by Philip Stiles
Everyone’s piling in on me, but it’s not my fault. And if you want to know the truth, I’m the only one who seems to be trying to rectify the situation. I’ve cycled as far as the riverfront, and then back out west to the A10 this morning, big distances, pasting posters on trees and lampposts, on shopfronts. I’ve put messages on Facebook and Insta. I haven’t had a thing to eat. I’m near exhausted. When I get home, Anita is in the bedroom. I call up to her but she doesn’t respond. Her father comes striding down the stairs, “Big Uli” I secretly call him, as he is as tall and wide as a wardrobe, and tells me we should leave the house for a while in a tone which suggests this is not up for debate. Already he is putting on his jacket. I say I should go up and see Anita but he grips my arm above the elbow and propels me along. “Let’s go,” he says.
We take his car. Even though it’s a 4×4, his head, topped by grey hair as dense and shiny as steel wool, touches the roof of the interior. He stares forward, driving fast, and says not a word until we reach the farm shop and garden centre by the marina. Big Uli always comes here with Roos on their visits to us to stock up on chocolate and ginger slims, slabs of “exclusive” Scottish shortbread, pickled apricots, and other stuff they cannot get in Germany and which they can show off to their friends at their “soirees”.
Big Uli chooses a table set for four people. A waitress asks us if we wouldn’t mind moving to a two-seater, as the place is about to get busy. Big Uli says `Just bring us some coffee.’
Big Uli was something big in an international paints company whose products apparently are on the exterior of every major building in Europe. He retired years back with a big pension which he and Roos now spend on trips to Asia and the Galapagos and Sweden and Australia. He buys a car new every year on some leasing plan that is tax efficient and smart, and he has accumulated wealth and I have not and I think this, not to put too fine a point on it, has `disappointed’ him, particularly since his daughter lives with me in a small house with an old car and only take camping holidays to Norfolk.
Big Uli is looking around, watching people coming in, filling up the place. His eyes are narrow, and a little watery at their edge. Since he retired, he has had a few `scares’ – pains in the legs which rendered him unable to walk for short periods, fainting in the street, bouts of dizziness, and so forth. Roos does a lot of the driving now, and keeps check on his diet and drinking. Like all such men, he likes to be fussed over.
This place used to be smaller, more intimate. Anita and I would come here every weekend to have coffee and cake. I had just started my teaching job at the college, sixth form students in the day, pensioners in the evening – drawing classes. I had always promised myself I would never teach drawing or painting – the quickest way to lose your gift – but Anita was just starting out as a graphic artist, so we needed the money. She’s doing well now, and was promoted last year I’m so pleased she is doing better, and you can still call it art, I guess.
The waitress brings a tray and bangs it down hard on the table, spilling the coffee into the saucers. She makes no apology or any attempt to clean it.
“What’s the matter with you?” says Big Uli to me.
I am expecting a conversation of this kind. So here we go.
“You have no plan,” says Big Uli.
“I have lots of plans,” I say.
Now that I think of it, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard Big Uli say my name. I try to remember an instance, right the way back to when I first met him. I can’t think of any.
“You never take responsibility. You’re a child.”
He has a large Adam’s apple, and as he speaks, I watch it go up and down; a bubble in a spirit level.
“I’ve lived with my wife for thirty-two years. I’ve built a house.”
Ah, the house in Cologne, a four-storey brownstone full of kitsch and tribal masks and a huge dining room in which they `entertain’ members of the Masons or Roundtable or whatever. I stare at the coasters, which are of English cathedrals. My favourite is Wells.
“You don’t have a serious house or job. I don’t know anyone else who would have a story about their dog like yours. It’s ridiculous.”
Perhaps he doesn’t know enough people with dogs. And what does a serious house mean? A two-bedroom starter-home close to the railway station and a ten-minute drive to the college – isn’t that serious enough?
“The whole thing was an accident,” I say.
Nobody thinks to ask me if I’m upset, or if I’ve been traumatised. I disappoint Big Uli I know. For example, I don’t like beer and have never `shared a beer’ with him in all the family visits we’ve had, settling mostly for water or coke, and he will make some remark about looking forward to when I grow up so that we can have a proper drink together. He is a man who `knows his beer’ and has on several occasions told me of the difference in brewing processes between Belgium, Germany and the UK, differences which indeed seem significant.
“Listen to you. You have no substance.”
“With respect, Uli, you don’t know very much about me.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say one interesting thing.”
“You’re not the easiest man to have a conversation with.”
“You haven’t got anything to say. Besides, it’s gone past that stage. The dog is the last straw.”
“You don’t know the facts about the dog.”
“The dog is a symptom.”
He’s warming to the task. He must have rehearsed his speech. This is his moment.
“When my daughter introduced you to us, I told her it was a mistake. I don’t even understand what you do. Maybe you have some kind of charm which is invisible to me, but when I was running my business, there were two types of people, the achievers and the rest, and you would be way with the rest. I’m saying this now because you have upset my daughter and I hope she has the sense to come back home”.
“You’re not my boss, Uli.”
“You’re lucky I’m not.”
“Your daughter has reasons why she loves me.”
“I can’t help that.”
“No, you can’t help that. Uli, I’ve always been respectful to your daughter and to you and your wife…”
He holds up his finger to his mouth and shakes his head.
“I asked you here because I wanted to suggest something to you.”
A waitress, not ours, drops an empty glass while clearing a table. Somebody cheers. That’s England, I want to tell Big Uli. We’re not in Germany now.
