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Troubador Publishing Ltd - M. Sindall David

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146 pages

English

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Mark Garvey likes women, wine and football. He is obsessed by the past but wants a better future. His relationship with Alyson, an Australian physiotherapist, has ended disastrously. In an attempt to forge a new start, he escapes Birmingham for a new job as Director of Social Services in Devon. He moves to Hope Cove, rents a holiday home and tries to start a new life. As a kid, he took holidays in the same part of Devon, so his reason for being there mirrors his desire to rediscover a sense of childhood optimism for the future. Yet leaving does not resolve his problems; it just creates new ones that get in the way of him moving forward. Mark Garvey has many problems, but the biggest problem he has is that he is Mark Garvey. He eventually stumbles into a relationship with the local doctor, Kalpna. Yet beneath the surface, the playground of his childhood optimism is littered with pitfalls and chaos - not that different to what he has left behind.

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Contemporary romance

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Publié par	Troubador Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	01 mai 2019
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781838599409
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0050€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

After Alyson

Copyright © 2013 David M. Sindall
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
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ISBN 978 1838599 409
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
For the 96 – justice one day.
CONTENTS
Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
PREFACE
Shagged
I know one day soon
I will burn all my valentines’ cards
in the sun
along with memories of
your perfect smile
kissable mouth
nasty habit and
deeply disturbing body.
You’ll catch your flight back
And maybe like you said
I’ll toughen up
Learn to be harder
and see that love or a few shags
are different aspects of similar journeys
as cycling must appear to hitch hikers.
They’re calling your flight
I’m calling your name
My future ejaculations
May sometimes contain
References to you.
London
2012
CHAPTER 1
I stop the car. I have to. I know in my mind that killing the engine is about parking the past.
The car radio continues to crackle away in the background. I am not actually listening, but football commentary has become the sound track to my life, its rhythms reassuring and comforting. Or maybe I have just become lazy and can’t be bothered to find alternatives?
I am sat here gazing out to sea, contemplating the future and the truth is I am very scared – but I don’t tell myself the truth. I tell myself that this void of emotion, this empty space in my heart, is excitement for the future. The things we tell ourselves. We tell ourselves we are not fat; that we still have time to fulfil our potential that the perfect relationship is just around the corner. We tell ourselves bollocks.
The light fades from the winter sky and I sense the night taking me in. Birmingham seems so far away. I am calm, I have a huge sense of having left something behind that wasn’t good, but wasn’t so bad either. So I sit alone on the coast in Devon between the old year and the start of another.
At first glance, so little has changed here. The harbour wall and beach have been frozen like a video still. At the far end of the wall are half a dozen fishing boats – I suspect they are the same boats that were here twenty or thirty years ago on my last visit. Next to the harbour, there is a convenience store that sells groceries and postcards, but it is closed for the winter. I often wonder how such places survive – but this has again endured as a landmark over many years, apparently untouched by the passing of time. Admittedly, a few new houses have been built – modern, box-like homes for retired civil servants. Perhaps the penultimate box they will spend their time in. The only indication of change is the number of satellite dishes that protrude from the side of the houses – even these are fewer in number than in Birmingham. Then again, I suspect this probably reflects the absence of Plymouth Argyle or Torquay United games covered by Sky sports and the like. Or maybe that retired people have less of a need for pornography than the urban population. Who knows?
I grow restless with my meditations. I need to be out beyond the windscreen. I want to smell the sea, feel the wind on my face, to know I really am here.
I open the car door and step outside. I am at once shocked by how cold the wind is. I am sure that my ears will drop off in these conditions. I drag my overcoat off the back seat, thrusting my arms into its sleeves, and pull the collar up high around my neckline. I feel pitifully underdressed, ill prepared for this place. I can sense moderate panic for a moment as thoughts of my stupidity at coming here well up inside me. All too late – now I am here – and there is no place else to go.
