Can on one desperate man with nothing but a crazy idea take on a multi-national?
The future looks bleak for Aidan Walsh. He stands to lose his job as the last major employer in a dead-end Welsh town prepares to close its factory and relocate to India. Then Aidan hatches a startling plan. He buries himself alive in a coffin in his back garden, announcing that he's not coming back up until everyone's job is saved.
Publicity is everything these days, and Aidan knows he must attract the attention of the media if he is to have a chance. Slowly, people warm to his cause, locally at first, and then from further afield, as news of his remarkable protest travels. And so begins a titanic battle of wills between an unlikely hero and a powerful corporation.
Going Under explores the ties of love, friendship, family and community in a story full of humour, human frailty, resourcefulness and - ultimately - triumph.
1
The moment Aidan walked through the door, he could see he’d put the manager on his guard. He’d only taken a few steps before he left the counter, walked across to where Aidan hesitated, gazing around him nervously at the merchandise.
‘Do you need any help at all, sir?’
‘I’m looking for a coffin.’
Aidan wished he’d leave him alone: there was nothing worse than someone hassling you when you were trying to buy something. This was difficult enough already without that. He glanced at the name badge on his jacket – Terence Roberts.
Roberts clasped his hands in front of his stomach, softened his voice.
‘Who’s it for, if you don’t mind me asking?’
After thirty-five years as an undertaker, he knew how important this was – the death of a distant relative raised a whole different set of issues for the bereaved to that of a dead spouse, for instance.
Aidan met his eyes.
‘It’s for me.’
Roberts’ shocked expression only lasted a couple of seconds. He composed himself.
‘I see.’
Some years ago a man who’d just discovered he had a terminal illness had come and arranged his own funeral, to save his family the distress. It was his way of taking control of what remained of his life, and he had admired him for it. Perhaps Aidan was in a similar position. Maybe that explained why he was so on edge. He looked like he was in his early fifties at most, seemed to be in good shape, but you never could tell.
‘That’s The Hartington, a popular model – dark, gold stained veneer with contrasting cut-away panels, solid gold cremation handles and name plates…’
‘I’m not really bothered about that – I’m more concerned about what it’s like inside.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I’m going to be stuck in there for a long time. I want to be sure I’ll be comfortable.’
Roberts began to wonder how long it would be before his junior partner Clive returned. He’d popped out to buy a couple of Danish pastries to have with their morning coffee, and was taking his time about it.
‘How much is it?’
‘Five hundred and twenty-five pounds.’
Aidan frowned, pointed to the one next to it.
‘How about that one?’
‘The Mahogany? That’s three hundred and ninety-nine pounds.’
‘Can I give that one a go?’
‘What do you mean, exactly?’
‘Can I get inside, try it out?’
Roberts’ gaze hardened.
‘I’m sorry, sir, we don’t allow that kind of thing.’
Aidan took a step forward, raised his voice.
‘Why not? If you were buying a house you wouldn’t hand over your money after just looking at it from the outside, would you? You’d want to go and check out what it was like indoors.’
Roberts straightened his back, assumed his most dignified expression.
‘And what kind of impression do you think it would create if people walked past and saw you lying down in one of our coffins?’
Aidan considered this. He had to admit, the man had a point. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘how much would it be to hire The Mahogany for a couple of months then?’
*
Aidan sat in the living room, listening to Meat Is Murder. It belonged to his daughter Shauna, must have slipped out of her bag when she last visited a few weeks ago. The Smiths were one of the few Eighties bands Aidan rated and he’d been playing it ever since – one track in particular, ten or fifteen times a day. He could do this without any danger of being interrupted now. When Shauna and Dylan had been teenagers, forever running around slamming doors, shouting at each other and hogging the TV and stereo, he’d complained bitterly about never being able to get any peace and quiet. He had more than he knew how to handle now. Once he was made redundant he’d have more.
Here it came, the fourth track, the song that had burnt itself indelibly into his brain, ‘What She said’. It began like a runaway train, careering wildly down the track at a hundred miles an hour. A jagged guitar riff, a red-hot rhythm section pushing it forward relentlessly. You just knew something dangerous and shocking was on its way. When it arrived, it cut him open like a knife. Morrissey at his most haunting, demanding to know why no one had noticed he was dead and decided to bury him. God knew he was ready. After hearing it, Aidan had known exactly what he had to do.
