Bastille Day in Brookwood

Ian contemplated leaving the door to the bathroom wide open, but decided, after a moment’s hovering on the threshold, to close it as usual. The ukulele in his right hand, its neck surprisingly thin between his fingers, was rebellion enough for one Bastille Day, he decided. The Revolution didn’t happen overnight, as he kept reminding his ten-year-old son. Or did it? he thought to himself as he closed the door.

The closing had nothing to do with the difficulty he would have faced attempting to sit on the lavatory with the door open, of course. Nothing to do with him taking up the majority of the space in the cramped, cupboard-like bathroom with its ineffectively frosted windows. Nothing at all, he thought, as he hovered once more, his hand dangling limply from the rusted golden bolt. He slid it across, then flung it swiftly back again, a final, minute defiance.

The ukulele was an ancient and dangerous artifact which had been discovered in the loft during a recent spring clean, lurking behind a number of Shirley’s heavy-handed watercolour paintings. The peeling canvases in tatty mud-brown frames had been Shirley’s pride and joy whilst at university; they had hung on the walls in her box room, held in place by furiously hammered in nails which peeled the paint in a direct affront to their noncommittal and surprisingly personable landlord. He had returned her full deposit to her when she graduated and had blamed the year’s worth of acrylic dandruff which had been trodden into the carpet on the damp, mumbling something about climate change.

She had needed some rebellion, however small, just to prove to herself that she could, and once she’d had that taste of it and endured the resulting conversation with the landlord she realised rebellion was not to her taste. It made her want to put the kettle on, to stare at the floor, to ask whether he’d prefer the spotty mug, if the floral patterned one was too girly.

In her abstinence Ian took it upon himself to carry out acts of tedious minor anarchy, assuming it was somewhere in the job description of thirty-seven-year-old father of two. Shirley secretly suspected, after reading an article in the Guardian, that he was keeping a diary of them and posting them on an anonymous blog. In the article the blog had eventually lead to a book deal, one of those gaudy hardbacks which face the front in the ‘humour’ section and fill people’s stockings come Christmas, only to be read on boxing day on the loo and sold for pence on ebay on the 27th. She had worried, recently, when she caught him drinking directly from the apple juice carton, that he was heading for the same windfall, and it would soon be his own book yellowing on the cistern. She knew that was where he did most of his reading, and had almost given up trying to stop him. Almost.

The ukulele was his latest, and he considered it his definite piece de resistance: already building upon the experience of reading surreptitiously whilst going about his business, he had graduated to something which made rude, unwelcome noises and clattered as he banged it against the white walls and the filthy, black-spotted glass of the shower cubicle. He hadn’t dared to get it out while Shirley was in the house, of course, but today was Bastille Day. He had little to no interest in French History, of course, but had seized upon it as the perfect excuse for an act of marital treason when it came up in his son’s homework.

He plucked absently at one of the strings, which issued a murky and evocative sound. Whilst at university, before he had known Shirley and rural Surrey and dinner parties and helping with French homework, he had been known by a handful of people in a small West Country town as something of a ukulele wizard. He wrote a handful of songs, some poignant, some bawdy, some confusing. There always those who shouted out for ‘When I’m Cleaning Windows’, of course, but he didn’t let them ruin the shows he did, in the backs of pubs, the sticky-floored clubs and once, supporting Billy Bragg at the student union. When the inevitable heckle came he would pause, and inform the audience, taking care to appear nonchalant, that George Formby had in fact played a banjolele, which is comprised of the body of a banjo with the strings of a ukulele. Once, in a fit of rage, he had played ‘that sodding song’ and stormed off stage immediately afterward, cutting his set short by two songs, including a perhaps overly earnest cover of The Smiths’ ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’.

He had not resurrected his passion for Morrissey since, as he met Shirley soon after and quickly discovered that she despised and pitied him, referring to him as ‘The Veggie Vulture’ and adding ‘misery, more like’, any time his name was mentioned. Listening to the records whilst home alone on a higher volume than seven on the hi-fi dial had been Ian’s only Morrissey-related act of subterfuge thus far in their marriage, and he thought, as he sat, perched oddly upon the lavatory, clutching the ukulele tight, that it was definitely time for full-blown treason. As he sung the opening line, stopping briefly to correct a wrong chord, his stomach turned with nervous sickness and adrenaline. He felt as if he had walked into a packed pub during the second world war, declared that Churchill and King George VI stank of kippers, and scurried away without paying for his half pint of ale.

His voice began to waver half way through the first chorus. It had always been out of his range, his friends had told him after watching him howl it painfully while they sipped awkwardly at their bottles of warm cider. He told them, in the same tone of voice with which he gave his George Formby lecture, that if Morrissey could sound like he was in pain whilst singing, then so could he, before leaving hastily to avoid further discussion of the subject.

In the privacy of his own grubby bathroom, however, some howling could take place without risking his friends’ or neighbours’ annoyance, so howl he did. The sound echoed through the dark room and threw itself rudely back at him, but he carried on. A dog began to bark outside, but he ignored the sound and raised his volume. As he began to reach the end of the second chorus he was treated to another, more dissonant accompaniment, and stopped abruptly as the loud shaking of keys and the crack of the opening front door sounded up the stairs.

