Pilot Error
by
David Milner
A rural suburb some three miles east of a coastal town is the setting for this (particular) tale. You’ve read it all before, but just listen what I tell you: Hell is personal.
“I’m good with people. Comes quite naturally.” This is what he said to me one afternoon in the kitchen at my mother’s bungalow. “I’m funny.” What sort of twat comes out with something like that? What sort of twat comes out with “I put people at ease” while chopping and slicing romaine lettuce, tomatoes, spring onions to toss in a glass bowl with pitted green olives, feta fucking cheese, splash of palm oil? In my mum’s kitchen, a running commentary on the health benefits of a Mediterranean diet. Because he’s got her taste buds going for Greek and Italian cuisine. Okay, she never went near an artichoke, fresh onion, garlic and thought hummus looked like dog sick. But this cock blows his own trumpet at a distance of twenty-five metres. “I remove the stalk from the bulb, it completely eradicates the aftertaste and smell of the garlic.” Had a high opinion of his own opinions; his feet were so special he wore silk socks.
I wasn’t having it, not from the likes of him. No. Not him. Not from Terry.
“He has the stubby fingers of a child molester.”
“Oh, listen to yourself, will ya!” My sister stood with her hands placed on her hips. She’s a trained nurse and volunteers with Christians Against Poverty. A couple of years my senior, Lynsey is the mother of two young girls. She is a good person. We were tending dad’s graveside, which was something I would never have imagined myself doing, like you see in films and such, dappled sunlight, murmuring leaves. Never knew what to say to dad though. Mum wasn’t with us that day. She was off, fucking off she was with Terry.
“She’s booking a Scandinavian cruise.”
“Yeah, I know.” My sister said.
“She told you?”
“Why wouldn’t she?”
“When?”
“The other night when she phoned, soppy bollocks!”
Lynsey went on at me that I was interfering and stressing myself out, mum was a vivacious woman of fifty-eight and more than capable of making her own choices. She said I needed to take an objective step back from the situation.
“We are predisposed to the acceptance of fate, Lynsey, I know this! Ask the Greeks!”.
I remember Lynsey looking at me, and the sound of her measured breath. She thought I looked underweight, malnourished, dark-eyed ill. She had a lot on her hands with the girls and everything. She is a practical person.
There wasn’t enough left of dad to bury. The corpse would have been cremated otherwise, I’m sure. The gravestone we had placed for all time’s sake.
I was twelve when my dad was killed in a helicopter crash. Killed in a helicopter crash coming home from the eastern Irish sea rig. Three weeks on ten days off, I dimly remember. It’s difficult to knit my memory from the threads of him. Pilot error was said before during and after the inquest. Pilot error, when a woman out for a walk with her dog on the limestone grasslands near Morecambe Bay swore that she saw flames and smoke before the helicopter hit the ground. Pilot error rolls off the tongue in a media friendly way, concise and comforting, it absolves. Blame the pilot! Imagine how the pilot’s family must feel, they get Pilot Error. No survivors. Bodies of hard-working, strong, sexy men smashed to bits, hands and feet and heads turned to fucking cinders. Mum a widow at the age of thirty-six, not coping, on Valium, me on Ritalin. Lynsey had to pull herself together and look after us. She was fourteen. Fuck all that now … I was on to Terry … I was having him.
Easy to follow someone in this seaside town as all roads lead to and from the raised area of land near the centre, with its ornate chocolate box pavilion, known locally as the Mount. Couldn’t miss the sight of his refulgent silvery grey hair, as he minced his calumny from place to place. A glad eye for all the ladies and old dears. Terry deals in antiques and military paraphernalia. Like many a crook he wears suede loafers.
“We’re not going to stitch you up.” This from the lips of a detective constable. Her name is Kirsty and she’s been solicitous verging on friendly thus far, so this hoary old we’re not going to stitch you up line she’s using baffles me. The thought never entered my mind. It’s not the worst of crimes I’m being accused of. I’m hardly a hardened criminal.
“Mister Haynes will be pressing charges.” This from the steely-eyed balding detective inspector as he rolls his burly shoulders forward. We’re sat in an interrogation room. And this is happening now. Too much reality and no mistake.
“I will need a lawyer, then?” I look to Kirsty and supress an urge to smile.
I’m on Terry’s trail one bright and bracing afternoon, bit of a devil’s wind blowing in from the sea. He was wearing a three-quarter length gaberdine overcoat. I was on the opposite side of the high street. Thing is, Terry saunters, his gait is louche as though he were being gently nudged through his pelvic bones, and this presented one or two problems for me, with all the stops and starts due to his man about town casual handwaves and whatnot at people through shopfront windows. Honestly, it was like following someone on a catwalk. Ten minutes go by and then he meets up with this woman known locally as Joke Shop Joyce. Incidentally, she got this name because she took over her dad’s old joke shop that had been a part of the town since God knows when, and by all accounts ran the place into the fucking ground after he died. Nice looking woman, I avow. Similar age (or vintage?) as my mum, fair haired and skinned, like my mum, slim with a serviceable shape to her bust, like my mum. And on this breezy afternoon Joke Shop Joyce is wearing a long, tight fitting, animal print skirt – the type of skirt my mum would wear – with leather, knee-length boots, that wouldn’t go amiss on mum’s long legs. Getting the picture? I followed them to a used car lot. Terry knows about cars, you see.
