SMILE AND THE WORLD SMILES WITH YOU

Trying to fit in...

Ernie Prendergast wondered why it was that a happy man like him could give so many people the impression that he was a miseryguts. He knew that’s what most people thought of him and some even said the word to his face, or one of the many synonyms they could think of for miseryguts.

So he decided to research the matter.

He started by planning to go to the working man’s club he belonged to and smiling a lot. At first, though he researched smiles. He had a computer and downloaded pictures of people smiling, both men and women, though it did cross his mind that men fell a long way short of happiness than did women when they smiled. But he examined the best (to him) images and printed them off.

It struck him as funny about women, though. Maybe they were happier than men. Maybe it’s because they controlled men in some subtle, hard to spot way, like he was pretty sure he’d never been controlled.

Then he simply stared at the printouts. It was easier to stare at the women’s pictures because they looked simply happy whereas the men looked as if there might be something unsavoury or devious they were smiling at. But he thought he had it. He could smile like a happy woman if he tried hard enough.

A genuine smile is on the whole face and not just the mouth he decided. And it was true. Take an image of a man smiling and cover the mouth up and if the smile’s a genuine happy affair he could see it in the eyes.

So he stood in front of his huge bedroom mirror and smiled at his own reflection.

At first it was a nervous half-smile affair, barely touching the lips and certainly going nowhere near the eyes. It made him look like a pervert looking at an attractive sheep in Farmer Jolly’s east field. He knew that because, well, he sometimes noticed that particular sheep. It looked lonely as if it could do with some love in its life. Though maybe that would be a mistake because sheep, well, didn’t they end up in an abattoir? You can’t, he thought, become too close to sheep destined for the butcher’s knife, can you? It would be upsetting, and that would make matters worse. It must be hard to smile if you’re that upset.

He tried again, but Farmer Jolly’s sheep was still there inside his head and the whole idea of smiling at all was a perversion. You don’t smile at creatures on their way to their animal heaven, do you? So he poured himself a small beer instead and sat down on the edge of his bed.

It’s a good idea of mine, he thought, having a small beer fridge in the bedroom…

He smiled at that, but he wasn’t looking in the mirror. But he smiled because Angela had left him over such things as the beer fridge in their bedroom. She had hated that and complained that she could hear it humming the whole night long, and the humming somehow found its way into her dreams, which suddenly all became darker and involved a great deal of blood flowing insanely from a variety of wounds on Ernie’s mutilated body.

She had been so irrational. It was probably because the only thoughts that entered her less than perfect head involved such things as her own personal comfort, and the quiet, almost comforting, hum of his lovely little fridge, a hum that was in all honesty barely audible, became magnified by her imagination.

He put his beer to one side, on the bedside table (his not hers, because she’d gone and left behind all the detritus and feminine litter that she’d needed to be happy, pieces of cloth, scraps of paper, pins for this or that, a watch that needed a new battery, a couple of brooches and a cube of tissues that all ended up smeared with a mixture of make-up and snot. He might have cleared that stuff away, but hey, there hadn’t been any reason to. So it was still there, gathering dust.

She’d have hated that, the way dust found its way onto her bedside table. Dust was one things that really got her going and when he’d pointed out as she scurried around with her duster that all she was really doing was re-arranging it she had a dicky fit, which was a mixture of being amusing and typical of the woman.

He gazed into the mirror again, and smiled.

That was better! Much better! He managed to crinkle his eyes up so that they joined his lips in an amused grin. Not yet a smile, but a grin was better than nothing, wasn’t it? He’d go down to the club this very night and show the world how he wasn’t a miseryguts. He’d smile like the all-round-good-egg that he was and they’d all smile with him. Then he’d drop an amusing quip and there’d be a general burst of laughter the like of which hadn’t been heard since someone played a recording of My Old Man’s a Dustman on his portable tape machine.

Then he’d be accepted into the gang like he hadn’t been years ago when he’d been a kid and the rest of the boys, at least half a dozen of them, had gone down to the copse behind the gully and had games together that he’d have died to share. But his mum had been a stickler for decency and decided that half a dozen boys together out of sight were never likely to be decent! As if she knew anything about cops and robbers and cowboys and Indians! The thing, was they’d got used to him not going with them, had formed friendships that excluded him and before you could say Jack Robinson he wasn’t one of the gang and never would be again. All because his mother had suspected that some of the games they played might be too violent or unhealthy in some way she didn’t specify.

But it would all become a thing of the past if he showed the codgers at the club that yes, he could smile. He was one of the chaps after all.

He smiled at his reflection again, and this time he thought it a tad too thoughtful. Maybe all this introversion was making it that way. What was it Angela had always said? You think too much, Ernie, you don’t give life a chance to settle…

Meaningless of, course, like just about everything that came out of her mouth.

She’d have got on well with his mother, she would. Both women had annoying little sayings that were supposed to encapsulate this or that bit of wisdom, but somehow failed to mean anything. Like mother’s bit about Satan finding work for empty hands… But then, she’d believed whole-heartedly in Satan, the devil, the Necromancer, call him what you will. So she never had empty hands if by empty hands she meant nothing to do. She had always been a busy bee. And in a different way, so had Angela.

Both women were gone now, of course, mum had died what, twenty years ago, young to die in her early seventies but her Lord had claimed her, and Angela was in bed with Tommy Stone and even looked happy these days when he saw her in the street.

He always said hi and she merely looked his way as if he wasn’t there. But he was there and it kind of stuck in his throat that she lived with someone else. But mum had provided him with a piece of wisdom to cover that… whatever will be, will be… she had said.

What did it mean?

That night he went to the club with is newly acquired range of smiles, all practised, all honed to perfection, and teeth whitened with domestic bleach. And it seemed the right evening for him to display his polished teeth in a bright beam of total happiness: there was a sombre atmosphere that needed lightening.

It was as if someone was mourning for someone. But the lads were all there

. At least none of them had succumbed to the grim reaper.

So he teased his face into what he had decided was his most amusing smile and let it radiate out.

“Good news hey, chaps,” he said in his best quippy voice, “did you hear the one about the woman who ate too much? She exploded!”

“You thoughtless b*****d!” snarled one of the chaps, “you objectionable thoughtless swine! And on the day when Harry’s misses died too!”

He swallowed.

Harry’s misses had been a rather large woman. The usual theory was he never went to the club because if she did she’d get stuck in the door… But they all knew that Harry had loved her to bits.

Which is why he edged forwards towards him and with one blow knocked half a dozen of his shiny white teeth out.

© Peter Rogerson 09.04.22

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