Right You Are

We’d had weeks of roiling heat; endless days of acid-blue skies and bleached, bone-white grass. It was a question of when it would break. The answer it turned out, according to various Facebook sages and, to be fair, the Met Office, was Saturday, this coming Saturday – the big one.

In the resulting panic I was dispatched to collect four galvanised steel troughs. The galvanised steel troughs would hold the guest umbrellas. The umbrellas I’d got already. They were dainty and white and transparent, like enlarged see-through cocktail umbrellas, and had been procured from a friend of my future mother-in-law.

The friend had bought them in case of an emergency for her own daughter’s wedding and, as she’d informed me sunnily, they’d had such good weather that they hadn’t been touched. When I handed over the hundred quid cash for the fifty umbrellas, a price which I’d been assured represented an absolute steal, Sandra wore the shark-like grin of a woman who’d just bought a genuine Renoir from a pensioner at a car boot sale.

So we had umbrellas. But there was nothing to keep them in. Nothing that ‘matched the theme’. I’d said we should use an Ikea bag, a suggestion which had been met with a flinch. There had been some terse words. But I had redeemed myself when, after some clarification, I had sourced the four galvanised steel troughs that, it turned out, were urgently required to hold the umbrellas. (The term “tubs”, woefully inaccurate and insufficient in this context, had been bandied around for some time as we grappled with what was needed for the occasion, to confusion and consternation on my part.)

I had sourced them by typing in “Four Galvanised Steel Troughs” into the search bar of Facebook Marketplace. And there they were. First result. Forty quid. More than half as cheap as Sandra’s umbrellas.

The house of the current owner of the four galvanised steel troughs was walkable; the journey home, with four galvanised steel troughs, was not. So I drove round after two messages (“Can I come and collect the four galvanised steel troughs at 2pm today?” “Course”) and pulled into a sloping driveway, sweat pooling in the creases of the backs of my knees. The front garden was pristine and suspiciously verdant given the hosepipe ban. A knock at the door brought a figure bowling down the hall towards me, an indistinct blur through the frosted glass, growing larger all the time.

He was smoking two cigarettes at once. One dangled from his lower lip and one was held like a dart between his thumb and forefinger. His checked shirt and smart shorts were pressed and fresh and there was a neat side-part to his full, silvery grey hair. Under bushy eyebrows sat a pair of thin-framed square glasses.

“You’re here for the galvanised steel troughs,” he said, and there was no hint of a question in his voice. He was grinning like we were old friends.

“Yep, that’s me,” I nodded, and in response he almost bowed and swept his arm to motion me over the threshold.

The hallway was narrow and on stepping in we were almost nose to nose. The paper of his mouth cigarette cracked as it burned and the smoke from his hand cigarette made my eyes water.

“I’m Dave,” he said. I told him I was Josh, more self-conscious with every passing word. “Beautiful,” he replied, elongating the start of the word with relish. “Come on then, Josh.” Then he beckoned me to follow him.

Walking down the hallway to the back door, I noticed Dave was surprisingly spry and fluid in socks and velcro’d sandals. He could have been anything between sixty-five and eighty.

I’d expected the four galvanised steel troughs to be stacked and waiting when we made it to the back garden but instead I was greeted by another small, intensely neat patio, a minute lawn and some garden furniture placed under a wooden lean-to with a clear perspex roof that was attached to the back of the house.

With the pageantry and grace of a magician, Dave stubbed the rapidly dwindling fag that had been in his mouth out in a spotless ash tray, clamped the other to his lip and and pulled two stubby green bottles of brandless French beer from a mini-fridge connected to an outside power point.

“There you go son, get that down you,” he said perfunctorily but kindly, unscrewing the top and handing it over as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Before I knew it, he was sitting, one leg crossed over the other, slightly reclined on his folding garden chair, starting on his own beer as his square glasses slipped slightly off the bridge of his nose. I stood, straight and awkward, watching, unsure of what came next.

