Jeremy Clarke

It’s my birthday. Four in the morning and I’m in the back of a cab coming back from a night out in town with Trev. He’s in the front, telling the driver about this 18-year-old he’s been seeing. You’d think an 18-year-old would be a sort of Holy Grail to a 51-year-old, but no. Far from it. She’s a nice-looking maid, he says, but talks a load of crap. Drives him nuts. The taxi driver nods sympathetically, the tart. He can well believe it, he says, youngsters being what they are these days. I worked on a men’s long-stay ward of a mental hospital in the early Eighties. Chronic schizophrenics who’d been stuck in there 20, 30, 40 years. Albert Marples. Reg Ford. The hospital mascots. Institutionalised institutions. Completely gone, they were.

I’ve been to Mali. Oh, yes. We went overland from the east, 23 of us in the back of a Bedford truck, via the Congo, Cameroon, Nigeria and Niger. And even after that succession of astonishing countries, Mali stood out as having a unique flavour of its own. The first intimation that we ain’t seen nothing yet came at the border. Border crossings were usually surprising or infuriating, one way or another. At the one between Niger and Mali, the Malian authorities surprised us by stipulating an extraordinary condition of entry. This was that we must take on board our truck a representative of the Mali tourist board who would ride and live with us for as long as we were in the country.

A superstitious Devon woman who lived and died in the residential home run by my parents, used to reckon that, if her first glimpse of a new moon was through a window or in a mirror, she was in for a month of rotten luck. If she first saw the new moon when she was out of doors, however, she was pleased, because that meant she was in for a month of good luck. If she glimpsed the new moon first over her right shoulder, she said, that would be very lucky indeed. It had happened to her mother once in her lifetime, but never to her. She’d lived all of her life in an isolated village. If she saw me sit on a table, she’d say, ‘Sit on a table, meet a stranger!’ If I dropped a spoon, she’d say, ‘Dropped spoon — stranger at the door!

I woke in an upstairs room, face down on bare floorboards, my body wedged into a coffin-shaped space between a divan bed (unoccupied) and a chest of drawers — which wasn’t half as uncomfortable as you might imagine. I stood up, checked for phone and wallet, and looked out of the window. Although the sun wasn’t visible in the sky, it was possible to tell by the latter’s lighter shade of grey that the day was well advanced. I went downstairs to look for my coat and to see if there was anyone else in the house. It wasn’t a big place. Downstairs consisted of kitchen and living room, both about eight feet square. The two rooms were connected by a doorless doorway. I found my coat without having to look very hard.

Waiting at a country bus stop in a downpour. Not sure if I’ve just missed one. No raincoat. No phone signal. Two o’clock in the afternoon and already too dark to write a will. No wonder everyone that can do leaves the country at this time of the year. There isn’t a bus shelter so I insinuate myself backwards into the hedge. A passing car sends a spray of rainwater up my legs. A motionless row of Devons, fetlock-deep in mud beside the five-bar gate opposite, contemplate me miserably. I try to remember what sunshine is like. I close my eyes and try to imagine hot sun on my face. I can’t. It’s impossible. A month ago I stepped off a plane in Antigua.

I’ve been away for three months but now I’m back in my gym shoes, gym glasses and faithful old gym pants with the colour washed out of them and I’m presenting my membership card to the bloke behind the desk. It’s the same old unfit unfriendly fat bloke. He probably hasn’t broken into a run for 20 years, but because he works on the membership desk of a gym he dresses like an Olympic athlete. Think Gordon Brown in a shell suit. ‘Gym and swim,’ I tell him. ‘Long time, no see,’ he says, not particularly glad to see me. ‘I’ll put the cardiac unit on speed dial,’ he adds, wafting my card under his reader.

My grandson turned three last week. His mum blew up balloons and laid on a sumptuous spread of artificial colourings, preservatives, thickeners, acidity regulators, stabilisers, emulsifiers, flavour enhancers, silicates, stearates, sweeteners, anti-caking agents, gelling agents, paraffins and waxes. We stood lovingly to one side while he, his four brothers and sisters, and an assortment of neighbouring hag-ridden young mums and their sullen kids dived in. The Mayan Diet, observed a wit. Eat as much sugary crap as you want because the world is ending next week. The naughtiest boy present was my grandson’s cousin, name of Landen.

At the end of the carol service, the vicar invited us to stay for a cup of tea and a mince pie, to be served at the back of the church. Seeing me standing alone with my cup and saucer, one of the elderly parishioners approached with a smile of Christian welcome. I was afraid she was going to ask me if I knew that Jesus loved me. But instead she wanted to tell me how many squirrels she’d shot — 35 of the ‘beggars’ since October. They plunder her hanging bird feeders. She leans out of her bedroom window and pots them, she claimed, with a .22 air rifle. Though delighted to hear it, I didn’t fully believe her. Years ago I tried to kill a rabbit with a .177 airgun and the business was so horrible and prolonged I vowed never again.

When I rang for an appointment, the receptionist said, ‘Can you be here within the hour?’ I arrived with ten minutes to spare and presented myself before her. ‘Have you been here before, Mr Clarke?’ she said. ‘I have, yes,’ I said. ‘Ah, yes,’ she said, studying her computer screen with interest. She wrote a six-figure number at the top of an appointments card in black Biro and pushed it across the counter. On this visit and on any subsequent visit, she said, I would always be referred to by this number instead of by my name. I took a seat in the waiting area. In the past I’ve always been perfectly happy to have my surname yelled out when it was my turn to go in.

