The Clockwork Man

By Ian Dyer

It's funny, I thought I had lost everything, but then another trip to the Doctors taught me a valuable lesson; you always have more to lose.
Now I am facing a future full of fading memories. A future full of constant reminders of the people that have died. A future where I will live in an empty house and where I shall grow old, all alone and......well, just all alone.
I may as well just end it all. Yeah, that's what I'll do. I tried it once before so I know what to do......

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ian Dyer
• Release date: Feb 16, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311140432

Ian Dyer

What to write here..... Well I am English, I am in my thirties, a child of the eighties, though I really grew up in the nineties. An inhaler of books from an early age, though my eyes were blinkered so that I only saw the main stream books and not the off piste works that I have come to love. European authors offer so much more, I quickly learned that books don't have to have starts and middles and ends and plots and twists and smoking guns and all that jazz. A good story, well written, is all a book needs. So that's what I try and do. I write what I enjoy, I do not conform to what the people want, what's the point in that? I have learnt that this world in which we live in, this authors world, is hard, unforgiving, and full of negativity. It is full of people telling you to change this and change that, to make it fit into this genre, or to that genre, and to write this type of book for these types of people. If, in the past, writers had undergone that type of scrutiny, then we wouldn't have the likes of Selby, Burroughs, Asimov, Palanuik, Steinbeck and many more. Anyway, that's my bio. Either read my stuff or don't. To me the joy comes from writing, not from reading peoples blinkered approach to what they think writing should be.

Book preview

The Clockwork Man

By Ian Dyer

This book is the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author. If you enjoyed this book then please encourage others to purchase their own copy. Thank you for respecting the authors work. ©

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents and events are all from the authors mind. Any resemblance to persons either living or dead is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 Ian Dyer.

All rights reserved.

For Cheryl and Isabella.

Table of Contents

Fragile

Shadow Man

Milk Bottle

Fixer

Jacobs Story

Wanting to Die

Roses

Shelter

Razor Sharp

La Mer

Poppy

Pink Blanket

Time to Heal

Fragile

The warmth is gone on that side of the bed because my wife is dead.

I look over, making sure that she isn’t there and that the last twelve months haven’t been a nightmare, checking to make sure if I am still married, not a widower at thirty-six like I actually am, and like so often over the last twelve months my chest hurts and my stomach twists itself into fluttering butterflies and I hate myself a little bit more because I see that she isn’t there. She isn’t looking at me as I look at her and her eyes are those sleepy eyes, all puffy and full of life, and God I was so stupid to think that she would be. Why do I do that to myself?

I wrap the sheets around me, shrinking myself into their comforting warmth and pray for sleep to take me, that sweet release of sleep that takes me away from… from....

……

……

…… But of course sleep doesn’t come and I lay here thinking about what woke me:

I was dreaming of her again, and like all the other times that I have dreamt of her I cannot see her face because I can’t remember her face but I know it’s there under a shimmering mist that moves as she moves. We are on the beach together, before the bump in her belly came along, and we are walking, leaving two sets of footprints in the soft wet sand. It is scorching hot and her black hair flows out behind her as we walk into the breeze that is full of salt and aromas of the sea that remind me of being a child, it’s an innocent smell, a real smell. We are on this beach in Cornwall as it’s the bank holiday weekend and it is what lovers do. I turn to her and don’t say what I feel and she turns to me and smiles and what we feel for each other engulfs us both and lifts us higher than where the seagulls swoop but still the mist covers the face that I really want to see and so I plead to her, Let me see you, and she laughs at me and that was when I woke up.

I don’t know why she laughed at me.

My back starts to throb a dull ache. The mattress still needs turning, replacing if the truth be told, but what’s the point in doing either? I roll over, far away from the side that is empty and stare blankly at the alarm clock that highlights the time in bright red digital glory. I whisper, Emily, as I try to drift off to sleep but sleep doesn’t come to me straight away. I seem to have lost the talent of nothing thoughts because all my thoughts are full of my dead wife, they are thoughts that hurt.