Aidan, Russell, Gwyn and Wilf were sitting in the canteen, eating their lunch. They were watching a man in white overalls re-painting the sign outside the factory entrance.
‘How many times is that this month?’
‘Five.’
Someone kept altering the sign so that instead of Sunny Jim Electronics – The Future is So Bright You’ll Have to Wear Sunglasses, it read Slimy Jim Electronics – Take the Subsidies and Run. The photograph of a beaming Jim Richter, Chairman of Sunny Jim Electronics, had also been tampered with, several large black holes ruining his perfect set of choppers.
‘Maybe they’ll hire a security guard to stand under it all
night,’ said Russell.
Gwyn smiled, he liked that idea. He took a swig from his mug.
‘Did you hear the news this morning – Jim Richter, Sunny Jim himself, has been awarded a £750,000 bonus.’
Russell nearly choked on his meatball.
‘What for?’
‘Successfully managing the global re-structuring programme.’
‘Can you translate that?’
‘For having the vision to take the radical and courageous decision to shut down their factories here and in Tyneside and the States and to relocate to India, where they can significantly reduce their overheads.’
‘That’s fucking outrageous.’
‘That is business.’
‘Bloody hell,’ said Russell. ‘I’ve lost my appetite.’
Aidan went pale. ‘£750,000?’
‘Yep.’
‘Jesus,’ muttered Aidan, pushing a chip around his plate. ‘And what will we get? Probably a week’s wages for every year we’ve worked here. Then we’ll all be competing for the same jobs in one of the worst unemployment blackspots in the country.’ He began ticking them off on his fingers: ‘Security guard, stacking shelves in a supermarket, rounding up trolleys in the car park. You seen that bloke in the Tesco’s car park at Maes-glas, the one with the little tash?’
‘Looks like Blakey from On the Buses?’
‘That’s the one. You should see his face when he sees people just dump their trolley anywhere when they’re finished – he looks like he wants to slit their throat. He’s about our age.’ He put down his knife and fork, stared out of the window.
‘Rounding up trolleys at Tesco’s, that’s what we’ll all be competing for.’
The others didn’t say anything for a while. Then Russell started yakking about last night’s match.
‘That second goal was definitely off-side – and that was the
one that killed the game.’
Gwyn and Wilf eagerly joined in the conversation. A few minutes passed before they realised Aidan was just staring into space.
Russell said, ‘You all right, mate? What’s on your mind?’
Aidan slowly turned to face him, a tortured expression on his face: ‘Have you seen the price of coffins these days? It’s shocking.’
It was Sunday morning. Aidan had to get out of the house, escape from those four walls. He walked up town, wandered into John Frost Square. Built in the sixties, at the height of Britain’s love affair with concrete, it was lined with depressing shops on two sides, a multi-storey car park on another, and the drab Central Library on the fourth. A bitterly cold November wind roared through it, whipping up carrier bags, old newspapers and discarded chip papers, wrapping them round people’s legs. Last night someone had smashed the front windows of Cheap ’N’ Cheerful and Fags and Mags, and the ground was carpeted with broken glass.
‘Terrible, isn’t it? Nothing better to do, have they?’ muttered an old lady as she passed Aidan, scowling at the damage and tugging her sickly looking terrier away from the shards.
‘No, love, they haven’t.’
He wandered around the square aimlessly for a while, then sat down on a bench. The truth was, he didn’t know what to do with himself at the weekends anymore. Russell would be on his allotment now. Wilf would be on his way to church – he’d do the weekly shop with Megan afterwards. Gwyn had got over his divorce and was taking night classes, was probably on the Internet at home, he spent hours looking things up. Everyone was busy except him.
