Mr Simmons had a horror of unsuitability, one that had stood him in excellent stead throughout his long, distinguished and recently truncated career.
Mufti Day by Katy Darby
Mr Simmons, contemplating himself, thought proudly that the combination of brown flares, purple velvet and cocktail-patterned yellow Hawaiian shirt looked really rather dashing. His shoes remained his usual oxblood Tuesday Lobbs; there was such a thing, a
On the first day of the rest of his unemployment, Mr Simmons sat on the edge of his bed, the noose of his Monday tie limp in his hand, like an executioner who'd forgotten whom he was to hang.
He had spent much of the night before attempting to entertain himself well beyond the hour at which he would normally have retired, with somewhat mixed results. He had reminded himself that from now on, every day was a weekend and that he could do whatever he wanted until the early hours; but his body had refused to believe him. Despite the fact that he had heard the pips at midnight on Radio 4, then suffered, grim-lipped and shy-eyed, through a late-night documentary on Eastern European sex trafficking on BBC2, he had still blinked awake at seven-thirty on the dot, as the first bars of winter sunlight slid against the wardrobe at the end of the bed. He had run his bath, shaved and brushed his teeth as usual. As usual, he had eaten a brisk breakfast of porridge, orange juice and Sanatogen in his pyjamas and matching dressing gown. He had even dressed in his double-breasted navy chalk-stripe and black brogues until, just as he was on the point of putting on his tie, he remembered at last that he did not, nor never would again, have a job to go to.
The tie in his hand suddenly seemed treacherous, snakelike; it had almost beguiled him into performing his immemorial routine of the walk to the tube station, the Metro crossword and the brisk stroll through Berkeley Square and up Davies Street. He dropped it abruptly on the floor in disgust, and steeled himself not to pick it up again. He was a free man, now; he could wear whatever he liked. No longer would his colleagues be able to tell by the stripe, shade or quiet motif of his neckwear what day of the week it was. M for Monday, M for maroon had been his initial mnemonic - but soon its selection had become second nature, and soon after that, a matter of unbreakable habit bordering on superstitious ritual.
Mr Simmons, Senior Administrator - no, he must forget his title, the embossed legend on his gold-tone staff badge - plain Mr Simmons, then - levered himself up from the bed and moved slowly across to the wardrobe to select another tie. His mind shied away from the idea of so much choice as from a dazzling light. The maroon went with his navy chalk-stripe, that much he knew, and there was no question of changing the suit to match the tie (that would be absurd) - but what if none of his other ties were suitable? Mr Simmons had a horror of unsuitability, one that had stood him in excellent stead throughout his long, distinguished and recently truncated career.
The tie-rack was obscenely full, malevolently various. Habituated to the same seven or eight (one for each working day, plus funerals, Bank Holidays and Christmas), he had never realised how many ties he owned - but then again, after a few abortive experiments with cufflinks and characterful socks, Helen and the children had never been sure what else to give him for his birthday. Ties spotted, striped, hatched and checked (quietly of course, always quietly) beseeched him from their hanger; there was his old college tie with its rather gauche crest, a gold and green staff tie from his first job and, right at the bottom, on the never-touched thirtieth rung, a polyester paisley creation, crowned with a portrait of a sardonic, carrot-munching Bugs Bunny. This had been presented to him as a joke by the Managing Director at the last staff Christmas dinner, ostensibly to 'spice up' his collection. He had thanked the MD with grim good humour, worn it for the mercifully brief remainder of the night, and had only been prevented from binning the thing by his reverence for the MD's exalted position and the lurking terror that perhaps, at some future training day or bonding exercise, he might be called upon to produce and parade it again.
But what need has Mr Simmons now of appropriate neckwear? As a redundant person of reasonable means, he could indulge in all the eccentricities that had never appealed to him, but seemed to be the envy of the working majority. He could drink at lunchtime, visit the cinema in the afternoon and pay the lower daytime ticket prices. He could patrol the local park, hurling bread at the quizzical ducks. He could purchase and wear a tracksuit, or a leather jacket, or ... (here his imagination failed him). He could stroll into the Post Office at three p.m. with the disabled, the disadvantaged and the decommissioned, and take full advantage of the shorter, swifter queues.
