Household Ghosts by James Kennaway

Author:James Kennaway [James Kennaway]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781847674944
Publisher: Canongate Books
Published: 2009-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

EIGHT

PINK WAS NOT the first to see Captain Gordon lumbered in the Gentlemen’s lavatory, but because, in a mild sort of way, he was extremely observant, he took a good look and noticed a detail was wrong. Captain Gordon was sitting in one of the cubicles, with the door wide open. His elbows were on his knees and his head was in his hands.

Pink said, hesitantly and politely, ‘Old knob, I’d take your trousers off,’ and Captain Gordon swayed unhappily from side to side. He looked up and opened his mouth, once or twice, like a salmon on a rock. His collar was undone.

‘Pissed, old chap?’ Pink asked kindly, and perhaps because the Captain shook his head Pink said ‘Never mind.’ He then looked around, and seeing a sort of refuse bin, not quite as big as a dustbin and with a lid that opened by pressing a foot pedal, he dragged that across to the door of the cubicle and there, more or less comfortable, he sat down. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, banging his knuckles against the bin a couple of times, ‘I’m fit for the human scrap-heap myself.’

Gusts of noise, of music and of laughter came from the corridors, the classrooms and the gym. They were like two boys in the sickroom, kind of poignantly out of things. It was doubtful if the Captain knew what it was all about. He seemed to have lost his knack for his semaphore of winks, belches and rubber faces, or at least the energy needed for its execution. When at last he did answer Pink he applied one of these Scotticisms, which mean nothing but which have a use. They keep friends along the bar from falling fast asleep, and save grandmother in the parlour, on a Sunday afternoon, from dissolving into tears. The one he used translates approximately as ‘life is a labour’, but curiously enough is seldom exchanged between men at work.

He said, ‘It’s an awful trachle.’

Pink, apparently delighted to get a reply, as the Captain’s heavy breathing had been beginning to upset him, knew exactly the sort of thing to say to this. A thousand crawling hours at the bar of the Queen’s made him answer, without hesitation:

‘Absolutely, old man. But then the fun’s in the ficht.’

‘D’you think my collar was too tight?’ the Captain asked. He referred to the pills he had to take, when he added, in a hurt voice, ‘I took my coagulation Johnnies. I didn’t forget.’

Pink said, ‘I hate these bloody collars. You want to wear a soft job like this.’

‘Yours looks tight.’

Pink did not like the idea that he was, weekly, growing fatter. ‘Not a bit, old man,’ he said huffily, ‘perfectly all right.’ Then added, ‘They always shrink things in the laundry. And, by God, the price.’

‘It was mixing drinks, I think,’ the Captain said, recovering a little. ‘Jack Gordon’s all right. I hope.’

‘Could be,’ Pink said, pensively. ‘Grain and grape.’

‘I’m sure that’s what it was,’ the Captain replied.

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