“Those galvanised steel troughs might be the best investment I ever made,” he said, as if to no one. I sat for want of anything else to do. “Yep,” he continued, “they’re right up there. Saw them at a car boot out Arlesey way. Got ‘em for nothing. The bloke didn’t want to take them home. I just knew. Weddings. Parties. They’re perfect. Load of ice and some beers. Presents if you want. They’re rustic. Fantastic bits of kit. People call them ‘tubs’ sometimes. Woefully undersells them for mine. Doesn’t begin to describe the possibilities of what they can do. What will you be housing in the troughs, if you don’t mind me asking?”

He looked at me enquiringly.

“Umbrellas,” I said. “Guest umbrellas. At my wedding – in case it rains.”

“Beauutiful,” he crooned again. “Congratulations to you – both for the nuptials and the selection of these galvanised steel troughs to be part of the big day. I’ll tell you now, these galvanised steel troughs are perfect for umbrellas. Have you got the transparent ones with the white handles?”

I was at a loss by this point, sat there with a man I didn’t know, the coldness of the beer numbing my hand, sweating under his lean-to whilst he sat there with the manicured calmness of a film star, talking at me about types of umbrellas.

“Yeah, yeah, we have actually,” I said, my brow crinkling unbidden into the first crease of quizzical annoyance. Dave didn’t notice.

“Fantastic,” he steamed in to reply. “Well, now we’ve established these will be used in the delivery of a one-off event, I am happy to give you further insight on how we can work together. Here’s the thing, Josh – here’s my policy on these four galvanised steel troughs. What I do is I sell them to you for two twenty notes, or I’ve got an Izettle if push comes to shove, and you use them at your event – and what an event it sounds like by the way, congratulations again.”

He paused for a fleeting moment, seemingly to check if I was following. I indicated with a small upward nod that I was, but in reality I had no clue what he was going on about.

“Then, Josh – and here’s the good part, here’s the partnership – you are absolutely welcome to give them back to me after the event in return for one twenty note. Think of it like a deposit. That is unless you want four galvanised steel troughs cluttering up your living space after the event. Do you want that, Josh? Does that sound like something that you might want?”

Here his eyebrows went up, ascending so aggressively that it wouldn’t have surprised me if they had flown off the top of his forehead. His neck was now craned towards me, his cigarette in his right hand, jabbing the air like a conductors baton to punctuate his pitch.

“No, Dave,” I told him. “That doesn’t sound like something I would want, at all”

“Beautiful,” he intoned for the the third time. “I’m glad we could come to an accommodation.”

He sat back, seemingly satisfied, and the fag once again became an object of langorous pleasure, moved in slow arcs from mouth to arm rest, rather than one that might peck a burn into my forearm.

“Umbrellas. Fantastic planning. Could have done with some of that on my wedding day,” he laughed. “Yep, we could have done with a good twenty-five of them. Pissed down all day. Didn’t have far to go, just from the church to the cars to the community centre. Funny old day, looking back on it. I wasn’t that long back from Libya. National Service. I was the last lot through – and no, by the way, I don’t think they should bring it back.”

A dead stop here – a stern look my way as though I’d accused him otherwise. Then the flow of the story resumed.

“I enjoyed it, ‘course I did. Experienced things I never could have imagined at the time. Some of the days I had. I remember once we had some leave and me and some of the boys ended up on the beach in Benghazi, you know up towards Al Karmah way?”

He looked at me eagerly so I nodded, despite the fact I had no clue about Al Karmah and couldn’t have picked Benghazi out on a map even after he’d told me it was in Libya.

“So we are on the beach in the evening and someone gets a fire going. Before you know what’s what, someone’s come back with a few cold beers, we’ve got a little grill type of thing, propped it on some bricks, and we are barbecuing mackerel from the market – mackerel! We had to share a toilet at home in London and there I am, sand on me feet, the sun setting over the med and mackerel on the barbeque. They were silvery blue. Beautiful fish. I remember their eyes went milky as they heated up…”

Dave trailed off. The silence lingered longer than I would have liked but I had nothing. I gulped the beer and waited for him to continue.

