GEOFF AND HIS MUNDANE LIFE

Unable to form any kind of relationship with other, Geoff goes out iinto the world

Geoff had spent the best part of his life being a nobody. He hadn’t been able to help it: life had sort of passed him by, had been something enjoyed by other people whilst he sat on a sort of sideline wondering what on Earth was going on around him and not thinking much of any of it.

Like when Father O’Connor had sidled up to him in the college library years ago, how old had he been back then? Twentyish, if that? And whispered something to him that couldn’t possibly be misinterpreted even though he’d spent all the years since then misinterpreting it.

“If you want to check my credentials, pop up to my room just before lights out,” he had said.

Before lights were out? What could he show him in the dark?

“Yes sir, maybe sir,” Geoff had replied, knowing full well that what just about everything rumour said about Father O’Connor was as true as anything could be. He may have been high in the church and expected to show his students an honourable way through life, but all he ever really wanted to do was sleep with as many boys as would let him and hope that if he was caught his inquisitor would understand. They always did.

After a great deal of worrying thought and weighing up whatever pros and cons he could see he decided he had no need or desire to see O’Connor’s credentials, whatever that might mean, and didn’t go to his room just before lights out as suggested. Or had he been ordered in a way that sounded like a friendly invitation? Whatever he meant, Geoff didn’t go because he had books to study and anyway he guessed what Father O’Connors credentials might be. After all, he had that sort of credentials of his own. However, the Father got his own back weeks later by giving his a fail mark in an exam he was convinced he must have passed.

So this time he did go to see the Father in his room in order to nervously challenge that failure.

“But I did all the reading I was instructed to do, and I fully understood the issues,” he nervously stammered, but to no avail.

“You’re a failure,” sneered Father O’Connor, “so get out! I did try to show you the light, I could have demonstrated using my credentials…”

And Geoff was in no position to sacrifice another year in order to pursue a course he didn’t particularly like anyway, so he left that college and Father O’Connor with a black mark against his name. and found a job down a coal mine at a time before most of the coal mines had closed down. But that job didn’t last long. There was an accident down there, one that involved an explosion in a gallery dangerously close to where he was working.

He had micro seconds to come to a realisation that dying was no solution to any problem, and if he continued working where he was there could be a real possibility of him being caught in similar explosion. He didn’t fancy that one jot.

“I know,” he said to himself in the communal showers at the end of his last day there, trying not to joke with his fellow workers because he didn’t know how to because they were hard working well-muscled men and he wasn’t. “I’ll buy a typewriter and write a book. I’ll write about my own life, the things I do. The ideas that cross my mind, and about Father O’Connor…”

He found a typewriter in a second hand shop, one that was going cheap because it was far from new. The downside was that it was heavy: an ancient office machine that had been hammered on by many a frustrated secretary over the years since it had been a shiny new machine.

“I’ll start tomorrow,” he muttered as he arranged it on the small desk in the flat he’d taken in lieu of living at his family. It wasn’t that his parents were dead, just that they lived in another town and anyway there was a bleakness in the way they spoke to him since his failure at college. They even mentioned that Father O’Connor had suggested that he would really have liked to get to know their son better than he had and maybe, he might have been able to help him.

“Thank you Father O’Connor,” he muttered to the cold wall of his small bedroom, and imagined himself destroying that faithless man in words as he typed out Chapter One.

Months passed, and Chapter One never reached Chapter Two. He was slowly learning that nothing occurs in a vacuum, not even memoirs, and his life thus far had existed in the emptiest of vacuums. He couldn’t write about the wretched Father when all he knew of the man was what rumour smirked about him and the darkness that his own spite clothed him in. And with this as his basis, intangible and spiteful, it was beyond his skill to write more than a short paragraph.

So the typewriter and his unwritten book had been both a waste of money and a waste of time.

He found himself getting painfully hungry before it crossed his mind that man cannot live on air alone but needed bread. So he went into the world in search of paid work and was fortunate to land a job walking the streets, delivering what struck him as somewhat sleazy leaflets.

Had he walked those streets with his eyes properly open Geoff would have seen enough of the world to equip him to write a library of books. As it was, his eyes were only open wide enough for him to spot Hilary Hopeworn as she hung out her washing despite the fact that their air was heavy with drizzle.

“That looks like a lost cause!” he said to her, trying to sound jovial.

“My Henry pissed on it,” she replied.

“Henry? Who’s that?” he asked handing her the leaflet rather than pushing it into what looked like an awkward letter box.

“hubby, for what he’s worth, the b*****d!” she replied, “got a weak bladder. The whole house stinks of his piss! Do you fancy a cup of tea? It ain’t easy walking the streets like you’ve got to do.”

“No thanks,” he said, “but it is raining and I want to get done. Maybe some other time?”

“Lovely,” she grinned lasciviously, revealing two rows on broken and uneven teeth two of them black as damp coal.

“Goodbye then,” he said, turning to go, “I’ll see you soon.”

“You better had,” she told him, “I’ll be prepared. I might even put on some clean undies. An’ if I’m not in, jus’ ask for Mrs Hopeworn. Hilary Hopeworn ‘cause that’s me.”

That last promise, the clean undies bit, almost made him feel nauseous.

But worse was to come.

A month later he was hauled before the manager of the leafleting firm. That individual had a most severe expression on his face.

“I’ve a had a complain from a Mrs Hopeworn,” he almost snarled, “about you!”

“You’ve what?” yelped Geoff, “I don’t know any Mrs Hopeworn.”

“That’s the trouble!” admonished his manager, “she was expecting you to call and you never did! She mentioned clean knickers as well! Look, lad, leaflets are just a cover, and you should know that! There’s many a lonely housewife who needs a little extra every so often, and Mrs Hopeworn is one of them! Now you get yourself round there and make sure your own undies are freshly laundered!”

Geoff could see no way out and he even considered suicide. Instead, he went to sea. In a boat, a small boat with a petrol engine and nowhere to sleep.

He took plenty of food, of course, and water. He’d read how men have died of thirst whilst floating on the briny ocean.

Maybe I shouldn’t mention this, but he landed a couple of years later when he was fed up with the sight of water on the sort of island you might dream about. You know: sunshine, coconuts, palm trees, and nobody else. No dancing girls, no hoary men, just himself and as many fish for dinner as he could catch.

It was heaven, and Geoff prayed nightly that it might stay that way. This was finally his kind of life.

© Peter Rogerson 14.06.22

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