The Man on the Landing

A 2 minute read

The third dead body I encountered was a lot closer to home. About 500 yards away actually (badum-tish).

But first, a bit of historical back story. For many years we lived about fifty miles away from my nan’s brother, Reginald, or about three hours on a Ribble bus. Visits tended to happen during school holidays, and as nobody in our household could drive the three of us (Mum, Nan, me, never Granddad for some reason) would walk twenty minutes from home to the Ribble Bus Depot and get on a coach.

I say none of us could drive, but in fact my granddad did have a valid driver’s license. When he was in the Army he drove a truck along a military runway, turned it around at the end, and drove it back again, whereupon he was presented with a British Army license to drive. When he left the Army he turned that military license into a civilian one through the incredibly complicated process of walking into the local council offices and asking them for one. In theory at least, my granddad could have driven us to see my uncle Reg, but he had never got round to buying a car, and North West England was probably a much safer place as a result.

I wasn’t a good traveller as a child, and I really struggled with travel sickness. As we did so little travelling (short journeys around town by bus didn’t bother me) this wasn’t much of a problem. But every coach journey to see uncle Reg had to be planned in advance. I would take a travel sickness tablet, which I remember as being tiny and red, and we would deliberately book a coach that stopped off at as many places along the way as possible, so I could get off the coach for five minutes and recalibrate myself. Which is why a fifty mile journey took about three hours; there wasn’t a depot or major station en route we weren’t familiar with.

My memories of uncle Reg and his house are a bit vague, and also oddly specific. He was uncomfortable around children, and didn’t really know what to do with me. He would go next door and ask his younger neighbours for cans of pop upon discovering, always for the first time, that this child didn’t drink tea. His house always smelt of toast, whatever the time of day. He had a wooden cabinet in the kitchen with glass doors and shelves full of pale yellow china cups, saucers, and plates. He had a black china cat’s face hanging on the wall with a tiny hole in its mouth, through which hung string from a ball hidden within. In the hallway by the front door there was a small shelf, and on the shelf was a letter opener with a clear plastic handle with a tiny scuba diver, brightly coloured coral and seaweed, a gold anchor, and ‘Barbados’ embedded in it. He always wore suit trousers, open necked shirts, and patterned woollen tank tops that looked very itchy. There was a massive forsythia bush in the corner of the small back garden with the brightest yellow flowers you can imagine. The driveway was incredibly steep, and he drove a black Morris Minor with leather seats that stank when they got hot in the summer.

I can remember these details as clear as anything, and yet I couldn’t tell you where we ate, where we watched telly, or where I slept. I know I often went next door to play with their eldest son, who was about three years younger than me and whose name I am ashamed to say I cannot remember. He died very young, at eleven or twelve, from leukemia, and the family moved away shortly after, still lost deep within their grief.

So there you go, some very boring background filler for you. Let’s get back to the time of this story shall we? By this point I am fifteen and I guess uncle Reg would be about seventy six? We are now living in the same town as Reg, about 500 yards away in fact as I mentioned in the first sentence. I have no idea why I was calling round, it isn’t as if he was any more comfortable around children than when we used to visit in earlier years. But calling round I was, and I let myself in through the front door after the doorbell went ignored, which it often was. Reg’s front door was unlocked every morning when he came downstairs, and locked again as he went to bed at night. Throughout the day anyone could just walk right on in, which is what I did now.

I walked into the small hallway with the staircase in front of me and slightly to my left, not dissimilar to the one in the picture you clicked on. The top half of uncle Reg was lying on the small landing at the top of the stairs, with the bottom half out of sight on the main landing. His eyes were open, and so was his mouth. When I reached the body I saw that there was a half eaten Polo mint lying on the carpet, in a small pool of saliva. Seems uncle Reg had been sucking on his favourite sweet when he had the heart attack that killed him.

I walked back downstairs and used the phone by the front door to call Nan, while I slipped the Barbados letter opener into my pocket.