Andrew glanced at Scarlet and nodded. Then they both smiled.
‘You don’t mind working Saturdays?’
‘No.’
‘Your boyfriend won’t mind when you’re busy on a Saturday?’
‘I haven’t got a boyfriend.’ I would have liked to make a little joke out of this sad statement, say that I’d given them up for Lent or some other witticism, but for once I held my tongue. I wanted this job. I wanted to be in this world I saw as exciting and different, something earthy and business-like. Meeting people other than ‘The Bewildered’ or the spiteful staff at The Stephanie Wright ‘Care’ Home. I liked Scarlet with her gypsy air and casual attitude. And Andy seemed like a decent sort of guy.
I held my breath, waiting for them to ask for references, which could have been a bit of a problem, but they didn’t.
‘OK,’ they said simultaneously. ‘We’ll take you on a month’s trial. If all goes well and you settle into the job and like it, we’ll put you on a proper contract.’
And even before I’d said anything more they finished with, ‘Twelve pounds an hour OK?’
I tried hard not to gape.
More than I’d earned at the nursing home. Much more than minimum wage. The wonderful thing about earning more than minimum wage is that if you work the same number of hours you actually have disposable income. As in capital. As in spending money. I felt like doing a jig. Maybe I did have a future. Was it even possible I could save enough to study for A levels, even, and this was a very big stretch of imagination, put myself through university?
Step one of my life plan.
FOUR
I started the following day and quickly realized two things. The first was that I’d been right about Scarlet. She was from the Travelling community and wasn’t in the slightest bit interested in references. When I mentioned it tentatively she looked almost cross. ‘I can make my own mind up about someone,’ she said. ‘I don’t need other people’s opinion.’
And the second thing? I could do this job easily, with one hand tied behind my back and a library book propped in front of me on the desk. The machines and computers were easy to work. The job description was simple. I had to keep an eye on the bank of monitors.
I had to keep the database up to date, so I knew which units were empty and which were available, make sure customers signed in when they arrived and signed out when they left. A Health and Safety requirement, in case there was a fire and a fireman rushed in to ‘save’ someone who had actually left an hour before, or in case a client was accidentally locked in when I left, which was possible as none of the cameras was situated inside the individual stores. All kept an eye on the access corridors. Each individual store was secured with a roller shutter, padlocked on the outside, and the roller shutter doors that led to the outside were opened with a key code, which was switched off when I left the building. Mobile phones didn’t work behind the shield of metal. If someone was accidentally locked in, they would have a very uncomfortable night’s sleep. Two if it happened to be late on a Saturday as we were closed on Sunday. More if no one missed them. And God help them if it was Christmas or New Year. So signing in and signing out was vitally important.
I had to check contracts and warn people about ‘forbidden substances’: livestock, firearms, drugs. I worked out the VAT. Lastly, if I left the office to inspect the storage areas, I had to lock the office door behind me, even though there was never any real money there. Everything was done with plastic contactless. Apart from the office work, I swept the corridors and generally kept the place clean. And that was about it.
After slaving away in the SW Care Home, it seemed like money for much less work.
Andy and Scarlet spent the first week teaching me all this: how to work the computer, how to work out which units were empty and which ones full, how to keep the database up to date, how to take credit and debit cards and how to open and close the key-padded steel shutters and close the big gates when I left the site. I started work proper the following Monday, and by Thursday I was there on my own for a couple of hours at a time, with both their mobile numbers pinned up in front of me. For the first time in my life I felt in charge. Powerful.
As the weeks passed I saw little of Andrew. I suspected he had another job, but Scarlet never said and I never asked. On Friday Scarlet went out shopping for four hours. I had her mobile phone number but I’d already got the hang of the place and didn’t need to ring, even though two potential new clients asked for prices and availability. I just gave them a leaflet and a nice smile. My pay at the end of the week was enough to pay for my room, bus fares into work, food and a little bit left over for me to buy two smart outfits from the Donna Louise Charity shop, Donna Louise being the name of a little girl who had died, I think, of leukaemia, poor little mite, and the charity had subsequently been set up in her name. With the result that here, in Stoke-on-Trent, children with incurable diseases benefit from the money that pours in, raised by friends and relatives. Money can buy a room for their parents when they are admitted, toys and trips. It can’t, however, buy the one thing they want more than anything, life.
