Fur coat, no knickers

It was about half-way through January, the coldest time of the year. Thankfully, it wasn’t raining, and there wasn’t really any wind to speak of. She had told her husband she was meeting her friend Jane in the city, and it was Friday, so he would not suspect anything out of the ordinary. Jane and she had been going into the city on their weekly shopping trips for so many years now, who was to say this one would be different. She was free then, to have her five minutes and set her plans without anyone being the wiser.

She parked the Range Rover in the underground. You couldn’t expect her to park it on the street, this area of town was, at best, questionable. She was quietly walking down the street, not too fast, and not too slow. It was daytime but she still didn’t want to be seen here of all places. Imagine, Natalie Joel Smiths, seen walking down this drainpipe of a street. If her destination had not been at the end of it, she wouldn’t have been caught dead here. This was one of the few places she could go, where nobody would bother her while she thought.

She adjusted her Gucci sunglasses, more to hide her identity than anything. Reaching inside her bag to check her phone, she passed one of the locals. The letters MK glittered on her bag, and always caught attention. It could also have been her coat, after all leopard print was not as common as you’d think. In any case she turned the corner into the park area, and soon saw the bench she was headed for.

Sitting down she finally breathed a sigh of relief. With nobody around she took off her glasses and took out a cigarette case, liberating a cigarette and fishing for a lite. She didn’t usually smoke, but events had unfolded in such a way that it was either this, or something far stronger. She looked at her well-manicured nails, the gold rings on her fingers and decided to lite up and draw a deep breath, closing her eyes as she felt the familiar, long forgotten tickle in her lungs. For a second the world seemed to go quiet and still. The birds whistling lightly, the breeze gently blowing by, but nothing happening at all. It was as if nobody else in the world was there, and all the problems were melting away. As she let her breath slowly slip away, she heard the gravelly voice she had come here for “Hello Nat”.

Opening her eyes and turning to gentleman next to her she smiled and said, “Hello Dad, how’ve you been?”. The man, Eric George Digbeth, weighing far too much as his enormous belly showed, was well into his seventies, dressed in a pair of jeans, a white turtle-neck jumper, jacket, white trainers, and flannel flat cap; smiled back at his daughter with a knowing smile. “Not too bad, been quite some time since we saw each other” he said knowingly and added “why don’t you give me one of those, but don’t tell your mum”, he winked as she offered him a cigarette. “When have I ever grassed you up?” she asked as he reached for the lighter “Never that I can recall, the price was never right!” they both smiled and laughed quietly.

They sat on the bench, enjoying the breeze for a few moments, reminiscing of better times and younger days, laughing at family memories in a melancholy haze while they enjoyed the cheeky smoke that had brought them back together. Time seemed to have stopped, nobody was interested in their little corner of the park. The grass shimmered lightly, allowing the wind to blow through its blades. From time to time a small flock of birds would fly overhead, reminding them that the world was in fact, theirs for the time being.

One story Eric always told was of the time he was called home urgently by his son Bruce in tears, who confessed to having shot his mother Alma with a bow and arrow Eric had given his younger son Darren for his tenth birthday. Natalie recalled between bouts of hysterical laughter how she and her sister Kathryn had helped her father perform home surgery to remove the arrow lodged in her mother’s shoulder. No permanent damage done, the day ended with a bandaged-up Alma chasing Bruce and Eric around the kitchen table, through the garden and out into the street brandishing a rolling-pin in her still very functional right hand. The child, for daring to shoot anything at his mother, and the adult, for the abhorrent lack of foresight in giving their children a weapon and expecting nobody would be hurt. The cackles of laughter the memory brought had Natalie doubled over, forgetting for an instant the reason she had come. Eric was stretched back, ruddy faced, with tears in his eyes and trying to catch his breath which had long escaped him in the joyous bout. So much so he was almost unable to finish the story.

The exchange, pleasant though it was, seemed loaded with the weight of a much deeper, darker conversation yet to come, and both parties knew it as they slowly came to the end of their cigarettes, smiles giving way to serious and sombre faces. Tears of laughter were wiped away as chuckles gave way to quiet stillness. “Nat, you didn’t come here to stroll down memory lane. You look worried. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this worried. Why don’t you tell me why you’re really here?” Natalie crushed out her cigarette, all the while avoiding the old man’s gaze, she looked at her fingers trying to remember when her last manicure was, and when her next one was due. Brushing her blond hair out of the way she finally locked eyes with the old man. Her green eyes met his cobalt blue, dead on. For a second she was six years old again, afraid of Dad finding out she’s done something wrong. The feeling only lasted a moment, then she was back at 42, with her life shoved behind her and the future still ahead. She decided there was nothing to be gained by procrastinating any further.