~

The alarm clock doesn’t go off because I have a different alarm clock now. She comes running into the bedroom and curls up beside me and the cold side of the bed warms a little now that she is in with me. My eyes are shut tight but the light pouring through the curtains is enough to tell me that its way past the time to get up but still I lay here and wrap my arms around the little bundle and I wish her a good morning and she wishes me one back buts adds a heart-warming, Love you daddy, and then gives me a little kiss on the cheek which reminds me of things I don’t want to be reminded of. Before I can return the kiss and open my eyes to see her she is up and rolling over and bumping herself off the bed. She is ready for the day to begin.

The world is too bright this morning and my eyes hurt for just a moment. I rub at them and reach over and put on my glasses. Everything is blurry and then crystalizes into that familiar morning fugue of sleepy nonsense. I ease myself out of bed fearing the ache in my back and am surprised when it isn’t there but that doesn’t stop me from stretching it out and I think about the monotonous routine of stretching I used to go through before I quit the gym because there was no point in going anymore, who was there to impress? So one Tuesday afternoon I tore up the membership and threw it in the bin. That felt good, but they billed me, as I hadn’t quit properly, so who’s laughing now?

Poppy is already half way down the stairs as I put on my grey jogging bottoms and t-shirt. After I’ve performed, the morning duty in the toilet I join her downstairs in the kitchen and make her the breakfast she demanded and we sit together at the breakfast bar Emily always wanted but only ever used a handful of times. I drink my coffee and pick at a bit of toast whilst Poppy devours her Weetabix and slurps her water from the princess pink water bottle I bought her at some point in the last month. That bottle hasn’t left her side, I suppose she saw a big girl using one at the zoo I bought it at and she is at the age where what big girls do is what all little girls aspire to do.

I watch her eat. I enjoy watching her eat and then I clear away the bowl and small spoon when she is done. I tell Poppy she only has twenty minutes of playtime before she has to get ready for school and there is a little squeak of joy from the living room and the cartoons go on and she is off to Poppy-World, a world I would like to live in.

I grab her uniform from the recently washed but not yet ironed pile of clothes and then remember that today is the last day before her summer holidays start so it’s a non-school uniform day. I go to put the uniform back into the pile but instead hold onto them tight and smell their freshness. They don’t need to go back into that pile. She won’t need them after the summer holiday and that’s not because she is going up a year or growing out of them - which she would most certainly have done if she were going back - Poppy won’t need them because she won’t be here anymore, and as if on cue my little rock to which I have anchored my life to over the last twelve months comes running into the utility room and grabs hold of my leg and reaches up for a cuddle. I pick her up – a struggle but one I don’t care about – and hold her close to me. She wraps her arms around my neck. I can smell her sleepy nightie and then the scent of her curly auburn hair drifts over me and it has the same smell as her mother’s hair because Poppy uses the same shampoo as her mummy and I haven’t the heart or the guts to tell a six year old whose mother has died that you can’t use that shampoo because it rips my guts out whenever I smell it.

When Poppy is done with the hug she asks me politely if she can have an apple and I say, Yeah, of course you can, and I put her down and watch her run off knowing that she will never see her seventh birthday and for the millionth time I start to cry and have to cover my face with her white school shirt which becomes drenched in my tears and I think I have done all I can do and I don’t know why I think that but it seems apt. I also think how much I am sick to death of crying, sick to death of feeling sorry for whom? Myself? For her? I have no idea and the tears won’t solve anything.

~

It’s 8:40 and right on time, like she always is, Carol from number 103 knocks at the door. She has three other kids in tow. Poppy makes up the fourth kid that she takes to school as a favour to me and some of the other families that live local. I am grateful, one day maybe I should tell her that, but right now I pay her each week and that fifteen quid she charges seems to be enough of a thank you.

Poppy leaves the house and I give her a kiss on the lips and tell her to have a good day and that I will see her at three and as she walks over to the other kids of the same age and from the same class Carol looks at me and asks if I’m alright and I answer with the same two words I always do because I know that she isn’t asking if I am alright in the normal sense, what she is actually asking is: am I still okay and not going to try and off myself like I did during the winter because I couldn’t deal with the loss of my wife and wanted to be an inconvenience to everyone?

Yep. Fine. Those words drip from my mouth and I grab hold of the front door and push it closed.

I have until three all to myself, much like I have every day, except for the weekends of course, which are filled with Poppy and activities and running around. All things I could accomplish in these hours alone. Probably won’t do any of them, I have become lazy and happy with just sitting and looking at the same shit I see every day in my attic space I once called my Den but is now just a room where I am surrounded by the paintings of my thoughts from when times were sweeter and I wasn’t so lazy and the world I survived in had a meaning.