One of the outfits I bought from the Donna Louise was a trouser suit from Next – hardly worn, dark blue and a perfect fit apart from the trousers which were an inch too long. I’m not handy with needle and thread, but if I asked Jodi really nicely I thought she might take them up for me. The other outfit I was particularly pleased with was a skirt suit in black and white. Someone must have worn it to a wedding just the once. It was a bit posh but it looked brand new. When I turned up wearing that on that first morning I felt distinctly overdressed. Like going to the local pub wearing a sparkly dress and wedding hat. Scarlet looked me up and down and burst out laughing. ‘Darling,’ she said, unlit fag dangling out of her mouth, arms draped around me. ‘Jeans and T-shirt’ll do.’
I felt my face burn. Nothing shows you up more than overdressing. You look like the cleaner out for the annual works trip.
The next day both outfits stayed in the wardrobe and I went to work more suitably dressed in the suggested jeans and T-shirt. Still, better than the crappy white nylon overalls I used to wear at the SW home.
I soon realized the hours were long and customers sporadic. Scarlet and Andrew left me more and more to my own devices. Sometimes, particularly in the week, no one would come in for a whole day and I did grow bored – even with the latest set of novels from the library, social media on my phone and a couple of chats with Bethan and Stella. (Stella with Geraint howling in the background, and Bethan still moaning about being pregnant.) So I’d lock up the office and prowl the premises, checking everything was working OK, alarms, roller shutters, test the doors, make sure they were all padlocked and secure. But after a month or so of doing this the day would still drag – even with a stock of good books. I’d find my gaze wandering up to the bank of CCTV screens and searching for some sign of life, some movement, something interesting. But there was nothing. Just the roller shutters, static for ninety per cent of the time, immobile vehicles, and always silence because the monitors displayed pictures but transmitted no sound. In spite of having more than two hundred units, the place had an abandoned air about it. The folk who hired these storage units were, it seemed, quite happy to pay a weekly fee only to abandon their possessions. Once or twice, as the evenings lengthened, my imagination would take over, my mind playing naughty tricks. I would see shadows hovering in the darker areas, imagine movement when the wind caught an odd scrap of paper, and occasionally I thought I saw someone standing just outside the tall wire gates, peering into the compound.
All in the mind, I said to myself, and tried to ignore the rather sad atmosphere. The Green Banana, it seemed, could not escape its air of clinging to a shoddy past – of failed businesses, abandoned goods, unwanted furnishings belonging to dead people, chairs they had once sat on, tables they had once eaten at, pictures they must once have loved, ornaments they had once treasured. Now all unwanted, like the people, a by-pro
duct of a life that the living could not quite discard. They paid their monthly dues by direct debit, paying for their guilt in not taking these unwanted pieces into their own home. Perhaps, like the folk in The Stephanie Wright Care Home, the same had applied to their dead relatives. Abandoned to their fate.
Sometimes it did spook me, watching those silent grey monitors with silent people going about their business. It could feel as though they too inhabited a dead, grey world. It was OK when I left. Once outside the gates I rejoined the living, emerged into the present and left behind all those unwanted possessions. After a while I stopped asking myself the question: why did people pay to hang on to all these possessions?
As I grew in competence, Scarlet often wouldn’t come in for days at a time and I was largely left in charge of The Green Banana alone. Andy would wander in, usually at around six o’clock, when I was about to lock up. I wasn’t quite sure whether he was checking up that I hadn’t left early or whether it was to help me make sure the premises were empty overnight. Maybe it was to check that I was safe. The storage facility was that sort of place, the sealed units oddly threatening. One never knew quite what was inside them, and even though I always pointed out our list of banned substances, one could never be quite sure.