I turn my back on the harbour and beach and climb the short hill up into the square. Again, there are only moderate changes. The old bus shelter – where I had my first kiss with a spotty but large breasted 16 year old from Porthcawl (what was her name?) – has been replaced by a modern, clinical glass cylinder. I wonder how easy it is for adolescents to snog in here in the summer, lit as it is by the brightest of lights. The chances of getting a finger onto a girl’s nipple have been greatly reduced by the progress of time, and getting your hand in her knickers must now be an impossibility.
The Spar supermarket is also still there – albeit refurbished with a plate-glass front window. Despite the fact that my car is full of most things I need – and tons of things I will never use again – I decide that I should buy some bread and milk for the morning, and thus start to put some money into the local economy for the first time.
As I push the door open, I notice the first real sign of change – and I am slightly shocked. Behind the counter stands a very beautiful Asian girl of 18 or 19. Her eyes, in particular, are fantastic, vistas rather than windows to the soul. I try to hide my shock, but I am convinced – as I am when I silently fart in a lift – that my embarrassment is obvious. You see, I didn’t expect this – despite leaving a city where many of my colleagues, friends and neighbours were Asian – my assumption has been that, as it was in the past in Devon, the shop would be run by a middle-aged man, with a receding hairline, brown overalls and hair sprouting from his nostrils. So maybe I should have walked in with a hood over my head, carrying a burning torch and a white cross? Christ I am becoming out of touch!
I wander around the shelves, hoping that I look ‘normal’ and not like some bigot – but then I calm down. Easy mistake, doesn’t make me a member of the EDL does it? Eventually armed with a sliced loaf of white bread and pint of full cream milk, shocked by its fat content and my willingness to overdose on cholesterol, I make my way back to the counter.
The Indian girl smiles at me.
“Hello,” she says enthusiastically “down for a new year break?”
I am relieved that she is not surly or suspicious of me. This in itself allows me to feel more relaxed and at ease.
“No, I’m here for a bit longer than that,” I say, smiling ironically to myself.
“Oh! Are you the man who has rented Drake House? Mr Garvey?”
I am surprised and a little bit pleased by my local fame or is it notoriety?
“That’s right, yes,” I respond.
“The new big cheese at County Hall?”
“Hardly,” I say “just in charge of bottom wiping and the likes for older people”.
She tilts her head to one side, “Can I quote you on that?” She hooks her fingers in the air making quotation marks. “New director of Social Services is only here to wipe bottoms.”
“Don’t you dare!” I say in mock defence.
“It’s OK,” she grins back, “I think your secrets safe in Hope Cove.”
“Well, given that you know who I am, who are you?”
She smiles – “Just the girl who fills in at the local Spar during the Christmas vacation – but you can call me Alpha.”
She stretches out her hand to shake mine.
“Pleased to meet you, Alpha – when do you go back?”
“Oh, another two weeks here and then back up to Bristol.”
“Not too far then.”
“No – I miss here when I’m away and miss there when I’m here. I suppose Bristol is far enough to stop my mum poking her nose into my affairs and near enough to bring washing home once a fortnight.”
I laugh, “Oh well – at least your mum is understanding then.”
She rolls her eyes.
“I tend to have to show my mum how to use the washing machine. Like I’m a domestic goddess?” She uses the same contemporary inflection that kids these days do, going up at the end of sentences, too much exposure to Australian soaps is probably the cause.
“I see,” I say, smiling. “You know if she’s neglecting you I could arrange to have you taken into care?”
She giggles – “No it’s alright, Mr Garvey – I’m sure there are more deserving cases than mine.”
By now I have paid for my items and she has given me the change.
“Well, if the situation changes – just tell the social worker that you know the boss – OK?”
She smiles and then nods firmly. “OK – I‘ve made a note.”
As I walk back down towards the car, I turn and she waves from the window. My first social encounter back in Hope Cove hasn’t been all bad.
* * *
It started on a train. I was travelling back from a weekend conference in Newcastle that had not gone particularly well. On the Friday night, I had got sloshed with a bunch of colleagues from across the UK, including Patrice – a lovely raven-haired woman from east Belfast. I was sure I was on for a night of passion with her. It came to my turn to buy the drinks and I left her with the rest of the gang whilst I went to the bar. I came back to find her snogging a guy from Leeds Social Services – Mike Dermott – and thus went any potential bonkfest that weekend. I did, by the way, get my revenge when he applied for a job in Birmingham much later in his career. Despite being the best-qualified candidate, I managed to persuade the interview panel that a far less able visually impaired guy should be appointed in pursuance of our council’s equality policies. Affirmative action had never been taken for such negative reasons.
Anyway, I was travelling back to Edgbaston on a train that gave me a pleasant spring afternoon ride back to the Midlands. I had the Sunday Peop