Mr Simmons whipped the lurid tie off its hanger and swiftly knotted Bugs around his neck in his customary half-Windsor. The bottom of the tie flicked up like a rabbit's scut as he finished adjusting the knot with a flourish. To his astonishment, there was a secret message on it, as covert and clubbable as a Masonic handshake - the hail-fellow-well-met of the fraternity of novelty tie-owners. 'What's up, Doc?' Bugs asked the mirror, dragging casually on his carrot. Mr Simmons sighed. He could do whatever he wanted, today and every day for the rest of his life.
If only he could think of something.
After half an hour of pacing about the kitchen, restlessly examining the contents of the cupboards and half-listening to something about salmon farming on the radio, Mr Simmons finally found an excuse to leave the house: the milk in the fridge was about to expire. He was strangely excited by the transgressive nature of the tie he wore; as thrillingly conscious of its slim embrace, the feel of it lightly circling his neck, as he would have been of a gun in the room. He both feared and longed to step out of the door, walk down the road, enter the shop and be, quite obviously and shamelessly, someone who could not possibly be on his way to work.
Mr Simmons patted the breast and hip pockets of his overcoat for, respectively, his wallet and keys, and opened the front door. It was a cold and blustery day, and he decided not to risk his trilby in case it blew off on the way to the Co-op on the corner. The tie was quite enough adventure for one day. He was slightly disappointed not to encounter anyone on the short walk to the Co-op, but reasoned that, buttoned under two layers of good-quality wool cloth, the tie would have had little impact on passers-by in any case.
As he crossed the threshold of the shop Mr Simmons was blasted with a thick sheet of hot air, meant (he had always imagined) to make customers feel instantly welcomed and warmed. He undid the buttons on his overcoat, picked up a wire basket in his gloved hand, and proceeded to the dairy aisle, where he meandered nervously, feeling like a Cold War spy waiting for a contact. Other customers passed him mutely, their eyes wandering over the shelves or intent on the floor. A number of the younger ones had the glassy inward stare of zealots and schizophrenics - Mr Simmons could usually trace the source of their trance state to the white wires running like jump-leads from inside their coats, to terminate in their ears. He wondered if he ought to get something of that nature, now that he was a man of leisure. It would certainly be pleasant to perambulate through the park with the 'Rite of Spring' singing in his ears. He selected a pint of semi-skimmed, and moved towards the till, unbuttoning his suit jacket in a single, furtive movement. Bugs, unleashed, swung sassily against his white shirt-front.
The queue was not long, but Mr Simmons saw with unsurprised resignation that the staff member on the till was the new young chap whose sole distinction as a member of the Co-op team was that he was really quite exceptionally slow. Even among the generally vague and unhurried staff (who were drawn, Mr Simmons often secretly suspected, from some sort of 'Care in the Community' programme which placed the virtually unemployable in jobs meant to be suited to their meagre skills) - this lad was a sloth, a tortoise, a very snail. His lack of interest in his work was matched only by his total indifference towards the customers; Mr Simmons could not recall having been looked in the eye by him even once. There was no chance at all that the checkout boy would notice his tie; or even if by some miracle he did, his lack of sartorial savoir-faire would almost certainly mean he would think it quite as appropriate as any other. Mr Simmons felt unexpected disappointment twang his vitals: he had the frustrated urge of the iconoclast for attracting comment, opprobrium, even.
He braced himself against the boredom of the queue's slow shuffle by selecting products from nearby shelves which he felt might be of use to him in his new life of devil-may-care, untrammelled freedom. There was a rack of birthday cards, adorned with, alternately, kittens and crude cartoons advertising the off-colour joke inside; well, people had birthdays all the time, and he might as well be prepared. Wasn't Mark's coming up soon? Mr Simmons tried to remember how old his son was, but could only be certain that he was somewhere in his late twenties. He havered, selecting one card with flowers on the front and no message, and one that berated the receiver for his or her advancing age and fading looks. It was the sort of thing he expected Mark might find amusing.
