Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Nolan

Author:Megan Nolan [NOLAN, MEGAN]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2024-02-06T00:00:00+00:00

6.

John took in the bag of clothing and after inspecting the contents threw it to the side of the bed, staying in his own undershirt and trousers. He saw from the note that he wasn’t to be summoned until the evening for an audience with the newspaper man. He looked out at the fine weather. Though he knew he couldn’t leave, he thought he might go and sit in the gardens for a while in the afternoon. Until then he would remain in the room and watch television and order up breakfast. The whole day rolled out before him, imbued with the dignity and solemn pleasure of a man’s last one.

Like his granddaughter eight miles away he felt relief that things had broken down so irrefutably. Finally something had happened to halt the way he staggered on through life in contravention of the truth inside himself. This perverse ongoingness was especially obscene since Rose died, but really it had been the case since Carmel got pregnant and they moved, but really it had been before that when his first wife left him, but really it had been when his father died, but really it had been his whole life.

Ordinarily his insistent solitude was surrounded by the presence of his family, making it aggressive, but he didn’t necessarily want this. He didn’t think of himself as a cruel man. He only wanted to be alone, and he savoured this last day as one in which his aloneness would be harmless and appropriate.

Today, he would drink. He would drink with purpose and discernment.

He had always drank often, and eventually daily, but it was with a different spirit to the one his son drank with.

He envied Richie it at times, the wildness of his thirst, at least until the demands of the thirst mandated the repetitive misery he now lived within. But before that, when the moments of truly ugly excess could still be seen as innocent outliers, the way Richie drank looked attractive to his father. Richie loved what he drank and came alive with it, was bestowed with great reserves of life and energy. He shed the usual nervy, downtrodden aura, the avoidance of eye contact, and seemed free and open, musical and eloquent. For John, drinking had never been that way. It was only a kind of busy work and maintenance. It was something to do with your hands and your body which could be counted on. He only ever drank cheaply and quickly for this reason.

Today, though, today he would choose carefully, enjoy at his leisure and wait for the rest to unfold. On the television a rerun of a drama called Who Bombed Birmingham? played, which he watched with detached interest while he opened the first bottle of wine, to see if he liked wine after all.

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