There were various sizes of units, some hardly bigger than a large suitcase, others the size of a shipping container. And all the sizes in between. To one side of the yard there was a large open area, protected only by the wide roller shutter at its entrance. Here people stored classic cars, camper vans and caravans out of season.
Outside, The Green Banana had ample car parking for all vehicles, and was encircled with razor wire, which should have helped me to feel safe. But it didn’t. It emphasized the feeling of living in a war zone or a prison, furthered the feeling that something beyond the razor wire threatened me. Which was fanciful, I know. But as I locked the tall wire gates behind me in the evenings and stepped outside I felt vulnerable, exposed. And when the nights darkened and I sat in the office, illuminated as if on a stage, I felt frightened.
You can ask why did I stay? For money, because I was not qualified to do another job, because I would have no references and because Scarlet and Andrew paid well. Also I had the opportunity to sit and read. The work was hardly arduous. Just boring. One day, I planned, I would leave. I would realize my future. And I would know when the time was right for the next step.
Some of the clients were a bit odd, but I had dealt with odd people almost all my life. Starting with my parents and my obnoxious little brother, Josh.
My life is potholed with odd people.
And all my boyfriends, without exception, have been odd. Some scary. Like Tyrone. I guess the name Tyrone should have warned me.
How do mothers know what to call their kids before they’re born or when they’re just hours or days old? And get it so right? One of life’s little puzzles. What comes first? Do the names actually influence the child’s choice of character? Tyrone becomes a thug while Justin is gay, Wayne works in a car showroom and Stefan is … a plumber. It’s the way it works. I mean Justin can’t be a thug. And Wayne can’t work for the BBC, can he? Do we grow into our names or is there divine intervention handing them out?
I met Tyrone when I was seventeen through an internet dating site that I visited every now and again. I was registered with a couple of matching websites but so far had only ever been offered the pits. But Tyrone looked fit. And he sort of half smirked into the camera, which intrigued me.
Fit? He was that.
The trouble was that his idea of keeping fit was pumping anabolic steroids into his system. Look up the side effects. They have a nasty effect on your volatility, your temper … and your manhood. It can shrink your willy, give you gynaecomastia (man boobs), and so on. (Not many people know that, do they? All they see is the bulging muscles.)
Probably neither knowing nor understanding any of this, Tyrone would spend hours at the gym pumping iron. He was narcissistic. Yes, I do know words like that. I’m not a moron. I would have passed my A level English with flying colours – or so the teachers told me. If I’d not run into problems at home and been living on the streets at the time, I would have studied for them. I might even have gone to university if I’d had any help (financial) or encouragement from either of my parents. If they hadn’t been so drowning in their acrimony and their divorce … Miss McCormick had tried to make up for my parents’ distraction by being extra encouraging. ‘If you do well in your A levels you could even try for Oxford,’ she said, flapping her hands around. Not knowing my mind was baulking at the very thought. And how the hell am I going to get on there, Miss McCormick, mixing with all the toffs and academics as well as having the impossible task of financing myself all the way through? I wanted to say. I just about managed, ‘Women like me don’t belong there.’
Oh yes, Martin Luther. I had a dream all right. Me in cap and gown, hurrying along the ancient corridors of academia, loving husband waiting to whisk me back home? I would get there, somehow. When I shook my head at my year ten job discussion, they didn’t see the fuller picture. Miss McCormick just looked disappointed. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, eyes heavy with sadness. ‘Such a dreadful waste.’
I was too choked up to respond.
But I would make it happen.
FIVE
As 2016 turned into 2017 I settled into life at The Green Banana. I got to know some of the clients individually. They were a varied lot and I began to speculate about them. In spite of the no-drugs rule, I think a couple of them might have stored illegal substances, particularly my favourite, Tommy Farraday.