He also bought a packet of chewing gum that promised to whiten and protect his teeth, and a television listings magazine which was not the Radio Times. Inset on the front cover was a picture of an exceptionally unattractive bottle-blonde entreating the reader to find out The NAKED truth about her THREE divorces from the SAME MAN!!! Mr Simmons thought about Helen. Neither of them had believed in divorce, but perhaps it was a generational divide; both the children were already on their second marriages. There were no grandchildren as yet, but Mr Simmons feared for them already. Lucy's husband Thad was, Mr Simmons intuited, beginning to tire of her, and Lucy was the sort of woman who believed in the magical property of babies to keep struggling couples together rather than drive them further apart. Helen and he had been happily married until the day she died. That sort of mutual commitment seemed almost impossible to imagine these days. He sighed softly, and glanced at his watch.
The young man at the till finished serving the previous customer, had a minor altercation with a plastic bag which would not open, and then glanced at Mr Simmons with a dazed, apprehensive shadow in his eyes.
'Next?' he said.
Mr Simmons dangled Bugs provocatively over the counter as he counted out his change, but there was no reaction from the till-person. Mr Simmons had rather hoped for a flicker of either distaste or amusement (and wasn't sure which made him more apprehensive), but the youth's face remained as distant and inanimate as the moon. An infinitesimal sensation of disappointment settled on the shoulders of Mr Simmons like fine rain as he turned to leave the shop.
A small child in a pushchair was barring his way: her very youthful mother, or perhaps older sister, was examining a copy of the same listings magazine he had just purchased. He tried to feint to the right, but a second, marginally more attentive member of staff had just opened up another till and his path was blocked by basketed opportunists. He leaned down to gently move the pushchair out of his way and the child - it was a girl, dressed in pink and sporting the sort of blonde ringlets which looked as though they had been created by a professional television hairdresser - grabbed hold of his tie with a hot fat hand as it swayed towards her.
Mr Simmons was in a rather awkward position; a half-crouch which was already beginning to take its toll on his hams. He tried to stand up but the child was a good deal heavier than she looked and had the grip of an all-weather tyre. Bugs tightened a little around his neck as the tie took the strain of the child's full weight. She stared at the cartoon. Mr Simmons gave a little cough. She looked up at him with blank blue eyes, and then returned her gaze to Bugs.
An adult hand reached into the impasse.
'Let go, Trish,' said the child's sister/mother, unclamping the small tacky fingers one by one from his tie. 'Sorry,' she told Mr Simmons: 'She loves Bugs Bunny.'
He smiled his forgiveness, tentatively, and resettled Bugs around his neck. The little girl was still staring at it, with the devoted intensity of a dog gazing at a morsel of food. Her mother/sister was still browsing the three-divorce story in her magazine. On impulse, he flicked up the bottom of his tie to reveal Bugs's greeting.
The child burst into giggles and covered her face with her small hands in delighted embarrassment. She continued to stare at the tie through her fingers. He put his finger to his lips and walked swiftly out of the store, feeling quite unaccountably pleased with himself. Changing one's tie certainly opened up a whole new world of possibilities.
The next day, Mr Simmons awoke at 9am. A brief, blinding moment of panic when he saw the position of the hands on his alarm clock (which need never again, he reflected, give him cause for alarm) subsided into a mild sense of guilt at oversleeping. He sat erect in bed and looked out of the window. He still slept with the curtains open because Helen couldn't abide a dark room. It had been almost two years, but at night he still could not bring himself to draw them closed. He had got used to the feeble moon and street-light, and the faint traffic sounds, the midnight song of insomniac city birds, over their 27 years of marriage, and it seemed a betrayal of Helen's memory to close the curtains on all that. It was the same dread and guilt he felt whenever he contemplated sending all Helen's old dresses, hanging shrouded in dry-cleaner's polythene on her side of the wardrobe, to Oxfam. Not now, he reasoned. Not yet.
