Thursday 23 August 2012

The Common Man


I couldn’t tell you his name. He’s always there. Like some spectre, a constant reminder. Who is he, I wonder? And how to describe someone you’ve never met? This is what I think. I’ll call him the Common Man.

He doesn’t have a name. I think I said that already.

He refuses to discuss serious matters, political, religious or otherwise. The careworn look on his cracked, muddy face suggests things had been different once.

If he finds himself splitting hairs between arguments, he’ll resort to points of fact to disentangle himself from the mire. His opinions are always expressed as such and he wears around him a cloak of anonymity.

A profusion of dark facial hair is still ripe with colour after all these years. He has no one, an estranged mother, a distant father, and his principles take root in an early Christian upbringing that refuses to budge. Little does he know how much he is directed by this.

He hangs with other alcoholics at the fountain on the common each day, but his participation is transitory, liminal, somehow abstract.

The Common Man maintains a remarkable serenity that masks a virulent streak of bitterness, anger and discontent. Whether it was through a rare kind of knowing wisdom that he overcame this facet of his nature one will never know. Perhaps it had rather been the result of years of frustrated desire and hollowed out hope, beating him down to a semi-confused, pottering weariness.

Yet there is something different about the Common Man: his stride, confidence, and contemplative face suggest otherwise. Something to indicate all this has been judged out, reflected upon, voluntary, deemed right. Like the sails on a ship deliberately brought to mast so the wind can carry you along as it must.

The Common Man has not always lived in this country.

His goals are unapparent, as if undergoing a steady and unnoticeable process of negation. He was educated when the meaning of the word was different.

He has no work. He is calm, composed, or ready to flip. Hobbies, interests, there were some. A deep down fear of being left alone though this has always felt what he’s been driving at.

A heavy smoker with a deep, dark secret. Like every other character.

Seagull


‘Table for eight, Madam? Please, this way.’
The young waiter motioned across the floor, the sight of the table appearing to the boy after a few moments. The dining room was huge, three times as big as his living room and perhaps four times that of his own bedroom - although he had been promised a bigger one at some point and felt he might have the good fortune to inherit his elder sister’s as early as next week when she was due to move out.
The boy peered up over the tabletops in between and stretched his tiptoes to gain a surer view of the window. He was quite excited but wondered if he’d be made to sit in one of those different chairs again, not like everybody else. He followed his mother and she clutched his hand tight. Her long emerald dress flapped against him and then the table legs and he wondered what they thought of it all. He’d once heard his uncle remark that he’d like to get lost up a woman’s skirt and the boy had thought how that could happen when his uncle was so big and so tall.
The boy stole passing glimpses of the other diners as he shuffled on quickly past the occupied seats. He heard little bits of words as well as his mother talking, and he tried to piece them together like he did in school, saying things out loud and seeing what would come next. He could just make out the table now against the big blue background of the sky and the waiter who stood to one side.
            ‘If you’d care to have this table, Madam, I will be delighted to take your coats.’
            The boy stared up at his mother to see if she responded to the waiter because he’d just said something, but she remained silent and kept her mouth closed. His father may have grumbled a word quickly but the boy kept peering at his mother and the way she flicked her long dark hair back as she removed a white chiffon scarf.
He always had to wait for her to say a few things to his father before he could sit down and before they all sat down after that. He often wondered what these things were but couldn’t ever hear because it was all spoken so quietly. Today the noise of the restaurant made it difficult to make out anything and the boy took the chance to sneak a quick peak out the window at the grassy slopes that tumbled down to the sea and the flurry of seabirds that shot up over the cliffs like fired arrows or falling stones.
            ‘Marcus, please will you sit down so everybody can have the chance to do so too.’
            He remembered then that he must sit down as he heard his mother scold him and that if he didn’t he might forfeit his chance at sitting like the rest of them. He felt himself lifted a little as he prepared himself to sit and it felt like something had been put there to make him taller.
            ‘My little emperor.’
            The boy looked up at his mother smiling and felt himself smile too and all the eyes of the world seemed to be upon him. He quite liked when the faces were all happy and nice to look at and when this was so he sometimes let out a little giggle that seemed to please them even more. It’d had happened before that he received most attention at the start like this and then things turned to more adult topics and he had to wait until it was his turn again. At least he had the window to look out of this time and the sea and the sun and the sand.
            His sister was at the far end of the table when once before she would sit next to him. It seemed like the bigger you got the further you were allowed but the boy would have to wait for now and sometimes it felt like it would last forever. He liked to watch the others eat and drink their funny liquid from the glass bottles that they all seemed to find so very funny. Sometimes he tried to see if he could make his liquid funny but each time he did it made him almost choke and his mother would scold him for being so silly. She would look at him with disapproving eyes and shake her head and he would feel sad. He would want to make it better by making her laugh and he’d point and poke at the funny liquid on the table. She never seemed to understand and he would be made to stop because it was all making too much noise or by then somebody else had started talking.
            When it got late and the sun began to set, casting a warm fuzzy glow across people’s faces and the floor, he would sometimes grab at his mother’s dress because he didn’t like the place anymore and he wanted to go home. This time there was plenty to watch out the window and he liked seeing the white gulls swoop onto the brick wall and peer in as if they were looking straight at him. He liked to point to them because it made his mother pay attention and she seemed to want to play when she opened a window as if she’d let the silly birds in. He liked to look across at his father to see what he thought of it all but it didn’t happen often that he’d even be looking or appear to care at all.
            The boy would know it was time to leave when his father beckoned the waiter over and made an odd gesture with his hand while whispering something into his ear. He wondered how it was that each time this was understood so as to leave no room for confusion, how this peculiar activity his father called upon each time meant any sense to anyone. He often made a point of staring at his father to see if he could perhaps work out his secret but each time he did this his mother would turn to him and tell him to stop because it was all quite rude. He found then that someone would say something to make it seem normal when he knew very well it was not and that if no one else was going to try and find out his father’s secret it would simply have to be him and no one would stop him.
            ‘Ah, that’s nice. They’ve put some music on. And only now as we’re about to leave!’
            The boy heard the soft sound of music ripple up from behind the bar and wondered if they’d put it on for them but strangely when they were leaving. He liked the music his mother played in the car or at home on the long armed machine that didn’t like it when you got too close. His uncle had told him that the machine got frightened especially if you jumped around and that it could sometimes scratch itself because it shivered all over. The boy wondered how music could scratch itself when you can’t even see it and this thought made him dismiss the music for now.
            Outside the window more and more seagulls had gathered and the boy thought this funny and smiled. The waiter had returned and was holding up a machine without a long arm and the boy considered whether this one would scratch itself if it was held up like that.
The boy kept his eyes on one of the gulls that appeared friendlier than the rest as it slid along the small tiled balcony outside. No one else seemed concerned and this provoked the boy because it was like no one was welcoming the new guest. He’d heard his mother remark that new guests should always be made to feel welcome. He thought the bird may like some bread so he held it up in his hand and waved it enough so the silly thing could see it. The boy’s mother was not impressed and it seemed like she had seen it all coming, so quick was she to remove the bread and place it on the table. The boy kept looking at the bird and maybe he looked hard enough to make it fly in because the silly thing came launching through the window and dived to pick up the bread.
The boy remained fixated on the bird and then the bread and the sounds of the music were broken up by exclamations from his sister and his aunt. He kept looking at the bird but it wasn’t the bread he’d got. Instead the bird had found a small rectangle that his father had removed from his pocket only moments earlier. He didn’t know what it was but it was important enough for his father to leap up and take chase as it took off straight out the window, piercing the calm, quixotic music with its miraculous, fearless shriek.