Hungry Paul woke up just before the alarm at 6am, as he did most Mondays. Roughly three Mondays out of four he got a call from the Post Office to work a shift as a casual postman, covering for some malingering lush at the depot, and so he liked to be up early to answer the landline promptly in case it disturbed his folks. Helen and Peter usually liked to talk and joke in bed for ages after lights out, like two kids on a camping trip, so they tended to sleep in most mornings.
His first thought was to review what he had written the night before, to check that it had not curdled overnight. Though he was pleased with how it looked, he barely felt ownership of it. It had come to him as if from elsewhere, with no preceding stream of ideas and no trace of it in his thoughts afterwards.
He went to the bathroom to spit out the morning goo and gave himself a standing wash with a facecloth, the oxters and ‘Adam and Eve’ areas being the priority. It always felt strange to look at himself in the mirror, his reflection reminding him of how little of the world he took up. He was generally tidy in his appearance, especially in his postman’s uniform, which was the closest thing that he had to a suit. If he didn’t get his act together he might end up wearing it to Grace’s wedding.
Downstairs, he took a moment to sit in stillness, listening to the silence and the gentle high frequency tingling in his ears that was barely audible except at quiet times like this. It was unclear whether this was a mild form of tinnitus from years of listening to headphones in his room or whether it was just the sound of nothing happening. The ambient music of air itself. He supposed that the world was full of people who have never heard that sound. People with busy lives and even busier minds.
The bird feeders swinging in the garden were empty, so he took the fat balls and seed mix out of the corner cupboard, knowing that he would find it impossible to relax over his own food until the birds were taken care of. They were ravenous at this time of the year, their bodies bursting with reproductive urges. Chaffinches, great tits, starlings, collared doves, magpies and hooded crows all took turns at the feeder, quite literally in a pecking order. The larger birds looked like bullies at first until he realised the service they provided to the smaller birds in making sure that the area was safe and free from predators, small creatures being innately paranoid and with good reason. Hungry Paul was not a bird watcher as such. Though he loved looking at them and identifying them and being part of their lives, he never liked the collector mentality of birdwatching: all that ticking off lists and valuing the obscure over the everyday. He saw birds as part of nature, just like himself, and appreciated them with kindred interest.
Hungry Paul was a fan of routine and the way it had of bringing familiarity to one’s life when so much else was new, changing or doubtful. As each day seemed to be fresh in its own way, he didn’t feel the need to season life’s innate variety with variety of his own. His breakfast was the same every morning: three Weetabix with banana chopped into the bowl using the side of the spoon, and a cup of strong, sugared coffee. Whereas people generally try to vary their lunch and dinner habits, at breakfast it is accepted the world over that it is better to find a system and stick to it. Hungry Paul felt that way about most things.
With the morning all to himself, he moved to the living room and sat by the phone. Above all things, Hungry Paul was a patient person. He saw patience as a way of allowing things to happen by themselves, trusting that things would turn out as they were meant to, not by design but because of the innate orderliness of things. Just as he started filing the side of his thumbnail with a matchbox, the phone rang and, after a very brief, very male, exchange of the barest information, he cycled to the Post Office, the wind blowing through his helmet. While it wasn’t a career as such, he liked being a casual postman and was proud of the fact that he wasn’t taking up a whole job, depriving someone else of a living. Like a small denomination stamp used to make up the balance due on a larger package, he simply covered the parts that needed covering.
When he entered the sorting area where his post bag was waiting for him, the large room was practically empty, the early rising full-timers keen to get their day started—or more specifically finished—as soon as possible. This was a busy place in a state of desertion, with a lingering atmosphere of bachelorhood and strong opinions. Hungry Paul started organising the post into pigeonholes, one for each street on the route, before ordering it by house number. Throwing up and setting in, as it was called. If you didn’t know a street you didn’t know how to order the letters. Some streets were best done in odds and evens, others in numerical order. In semi-rural areas, where houses had names but no numbers, it was all a question of local knowledge, which was unavailable to the casual postman. In most cases it would have made more sense just to leave the post until the next day when the regular man would be back, as hardly anything urgent went by post anymore, but they never did that. It was said that a clean bench was a clean conscience.
It had turned into a nice spring morning: bright and warm on the sunny side of the street, but in the shade there was a head cold waiting for anyone who thought it was an early summer and went out hatless. He passed kids going to school and vans running late with deliveries. It was enjoyable just watching the general distracted activity of that part of the morning, but once he got into the estates things were quieter. Postal workers weren’t supposed to cross dividing walls, though many did, so he had to walk up and down the driveways, with each front gate having its own knack.
