'City or United?' by Orlando Wysocki

It was the worst of times, and the worst of times. Martin Clough could well believe his luck. He’d failed his driving test for the eleventh time that morning, and now this.

“And the last item on the agenda”, Alan Miller paused and looked at the A4 in front of him for effect, although he knew exactly what was coming, “is the Lord Chancellor’s press release”. He passed a sheaf of papers to the other councillors.

“God, what’s new from the Derry Air?” said Martin.

The chairman ignored the interruption. A short, successful man with a Toni and Guy haircut, Miller had the sieve-like ability to case aside what he did not want to hear.

“Lord Irvine has announced that the Golden Jubilee competition for city status is shortly to be launched, and this time I intend that we win it.”

“Oh, not again. All that effort last time, and we romped in, what, fifteenth?” Martin sighed.

“If at first you don’t succeed, Martin...”

“Give up. And spend the taxpayers’ money on something more useful.”

“It’s worth noting,” Miller brandished the press release, “that only seventeen towns in England were granted city status during the entire twentieth century, so this would be a huge honour for Colchester.”

“A huge honour for Colchester would be having the Pope open an ice-rink with a triple salto”.

Some of the councillors sniggered, but Miller simply carried on, his soothing but relentless delivery like a Chemical Brothers’ remix of ‘Save Your Kisses For Me’. He usually managed to grind the opposition down. “There are, moreover, only 65 cities in the country, as you can see.”

Martin scanned the list. “Hang on a minute. Ripon? Ripon’s a city? How did Ripon get to be a city? It’s a racecourse. It’s a lay-by just off the A1. Ripon? Rip-off, more like.”

“It’s historical”.

“It’s hysterical. God, I suppose if Ripon can do it, I’m all for it.”

“So glad to count on your unflagging support.”

As always, the first ten per cent of the agenda occupied ninety per cent of the time, so the lighting tour of this last item saw Miller’s ‘City Committee’ proposal pushed through with only feeble opposition – most of the battered councillors were ready for the Phoenix and Firkin. Clough was bemused but not entirely surprised to find himself hung, drawn and quartered in the role of the committee co-ordinator.

Martin Clough was a huge U-turn of a man, always indecisive about ribs or steak. He could sit on the fence with the best of them, spurred by rhetoric to jump one way or the other, and then, perhaps, the first way again. He wondered whether Miller had an ulterior motive for shoving him down the cul-de-sac of the City Committee, but he didn’t really care, either way.
When he moved to Colchester twelve years ago, Martin Clough, Everest Salesman of the Year, had thought it already was a city. For heaven’s sake, the Romans had made enough of a meal of it for it to have been one long ago. And anyway, what defined a city these days? A Marks and Spencer’s on the High Street? A ring road with McDonalds golden arches on every corner? Rising crime rate, maybe? The whole thing was a ludicrous waste of time, and was sure to eat into badminton lessons. But old Windy Miller had this bit between his teeth, and with his yes-men Cuthbert, Dibble and Grubb in tow, he was sure to get his own way. City Committee? Mitty Committee, more like.

Martin’s altruistic motives for becoming a councillor had worn thin as muslin. There were too many meetings devoted to stopping trellis appearing on listed buildings, and not enough time spent on deciding how to divvy up the Council Tax. He pondered on whether Alan Miller would have taken so many trips to see his counterpart, had Colchester been twinned with Ljubljana instead of Avignon.

“Martin, a word.” Clough felt Miller’s hand on his arm as they all filed out. “I have procured copies of the successful applications made by Brighton and Wolverhampton for the Millennium competition. They may give you some ideas.” Miller gestured at a small former spinney at the end of the table.

Procured? Why can’t you say ‘got’ like anyone else? “Fine, Alan, thank you.”

“I’m relying on you, Martin.”

Goodie.

Miller’s S-Type passed Clough as he waited at the bus stop, accelerating as he went by for Martin’s benefit. The bus was late, as usual. Now that would be a change worth setting up a committee for, reliable public transport, not that Miller would even know which end of a bus to get on. Clough’s mobile went off just as he was parking in his seat, Vivaldi’s ‘Autumn’ shrill between him and the only other passenger on the 31, who looked like she was old enough to have remembered the piece the first time around. Martin had to wade through Brighton and Wolverhampton to find the ‘phone in his briefcase.

“It’s only me.”

“Hello, me.” Traditional greeting ritual. No-one tells you that love ebbs with the toenail clippings and the ring around the bath; that it fades to grey like the white towels you got for a wedding present. Nor that the sweet intimacies and rituals of the early years cling on for dear life to remind you of what has been lost. Somehow, the reminder is always out of focus.

“Just off to yoga, love. I thought you’d be back by now.”

“Meeting went on a bit. I’m on the bus. Be home in twenty minutes.”

“I’ve left your tea in the oven. Spag Bol. I hope it’s not too dry. Anyway, see you later, love.”

