The Crooning

The Crooning by Chris Green

It first occurs to Merv McCann that he might be getting old when he hears a mournful ballad by Leo Sayer on the radio, the one about his love leaving in the morning on the early train, and turns it up to listen. Had this happened in isolation, he might have not given it a second thought. His musical taste has always taken in a wide range of styles. But when he begins to reappraise Andy Williams’ oeuvre and finds himself singing along to that Engelbert Humperdink tune, he realises that ageing might be a matter for concern. He even finds himself enjoying an old Cliff Richard Christmas tune and picking up a copy of Crooner magazine in W.H. Smith. Where might this decline in musical appreciation end? Can it actually drop much further than enjoying a Cliff Richard Christmas tune? This might be more damaging even than loving Eddy Arnold’s Make the World Go Away.

The passing of time is something he has not hitherto given much thought to. His view has always been that you are as old as you feel and that one’s tastes in music are a reflection of this. Merv has always prided himself on keeping up with trends, and on occasion, belittled those who don’t. Not so long ago, he ridiculed his sister Sophie because she has not heard of Arcade Fire and he recalls mercilessly mocking his friend Frank when a Barry Manilow tune turned up unexpectedly on one of his shuffles.

It seems that having recently turned seventy, ageing is something Merv is going to have to face up to. Seventy is a big number. It seems that only yesterday he was celebrating his sixtieth. He had held a big party, an extravaganza of excess at Noise. And not that long ago surfing at Widemouth Bay, going to raves in far-off fields and indulging in the decadent pleasures of youth. Where has the time gone? Who was the thief in the night that made off with those years?

There are other signs of getting old that Merv might have picked up on, had he been more attentive. Things that might have offered a clue that St Peter was perhaps clearing a space for him upstairs. Or not, as the judgement might be. Failing health should have triggered the odd thought along these lines. The list of nagging complaints that weren’t there before has been growing by the day, not helped by his drinking or smoking, and his almost complete disdain for exercise. Frequent lapses in concentration too punctuate Merv’s day. Reading is becoming difficult, and he has trouble managing his day-to-day admin. Faculties that he took for granted are no longer guaranteed. And then there is the lethargy. He finds it hard to even get out of bed in the morning. Turning the radio up to listen to Leo Sayer or quietly enjoying a Cliff Richard Christmas tune might be the least of Merv’s problems. Crooning, after all, does not pose a threat to life.

Everyone who knows her would describe Rose as a sensible woman, which is just as well as she and Merv are about to meet. Merv does not know many sensible people and certainly none like Rose. And since Maddie packed her bags and took the train out of there, he does not get a lot of female company. A catalogue of self-pitying laments have been added to Merv’s playlist in the wake of this, including Can’t Live if Living is Without You, There Goes My Everything, and the one about leaving the cake out in the rain. Along with a few George Jones and Hank Williams favourites. The Hank Williams ones are probably the pick of the bunch. Merv is desolate. He has no one. He has let himself go to the extent that Sister Sophie no longer speaks to him. His daughter Hannah has long given up on him. She is in Australia, but she doesn’t even message him. Even his imaginary friends have started to give him a wide berth. In the light of all this dejection,

Merv and Rose’s accidental meeting on the town hall steps, where they are both sheltering from the downpour brought on by Storm Magnus, is fortuitous. Despite their different backgrounds and outlooks, the pair seem to hit it off. They discover they have a shared interest in Doberman Pinschers. Rose simply adores them and has two: Bella and Archie. Merv tells her he grew up around Dobermans. They were the family guard dog, Even the most foolish of intruders would know better than to take on a Doberman. Up until a few years ago, well perhaps twenty, he still owned one. His favourite was an all-black dog called Satan. The name takes Rose a little by surprise. She says it’s so inappropriate as they are such good-natured dogs. Bella and Archie wouldn’t hurt a fly. But at the same time, the name makes her chuckle. She tries to imagine Merv calling after Satan in the park.

Yin Yang cafe is close by and when the rain eases a little, at Rose’s suggestion, they dive in there for warmer shelter and a cup of Masala Chai. A rich source of antioxidants to boost the immune system, she tells him. Merv is not sure what to make of this new beverage at first, but it makes a change from his usual Builders with three sugars, and once you get used to the taste, it has a sweetness of its own. Rose has a persuasive air about her and she finds it easy to push Merv out of his comfort zone. He is no match for her on matters of health and well-being. He agrees that if it has benefits he ought to buy some Masala Chai. He finds himself agreeing with her that as you get older, it is important to get the right nourishment, and she further persuades him to splash out on a compendium of health foods and supplements that he had never heard of. And such is Rose’s consequence, he doesn’t consider going outside to light up once, even when it stops raining.

Rose’s husband Didier, it turns out, died from a rare blood disease with an unpronounceable name in a country in Africa that Merv has never heard of. Didier was only fifty-eight, she says. No, she is not going to tell him how old she is. A lady doesn’t. But it is a year or two more than this. Rose now lives alone with her two dogs in a large detached house in Park Street. The one with the dark blue S-Class Sedan on the drive. Park Street, as it happens, is a stone’s throw from Merv’s first-floor flat in Dark Street. Rhyming street names and they are practically neighbours. She invites him round to meet Bella and Archie. How could she not? Perhaps he might like to join her when she takes them for a walk in the park later. It seems she is lonely too.

