Floating Away

Looking back, I wonder why it took me so long. How I missed the signs. How I could search so avidly for an escape, without realising that the answer was in my hands all along.

But maybe this dreamlike remoteness is just my fate. I found dealing with practical matters - booking a dental appointment, filing letters, replacing basic household items when they wore out - to be immensely dull, impossible to complete in one go. I’d find the number for the dentist, and then go out for lunch. I’d buy a box file and leave it in its shrink wrapping. Magazine stacks were pressed into service as tables. So my life was a hodgepodge of the incomplete, cobbled together from odds and ends, forever makeshift. ‘You’re a balloon-head’ my Dad sighed, more with regret than disdain. ‘And you’ll always be a balloon-head’. ‘Maybe one day I’ll surprise you’ I said, but neither of us believed it.

Having a balloon-head for a son was bad enough at the best of times. These were not the best of times. My family badly needed money. My dad, an insurance salesman, was being made redundant. And I had to pay back my student debt. So I took the first job I could find.

Unsurprisingly, the standard nine-to-five routine hardly suited me. I instinctively searched for loopholes, corners to cut, acceptable nooks in which to hide. I had a balloon head, and I always wanted to float away.

My expectations were low, and I have to say they were met. Being an IT salesman was repetitive. To put off making awkward phone calls, I’d dawdle in the kitchen making a round of tea, or sing to myself in the toilets under the noisy cover of the hand-dryer. Rather than sales figures and meeting notes, my standard-issue black leather notepad was filled with dreams, plans, ideas for escape. In short, I was hopelessly bored, patiently saving my pay-cheques until I’d unburdened myself of the debt. People noticed. My colleagues gave me a Dozy mug, featuring the most useless of the Seven Dwarves. Once a balloon-head, always a balloon-head.

To save on rent I lived with my grandmother, Maria. She was a pensive, morose woman of eighty-five, scarcely mobile, prone to lengthy ruminations about her long-dead husband and how my parents were awful people for buying too many new clothes. Her favourite saint was Theresa, beneath whose portrait she lit a solitary tea-candle every evening. Her apartment, a ‘70s high-rise directly beneath the airport’s main flight path in Hounslow, was stuffy and coffinesque. Strange trinkets and ersatz antiques cluttered the place terribly. Maria had lived alone for twelve years before I moved in, and she was so used to having things the way they’d always been that even small deviations - towels hung on the bathtub rather than on the door handle, the porcelain dog on the left-hand side of the TV rather than the right - could upset her for hours. ‘Everything you see? Is valuable!’ she cried, gesturing to the worthless tat on the walls. ‘Is worth a lot of money. Don’t touch’. Although I lived in her spare bedroom for two years, other than a small stack of books there was no sign of my presence, nothing to show that a young man also lived here. Part of this was due to my continued, deluded insistence that I would only be staying at my grandmother’s for a few more weeks, but mostly I felt sorry for her. The flat was her friend, and I wasn’t going to interfere with their relationship.

I was half-disgusted, half-intrigued by how quickly I had fallen into obscurity. There was a peculiar, deathlike quality to those months, with each day suffocatingly bracketed by long journeys into London to sell computer software which I had never and would never use. I needed to get out; but how? My dad couldn’t find another job, and so the family had finally run out of money. Over the course of several agonizing phone-calls, my parents explained that they were on the verge of having our family home taken away from them.

My grandmother tried to help. ‘This was your grandfather’s watch’ my grandmother said, in a voice slow and deliberative with age. ‘Is worth a lot, a lot, a lot of money’. Her eyes were glassy with pride; I began unfolding a polite refusal, but she persisted. ‘No! You take’ she said, thrusting the tatty leather into my palm. ‘He no need it now’. Poor grandmother. At least she would never learn how worthless her accumulated treasure actually was. I stuffed the watch into my bag. Then Maria went to bed. I sat up, alone, staring at the sentimental watercolours and the faded grandeur of the chandelier.

Procrastinating in the office, I had found an advert on an arts website. Such magazine were looking for a lifestyle writer. I spent the rest of that afternoon writing an application, offering to write my first article for free.

Such offered an irresistible escape from the ossification of my grandmother’s apartment. We were invited to all kinds of events across the city. I accepted everything that came my way: the unveiling of a cocktail in celebration of the Oscars, a pancake-eating competition on Shrove Tuesday, the launch night of a new vodka in a church crypt. These pseudo-events were shams, escapades in lieu of real escape.

At first, I felt fortunate to be there, grateful for the free drinks, giddily anticipating the moment when I’d get to tell the story the next day. But the glamour subsided, and I began to realize that I was giving away something precious in return for a few cocktails. I was getting home later and later, I slept badly, arriving late to work and leaving as early as I could. My grandmother, almost in tears, accused me of being an alcoholic, relentlessly repeating stories of long-forgotten relatives who had been demonised by drink. I did my best to ignore her.

