Past Imperfect

by Graham Debenham

part 2 of 10

The incident weighed heavily on his mind, like so many similar incidents over time. From his formative years, through school and university, Nigel had found himself to be somewhat lacking in the heroics department. He could never quite understand whether it was his owlish appearance or his superior intelligence that made him the target of his cooler, less intelligent classmates. He eventually decided that it was a combination of the two.

The secondary school years were by far the worst, and probably set the benchmark for the rest of his life. Right from the very first day at Taplow Street Comprehensive, he knew that, in spite of having Cynthia in his class, he was in for six years of absolute hell.

And the devil was Tommy Wellard.

Nigel could remember that first morning as if it were yesterday. Standing in line in the playground in his crisp new school uniform with Cynthia by his side, he was looking forward to making new friends and impressing his new teachers. That was until he made eye contact with the scruffy looking kid in the next line.

Being a comprehensive school, there were no strict uniform guidelines. If your family could afford it, you wore school uniform. If they couldn’t, you wore what you had. It was clear from Tommy Wellard’s appearance that his family had very little.

There were three lines of new pupils in the playground. Class 1a was in the centre with classes 1b and 1c on either side. Mr. Owen, the Deputy Headmaster, stood at the front of the three lines, making his welcoming address to the new first-year classes.

Tommy stood halfway down the 1c line with a couple of cronies. They were all sniggering and making fun of Mr. Owen’s Welsh accent. Nigel made the mistake of looking across at Tommy and his motley group, just as Tommy looked over to see who else was sharing the joke.

It might have been Nigel’s new school uniform. Quite possibly it was his studious appearance; but at that moment, history was made. Tommy’s eyes narrowed and he mouthed an obscenity which Nigel had, at that time, never even heard before. Even now, four decades later, he blushed every time he thought of it.

And so, it began. Tommy Wellard became the first of many nightmares that Nigel would endure over the years. Day after day, week after week he would put up with the taunts and bullying without any thought of retaliation. He learned early on that if you punched someone like Tommy Wellard, you just made him even angrier.

Cowardice became a way of life for Nigel. If it wasn’t Tommy, it was some equally obnoxious bully, either at school or at university.

Take Roddy Millington, for example.

Roddy was a superb athlete, strong, good looking, a real ladies’ man.

And a bully.

Nigel naturally tended to gravitate away from the sporting activities at Magdalen College, opting instead for the more cerebral pastimes, such as the chess club and science club; mostly things that he and the other non-athletic students enjoyed, which tended to make him a target for the likes of Roddy; this, and of course Cynthia.

Whilst Nigel was as much of a geek at university as he was at school, Cynthia was rapidly evolving from an ugly duckling into a somewhat more attractive swan. In Roddy’s eyes, this made her fair game.

After several months of putting up with his unwanted attention, Cynthia eventually told Roddy, in no uncertain terms, that she had no feelings for him in the least. This on its own would probably not have bothered Roddy too much, seeing that there were plenty of other fish in the pond. The problem was that Cynthia, in her farewell address to Roddy, happened to mention that she and Nigel were and always would be a couple.

This was a big mistake.

Thus began a further four years of pain and suffering which Nigel, to his credit, took with remarkable stoicism. After all, he thought. All this will be over once I graduate.

But it wasn’t, was it?

After ten years of almost permanent bullying and harassment, more was still to come. Nigel’s inability to stand up for himself followed him into the wide world of insurance. Whilst Cynthia’s career went ahead in leaps and bounds, Nigel’s went into a permanent state of inactivity.

In a department of over twenty people at Metropolitan Mutual Insurance, Nigel still occupied the same position in which he started with the company. Over the years, other, younger, less qualified underwriters had passed through the department on their way to the dizzying heights of middle and upper management.

Nigel’s boss, Daniel Winstanley, had recently taken over the reins from Arthur Smedley, the man who hired Nigel straight from university. Daniel had started with the company only ten years ago. In fact, Nigel had trained Daniel in all aspects of insurance underwriting. So good was Nigel’s training that Daniel had soon been promoted over Nigel’s head; promotion followed promotion until Daniel was head of department.

At this point in his life, Nigel became philosophical about his lack of progress. He looked upon his lack of success as fate, rather than the absence of ambition. Now in his fifties, he was resigned to the fact that he would never amount to anything; although he often thought about how different things might have been, if only...

All of which brings us back rather neatly to where we came in.

Sitting in the carriage ruminating over his failures, he failed to notice the old man sitting across the aisle. Eventually, he felt the old man’s eyes on him, in that way that only the persecuted can. He slowly looked over.

The old man was very neatly dressed, in a rather tasteful charcoal grey pinstriped suit. The white shirt and heavily starched collar were reminiscent of the fifties and sixties, as was the silver grey silk tie, complete with Windsor knot. On his lap was a neatly folded camel overcoat with black velvet collar. His face was weathered and cracked with age and framed by a white, immaculately trimmed beard. The perfectly coiffed white hair was topped by a spotless black bowler hat.