Rain blew listlessly against the window. The lopsided pine in the garden twitched and shrugged in the gritty wind. Mr Simmons rose and contemplated his wardrobe: the Bugs tie was draped over one of the doors, which had drifted slightly open. He had deliberately not put it back on the tie rack. He was determined to embrace his unemployed status and the carefree attitude to tidiness he felt ought to embody it. What need had Mr Simmons of domestic order now? He opened the door wider and frowned at his serried suits, which stared back impassively. After the strange freedom of yesterday's tie, he was not entirely sure that he could return to the pinstripes and sombre shades of the rest of his wardrobe. What he needed today, he decided, as a stray pine branch splattered its cargo of raindrops against the bedroom window, was something bright and colourful to cheer him up.
An hour later, Mr Simmons examined himself in the hallway mirror on his way down to the kitchen. Unable to find anything sufficiently optimistic in his usual wardrobe, he had ascended into the dusty reaches of the attic space (although space was perhaps a misnomer - he had barked his shins through his pyjamas on the joists and banged his head rather nastily on the canted roof beams), to seek out the holiday wear Helen had secreted there five summers ago. While attempting to unearth the casual clothes box, he had also come across a very old suitcase - perhaps from before the children were born - of his clothes from the 1970s. She had put them away all those years ago, folded, polythened and mothballed in cedarwood, when the concurrent changes in fashion and his waistline had rendered them unviable.
But Mr Simmons had lost quite a lot of weight since Helen had gone, and to his surprise, when he tried on the suit he had bought over thirty years ago for his first day at work, it fitted him like a glove. The trousers were quite fetching, if a little wide in the ankle, but he wasn't sure about the excessively broad lapels on the suit jacket, and so he had accessorised the ensemble with a plum velvet smoking jacket Helen had bought for him in the Debenhams sale in 1979, which he had never worn. He regretted not having appreciated her gift more at the time: Mr Simmons, contemplating himself, thought proudly that the combination of brown flares, purple velvet and cocktail-patterned yellow Hawaiian shirt looked really rather dashing. His shoes remained his usual oxblood Tuesday Lobbs; there was such a thing, after all, as going too far. Besides, he was hardly going to leave the house dressed like this.
And yet, after an innovative breakfast of Coco Pops (kept for Lucy's rare visits, and a month out of date) and elderflower tea (Helen's - he began to see why she'd liked it) Mr Simmons could hear the thrushes singing in the trees outside and see the sun, broken at last from its prison of rainclouds, making the wet pavement glisten and sparkle. He hadn't had a good walk, an amble, rather, with no purpose other than to exercise his legs and fills his lungs with newly-washed air, for - well, it seemed like years - and it probably was. Mr Simmons experienced a sudden painful yearning to be outside, to walk through the nearby park and perhaps stop off in the Murphy Arms on the way back. He tried to ignore it, but it was like a stitch in his side. Of course, he'd have to get changed into something more suitable - but then again, what could be more suitable for such an unexpectedly brilliant winter's day than a shirt the very hue of sunshine? And the velvet jacket would keep him quite warm; he probably wouldn't even need a coat. Or a hat.
Mr Simmons stood up, pushing his chair back from the kitchen table so decisively that it nearly toppled over. His heart was tumbling in his chest like a nest of puppies, and his hands were trembling slightly. He was going to go out, just as he was, and walk through the park. And if people laughed at him, and pointed, well, so be it. He would laugh and point at them in return. Most people these days looked like they had recently descended from another planet in any case. They would probably not even notice. Although Mr Simmons permitted himself to hope that, if they did notice, their reaction would be the delighted amusement of the child in the Co-op. It did not do to take oneself too seriously, after all.
