Nostalgia - Chapter 12
Halcyon
Nostalgia is my second novel, a magical-realism sci-fi drama about memories, family, addiction and the dangers of living in the past.
‘Elliot!’
My little brother (not in size, anyway) perks up, looking around the overcrowded convention hall before locking onto me. He shoots me a look of “What are you doing here?”, before raising a hand. Just a sec. He finishes up serving a customer, leaving his memorabilia stall to be manned by someone who is possibly cosplaying as Chewbacca. It’s hard to tell.
He’s a big, daft thing. Forever the baby of the family, he’s never fully matured and holds the envious position as the most doted over, even today. Wayne refers to Elliot as a ‘retrosexual’, due to his love of cinema and television from a bygone age. Elliot is the most melancholy person I’ve known. He mourns five minutes ago. Always counting the days and weeks since a particular event, always aware of the passing of time. He would randomly announce ‘Christmas day was seven weeks ago today… it was six months since our holiday…’ Elliot would always drift off, not really having a point for mentioning these redundant facts, but still, he looks off into the distance, misty-eyed, as if mourning its loss.
Wistful euphoria hangs in the air at Elliot’s place of work: A Comic and Sci-Fi convention. Cos-Players as far as the eye can see. Stereotypical nerds wearing their favourite T-Shirts, advertising their specific obsession.
The arena is lined with cramped stalls selling geek memorabilia. Long queues of people at celebrity signings. I even recognise a few of the ‘faces’, so they must be quite famous. Fans ask celebrities to do their thing, say their punchline, do the pose, sign their catchphrase on a photo.
Elliot dashes over to give me a bear hug.
‘All those invites you sent me... Thought I’d come down, and say thanks for the birthday gift. That Patrick Steward Commemorative Plate.’
‘Oh, yeah. You got it. Can’t believe you’re here. Knew I’d wear you down eventually!’
Roaming the various stalls, Elliot excitedly shows me around ‘his world’. I don’t share the same levels of wonder and excitement, but his giddiness is endearing. He points to an old man at a table, signing photographs and posing for a selfie with a fan.
‘Look! It’s… agh, what’s his name? Him from ‘Doctor Who'. He was a baddie. Oh what’s his name?’ asks Elliot, as if a lot is riding on it.
‘Patrick Longstreth,’ I reply, putting Elliot out of his misery.
‘Yes! Thank you!’
‘Call yourself an expert?’ I jest.
‘Tell me about it. I think I’m losing my mind,’ he says, eyes widening.
‘Forgetting what year it is, then maybe. Not being able to name the third Cyberman at the back? No,’ I say.
We peruse the numerous stalls crammed with toys from the past, film posters and ridiculously expensive models of spaceships and superheroes.
‘What’s the point of all this?’ I mutter.
Elliot gawks at me as if I’ve blasphemed.
‘No, really. What do you get out of it?’ I ask.
‘The point of collecting figures is to collect figures. Because they’re cool. And whoever owns the most wins the coolest person trophy.’
I raise an eyebrow at his sarcasm.
Elliot gazes longingly at a boxed Star Wars figure. ‘Remember Dad used to take us swimming… he used to buy us one of these if we did well.’
I check the price and puff my contempt. ‘Why’s it all so expensive?’
Elliot points out that a lot of the merch is actually new releases. The boxes are deliberately “distressed” to make them appear old and tattered as if they’ve just been discovered in somebody’s loft.
I pick up a figure of Captain Kirk. Just holding it in my hand, the feel of the material and the weight of the plastic, it brings a familiar, reassuring recall of when I used to play with such a toy. Realising I’m staring at it a little too long, I place it back on the table before I fall for the trick. But then I spy something at the back of the stall, perched high up on a shelf. A cardboard playset of the Death Star. ‘I used to have that,’ I say, out loud.
‘I know someone who found one of those on a skip! A skip!’ exclaims Elliot.
‘Dad threw it away. Said it was falling apart. It was my favourite thing,’ I say.
‘Why don’t you buy it?’ says Elliot.
‘For that money?’ I say, gawking at the price tag.
