“So, ladies and gentlemen,” says the Bright Young Thing from the training department, flashing a smile that does great credit to her orthodontist, “I hope you’ve enjoyed this morning’s seminar. See you all back here at two o’clock prompt.”
While his colleagues close their ring binders and scrape back their chairs, Nigel Carmichael takes the opportunity to refill his fountain pen from a bottle of Quink.
Gary Bostock approaches Fred Pilkington at the desk to Nigel’s left. “Coming to the pub?”
“Sure. The afternoon will be a lot more bearable with a couple of pints of Pedigree inside us.” Fred jumps up and, as he tries to squeeze past Nigel, he knocks into him and a few drops of blue ink spill onto the morning’s lecture notes.
“Bother!” says Nigel.
Gary sniggers.
“Sorry, mate!” says Fred, glancing back at Gary, his eyebrows arching like the tops of question marks. Gary shrugs.
“Want to join us?” Fred asks.
Nigel pushes his jam-jar bottom glasses back up his nose. “No thanks, got to pick up a couple of things from the shops.”
“Suit yourself,” says Gary.
“Haven’t you got a wife to do that kind of thing?” says Fred, but he and Gary are out of the room before Nigel can reply. Not that any answer would satisfy a couple of yobs like Fred and Gary, men who seem to think that it’s Nigel’s fault he’s never married, never had children. Men who carry on as if it’s a joke that, at fifty-nine, Nigel still lives with his mother, now so old and frail that not only does he have to do his own shopping and cooking and ironing, but hers as well. But none of that need concern Nigel now as he picks up his gaberdine mac from the hooks alongside the door, and follows his colleagues out of the classroom for his lunch break.
The front door of the building marks the boundary, like a customs post separating the world of work from Nigel’s other life. He steps out into the street with the excitement of a child entering a theme park. Why waste a precious hour cooped up within the four walls of the pub when he could be slap bang in the middle of the hustle and bustle of the town centre? Why should he grumble that the company has sent them to brush up on the finer points of telecommunication skills when it means getting away from the barren landscape of the industrial estate for a whole day? What does he care what Fred and Gary think of him; Nigel can go places way beyond the frontiers of their imaginations.
Nigel hardly dares blink for fear of losing a single moment of the experience: the multicoloured facades of the shops with the goods jostling for attention in the windows; the church spire trying to pierce a hole in the sky; and the people -- especially the people -- in every conceivable shape and size. And not just the sights, but treats for his other senses, too: the hum of the traffic; the whiff of fat and vinegar from the fish and chip shop; the breeze caressing his cheek. So what about taste? One should never neglect taste. Nigel can detect a faint metallic flavour in his mouth, from the car exhausts, or is that just his imagination determined to conjure up the full set? So much to take in, it leaves him somewhat nauseous, as if he has indulged himself too much at an all-you-can-eat buffet.
“Excuse me, please,” snaps a young mother pushing a sturdy three-wheeler buggy. Nigel steps to the side to give her room to pass by on the pavement, trying not to stare too obviously at her dyed-pink hair and nose ring. Excuse me, please, he repeats in his head, striving to recapture the exact timbre of opprobrium and pleading, as she totters past on unsuitable heels. An older woman in a knitted hat like a tea-cosy scowls at him. Nigel blushes. Sometimes he just doesn’t quite manage to keep his fascination with other people’s utterances to himself.
