Chapter 4 Bess
Chapter four
Bess
By the time I get to the cemetery the sky has the thick, soupy texture of freshly mixed cement. The clouds hang ominously heavy, as if they are actually made of concrete and will lose their ability to defy gravity at any moment.
Typical.
Just when I have something good in my life to rub in the old tosser's face, my parade is literally going to get rained on.
I still manage a spring in my step, anticipating the delight at which I'll deliver my show and tell.
Basil Alexander Everett, or "Evil Everett" as the kids at my primary school dared to whisper when he was so far out of earshot, safety against being overheard was categorically guaranteed, lay in a neglected plot at the far end of the cemetery.
As an eight-year-old, naturally I preferred the much pithier "Basil the Bastard" and wasn't afraid to whisper it when the distance between my mouth and his ear was precariously close to the wrong side of the "bring back corporal punishment" debate.
Usually I take a meandering path through the old part of the graveyard, enjoying the ambience of the more decorative graves, but given I've left my umbrella at home, I make a beeline through the more recently dead.
How a sadist of his calibre was ever allowed within shouting distance of young children, let alone being given the enormous responsibility of educating them, I'll never know.
That man tried his best to crush the hopes and dreams of generations of Port Derrum children quite literally until the day he died.
The entire childhood population of the town, between the ages of five and ten, got to bear witness to the indignity an eighty-four-year-old human body goes through during a heart attack, courtesy of a Monday morning assembly.
If Bas' ambition had truly been to scar all his pupils for life, I have to commend his commitment. Unfortunately for me, I had already graduated to secondary school and so missed witnessing him taking his last, undeserving breath.
I want to say with confidence he never actually succeeded in crushing the hopes and dreams of generations of Port Derrum children, but judging by the pile of semi-dessicated dog poo nestled at the foot of his headstone, all bets are off. Or perhaps dogs just know a bastard when they crap on one.
"Hello Bas. Couple of weeks no see."
Basil doesn't have much to say to that. There is no refuting I've been marginally neglectful of late.
"I've got something to show you." I pull my phone out of my pocket and thumb open the TikTok app.
"You know when you told me, I don't know, at least a dozen times, I was a waste of resources and would never amount to anything more than the clumps of dust gathering volume inside my skull?
Well, I just made five thousand pounds for less than a minute's worth of work – work, I'd like to point out, that has been viewed by –" I pull the phone back and squint at the screen.
"– nearly two million people in the eight hours of it being out in the world. " I put the phone back in my pocket.
"Imagine that. Two million people taking note of something I've done and enjoying it. Hardly what I'd call amounting to nothing. I'd call that making a mark on the world. Wouldn't you?"
Basil offers little in the way of a reply.
"I now have over one hundred thousand followers. That's more than the entire population of Exeter – the equivalent of more than a city's worth of people so interested in me, they want to know what I say the moment I say it."
With a grin, I let that sink in for a few seconds. Bas, I hope, is struggling against the press of soil and decayed wood to turn in his grave.
I've been visiting Bas' grave since my first success. Landing a lead role in a grammar school musical, graduating from university, starting my own business.
It's been years of visits, hours of happily proving him wrong, but it's this moment that feels like the true triumph.
I am bright and shiny with glee in the stormy gloom. My TikTok success is a rare and precious achievement – inarguable social proof that I have significance.
I know it to be vulnerable, fickle even. Those same one hundred thousand followers might find me boring tomorrow. Or too much. I could be cancelled in a heartbeat. But I don't care. I'll happily take what I can get.
The first fat drop of rain hits the headstone and leaves a dark grey mark in the shape of a turd, which brings a nice symmetry.
Time to close the conversation. "Been nice chatting with you, Bas. I hope the rain liquefies the dog shit."