‘You can afford it.’
‘You don’t know enough about my finances to make statements like that. Those days are gone,’ I say, in an attempt to close the subject.
Elliot points at another seated celebrity, signing autographs. ‘Remember him? He used to be in that show we used to watch when we were kids. They used to show it during the summer holidays, Saturday mornings. Nine thirty. Gotta get his autograph!’
I feel a tinge of embarrassment, distancing myself from Elliot as he poses for photos with various sci-fi stalwarts. I check my watch. Fake an interest in my surroundings. Anything to speed up the passage of time.
Somebody brushes shoulders with me. I must have been in the way, and I turn to apologise. I can’t be certain, but just from seeing the back of their head, I convince myself it’s Meredith. I know it can’t be, but whoever the woman is, she’s identical. I drift along with the flow of bodies, closing in on her as she passes through a doorway. I push through, dashing for the door before it closes.
My feet scuff on the sudden change of surface. Gone is the expo flooring, replaced by wooden boards. There’s a sudden urge to check my surroundings, as the atmosphere alters instantly from the echo of the indecipherable buzz of cosplayers to the clashing sounds of pier rides, holiday-makers and an ocean breeze.
The pier is in the distance, framed by a clear blue sky and pebble beach.
‘Do you like kids? Would you like a baby one day?’ asks a familiar voice. I look to the source: Meredith. She’s stood before me in summery clothes and sunglasses, waiting for an answer. ‘Well?’
I recall this conversation and repeat the answer I gave last time. ‘Couldn’t eat a whole one,’ I reply. How droll. ‘Alright, alright... Yes. One day. Not right now though. I mean, they’re expensive. We need to be in a much better place, financially. It’s a lot of responsibility and I wouldn’t want to bring a child into this world unless I was certain I could offer it a decent life. We’d need a much bigger house for starters, and then there’s paying the mortgage, which will suck up both of our salaries…’
‘I didn’t say now,’ says Meredith, not looking at me.
‘Why... do you ask?’ I say, still adjusting to the sudden change of location and the sight of Meredith.
‘I wanted to see if your eyes popped out of your head,’ she says, walking on with a silence that can only mean something is wrong.
‘Do you want children?’ I ask, already knowing the answer but more concerned that I’ve upset Meredith with my throwaway response.
‘Yes,’ comes her sombre reply.
The sound of our feet crunching against the pebbles becomes too much.
‘Are you angry?’ I ask, carefully.
‘No.’
‘So… what’s wrong?’ I ask. Meredith pauses, choosing her words carefully.
‘Nothing. Just… not everything has to be about money. I know it’s not you talking. It’s your Dad.’
‘You think—That’s my opinion, not my Dad’s. I have my own opinion.’
‘All I’m saying is… don’t wait for the perfect day, because there never will be. There won’t be a day when your work is complete when you’ve made everyone happy. You need to live for yourself.’
We walk on whilst I chew over Meredith’s words.
‘Is that it then?’ I ask. ‘Are we…’
‘You thought we’d just split up? Paul. We’re going to have bigger and better fights than that.’
To prove the point, the walls of the memory pull apart to reveal a different time and place. Meredith’s flat. Meredith is looking directly at me, holding out her hand for mine.
She can see me, but I instinctively brush her hand away, thrusting clothing and possessions into a sports bag. I look up from the bag to Meredith's pleading face. A different time and place. I pace from room to room of her flat as she follows me around. The images distort as the sound of Meredith pleading draws focus.
‘I don’t want it to be like this. I want to be your friend, Paul. Talk to me! Do I mean anything to you?’ she pleads.
‘This is what you wanted. You said we shouldn’t be together. That’s fine,’ I say.
The next voice takes me by surprise. My Dad’s voice.
‘You don’t really want to be a part of this family, do you?’ It’s not a question, it’s a statement. I realise there’s a phone in my hand, held to my ear.
‘You don’t know me well enough to make such judgements,’ I coldly state.
‘I know you. I know what you’re like,’ says a wry voice behind me. I turn to see my Mum, back when she could hold a conversation. ‘I know what this is about.’
