by Heide Goody
“Why do you have cocoa puffs if you don’t have any children?” Spartacus asked.
Ben, trying to match labels with parcels, said, “Can’t a grown man have cocoa puffs?”
“It’s a kids’ cereal,” said Spartacus.
“It’s for kids, silly,” said Bea.
“Why?”
“Because it’s got chocolate on it.”
Ben turned to face them, a wrapped parcel in each hand. “Aren’t adults allowed to like chocolate?”
“Only grown up chocolate. Like that posh dark chocolate stuff.”
Bea stuck out her tongue and screwed up her eyes to show what she thought of dark chocolate.
Ben held out the book packages. “One of these is the fantasy novel, Name of the Wind. The other is The Dwelling Place by Catherine Cookson. I’m trying to work out which is which.”
“Unwrap them then,” said Spartacus.
Ben shook his head. “I could, but then I’d have to do the anti-virus deep clean again.”
“So, it’s fantasy nerd book or old lady boring book,” said Spartacus.
“If you must.”
Balancing his empty bowl on his knees, Spartacus took the books from Ben, weighed them carefully and sniffed each. “This one. Smells of sad lonely geeks.”
“Bit offensive,” said Ben.
Their cereal finished, Ben directed them to the kitchen to put the bowls in the sink and then to disinfect their hands. He took their temperatures with his thermometer gun while they did.
“Are you a doctor?” asked Bea.
“He’s just a weirdo,” said Spartacus.
“Taking precautions,” said Ben.
“You know what you should do with your books and labels,” said Spartacus. “You should just totally mix them up.”
“What?”
“Mix them up. Send everyone a random book.”
“That’s really not what I’m trying to do for my customers.”
“Nah,” said Spartacus. “You stick an extra label on every package saying since we’re all in lockdown, we should try something new and that they should read the book they’ve been sent.”
Ben wasn’t sure. “It is tempting.”
“And then you tell them to randomly send the book on to someone they know. You know, to spread the joy.”
“That could almost work.” He had a pained, unconvinced look on his face. “No, I’ve got time to sort these out. I’ve not received my face mask yet, so it’s not like I can take them to the post office yet anyway.”
“You can make a face mask,” said Spartacus. “Or what about that?”
Ben looked round to see what he was pointing at.
“That’s not a proper protective mask,” said Ben. “Nerys brought it me back as a souvenir from her trip to Venice.”
“Is it a bird mask?” asked Bea.
“No, it’s a plague doctor mask,” said Ben.
“Perfect then,” said Spartacus.
“Yeah— I’m not so sure about that.”
“Or I could take your books to the post office. For a modest fee. I’m gonna take Nerys’s stuff once I find a bag big enough to put it in.”
12
Nerys put the kettle on and glanced at the clock. She had thirty minutes before her first online meeting of the day, so while the kettle was boiling she went to pull on some clothes. She’d hung up some of her fancy new things so she could ponder which to wear; the tops obviously. She’d been careful to strike a balance between playful and professional – first impressions and all that. She decided that a green silk blouse with a pussycat bow would be just the ticket. She pulled off her onesie and buttoned up the blouse. She had a pair of jeans that would do for the unseen bottom half. She could wear slippers as well. A fun new take on workwear, one she might grow to enjoy. Where were her jeans? They were not where she left them.
“Come on. Come on.”
She narrowed her eyes as a tiny nugget of doubt began to gnaw at her mind. She flung open the doors to her wardrobe. The top row was as she has left it, hung with tops and jackets. The bottom row, which normally featured skirts and trousers, now featured bare coat hangers. Surely she hadn’t suggested Spartacus should remove all of her clothes? She ran out of the room and down the stairs.
“Spartacus! Spartacus!” She yelled.
Ben and Clovenhoof opened their doors to see what she was yelling about.
“Where is he? Where is Spartacus?” she yelled at down them. They stood there like a pair of idiots, failing to grasp the urgency of the situation.
“He’s gone off to the post office,” said Bea, who was playing with her semi-naked Barbie.
You’re the one who sent him there,” Clovenhoof pointed out.
“Was he carrying loads of clothes?” said Nerys.
“No idea, I’m catching up on some porn while he’s out,” said Clovenhoof.
“He had a big parcel to deliver,” said Ben.
“He’s taken my stuff!” Nerys bellowed.
Bea pointed at Nerys. “You’ve got no trousers!”
“Exactly!”
“You told him to—” started Ben.
“No, he’s taken all of my stuff! I don’t have any trousers or skirts left! Go and chase after him!”
“I haven’t got a protective mask.”
“This is an emergency! An actual emergency!”
“It’s a fashion emergency,” said Ben “Lockdown is serious, Nerys.”
Nerys might have let him get away with that comment if he hadn’t put air quotes around fashion emergency. She ran downstairs.
“No trousers!” squealed Bea, delighted.
Nerys grabbed the neck of Ben’s t-shirt and pushed her face into his. “Don’t make me snog you, Ben! I might have the virus, after all!”
“Fine! Fine! Just let me don some protection!”
Three minutes later, Ben was back out with a plastic outfit constructed from bin liners, and a long staff in his hand.