“I don’t know if you’ve heard…” she began “but things are in a right state. Some years ago, Sam’s business started to suffer. He says that the market has gotten more competitive, that there are many more dealerships, and that’s why our receipts had started to fall. He always would tell me not to worry, but I did. A few months ago, he told me that the Tax Office is auditing his company and that we have a mortgage on the house and business that has not been paid. They have already started to litigate, and unless we come up with some serious cash quickly, they’ll take the lot”. Natalie stood up having grabbed another cigarette, turning away from her father with the excuse of lighting it, all the while hiding the mixture of anger and fear on her face. Once she had regained her composure and fought back the tears, she faced her father once again and recounted several heated conversations with her husband over the last few weeks. The theme was always the same, how the hell did it get to this? And what was he doing to fix it?

Eric listened intently. He had always liked Samuel Smiths, ever since he and Natalie had met each other when they were about 17, on a family holiday. Sam was working in a beach bar, then and he had always seemed like an industrious young man. Eventually they got married and Sam set up a business selling high end luxury cars and pleasure boats to the well-to-dos. He had given his daughter a life she loved, a life any father could hope for his daughter. She became a homemaker of sorts, if you can call having a maid, a nanny to look after the children, someone to do the grocery shopping and someone to wait on her hand and foot, being a homemaker. Business went well for many years, but that was a long time ago.

The family had been living it large for many years, buying a plot of land and building a mini mansion that Eric always considered to be far too over the top, even if business was booming.

But Natalie was happy, Sam seemed like a good husband and provider, and on top of all that, he had given Eric his first grandchild, a ginger-haired devil who had inherited his grandfather’s character, or so they said. Charly they’d named him, and he was now 19 studying an economics degree in some posh private university somewhere with the children of the upper-class. How could he fault Sam? Eric did however always worry that all good things come to an end, and Sam did not seem to be setting anything aside for a rainy day. The conversation he had feared quietly for years was finally here.

As she spoke, the mask of composure slipped, and the odd tear escaped the otherwise stable Natalie. “It sounds to me like what you need is a loan kid” commented the old man, trying to be supportive. “Has he not gone to the banks?”, she bounded on her father unwillingly, her anger reaching a fever pitch “He has gone to the banks, and pandered around every financial institution he can find, but the business is not worth anything, he’s run it into the ground, the house is mortgaged to the hilt, and we have no collateral whatsoever to offer. And to top it off, he’s sick!”.

The backhanded comment hit Eric like a brick. “What do you mean sick?” he turned to face his pacing daughter. “I mean the doctors aren’t sure yet and they’re doing all these tests, but they think it may be Multiple Sclerosis. So, this means that he’s slowly going to be slipping aways now that I need him to get us out of this hole, he’s dug us into…” she all but spat, loosing whatever little composure was left in her outburst of selfish rage. Eric found himself on his feet, facing his daughter gripping at both her elbows. His face was contorted in disbelief as he searched the face of his child hoping somehow, he would realize it was all a bad dream. His daughter was not worried about her husband’s medical state in the slightest. She was not worried about their son having to watch his father waste away under the progression of a wretched disease, or the impact this may have on his studies, his life. She was only concerned about her own material wellbeing.

Furious he barked “Stop it now! We didn’t raise you like this. Is this why you’ve come, to make me feel shame? The man’s probably scared out of his wits at the diagnosis! And what about the boy? You’ve said not a word about him?...”

Natalie rebuked him by freeing herself from his grasp with “If we don’t have a place to live, don’t have a business to bring in money and don’t have someone to run it, then what good is me worrying about his health and the boy, we’ll just starve in the street! What bloody good is he to me if he’s just going to leave us in the lurch!”. Eric Digbeth was completely bewildered. He answered his daughter “You know you shouldn’t be angry with anyone other than yourself. For years you were happy to sit in that big house, spending money. Not once did you ask Sam about the business, where the money came from or how your finances were put together. And here you stand now, shouting at me about all this, with not a sidewards glance at the real problem” interrupting her father she spat “The money is the real problem”. Disappointment came over Eric’s face as he asked “what is it you want me to do?”.

