Chapter 2.
Dennis, death, deserts, destiny, desperation and deliverance.
Today would be one of his least numbing. Once a month, the Coordination and Integration Committee convened. Officers of his level would attend. Glitches in the existing paper and IT systems would be ironed out, and plans made to implement improvements. These were the eddies-at-the-bottom created by the dynamism-at-the-top.
Apart from the sheer relief from routine, Trevor looked forward to these two-hour meetings because his old mucker, Dennis, would be there. Dennis would be chairing; he was a high flyer, he networked his way to the top, but he and Trevor had been at the bottom together, they had shared the golden years of their youth before Trevor had married. Although they lived completely separate lives outside work, Dennis would always seek him out during the twenty minute break for refreshment to talk chummily about the old days and catch up.
"I don't want to spend the fucking break talking about paper chains," he had told Trevor.
Recently, Dennis had been confiding his retirement plans. Trevor was thrilled to hear them, and envious.
"I really can't wait to be shot of this place. I should've gone when Richie and Dave bailed out, but it was the pension, I wanted the pension. Now, I've gone as high as I'll go; I'm bored shit-less and trapped. I go home and plan my retirement. Melanie gives me stick. I'm always calculating my savings and planning adventures. Her pension kicks-in next year, she's sixty in March. She wants me to jump ship now and we can live on her pension 'til I'm sixty-five. I may. But I do want the full pension. I've got to do forty years."
"What's the current plan?" Trevor had asked the previous month.
"Sell the house and downsize to a cheap flat near the kids. Buy a small place in the South of France with the balance ... and a yacht. We want to enjoy the grand-kids, so we can babysit them in the winter and take them on sunshine holidays in the summer. We can sail around the Mediterranean. Tight ... but do-able on a full pension."
Trevor was certain Dennis would pull it off, and was pleased for him. Dennis was sure-footed, and it was the sort of graceful retirement to which Trevor had once himself aspired. However, even his Christmas cards to his grandchildren now drew no response.
At five-to-two, Trevor arrived in the conference room and found his place. At two, Alice Purbright took the head of the table and brought the meeting to order.
She introduced herself. "Unhappily I will be chairing today because, this morning on his way to work, Mr Tremaine collapsed. Sadly, by the time he reached hospital he was dead. It was probably a heart attack."
Trevor was instantly wracked by turbulent emotions. He had experienced something similar fifteen years before, when his eldest son, Dan, poisoned by his mother's contempt for his natural father, had told him he preferred him not to visit. The debilitating shock deprived him of the power of speech or action. Other attendees eventually declared him unwell and a volunteer led him back to his office where he was committed to the care of a deferential young girl by the name of Beattie. Beattie did not know what to do with him. Phone calls were made and a kind lady from human resources turned up, led him to a side room, elicited his story, commiserated, and arranged for him to go home immediately.
Sitting in his living room, Trevor's emotions remained in turmoil. He raged on behalf of his friend.
'All the shit and none of the icing. Why? Why him? He did all the right things, he deserved the rewards, but they're suddenly whipped away. Fate is arbitrary and cruel?'
A glass of wine steadied his mood; the ability to choose his thoughts started to return. The wine brought emotional numbness, so he drained his glass -- several times - and anger on behalf of his friend lapsed into self-pity.
'Should I die tomorrow there's no one to lament my misfortune. And no fortune I would have missed. No one would be bothered to be distressed for me. Even I can't be distressed at the prospect. Dennis has been robbed: I'd be robbed of nothing. My death would put me out of my misery and spare the taxpayer the cost of preserving a pointless life.'
He crystallised his dreadful condition:
'I have nothing that makes life worth living. I expect nothing to make my life worth continuing, no plans, no expectations. No one would think me cheated by a life cut short. Why should they? '
He recoiled from the thought. His chest tightened and panic rose at the prospect of existing, but not living. He gulped down another glass of wine, just enough alcohol to tip him out of his condition of learned helplessness into a condition where he could react, drunkenly aspire, and absurdly dare to live. He resolved that things would change from that moment. He would make himself a future. He would seize his share of life. He would make a plan. For an hour he was purposeful, but as the alcohol subsided so did his resolve, his emotions returned to rest and he fell into an intoxicated sleep.
Next morning the alarm clock could not penetrate his alcogenic slumber, and by mid-morning he had rung the office to call in sick. They were understanding. Aspirin and coffee took the edge off his hangover, and he climbed back into bed and ruminated.
By early afternoon, he sat at the kitchen table with a blank sheet of paper before him, and wrote a heading. The mood of resolve, driven by last night's anger and despair had dissipated, but the anguish of a wasted life lingered. Now, a fearful Trevor, spurred to action by his dreadful insight, wrote a heading:
My future life.
He sat in silence for a long time, staring at this heading, unable to write more, until it occurred to him that if he wrote nothing, that was what the rest of his life would be - an empty sheet. Deterred by self-derision at the notion of change, with courage born purely of desperation, he entered that dark room at the bottom of his soul where all his youthful aspirations were locked away like disused lumber, and turned on the light. Instantly, he recognized what he sought, but still hesitated, knowing that when those aspirations were set down on that page they would cease to be fantasies, his foolish dreams; they would become ambitions, targets, objectives requiring action, like the relentless memos he penned at work - and become the object of ridicule. His hand moved reluctantly; this act, a difficult, shameful admission of what he was, and what he had been, and the same words appeared on paper:
More love.
More sex.
More excitement.
Once written down the words could not be unwritten; they were burned on his soul and would glow behind his eyelids when he closed his eyes. He now had no hiding place. No excuses. No more papering over the truth. He wanted to live his life again. He wanted a second chance.
The admission was painful. He began to sob.
'You get no second go. If you chase dreams, you end up an undignified, old fool, a laughingstock, the fodder for satire, like those in Filipina Dreamgirls.'
Yet a fragment from an old adage drifted into his head,
- greater fools look on wishing they could do the same.
He had looked on and laughed, but secretly had envied them and wished he could do the same. In this instance, he now saw he was the greater fool.
