Mr. Preston Brown

I was tidying my room and started sorting out some old notebooks.  Flicking through them I wound up reading a fair few old bits of writing, some half-finished short stories, some ill thought through ideas struggling to get out of my head as fast as I could think them, some transpositions or recordings of things that actually happened.  I have decided to write these up and post them on here for your reading 'pleasure'.

This first one was written in 2007 immediately after the events described below actually happened.



Mr. Preston Brown

Walking towards me was a man with an odd look on his face.  At first I thought he was grinning eagerly, but as he approached I realised he was crying, or, perhaps he had been grinning and made himself cry once he got closer?
    He wore a black baseball cap with a cartoon green bird and the word 'Shag' on it, an unwashed dark grey (or faded black) and white striped polo shirt, Adidas tracksuit trousers and white trainers, but no socks.  HIs face was contorted into a grimace of despair as he began to tell me his woes.
    At first he just seemed to want directions - oddly that had been happening to me a lot lately - but suddenly he told me his father had just died and he needed to get to Manchester for the funeral.  It transpired that he had assisted other members of his family pay to travel to the funeral, he had however neglected to pay for himself.  Perhaps this kind of financial negligence, or selflessness, may have seemed foolish to others, but I grew up knowing my father and weirder choices have been made.
    He said he'd walked from Chelmsford, though he also claimed to live just down the road, he said he'd lived all over the world in Australia, Hong Kong, Canada and America - specifically North Carolina, where he said the racism was too prevalent.
    He told me of his seven houses and many cars, that he'd been trying to sell a BMW for cash in the preceding hours in an effort to raise the £20 he needed to get to Manchester.  He even kept offering me his phone - a strange teal coloured box, it had a touch screen like a PDA, activated by a little pointer - in exchange for financial aid.
    I had already told him I had no money on me - a lie, I'd just withdrawn £20 and spent £10 at Tescos, but I also told him I am unemployed and would help if I could afford to, which is true.  But he persisted, he kept dropping his hands to his calves and sobbing, bringing face and his wiry little goatee - deposited above the chin, in the space below the bottom lip - up and staring at me as if there were nobody else in the world.
    He was relentless, he said he'd walk to a cash-point with me, perhaps I should have walked to the train station and bought him his ticket, then I could have seen how genuine his need was.  But I was scared, scared that this one intense emotion of sorrow he was displaying could turn to another extremity.  Every time his hands went near his pockets, I took a cautious step back and wondered how I would defend myself.
    Finally I figured the only way to get rid of him would be to supply him with some money.  £10 would do from my end of the deal, though he kept asking me to make up the full £20, so, rather foolishly, I said I would go back to my flat and return, but he would follow me if I left and so all I could do was allow him to accompany me.
    He waited outside and rolled a cigarette whilst I pretended to go upstairs to find some money in my room, when in actuality I just stuck my hand in my inside coat pocket.  When I presented him with this crisp, clean note he continued to talk to me, he told me how he appreciated it because it came from my heart - a word he said with almost exagerated tenderness.
    He told me about his father, how he inherited his business; Preston Transport he said it was called, told me that they had helped people who were in trouble with the IRA.  He had introduced himself as Peppy (Pepe?) and then referred to himself as Mr. Brown, but when he insisted I took his phone number he told me his name was Preston, like the company.
    'Have you ever heard of Preston Transport?  You have now.'
    But he said his mother had wanted him to become a doctor, though he had trained as a barrister with the hope of becoming a magistrate.  He had taken odd and confusing pleasure in asking me to guess his profession, much like he had asked me to guess his age; he is forty two, though I might have guessed mid-thirties.
    He said he was born in Salisbury or Salford, but grew up in South Africa.  His father would teach him to fish in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) and had taught him of pride, pride being in your heart, again said with a sentimental whisper.  But he was also regretful of choices he had made, he felt unfit to fill his father's shoes, to live in his shadow especially as an only child, and he kept calling himself a wanker.
    I nodded and agreed where necessary.  He offered me his mobile phone again, and then more mobile phones.  He offered me his BMW and then, after asking if I liked 'boys or birds', he offered to get me a girl, but I continued to refuse.
    He insisted he would pay me back, he said he would never be indebted to anyone in his life and later swore on his father's grave that he would do something for me.  £1000 he said, asking if I was a student and whether that would be of any use to me, but I insisted he need not do me any favours.  But he wanted to take my address and we exchanged phone numbers.  It was only later that I remembered I'd told him I didn't have a phone on me.
    My phone, the little bastard, had ran out of battery charge when I was in Tescos as a friend was trying to call me and I hurried out after paying to get back and charge my phone quickly to call them back.  If they had called and my battery hadn't died and I had spoke to them whilst shopping I would not have left so quickly or may have left via a different route and not met Preston Brown.  Indeed, I had taken a slightly different choice to get home then usual and if I had taken my regular choice perhaps then I would have been £10 better off.
    How selfish I am, mourning the loss of £10 when Preston has lost his father, or how selfish Preston is using the death (or imagined death) of his dad to take £10 from a humble idiot like me.
    He said he'd remember my name because of Michael Owen and Owen Hargreaves, he said he'd bring me a Michael Owen shirt, and he shook my hands a good few times and even hugged me twice.  It was at this point - perhaps the pressure had pushed a button - that my seemingly dead phone returned miraculously to life and serenaded me with the 'low battery' sound twice in a row.
    Preston looked at me and questioned this noise, he said; 'I thought you didn't have a phone?'
    I said, 'I don't, but I have a watch.'
    Which made him nod and say, 'I have a watch too.'
    He began to leave, examining the house with his insistent eyes, placing the cap back on his shaved head.  He said he used to have long hair down to the base of his spine but his girlfriend had made him cut it.  He's got a Harley Davidson and wanted to be a biker, 'Y'know, just for the shit of it.'
    So, looking up at my house, trying to remember the street and insisting, imploring the I still come with him and get something to eat, or continue to aid him on his quest he began to walk down the street, he told me how generous I am, that he doesn't know how to articulate my kindness.  He said 'cool beans' and 'cool bananas', saying they were phrases from his Dad, from South Africa and Australia.
    He walked back toward the door, reiterated that he will do something for me and finally walked off, allowing me to  close the door and breathe.
    I blame my sixth year junior school teacher for reading us Great Expectationsm because now I have to help, I'm afraid to ignore people or walk away because there is the glimmer of a dream that perhaps they are genuine, they do have morals and heart, and one day will remember me and bless me, genuinely wish my dreams to come to fruition or, perhaps, just send me a Michael Owen shirt in the post.