Everything dries out. One moment you’re walking along welded like Siamese, you have to stop every ten yards to kiss each other so that you know it’s real. The next it’s leftover teas, Post-Its on the fridge, and the back that faces you in bed has contours you no longer recognise. At some point the sex slipped from daily to monthly, but Martin just didn’t know quite when. This City Committee thing had him really depressed.

“OK, Marion, see you later.” Children might have made a difference.

He flicked through Brighton. Take the name away and it looked exactly like the dossier Colchester had submitted for the Millennium competition. Full to the brim of achievements and targets, snippets of history and folklore, ambitious plans and fast-forward projects for the future. But why Brighton? What do they have that we don’t? OK, a pier. Well, no-one would be impressed with money spent on a pier in Colchester town centre (no, let’s be positive – city centre), although the idea had a surreal appeal to Martin. The gay aspect? Yes, very politically correct, but little short of kidnapping a couple of hundred of Brighton’s finest would raise the profile. Maybe the cosmopolitan nature of the town? Well, Colchester did have the Dutch Quarter, unfortunately not many Dutch to go with it.

Martin sighed and hove Brighton back into his case. He would need to think on this a bit more. The whole thing was a charade anyway. Although the Queen nominally decided on the winner, it was clear that the thumbs-up really lay in the hands of the Care Blairs. Whichever constituency happened to be Tony’s favourite at the time would be favoured with his whisper into Her Majesty’s ear, accompanied by the Blair half-nelson if more persuasion were needed. Waste of time.
His stop. He excused himself as he struggled past the old lady.

“You should change it to ‘Summer’. It’s not autumn yet. It’s summer.”

“I know. I know.” The mobile had been stuck on ‘Autumn’ for about four years now.

Clough stepped over Marion’s yoga mat, curled up in the hall like a lonely raspberry Swiss roll.

“Marion”, he called. Their first names used to share so many letters. No answer.

The pasta was dry, rock-hard like Spaghetti Junction. He scraped it into a BHS bag, which he hid at the bottom of the swing-bin. The fridge was speckled with novelty magnets, which they had given to each other in Christmas stockings when they lived in Lincoln. The practice hadn’t survived the move south. He oscillated between a hunk of cheddar and some out-of-date honey roast ham (buy one, get one free), then settled for a can of Ruddles. He flopped onto the settee with Wolverhampton and the channel-changer, still called ‘Frank’ (Zapper) from the days when he and Marion had their own private lexicon. The television droned, Wolverhampton wandered, and Clough dropped off with the can wedged affectionately between his thighs.

“Martin. Martin.”

He felt himself shaken.

Clough came to, of course spilling beer onto his crotch.

“Shit. Sorry, love. Aw, blimey.” He rubbed his cricked neck, could hear the bones complain. “Good night?”

“Yeah, lovely.” Yoga certainly seemed to relax Marion – she never moaned at him after an evening class. Maybe he should try it; it couldn’t all be lotus positions. And although she never practised her moves on him, she had becomes lithe from all the exercise. Downside: the fridge was always full of yoghurt.

“You forgot your mat.” He waved in the general direction of the hall.

“Oh, yeah, well, it was ball work tonight.”

Martin didn’t dare think on that any further. He resolved not to take up yoga after all. Maybe a rowing machine?

“What’s all this?” Once Martin would have been able to tell whether Marion was cross or interested, but not these days.

“Oh, God, that, “Martin said, looking at the debris on the settee. “It’s the bid for city status that Wolverhampton made for the Millennium. I’m supposed to find ideas in it that will transform Colchester into Gotham City. It might just be easier if we moved to Wolverhampton. Or Brighton. Or maybe if we re-locate Colchester to Wales there will be less competition. I’m fed up with it already.”

“Oh, Martin, don’t be so negative.” Marion curled up on the sofa beside her husband, giving off a faint aroma of wine and peanuts. She had showered and her blonde bob was still damp. “It’s interesting. What do we get if we become a city?”

“Nothing.”

“Well, what’s it for?”

“Search me.”

“Well, how do you know you’re a city, then?”

“You got me scratching. When your footie team’s got ‘City’ in the name? I don’t know. We should never have left Lincoln – we knew where we were then.” We knew who we were. “My heart’s just not in it, Marion.”

“What you need is a gimmick, something that will make Colchester stand out above everyone else. Now, what’s great about Colchester? What’s different about us?”

Martin was engaged by Marion’s enthusiasm. When had she ever shown any interest in council business before? Must be the wine. “You been drinking, Marion?”

“I stopped off at Julie’s for a glass. She had some bricks she wanted to show me.”

Martin didn’t ask. “Anyway, I’ve to come up with a plan, a gimmick, if you like.”

Marion shuffled through the press release, while Martin hoped the pages were numbered. “I didn’t know Ripon was a city. Bath – now there’s a lovely place. But why is Bath a city and we’re not?”

Martin just shrugged.

“Bath Buns! I love Bath Buns.”

“You like Eccles Cake too, but it isn’t a city.”

“Colchester Cake! That’s what you need.”

“Bakewell’s not a city either.”

“There’s your gimmick, Martin. Colchester Cake.”

