Simply Stories - Last Post

Last Post

by Jackie Anderson

   

The kettle screams for attention and belches steam into the dank air of the kitchenette in the corner of his room.  Ian unfolds his arms and steps towards it, keeping meticulous time with the crisp ticking of the ornate wall clock that frowns down on him.  It belonged to his late grandfather and Ian can hear the old man’s disapproving click of the tongue in his teeth with every swing of the pendulum.

Ian sighs with his kettle when he takes it off the stove, letting out a long breath.  Lately he finds himself so on edge that he stops breathing.  At those moments, he has to blow outwards so that he can breathe in again. When he’s at work he can disguise this as a whistle; everyone expects a postman to whistle.

He puts the kettle down on the draining board and remembers when he used to have an automatic kettle.  It was a year ago.  A year since everything went bottoms up heads down and life turned sour.  The business went.  The house went: that glorious villa he had built down near the beach.  The staff left, all his mates, sweating and heaving concrete with him when the going was good and now slaving for new masters.  They did not want to stay with him for love and sunshine.  Nor did his wife.

Ian pours boiling water into a cup and stirs a teabag into it.  He stares at how the water turns brown and the tiny dots of the tea leaves fret inside their perforated pyramid prison.  He fishes out the teabag, foregoes the milk, which has turned to sour lumps even in the fridge and sips with a first cringe at the bitterness of it.  He catches sight of a bundle of letters propped up against the empty biscuit tin and pauses. 

Shall I open them, he wonders.  He thinks the better of it and sits down at the stained table that perches on a dusty tiled floor.  He leans back in the chair, folds his arms and glares at the clock.  Black and forbidding, it stares back, its face a stark reminder of family.  They’ve all gone now; his brother and nephews back to England after they sold Granddad’s house and cleared the furniture.  Then Ian’s wife.  The thought of her still makes him clench his stomach with loss.  She ran off with his site manager.  Two people he had always expected to rely on.

He rubs his eyes and scratches at the grey stubble on his chin. He was furious at the time, rushed to divorce her, spent the last of his money on lawyers, and she still managed to force the sale of the house and then took Jeremy and Alicia, their children, to France where her mother lived.  So nothing left.  Certainly no money.  Only debts.  That was the only sure thing left in his life.  And the ticking of the damned clock.

He stares long at the letters.  Different sizes, different stamps, some with hand-written addresses others with typed labels.  One of them is from the courts, demanding money from him and he can see a tatty one with his landlord’s writing giving him until the end of the week to come up with the rest of the rent or leave the room.  Ian takes a cursory glance around him.  Not much to leave behind anyway.  His wages cover the rent and food.  The essentials.  But not the tax, not the lawyers, not the fines, not the debts and not the mobile phone, which is the only way he can speak to the kids.

Ian’s breathing falters and he’s back with the clock.  Even in this dismal bedsit its staccato striking echoes.  He listens intently and sucks air in, out, in, out, second after dull second. Time is ticking always forward, an infinite line that stretches ahead, a conveyor belt that doesn’t stop, doesn’t let you look, makes you lose sight of all that’s already been and gone.  It seems his grandfather has slapped him between the shoulders and he breathes again, finding rhythm along with that of the clock.

The bundle of letters summons him over, like a siren singing to a drowning sailor.  He holds back, staring at them.  He knows what they hold.  He’s been collecting them for weeks, bringing them home one at a time.  He’s come to know the way the envelopes feel between the fingers, the birthday card with the slight bulge in the middle where grandma has slid a couple of notes.  He was surprised at first when he realised some people still send cash in the mail.  He can tell by instinct now, so carefully has he been examining the letters over the past few months.

He taps his fingers on the table and Grandfather glares, tutting from the wall.  Ian purses his lips and watches the steam curl upwards from the tea towards the shaft of light that splits the grubby room in two, but again his gaze is drawn to the bundle of letters.  There might be enough there for a month’s rent.  He hasn’t had much time to think about how he will spend it; every waking moment is spent working.  Delivering mail, bar work at night and maintenance jobs at the weekends.

The relentless ticking competes with the car horns and yelling of yet another traffic jam outside his window.  Ian remembers having a car not that long ago.  The bailiffs confiscated it.  So many people having it good, having enough to stuff envelopes with cash and risk having it stolen.  At least he won’t squander it.

He snatches up the cup and winces when the tea burns his lips.  He wipes his muzzle roughly with the back of his hand feeling the coarseness of the bristles and wishing fleetingly that he had time to shave.  He coughs, the air in the room suddenly thick with burgeoning summer and threatening to suffocate him.  It’s like treacle, cloying, like syrup in his lungs.  Even the clock has dulled its tones to lisp out the seconds it takes Ian to reach to the bundle of letters and snatch them to his chest as if an invisible hand is about to strike them away from his grasp.

He opens them with care, using steam from the hot kettle.  He tosses the contents onto the table, cards and letters still folded over their precious contents in their dozens.

“Happy birthday Grandson”; “For your Holy Communion, Abigail”; “Congratulations on your Engagement”.  One after another. 

It’s been a year since Ian could send his children any gifts and weeks since he has spoken to them.  He can’t see them or give them a roof over their heads.  Not this squalid room in this shabby building over a dark patio where the sewers overflow every time it rains and stink when they dry out.  The breath is catching in his throat as he fights off the sobs.  On the other side of the table the wall clock glowers.

Ian breathes heavily now, panting as if he had sprinted up the mountainside in August.  His hands shake, his knees tremble and he sits heavily.  He leans his elbows on the table and laces his fingers so his hands are balled together.  He thinks that he can take the money out of those cards and slide it into his pocket and run down the hill to his landlord’s apartment and save himself one more time.  He doesn’t have to read the messages.  He doesn’t have to know who sent them or why.

He sits at that table as the minutes slink their way past.  By the time the sun begins to dip he has tear tracks like dry riverbeds crusted on his face.  He has one short hour left and then the rent has to be paid.

The clock shudders and strikes the hour.  With the lightest of groans, Ian reaches forward and takes a card.  There’s two twenty pound notes in it, a present for a newborn.  He looks at the address on the envelope.  It’s not far, just past his landlord’s.

Ian lights a cigarette, the last left of those his boss had let him have from his own pack.  He stuffs the letters, cards and their contents neatly into their envelopes and seals them.  Then he pops them in his pocket and leaves the room.  He’ll tell his landlord he’s leaving at the weekend.  Then he can bed down at the local hostel for a while.  And it’s summer. If needs must, he can find a dark corner somewhere outdoors.  Tonight he will be walking streets with special late deliveries.  He glances at the clock as he leaves.  Plenty of time before daybreak to get them all to their rightful owners.  The clock ticks at him.  Ian grins.  He might just get a few pounds for that monstrosity at the antique dealer’s.