Tommy Farraday was part of a rock band, The Oracles, who stored some of their equipment with us and were, according to them at least, about to ‘make it big’. Tommy was a tall, skinny guy, about six feet tall with a mop of yellow-blond hair. Not sure if it was dyed. I never noticed dark roots so if he did dye it he kept it up. He was gorgeous, with a bright white grin, a flirtatious manner and a habit of groping bums and breasts when he thought he could get away with it. And he usually did. Tommy was one of those guys born with an easy charm, and he could get away with blue murder with the opposite sex, me in particular. He’d come waltzing in, spin me around, put his arms around me and apologize for being late with the rent. I tried to be severe with him but it just rolled off his back like water down a goose’s feathers. That was Tommy.
The band kept their stuff in one of the medium-sized containers, dropping the instruments off on a Monday or Tuesday, depending on how hungover and stoned they’d been on the Saturday, and picking it back up on a Thursday or Friday – depending on how far away the gig was. Tommy was the one who usually collected the gear, although the others helped when they could. But it was Tommy I watched out for. Those long, skinny legs emerging from the pink van they’d painted with black psychedelic letters. He had tattoos all the way up his arms and I’d dream that my name would one day be added to his collection of girlfriends – Sharnee, Fiona, Mirabelle … They went all the way up his delicious arms to his shoulder blades. It was a vain hope. Tommy was a born flirt. But still, I dreamed when he signed in – winking at me and puckering up his lips as though he would kiss me like they do in the movies – that one day he would look at me properly and the violins would play.
You want the real truth? If you weren’t a set of drums or a bass guitar, he wasn’t really that interested. Girls to him were simply arm candy. In spite of the almost obligatory grope, I wondered whether he was a closet gay. I sensed there was no serious intent behind his hand-wandering.
But … One can dream.
The winter was quieter and the customers scuttled in and out, like beetles, carrying their wares and anxious to return to the warmth of their cars. I’d watch them on the monitors, sometimes struggling with the larger pieces, reversing their cars or vans right up to the roller shutters. Daylight melted away by four o’clock and tall street lights beamed down like the lights from the watchtowers in concentration camps.
> Apart from the bona-fide customers, there was an entire substratum, who would arrive after dark, back right up to the shutters, unload by a waiting car’s headlights, faces covered against the CCTV, the contents of their van covered with grey removal blankets. They scurried around like rats in a grain store, signing the book with a swift check to see who else was there and a nervous glance at my bank of monitors. The items they stored, I reasoned, must be secret. They certainly didn’t want prying cameras and they kept their backs to the surveillance. They made me uneasy and edgy.
Which, in turn, made me even more sensitive to the isolation of my job. And home life wasn’t much better. Josh and Jodi weren’t as friendly as they had been when I had first moved in. They wanted my money but they sure as hell didn’t want me, certainly not hanging around the house. And I couldn’t blame them. If I had had a house of my own, I wouldn’t have wanted to share it either, with anyone except with my gorgeous, loving husband and a child or two. So, knowing Jodi and Josh didn’t really want to share their home at all, I stayed marooned in my room and scurried downstairs only when I had to eat, opening a tin of soup or sticking a pizza in the oven.
Because both my home life and the job were so lonely, if a customer or potential customer turned up I would engage them in conversation, chatting about anything – from politics, which I have zero interest in, to fashion, to rock music (with Tommy), to the weather, which I’ve also always found pretty boring. The weather will continue whether you like it or not. Rain, snow, heat or cold. No moaning about it has any influence whatever. It just makes you feel hard done by. The rain in Tunstall has a particularly dreary quality about it anyway.
I saw less and less of Scarlet and Andrew and began to reflect that now they had set the place up and had me to (wo)man it, they were earning money for nothing.
Left in isolation, over that winter, the days appeared longer and longer, and working every Saturday meant what little social life I might have had suffered. My friends, particularly Stella and Bethan, had been into Saturday shopping trips or afternoons spent in wine bars. But now it was all about family. Their little babies consumed them. And Sundays always had been a ‘family day’. Except for me who had no family. Mother, father, brother – none of them counted. So my Sundays were mainly about keeping out of Jodi and Jason’s way and traipsing the country park alone, whatever the weather.
The Subsequent Wife Page 3