A £750,000 bonus, he couldn’t believe it. How could Richter live with himself ? Gwyn had shown him an article about Richter – he had a house in Switzerland, a flat in London, and a ranch in the States. He had his own helicopter and a yacht called the Iron Lady. This was the man who had said that demands for a rise would bankrupt the company. Back in January, when the rumours about the redundancies were building up, Richter had gone on telly. He looked at the camera with studied sincerity and said there was absolutely no truth in this talk of job losses. It was put about by people who wanted to damage Sunny Jim’s reputation. Even worse, he felt they were an attack on his personal integrity and nothing meant more to him than that.
Read my lips – there will be no redundancies at Sunny Jim in the foreseeable future. You have my word.
The next day at work, when everyone was saying they wouldn’t trust the shifty bugger as far as they could throw him, Aidan had actually defended him.
I just can’t believe he’d be so cynical as to say that, then turn around a few months later and give us all the chop.
Don’t be soft, mun, he’s just buying time.
If that’s what he wanted to do he could have just said ‘No comment’ or ‘We can’t rule anything out,’ couldn’t he?
I’m telling you, he’s lying through his teeth.
I trust him.
They’d roared with laughter.
But the uncomfortable truth was that Aidan, even without Richter, had begun shutting himself down years ago. It began when Eileen died. That was when he shut down the part of him that believed in the future. When his kids left, he shut down the part of him that took a pride in his home. Doing something just for the sheer hell of it, never mind the risk – shut down. Believing it wasn’t too late to meet someone new and start again – shut down. Sticking his neck out for something he believed in – shut down. He’d made so much of himself redundant that he hardly knew what was left of the real Aidan anymore.
Aidan became aware of someone standing next to him. He looked up, saw a smartly dressed man clutching a briefcase and a black book. He smiled at Aidan.
‘Good morning, my friend, would you like to hear The Good News?’
Aidan scowled.
‘What fucking good news is that then? Have the last ten years been a bad dream? Am I going to wake up now and find out everything is all right after all?’
The man backed away quickly, his smile fading.
A few days later, Pancho was sitting in the corner of the Globe, writing in his notepad, diary and mobile on the table next to him. He wore a Che Guevara T-shirt under his leather jacket, a red bandana around his head. Ponytail, handlebar moustache, three days’ growth, gold tooth on the left side. He took a cheroot from his jacket pocket, a match from behind his ear, bent down and in one swift, easy movement struck it first time on the metal heel of his cowboy boot. Aidan smiled. He’d never seen him miss. Pancho was the most colourful thing about the Globe.
The place had hardly changed in the last two decades. A few years ago they’d slapped a couple of coats of sickly yellow gloss over the rank wallpaper, making it easier to keep the walls moderately clean. The grimy windows allowed in little light: the dark brown carpet whose chief purpose was to soak up and hide the countless stains only added to the gloom. There was a permanent cloud of cigarette smoke, a lingering smell of slops and an eye-watering stench from the Gents whenever someone opened the door. Right now there were just a few solitary middle-aged drinkers and a couple of heavily tattooed young bucks playing pool, punctuating every missed shot by a string of foul expletives.
‘Hi-ya, Pancho.’
He lit his cheroot, looked up.
‘Buenas noches, Aidan – what can I do for you?’
‘I’m after something a little unusual.’
Aidan’s budget didn’t extend to the kind of prices the undertakers were asking, but he wasn’t going to give up now. Pancho took a drag from his cheroot and blew a perfect smoke ring into the air. He fixed Aidan with a wry grin.
‘Hey, have I ever let you down before?’
Aidan shook his head.
Pancho nodded, pleased to agree with him. He gestured for Aidan to sit down in the chair opposite.
‘Now then, why don’t you tell me what you’re after?’
Aidan sat, then glanced behind him. Pancho smiled.
‘No one’s listening – look, don’t worry about it, I get all sorts of unusual requests and it’s very rare I can’t meet them. A couple of months ago I got a big supply of adult-sized nappies and baby clothes for a customer.’
‘For dressing up, like?’
‘What else?’
Aidan pulled a face. ‘Bloody hell.’
Pancho picked up his glass of tequila and slowly took a sip, enjoying Aidan’s reaction. Aidan looked around the bar. He turned back to Pancho. ‘Who was that for? Are they in here now?’
‘There’s such a thing as customer confidentiality.’
