by Laura Elvery
Mrs Maxwell has said something funny, or Caroline’s laughing anyway. It doesn’t look like they’re going to buy the skull today. The Maxwells have been in three times in the past two weeks. Mr Maxwell is over by the posters, standing with his legs slightly apart and running a hand through his white hair. Those posters cost twenty pounds each, and they’re not even going to buy one of those. Mrs Maxwell thanks Caroline and Caroline thanks them back and says, ‘Look, anytime. My pleasure. It’s a great piece.’
Tuesday
Last night, I bought four frittata patties and one bag of beans and one of boiled potatoes on Tesco’s three-for-seven-pounds deal. So today I have leftovers I can re-heat in the lunchroom microwave. Jason offered to meet me for lunch, but his work is twenty minutes away. And I’m cruel, but I’m not that cruel. He’d be here for ten minutes and have to go again. Out the front of the gallery, people sun themselves in their own patches of grass that they’re very careful to protect. A small girl runs rings around her family, shaking the ribbon sticks we sell for six pounds in the gallery gift shop.
A lot of people who maybe don’t have much money come to the gallery because it’s free and no one needs to know that’s why you’re actually here. The toilets are always clean and there’s lots of space for strollers. Lucy says that once she found a dirty nappy, like a really dirty one, wedged behind the taps in the bathroom even though there are bins everywhere. But Lucy is pretty posh so maybe she lied. She goes to uni and only works in the shop part-time. We’re the same age, but it never seems like it.
When I was at high school, I thought I was going to be a psychologist or a photographer or work in a nice office. Because that’s what kids like us did. The career guides at school said nothing about being gift shop workers. Today I ask Lucy how uni’s been and she goes on and on about her lecturers and timetables and assignments until I have to pretend Caroline needs me in the stockroom. After lunch, Lucy tells me she had someone who was very interested in one of the skulls. She doesn’t say it, but I can tell that the man was from the Middle East.
Wednesday
Jason stayed over last night, and we had sex, which was fine. He always takes a long time, mostly because he’s looking deep into my eyes and whispering things. I just do what I know will work and he can’t help it and then it’s all over and we can go out to the lounge room and watch Big Brother.
This morning, Jason kisses me on the neck and closes the door softly as he leaves. The rule with my housemates is that you can have boyfriends to stay, but it’s better if they’re not seen and don’t use any of the hot water.
I always want to lie in on my day off, but I never can. In the kitchen, I pull down my box of cereal and I see that Jason has paper-clipped a twenty-pound note inside.
At the Tube station, I say to myself that I’ll put the whole twenty quid on my Oyster card, but instead I press the ‘ten’ button and put the change in my purse. A man who looks like he could have been Daniel Craig shuffles in front of me through the turnstile, and he reeks of piss and something like wet carpet steaming in the sunshine. On the platform he hunches forward with both feet on the edge. Around him, other passengers fiddle with their phones. I wonder who’d rush to the edge if he fell. All I’ve ever seen on the tracks are rats, soft brown bundles scritching and nosing inside chocolate wrappers. Rats must be used to trains thundering above. When people kill themselves on the underground, the station will announce something like, Mechanical difficulties. And even though you want to be sympathetic, it pisses everyone off.
A voice comes over the speaker telling the gentleman on platform one to please stand behind the yellow line. Daniel Craig doesn’t move, and he’s first on the carriage when it pulls up.
On the journey I think of the underground stations all around me – especially the phantom ones that have been closed and no one can get to. Sometimes I deliberately freak myself out by thinking of that scene in Atonement where the water gushes down the steps of Balham station during the war and everyone hiding down there drowns. That actually happened. When I think too much like that I want to get off at the next stop, unless it’s Balham, obviously.
I emailed my CV through to a bunch of places. The only one who replied was a recruiter in Russell Square, who asked to meet me today. Katherine is dressed in a navy blue suit and a shirt with pink and white stripes. On her right hand are three rings, all with diamonds.
‘Holly? Lovely to meet you,’ she says, and I like her straight away. Katherine’s blonde hair is pulled back with a little fringe she has to keep flicking to the side. I don’t look as good as she does, but the ad didn’t say anything about a suit. She leads me through a few doors, saying Hiya to about eighty people along the way.
‘Is this all okay?’ I say.
‘What you’re wearing? Yes. But if we get you an interview at the next stage, are you right to present as a little more corporate?’
‘Absolutely.’ I take a seat across from her. Both the door to the office and the meeting table are glass. The table is empty, except for brochures fanned out in the centre and a white orchid in a vase.
‘Great. Let’s get started,’ she says, checking her watch. Katherine lists things about me as if she’s a doctor and I’m a patient with symptoms. ‘You’re currently in retail? Two years’ experience?’ She asks if I enjoy working in a gallery.
‘The gift shop is really interesting,’ I say. ‘I get to meet lots of new people. I like helping customers find what they want. Good people skills, answering the phone, things like that.’
Katherine smiles at me in a nice way. ‘Excellent. That’s what all the employers are looking for.’
I speak up. ‘What I’d like, though, where I think I’m headed, is a personal-assistant or executive-assistant role. Somewhere in the city, maybe? I’m very organised and reliable.’