‘What is it about? Tell me. If you know me so well, what am I thinking? I’m all ears. Tell me,’ I ask.
A new voice speaks. ‘You want me to tell you what this is all about?’
I’m now sitting in a meeting room, opposite Kirk, who is flanked by two red-faced parents. Her father rants at me, jabbing an accusing finger as he yells.
‘We have paid thousands for her education and you’re going to fail her? You might have thousands of pounds to throw away, but we do not. This is our daughter’s future we’re talking about here!’
‘But your daughter very rarely showed up for my lectures. I understand your frustration because I feel the same—’ I explain.
‘We’ll sue you for this. We’ll sue the University! You won’t get away with this!’ roars the father, now leaning across the table at me.
I turn away to see the stern face of Roger. He’s dressed in a cheap 1970’s suit with hair to match. I’m sitting on the other side of his desk, inside a brown-panelled office.
It’s Roger, but it’s not the Roger I know.
‘There’s no way I can account for your expenses. Are you listening to me?’ barks Roger.
‘This is what I do. I take clients out. I grease the palms to get their business,’ I say. ‘Alright, I’ll pay the money back. I just don’t have it all right now…’
‘It’ll be my neck on the block too, and there’s no point in both of us losing our jobs,’ says Roger. ‘Ivor, I can’t help you. You’re finished here. There’s no coming back from this.’
A moment’s silence, then an agonized roar.
My hands uncover my eyes to see a Chewbacca cosplayer roaring as it passes by me. The sudden volume of thousands of people and the nauseating smell of coffee and burgers floods my senses. There are cosplayers all around me as I sit at a small table with a steaming cup of coffee. Elliot slides a plate of food across to me, taking a seat opposite.
Looking around, we’re in a small cafeteria. I gaze out of a large window overlooking the arena, where the visitors look like swarming ants.
‘I know you think all this is about sad, washed-up actors. But life’s about being remembered. That’s how you live on in immortality. Are you truly dead and gone when nobody thinks about you? It’s deep, isn’t it?’ says Elliot.
I emit an unimpressed ‘Hmmm’, still adjusting to the real world.
‘You never know the true value of a moment until it becomes a memory. I read that somewhere, been thinking about it a lot recently. Like, when we used to monkey around on the living room carpet. Stacking up the sofa cushions and diving into them… I bought a mint condition BBC Microcomputer last month. Remember when we all got one for Christmas?’
Little does Elliot know I’ve recently revisited that memory and saw it first-hand. The squabbling and arguing over whose turn it was to play Killer Gorilla.
‘That was a good Christmas, yeah,’ I say with some sarcasm.
‘Yeah… except I never got to go on the bloody thing. You, Wayne and Bridie were always hogging it,’ says Elliot, dryly.
‘You spent a lot of time by yourself. You’d take ages setting up your toys… you’d ask me to play. And I’d make some excuse not to. I’m sorry I did that.’
Elliot looks at me like I’m the crazy one. ‘I don’t exactly lie awake at night crying over it, Paul.’ Elliot laughs at my attempt to level with him. He doesn’t seem bothered at all, even though I know it did at the time.
‘I’m being serious. I know it wasn’t easy being the youngest.’ I cough gently before I speak, knowing I’m about to make a fool of myself. ‘When you used to play in your room alone, did you ever hear anything… see anything?’
‘What, like… a ghost?’ asks Elliot, with all seriousness.
‘Perhaps. Maybe.’
Elliot puffs his cheeks, trying to recall. ‘Er… No. Can’t say I did.’
I blow on my coffee, wishing I’d hadn’t asked. But then Elliot says more. ‘Now you mention it, I did sometimes feel… a presence… like someone was watching me. Didn’t think you believed in all that?’
I sip my drink because burning my mouth is the preferable alternative to telling my kid brother that I’m losing the plot.
‘You spoke to Brydie? asks Elliot as if I should have. I shake my head, waiting for the swirling sensation to settle. ‘We’re all having dinner on Saturday. Family meeting.’
