It’s the thought of the money that keeps him going. With only a tiny amount of board and lodging he uses to pay his mum for his keep, he’s now got a tidy little sum tucked away and hopes that soon he will have enough to use as a deposit for his own place. What he really needs to do before that time is find another job, if possible one that doesn’t make him feel as if he is losing his mind. There are days when he feels certain that sticking hot pins in his eyes would be infinitely preferable to what he has to do hour after hour, day after day in that fucking awful factory.
He took today off, using one of his precious holidays to prepare for this evening. He didn’t expect such an uptake for the classes. After it was advertised by the community centre, he received ten replies within days and knew at that point that there would be no backing out.
He’s hoping to keep it as casual and informal as possible. That’s his way. He’s never been one for formalities and unnecessary procedures, preferring a relaxed environment in which to work. Gaynor, who helps run the community centre, is a friend of his mum’s. She has been at the centre of this, printing leaflets, placing them in windows, mentioning it on their Facebook page.
For so long, it didn’t feel real that it would happen, that his mum’s idea for him would come to fruition, and now here he is, nervous, with a growling roiling stomach and sweaty palms, counting down the hours until he takes an art class for which he is desperately under qualified. He lets out a snort of derision. Desperately under qualified is an understatement if ever there was one. He has a diploma in art & design. No tutorial experience or certificates to back up his knowledge. All he has is his sketchpad, pencils and paints, and a paintbrush.
‘Honey, we’re the local community centre, not the Royal College of Art,’ Gaynor had said with a smile when he told her he wasn’t really qualified to teach adults. ‘We provide the required insurance. All you need is your skills and that lovely easy manner of yours that your mum is so proud of telling everybody about.’
He had felt his face flush at her words. Compliments have never sat easily with him. He has spent the last twenty years trying to get on with his life, getting his head down and making a living the best way he knows how. With only one relationship that petered out a few years ago, he has focused his energies on getting his life back on track, achieving things that he once thought never possible. Even the tiniest of accomplishments have been like climbing a mountain. Beginning life on the bottom rung of the ladder has been difficult to say the least, but he is starting to get somewhere and somewhere has to be better than nowhere.
Reaching into his bag, he checks that he has the necessary equipment. He’ll need a pen and pad for a register. That much he does know, that he has to take names and numbers for fire regulations. It’s not as if ten people are going to push their numbers over the limit but he wants to get it right. Sticking to the rules is important to him. He learnt the hard way that breaking them comes at a price.
A spear of discontent and anxiety twists in his gut. A memory flashes into his head. He bats it away. Now isn’t the time for such maudlin behaviour. He needs to stay focused, get it right, not drive people away by presenting himself as a mumbling miserable figure who doesn’t know his arse from his elbow. He has to appear confident, slightly brazen even. Nobody wants to watch a bumbling idiot who can barely string a sentence together because they’re so wracked with nerves. They want to be taught by somebody who oozes charisma and confidence. Somebody who knows exactly what they’re doing. He has to be that person.
Now definitely isn’t the time for his own memory to start bashing him over the head, trying to remind him that deep down, he’s a nobody, a damaged individual who, it seems, can never forget. He wishes he had the type of brain that would allow him a moment’s reprieve from it, but he doesn’t. It’s there every morning when he gets up and is stuck in his head before he goes to sleep every night. Maybe it’s a lifelong thing that will never dissipate, an internal barometer of how messed up he really is. Maybe he is beyond redemption and this thing will follow him around for the rest of his days. He likes to think not but then sometimes in his darker days, he wonders if what took place was nothing to do with his upbringing and everything to do with him, with who he really is, the wicked malicious Ashton that lurks deep in his soul.
The minutes turn into hours as he sits, trying to ready himself for this thing. He has tried watching the TV, listening to the radio, listening to his music on Spotify. Nothing has worked. Nothing has managed to soothe him, to ease his state of angst. To others, taking an art class with a handful of local people would be as easy as breathing, but not to him.
He goes over everything in his head, pre-empting their queries, thinking up answers to questions that haven’t yet been asked. This is what he does. He has spent his whole adult life planning out his days to preserve his well-being. He has come too far to let everything come crashing down around him, has worked hard to get to where he is, which, compared to many, isn’t so far at all, but for him it’s been a global trek. He’s walked the length and breadth of the earth a thousand times over to reach this point in his life. This is why, he tells himself, I have to get it right, to not allow my nerves to get the better of me and blow it before it’s even begun.
He stands up, stares at the hands of the clock as they move around the silver face. 5.30pm. Soon his mum will be in, exhausted after another day at work, standing at a production line in another shitty factory that pays minimum wage for back-breaking work. Still, it’s far better than how life used to be when he was a kid. He bites at the inside of his mouth, tells himself to stop it. He’s at it again, harking back to those days, to that time, to that fucking miserable period in their lives when everything went so horribly wrong, tainting his existence, staining it a murky shade of grey.
As soon as he gets in later, he’s going to have that beer. He thinks of how it will keep him going; the thought of that cold liquid, the yeasty flavour, the creamy froth, how it will put a haze over everything, a welcome blurring around the edges of his life. Just the thought of it makes his mouth water.
‘Hello, love.’ His mother’s voice rings through their dingy little hallway with its peeling paint and mouldy wallpaper. There was a time he wouldn’t have noticed these things. Now they seem to be paramount in his mind. He thinks, perhaps, that he now sees this house for what it is – somewhere that contains a pile of filthy unwanted memories. A place where bad things happened. Terrible revolting things. For now, it is somewhere to live, a place for him to sleep and eat. It has saved him from a life of near poverty in Lincolnshire where his wages barely covered his rent but he knows that it’s bad for him, living here. Too much hurt. Too much damage. This house and the things that went on in it all those years ago were almost the undoing of him. He doesn’t blame his mum. What could she have done? Besides, he gave her as much misery in the end. His behaviour, what he did, it all added to their downfall. He was just as much a part of it and now he has to repay her for standing by him, for never questioning him or turning her back on him. She was always there for him. Still is.
‘In here, Mum,’ he shouts, glad of her presence, relieved that her arrival has broken the wicked spell he was under, his mind refusing to shut down and allow him a moment’s peace.