Her smile stiffens as she writes in her notepad. ‘At the moment, Holly, that’s becoming very difficult even for candidates with admin experience. Sometimes three and four years’ experience is not proving to be enough. It’s still hard out there.’ She nods like we both understand the GFC equally.
I hope Katherine is just taking a long time to get to the part where she’ll say, But actually, Holly, I have a very small, very friendly boutique firm that would adore you. It’s a bit glamorous really, but totally down to earth.
Thursday
Today I’m too depressed to face frittata patties for the fourth day in a row so I go down the road and get a sandwich for lunch. The cheapest used to be the egg and lettuce at one pound fifty. Now it’s almost double that. On the specials board out the front, one of the workers has drawn a cow – grinning and super fat so that all the words can fit inside.
The halved cows at the exhibition upstairs pop into my mind. Someone paid millions for those cows.
Friday
I know what the time is when it happens because Caroline asks me just as she finishes a stretch to the ceiling and then back down to her toes.
‘It’s twelve-seventeen,’ I tell her.
‘Oh God, I did yoga six hours ago and I still feel like shit.’
‘Ha,’ I say. ‘I should do yoga. I need to do something.’
Past the locked cabinets with the skulls is the stairwell, and I see dozens of people moving back and forward and up and down the escalators. Two identical security guards dart past. Their hands grip their belts where they have batons, not guns. They run, leading with their shoulders.
Caroline bolts up from her stretch. Her face is red and her eyes water. She says, ‘Probably the usual.’
A big scrappy fight among teenagers that’s been dragged inside, or a husband and wife arguing about losing their kid. Security will end up taking them to a room and calling the police if they have to. That’s what Caroline means. But somewhere further above us – maybe in a white room walled with paintings – a woman screams.
We look at
each other. ‘What’s going on?’
Caroline says, ‘I’ll go for a wander. You stay here.’
There’s more running and more people watching the running. I have to concentrate to sell a library bag and stickers to a kid who takes ages to decide what she wants.
‘What’s going on up there?’ her dad asks me, stroking the girl’s hair.
‘Not sure. Sometimes people faint, you know, in the heat.’
He keeps smiling at me, his eyes resting for an instant on my chest. He probably doesn’t even know he’s doing it. His daughter, or whoever it is, has dropped to the ground to unwrap the packet of stickers.
‘I’m Calvin,’ he says.
‘Oh. Hi. Have a good day.’
He laughs. Nice though, not mean. ‘I see you’re … Holly.’
‘Yep. Hi.’
‘Lovely to meet you.’ He must stare at girls all day long like this because he doesn’t seem embarrassed at all. His eyes trace across my neck. He’s old, I guess, but not that old. Sort of looks like some teacher I might have had for a semester of History before he got transferred to a better school.
‘Lots of great things in a shop like this. I must say I’m surprised.’
If he was a real History teacher he’d know that museums and galleries make all their money in gift shops – not from broken bones and chewed-up bits of loincloth.
Maybe he’s hitting on me, but the movement outside is making me antsy, and Caroline’s not back yet. ‘You want to see something?’ I ask.
‘I’d love to, Holly.’ He turns his attention to the girl. ‘Bridget, baby, you stay there.’
Calvin says something weird like, After you, and he follows me. More commotion beyond the doors: everyone is keen not to miss a moment. A mother has stopped with her stroller in the dead centre of the walkway towards the escalators. Half a dozen teenagers are saying, What the fuck? to each other and texting on their phones. Calvin wears a small smile like he’s feeling a nice breeze across his face. He seems to have forgotten the panic outside.
I tell him, ‘These are Damien Hirst skulls. From the exhibition upstairs? Exclusive collectors’ pieces. Just £36,000.’
‘Wow.’ Calvin touches his fingers to the outside. Only Caroline has the key.
‘Yeah, loads of people like them.’
‘What do you think?’ he says.
‘Well. They’re exclusive collectors’ pieces.’
Calvin laughs. Flash of white teeth. Flash of gold necklace beneath his throat. He touches his finger to my shoulder then onto the glass. ‘But what do you think?’
I turn back to the cabinet and see myself and the chaos behind me, in the dark, concrete atrium where everyone is either frozen or rushing. ‘I think they’re beautiful. He’s made something no one ever gets to see.’
In the reflection, Phil, the main security guy, points up and speaks into his phone. Bridget has gotten up from the ground and is toddling over to her dad.
‘And they’re so fragile. I guess like a real human skull.’
‘Mmhmm. Very true.’ Calvin seems to be losing interest.
A teenager dashes in through the back door of the shop. He looks at Calvin first, then sees me in my uniform.
‘Oh my God. Did someone just kill themselves?’
‘What?’ Calvin and I say it together.
‘That’s what they’re saying. Oh my fucking God. That some guy jumped.’
‘Daddy?’
I ask the boy if he’s serious. His face is sweaty and he has a bit of a grin, the way you look sometimes when the news is so bad you need to fight it off. He says, ‘I don’t know. That’s what they’re saying. Someone jumped.’ Bones and a brain tumbling and coming apart at the feet of someone who glances up too late.