The landlord of the Murphy Arms had been serving Mr Simmons and his sadly deceased lady wife for 12 years now and was fairly certain, when he thought about it, which was rarely, that he had the measure of the old chap. His customers were almost all of that type; respectable, settled, sober-suited, moderate drinkers who chose bitter over lager (white wine for the ladies), did not like jukeboxes and would have suffered public nudity at Speaker's Corner rather than touch the 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire' quiz machine the brewery was always nagging him to install. So when a gentleman he thought he vaguely recognised walked briskly through the doors, a spring in his stride, flares flapping raffishly around his ankles, patterned shirt peeping from under his maroon velvet jacket, the landlord assumed he must be selling some nostalgia theme night. Judging from the amount of greying chest hair visible at the collar of his tieless shirt, the man could well be a Tom Jones impersonator. The landlord put on his polite-but-firm smile as he moved to ask what he could do for the newcomer.
'A half of the usual, please,' Mr Simmons told him. Despite the month, he felt invigorated - full, as Helen would have said, of the joys of spring. Two schoolgirls in the park had stared openly at him, but they had been smiling, and when he'd given them a little wave, they had waved back then burst into giggles. A young black chap he had passed on the street had glanced at his jacket and given him the thumbs up. He had even found a pair of sunglasses, left over from two years ago in the South of France - Helen's last holiday, he remembered, with a breath of sadness - in the breast pocket of the summer shirt. They were large-framed and had a blue tint and mirrored lenses; he had left his polarised tortoiseshell ones in a restaurant and had had to buy a new pair from a cheap beach stall. He had hated them at the time, but now he was starting to see their charm. He rather suspected that they were cool.
'And what would your usual be, sir?' the landlord asked him dryly. Mr Simmons was perplexed for a moment, and then removed his sunglasses. The landlord's eyebrows elevated.
'Sorry, Mr Simmons, I didn't, er ...'
'My fault entirely. Didn't mean to scare you!'
Mr Simmons was delighted. It was extraordinary and exhilarating to discover how completely changed a mere set of clothes could make him feel, let alone look. People saw him differently, reacted to him differently, and because of that, he behaved differently. His clothes were fun, therefore so was he. He grinned, and suddenly stopped the landlord's arm with his finger as he reached for a half-pint beer glass.
'Perhaps I won't have the usual, actually. Give me some of the unusual.'
'Anything in particular?'
Mr Simmons shook his head.
'I leave it entirely up to you.'
The landlord considered.
'We've just got this new caramel liqueur in. No-one seems to want to try it. Double of that? With some ice?'
'Why not indeed?' Mr Simmons winked. 'It can't kill me.'
Mr Simmons was not drunk when he returned home, a bottle of the very excellent caramel liqueur which he had persuaded the landlord to sell him banging against his legs in a discreet blue plastic bag. He was, however, quite happy. It had not rained again after the morning shower, and after a couple more drinks and a relaxed lunchtime chat with some of the other regulars (once they had recognised him), Mr Simmons had stopped off at the local independent bookshop and asked the nice girl behind the counter to sell him her favourite book. She had complied, unearthing a book by a Czechoslovakian author of whom he had never heard. It had a long and mysterious title, and the back of the jacket emphasised its erotic elements. He had taken it into the park and sat on the bench in the sun, reading. So far it seemed to be mostly about revolutionary politics and adultery, but the chapters were nice and short and on the whole, it was really quite good. He felt very pleased with himself for having opened himself up to a new reading experience. He would probably go back to his John le Carré and Dorothy L. Sayers shelves sooner rather than later, but in the meantime there was no harm done and he had felt an unexpected pleasure in not knowing what in the least to expect when he turned to the first page.
He was almost sure, too, that he had persuaded the landlord of the Murphy Arms to consider hosting a charity karaoke night. A girl had come round with some flyers while Mr Simmons had been sitting at the bar, chatting with Peter Price, who worked at the insurance office across the road. She had explained that it was an initiative by a local charity (Mr Simmons had seen their shop in the High Street) to have a karaoke competition between as many of the nearby pubs as possible, with prizes provided by local businesses and all the entry fees going to cancer relief. Mr Simmons and Mr Price had both protested strongly when the landlord told her that his pub wasn't 'that sort of place', and eventually the landlord had grudgingly accepted a leaflet from her while his customers pledged their support.
