Coming to you in a number of installments over a period of five weeks or so. Keep an eye out on my social media – I’ll do a post whenever the next part is up.

The story behind the story: This story began with a name – Linton – and the image of this character was so strong, the story almost wrote itself! It’s a portrait of the Ordinary and the Beautiful: the terrible (and satisfying) gratification of being lonely and content all at once.

PART I

Linton collects art. He’s slender and from-another-century. When he was in school, the kids used to call him mop-head. He smokes a pack of cigarettes a day but manages to smell like fresh soap whenever he goes out. He’s a conservationist, slightly progressive, but values tradition and votes independent every election. He has a permanent squint and likes to eat liquorice. When he was in high school, he wanted to be a famous pianist but being musically inept he had to give it up. Now he’s a jeweller’s apprentice and works a forty hour week in an old fashioned arcade in the city where rich people, couples, and worn out social elites browse the window display of his employer’s shop.

When Linton was three, he prayed and asked God to make him a Great Man. He’d grown up on stories of men in lion’s dens and men building boats, women leading armies and appearing before kings. When Linton was three, he wanted to be great. He was a giant in his own mind, but quiet and shy so that ‘being great’ felt unattainable and far, far away. His three-year-old mind couldn’t see that the obscure, delicate, and ordinary parts of life were beautiful. And now, for all his dreams, Linton’s living the beautiful.  

It’s five in the evening and swarms of people gather around the bus stops, tramping down the streets, bustling home. The city is tired, ready to settle down and embrace the homeless for the night, ready to become a picture of emptiness and newspaper sheets: a composition of grey matter put to music. Linton sighs and takes his place at the end of the line-up at the bus stop. The reflections of his fellow bus-people flicker in the windows of taxis and cars driving past on their way to the suburbs. The lights get louder, the air brighter, and the man standing next to him coughs. Linton lights a cigarette and stands smoking in the peak hour hum. The woman on his other side glances at him but Linton ignores her. The kid holding her hand stamps his Nikes, looks up at Linton, and asks why he smokes.

‘I’ve ummm… I’ve always smoked – started when I was about your age, actually.’

The mother gives him a dirty look and bends down to say something to her son. Linton grins slyly and peers down the street. He can see his bus number glowing orange as it creeps forward slowly, deliberately slowly, until it jerks up to the curb, creaking, hissing, throwing a tantrum. Linton gets on and stands in the aisle, holding onto the railing and shunting back and forth with the movement. His veiny wrist grips the bar overhead, his grey coat drips from his shoulders like murky water. The streetlights glitter on Linton’s glasses – yellow, orange, and red bursts of sentiment that gather upon the glass and dissolve before the dark of suburbia. The bus has left the city.

Linton gets off at his stop and walks the three hundred metres to his front door on the corner of Spelton Avenue and Hackney Street. The gum trees in the park nearby droop heavy and silent. The streetlights look sick. The air smells like pan-fried onion – his neighbours cooking dinner. Linton takes a good long breath and walks inside, watching the outside shrink away. The light stares frostily back at him. He shuffles down the hallway, throws his bag on the table, and starts making dinner like his neighbours. The gentle hush of night traffic seeps through the open window. With a cigarette between his teeth, Linton hums Beethoven’s fifth and stands at the kitchen bench deftly chopping an onion with his long fingers. He pauses to look out the window at the dirty sky, then starts cutting again and slices his finger on the downward stroke of his knife. Linton jumps – Damn! He watches the blood coming fast and holds it under the tap for a minute, feeling the bite of it sink deep. He grabs a Band-Aid from the cupboard and finishes the job.

Next morning at work, Linton’s cleaning a ring and feels a movement behind his left shoulder.   

‘Whuddya do to your finger?’

‘Cut it open last night – bled like nothing else.’

‘Looks like it’s getting in the way.’

‘Tis a bit.’

‘Well, don’t let it stuff up that job.’

Linton rolls his eyes.

‘Sure – it’s not.’

His boss grunts and moves away and Linton breaths easy. He pushes his glasses further up his nose and takes to imagining himself far away in one of his paintings hanging at home – it’s a print, not an original – but it still moves and sighs like good art should. Painted somewhere on the coast of France, the sky is huge, filled with boiling cloud. The sea thrashes. Salty-smell and wind blow rush past. Linton’s got a good grasp on it – the feel of deep winter, the dregs of hauling fish to your hut, the silver-grey of fish, the smell of fish, the painful cold, the…

‘Ding-ding.’

Linton snaps back to his job and looks up to see a tall customer come in. Probably the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen – all clad in furs and creamy-skin and eyebrows one can’t stop looking at and red lips. Yeah, whatever. Linton doesn’t give the customer a second thought but tips his head back down to cleaning and polishing the ring on the table in front of him with tenacity and a ridiculous amount of zeal.   

‘Good morning,’ the boss says rising from his desk in a civil, gentlemanly, effortless manner – a manner perfected by years of practice. Linton loathes this: the hypocrisy of commerce and business, especially when he sees it in people he has to work with every day.

‘Morning’, the woman says and her voice sighs, giving Linton the creeps.  

‘I’d like this watch looked at. It’s an old wind-up one and I’ve no idea how to get it to going. Also, the band is too loose and needs tightening.’

She pulls out a delicate gold-coloured thing with nine tiny diamonds in clusters of three each, set in gold leaves around the watch face.    

‘Certainly, we can manage that.’

Linton catches the woman staring at him. Of all the things Linton hates most, it’s children and beautiful women. Probably because he hasn’t had either but deep down, wants them all the same. He grins at her – what he thinks is a grin but comes out more like a sneer – and the woman looks down at her hands. This annoys him. He scoffs and checks the clock on the wall. Five past ten – the shop closes at two on Fridays. Linton holds his breath and waits.  

To be continued…