“Listen to me,” he says. “Anita needs some time alone. She won’t say it of course because she does not want to admit she has made a mistake. We’d like to take her home with us, at least for a while. I’d appreciate it if you would not make a fuss about it.”
He stops talking, takes a sip of coffee. Then he looks up at me and waits. I can’t figure out which moments in my life with Anita have led to this pass. She hasn’t been a bundle of laughs herself, I could add. I felt her silence when I didn’t sell my big pictures to the galleries, and I’m not handy around the house, which brings its own tension. When she is on the phone to her father, she laughs in a way that she never laughs with me. She loves the dog, too. I know the absence of the dog has hit her hard: it’s her dog – she feels it more, a gift from her parents. She loves the dog no doubt about that, but I have grown used to it too.
“Is that your offer?” I say.
“It’s not an offer,” he says. “I’m informing you. I just didn’t want you having a tantrum at the house while she is so upset.”
“I want to go back and see Anita. Whatever you think of me, I make your daughter happy.”
“Not any more you don’t.”
He looks around the cafeteria, his jaw thrust out as though he were some actor being filmed for a close up.
“I will give you money. Something each month, to make sure you don’t lose the house.”
“It’s insulting for you to say this to me.”
“I’m letting you down lightly. You should take it. Now,” he says, “I’m going to the bathroom.”
People are looking for tables. I feel guilty at occupying the four-seater. I hold my coffee to show I am still busy. I think about his offer. I should call him out; tell him what a jerk he is, how he and his wife are no longer welcome in our house, that Anita and I will be stronger without them both.
A young family come and stand near the table, with a tray full of filled cups and sandwiches. They stand together without talking, hoping their presence will force me up. I weaken and I take my coat from the chair and say “I’m just leaving.”
I pay up and wait for Big Uli near the entrance. I begin to browse the greetings cards. There are some humorous ones about husbands and wives, mostly focusing on men playing golf, or fixing cars, or watching football, while women look frustrated or long suffering. Wry humour, I guess. There is a local book on ghosts in the area I flick through the pages. I wander across to the deli counter. I should buy the cheese with cumin, just as Anita likes, with a pot of Greek olives, take them back and say to her `do you know what your father has just offered me. Do you know what kind of man he is?’ There is a showcase of new cheese – this time from Wales, and some hams that I know Anita would like for lunch. I order a selection.
Walking back to the entrance, there’s still no sign of Big Uli. I worry he may have had an incident in the bathroom. Though the place has grown, the toilets remain just a small room with a few stalls and a cubicle. I push the door open and see immediately that the bathroom is empty. Perhaps I missed him when I was buying at the deli. I make a tour of the farm shop, through the aisles stacked with cakes and rows of chutneys and bottles of cordials and crackers in fancy displays and presentation boxes of specialty chocolates, round by the fruit and veg section and the lines of chest freezers with high priced frozen meals. I walk past the tills and go outside, to see if he is getting some fresh air, or has tramped over to the garden centre. I look over to the car park, by now quite full, and it’s then I realise the car has gone.
I try to call him on my mobile but there is just his dumb voice speaking German on the answerphone. I call Anita on her mobile and then on our home number, but again just get the service. I go back inside the farm shop and ask the cashier if they have a number for a cab company. They ask me if I am alright and I say yes, but please I need to call a cab quickly. The guy goes to check with his manager, who checks his iPad. The one thing playing in my mind right now is what I will say to Big Uli when I see him. This is not the behaviour of a rational man; it is the behaviour of a sneak and a bully, and for once I do not feel inferior to him. Once I get home, I will say my piece; and about time too.
The manager speaks the number and I tap it into my phone and call. Them I dial home again and leave a message: “Anita, your father has demeaned you and me. We must speak with him together.”
I go out into the car park again, to see if I haven’t made a mistake, or perhaps Big Uli had gone to turn the car around. I watch as cars come in and as cars leave. I can’t think of what else I should be doing.
The cab comes after 30 minutes.
“Christ, you took your time,” I say.
“Drivers are off with Covid,” says the cab driver. “And if you take that tone, you’ll be waiting a lot longer.”
“Sorry, I’m in a hurry.”
“It’ll take as long as it takes. If you wanted a getaway driver you should have specified.”
He takes his time of course. The world is full of such people, out to needle you, out to make a point. In the back, I don’t say anything. I don’t want that conversation. I open the window a little; try to keep my mind clear.
We pull up to the house, Big Uli’s car is not on the drive. I open the door and call out but there is silence. I walk upstairs, calling Anita’s name and move into the bedroom. The wardrobe is open, and so too the drawers. It is clear three quarters of Anita’s clothes from the rail, her jackets, blouses, skirts, are gone. Apart from a few odd bits and pieces, the content of the drawers are also gone. I walk back downstairs, into the kitchen.
I think about my life with these people in it, and I think about the dog’s moments, my moments, my wife’s moments, how we have spent our lives together in a sombre small house, under the same sky and how in the park, the dog would enthusiastically greet any stranger who walked close to it on the paths or grass tracks, wagging its tail wildly, dark eyes shining, and would have walked away with them if they had offered a titbit or piece of bone, always pulling on the lead to stretch up to the individual, despite all the hours in training class, her mouth panting with exertion, my arm tired of the tugging and I wondered where she would go to if there were no lead and my hand not through its leather loop, I had felt the tug again and for a brief moment, I held the lead by the tips of my fingers, and then I relaxed my grip and she was gone.