Blue Collar (22 page)

It ain’t just dogs who can smell fear? Hmm.

Well, it ain’t just dogs who have teeth either. I’d show ’em.

24 Getting my retaliation in first

I took the initiative for once and picked a place to meet. And it wasn’t the Workers’ Social either. I suggested we met at
St Paul’s. As in the cathedral.

‘Fancy a drink in town this evening? I know a pub in Trafalgar Square that’s never that busy.’

‘Er, yeah, OK. Then afterwards, if we’re hungry, maybe I can treat you to an Indian if you fancy it?’

Well, just let her try and come up with a flasher church than St Paul’s Cathedral. I couldn’t think of anywhere.

Also, and rather more importantly, I needed Charley to actually show up and I wasn’t entirely sure she would if I simply suggested
some neutral pub, restaurant or park bench somewhere after a week of radio silence. Charley might’ve smelt a rat and taken
the opportunity to leave me stewing in my own pilchards as one final ‘fuck you very much’ before disappearing from my life
completely. And I wanted to have my say. Face to face. I owed that much to myself.

So St Paul’s Cathedral was my ace. Impressive, neutral and intriguing enough to entice her along.

I arrived a little before midday and walked around to the main entrance. One side of the building had scaffolding going up
to the first roof, so I stopped for a moment and tried to picture what this place had looked like three-hundred-odd years
ago when it had been rebuilt after the Great Fire. It probably wouldn’t have looked too unlike some of the big building projects
I’d worked on in the past. I’d done a few offices, a couple of supermarkets and even a prison out in Kent in the past, so
I reckon I could’ve found my way around this site without too many problems. I reckon I could’ve probably even got a job if
I’d showed up with my own tools and the boss had been hiring. Things hadn’t changed that much in three hundred years. Technology,
materials and designs had perhaps, but the actual work itself had always been done by blokes like me. It might’ve been Sir
Christopher Wren’s name on the big marble tablet on the wall inside but I didn’t have a doubt in my boots that it was being
kept company by a couple of hundred less obvious engravings that probably hadn’t seen the light of day in three-hundred-odd
years. And I was sure these names warmly greeted a dozen or so new arrivals every time a fresh set of scaffolding went up
to steam-clean the masonry, repoint the lead or install the dean’s new Sky+ dish.

I walked around and through a big set of revolving doors, bought two tickets for admission and left Charley’s with the woman
behind the desk, before heading for the Whispering Gallery.

Situated a hundred feet and two hundred and fifty-nine steps above the church floor, the Whispering Gallery is basically one
big circular walkway with seats around the inside of the dome. It’s so called because apparently if you whisper into the wall
on one side of the gallery, the sound travels around the smooth stonework so that your mate can hear what you’ve just said
right the way over on the other side. ‘Blimey, the bishop’s banging on a bit this morning, isn’t he? Fancy a pint at lunchtime?’
being one whisper I bet this wall had heard a fair few times in the last three hundred years.

Another whisper, according to the tour guide I passed on the stairs, was ‘will you marry me?’ Lots of people proposed to their
other halves in the Whispering Gallery. Hats off, I guess it’s quite a romantic thing to tickle your girlfriend’s ear with.

I wondered how many had used the place to dump theirs.

Now, I wasn’t going to be such an arsehole as to whisper it into the wall to her or string tin cans across the gallery or
nothing. But likewise, I did quite like the sanctity of the place and felt it bullet proofed me against the sort of violent
reaction that was as likely to be heard in the crypt downstairs as on the other side of the gallery.

That sort of thing.

Not that I expected her to flip out this way, but it was always a possibility. People do funny things when they’ve just been
dumped.

I sent Charley a text to let her know where I’d be, then turned off my phone. And this wasn’t just to avoid getting a last
minute SMS dump either. St Paul’s was a church. A house of God. Mobiles were strictly off limits. If visitors wanted to send
messages from this place, it had to be done the old-fashioned way with their hands together and their knees bent.

I found a seat against a quiet wall of the Whispering Gallery and looked at my watch. It was now just after a quarter past
twelve. I’d asked to meet her at half past and arrived early to get the lie of the land. I knew she’d be late. Probably a
quarter of an hour, maybe even half, which normally would tear into my guts and fill my head with visions of being stood up,
but I expected it now. I’d got used to it, so I was able to take a moment and prepare.

To be honest, I wasn’t sure what I’d do if Charley didn’t show up; rethink my whole strategy, probably, but the one thing
I wouldn’t do was enter into some sort of slanging match with her. I’d liked Charley too much to want to us go down that route.
I knew some couples who sniped and bitched at each other for months after they’d split up. Years even. Sometimes for longer
than they’d even dated in the first place. I guess it’s just easier like that sometimes. We invest so much raw emotion into
a relationship that some people have real problems letting go without seeing a return on their investment, whether it be hugs
and kisses or sticks and stones. We all want to know that we mattered to the other person at one stage or another, even if
it was just for a short while.

Equally none of us want to simply sink into the mists of time without laying down some sort of marker to be remembered by.
And that goes for relationships as well as church walls, so some people hang around long after they should, slinging accusations
at the former loves of their lives and ordering them fifty home-delivered pizzas a night.

But that wasn’t for me. I was determined to do this right. Things hadn’t worked out and that was too bad. Really. But I’d
do the right thing and bow out with my dignity intact so that Charley would eventually come to realise that the uncouth,
uneducated and unclipped bricky who she’d thought was beneath her was, in fact, the best fella she’d ever met.

