Our Fiction
Winterland
By Eddie Willson
[excerpt]
'What I can't get over with Dan, I see him in Sainsburys the Thursday before
and he seemed really chipper,' Steve said.
They met each other in the cereal aisle. Danny was looking for washing powder.
He had a moan about the way they kept moving stuff around in the store. Steve
took up the subject. He started on about how it was all a management scam. 'It's
supposed to make you lose your way looking for what you want, so you end up
getting a load of other crap as well.'
Danny stood there with his pisstaking, 'paying attention', face on. He stopped
stroking his chin and gestured at the cornflakes, 'I know. It's terrible. I
remember when it was all bread round here.'
'I know he got pissed off sometimes. I used to see it in him. In Kwiksave once,
funny enough.'
'When was this?'
'Between poly and the bookshop. I think he felt like his life had gone a bit
sideways. He was by the broken biscuits. He goes "Here I am, one of the finest
minds of me generation and I'm shopping in Kwiksave. What's going on?" I said
"Could be worse. You could be working here."'
'You can't help thinking, well, was there something I should've spotted. Some
sign he was going to.'
There was that time when Dan was back in the flat after Denise. Danny was at
work, Ian was pulling a sicky. Ian went into Dan's room to borrow his Time Out.
He couldn't resist having a nose round. He found Dan's diary. There was only
one entry, repeated at various intervals. The entry read 'The fool I've been
and the fool I am.'
'I know.'
'There was a time I thought I should have said something, but it was awkward.'
Ian said, his index finger pressed below his nose, like Denise that time.
But guilt is not the point at all. I'm not here to dish out blame in neatly
wrapped parcels; who do you think I am, J.B. Priestley? You've probably seen
that movie. This woman tops herself. Then Alec Guinness turns up and goes, 'Let's
be having you then. Whose fault was all this? Hour and a half and I'll sort
it.' If only.
Terry came back with the next round.
'Fuck all like that movie, is it? The Big Chill. Where all those mates get together
because one of them's died,' Ian said.
He'd got it out on video the other week. It was an old tape; the tops of people's
heads waved like trees in a gale. He couldn't watch it all the way through,
but the tracking wasn't the reason.
'Not that shite with Tony Slattery and all them?'
'Christ no! What, "Peter's Friends"? See what you mean though. If a thing's
worth doing, it's worth doing twice.'
Or three times even.
'I hate that fucking film.'
'Which?'
'"Peter's Friends,"' Steve explained. 'Imagine all those smug tossers in the
same place at the same time. They must've had to screen the extras for potential
suicide bombers.'
'No. "The Big Chill", I'm on about. Kevin Costner's finest hour.
'He's not in it, is he? I'm getting lost now,' Terry said.
'Yeah. He's the corpse.' Ian laughed. 'Why can't he always play to his strengths
like that?'
'The whole idea behind them films, it's a bourgeois construct.' Steve said,
his voice thick now.
'It's not is it?'
'They sit round, wringing their hands over whether they've sold out their promise,
yeah?'
'Yeah"
'Well who gets a chance to sell out? We start off getting bent out of shape
by what we have to do, and we just carry on.'
Terry looked at Steve and Ian, and felt he'd been away a long time. He spoke.
'I have seen it, as it goes. Shite. Their mate tops himself, they're all gutted,
they sit round talking, they feel better.'
'Yeah. Like it's a piece of piss.'
'The worst is when what's her face plays that poxy song at the funeral.'
"'You Can't Always Get What You Want."'
'Yeah. But if you try sometime...'
'You might just get the exact opposite.'
'It's weird the way it gets you. I see "The Dead Zone" on telly. With Christopher
Walken?'
'Yeah.'
'I was thinking of Danny anyhow because he was into Stephen King.' Terry went
on, 'Anyway, this bloke's got E.S.P. and a T.V. bloke's interviewing him, taking
the piss, asking who's going to win the World Series or something. And Christopher
Walken goes "You don't want to know that, you want to know why your sister killed
herself."'
'I've seen that. Yeah. The telly bloke freaks right out.'
'I burst into tears when that come on.'
It's just like what it's like though, the wanting to know.'
'Maybe there's no knowing. Aren't really any proper clues.'
'Maybe. Maybe some people are just like that,' Ian said, his voice tailing off.
'"The world of the happy is quite different to that of the unhappy." Wittgenstein.'
'Eh?'
'Wittgenstein. It's a sort of lager, Steve.'
'I know who he is; I never fucking heard you. Don't get like that, Ian.'
First published in Stand Magazine Spring 1999. © Eddie Willson 1998
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