Best foot forward

I broke through the surface of a deep sleep, gasping for a sense of reality, waiting for it to fall into place like the reels of a slot machine.  First the floating pale blob of his face, the stale smell of cigarette smoke and alcohol, the whiskey gravelled voice and the iron grip on my shoulder as he shook it.  He'd obviously been up for sometime, maybe all night, waiting to wake me, to goad me.  He told me I couldn't handle the early rises.
"C'mon get up, get ready to go you don't want to be late it wouldn't look good, being late for an interview."
      Only the cold shock of water from the shower pulled me completly from the grip of sleep.
"You'd better get used to cold showers boy."  My fathers voice echoed in my head, cold showers was one of his ways to toughen me up.
"Warm water is for sissy's and women, which one are you?," he would sneer.
      I cursed myself for having slept late, sleep had eluded me for hours.  I had lain awake trying to sleep, but the worry of waking up late and what I was going to say at my interview ensured, what felt like , an almost sleepless night.  I didn't want to be woken.  I wanted to be up before him, get ready and go with no fuss.  But he must have sat up all night just so he could have the satisfaction....
      The angry tapping on the bathroom door was his signal to say, I had spent too long with the water running.
"Fresh water is a precious commodity,"  I mouthed the words as they were spoken by my father just outside the door.
      I  dried quickly looking at the small pile of neatly folded clothes on the bed.  My mother had put them there the night before. Clean underpants, a white vest, no holes, and 
a long sleeved button down business shirt, which I was made to iron the night before.
"Let him get used to it Beryl, he won't have anyone to mollycoddle him where he's goin."
"I'll tell you how we used to do it, he said, first the collar then the chest last is the arms and buggar the rest."  And then he'd laughed and chuckled at his own little ditty, a laugh that always ended in violent coughing and spluttering.
      The kitchen light was the only light in the house that was on. My father was in his usual place at the table, the full ashtray beside him held a cigerette, burning slowly, blue smoke curling up to the yellowed ceiling.  A small tendril of smoke wreathed a tea stained mug that had varying tide marks incrementally etched on the inside.
      "I've cleaned my old black shoes for you," he said.  "You cant go to that interview wearing sneakers it's not a good look."
I winced at the thought.  I was already out of my comfort zone in the clothes they had picked out for me, and now the shoes.
      It was early, and I was too preoccupied to argue back, not that it would have made any difference.
I drank the tea he had made for me it was good, he could always make a good cup of tea, hot, strong and not too sweet.  The toast however, or my mouth, was too dry.  One or two mouthfuls seemed to to take an age to chew and remained impossible to swallow, like a mouthful of tastless dough.  I gave up and finished the tea.
        I stood awkwardly after tying the shoes,  'the proper way,'  they just felt wrong, hard, cold and uninviting.  I'm sure they were one or two sizes too big, my feet seemed to slide around inside them and, I felt I would trip over the pointed toe if I wasn't careful.  I was almost ready to take them off when my father grabbed the toe of the shoe,squeezing the end between his thumb and forefinger. 
      "See!, look!, their just right, lucky for you I still had my old shoes."
      "Yeah, lucky me," I thought.
      They were shiny though, like slippery black onyx, and not a mark on them.  Even the leather soles, although worn, were spotless.  But the foot that had moulded the inner sole wasn't mine and it was a constant reminder now as I walked to the bus stop.  And I felt, or could I hear it, a small creak from one of them just as I put pressure on the heal.
      It was all I could do to stop myself from turning around there and then and going back for my own shoes.
I strained my hearing to try and pick up on the sound as I walked but it was more a sense of movement than a sound.  It was there just to remind me. "Thats just bloody great," I thought.
      I was well and truly worked up by the time I stepped down from the the bus and was swept away in the flow of morning commuters.  My mind had gone over many scenarios of what lay ahead at the interview.  I had rehearsed a thousand different responses to dozens of imaginery questions.  But now, just as I needed my brain to work clearly, it was on a go slow; distracted or abstracted I wasn't sure, but I felt unprepared and unarmed.
      I could see the building on the other side of the street, about fifty yards ahead.  I made my way across the stream of people to the edge of the kerb and stepped off.
      The reception area of the recruitment office was quiet compared to the street outside and there were posters every where, pictures of ships and people.  Posters declaring, 'the Navies job is worldwide, keeping 80'000 miles of trade routes open.
      "Can I help you?," the receptionist was a middleaged women in uniform, her piercing eyes and pursed mouth were nothing like the smiling suntanned faces in the posters.
"Um... Anderson, I'm here for my interview."
"Go through that door and wait until you're called," she said, dismissing me with a wave of her hand.
Upon entering the waiting room I only had time to see that there were four other guys waiting, two sat together talking quietly, the other two sat staring into space or at the walls who could tell
when a young sailor in uniform called my name and came over to me
"Anderson is it?"
"yeah thats me."
He sniffed slightly, "says here you're a nonsmoker" he glared at me.
"I am," I said wilting slightly under his withering glare.
"Alright, follow me," he said, and turned quickly heading for the hallway at the other end of the room.
I quickly started to follow him when I heard a loud squeak from under my foot, the sailor turned and looked down at my shoes.