‘Oh? Oh really? I must have missed my invite,’ I say with a raised eyebrow.
‘Well, I’m telling you now,’ says Elliot, matter-of-fact. ‘She wants to hire a private eye in. Figure out where Dad’s money went.’
All I can do is sip long and slow on my coffee, wondering how I’m going to break this news to Roger.
I’m now at the far end of a table inside a mock Tudor family pub/restaurant. I fixate on minor details of my surroundings: the pattern on the blue and green carpet. The orangey-red tiled flooring in front of the bar. The wicker wall art and chalkboard menus hanging high on the walls. The awful chart music din from tinny speakers. It’s probably chart music, anyway. I’ve no idea what passes for chart music these days.
I then become aware of the movement and noise around me, pulling into sharp focus. Elliot, Brydie and her family squabble over the seating arrangement. Brydie lays down the law to her teenage boys. ‘If you can’t behave, you can sit over there.’
With everyone seated, Brydie composes herself. ‘Thank you for coming. Evidently, your Uncle Wayne isn’t joining us.’
‘Mum and Dad were never on time for anything-—’ Elliot pauses. His face lights up. ‘Here he comes!’
Wayne bowls in, hands in pockets. His peck of a kiss to Brydie is closer to a head-butt. Passive-aggressive as ever, Brydie fake-smiles up at Wayne. ‘Didn’t think you were coming.’
‘Neither did I,’ shrugs Wayne, taking a seat at the table as the menus are handed out. ‘Someone pulled a machete on my bus. I was out the emergency door. Gone like a wig in the wind.’
I stare enviously to the opposite end of the table, where Brydie’s boys thumb their handheld consoles. Brydie picks up on this and dotes. ‘Ah, look at them. Time moves so fast. They grow so quickly.’ I was only looking because I wanted to join in. Being young has its own issues, but at least you get to sit out on matters like a family inheritance.
A waitress arrives beside Brydie, ready to take our orders. Brydie puts on her polite voice. ‘I’ll have the Filo parcel, thank you. And a glass of Chardonnay.’
‘Yeah. I’ll have the burger, ta,’ says Wayne, without eye contact.
‘Burger? Might as well have gone to a drive-thru,’ laughs Brydie.
‘Have whatever you like,’ suggests Elliot, hoping to head off any disagreements.
‘You’d think,’ replies Wayne, straightening his back as a signal that he’s not having any of Brydie’s smugness for dinner.
‘Tell ya what, Brydie. If you don’t want me to have the burger, I will have the meat sharing-platter for starters, followed by the 10oz rump steak - rare - with a bottle of that Beaujolais for Elliot. And you can pay for it.’
‘Fine. If that’s what you want,’ she tartly replies.
Her husband Clive coughs a polite but deliberate interjection, waggling his index finger. Brydie instantly changes her tune. ‘Have the damn burger.’
I don’t remember the waitress placing my meal before me, but still, I eat in silence as stilted conversation passes the time.
The most that comes my way is a line from Wayne: ‘You alright there, Bob Todd? There’s more life in my steak than you.’
So nice of Wayne to notice. By the time the drinks arrive, Elliot is deep into misty-eyed reverence.
‘It’s just weird to think I’ll never see Dad again. All the places we went together. Hear his jokes, get a hug off him…’
‘Be shouted at, be ignored…’ adds Wayne.
‘He wasn’t like that,’ prickles Elliot.
Wayne clarifies. ‘What I mean is… take off the rose-tinteds for one minute. Nobody’s perfect.’
Brydie intervenes. Except it is Brydie, aged thirteen. ‘Our parents weren’t horrible to us. Blimey Wayne, you’re talking like they were monsters.’
Wayne defends his stance. Well, fifteen-year-old Wayne does, anyway. ‘I know, of course not. I’m not saying that. All I’m saying is, your experience may not be the same as mine.’
Five-year-old Elliot chimes in. ‘They provided for us. Cared for us. We never wanted for anything. A lot of people had it much worse.’
‘I know,’ says Wayne, now in his early twenties.
