Take the next road on your left (2)

It was not an unhandsome face I recalled, even though I’d only seen it for a moment and that appearance was rather two dimensional being flattened against my windscreen. I braked sharply and it vanished with its body beyond the bonnet. God pushed the pause button then, and the whole world ceased to move. Traffic and pedestrians alike gave out frozen mechanical stares. My own searched out beyond the windshield and crossroads until it found somewhere warm, a place of solace where none of this could possibly have happened and then came the scream and God pressed play.
“Sweet Christ I’ve killed her” I cried and instinctively fisted away at the electrical dashtop fiend that had directed me to this appointment. Those of the unfrozen witnesses standing at the junction who hadn’t turned away in horror ran to the point beyond the front of my car where I knew her dead body lay. I could see them crouching down but hadn’t the nerve or the nerve ends to motion away from the vehicle.
Then one head popped back up and glared at me. He eased himself away from the huddle and strode toward my door. I braced myself for the ensuing tirade. She did it, I thought; that little bitch back at that shit house estate I’d got lost in. Then I felt a wave of contrition, as rare in me, than a missed sale. I suppressed it immediately and the attribute of failure that I associated with it.
I didn’t miss sales. I was King Closer with a capital C. Everyone needed insurance and they needed me to inform them of this fact. They’re answers, whether negative or positive, were meaningless – what I wanted was their thanks.
I was trained with the mental attitude that no means yes. But this was bullshit because you could sit all night with a client and browbeat him into an affirmative only for a cancellation to hit the office two weeks later. They’d say anything to get you out the door but once you were gone they had their rights and when those hit the doormat one dark cold morning seven days hence, you were in no position to influence their premium. Gratitude was another matter.
My greatest sale was never the one that garnered me the most commission. The latter, in fact, was merely the splendid collision of the two orbiting comets of chance and fortune. I was cold calling new companies in the area and arrived at the reception desk of a firm manufacturing a new and “revolutionary” cleaning product. I had barely handed over my business card and was bracing myself for the customary brick wall and which method I’d have to adopt with the MDs first line of defence, when the latter emerged from his office requesting the number of a prominent Insurance Company.
Offering apologies and introductions in equal measure I broke through the barrier before it had been erected and within two hours left with proposals for a pension scheme for thirty employees. Happily the product became a household necessity and the firm several warehouses nationwide and staff in their thousands.
No, my finest hour was with Mr and Mrs Lighthouse of 69 Black Row, some six months into my selling career. They were both retired. She, Sybil, was in fact older than her husband, Archie. It was Sybil that had answered my prospective phone call three days previous.
“Mrs Lighthouse, my name’s Charlie and I’m calling people in your area to offer a free and comprehensive assessment of your current insurance”
“Ooh I don’t know. My husband deals with all the bank thingies”
“I’m not a bank Mrs Lighthouse. I work for a company that likes to give you money”
“How do you do that?”
“Perhaps I can come round and show you? What’s your first name?”
“Sybil”
“Well Sybil I’ll come and have a chat with you and Archie Thursday evening, say seven o’clock. Bye” And I hung up.
As I knocked their door at the appointed time I had already gauged the belligerence that would emanate from Archie before that scratched, gaudily painted council door opened before me.
“What de ye waant?” rasped a broad Glaswegian tongue from the lightless hallway beyond the porch.
“Hi I’m Charlie from…”
“Insurance?”
“Yes”
“Fack off”
“But Sybil asked me to call”
“Are ye sure?”
“Mr Lighthouse…Archie…I’m not in the habit…”
“De ye know me?”
“Sorry”
“Have ye ever seen me befare?”
“No”
“Well dinnae use ma first name. Hey woman” he leaned behind him, “Get here”
Sybil must have been cowering in the darkness only a few feet away because she emerged suddenly, white faced, from the shadows at his shoulder, like an apparition. I rocked back like an intruder in a funeral parlour who’d been admonished by one of the corpse lying there.
“So ye invited him did ye?”
“Well I suppose I did, but then I…” Sybil was in torment. All her life she had been instructed in the doctrine of obedience to the male and was therefore loath to displease either of us.
“Well I didnae” Archie resolved her dilemma
“I’ve come long way here to help you, could I at least have a warm cup of tea before setting back? The heater in my car isn’t working”
Archie eyes tapered and I felt mine replicate in response.
“It’s not in ma nature to be inhospitable. Get the kettle on woman”
And I was in.
By the time I’d finished my rambling fabrications that claimed my mother’s family were all from the same Glasgow suburb I was a friend. But when I showed Archie and Sybil how selfish they were in not providing a legacy for their loved ones when they were gone I was family. As they were signing the application for joint whole life insurance at a rate of £60 per month we’d made arrangements for me to come to tea again soon, an invitation I had no intention of keeping. “Maybe a wee something stronger” Archie winked as Sybil went out to the kitchen for the umpteenth time.
In fact Archie and Sybil’s extended family, two sons and three grandchildren, rarely visited. The rancour had eaten away at Archie for years. Like all families estrangement was never a case of culpability lying with the one side only. Now older and seeking a true reconciliation before he went for that final sleep he maintained those premiums whether he could afford them or not. That final bitter winter he and Sybil closeted themselves in a mountain of blankets refusing to pay for extra heat and threaten his inheritance.
They were found that way a week after temperatures plummeted to a severe minus 10 one January night. They had been watching the ice skating Olympics. They were as solid as the rink itself.
I presented the family with the cheque, some ten thousand pounds. They were delighted because they’d expected nothing at all from the old skinflint. He hadn’t told them. They gave me their thanks just as Archie had when I sold him it.
My driver’s door flew open and the man peered down toward me. I turned my head to the right and closed my eyes.
“You lucky bastard” he spat, “I think she’s gonna live”.