Last week I received by post an invitation card from The Spectator office to the Parliamentarian of the Year Awards at the Savoy. My goodness, you should have seen this card. It was handsomely embossed, printed in beautiful copperplate, and so large that the postman couldn’t fit it through the letterbox. The Spectator requested ‘the pleasure of my company’, it said, and underneath there was a brief outline of the beano. From 12.30 p.m. we would be drinking Pol Roger champagne; at 1.15 we would be toddling in for the lunch and the awards ceremony; and at 3.45 ‘carriages’ would be outside to wheel away the fallen. I was very excited. I hadn’t had a decent drink for about six weeks.

After the open-air night drawing class, the teacher invited anyone who felt like it to repair to the pub afterwards to have a drink and maybe something to eat and maybe a discussion about art. On the way to the pub I’d nipped off to the cashpoint. By the time I got to the pub, the night drawing gang were already seated around a cosy table with their coats off and my bird had saved me the place between her and the art teacher. I squeezed in between them and took in the new faces ranged opposite me. They were two women and a bloke. The younger of the two women was a straight-backed, handsome, pleasant-looking woman with whom I fell in love on the spot. The elderly woman smiling humbly beside her she introduced as her mother-in-law.

Two policemen and a policewoman were the first of the emergency services to arrive on the platform. The policemen ran about like headless chickens. The woman was calmer. She quickly grasped the essentials of the situation, such as under which wheel the suicide lay, and who had been driving the train. Then more police arrived, and a paramedic team. One of the paramedics knelt down, then got his head and shoulders under the carriage and reached down and felt the dead man’s wrist for a pulse. Then the policewoman, noticing that there were passengers still on the train, indignantly ordered the train manager to evacuate it. This he did, netting around a dozen of us. He shepherded us down two flights of metal steps and told us to wait there, at the foot of the embankment.

I was on a train last Sunday evening, quite late. Reading in Berkshire to Redhill in Surrey, a journey of about an hour and a half. The train was three carriages long and we trundled at a leisurely pace across country, with frequent stops at freezing, deserted platforms. I was sitting in the front carriage with my back to the driver’s cabin, on the left-hand side as you look forward. The driver and I must have been sitting back to back because I could hear him speaking on his phone now and again. I had the carriage to myself. One of the stations near the end of the journey was called Dorking Deepdene.

On the Thursday night, my grandson had another asthma attack. Because my boy had had a few drinks before going to bed, granddad had to get up and drive everybody to the hospital. That night I had an hour’s sleep. On the Friday night I had no sleep at all. Check-in time for my flight to Lisbon was 4.30 in the morning, and it wasn’t worth renting a hotel room at Heathrow, so I sat in the Costa coffee lounge from 10.30 p.m. and read a biography of the American short-story writer Raymond Carver. At around 3 a.m., just as Carver’s lung cancer was diagnosed, the genial barista made his way over to my table and with practised politeness asked me to please take my feet off the seats. At 4.

Brazil! What fantasies, mainly erotic, are conjured up by that word! At Salvador airport, as promised, leaning over the rail bearing a sign with my name on it, was a man sent to drive me to the hotel. I gave him a nod (I was too tired to smile) and without further ado he led the way outside to his car, a taxi, baking in the 30-degree heat of a Brazilian afternoon. It was a very small taxi. The knuckles of his right hand shoved my knee aside as he pushed the gearstick into third. Hanging from the rear-view mirror was a crucifix with a tiny Christ figure realistically convulsed in its death agony. Once he’d turned on to the expressway into town, the taxi man turned to me and began to shout at me in Portuguese. The voice was deep and gruff, but the face was kind. I shrugged at him.

The film started ten minutes ago, says the man as he hands us our prebooked tickets. Another young man shows us down the stairs and through doors marked ‘Screen 2’ into darkness. There’s no light coming from the screen and it’s so dark in there I can’t see a thing. Fortunately the usher turns on one of those muffled torches and I slavishly follow his weak green light until it stops and hovers, presumably at the end of a row with vacant seats in it. By using his circle of light as a rough guide to where he is standing, then calculating from this where his ear might be, I lean towards it to whisper my gratitude, and accidentally kiss him on the eyelid. The film is an Austrian subtitled film called What Is Love (without the question mark).

We hop on a bus. It’s moderately full. We stand downstairs, next to the doors. The bus pulls off and I study her from the side without her noticing it. In a Sunday newspaper style magazine that I read recently, there was a piece by a woman writer about ‘the ten things women really want from a man’. These ten things were contrasted with the ‘11 myths about what women want’. I read both lists closely, having no idea either about the myth or the reality, even at my age. It is a myth, she claimed, for example, that women like their men to take a serious interest in what they wear. They don’t, apparently. ‘We want you to say, “That’s new. You look fantastic,” not have an opinion,’ she said.

I peered through the slatted blind to see what the weather was doing. A Mediterranean-blue sky was parked over the rooftops of Camden. Few people were out and about in the street early. I was the cab driver’s first fare of the day. He didn’t look elated to see me. When I told him where I wanted dropping and why, however, his face lit up and he whipped his cab through the empty City streets as if our lives depended on it. About 200 punters were gathered at the Tower pierhead, waiting for a signal to board. Cheerful 50-year-old blokes in knee-length shorts and sunglasses, tattooed calves, tins of lager cracked open already. Everyone smiling in the sun. Even the Tower of London looking benign. A long, mournful blast on a ship’s horn. Embarkation.

I saw a 1985 Mercedes SE 380 advertised in the classified ads of the local paper and called the number. I was more curious than anything. A ton and a half of no-expense-spared German engineering, powered by an aircraft engine, and all for the price of a top-spec iPad. You don’t see many 380s on the road these days and what’s more the advert said there was no rust. It was at least worth a phone call. The number given was a misprint, however. An amused woman in Huddersfield said I was the third person that morning to have rung up about a Mercedes. I rang the advertising department of the paper and the woman there said I was the fifth person to have rung about that particular ad and she had the correct number right there on a piece of paper in front of her.