“Nor Dundee.”

“Yes it is. Look.” Marion pointed at the press release.

“Well, then...Kendal, Chelsea, Ashbourne, Sandwich, Melton Mowbray, Bishop’s Stortford, Lemon Meringue...”

“You’re making them up. Colchester Cake. And that’s that.”

“For Christ’s sake, I’m going to bed. Goodnight.”

There had been the sperm of a conversation there, but Martin just trudged upstairs, ways too set to go back and allow it to chase fertility.

Weeks passed. His mobile’s ring-tone cycled back into season. There was bickering on the City Committee and bickering at home. He hurt his knee playing badminton and had to give up. Quiet nights in became too quiet. Marion signed up for Advanced Hatha on Tuesdays, and then Iyengar on a Friday, which used to be fish and chips night. Martin never made a decision about the rowing machine.

The City Committee produced a new application for the competition: glossier; more punchy; lots of pithy references to the Roman occupation. But Clough knew that the dossier was a victory for style over content, and that there was essentially nothing new to say. His enthusiasm for the project dwindled from its peak of close to apathetic down to nothing, and he sighed with relief when the October closing date passed. Miller seemed pleased with the final outcome, unable to dig beyond the superficial, and Martin didn’t disabuse him. When the chairman sidelined him into Recycling and Waste, Martin just shrugged and got on with it. He decided to stand down at the next election. The thrill of having his photograph on the council blurb had worn off long ago.

They went to Lincoln, to Martin’s parents, for Christmas. There was a carol service at the cathedral on Christmas Eve; they used to go to it every year, holding hands in the dark, feeling for the warmth they could rely on. This time their fingers touched and search for the clasp that had once been so automatic. Age must affect the circulation, thought Martin, because Marion’s fingers were not those he remembered, but cold and distant. He squeezed her hand tightly, and she looked up at him and smiled. How long since he had noticed that smile? She removed her hand and put it in his coat pocket, warmer and softer by far.

After turkey, they played charades with his brother Tony’s family. It was Tony who got Marion’s clever interpretation of ‘The Waste Land’, but her mime gave Martin an idea for the ‘Safe Recycling’ leaflet he was due to put out in the New Year. Martin did ‘Braveheart’ (“One word, two syllables, the whole thing”) by representing a donkey braying and farting simultaneously. Marion saw this one most Christmases, but either the sherry or affection just made her smile at her husband.
Marion had to look at the road map so that they could find the way out of Lincoln, so many things had changed in their absence, and they drove home politely.

“That was nice,” said Martin.

“Yes, wasn’t it?”

“Lovely dinner. Sprouts were a bit overdone, I thought.”

“Mmm.” Marion touched up her lipstick in the vanity mirror, coral, a new shade. “I liked your ‘Last of the Mohicans’.”

“Thanks. Your ‘Crossroads’ was pretty good, too.”

“It was funny, wasn’t it?” The silence had to be filled. “Martin?”

“Uh-huh?”

“Do you want to go back to Lincoln?”

Martin pretended not to understand. “Why? Have you forgotten something?”

“No.” She turned back to the map. “No. It’s nothing. Oh, look, there’s a Little Chef at Huntingdon. Shall we stop for lunch?”

“Let’s push on, eh?” There was no stopping, no going back.

As they reached Colchester they passed the brown sign that said ‘Oldest Recorded Town’, and Martin wondered if they would have to change all those signs if they won the competition. That would cost a bit. Change always costs.

February saw the ground as hard and cold as the reluctant councillor. His recycling leaflet was a huge success, being responsible for a 25 per cent increase in recycled waste. He thought about sharing this success with Marion, but he didn’t think she would really be bothered, so he just filed the plaudits in a corner of his memory. Marion took up jogging as the evenings became lighter; Martin came home with brochures for rival rowing machines. They left each other messages. They never argued.

Spring was beckoning when Martin Clough came home late one evening, expecting another Spag Bol, but instead finding the letter pinned to the fridge with a sausage magnet, Marion’s sprawling writing looking for direction:

‘Dear Martin,
I’m leaving. I’m sorry, but it’s all over. There’s someone else, you know him, Alan Miller. We’re leaving Colchester for good – Alan has family in Brighton. I never meant it to happen, but I can’t let this chance slip away. I wanted to speak to you, but we just seemed to stop talking altogether.
I need to be loved, Martin. I tried, I really tried, but we couldn’t go on as we were. I’ll be in touch about my things. I won’t make it hard for you. Please understand. I’ll always care about you.
Love, Marion.’

More words than she had spoken to him in months. What had he done? What hadn’t he done? A love so strong you could build walls with it, and he had simply allowed it to crumble away.

The telephone rang. Clough stretched his hand towards the receiver, drew it back again, took a deep breath and picked it up, hoping desperately to hear the voice say, ‘It’s only me’.

“Martin? Alan Miller. Sorry about Marion, old man. But I thought you should know: they gave the city prize to Preston. They invented some new biscuits – called them Preston Pans.”

END.