For all the fucking good that would do me… To my surprise, on the dot of half twelve, Charley stepped through the door and
clocked me almost straight away on the far side of the Whispering Gallery. The very sight of her made my heart almost turn
and run and for one headlight-staring moment I wondered if I had it in me to go through with it. Wouldn’t it be simpler and
easier just to let her do it to me, to save me from having to do it to her? Quite possibly, so I had to quickly remind myself
why exactly I was getting my retaliation in first… …if I could remember.

Oh yes, all that stuff.

Charley looked a little breathless herself and I was about to draw a few hasty last-minute conclusions to shore up my resolve
when I remembered that she had just walked up two hundred and fifty-nine steps. She was allowed to look breathless. Just this
once.

What didn’t add up was just how confident she looked. She looked happy, smiling and assured, like she didn’t have a worry
at her door, while I had spent the entire last week wringing my handkerchief out into a bucket over the state of our doomed
relationship. It was funny, but it hadn’t even occurred to me up until this final moment that Charley might show up with anything
other than a matching expression to mine. Yet here she was, as happy as a florist’s daughter on Christmas morning with a pocketful
of pixie wishes.

That just about summed us both up in a nutshell as far as I was concerned and convinced me there really was no more of this
relationship to run.

Come in, Tel the trowel, your time is up.

‘Hiya [kiss kiss], I wasn’t sure if you were joking when I got your text about meeting here,’ Charley said, plonking herself
down next to me.

‘You found it OK?’ I asked.

‘Oh yeah, I’ve been here before,’ she told me, which didn’t surprise me in the slightest as Charley had generally been everywhere
and done everything before. That said, I could walk into the Lamb in Catford tomorrow and have a pint of my favourite lager
put on the bar without having to say a single word, so it wasn’t like I didn’t have anything to show for the last ten years
either.

‘Have you been up to the Golden Gallery yet?’ Charley asked, but I just shook my head and told her I hadn’t. ‘Oh well, perhaps
we can…’

‘Charley,’ I said, taking a deep breath and seizing the moment.

‘We need to talk.’

Charley’s eyes narrowed and her smile slipped a few degrees, but I didn’t give her a chance to respond, too concerned was
I that she’d pip me at the death with a lightning-quick ‘I agree, we do, but let me just say what I’ve got to say first’ strike
of her own.

‘I think you’re great and I… I really, really like you, but… I… I just think… I… I think I’m going to have to call it a day.
You know, between us,’ I finally got out, my innards in knots over words I could scarcely believe I was speaking. ‘Look, it’s
not you, it’s me,’ I added, figuring I might as well use that one up before she could.

Charley stared at me with uncertainty, then broke away from my guilty gaze to look into middle space, clearly flummoxed by
what I’d just said.

‘I just think we’re very different people,’ I continued in earnest. ‘We’re into different things. We’re from different places.
And we’ve got different parents. Er… we’re just… you know, different. And honestly, I’m not saying that I don’t like you,
because I do, I just don’t think… we’re really [what was that expression? Er, that was it]… going anywhere,’ I explained.
‘You know what I mean?’

‘No, I don’t,’ she suddenly snapped, obviously annoyed that I was the one doing the dumping. I guess she was probably more
used to being the dumper than the dumpee.

‘Look, it’s not you…’ I tried once again, but Charley just cut through my default setting with an angry hiss.

‘Stop saying that,’ she barked, before pressing, ‘Is this about last week?’

‘No,’ I denied. ‘Of course not. Er, well, yeah, sort of, I guess.’

‘Look, it’s not my fault that you…’ she started to say, but I stopped her right there as I didn’t want her thinking that this
was a single-issue dumping. It was much more than that. Much, much more.

‘No, no, OK, it’s not about last week,’ I corrected myself.

‘But you just said…’

‘Forget about that. Forget about what I just said. I didn’t mean it. I was just… [saying the first thing that came into my
head?]. Look, don’t worry about last week. OK?’

‘No, Terry, it’s not OK. I don’t know what’s going on. What’s going on?’ Charley asked, which was a girlie classic and one
my ex, Jo, used to use on me all the time. It’s a simple technique that girls learn at an early age that turns the tables
on us mug blokes. Basically, the way it works is this: there’s a problem; you both know about it and you’re both constantly
reacting to it, but neither of you can say anything about it because the moment you do, the other one can then accuse you
of being petty, oversensitive, stroppy or suspicious, so that all at once the argument becomes about that rather than about
how much time they’re spending down at Morrisons. It’s a lost cause trying to talk out your concerns with women because at
the end of the day, it’s never their fault. It’s always yours.

At least, it was always mine. And I can only go on experience.

‘Charley, we’re just not right together,’ I simply said, causing Charley to turn away for a few seconds before rising to her
feet.

I fought the overwhelming urge to grab her hand, drag her back down next to me and plead with her for forgiveness, but the
dogs were in the traps and the rabbit was already running. This race would be run.

As it was, Charley didn’t dash off anywhere, like I thought she would. She just stepped away from me a yard or two and leaned
against the safety rail with her back to me. I watched her for a moment or two and took the opportunity to try and untangle
the knot of reasons in my brain so that we both knew what we were talking about, but without resorting to all that ‘then you
did this, then you said that’ bollocks, and I couldn’t find the words.

‘You know, I’d love to know when you came to this conclusion because you’ve never said anything to me,’ Charley then objected.
‘And what do you mean, we’re not right together anyway? What is it I’m doing that’s not right?’

‘Charley, please…’ I tried, but Charley was determined to play the apportion game.

‘No, I want to know,’ she insisted. ‘Tell me.’

‘Charley, it’s not you…’ I almost said again, but managed to veer off at the last moment and repeat instead that we were very
different people.

This didn’t do for Charley, though. She wanted specifics, presumably to prove to me that I was the one in the wrong, not her.
But seriously, what were the specifics?