Might Rose’s compassionate nature see Merv as a hapless juggler, someone to mentor and offer support? Someone who has perhaps seen better times and is down on his luck. Could helping Merv be a way for her to atone for her selfishness in sending Didier to Africa? Might she still be blaming herself for Didier’s demise? It was her after all pretty much down to her that Didier was working for the global communications company developing a fibre network in Mauritania. She had persuaded him to apply for the position because of the generous salary, ignoring the dangers he would face working in the remote regions of the country. The same generous salary had allowed them to buy the big house. Didier had been reluctant to apply. Is Rose is looking to make amends? Rose’s influence could help turn things around for Merv and even help persuade St Peter to hang fire on his plans for him, and get his gatekeeper on the pearlies to hold off a while. Or might Rose be less virtuous and be looking at Merv as a case study for her own amusement? Something she might joke about with her friends at Pilates. Surely, she could not be looking at Merv in his sorry state of grace as a prospective partner. With his mismatched clothes, thinning hair and expanding girth, he would hardly be anyone’s dreamboat.

Might Merv in turn be looking at Rose as someone he can take advantage of? Someone who will compensate for his monumental resourcelessness? Or ought we to credit him with having more grit and principle? Is he instead a well-meaning diamond geezer undeservedly going through a rough patch? A fellow who has temporarily lost his mojo. In which case, Rose could be someone to help him find it and get it working again. Might he win her over with a heartfelt rendition of I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry. Or why not, My Way? It seems unlikely he would imagine she could be a prospective partner. He would surely be able to see that this was not on the cards. On the other hand, in this crazy mixed-up world, you can never be sure of anything. Stranger things happen. The more you look into how things work and what holds things in place, the more you realise that what’s solid is not.

Perhaps Rose will take Merv on as an odd job man/skivvy and in return, he will have access to the comforts of the big house in Park Street to brighten his day. But weighing it up, were Merv to get his foot in the door, it could easily end badly for one or both of them, couldn’t it?. When disparate worlds collide, the outcome is unpredictable. In the hands of a creative writer, who knows what accidents might happen? Fate is endlessly creative. In the beginning and for always and evermore. Let’s move on and see if we can discover what’s in store for the pair.

Newspapers aren’t the most reliable sources of information. In the interests of selling papers or putting across a particular point of view beneficial to the proprietor, they go for hyperbole and sensationalism. As Albert Einstein famously said, don’t believe everything you read on the Internet. The same could apply to the printed media. Like any commercial venture, media groups are looking for maximum profit rather than offer a public service. They have worked out that tabloid readers are not too bright. Their aim is to keep them frightened and depressed and grateful for the paper’s intervention. News is big on bullshit. It seeks to control our lives. The big media groups own all the regional news outlets, so when I read the headline in The Littleton Gazette about the brutal murder in Park Street, I treat it with an air of scepticism. Not much happens in these parts and they are clearly looking to cause a stir to give local people something to talk about other than the closure of the leisure centre or how badly Littleton Rovers are doing.

The sixty-year-old woman hacked to death with a meat cleaver is not named, but word quickly gets around that this is Rose Pink, the lady from the big house with the S-Class Mercedes on the drive. The ritzy lady with the feather boa, the choppy bob cut and the Estuary vowels. The one with those nasty vicious dogs, Misty Lamb in the library tells me when I go in to check if they have the new Phil Dark novel that I ordered. They don’t, but Misty says it should be in next week.

The man who is in custody is similarly not named in the Gazette report even though, for a serious crime like murder, he must surely have appeared in magistrate’s court for a summary hearing by now. Whether there is a sub judice issue or whether it is simply down to the inexperience of a rookie reporter on the paper is not clear, but word gets around that he is the old fellow from the block of flats at the scruffy end of Dark Street. The block with the drug dealers hanging around, the colourful graffiti on the stairs, and the cages of feral pigeons in the yard. He’s the fellow who croons karaoke ballads tunelessly at The Goat and Bicycle and staggers home drunk, Guy Chapman says, Merv something or other. Guy says he used to play snooker with Merv years ago at Ball Hall above Shurtons and even then, he had violent tendencies. Mad Merv they called him. Guy recalls the time when Merv lost a frame against a young kid off the street and snapped his cue over his knee in a fit of pique. People gave him elbowroom after that. You never knew where you were with Mad Merv. He frequently threatened his opponent if the game was going badly. Eventually, he got banned. If Guy says it, there must be some truth in it, but some who say that Guy can’t be trusted, so it’s probably best to take what he says with a pinch of salt. Others maintain that Merv was never violent. He was too lazy to be violent. Perhaps it’s a case of mistaken identity, Daley Roller suggests.

All bets are off as to what the story is when Merv turns up at The Goat and Bicycle on Karaoke night acting like nothing has happened. Surely the courts don’t go that easy on murder these days that he could be out so soon. That would be too woke for even the most dementedly radical, morally aggressive, Jainist hippy. Merv orders his usual pint of Old Bastard and takes it to his usual corner, the one where he can get away with smoking. Here is a man not in a chatty mood. Is he contemplating Rose’s live-well active healthy lifestyle? The ginseng, the ginkgo biloba extract and the marigold tea? The multi-vitamin probiotics? The Tai Chi and Quigong? How’s all this coming along? Has it had any effect, or is it simply too late for someone of Merv’s disposition to change his ways? Or is he perhaps using his personal space in the Goat to remember his glory days in the hope that he can somehow rekindle the fire of youth? Wait! Is that a mournful Leo Sayer ballad I can hear? The one about his love leaving in the morning on the early train. Isn’t this where we came in?

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