On Reflection

James recalled moving from the grunt work of manual labor to shift manager, where he’d made sure the machines kept running and the staff busy. Production was up, accidents were down, and everyone was getting along. He’d had a sense of pride and worked hard towards turning the job into a career, but that didn’t turn out the way he’d hoped. The family business was used to absorb and occupy the offspring. Useless buggers they were too, hired directly from school into management and didn’t give a toss. There was no talk of promotion for James. No one came and asked him what he thought. Gradually, he came to concede that the shop floor would be the sum of his ambitions.  

Now he’d retired and was as free as a bird. He had his pensions, not large, but with no mortgage or rent, he could manage without taking on a part-time job like the other old sods he saw each morning at the bus stop, still having to clock in. But what was the point of it all? He had limited time and no bucket list. He wasn’t interested in the pyramids of Egypt or even a trip to Whitby.

James shifted in his recliner. Reflecting, he would have to admit that he always just took it, even when he knew at the heart of him that he was being taken advantage of. He was flattered when he’d seen her looking at him at work, even more so when she took him up on the offer of a date. His co-workers had dared him to ask her out, and he was so convinced they were just setting him up that he reluctantly blurted it out in the employee lunchroom. He was floored, and the others couldn’t fathom it either, when she took him up on it, but there it was. He’d been so tongue-tied on their first dinner date he was convinced she wouldn’t go for another, but she did, and they became an item. Eventually, she told him they should get married. He didn’t ask her why him? as he didn’t want to press his luck.

He shook his head. What had he been thinking? She was so far out of his league. She had the perfect body and knew it, flaunting it around, chatting and laughing to everyone, her blue eyes flashing, her blond head seen bobbing here and there on the mill floor as she chatted up all the men and gossiped with the women. The teeth were the only visible imperfection. Just that bit too small that James couldn’t help but be reminded of a hamster as she ate. Otherwise, she was perfect and just as good looking as some TV stars. Someone had once hinted afterwards that she was pregnant, but there hadn’t been a baby. It had never come up. He’d never followed it up. At the heart of him, he didn’t dare ask. Sometimes, like today, he could physically feel her hand. He shook himself.

 James had just qualified for the height requirement for the police, with slightly protruding eyes like his father that hinted at a mild thyroid condition. Sometimes at school they would taunt him, calling him Froggy and hopping around him. No wonder it ended the way it had. Any confidence he’d ever had in his looks had been knocked out of him. Even his dad in his broad Yorkshire accent, said, ‘Eeh lad, thee and me were at the back o’ the bus when the looks were ‘anded oot.’ He tried to push his father's words out of his mind, but after all these years they still rankled.

Through all these thoughts, James felt a growing discontent. He felt bad news was never far from him, and it was always other people who had the good news and won the lottery. They hadn’t been left for a married man. They hadn’t had their wife carry on right under their nose and then just up and leave without a word. They hadn’t had to live in a house with a demented mother and an angry father seemingly determined to smoke himself to death. Ultimately, they were both gone, but it had taken years and his youth went with them. And now this.

In a burst of misery and anger, James pushed himself up from the chair and went to the kitchen for another beer. Throwing the bottle cap on the kitchen counter, he startled at his reflection in the partly steamed window. Who was that man? Where did all those wrinkles and the thinning hair come from? He looked at the hands that had never played piano or built something useful. He glanced at his paunch and looked quickly away. He noticed parts of himself as if he were a stranger. He thought it so cruel that he should have to face the end of his life when he’d never really lived it. He stood, motionless, watching the rivulets of tears navigate the wrinkles on his face down into the sink.

James felt an urgent need to do something, anything, that would make him feel less useless. He thought about the young woman he’d seen in the dirty sleeping bag out in the cold. Life wasn’t fair for lots of people, not just him. He could try, using the precious time he had left, to take control and do something useful. There had to be some point to it.

He knew he’d become invisible as he passed through life, hardly touching a soul. That had to change. While his health held out, he could try to help people who had been passed over, people like him who might never have had a break. But how? He didn’t have any useful skills and little money to hand out. Then his brain gave a lurch. What if he could become one of the criminals he’d previously tried to apprehend? It was mostly their stupidity that got them caught. His heart picked up speed. Maybe it was him who had been the mug all along, walking the straight and narrow. Towards what? A recliner and an occasional IPA? There was no time left to punish him on this earth and, luckily, he didn’t believe in hell.