Helen had always said that she wished karaoke had been around when she was young; by the time it came along, she said, she was far too old to get up there and make a fool of herself. Mr Simmons had told her not to be silly; she had a lovely singing voice and her performance would have been a pleasure after the dreadful yowling that seemed to be standard at these things. Her favourite song was Elvis's 'Always on My Mind'. She claimed it was their song, but it was hers, really. Whenever Mr Simmons heard it on the radio, he was torn between turning it off and turning it up. The memories it conjured had a painful, powerful fragility; he was not sure of himself around them. He always ended up turning the song off half way through. It still felt too soon.
A month later, Mr Simmons was well established as something of a local celebrity. His participation in the daily life of the surrounding area had increased along with his visibility; not only did he enjoy the parks, cafes and pubs at all times of the day, he did so in some very head-turning outfits. He had dragged the old holiday suitcase down from the attic and raided his 'vintage' wardrobe for frilled and frivolous shirts, and jackets in luxury cloths and jewelled colours. Mr Simmons, who had once spent 15 minutes before the mirror paralysed with doubt as to whether his pocket handkerchief and tie should match or tone, now mixed colours, patterns and fabrics with splendid abandon. Recognising the vibrant clash of pinstripe and paisley, Dralon and suede, people began to smile at him in the street and point him out to their friends.
A local artist (up until this point, Mr Simmons hadn't known there were any local artists) had even asked to sketch him, and so every day for the last week or so, Mr Simmons had met Bryon - for such was his name - at the Murph for a quick half and a modelling session. Bryon's previous job had been as an artist for various fashion magazines, dashing off voguish scribbles of willowy, featureless stick-women wearing the latest garments to illustrate articles about directions, trends, signature pieces, key looks. He still retained an interest in clothes, but his involvement was more on the spectator side these days. Day in, day out, summer and winter, Bryon always wore a slightly different iteration of exactly the same ensemble; black trousers, white shirt, black woollen jumper and a red tie. One day Mr Simmons, shy of enquiring as to why Bryon never changed any element of the combination, asked him about the colour of the tie.
'The look,' said Bryon, not glancing up from his sketch pad, where an etiolated, blade-boned Mr Simmons wafted across the page in green silk shirt, brown houndstooth jacket and navy trousers, 'is based on my old school uniform. Hence the red tie'.
'How interesting', said Mr Simmons, wondering why on earth anyone would voluntarily resubmit to the sartorial strictures of their schooldays.
'I'm reclaiming it,' said Bryon, giving Mr Simmons a large sweet smile full of uneven teeth. Plus, it saves worrying about what to wear in the morning.'
The karaoke night drew closer, and Mr Simmons grew more and more secretly concerned about what he was going to wear to the grand contest at the Murph. He wanted to dress up, of course, and show his participation in the evening and his respect for a good cause, but where had he to go? The extraordinary fashion decisions he had been making every day for a month now weighed on him; he felt on his mettle to pull something spectacular out of the bag.
As Mr Simmons stood in front of the looking-glass in his dressing-gown, he was assailed by the same anxiety he'd suffered from in the old days when getting ready for work, before he and Helen had settled upon the labour-saving suit-per-day model. Helen had decided what went with what, for although Mr Simmons had excellent eyesight for his age, he suspected that he was slightly colour-blind, and so she had chosen the hues of his suits, shirts and ties. They had not discussed it; she had simply begun to do it one day, realising that he needed her help. He needed her help again now.