“It wasn’t all like that though. That’s why I don’t reckon it needs to be brought back. I didn’t ‘see stuff’, if you take my meaning. There was no combat there at the time; it was just an outpost really. But it can get a bit naughty, chucking a load of young lads from all over the place together. You get the sense some of them have been waiting for a uniform and a gun. Put it this way, there were some nutters in the regiment. A Scouse lad shot a donkey in the desert. Stood there, watching it die. I had to put the poor fucker out of its misery – the donkey, not the Scouser. Do you know how he managed to get away with it when the Sergeant came charging over wondering what the shots were all about?”

It took me a second to accept that this was being addressed to me. “Er, no,” I proffered dumbly.

“We put a handgun down next to the donkey’s hoof and said the cheeky cunt drew on us first.”

Dave stared at me evenly. Then his face broke into a broad grin and he laughed wheezily with the remnants of the second cigarette bobbing at the side of his mouth.

“Look at your face,” he guffawed. “Liven up, Josh lad, it’s your wedding week, you should be buzzing. I know I was. We’d only been seeing each other the nine months I was back. I proposed after three. I just knew, y’know, no two ways about it, this was the girl.”

“And she was. Always was. Is.” He shook himself a little, fidgeted in the chair. “Anyway, it was the day of the ‘64 FA Cup Final – the wedding. I remember the pictures of Bobby Moore. Two years before ‘all that’. Think she would have preferred to walk down the aisle towards Bobby had she been given the choice. Good looking fucker. Do you know Bobby Moore used to iron his money? That’s how neat he was, apparently. They called it elegance back then. But ironing your money? That’s not elegance in my opinion, that’s mental health, don’t you reckon? We’d make him talk to someone now. What kind of fruitcake irons their money?”

It was phrased as a question but I really needn’t have been there by this point. There was barely a second between the upward inflection of his query and the start of his next sentence. My tiny beer was empty.

“Two years after that we were out of London and here. Moved the day of our anniversary. Hard at the start. Quiet. She was doing nights, I was in the van. We used to call the locals ‘carrot crunchers’ – thought they were right bumpkins, we did. Look at me now, lived here longer than I lived there – I’m a carrot cruncher meself. You look a bit of a carrot cruncher an’ all, Josh, if you don’t mind me saying.”

It was hard to know how to respond to that. But there was an earnestness in his eyes, and it didn’t feel like a slur, so I tried to engage with Dave’s premise.

“I’ve been here all my life,” I told him. “Never known anywhere else. Not really. I mean, I was away for Uni but I was back here every four weeks to see Maeve anyway. We’ve been together ten years, engaged for two.”

“Oh, so you’re a coward an’ all,” he said, knowingly. It was funny to be fair.

“I guess I am, Dave. I couldn’t have have popped the question after nine months.”

“That’s fair enough, really,” he conceded. “It was a different time. But everyone gets there in the end.”

There was a long silence. Then he blurted out, as though an epiphany had hit him, “You can take the four galvanised steel troughs.” It was as though he was surprised at his own voice.

“Really?” I asked.

“Yeah, go on. I’ll have ‘em back, mind. But you can borrow them. On us.”

It didn’t seem polite to not accept the offer of the loan. He wasn’t interested in my response anyway; he’d already sprung out his chair and was busy clicking a rusty padlock off the garage door and pulling it open.

We stood there looking at them.The four galvanised steel troughs.

“Beautiful, aren’t they?” said Dave.

“Yes, Dave. Yes, they are,” I replied, shocked at my own sincerity.

He didn’t offer to help me carry them, but he did follow me down the hallway as I tottered under the weight of them all the way to the car, chuntering unsolicited advice for marital bliss all the while. When they were loaded in I started the car and sat with the window down and the engine chugging as Dave, his forearm resting on the car roof, leaned into my window, a fresh cigarette he’d seemingly lit out of nowhere puffing away.

“Have a good day, won’t you, Josh? On the day I mean – not the rest of today,” he said.

“I will, Dave. We will. Thanks for the tubs.” His face fell into a mask of stern shock. I grinned. Dave laughed, realising.

“Right you are, son,” he said as, with a wave of his fag, he turned and started wandering back towards the house. “Right you are.”