Memories are made of this

The time he kicked the bucket
The only bucket he had kicked was the one Esther had foolishly left out. He had stumbled whilst he felt his way, with a shilling for the meter in the cubby hole beneath the stairs. He picked up on his trousers (thinning then at the knees) ribbons of moldy wallpaper that Esther had stripped off their sitting room several evenings before in an effort to make their home look better. There had been something of a ceasefire in their house and the hall doorway slammed a little less, and his Bakelite radio, stored on a shelf above his head, a few decibels lower as he sat with his Braille books of particular knowledge opened on his knee, and his hands flitting left to right with intermittent breaks for mugs of tea proffered by Laura.
The purpose of this break in his routine was to second guess the type of questions he might face soon when he went to London and the ‘This Morning’ programme on radio four with Jack Demanio, which they all usually listened to each morning as they sat quietly eating their cornflakes, before heading off to school in the next town, and her brother to Technical Grammar School in the opposing world, where more might be expected from its scholars.
A candy floss of memories of local busses, a fifteen minute walk down a leafy pretty road, a train then a taxi, a newspaper vendor on the frosty pavement coughing and sniffling as he tried to sing and banged his boots on the pavement and smiled at them, and didn’t try to sell them a newspaper as they headed for the revolving doors at Broadcasting House. A world within a world of elegance and suits, with a receptionist connecting and disconnecting spaghetti of switchboard leads from row upon row of clicking dolls eyes on his switchboard. Into an escalator, then a soundproof recording room with a headset firm to his silver-grey wavy hair and her in an external office watching this apparently innocuous figure. Initially he tackled with ease the volley of questions until he froze and was beaten by a deputy headmaster from Leicester and him furious about that injustice he proclaimed later as they sat on a park bench nearby eating fish and chips out of yesterday’s news on Profumo.
Again he declared, “My mind just froze, I knew that question really, and my fingers not quite quick enough on the button that was all!” Joe, with his new dog’s harness and her tight lead; eyes looking back, soft paws at St Pancras platform 3, steam creating a magic that wasn’t there. Then down beside the long corridors and compartments where feet and bags and suitcases stowed above dark figures with broadsheets or popular papers of the day desperately trying not to look at the three of them as Esther’s thin fingers pulled back the sliding door. Then they went to their scratchy seats. Desiccated sick on the floor. Posters in the compartment with happy nuclear families complete with a bright coloured ball that hung in the air like a pink moon. Inviting a trip to South End and Esther with memories of a happier time when life could be easily understood. He talked with her, loudly saying how he remembered he sat in a carriage just like the one they were in then, and met the hangman Pierpont and how you would never know what sort of job he did, then all the newspapers and the books went down on fidgety knees.

Esther, hours later, left him and his dog at the entrance to the Working Man’s Club, which had been a mainstay for their town when used for the purpose intended. Minutes later, she was home and her mum turned off the Archers and Phil and Peggy at the Bull.
“At least we know what to expect,” she said as she reached moments later for the lose tea tin in the larder and the co-op bottled milk on the lower shelf below their motley assortment of cracked dinner plates. Esther drew out the small chair from the Formica table and sat down, as her mum began to laugh out loud.
“God Esther, you would have laughed today if you had been here to see the packman here at this very door, trying to sell me unbreakable plates and he suggested I throw one on the floor and try to break it, and so I threw it and it shattered into pieces. He lied of course, and said how it had never happened before!”
Whatever went wrong with their lives, Joe always had a solution and that came in the form of absolution, and a loud hammering on their front door each Sunday morning when a kindly lay-preacher from the end of town gently knocked on their front door and their best ‘Sunday Joe’ let him in and then led him up their very steep stairs and into their largest bedroom where absolution was performed. Incense mixed with stale beer and then their voices drifted back down the stairs whilst they in their front room, where plaster fell from every available wall, sat round the oak table and waited for silence to break once more.