Either Way

Robert Etheridge spent the split-second it took to slip the Focus into reverse surveying the crunchy, rust-coloured carpet of decaying sycamore leaves that lined the gutters of Carmichael Avenue. He took a moment to appreciate the unexpected dose of urban beauty; the vivid hues of their slow demise combining to banish the grayscale aesthetic of the cul-de-sac, temporarily bringing a certain picturesque charm to the neighbourhood.

The time was a minute after half past one in the afternoon. The lady over the road - currently peering from behind her curtains - witnessed a middle-aged, professional-looking individual in a black, polyester-lined business suit park carefully at the side of the road. His kerbside wheels’ short foray into the clogged gutter left them scantily dressed in a ragged jacket of damp leaves, which peeled and fell from the tyres as the vehicle slowed. The engine spluttered to a final standstill directly opposite a wall-bordered wheely bin enclosure that loosely constituted the front garden of number eleven.

Robert scrutinised the brass-plated numbers affixed to the unsightly rows of terraced housing, then checked his nearside wing mirror and eased open the car door. His forgettable face contorted into a tight grimace as his knees took his weight, then returned seamlessly to being immaculately devoid of expression. He straightened his tie, closed the car door and, after looking both ways, crossed the road. In his right hand was a black briefcase, featureless except for two shiny silver clasps that held it closed; in his left, he gripped a packet of cigarettes, which he slid into his jacket pocket as he approached the house. One more appointment to wrap up, then he could head home and catch the Arsenal game.

He reached the threshold of the property. A skinny black cat leapt from his path up onto the low wall by the road, watching him suspiciously as he walked by.

"Ben, hurry up, he’s here!" Julie yelled, peering nervously out of the living room window.

A chain flushed upstairs, then the hurried stomp of Ben’s footsteps thudded through the floorboards. He jogged down the staircase, chuckling guiltily.

"Best keep him out of the John for a few minutes!"

"You’re disgusting," Julie said, reluctantly finding amusement in his rogue usage (and lifetime debut) of the term ‘John’. "Look at this guy, by the way…" She gestured out the window. "I don’t think this is gonna be much fun."

Ben looked outside. One glance was enough for him to concur. The bottoms of the man’s baggy pinstripe trousers flapped in the breeze; a half-mast flag commemorating the death of style. The sizeable chasm between his trousers and shoes revealed a pair of bright, spotty socks; ones worn, no doubt, in lieu of a personality. The seniority of his appearance didn’t befit the door-to-door nature of his job; a presumable track record of being repeatedly overlooked for management positions lent a big-fish-in-a-small-pond snootiness to the way he held himself. Yes. Without a doubt, this was the guy he’d spoken to on the phone.

His eyes lit up childishly. "We could make it fun," he said.

"Oh yeah? What do you have in mind?’"

"Remember what I was saying the other day about palindromes?’"

Julie rolled her eyes. "Oh, God..."

"You know, words that read the same in both directions. We were talking about your friend, Hannah…"

"My friend’s dog, Hannah. My friend is Lucy. You know, the one who came to our wedding, the one whose wedding we’re invited to?"

"Right. Er—did I RSVP to that one, or did you?"

 "You did," she said, "and I swear to god, if you’ve addressed our response to their dog…"

"I'm sure I didn’t,’ Ben said, unconvincingly. "Anyway, let’s see who can squeeze the most palindromes into conversation with this bloke, alright? Winner gets whatever they want. It’ll be a laugh."

"Will it?"

Ben watched the familiar duel unfold: the responsible young adult versus the girl who loved to laugh. There was only ever one victor.

"Fine. You’ll win, but I reckon you’ll get way too into it and make a fool of yourself, which is kind of the same as me winning. Just don’t get our application rejected, alright? We really need this mortgage."

He sensed the genuine concern in her voice, so he took her hands in his and pulled her close.

"Hey. We don’t need anything. A mortgage would be nice, sure," he said, squeezing her hands. "But we have everything we need right here." She didn’t seem convinced. "I will try not to blow it, though," he added.

"Thank you."

There was a knock at the door; a quickfire quintuplet, lightly drummed by a single knuckle. Ben opened the door and greeted him with a shake of the hand.