The old man’s green eyes twinkled as he smiled a friendly greeting. Nigel, in spite of his trepidation, returned the smile, though without much enthusiasm.

“He wasn’t too happy, was he?” The old man said, nodding toward the back of Nigel’s malodorous tormentor.

Nigel shrugged his shoulders. What could he say to such gross understatement?

“You seemed to handle it quite well though, all things considered.”

“You think so?” Nigel said wryly.

“Well, you didn’t have much choice really, did you?”

“Well no, I...”

“I mean, in front of all these people, you didn’t really have any alternative other than total capitulation.”

“Well, obviously not. I mean...”

“Naturally, you couldn’t have just stood up and punched him on the nose, could you?”

“Well, no. I mean that would...”

“After all, it doesn’t really matter what people think of you, does it? I mean not at your age, anyway.”

“Well, I wouldn’t put it quite like...”

The old man turned around in his seat and faced Nigel. “How would you put it, Nigel?”

“Well of course it matters what people think but..., hang on, how do you know my name?”

The old man brushed the question away with a wave of an immaculately manicured hand. “It’s never bothered you before, so why should people’s impressions of you matter so much now?”

Nigel looked mildly offended. “Of course people’s impressions matter to me. Well, at least they used to.”

The old man’s eyes sparkled with interest. “And when exactly did they stop mattering?”

“Well, I can’t remember exactly. I think it was sometime... Look, hang on a minute. What makes you think that I never worried about what people think of me anyway?”

The old man sat back in his seat. You’d be surprised how much I know about you, Nigel.

“Look, do I know you? Have we met somewhere before?”

“No, we’ve never met, but you can call me Wally. I’ve known a lot of people like you over the years.”

“People like me?”

“Yes. You know, people who’ve lived their lives wishing that they’d lived them differently. People who go through life wondering what would have happened if...”

“Everybody’s done that at some time or another. It’s not exactly unusual, you know. “

“Oh, I know. It’s not uncommon at all.” He leaned closer and lowered his voice to a whisper. “But wouldn’t it be marvellous if we could actually get to find out.”

Nigel leaned closer to the old man. “Find out what?” He whispered.

Wally smiled and touched the side of his nose with his forefinger. Then he leaned back and closed his eyes, the smile still flickering on his lips.

Nigel raised his eyebrows, waiting for an answer that he knew would not be forthcoming. He couldn’t decide whether or not the old man had struck up a conversation just to make him feel better about the confrontation with the intoxicated man with the unusual fragrance. Maybe he was a psychiatrist, who passed the time away by analyzing his fellow passengers. He certainly looked affluent enough to be a doctor of some kind.

Come to think of it, somebody as tastefully dressed as this particular old man would obviously stand out in a crowd of weekday suburban commuters. How could it be that Nigel had never noticed him before?

“You’d be surprised how much I know about you, Nigel.”

The train slowed as it entered the platform at Clapham Junction. Even before it had come to a complete stop, the doors were being pulled open by anxious travelers eager to claim their one square foot of carriage space. The crowd pushed into the carriage, forcing the existing commuters even farther over toward the opposite side. Nigel lost sight of Wally as the scant remnants of space were rapidly occupied.

When he finally looked across the aisle, the old man was gone.

For the remainder of his journey into Victoria, Nigel thought about the old man, and what he had said. Of course some people wondered about what might have been. But he was quite happy with what was. He had a lovely wife, a nice house, a good job. What more could he possibly want from life?

He alighted from the train at Victoria and made his way to work. As the day progressed, he forgot about the immaculately dressed old man and got on with his work.

The trip back to East Croydon that evening was totally uneventful. So much so, that he managed to complete the crossword that he had started that morning. By the time he arrived home, Cynthia was in the kitchen sitting at the table going over legal papers.

She looked up and smiled as he entered. “How was your day, dear?” she asked, knowing the answer in advance.

“Oh, much the same as usual, darling. How was yours?” Nigel replied, giving the standard reply and expecting the usual from Cynthia.

“As ordinary as ever,” she answered, getting up and removing Nigel’s dinner from the oven. It was his usual Wednesday repast. Pork chops with mashed potatoes and various green vegetables. “I’m going to finish these off upstairs,” she said, picking up the papers from the table. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

Nigel finished his dinner, watched the late news on the TV, switched everything off and went upstairs.

He performed his nightly ablutions in the ensuite bathroom and changed into his pyjamas. When he re-entered the bedroom, Cynthia’s lamp was off and she was asleep.

He opened the wardrobe door and carefully placed his suit on its hanger, ensuring that, as always, it was in the correct order ready for next Wednesday.

Finally, he removed his horn-rimmed spectacles, placed them on his bedside table and climbed into bed next to his sleeping wife. Switching off his bedside lamp, he settled down to sleep.

* * *

Proceed to part 3...