Aidan held up both hands, palms towards Pancho. ‘Of course.
I understand.’
‘So, this unusual request . . .’
‘Was it Brynley Biggerstaff ?’
Pancho wagged his index finger at him.
‘OK, OK . . .’
‘A Design for Life’ started playing on the jukebox. Every few minutes, somewhere in Crindau, someone put ‘A Design for Life’ on a jukebox, it had become a national anthem. It was the unlikeliest of hit singles in these hard-nosed times, a passionate eulogy to the Welfare State by three boys from just up the road in Blackwood. People in Crindau felt an enormous pride in the band’s hard-won success.
‘I need a coffin.’
Pancho’s face fell. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise you’d had a bereavement.’
Aidan waved his hand dismissively.
‘No, it’s for me.’
‘You?’
Aidan nodded, he was getting used to this now.
‘How soon can you get one?’
Pancho’s eyes widened. He leaned a little closer, stroking his moustache.
‘Have you had some bad news?’
‘Yeah, I’m being made redundant.’
‘Christ, mun, I know it’s a blow, but . . .’
‘Don’t worry, it’s not what you think.’
Pancho shrugged. It wasn’t his job to ask questions.
‘I’ll do my best.’
‘How long will it take?’
Pancho glanced down, scribbled something on his notepad.
‘I have to admit, Aidan, it is a little on the unusual side. This is going to stretch me a bit.’
‘I understand that – but I’ve got faith in you, Pancho. The thing is, I’ve had a look in the undertaker’s, and the prices are a bit steep. I’m on a tight budget. It’s outrageous what they charge for a bit of wood. I’m not fussed about whether it’s dark-stained veneer, or finest mahogany, or whether it’s got solid gold cremation handles and name plate. I mean, at the end of the day, it’s just a bloody box, isn’t it?’
Pancho nodded, the customer was always right was his motto. Unless he wanted to return something. Bought as seen was his other motto.
‘OK, so nothing fancy, the most important factor being value for money, gotcha. As you know, my prices are always very competitive.’
It was true, he’d bought his video, TV, hi-fi, microwave and fridge from Pancho at a fraction of the price you’d pay in the shops. Aidan held his eyes. ‘The sooner the better. I’m in a hurry to get started, understand?’
Pancho didn’t, but then he didn’t need to, he was just the supplier. His mobile started ringing – ‘La Cucaracha’. ‘I’ll be in touch.’
He reached out, shook Aidan’s hand and took the call.
Aidan stood inside the hole, knee-deep now, hands on hips, puffing and blowing like a steam train. The pain in his shoulders and thighs was excruciating. He was desperate to give up, go inside, open a can of beer and collapse on the sofa.
But he wasn’t going to.
There were two very good reasons why. He needed to be doing something. It was vital not to lose momentum. The longer a plan festered in your mind without you putting it into action, the more unreal it began to seem. Just because he had to wait for Pancho to deliver didn’t mean he had to sit around on his backside, doing nothing. He could be getting other things ready. After all, what good was a coffin without a hole to put it in?
Then there was the bedroom curtain twitching next door.
Joy was working herself into a frenzy trying to figure out what he was up to. It would be all over the neighbourhood by tomorrow. He wasn’t going to give her the opportunity to belittle him.
Hasn’t touched the garden for years, an absolute disgrace it is. Then, when he finally decides to get off his backside and do something about the state of it, he gives up after half an hour. Had to go back inside and lie down. Should have seen him, thought I was going to have to call an ambulance.
Eileen had been the one with the green fingers. After she’d died, he could barely bring himself to look at the garden, it reminded him too much of her. Shauna had taken over for a while, she’d picked up the knack from her mother, but when she’d left home, he’d drawn the curtains in the back kitchen, so he couldn’t see it anymore, let it go to hell.
There it was again, the bedroom curtain twitching. He’d show her. He picked up the shovel and went back to work. After a few minutes, Ken came out, whistling very loudly and deliberately. Joy must have sent him down to have a closer look. Their garden was immaculate – they stood on guard like sentries when their grandchildren came, in case they spoilt anything. Aidan heard him open his shed, the whistling muffled now as he pottered around in there for a couple of minutes, picking things up and putting them back down again, rattling a few tins. He came out again, shut the door. The whistling stopped.