"Hello, I’m Ben. Nice to meet you."

"Robert. Likewise—"

"Wow," Ben whistled, peering eagerly around Robert without inviting him inside. "Couldn’t help but peep at your race car there! Some set of wheels you’ve got!"

He placed an unnatural emphasis on the qualifying words for Julie’s benefit, well aware that she was eavesdropping from the living room. She shrieked with laughter, muffled immediately by her sleeve. Robert looked back at his decidedly unimpressive four-door estate. A sizeable patch of paintwork flaked away around an irreparable dent in the rear passenger door. A kingdom of cobweb shimmered beneath the wing mirror. Crudely etched into the dried sediment of some bygone condensation was a minimalist illustration of a set of male genitals, persisting stubbornly many weeks after its anonymous creation. All in all, it was certainly no race car.

Robert gestured into the house. "Shall we?" he said.

"Of course," Ben replied, leading the way. He entered the living room triumphantly, holding 3 fingers up by his chest out of the man’s sight. "Julie, this is Robert. Robert—my wife, Julie."

Julie composed herself and shook his hand before offering him a seat on the sofa. He placed his briefcase on the coffee table and released the clasps, exposing a stack of documents inside.

"Mind if I smoke?" he asked.

"Rather you didn’t inside, if it’s all the same," Ben said. "There’s a little garden out back, though."

"Don’t worry," he said. He slid the packet back into his jacket. "So, you said on the telephone that you would each be able to provide evidence of your annual income?"

The practically infinite combinations of the alphabet circled Ben’s mind. Promising sequences collided experimentally as he burned through his entire vocabulary, inspecting the structure of each word, searching for a suitable response which fit the necessary criteria. An absurdly long silence elapsed in which he appeared to consider his answer to Robert’s frankly binary question with an unnecessary degree of care.

"I did, did I?" he replied, side-eyeing Julie proudly. It was too much for her. She disappeared to the kitchen, her shoulders bobbing with laughter.

"Can I get either of you a drink?" she shouted back.

"Tea, please," Robert said. "Milk, no sugar. Thank you." He turned back to Ben. "So, may I see some payslips?"

"Yes, of course, sorry," he said, his bravado immediately crumbling without the validation of Julie’s amusement. He obediently passed the man a folder of photocopied payslips that they had prepared during the week.

"Thank you. Now, sources of income. What is it that you both do? And will you be obtaining funds from anywhere besides your regular employment and your personal savings?"

"Oh, we’ll borrow or rob if we have to," Ben said loudly, his eyes alight with satisfaction. Julie had better have heard that one.

Robert wasn’t impressed. Ben cleared his throat.

"I’m a graphic designer," he said, "Julie’s a nurse. And no, just our salaries and the money we’ve saved."

Robert frowned. His pen lingered above the page uncertainly.

"'Graphic designer’?" he repeated with a frown.

Julie re-entered the room with a small plate of digestive biscuits and set them down on the coffee table.

"G-r-a…" she began, defensively.

"I design visual concepts and promotional material for a number of commercial clients," Ben explained, smiling appreciatively at Julie. "It’s a real job. Look…" He picked up his most recent payslip and placed it into the man’s hand.

"Ok," he said, apparently satisfied. "Any loans or other types of debt? Big items of expenditure coming up?"

"Nope," Ben said, glancing across the room to make sure Julie was still in earshot. "Nothing on our radar."

Julie snorted. Robert didn’t seem to notice.

"Robert," she began, in a contrived tone. "May I refer you to the biscuits? Please do help yourself."

He took one from the plate. Julie smirked and flashed Ben a preparatory look; one that unmistakably told him to listen carefully. Sinking into her armchair, she sighed in relief.

"It’s so nice to finally sit down," she said. "I’ve been on my feet all week, dashing from patient to patient…"

Robert washed his biscuit down with a gulp of tea, clearly disinterested in the small talk. Ben narrowed his eyes, desperately trying to figure out where this was going in time to claim the punchline.

"Honestly, when I took the job, nobody told me—"

"Just how much nurses run?" Ben intervened, rising triumphantly from his seat.

