thank you.’
Inspector Bellicom says, ‘Tea? No
thanks, sergeant. Now, Mister Travis, you are of course aware that the
coroner’s report stated that your wife’s death was caused by barbiturate
poisoning, self administered whilst the balance of her mind was disturbed?’
‘Yes.’
‘We have received certain new
information that could contradict the coroner’s self administration comment,
Mister Travis. Would this surprise you?’
‘Inspector, I am not young and I
am a bit tired and no, nothing would
surprise me. However I should perhaps point out that elderly people suffering
Alzheimer’s dementia often have periods of lucidity during which they may
wonder about the logic of their continuing lives.’
‘Yes, sir. May I ask you to
answer my question, please?’
‘Certainly. No, it would not
surprise me.’
‘Then my next question is simply
this; did you yourself administer barbiturates to your wife?’
‘Yes, indirectly I did,
Inspector.’
Pause, clearing of throat;
‘Please repeat that, sir.’
‘Yes, I did administer them. I
handed the barbiturate pills to my wife and my wife put them into her mouth.’
‘And you did not think to inform
anybody of this, previous to today?’
‘Nobody asked me, Inspector, not
directly anyway. And I would point out that I acted under instruction, even if
quite willingly.’
‘Instruction? Who’s instruction
would that be, then, Mister Travis?’
‘My wife’s instruction,
Inspector. Remember that this was a matter that until now has been private,
only between the two of us. I was acutely aware of how controversial - and how
damaging to the happiness of our children and their children my actions could
be. I suspect that, in her own fashion Tina also was conscious of this.’
‘Yes. Mister Travis. At this
point I have to caution you that anything you say may be taken down and used in
evidence. You do understand - I mean, you understand the seriousness of your
admission?’
‘Yes, of course. I believe I just
said as much.’
Another, more lengthy pause,
sounds of fingers drumming on table top, then; ‘I am not prepared to carry on
with this matter pending advice. For the record I am terminating this interview
at eighteen thirty four hours.’ He switches off, sits back, shaking his
head. ‘Sergeant, I think I’ll have some
of that tea now, please.’
‘Yes sir.’ She picks up the
telephone.
‘Sergeant?’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘There’s no special hurry.’
‘Right, sir.’ She nods her
understanding, puts down the telephone, goes out, closes the door behind her.
‘Mister Travis - ‘
‘Please, Inspector, I’m
‘William.’ ‘Mister Travis’ was your bank manager. Remember those, Inspector?’
‘Yes? Never go in my bank these
days.’ The Inspector is smiling. ‘Never need to. Do all my banking stuff
through the Net or someone on the phone in Outer Mongolia
or wherever.’ The inspector leans forward to speak, but more quietly now. ‘I
wish you’d not made that admission, sir - I mean, William. We know the pills
were prescribed for you. ‘Information received’, as we put it. But we were
hoping you’d just deny everything so I could get back to town in time to get
some sleep and you could get on with your holiday. You know, you aren’t the
first to be faced with a problem like the one you had. Nor the first to come up
with that answer. You’d be very surprised. Its just they don’t normally own up
to it, not straight out like that.’ He sighed. ‘It’s the ones who find that
kind of so-called ‘remedy’ when there’s no real problem. It’s finding the vital
difference, that’s what counts to me - actually to most of us.’
‘You asked me and I answered with the truth.
Funny old word, ‘truth’, these days, eh? You know, it may be regrettable but
even if I had something to lose I’d still feel obliged to tell the truth.’
The policeman shakes his head. ’Something
to lose, you say? Of course you have something to lose. I doubt the DPP’d dare
not recommend proceedings. Not now, not after this.’ He nods towards the recording
machine.
‘Inspector, I have to accept what
you say. Anyway, will it be all right if I finish my holiday here?’ He wondered
why Bellicom hadn’t asked why he had himself been prescribed the pain killers. He
must have known. ‘Information received’. From the pharmacy, no doubt. If he had
asked he’d have had to tell the truth about that as well; he’d have had to tell
him about his very own very bad companion, the pancreatic cancer that had
already reached out to get its roots into, well, just about everything. And
then, after him, who on earth would have looked after Tina? Not George in between
his transatlantic shuttling and extreme surgical operations on his patients’ brains.
No way. And certainly not Debs, God bless her; Debs with her eyes and her heart
set on some kind of conquest of the City of London. Nursing home? Tina had extracted his
promise; definitely no nursing homes.
