This is probably the last chapter in the saga of Simon William Smith!
Simon William Smith stood in a small room with worn leather furniture. The room was oak panelled and had a high ceiling. The furniture had once been fashionable but now looked rather shabby, much like the men who were stood in the room with Simon.
They stood around in twos and threes, passing the time of day, sipping from glasses of brandy and port and other such things as men of their standing drank. (They drank this because that was what men of their standing drank.)
Simon didn’t drink, so he just stood watching the men. He was holding a carriage clock, on top of which balanced a card. A man with salt and pepper hair and a moustache which bristled as he spoke walked up to him and cleared his throat.
“So,” he said boisterously, “what do you plan to do with yourself now that you’re retired, what?”
The man smiled at Simon (in what he was sure was an affectionate way, slightly roguish with a look that told Simon he was a ‘man of the world,’ in spite of the fact that he’d never been further from his home than the Watford Gap Service Station in almost five years. Simon thought that the look made him look neither roguish nor affectionate, rather he was concerned that, from the look on his face, the man before him was suffering from a peptic ulcer.) Simon merely shrugged and made non-committal noises until the man bristled his moustache, punched Simon lightly on the arm (in what he was sure was an ‘old boys’ way) and rambled off to talk to someone whose name he announced loudly to be “Jeremy, you old reprobate.” (Jeremy, to his credit made no attempt to correct the man, point out his name was Philip, that he was barely middle aged and that he was certain he was not a reprobate.)
Simon looked at the door and glanced down at his clock, it was a little after five in the afternoon.
Simon began shuffling towards the door but stopped when he heard the sound of a spoon being tapped lightly against a glass. Since the only drinks which were ever served in this room were alcoholic and had never required serving, it seemed to Simon that the spoon was there purely in order to allow people to attract attention by knocking it against their glass.
Another man (tall and impossibly slender, with thinning white hair and a face which was so lined that it would not have surprised Simon if he were to learn that the gentleman had been the first to successfully receive a face transplant from the back of a rhinoceros) was looking around the room hopefully, trying to draw attention to himself.
The murmuring in the room ceased and the man began to speak, “Well, I’m glad that everyone here could make it. We’re all here to say farewell and bon voyage to a dear, dear colleague. A man who we’ve all come to depend on over the years, who has been a part of our lives for so long that we can scarcely remember a time that he was not. Let’s all give our friend over there,” he gestured with his glass to Simon, who smiled politely, “A heart cheer and wish him a happy, early retirement.”
The men let out a cheer in the sort of way they had learned to do at the various public and preparatory schools they had attended in their youth, a sort of rowdy “Pip, pip.”
Simon continued to smile politely and inclined his head, the man who had been speaking now raised his glass again and gestured to Simon, “Difficult and all that I suppose, but I imagine a fellow like you can conjure up a few words for this occasion?”
Simon thought for a moment. He held up the clock to indicate it, and used it to gesture to the men in the room and said simply, “Thank you.”
Murmurs of approval, well said, jolly good show and the like reverberated around the room and then the men began to file out, until Simon was left alone. He looked around, thought and then left and went home.
When he arrived back at his flat, he set down the clock on the table in his kitchen, and went about his normal evening routine.
The next morning, a Saturday, he awoke at the usual time, turned on the radio, exercised, showered, dressed, ate breakfast and then took two slices of bread from the packet in the kitchen and left his flat.
He walked to the local park and sat down on a bench in front of a pond, in which some ducks were swimming in circles, around and around. Simon pulled small pieces from the bread slices and tossed them into the ducks’ paths. He was careful to throw them in such a way that the ducks could collect the bread as they swam and did not have to interrupt their rhythm.
When all the bread was gone, Simon William Smith looked at the ducks for a moment, then leant back on the park bench and closed his eyes for the last time.