~

Folding clothes, looking out of the patio doors into the small thing called a garden. Some Tom Waits is playing in the background and I like it because I know others don’t. Old Tom is singing about not wanting to grow up because being a kid is the best and being an adult is shit and I agree with that. I have nothing special to iron and most of Poppy’s clothes are too small to need smoothing out so I just keep on folding and looking out of the patio doors into the small square of garden that I could have probably grown vegetables and flowers in but never have and probably never will. We were going to grow vegetables once, myself and Emily, all sorts like my father did and his father did before him but we never got around to it. It’s not that we didn’t have the time, there were plenty of days we just lounged about before she fell ill, but it always seemed as if the days just drifted by and there was nothing we could do to grab hold of them and stop them and actually do something instead of just letting them go. Letting them dribble down the drain.

I can still picture my father and grandfather, even though they are a long time dead; both of them down the allotment digging and turning and seeding and smoking cigars that I couldn’t bear the smell of but at the same time still wanting to smoke one myself. I can see their faces, both similarly hard and rugged, and they are both tall with big hands and strong arms and strong powerful legs and big chests that heave in great gulps of air and they both worked in the same way; more like twins than father and son. And seeing them so clearly in my mind’s eye is annoying because Emily has only been dead for just over a year and I can’t picture her face or her hands or her legs or her feet – which I know were small because I have kept her shoes - anymore and have to rely on the pictures I took when she didn’t want me to and the secret paintings I have of her up in my attic which remind me of what she looks like. Looked like.

Looked like.

I have reminders of Emily all around me. Sometimes I see Emily in Poppy, but not as I often as I’d like and when I do I look away because I can’t face the truth. I’d rather slunk away from the truth and live in a fantasy world where she is still alive and will come home from work at half four like she always used to. It’s easy to do, easier than facing up to the fact that she is gone, no, gone is the wrong word. She isn’t gone because gone can imply that whatever is gone can come back. No, she is dead. Thinking that I chuck a pair of socks into a teetering pile of grouped together socks and they all fall to the carpet like heavy marshmallows and in anger I pick up a navy blue jumper and hurl it at the patio door.

Fuck it. The jumper flaps and curls itself around the patio door handles and the little zip on the pocket clinks against the window and I sob like it was Emily I threw against the door and then see that that jumper was the last gift she bought for me and so I reach under the ironing board that hasn’t had a hot iron on it for months and pick up the jumper and put it on even though it’s going to be a hot day. I feel comfortable in that jumper, protected by it as if she is there with me and fuck me that sounds absolutely ridiculous and I would shout at someone and call them a spiritualistic fool for thinking such things.

~

Just before lunch I hang the clothes in Poppy’s wardrobe and then in mine and sit on the edge of my bed built for two but which now sleeps just one. I look into the half-filled wardrobe and can see the flowery dress hanging there that will never be worn again. Emily had worn that dress many times, it’s one of her favourites, an all-rounder she called it and I know she looked good in it because there is a picture on the nightstand of her wearing it. I kept that dress, among a few others, because she wore it on the days that changed everything: the day I proposed to her and she said yes, the day after we married, the day we moved into this house, the day she fell pregnant with Poppy, the day Poppy came into the world, and the day we found out Emily was going to die.

The day when we found out she was going to die.

We all die, but to find out you are going to before you expect it is almost indescribable. It had been a routine follow up after Emily’s yearly check-up. I had gone with her because Emily suspected something was wrong in the way the admin lady from the doctor’s office had spoken to her. She had never been ill, prided herself on that and put it down to her diet, her fitness regime, and the yearly check-ups with Dr Knowles. Or Ruth-Dr-Knowles as I and nobody else called her because one day when I had gone to see her about a lump on my foot she had requested I call her Ruth and it kind of slipped out to awkward laughs but the name stuck. Now I can’t stop myself saying it so it has become a tradition. We are sat there and Ruth-Dr-Knowles looks glum, concerned, and her usual tanned skin is pale and grey like the weather was outside.

She starts off by saying that she had gotten the blood works back and that levels were fine and went on to say some more