Mr Simmons wandered downstairs to the drinks cabinet. He had an hour-and-a-half before the karaoke night began and he felt he needed something to stimulate his creative faculties. He settled on a glass of caramel liqueur. As he did every time he drank it, he felt a twinge of sadness that this had not been invented until after it was too late for Helen to try it; she'd had a very sweet tooth and would have loved the stuff. In a way, perhaps only half-consciously, Mr Simmons suspected that he had really bought it for her. He toasted Helen with another small sherry-glass. Then he went upstairs to have another go at assembling an outfit. Something would come to him, he felt sure.
The karaoke night was five minutes into its Grand Opening when a well-dressed, middle-aged woman in a natty floral hat pushed open the door and went across to the trestle table where the landlord and landlady were counting up the proceeds from sales of tickets. The door banged loudly behind her and everybody jumped. The compère, who was in fact the landlord's brother-in-law - a semi-professional covers artist who did the wedding circuit and a bit of interior decorating on the side - turned in annoyance at the disturbance. He had a couple of choice put-downs for latecomers (he had learned from experience that there were always latecomers) but, taken aback, he hesitated to use them.
There was something not quite right about this lady; she moved rather awkwardly, heavy on her feet, clumsily fussing with the clasp on her handbag. He wondered if she was drunk or had some sort of motor disability. He wasn't in the business of mocking the afflicted - well, certainly not at a cancer gig - and so he turned back to the audience and exposed his cream-coloured teeth. .
'Well, that's enough from me,' he assured them, not believing a word of it. 'How about some songs?' The crowd cheered enthusiastically. He hushed them with a wave.
'All right then. Contestant number one in the competition tonight, supported by her employers, Farford Building Society, is Margaret Hodge singing Sinitta's 'So Macho'.
Margaret, resplendent and appalling in a peach lamé dress, ascended the steps to the makeshift stage. A small party of colleagues roared and stamped their feet in boisterous delight. Even before she started singing, she was beaming with pride and embarrassment. The woman at the back, nursing a small glass of caramel liqueur, smiled; that type of contestant was the best. After all, on a night like this, it wasn't about the winning, but the taking part.
There were 23 official entries to the karaoke contest that evening, but the one people would talk about for the rest of the year - the one who would make the night both memorable and worthwhile - was in fact called up to the stage by accident. Although Mr Simmons had actually asked, and paid, for entry as an audience member, the landlord's sheer astonishment at seeing his familiar face beneath the perky, flower-strewn hat had led to a slight mix-up whereby Mr Simmons received a participant's ticket instead. Thus, when his quiet appreciation of Peter Price's rendition of 'Delilah' was cut short by the compère appealing for ticket number 24, the last contestant, he was both surprised and alarmed. Mr Simmons raised his arm, waving genteelly like the Queen, and tried to explain.
'Excuse me, it's mine, but I think I have the wrong ticket.'
The compère winked at the audience.
'There's always one, isn't there, ladies and gentlemen? Cold feet, eh love? Never mind, come on up here and tell us what you're going to sing.'
Mr Simmons looked around desperately. Friendly, blurred, shining faces turned towards him, smiling and murmuring encouragement.
'But - no, nothing. I can't sing.'
Given the general standard of the entertainment that night, this provoked a roar of cathartic laughter from the audience. The compère frowned. He clearly had a bit of competition from this one.
'Don't let that stop you, love,' he said. Mr Simmons was trying to shrink out of the spotlight, shading his eyes with his hat. The compère was becoming impatient; it was going on for 11 and he wanted to get another drink in before the bar closed.
'Come on now, it's for charity. Get yourself onstage, gorgeous. We want to hear a song don't we? Eh?'
The compère appealed to the audience; the audience cheered and whooped and clapped. Made generous by beer, unburdened by any expectations of professionalism or quality (as all charity and karaoke audiences must be) all they wanted was to see someone - anyone - up there; to be willing accessories to the murder of a song - any song.
Mr Simmons rose from his seat without volition, like a puppet. He stumbled towards the stage, his handbag banging against people's chairs, the ruby and emerald disco-lights making him squint. His only compensation for the inevitable humiliating performance was seeing the compère's face drop as he realised that he had been flirting with a bloke in drag. The compère handed Mr Simmons the microphone and vanished off the stage, more in need of a beer now than he had thought possible.
