OLD MEN
Nell Grey

"Old men...," said Danny through gritted teeth as he hazarded his way across the main road, "...they're bloody everywhere." A horn blared— near, too near—his heart crashed skittering against his ribs, he cursed, leapt for the pavement just missing another old boy waiting to cross. This one must have been ninety, as small, dark and wrinkled as a prune, button eyes glittering out from under the brim of a baseball cap that had been made out of the Union Jack. There was another on the corner. Danny had seen him at midday, erect in plus fours, deerstalker and riding boots, staring fiercely through the monocle gripped in his right eye. It was four now but it didn't look as though he'd moved a muscle since lunchtime.

Danny counted sixteen on the way along Harper Road to the bed-sit. Sixteen old men out of twenty pedestrians, some tidy in pin-stripes and bowlers, some jumble-clad in hooded tops and combats like street kids, some in seventies retro and others little more than bundles of rag and bone with grizzled beards. Had it always been like this? Maybe he was paranoid but it seemed unbalanced somehow, as if the male population was aging too fast and didn't know it. Women were supposed to live longer than men, he remembered reading that somewhere, although his poor old mum had died at sixty, worn out by the demands of Pops and his two brothers, not to mention Dad. And where were the women? There was only Kate downstairs and a couple of old biddies two doors along. That left Danny, Ed and the guy across the road the only three men in the whole street under thirty. There had to be something wrong.

Opening the front door, the smell of Old Holborn, mothballs and shoe polish shot him backwards through the years and he shuddered. Kate was in the hall, squeezing her lump past the bicycles and the vacuum cleaner that Ed always slung his coat on. She made a face, a little wrinkle of annoyance and discomfort and he was suddenly reminded of a small animal, a shrew or vole perhaps, maybe even the hamster he'd had when he was six, the brown one that Pops forgot to feed when they'd gone away to Margate that time.

"How long now?" he asked.

"Dunno exactly," she replied. "Quack reckons around the seventeenth of the month—a couple of weeks—but it could be sooner. At any rate he's pretty damned restless in there—can't wait to get out, I'd say."

"It might be a girl." He hoped it'd be a girl. Twin girls, triplets maybe. Anything to even things out.

"Na, it's boy—had a scan didn't I—saw his little thingy on the monitor. Gave us a print-out too, though it didn't show up on that. Coming down for a drink later?"

Danny felt suddenly depressed. "No, I don't reckon, thanks all the same. I might have an early night. Maybe see you both at the Slug and Radish tomorrow night."

He made straight for the mirror when he got in, leaned forwards, nose almost touching the glass. He couldn't be sure but it seemed as if the natural lines of his face had deepened, and was that a Grey hair? Danny turned with a sigh and all at once his feet left the floor. "What the...?" Sitting in the easy chair in front of the silent television and regarding him with an expression of amused malice was the oldest man he'd ever seen.

"Who the hell are you,' said Danny, 'and what the feck are you doing here?"

The old man lifted an elbow to scratch his armpit before rubbing the white stubble that lay over the furrows of his chin like snow on a winter field.

"I wuz just about to ask you the same question," he replied. "I've always been here, never left, but you? Never seen you before in me life." His chuckle, deep and humorless brought a picture of Gramps' malignant sneer suddenly and horribly to mind.

This is getting mental, thought Danny. He crossed the space between them and took the old boy by the forearm. "I've had enough of this," he said, "it's my room and I don't want you here. There're enough of you outside, let alone inside. Go and stay with Baker or Wilf upstairs—just leave me alone. Now clear off and don't come back."

"But I'm an old man..."

"My point exactly," said Danny steering him to the door and banging it behind him.

He didn't sleep well that night and woke the following morning with a head that felt as if a herd of elephants had partied inside. He went to work and forgot all about the old boy but when he got back to the bed-sit there he was again. By the time Danny had evicted him six evenings in a row he was beginning to lose heart. Then he remembered that he hadn't seen Ed and Kate at the pub and decided to pop down to say hi. He gave his usual knock—one rap, two quick ones, then two longer ones followed by two more. The door opened, but it wasn't either Kate or Ed who stood there. It was an old guy with a beard that reached his belt and long white hair tied at the back in a ponytail.

"Where're Kate and Ed?" said Danny, feeling the sweat burst out of his forehead like a garden sprinkler.

"Sorry son, they've gone," said the old one, not without sympathy.

Danny let out a yell and ran upstairs. He stayed just long enough to throw the important stuff into a case, make sure he had his check book and credit cards and was out the door faster than a cat on hot coals. There was only one place to head for, and Danny didn't stop till he saw the half-meter high letters on the side of the building. Thank Christ for the YMCA.

© Nell Grey 2005

Nell Grey has published two novels—Solitary Pleasures and The Golden Web—as well as the odd poem, short story, article and review in small magazines. She admits to a passion for archaic mystery, myth and legend, and most of her stories are conceived whilst walking the dog.

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