The Inspector shakes his head,
stands up, paces around with his hands behind his back. He stops, looks down on
him, says, ‘You still have not mentioned the obvious mitigating circumstances,
William. I’ll tell you, personally I have to say I’m very sorry because you
seem like a good man. But a bloody cool one, I will say that much.’ He jabs a
finger at a button on the recording machine. A compartment opens and the
inspector removes the tape, puts it into his pocket.
Untypically, the words come out
before he has really considered them. ‘It’s a bit late for you to be going back
to town now, Inspector. Why don’t you stay down here? Look, I met a very nice
young lady earlier today. She invited me to a country and western club of some
kind this evening. You could come with me if you like.’
‘Country and western? My God,
man, you’ve just admitted to one of the most serious crimes - and now you tell
me you picked up with some girl and want me to - I …’ he shakes his head but the smile has started
and has spread and white teeth have appeared in the good looking face and then
come the chuckles and the Inspector’s laughter and his own as well, louder and
louder, and when Sergeant Palmer arrives with the tray and the Inspector tells
her about it she starts in laughing, too, specially when the Inspector says he
wouldn’t care but black men aren’t into country & western anyway and
William says oh yes they are, haven’t you ever heard of the great Charlie
Pride? But finally they’ve straightened up enough for Inspector Bellicom to
tell him to get off, report to Wood Green police station Monday morning.
Please. He and the sergeant would now need to test run the tape.
You know how it is when you’re walking into something by
your own choice and suddenly come to know it’s such a big mistake but you can’t
easily retreat? Well, that’s how it is with this Willie’s Place. It’s almost
empty for a start and you only find out later that you arrived far too early.
By that time you should be feeling very conspicuous in your holiday-smart
chinos and linen jacket, being surrounded by more and more of the cowboy boots
and silver buckled belts and well-fringed wash leather dresses and those big,
wide brimmed cowboy hats.
There’s a dancing area with chairs
and tables all around it in a horseshoe and there’s a stage, and there's a DJ
with a microphone prancing and banging around in high heels and tasselled, worn
leather chaps, silver spurs jingle-jangling. But you like it here by then and
you know most of the country standards the man puts on for the line dancing and
there’s groups from four up to everyone in the place except you when he plays
Achey Breakey Heart. They’re all linked up at the shoulders, heads down to
watch the careful placement of feet, side to side, step forward and back, hands
free to clap and twirl. Heels on floorboards; bang, tap, bang, slide. Tina
would have loved it.
By ten o clock you’ve forgotten
how tired you thought you were. The third pint’s going down exceptionally well
and you can feel the alcohol but you’ve never been a let-it-all-out type
drinker and you’re not going to become one now, are you? So you empty your
glass and ask the substantial cowgirl with the white Stetson serving behind the
bar for a bottle of the fizzy, peach flavoured water.
When they play Willie Nelson’s
version of Georgia On My Mind the lights dim down and the dance lines break up
into slow moving couples, shuffling, swaying, hats getting in the way of their
wearers’ intentions. And then quite suddenly she’s here, smiling up at you,
pale gold hair shimmering down the sides of her face and neck, cascading over
the epaulettes of the red and white shirt, and you cannot help but remember
what’s there under the shirt. You hope your blushes can’t be seen in this
lighting. She glances at the dance floor, eyebrows raised in question. You
shake your head, ask her what she’d like to drink. You’re looking around for
her partner and now it’s her turn to smile and shake her head.
Georgia finishes. The DJ returns to centre
stage, announces in his nearly convincing Southern States drawl, ‘OK, it’s
karaoke time, folks, and tonight we got our own Patsy Cline, right here.…. Come
on up, Patsy … Crazy’
Patsy waves to acknowledge the
cheers, turns to him, says, ‘Please do not you go away, William.’ She climbs on
to the stage.
She’s good, really good. It’s not
just the voice, it’s the depth of meaning she manages to inject into the words
of Willie Nelson as long since immortalised by Patsy Cline; ‘I’m crazy…crazy for feeling so lonely … I’m
crazy for feeling so blue …I knew that you’d love me so long as you wanted …
and then someday you’d leave me for somebody new … Well, you did, Tina, you
did. Please, God, I hope you’re looking after her. He has to take a long, deep
breath, eyes hard shut.
It’s not just himself. He can see
the effect the singer and the song are having on everyone else, most of them
not dancing any more, lining the stage front, looking up at her, swaying … ‘Worry, why do I - The words are on a big screen, the karaoke
ball bouncing across it syllable to syllable even though Patsy’s the only one
singing the words and she doesn’t need to look.
In the middle of the song she
stops, holds up her hand, turns to the DJ. The music stops, too, and the screen
goes blank. She speaks into the microphone to re-assure them all. ‘It is no
problem. I go on, OK? But you know this song, Crazy? You know it is a song
written by the great Willie Nelson, no?’ More of the silence. The DJ looks
baffled, not amused, obviously wanting to intervene.