“Really?” she said in frank disbelief.
“It’s my social distancing stick,” he said. “Persephone down the road has one.”
“I meant that,” she said, nodding at the mask under his arm. “That’s meant for ornamentation only.”
“Plague man,” said Bea, sombrely.
“It’ll have to do,” said Ben. He jammed the plague doctor mask over his face and hurried downstairs.
“He looks silly,” said Bea.
“He’s not the only one,” said Clovenhoof, waggling his eyebrows at Nerys’s near naked lower half. “I mean I’m your husband and I’m entitled to see your unruly thatch.”
“I do not have an unruly thatch!” she said, placing her hands over her knickers.
“It’s not a sight young girls should have to see.”
Nerys was furious and torn. She had no desire to be embarrassed by Clovenhoof but, as a matter of principle, she didn’t think young girls should be horrified by the adult female body, and certainly shouldn’t grow up thinking a naturally hairy pubis was something to be ashamed of.
“I’m one hundred percent natural woman,” she said, lifting her chin nobly. “Nonetheless, I really, really need my trousers.”
“Well, we could do this,” said Clovenhoof, pulling out his phone and waggling it at her. He tapped a number and put the phone to his ear. “Spartacus? Listen my man, Nerys is having a meltdown about what you’ve taken.” He listened to the answer. “Oh? Interesting.”
“Give me the phone!” said Nerys, her hand outstretched. Clovenhoof handed it over. “Spartacus, you were only supposed to take the new things, not everything out of my wardrobe! I need you to bring them back now.”
“Oh right, funny story. The lady in the post office said that it’s not normal to have a returns label on a parcel that big. I had to argue quite a lot to get her to take it.”
“What do you mean: parcel? There’s no way all of that stuff went in the returns bag.”
“No, I had to get a dustbin bag, it wasn�
�t easy to squeeze it all in. I put the label on the bag and it was a freepost address, so she had to accept it.”
“Go back and tell her you made a mistake. I need those clothes. Hurry up!”
“What’s that noise coming from your flat?” asked Clovenhoof. “Like a dinging sound.”
“Oh shit! It’s my meet and greet with my new boss!”
Nerys raced up the stairs. She slid into her chair and clicked on the meeting request. The screen showed eight other people, all streaming video from their homes. The software gave the largest window to the person who was talking. It was a middle-aged woman wearing a polyester jacket in royal blue. She seemed to be addressing everyone on the call.
“And while it’s lovely to welcome a fresh intake at this time, don’t expect an easy ride, just because you’re able to work from home. We face a great many challenges, and it’s your job to maintain a professional attitude in the face of what are likely to be extremely fraught circumstances.”
“Sorry I’m late,” said Nerys. “It’s great to meet you all. Is this my team?”
“Er, yes. Welcome Nerys. Now let’s get back to the upcoming task.” The woman, who was named Amanda, according to her window, seemed brusque to the point of being almost offensive.
“Aren’t we going to do some introductions?” said Nerys. “I’d like to know who’s on my team.”
“It’s not really a team in the sense that you need to know each other,” said Amanda. “When you have questions, drop them in a message to me. I’ll get to you as quickly as I can.”
“What do you mean? Of course I need to know the people who will be working for me.”
The images on the screen wobbled in and out of focus as several participants giggled.
“Nobody is working for you, Nerys. You will be taking calls and answering to me. Is the reporting line clear?”
“Yes.”
Nerys sat quietly while Amanda detailed the job. It sounded suspiciously like working in a call centre, answering customer complaints and queries for the online supermarket. Probably they were getting everybody onto the phones while things were so difficult. She would get to grips with what her normal, day-to-day tasks were once the crisis had passed. A customer satisfaction manager would have much bigger fish to fry than actual customers.
13
It took a lot of bargaining and wheedling from Spartacus to get the woman at the Boldmere post office to give him back his parcel. Fortunately, he had one significant bargaining chip: the length of the queue. The more the woman delayed, the longer the queue grew, and the more irritated the people lined up behind him became.
She eventually relented and handed it over.
As Spartacus walked out with the large dense parcel, he saw an elderly gent being assisted by one of the staff by the door.
“I need to sit down,” he gasped.
“You’ve not … you’ve not got it, have you? Cough? Shortness of breath?”
“No, but I’ve just had the frit of me life,” he said. “I just seen the spectre of death.”
“The what?” said the staff member.
“Death himself, stalking down the high street, scythe in his hand.”
“Right,” said the staff member, giving Spartacus a look which said, plain as day, “He’s quite clearly bonkers, but he’s an old man so we have to be nice, don’t we?”
Spartacus, who was more inclined to treat people as he found them, and less likely to jump to conclusions based on people’s ages or their weird utterances, simply met the staff member’s gaze and walked out. He would have thought little of it, but for the fact partway down the road he heard two women with pushchairs discussing something much the same.
“What did you see?” Spartacus asked them.
“It was the grim reaper,” said one. “Or someone dressed up as him.”
“Scaring the life out of people,” said the other. “It’s like that bloody sex goblin we had the other week. People thinking they can dress up in public and act all creepy.”
