Brett's sadness

I once worked with a guy, Brett, who had just celebrated his fiftieth and always seemed on the very edge of tears because of a variety of small problems in his regular life, like woman trouble with a legal secretary he somehow knew and who was three years his senior, or like a terrible asthma infliction for which he still used endless hits of Ventolin, or the fact that he worked as a chef at the lower end of the catering trade because he had had such a sickly childhood and all he did was go to hospital for treatments and not get good qualifications. Potato-faced, he lay down on the soft chairs at work with half of his face pressed down against the leather-effect seats and I could see him frowning and he kept on sighing and letting out crushing groans of discontent. I hoped that things would never have to get that bad for me, and couldn’t help wondering whether he would play rock classics at his no doubt pending funeral because earlier that day he had been whistling ‘Smoke on the Water’.

He kept telling me never to end up like him and assuring me that his near-estranged son had been to Australia to travel. The legal secretary had told him that against the odds she did fancy him, but had had sex with another man all the same. His throat was so dry that he could barely speak the words out. He ate slithers of banana on wholemeal rolls because the kitchen didn’t have any bacon or tomato.