‘Nice evening.’
He was leaning over the garden fence, trying not to stare at the hole, but it was a terrible struggle, Aidan could see.
‘It is, aye, very mild for the time of year.’
‘You’re busy.’
‘Just doing a bit of work in the garden.’
Ken waited for more, but Aidan wasn’t going to give him any, the nosy bugger. Let Joy come down herself if she wanted to ask him something.
‘Well, better get back to work, you know how it is.’
He gave Ken a wink, picked up his shovel and started digging again.
Aidan sat at the kitchen table, a drawing pad open in front of him. He was sketching some of the modifications he’d need to make. He started by drawing a coffin, then adding a square near the top. A window so he could see out, it would be horribly claustrophobic otherwise. A window was a must. But what good was a window without a view? He chewed this over, doodling on the edge of the page. He’d need a shaft from the window to the surface. A patch of blue sky, a soft white cloud drifting past, these were the kind of things that could raise a man’s spirits when the going got tough. And people could look down the shaft and see him lying there. It would make a huge difference, being able to look up and see people’s faces when he was talking to them. He added these details, leaned back in his chair and reviewed his sketch – yes, it was coming on. He took a swig of lager, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
Then he began to have second thoughts. Did he really need a window? Why make extra work for himself ? If he just cut a hole in the lid they could lower his food straight down the shaft and he could send the plate back up when he’d finished. Attaboy, Aidan, now you’re getting somewhere. He picked up his pencil, drew a winch and a couple of stick figures on the surface. It was coming together. Careful planning, close attention to detail, that was the key to success. You couldn’t just shut yourself up in a coffin, cross your fingers and hope everything would be all right. He didn’t want to discover he’d overlooked some small but vital detail once he was six feet under with the lid screwed on.
He drew a smiley face peering out of the coffin’s window. He grinned. He drew a speech bubble coming from one of the stick figures on the surface.
What do you want for your tea?
Then one coming from a smiley face at the coffin’s window.
Fish and chips.
He took another swig of lager, laughed. After the fiasco in the undertaker’s the other day, he wondered if he could ever pull it off, but now he could feel his confidence surging back. This was going to work.
Aidan was in the garden, chopping at the knee-high grass, the weeds and the brambles with a pair of shears. A bastard of a job that would probably take him the whole weekend, his hands already cut to ribbons by thorns. Next weekend he’d borrow Russell’s lawnmower (a tenner from Pancho) to finish it off, make everything neat and tidy. No point in trying to attract publicity if people had to hack their way through a bloody jungle to get to you.
He’d like to see Russell’s face when he’d finished. The last time he’d seen the garden he’d given Aidan a scornful look and shaken his head, then put his hands to his mouth and yelled, ‘Sergeant Yashimoto – you can come out now, the war is over. There’s a job as a foreman waiting for you in the Honda factory.’
He looked around him now, at the mounds of waste waiting to be bagged up, and felt good about himself, felt a weight lifting from his shoulders. He should have done this years ago. What must he have been thinking of to let it get in such a disgraceful state? How long had he spent sitting on his arse, swigging beer, watching the box, oblivious to the chaos? What kind of awful black hole had he nearly disappeared into? No, stop that. No more looking back, no regrets. From now on he was going to concentrate only on what he could change and put the rest out of his mind.
‘You’re working hard.’
Joy’s voice. Aidan tried to straighten up, felt a searing pain shoot from the small of his back up his spine. Jesus. He dropped the shears, brought both hands to his back, slowly eased himself upright. Joy was standing by the fence, a concerned look on her face.
‘Are you all right?’
As if they were friends, as if she hadn’t told anyone who’d listen she’d seen a rat in his garden a few weeks ago. She’d threatened to ring up the council, get Health and Safety to prosecute him.
‘Yeah, I’m fine.’
A thin little smile spread across her face as she surveyed his hard work.
‘What’s brought this on?’
He stared at a point about a foot above her head, like a man gripped by a vision.
‘I’m planning some big changes round here.’