“He had the whole costume going on. Dress in back with this big stick-thing for mowing down people’s lives.”
“Scythe?” suggested Spartacus.
“That’s it,” said the woman.
“Did he have a blade on it?” asked the other. “I didn’t see a blade.”
“And one of those scary masks on.”
“One of them medieval plague masks.”
“Ah,” said Spartacus, understanding. “And where did you see this grim reaper character?”
“Down that way,” said one of the woman, pointing down the high street towards St Michael’s church.
“But don’t you go near him,” the other warned. “He could be dangerous.”
“Yeah, he is Death after all,” said the first.
“Don’t worry,” said Spartacus, jogging on with his heavy load. “I think he’s a friend of mine.”
Only a hundred yards later (after passing a pale-faced woman muttering “Death! He’s come for me! For meeee!”) Spartacus saw the grim reaper being questioned by a pair of police officers. It was indeed Ben in his bin liner and plague mask get up. The discussion was getting quite heated.
“No, I have to keep the mask on for protection,” said Ben. “You do know there’s a pandemic going on?”
“And we can’t have practical jokers giving members of the public a shock by parading up and down in this get up,” said one of the coppers.
“Parading? I’m not parading! I was going to the post office to stop a young lad sending my neighbour’s trousers to the wrong people.”
The police officers exchanged glances. “Well, as excuses go, I don’t think I’ve ever heard that combination of words before. Have you, Arnie?”
“Can’t say I have. Perhaps Mr Reaper here would like to discuss it down the station?” The police officer held open the rear door of the police car next to them.
Grim Reaper Ben looked down at the interior of the car. “I don’t want to touch anything that hasn’t been cleaned.”
“Our car is very clean,” the copper assured him.
“But has it been disinfected since the last person sat in it?” Even masked and cloaked, Spartacus could see Ben shudder. “And the cells. No. No, I don’t think I could.”
The police officer put a hand on Ben’s arm. Ben yelped and ran off. The police started to give chase, but for a masked harbinger of death Ben had an unnatural turn of speed on him and was soon out of their reach. The police officers doubled back to their car. Moments later they were driving away, lights flashing.
14
Nerys tried to concentrate on the advice that Amanda was giving, but she had found she could click on each participant in the meeting and see them more clearly. She went through and checked out the clothing and appearance of each person. She jotted down the names of two of the men, for reference. Then she clicked on her own picture and was shocked to see how she slumped in her chair, and how the unflattering angle of the laptop made her face look saggy. She would need to experiment with posture and the placement of the laptop. One woman was looking up at hers, a much better idea. Had she put it on a high shelf, or something?
She was distracted by the backgrounds of everybody’s homes. Some people were clearly sitting in a kitchen, and Nerys strained to see whether there was any tell-tale food or alcohol on the surfaces. Some had positioned themselves in front of a bookcase, which smacked of trying way too hard. Nerys wondered if there was a better position in her flat other than this boring wall. Perhaps she should arrange some artwork behind her, or an attractive plant.
“Now we will move on to the call listening part of the meeting. Just wait for a few moments and we will be connected up with a colleague who is taking customer calls. You will observe some of the techniques we’ve covered today, and I will be asking you afterwards to tell me what you managed to identify.”
After a few moments, the call could be heard. The agent’s voice was very loud, while the customer sounded as if
they were on a bad line.
“Thank you for confirming your identity. How can I help you today?”
“I want to make a booking, but there’s something the matter with your website.”
“Yes sir, we’re experiencing an extraordinary level of demand at the moment. I would advise you to keep trying,” said the agent.
“I pay for your premium account, why can’t you get me a slot? I’ve been trying for three solid hours now!”
“That must have been very frustrating for you sir,” said the agent.
Nerys scrambled for her pen. Wasn’t that one of the techniques? Telling them that you understand?
“Can I give you a tip?” the agent was saying. “You might want to try early in the morning. It will be quieter around seven. It’s also when we release the delivery slots for the—”
“Why can’t you book it for me? Surely you have access to the system?”
“I’m afraid we are unable to carry out customer actions on their behalf.”
“What if I told you that I’d lost both of my arms in a freak accident with a garden shredder?” asked the caller.
Nerys sat bolt upright. No! It couldn’t be…
Clovenhoof held his landline phone to his ear.
“Sir,” said the Dukoko customer service manager on the end of the line, “if you are a vulnerable customer then I can mark it on your account. Have you lost your arms?”
“No, I asked you what if I had,” said Clovenhoof. “Would you make a booking for me then?”
“Sir, I know that it’s a difficult situation at the moment, but I have given you my best advice. Is there anything else that I can help you with today?”
“Yes, tell me more about the vulnerable thing.”
“What would you like to know?”
“What other ways can a person be vulnerable? Maybe I’m vulnerable in a different way?”
The agent paused. “It would be up to you to put forward your condition, sir. Can you tell me why you think you might be vulnerable?”
“No, I want you to guess.”
“Sir, I need to respectfully point out that there are many other people waiting to get through for our help. If you wanted to joke around then I’m afraid this is not the place for that.”