‘Then why do you sound like such a thankless bastard?’ chuckles Elliot. Normal Elliot. The one that’s in his thirties.
Wayne raises a threatening finger to Elliot, silencing him. ‘All I’m saying is recollections may vary. Other opinions are available.’
My heart and mind race each other as the squabbling continues.
‘There will come a time when you have to take responsibility for your own decisions in life, without blaming your Mum and Dad, or the fact it was a Tuesday. Grow up,’ says Clive.
‘Sorry, are you talking to me or The Boy Who Never Grew Up here?’ Wayne nods to Elliot, who gives him two middle fingers back.
The sight of my brothers and sister arguing like they did when we were kids drives me away from the table. I wipe away a thick, cloying layer of sweat from my brow as I stagger through one heavy wooden door after another as if I’m stuck in a loop. The suffocating stench of hot urine in the men’s toilets informs me of my arrival. And the heat. It’s too much. I run my hands under a blast of cold water, shaking off the excess before running my damp hands through my hair. Eyes closed, I regulate my breathing until I can hide out no longer.
As I decide to face my family and explain the truth behind Dad’s missing money, a voice speaks.
‘You can’t fix them.’
I stop, cautiously glimpsing a reflection in the mirror, and it’s not mine. Dad. ‘There’s nothing you can do to change them. All you can do is love them.’
I shake off what is clearly a psychotic episode and return to the table unnoticed; my siblings are now full-blown arguing.
‘It’s all politics with you, Brydie. Always wanting to be top dog. But guess what: Dad’s dead and Mum’s in the nuthouse so there’s no one left to give a shite,’ says Wayne.
‘All I want to do is hire a private investigator to find out where Dad’s money went. And if we do that we must share the responsibility of the cost.’
‘I don’t care. Dad had nothing left. Move on,’ says Wayne.
‘Fine. We’ll pay for the investigator and we’ll take whatever Dad left us to pay for it,’ says Brydie.
‘I preferred it when we used to argue over who gets to be Virgil Tracy,’ smirks Elliot, dryly.
‘We were meant to be discussing your father’s financial state of affairs,’ says Clive.
‘Yeah, ‘n we all know why,’ says Wayne, rubbing his fingers and thumbs together, addressing Clive’s penny-pinching reputation.
‘The trash heap has spoken. Y’know, Dad never stopped marvelling at how you stopped drinking, how you got through your divorce. How he bailed you out when you got in debt. Three times. Talk about deja-vu.’
‘If I could only go ‘n do it over, I’d do it differently. But I can’t. Life sucks, and it only ever gets worse. All of this... It doesn’t mean anything. Amen, Wayne. That was a good point,’ concludes
Wayne, standing to shrug his coat on.
‘You are a very bitter man. Sad,’ says Brydie, going in for the kill.
Elliot attempts to calm things with a ‘Guys, c’mon. Please.’
Wayne lurches over Brydie. ‘Y’know, I didn’t wanted anything from Dad---‘
Brydie cuts in. ‘Yeah, right. How many bad debts did Dad bail you out of?’
Wayne talks over her. ‘And I don’t want any of whatever Dad had left.’
‘Good, because there’s precious little to get excited about,’ says Clive.
‘What do you need money for? You’ve got everything. The consoles, the branded hoodies, holidays during school weeks…’ Wayne continues. ‘You’re nothing if you’re not splashing the cash round ‘ere. This is between the three of you.’
‘Oh, what are you talking about? It was always about you, Wayne. You were always the chosen one,’ jeers Elliot.
Wayne glares at Elliot. ‘You can shut up for starters.’
‘Me? What did I ever do?’ asks Elliot, wounded.
Wayne points to Elliot, Brydie, Clive... ‘Peter Pan. Princess. Tight-arse.’ Wayne aims an accusing finger at me. ‘Ghost. When was the last time you showed any emotion, Paul? Dad died and you still wear that same look on your face.’
I look up to Wayne, steely-eyed. By the look on his face, he’s expecting me to hit him.
‘I did my grieving years ago.’
Copyright © Andrew Wright 2023