"NO!" Julie squealed. "How on EARTH did you get that so quickly?"

Robert set his mug down on the coffee table and got to his feet.

"Listen, I think I have what I need," he said, checking his watch to make sure he’d make it home for kick-off. "Let me go away and see what your options are, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can."

Julie was mortified. She hadn’t meant to get so into it. Resigning to the loss of her credibility, she collected Robert’s mug, picked up the box of biscuits and rushed out of the living room, shooting a desperate glare at Ben. Fix this. It was in his hands now.

"You sure?" he said, rushing to his feet, sensing the real possibility that his little game was about to cost them a place on the property ladder. "Plenty of biscuits left," he pointed out, frantically, ‘and we’re happy to answer any other questions you might have.’

Robert shoved a fistful of documents back into his briefcase and fastened shut the silver clasps. Julie returned from the kitchen, visibly shaken.

"Anything else we can provide, any information you need, you just let us know," she begged.

"Thank you. But I have everything I need here," Robert said, tapping his briefcase. He walked out of the room. Julie clasped her arm over her mouth in horror.

Ben followed Robert. "We’ll be hearing from you then, will we?"

"You will indeed," Robert replied, one foot already out of the door.

Ben reflexively shoved an arm in front of him, blocking his path, then meekly twisted it into the offer of a handshake. Robert shook it loosely, then began to walk away. Julie joined Ben at the door, her eyes wide with panic.

"It was lovely to meet you, Robert!" she shouted after him.

The cat that had been on the wall now lay in their gateway, basking in the tepid glow of the afternoon sun.

"Watch your step, there!" she said, refining her tone, for his benefit, to one that unmistakably prioritised his wellbeing over the cat’s.

Robert stopped calmly in his tracks and stood for a moment, still facing away. His briefcase swung gently in his hand. His trousers flapped once more in the wind. He peered down at the lazing cat and then slowly turned around to face them. He looked straight past Ben and addressed Julie directly.

"Don’t worry, madam," he said. "I won’t step on no pets. And please, call me Bob."

Bob wasn’t an imposing man, but as he looked back, he seemed to look down upon them from a great height. He cast aspersions with eyes that were more disappointed than insulted; a wise old master scrutinising his foolish apprentices; a vocabular sorcerer who, without lifting a finger, had beaten them at their own game.

He walked away. Ben stood in the doorway, dumbfounded. Julie ran through to the living room to watch him depart from behind the safety of the windowpane, as though cowering from some terrible force of nature.

Bob stepped around the dozing cat and crossed the road. The carpet of leaves lying in state on the pavement crunched beneath him. He took out a cigarette from his pocket. The breeze licked at the excess material of his trousers one last time, then he opened the door and lowered himself into the driver’s seat. He turned the ignition, then the Focus’s leafy wheels pulled away from the gutter and disappeared out of sight.

Ben closed the door and joined Julie on the sofa by the window. For a long time, they stared outside at the kerb where the car had been parked. It was Ben who finally broke the silence.

"I didn’t see that one coming."

They exchanged inscrutable glances.

"Bob," Ben repeated, toying with the word in his mouth.

Julie really did want to be annoyed. She wanted to tell him what a ridiculous idea his stupid little game was. She wanted to tell him to grow up and to start taking life more seriously. She wanted to ask what on Earth they were going to do when Bob spread word of their immaturity around his professional network and made it his personal mission to ensure they would never be lent a penny from any bank or building society within fifty miles. Her face betrayed her, cracking into a hopeless, irrepressible smile. Seconds later, they were floored, incapacitated by one of the most intense bouts of laughter of their lives.

Maybe their application would be rejected, Ben thought. Maybe they’d need to rent for a little longer or expand the parameters of their search. Or maybe, just maybe, when Bob sat down to have his dinner tonight, he would smile; he would see a younger version of himself in them, and would look upon their application favourably.

"You know what," Julie said, after their laughter subsided. "We might get this mortgage, we might not. But we’ll always have each other, so it doesn’t matter either way, right?"

"Right," Ben said. "Just like a palin—"

He raised his arms and managed to shield himself just before the sofa cushion that Julie had launched across the room made firm contact with his head.

.