“I never do this.” The uniformed P.C. is dead sexy, not especially tall, with a teasing ripple of muscle under the regimental crisp white shirt, scarring of teenage acne in the delicate hollow below cheekbones to die for. A break this is in the invited under caution thing. We’re in the brick walled yard at the back of the station. “I never do this,” he repeats.
“I’m surprised that you smoke.” Say I in return.
He cups his hand over the flame to light me up. Lovely touch!
“There you go.”
I inhale and exhale and wish we were sat in a bar somewhere telling each other a million and one things.
“A mess of little consequence, my life, measured against the mess the world is in just now.”
“You’ll be alright.”
“You think?”
“Plead guilty … easier in the long run. Be yourself. Say you’re sorry.”
I shrug prosaically, “Wish I hadn’t killed now!”
And he laughs.
Mum isn’t speaking to me. She has never forgiven me since she discovered that I didn’t like girls. She’s something of a girly woman is mum. I have never sought a long-term relationship. I could never follow the straight path by aping the convention of marriage; pay a priest to lead us through the vows? Adoption next. My mum would never accept an adopted kid as a real grandchild. Let us not judge the woman too harshly. I’m one of those disappointing sons.
Everything happened quickly when I turned up at Terry’s that night. He was sheepish.
“You said I was to drop in should I be passing,”
“Did I …? Well, come …”
He was wearing beige corduroys. They looked nice on him. Up a short flight of stairs to his one-bedroom flat. And I was… laughing from the moment I stepped into the lounge.
“Everything alright?” He asked.
The furniture is arranged like the furniture was arranged in the old lounge we had when dad was alive. Salmon pink and near gelatinous looking cream-coloured walls, fixtures and fittings reflected in the smoked glass top of the coffee table; there’s gewgaws, knick-knacks, a carriage clock, crenelated lamp shades, floral patterned drapes. I see a framed photograph of Lynsey and the girls with her husband Ben … no fucking photo anywhere of me.
“Your mum’s influence…” Terry adds with his gameshow host grin, “You know how she is!”
I hit him hard in the face. He fell backwards against the creamy leather armchair which turned and landed on him as he hit the floor. I kicked his legs, I kicked his arse, ground my heavy heel into his bloodied face.
“Your suits aren’t tailor made!”
“Some … of them …”
“You’re off the peg, you cock!”
“If … this is … about the money …”
“What?” I stood above him.
“Your mother, she said … I told her … Christ’s sake she was willing to spend … Invest, I mean more …”
“How much?”
“Five thousand and I told her she can have the money back all of it back … say the word…”
“Say the fucking word?”
I dragged him to the kitchen. I opened the door of the washer/dryer machine and shoved his head in. I wanted him on his knees and his arse in the air. Terry was blubbering. Pathetic. I yanked his corduroys down to his thighs. Funny thing was his buttocks were flabby. Pasty looking too. Surprised me, that did.
“Get thee to a tanning salon, cried Hamlet to Ophelia!”
“Ohhnonono please no …”
I roughly grabbed at the flesh, jiggled it, one up one down, you know. I didn’t stick it up his ‘arris. He had no worries on that score. I got a fork from a drawer and jabbed the prongs into his fat butts, bringing no more than a trickle of blood. I sat with my back against the cabinet below the sink. My obsession obliged. Made manifest. I was spent. And felt bereft.
“Hell is personal.”
Terry didn’t hear me.
My mum has known Terry for years. Fifteen years old when she first met him. And I was the last to know? My sister knew. And she was all … we know what you’re like and how you take things. Like, personally? No one is allowed to take things personally now for fear of offending folk or showing your true self as thick as pig shit because you haven’t the wit and grace to detach. I’m sick of everyone.
I should have started this story with I’ll be thirty-five next birthday and I’ll be in prison.
Me and sexy P.C. stub the last of our respective cigarettes into the brick wall. A shared moment.
“We better get you back.”
“I blame the pilot.”
“What’s that?” He cocks his head to one side trying to interpret my meaning.
“A useless private joke.”
“Whatever helps.”How my incapacitation will help society beats me. I am not a threat to the public at large.
Bio:
David’s stories have appeared in print and online at Duality Books, Spillwords Press, Impspired Magazine. His plays include, I’m Still Here, performed live on Resonance 104.4FM Radio, and Shinwell: An Extra Break For Breakfast, published by Impspired Books. He adapted and directed his story, Into the Breach, as a short film for the Rise of The Resistance festival, screened at Bloomsbury Theatre and Wellcome Collection. A founder member of the punk band Vee V V (Edils Records), David finds his stories when he’s out and about, or they find him. He lives in South London.
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