One heavy bloke—‘stout’ Helen would have called him—was leaning over his gate, his waist a testament to the sturdy stitch work of the sports jersey he wore. ‘If they’re bills, I don’t want them.’ There was an old couch in his front garden, and a Staffordshire bull terrier that was attacking a tyre hanging from a small birch tree.
‘I’m just filling in; the regular fella will be back tomorrow.’
Further on, a young woman, still in her pyjamas, shouted after him from her door, something about bending her birthday cards.
‘I’m just filling in; the regular fella will be back tomorrow.’
He had to get an elderly lady to sign for a package in the next street on behalf of her neighbour. ‘They’re never home. Poor kids in crèches all day. I’ll drop it in later. You’re a bit late today aren’t you?’
‘I’m just filling in; the regular fella will be back tomorrow.’
He didn’t stop for lunch, as he always felt self-conscious sitting down and eating his sandwich while wearing the uniform. People didn’t like seeing that sort of thing.
Hungry Paul continued on his rounds, his bag getting lighter and lighter, doing a job that has existed, largely unchanged, for hundreds of years. To any busy person, burdened with all of life’s responsibilities and preoccupations, Hungry Paul’s lot would seem a bearable one. He didn’t have to decide which of a patient’s limbs to amputate first, or where to invest the life savings of a company’s pensioners. There was no pressure to report fourth quarter losses to the ‘higher-ups’ in HQ or force-feed cold carrots to a fevered toddler. His job, on the few days he did it, involved no agonising decisions or regrets that might spoil the conversation over dinner.
And yet, in modern vernacular, postal work is a profession that has become synonymous with violent meltdowns. Why would this happen in such an apparently placid line of work, which involves chatting happily to the householders and performing a task that has, throughout history, been shown to be helpful in all ways? Most overworked middle managers would gladly swap their late evening conference calls with the West Coast for the simplicity of the postal worker, walking in the mixed March sunshine, alone with his thoughts. However, such white-collar fantasies fail to consider what it is that bends even the most pacific minds towards self-destruction. Though we may be a species that prizes great minds, we are also terrified of and by our thoughts.
In prisons, the most extreme and austere punishment that is meted out to errant prisoners—those whose behaviour exceeds even the diabolical standards of incarcerated society—is solitary confinement: the awful fate of being imprisoned with only one’s thoughts for company. With no distractions, one thought billiards another, and an endless internal monologue drowns out the rest of life, bringing dissonance to silence, restlessness to stillness, and anxiety to forethought. A certain type of person, isolated and unsuited to long daily periods of reflection, will eventually think themselves to madness.
But Hungry Paul seemed to be able to maintain his peace where another man might have declared war on themselves and those around him. What did he think about? The answer is, quite simply, nothing. Hungry Paul had been blessed with a mental stillness which had become his natural state over the years. His mind worked perfectly fine and he had all the faculties of a healthy, if slightly unorthodox, man of his age. He just had no interest in, or capacity for, mental chatter. He had no internal narrator. When he saw a dog he just saw a dog, without his mind adding that it should be on a lead or that its tongue was hanging out like a rasher. When he heard an ambulance siren he just heard an ambulance siren, without noting its Doppler effect or wondering if it was a real emergency or just the driver running late for dinner. And it is in this way that Hungry Paul maintained a natural clarity throughout his day, and stayed apart from the trouble that the world will undoubtedly make for those who look for it.
At around midday he finished his deliveries and dropped his bag back to the depot. But there was one last letter to deal with before his day was finished. He took his competition entry out of his breast pocket and posted it in the box outside the sorting office, affixing a patchwork of smaller stamps that he had saved up in the back of his wallet. This was all done without any sense of excitement or concern about the competition; his entry was merely an offering. He didn’t so much want to win as help. If some other phrase was selected, then that was fine too.
The house was empty when he got home. Peter and Helen had left a note on the fridge saying that they had gone off to buy a Buddha at the garden centre. Hungry Paul made himself a peanut butter sandwich and, having failed to find any treats in the cupboard, ate it alone in the kitchen on the seat where he had watched the birds only a few hours before, the feeders already empty again.
He decided to lie down on the couch and took off his shoes the lazy way, with the toe of one foot prising off the heel of the other, the laces still done up. His feet tingled now that the weight had been lifted from them after a long morning of walking. He dozed off, not minding that he would later wake with that drugged feeling that comes with a second sleep. All around him, the house stood in a state of empty, quiet equilibrium.