Mr Simmons stood there, quite still, under the merciless spotlight. There was a slow wave of silence that began in the front rows of the audience and worked its way back, as the people in the pub suddenly realised who was actually in front of them. When the room was completely quiet, Mr Simmons removed Helen's hat (a little small for him, but it had always been her favourite) and held it across his chest, against his heart. He cleared his throat once or twice, but when he spoke his voice was still somewhat thick and strangled.
'Thank you very much. I, um. My wife ... my wife Helen, whom many of you knew, died a little over two years ago.'
Mr Simmons saw Peter Price, Tom Jones wig still on, bow his head slightly. Peter was sitting with his wife, Emma, who had been a good friend of Helen's. Mr Simmons looked back at the throng of shadowed faces below him. He felt very giddy, as though he were standing at the top of a tall building.
'Helen died of cancer, and that's one of the reasons I'm very happy to support this event tonight. The other reason is that Helen loved singing, and she would have loved this. She never did do karaoke but she always wanted to. I've never wanted to,' - a burst of high, tense laughter at this - 'but now I will.' Mr Simmons cleared his throat again. 'I'm going to sing 'Always on my Mind', because it was her favourite song and because, well, she is.'
He returned Helen's hat to his head and stood still and dignified until the CD kicked in. Mr Simmons staggered through the song. He wasn't good; in fact, he was bloody awful and he knew it, but he also knew it didn't matter. Tonight wasn't about singing, in the end, just as the last month had not really been about clothes. He stood on stage in his dead wife's dress, with her favourite song playing, doing something she'd always wanted to. It was, perhaps, an odd sort of tribute, he thought as he saw the last lyrics appear, neon pink, on the little television screen, but it was a tribute nonetheless, and Mr Simmons was certain in his own mind that everyone in the room understood as much.
When Helen's song ended there was a little gap, and then the whole room exploded into applause, people yelping and drumming their feet with violent enthusiasm. Mr Simmons bowed deeply, sweeping Helen's flowered hat from his head. His cheeks flamed. He could not stop smiling.
It took him almost ten minutes to get to the door, assailed as he was by well-wishers and friends old and new, intent on congratulating him, almost frighteningly insistent on buying him a drink. He declined politely, pleading fatigue and famine. As he slipped out of the door somebody handed him a piece of paper; in the crowd he caught a flash of red tie, a snaggletoothed grin. Bryon had done a sure-handed sketch of him on stage, a lissom, stylised creature with five o'clock shadow, wearing Lobb loafers and a smart summer dress. Mr Simmons smiled, folded it carefully and put it in his handbag. All he wanted to do now was get home and sit down quietly, in the kitchen, in the dark.
He must remember to wash Helen's frock, too, iron it and hang it back in the wardrobe. In the morning he would take her old things down to the Oxfam on the corner. She wouldn't have wanted them to go to waste.
Mr Simmons wondered idly how he should dress tomorrow. He decided that perhaps he would wear his charcoal three-piece, with a white shirt and his Friday tie. Just for a change.
Katy Darby has a novel and short story collection in the works, and co-runs Liars' League, a London-based night of new short stories read by actors.
Friday, 1 August, 2008
In Short stories
- The Rose Tango by Mieko Kanai
- In Search of Tommie by Zoe Wicomb
- From Round Here: Lays of a Sicilian Life Told to Andrei Navrozov. By Manlio Orobello
- The Wake by Zoe Green
- Milgram by Tommy Wallach
- Jersey Tiger by Maggie Bevan
- Woman at Window by Alex Sheal
- Aldeia da Luz by C. D. Rose
- Bourgeois by Mikey Cuddihy
- Troy and Me by Drew Gummerson
- History Lesson by Tony Peake
- Mufti Day by Katy Darby
- Frank by Mercedes Helnwein
- Notes On A Grave by Lauren Frankel
- The Poison Factory Conference by Divya Ghelani
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