‘Really?’
She couldn’t quite manage to keep a hint of sarcasm out of her voice. He smiled blandly at her, watching her struggle to conceal her impatience. She hadn’t come out here to be fobbed off like her husband. She nodded at the hole.
‘What’s that for?’
‘What?’
He was enjoying this now.
‘The big hole behind you.’
Aidan wheeled around in surprise.
‘Oh, that.’
He hooked his thumbs into his belt loops, looked down fondly at his work.
‘It may look like a hole to you, but that’s just the beginning. I’m building a wildlife sanctuary.’
‘Wildlife,’ she repeated.
‘Yeah, I get a lot of wildlife in my garden.’
‘What sort?’
He winked at her.
‘Rats. Big buggers.’ He held his hands about a foot apart.
‘About that size, some of them – surprised you haven’t noticed.’
She shot him a deep-freeze stare, then turned on her heel. Aidan burst out laughing as she slammed the back door behind her.
Strangely enough, though the factory was set to be closed down, the orders showed no sign of drying up and it was another busy morning in the warehouse. It was a harsh, impersonal workplace, the days repetitive and draining. Exactly the kind of environment Aidan had wanted after Eileen’s death; somewhere he could spend eight hours a day without any opportunity for dangerous introspection.
Thousands of cardboard boxes of varying shapes and sizes were lined up like faceless recruits on a parade ground. Stapled, tightly sealed in plastic, and labelled, ready for transporting. Yells and shouts, whistles and laughter bounced off the high metal ceiling and walls. The constant hum and whirr of forklift trucks, the smack and thud of heavy loads mingled with the determinedly jaunty sounds of Radio 2 booming out from speakers mounted high on the walls. It was like a greenhouse in the summer, as cold as ice on a winter morning. The harsh strip lighting scalded your eyes if you looked up too quickly; the air was thick with the smell of oil, plastic and stale sweat.
They had been working flat out. After sitting at home, worrying himself sick about the future, Aidan was enjoying the rigorous work-out. He liked to be busy. That way the voices inside your head didn’t have time to throw doubts, recriminations and interrogations at you.
What in god’s name were you thinking of ? That’ll never work, give that idea up now, you old fool. What have you done with your life – nothing!
No, if the mind had to work in tandem with the body, it was a much nicer customer. There were all kinds of things lurking in your head that you just didn’t want to know about. In another era, he probably would have talked to a priest about them. Nowadays people went on Trisha instead and made a spectacle of themselves, spewing their guts in public. But there was no easy answer: talking changed nothing. He didn’t see what good saying the same things over and over would do, apart from boring your friends to death. Some things were better left unexamined. You needed to keep active to stop them from surfacing.
He liked the banter too, once you got a rhythm going and the job was under control, the jokes would start flying.
‘This bloke goes to the doctor, he says, Doctor, every time I have sex with my wife she . . .’
It didn’t matter if everyone had heard them before, once someone started telling jokes it was a sign that everything was flowing.
Gwyn came to collect another stack of boxes to load up. He parked his forklift next to Aidan, who was standing with his hands on his hips, taking a breather. Gwyn had noticed a change in Aidan’s mood these last few days, he’d been less morose, more like his old self, had even started laughing and taking part again.
Gwyn winked at him, said, ‘Still worried about the price of coffins?’
Aidan winked back.
‘Nah, not anymore. I’ve asked Pancho to get me one. He’ll save me a fortune.’
Gwyn stared at him blankly for a few seconds, then moved on without a word.
Shauna was browsing in the open-air craft market in Cardiff city centre, looking for a present for Charlie’s birthday. She heard someone calling out her name, turned round to find Joy beaming at her.
‘How are you, love?’
‘I’m fine, Joy. Yourself ?’
‘Oh, you know me, I never complain.’
Shauna managed to keep a straight face. The spiteful, venomous old bitch.
‘So what brings you to Cardiff ?’
‘Me and Ken are going to see the Band of the Coldstream Guards at St David’s Hall. He’s in a bookshop at the moment – buying more books about steam trains, I expect.’