He stopped playing immediately, but in his haste he fumbled the ukulele, slapping his hand at thin air as it tumbled out of them and onto the floor. It struck the tiles with a deafening atonal bang, the echo of which was still ringing in Ian’s ears when he heard his wife’s fingers rapping tentatively on the door.

“Ian?” her voice came, small and short, “Are you alright?”

“Fine, fine, fine, yes. Just…dropped the…soap.”

“Really? It didn’t sound like soap,” she said, the concern evaporating swiftly from her voice.

“It’s new. I got it as a present from work. It’s made from….elephant.”

“Right.”

A slow, dull silence reigned for a moment, in which Shirley pressed her ear to the door and Ian became intensely aware of his own breathing.

“Cup of tea?” Shirley asked, removing herself from her position of failed espionage.

“That’d be nice.”

Ian heard her shuffle away slowly, and the telltale creak of the third step on the way down. After a minute, he stood up, flushed, and inadvertently kicked the ukulele. He waited, frozen to the spot, standing on one leg, as the echoes disappeared, and prepared for an earful. However, all he heard was the distant click of the kettle boiling. Deciding it was safe, he washed his hands, gingerly picked up the ukulele, and opened the door.

“I KNEW it!” Shirley barked at him before he had even had a chance to register her presence, standing on the landing with her arms folded. He nearly dropped the ukulele again, but caught it, and looked his wife straight in the eye. She was scowling, her usually pretty, heart-shaped face contorted into a frown which clearly required some concentration. They stood for a second, absurdly staring each other ought like rabbits in headlights, before Shirley burst abruptly into near maniacal laughter.

She lurched forward, threw her arms around his neck and kissed him, wetly.

“I’m sorry, Ian, but that is just ridiculous.”

Ian looked down at the ground as his wife let go of him. “I know.”

“I thought you sold that old thing years ago?”

He shook his head. He found himself tongue-tied, a strange soup of relief and mortifying embarrassment nestling in his gut.

“Ian,” he looked up. She was smiling now, her eyes seemingly large and bright after they had been screwed up in the forceful frown. “Ian, have you been…blogging?”

“What?”

“Blogging.”

“Erm…no. But now that you…”

“You haven’t?” she interrupted urgently, staring him down. He shook his head defiantly, his brow furrowed. “You can tell me, you know. I wouldn’t be mad. I mean, it’s funny, isn’t it, it’s just what everyone does these days, twitter and everything, I understand-“

“I haven’t,” Ian said, loudly and finally, “but now that you mention it I think that might not be such a bad idea! I’ve been needing a form of expression for a while I think. I could do some videos of me singing my old songs, put them on the whatsit-tube…” he trailed off, seeing her face, expressionless, unsmiling.

“I think that’s just great,” she said hastily, “now how about that tea?”

“Great,” replied Ian.

“Without the ukulele?”

“Okay.”

A week later, having put the children to bed, Ian and Shirley were sharing a rare moment, lying entwined in their queen sized bed. He ran his hand slowly through her hair, enjoying its post-hairdryer softness.

“Ian?” Shirley asked, quietly, her eyes still open while his were beginning to close.

“Mmm?” he replied.
“Did you ever start that blog?”

He did not reply immediately, but his eyes, unbeknownst to his wife, widened.

“No,” he mumbled, eventually, “I haven’t had time. Maybe on the weekend.”

“Okay. Time for bed?”

“Mmm.”

They shuffled slowly out of each other’s arms and rolled onto their own sides of the bed, falling into the ten-year-old grooves of the springs. Ian leaned over, fumbling for the light switch, and kissed his wife, briefly, on the lips, before plunging the room into darkness. The guttural murmur of low snoring filled the room soon after, and Shirley rolled over, sitting up gingerly.

She reached down to Ian’s bag and pulled out his laptop, which was on standby. She opened it up and caused Ian to stir slightly as the room was bathed in pallid light, but he carried on snoring. The screen was open on a webpage entitled Minor acts of Rebellion. At the top was a paused video of a blurry mass of pixels in the shape of a man playing a small guitar. Shirley breathed in, and considered closing the laptop and throwing it forcefully back into the bag, but continued reading. The first post on the blog was entitled Bastille Day in Brookwood.

‘I should begin this post, and probably all of those that follow, by saying that I love my wife, utterly and completely. Minor rebellions are just that, and will always remain as such.’
She read the sentence again, but stopped again at the end of it. Instead of reading on, she scrolled to the top of the page and clicked the small, almost unseen tab at the top marked ‘stats’. It informed her, with an optimistic greeting, that the blog had had 3,356 hits since it’s inception three days previously.

Smiling to herself, she shut the laptop down and replaced it in her husband’s bag. Rolling back over, she shifted awkwardly until she was pressed up against Ian, lightly, nestling in the small of his shirtless back. She placed an arm around him, which caused him to snort and shift and kick, but he soon settled, and his hand found hers and clasped it. He held on to it lightly, his snoring unbroken.

“I love you,” she whispered, and no sooner had the words escaped her mouth than the sound of snoring was doubled, filling the room, its echoes hanging and drifting away, slowly, into the night.