The thing I remember most about those days were the hangovers, the stubborn, spiteful hangovers. I became a connoisseur of the different kinds of sickness, growing to relish the rawness of perception left in alcohol’s wake. On those strange mornings, nothing looked the same; something I’d dismissed long ago as being trivial would suddenly move me to tears; everyday objects could inspire an immortal nostalgia within me, a longing so deep that I could loll in it for hours. Purged, the world seemed fresh, and even the crowded trains, the aching of my head and the sterility of the office couldn’t convince me otherwise.

Those were the kindest hangovers, and perversely they only seemed possible when you drank far too much. I usually suffered from the smaller, ignoble hangovers, the petty ones which trip you up and slow you down. I felt like a zombie. My manager Julia once told me, in a matter of fact tone, that I looked like shit.

You couldn’t look like shit while schmoozing for Such. Combing my hair in the bathroom, I cursed myself for agreeing to attend yet another silly charade, promising myself that this would be the last time. Rummaging in my bag for some aftershave, my hand felt something squishy and serpentine: the watch. I slipped it onto my wrist. Forty minutes later I was standing in a cocktail bar’s ‘VIP’ area (‘Closed for a Private Event’), listening to some fashionista detailing the finer points of his handmade cufflinks business.

‘That’s when I told myself, Robin, you deserve your own company. And I never worked for anyone else again’ he said, rewarding himself with a sip of champagne. ‘Nice Patek, by the way’

‘Sorry?’ I said.

‘The Patek’ he repeated. ‘Your watch. I’ve not seen that design before, is it vintage?’

‘It was my granddad’s’ I said, glad to have a fact to hand.

‘Must be worth a lot’ Robin said, as if the thought oppressed him.

Hungover again, I got in late the next day. And I found out that my colleague Nathan - chewing gum, sports car grin, always good for a betting tip - was leaving. ‘Hate to go mate, hate to’ he said, ruminating over his tea. ‘But I told Julia the other week. My antiques business is going through the roof. More orders than we can handle. I mean, why sit here all week?’ he said, gesturing to the dismal surroundings with a quick dart of the eyes.

I couldn’t blame him. The trouble was that the job had a high staff turnover, which is the polite way of saying that most people found it unbearable. New employees came and went, some appearing and disappearing in a matter of days, passing through like leisurely comets. Often they’d leave without saying a word, and that would be the end of Sally or Tyrone or Kirsten. Morning would come, and Julia would brightly announce that Tara was no longer with us, and that the team would be recruiting again. We’d revive memories of the interlopers during lulls, eulogising them through their quirks and oddities. Kevin who used to whistle. Chiara who wouldn’t share her coffee. And soon, Nathan who had a side-hustle in antiques.

‘Anyway mate, it’s my last week’ Nathan said, grinning. ‘No more nine to five for me’

‘Yeah, well, you’re lucky you know so much about antiques’ I said. ‘Otherwise you’d be stuck here like the rest of us’

‘Antiques? You’re wearing one mate’ he said. ‘That watch is at least sixty years old. You ought to be careful, flashing it like that’

‘This? Mate, my dotty gran gave it to me’ I said.But I gave it to him to inspect. ‘Here, call my mate Francis, and tell him you’ve got a fifty-year-old Patek, that’ll cheer you up…’ And he grabbed my black notebook to write down the number; I hoped he wouldn’t recognise that my so-called work notebook was actually a diary.

That Friday, we had a leaving do for Nathan. I tried to make an excuse, fearing yet another hangover, but Nathan wouldn’t take no for an answer. ‘Mate, you’re coming’ he said, and moments later I was back at the Queen’s Head. One pint, I said to myself, and no more. I was formulating an excuse in my head when Nathan interrupted, saying,

‘So what did Francis say? Was I right or what?’

‘What? Oh, right - the watch…’

‘Mate, don’t tell me you never called him! Give him a bell. I’m telling you, it’s worth something’ he said, his voice hard with admonishment.

I slipped out twenty minutes later. I never saw Nathan again after that night, but I did call Francis the next morning.

‘Patek from the fifties? About fifteen grand for a private sale. Maybe more at auction’. I struggled to maintain my composure, or to speak.

‘More at auction…?’

‘I can’t make promises, but I’d be surprised if it went for less than £18,000’

It had the loopy logic of a dream. Someone out there was going to pay me more than a year’s salary for an old timepiece with a mouldy watchstrap. I met Francis for a proper valuation, signed some forms, and then sent it for auction. A month later, and £20,000 was making its way to my account.

It was a Thursday. I was still in the office at 6pm, finishing off a contract. The e-mail came through. I hadn’t told anyone about the watch, fearing some kind of jinx. But now that it was finally come true, there was no one around me to celebrate with; the whole floor was empty. So I called my Dad. I didn’t even say hello.

‘Dad, great news’ I said. ‘I’ve sold one of Granny’s trinkets - for £10,000!’

Disbelief; confusion; joy; relief. And then, just before I put the phone down,

‘Oh, and Dad? One more thing. I’m quitting my job. ...I know, I know. Your balloon head’s floating away’