Shauna had just spotted a nice watercolour of Cader Idris that Charlie might like, and wanted to check out the price. Joy noticed her distracted air, clamped a concerned expression on her face and got to the point.
‘Is your dad OK?’
‘Yeah, considering.’
‘Considering what?’
Joy’s eyes shone with excitement.
‘The fact that he’s being made redundant.’
‘Yes, of course.’
The excitement faded, she knew about that. Shauna now realised she’d rushed over to pass on some gossip. She hated giving her the satisfaction of showing she was interested, but couldn’t help worrying about Aidan.
‘Why do you ask?’
Joy drew closer.
‘He’s started behaving very strangely.’
She gave Shauna one of her significant looks, then waited.
‘How strange?’
‘Well, after all these years he’s finally decided to do something about the garden. He spent the whole weekend cutting the grass and weeds, I’ve never seen anything like it. He said he was planning some big changes.’
That was strange.
‘Isn’t that good?’
Joy gave a little angry twitch of her head, ‘He was very rude when I asked him about it. He told me he was building a wildlife sanctuary.’
‘A what?’
Joy looked at her scornfully. ‘Well of course he isn’t, he was being sarcastic.’
‘Oh.’
Shauna was beginning to lose the thread now.
‘I mean, naturally I was curious, since he’d dug a great big hole the week before.
Ken said that by the time he’d finished, he was up to his neck in it.’
She widened her eyes.
‘If I didn’t know better, I’d swear it was a grave.’
As Shauna stood in the marketplace, digesting Joy’s latest gossip, Aidan was sitting at the dining-room table, an open exercise book in front of him, chewing a biro. The page was covered with crossings-out, exclamation marks, arrows and asterisks, the table scattered with screwed-up pages. There was a knack to this kind of thing, and he didn’t seem to have it. It reminded him too much of being back at school, his English teacher asking them to write an essay. What you did on your holidays this summer, two pages, starting now. He’d be fine talking about his holidays in the playground before school began – no trouble then – but as soon as he sat down in front of a blank page, he seized up.
He read back what he’d written.
I have taken this desperate step as a last resort. Sunny Jim Electronics have turned down every offer that the government, the Welsh Assembly and the union have made. I think it’s about time that employers in this country started treating their workers with more respect and stopped showing them the door when it suits them, without any sense of responsibility for the misery they’re causing.
I dread to think what’s going to happen to this town if they close down the factory. Every year it gets harder to make ends meet. Every year another town round here goes under. And once they’ve gone under they never come back. Now it looks like it’s going to be us.
It seems no matter how much we bend and twist and stretch we’re still not flexible enough for the demands of today’s labour market. We have to change, we can’t go on as we are, that’s all you hear them say now, the politicians. But while they’re very fond of telling other people how they need to change, they don’t seem very keen to follow their own advice – their pay rises and their bonuses get bigger and bigger.
It had taken him an hour, and he meant every single word, and it was shite. There were so many things he didn’t know how to say, that he wasn’t even sure you could say in a press release.
The phone rang. Aidan walked into the hall, picked it up.
‘Hello.’
‘Dad?’
‘Oh, hi-ya, Shauna, how are you, love?’
‘I’m fine, how are you?’
He walked back into the living room, sat back down at the table, staring at the exercise book. He picked up his pen, wrote His family are behind him every inch of the way, drew a line underneath.
‘Dad?’
‘Sorry, Shauna, I’m fine.’
‘Really?’
He didn’t want her worrying about him; this wasn’t her problem.
‘Only Joy was telling me about this big hole you’ve dug in the garden.’
So that was what this was all about.
‘Did she now? Nosy cow, I’ll bet she’s dying to know what I’m doing.’
‘Dad – what are you doing?’
He’d have to tell her sooner or later, it wasn’t fair to keep her in the dark, and he certainly couldn’t lie to her. That way he’d be no better than Richter. But something happened halfway through his explanation of his master plan. The more he imagined her anxious face at the other end of the line, the more insane his plan felt. When he’d finished, he said ‘So there, now you know – see, there’s nothing to be worried about.’
Static and silence greeted his final flourish.
‘Shauna? Are you there?’
‘Dad, I’m coming to see you. We need to talk.’