“I want you to help me find a way out of this situation”. Both Natalie and her father knew she was not asking for money, Eric had none. He had lived a simple humble existence after the Second World War, having served his country like so many others, raised his children in a small, decent, and very loving house, and finally retired out of the rat race on a government pension to enjoy his golden years and a series of cold pints on Spanish terraces. There was no hidden money. She was looking for someone smarter than her to tell her what to do, and her father knew it. He did not hesitate to tell his daughter what in his eyes was the right thig to do.

“There’s not much you can do. Sell the unnecessarily huge house you had the man build, settle as many debts as you can, find a place to rent. Sell that monstrosity of a car you had him buy, settle more debts; if there are no debts, use the money to tide you over, buy a second-hand car, preferably as cheaply as you can. Look after your husband and learn about his condition to care for him so he doesn’t suffer undue humiliation, fear, and worry on top of whatever his condition brings, get rid of the glad-rags and the pedicures, manicures and all these other extras that nobody ever needs. And perhaps most importantly, get a job, fast. Be there for him as he has for you for years, you become the provider now”. Natalie recoiled in horror. Downsizing was not on her cards, and getting a job, something so common she had run from all these years? It was almost indecent. How could a woman of her stature stoop so low? What would her friends say when they heard she, Natalie Smiths, had a job? It was out of the question, she was going to have to be cunning, to fight and find a way around all these problems. She had decided that even before she entered the part, she didn’t want to hear any of this defeatist talk. She wanted advice on how to win, to strategize and outsmart the crisis. She needed a captain to weather the storm, not common sense to ground her.

“No, there has to be another way” The coldness in her voice was matched only by the grey clouds that had started to gather overhead. All Eric could do was listen in utter disbelief as she continued “One of the banks said they could lend us money to save at least the house. But we would have to come up with a fraction of the money, something like 20 per cent.” Eric, wanting to see where this dark creature was taking him couldn’t resist asking “And just where do you plan on getting that money from? You’d already thought of selling your car” with a quick drag and a puff of smoke Natalie quipped without missing a beat “Of course not, don’t be silly, I love that car. Jane. We will get the money from Jane. I am going to tell her I am opening a personal shopper business and she will run it for me, I’ll offer her a job until retirement on paper, but secretly we’ll be partners. All she needs to do is come up with the cash”. Eric smiled “has it been so long since we last spoke, that your friend, who is about as workshy as you are, has come into money somehow?” Natalie smiled “she has a husband…”.

Eric did not want to hear it, his mind had made the jump “so let me see if I have this, you’re going to entangle yourself with this woman, in exchange for her getting money from her husband? That is your plan”. She was almost at the halfway point of her second cigarette “Half of it. The bank can’t give us such a huge mortgage directly. They need a young person, younger than 25. That way they can grant us a longer loan of about 60 years, that would make the monthly payments just about doable”. In disbelief Eric stupidly continued the conversation “Neither you nor your friend are 25 years old”. Natalie stared at her father with dead green eyes, and with a coolness that she had never displayed to her father before, she quietly whispered “My son is younger than 25 years old…”. The cringeworthy panic that gripped Eric as his mind made the connection forced his knees to buckle. He sat down on the bench

“So, you want your son, who is barely a man, to mortgage himself to the hilt for the rest of his life, for you to live in that golden cage you call a house. Have you thought what happens if you don’t make the payments? What if he needs a loan for himself someday? Does he even want to do this?...”. Cutting her father short she simply said “He should do this for his parents, he owes us for the life he’s had, and he can be made to want things”.

Eric rose with righteous indignation “There’s probably nothing worse than burying your own son. I had to do it with Bruce. You’re talking about manipulating your son into financial castration. Don’t do it, it is despicable”. Natalie saw her father’s expression of disgust towards the psychopath she had become.

Her mind was made up. She crushed out her cigarette and looked at her father’s gravestone. He passed away 10 years ago, before life came crashing down around her. Whenever she needed to make a difficult decision, she would imagine a conversation with him. Jane had arrived and was coming into the cemetery-park, Natalie had to prepare her performance. Today she was playing the distressed friend who needs Jane the saviour.