Geoff

Geoff sat looking at the sea and feeling sorry for himself. That morning he’d walked in on Grace talking to her solicitor about the divorce she thought he didn’t know about. She’d ripped the phone from her ear and said she was going to Dalkey for a swim; a terrible excuse to get away from him considering the beach at the end of the garden. He’d watched from the window as she turned the ignition, back on the phone, giving orders.

He needed to do something before she did. Ready himself for the end of this long career break he’d called marriage. The easiest thing would be to jump back onto the stage. His audience were loyal, a tour would sell and it would give him some focus. But his comedy hips were stiff. He could lean on the hits, wrap some new material around them, but then he’d think of the empty feeling of landing a worn gag. And worse, some sadness for the people who laughed at it.

Had they really nothing better to do with their time?

When , he wondered, had this ennui become such a daily reality? He tried to trace it back to some event, but his brain was blurry. Not from booze. He’d thrown his beer down the sink that morning and gone for a swim instead.

When he got out of the water there was a message from his agent, Stuart, reminding him to post something online in memory of Tom Chase.

Tom. He’d worked with Tom for fifteen years, since his very first tour. Tom had been the perfect warm-up act — steady and undemanding.When Geoff got married and took a break from touring, Tom hadn’t said a word about the lost income. Instead, he went online and built a platform for himself that grew slowly until it blew up overnight. He was planning his own tour when he felt sick one Sunday, went to the hospital and woke up dead.

His death had been a shock, but Geoff didn’t remember feeling any particularly difficult sadness — other than for his widow, Liz, and their two young sons. Still, he couldn’t remember enjoying much of anything since. 

Shut up, Geoff. He said out loud. How you feel has nothing to do with Tom.

His marriage had become a verbal bloodbath. Things between him and Grace had started to go very wrong after they’d ploughed through most of his savings into the house and she couldn’t motivate him back to work. She’d even tried to pressure Stuart, but Stuart was too savvy for her. His loyalty was to his client, Geoff and he was waiting it out — like a pro.

He wouldn’t miss her, but God, he’d miss her house overlooking Killiney Bay. Even though at times it had felt like a prison it was exceptional in every way; spectular views, beautiful villages dotted around. Where he'd grown up, there had been a lot of beauty but no prosperity, and he felt the two things worked really nicely together. From the first floor balcony he could see into Bono’s garden, watch him stumble out of the small caravan his daughter had converted into a pub. He still had a bit of money and he’d make more, but he’d never live like this again. With an orchard, raspberry gardens and private beach. Surrounded by celebrities.

Everyone would expect him to make a play for it but he knew the safest way out of this marriage was to walk away with the shirt on his back. He didn’t begrudge the money he’d put into the house, he just thought of it as wildly expensive rent. He’d have to go back to work but he could do that once he shook off this slump. He’d fine new things to love. Grace, by comparison, had no humour or even imagination to fall back on. Just her endless pursuit of money and power. She’d go to war because winning was all she cared about and he didn’t want the target she had on his back to get any bigger. Some mornings he woke up in the spare room surprised she hadn’t found a way to kill him in his sleep.

At one point in time she had been obsessed with him but once she got used to him that obsession had turned to resentment and then annoyance that he was still there. If only she was just a little bit gentler. If only they could have an honest conversation instead of every interaction turning into a fight. He thought back to earlier, sweeter relationships. Sure, eventually, they’d all ended badly but compared to him and Grace those breakups now seemed like peace negotiations.

One of his exes flashed through his mind. He checked to see if he still had her number. He didn’t. And he didn’t have the password for his socials, the agency looked after all that. For the best. Instead he texted Tom’s wife and asked her to go for a coffee. He hadn’t been in touch since Tom’s funeral, he realised. He should pay his respects.

Liz agreed to meet him near the hospital where she worked. If she was surprised to see him after all this time she didn’t show it — just hugged him and seemed happy to hang out.

He told her he missed Tom and she burst out crying.
That makes two of us, she said.

‘I haven’t been around much, I’m sorry, Liz,’ he told her. 

‘Are you working on anything?’ she asked.

‘No.’

‘How’s Grace?’

‘She wants to divorce me. I don’t know what to do.’

Liz smiled sympathetically but didn’t say anything. He was disappointed. That was when he knew he had been hoping she would rescue him. Take him on as a project. Lift his spirits.

Liz and Tom had had what he considered a happy marriage. Liz worked in the hospital where he had died and was now raising the kids on her own. She was heroic, he realised, and he was in the market for a hero.

Jesus, Geoff, he thought to himself. You really are a shit.

He paid for lunch and thanked her for meeting him. He told her his next stop was to visit Tom’s grave. Now he was compensating and he knew it, but Liz took him at face value and gave him a squeeze before she left.  

On the drive it occurred to him that he'd never left a relationship before without somebody lined up. That was essentially his pattern, his reflex, to reach out and clutch the next warm body. But these five years with Grace had given him more alone time than he’d had in his adult life. Maybe he could do this on his own.

There was no parking at the graveyard, so Geoff drove past and went back home. Happy anniversary, Tom, he thought, then laughed at his own stupidity.

Occasionally, if something amused him, Geoff would pull out his phone and send himself a voice note. But everything he thought of had begun to feel like a long apology for the ageing process. And the circuit was jammed, every topic covered so that it was impossible to surprise anyone with anything.

He used to love that element of surprise — taking the audience on a little trip into the mediocrity of his daily life. The small ruptures and annoyances.

He didn’t do crowd work or quote the women in his life like a lot of the comics he came up with did. Instead, he had developed a quieter, outsider perspective that his tall blondeness and Kerry accent had turbo-charged into the stratosphere.

But he got bored, got married, and retreated. He just couldn’t think of anything else to do at the time.

If it wasn’t cruel and tacky, he’d write a new show called Grace. The things that woman did. Somebody would have to write about them some day.

His phone beeped. Liz.

He’d left his sun glasses in the café and she’d left them behind the counter. No suggestion to meet back up. She wasn’t inviting another reunion. Fair enough.