William Travis knows what’s
coming now, looks around for the means of escape.
She goes on, ‘Well, back there by the bar?
This is Willie. He should sing this song with me, for you. You come up here,
William, yes?’
Faces are turned to him and he
can see there all the doubts and the reflection of his own embarrassment. Then
somebody claps and then some others and the cowgirl-bargirl has reached across
to place her Stetson on his head. He leaves the safety of the bar. The
alcohol’s at work, he knows that, but sing? With more than the usual necessity
to concentrate he walks to the stage. How the hell is he going to sing with a
throat so dry he can’t even swallow?
Patsy’s eyes sparkle blue in the
brilliance of the stage lighting. She reaches up, tweaks down the brim of his
cowboy hat, turns to the DJ. ‘OK, Johnnie. Now we go again with Crazy, yes?’
The intro starts and he looks out
and down on the faces, the smoke, the backlit bar and sees there the expectancy
and hope and he sees or senses something else, something undefinable. He
swallows, feels quite suddenly that this is going to be all right, knows
exactly where and when he’s going to come in on this. He looks at the pretty,
upturned face of an age to be his daughter and this Patsy smiles back at him
and William Travis sings the song Crazy to
her, and for her, and for Tina, too, knowing his voice sounds rich and deep and
true, like - like waves on shingle? And the girl/woman Patsy comes in at times
and sings it back to him and somehow the two of them know when it’s best for
them to do it together. And by the time they’ve finished the song, William H
Travis has become the great Willie Nelson and the music has stopped and he
barely notices the silence or the first accolade from Johnny the DJ, nor then
clapping and the cheering and the rebel yells. He raises the hat, winks across
all the heads through wreaths of cigarette smoke at the big cowgirl jumping up
and down behind the bar, hands clapping above her head.
The people don’t want to let go
of the two of them and he knows what it is now because he doesn’t want to let
go of them, either. It’s a here and now love affair, isn’t it? A love affair
without touching, the two of them in love with the hundred and the hundred with
the two of them.
By himself he goes on to sing
them the so very well remembered Jambalaya,
Hank Williams’ epic, his foot tapping to the driving rhythm of the song. She
follows on from there with Patsy Cline’s I
Fall To Pieces, the amazing purity of her voice a silver stream by moonlight.
Halfway through his next song
William Travis notices Inspector Bellicom and a Sergeant Palmer now in jeans
and a check shirt, gazing at him from their position with backs to the bar.
They're wearing the same rapt expressions as the others. William lifts his hand in salute, ‘I’ve been dreaming like a child … since the
cradle broke the bough … and there’s nothing I can do about it now The two of them wave back at him and he can
see Bellicom holding something up - a tape? Yes, a tape. The tape? Bellicom’s free hand points to it, his finger describing
a cross and then a circle. No more? William understands. He nods, lowers his
head, looks down and sideways at Patsy, sings on, ‘I could cry for the time I’ve wasted … but that’s a waste of time and
tears … and I know just what I’d change … if I went back in time somehow … but
there’s nothing I can do about it now …’
He comes to the finish and when
the applause starts to die down holds up his hand for silence, speaks into the
microphone. He thanks Patsy and Johnny the DJ and thanks all of them here for
listening to them or rather, to the songs that he and Patsy have sung for them.
He says there will be more songs and the cheering breaks out afresh, with
Victor and the Sergeant Palmer whose first name he doesn’t know, joining in. He
tells everyone, then, that this is the first time he’s sung in front of
strangers since he was twenty years old and he hopes they will forgive him a
little ring rustiness and he hopes they will get used to him being here. He’s planning
to move down here to Hastings,
he says. Patsy squeezes his hand. He finishes with; ‘But listen to me, folks;
being older is as good as being young, you know. Maybe better. Certainly a
whole lot easier. And like Willie says, there’s nothing I can do about it now.
I‘ve been especially lucky to have found my new friend, here. And through her
all of you here at Willie’s Place. What the future holds I cannot say, but
there are times when you know it can’t get any better than right here, right
now; just like this is for me.’
He steps back, looks down on she
who could have been Tina but who is in reality the timeless stranger he has
known all of his life. In her eyes is the shine of stars, of things unknowable.
And still the singing and the
songs; all the songs in Willie’s Place.
The end
Willie’s Place had its genesis in a steamy little karaoke bar in
downtown Dubai.
It was there that I watched a middle aged gentleman in a dark pinstriped suit
and sober tie turn into a convincingly all-out Mick Jagger. People can live
more lives than one, right?