The restaurant is on the sixth floor. Caroline took me there for my birthday in May. She bought us bacon sandwiches and freshly squeezed orange juice. We sat outside on the balcony. We watched tourists below and boats on the river and a crane, all the way across the water, dangling over Liverpool Street. Some worker hitched to the long metal arm, risking his neck for another skyscraper.
Above us, the sun in the sky. Beneath us, the glittering, bright pavement.
Skin to Skin
Dylan watches Stephanie make milkshakes for the two blokes in Fluminis uniforms who have come in, stomping their feet on the welcome mat. One of them takes off his hard hat and cradles it. Stephanie jams metal cups onto the spokes, cocking her head to one side. She is showing off, Dylan thinks.
‘Decided yet?’ she asks.
‘Yeah,’ the short one replies. ‘We’ll get a coupla bucks’ worth of chips.’
‘Sounds good,’ the other one says.
‘Dylan?’ Stephanie turns and finds his eyes quickly. At school once, their Drama teacher Ms Morris put them in a scene together. Something about a war and Stephanie had to hold on to his arms as though she loved him, so she dug in her fingernails until she left marks like staples. Across the room, Ms Morris had given them the double thumbs-up.
Dylan empties a package of chips into the fryer. He rocks the basket and a spatter of oil bites him on the cheek. ‘Fucking hell.’
Laughter from the front counter.
‘Don’t worry about him,’ Stephanie says. ‘Oi, Dylan. We can hear you.’
Silence for a few minutes while the chips twist in the golden oil. He salts them hard and shakes them into a box. Doesn’t spit into them. Dylan comes round, hands over the chips. One guy is on his mobile, drinking his milkshake. He motions for his friend to pay.
‘You all right back there?’ The Fluminis worker says it to Stephanie – a little joke. Stephanie has blue eyes and a heart-shaped face, long brown hair, and a dusting of light pimples around her nose and lips. She’s blushing when she takes the man’s money.
‘I got some oil in my eye. It fucken hurt.’
‘Dylan!’
‘But that’s nothing to you blokes, hey.’ He points to the logo on the man’s fluorescent vest. ‘Your risky business.’
Heaps of kids’ parents work for Fluminis. Dylan sees them turning up outside the school gates at three o’clock in work utes with the logo in dark blue on the side – three tentacles of river bending away from the ‘m’ in the middle.
‘No injuries here, mate.’ The man jingles his change and holds it up to Stephanie like a salute. ‘Thanks for the milkshake, love.’
‘Take some sauce,’ Dylan tells them. ‘On the house.’
The electronic bell bleats when they push the door open onto the street. He watches the men climb inside their ute, plucking chips from the box as they drive off.
In the afternoon, Stephanie takes a washer and toothbrush to the milkshake makers while Dylan moves a mop underneath the tables. His uncle Jon owns the cafe. Dylan overheard his mum begging her brother: Just give him something to do. Stephanie was hired at Barcombe Cafe two months later. She wanted to save up for tickets to Beachcomber Island in Fiji, where she’d go for schoolies with her boyfriend and her boyfriend’s mates. She’d take any shifts, she told Jon, thumbing towards Dylan. Even with him.
He dips the mop into the bucket and thinks about the water that comes from the River Derwent. Heavy deposits of minerals: cadmium, copper, mercury, lead and zinc. Dylan avoids drinking from taps. He showers with a product he bought online called Toxin Corps. When his mum saw it beside the bathroom sink, Dylan told her about the barrier it promised to cover him with. She asked Why? a lot, and then, How is it supposed to do that? Standing in a towel wrapped around his waist with the water running behind him, Dylan told her that she should feel free to use some herself, but to please pay for the next bottle; it cost thirty-five dollars. At school he buys water from the canteen and cleans his hands with a squirt of hand sanitiser from the front pocket of his backpack.
Dylan looks out the window. Barcombe is small, on
ly six or seven thousand people. He has lived here all his life. Across the road from the cafe is a tiny church. Beside that are wooden houses painted white and navy and butter yellow. Then there’s a dental surgery with a ramp leading to the door, and the Federal Hotel further along, on the corner that leads to the wharf. In his mind, the metals make the nearby river turn silver and molten, stirred up by the Fluminis machines. Beneath the water, Dylan imagines the particles slipping past one another, swift specks whizzing by on muddied currents.
*
For his Drama assignment – a monologue – Dylan has decided to tell the story of what happened to him at his old school. He’s told it so many times to himself, but this is when it really matters.
Ms Morris calls his name from the roll and he steps up to the low stage. She sits at a single desk at the back of the room, a pen in hand and a stopwatch around her neck.
‘Ready? And, begin.’
Dylan sits on a chair, opens his eyes and spreads his hands wide on his knees. ‘I left that school because they spat on me at church,’ he says.
The black T-shirt they all wear for Drama performances itches at his nipples and at the skin around his armpits.
‘It happened to me. Some boys had been giving me a hard time. Girls too. We went to Mass. It was a Catholic school, see, and they must have planned it to happen when the music was playing. I mean, it was an attack. Not a coincidence.’
He’s forgotten what comes next. He can see the words typed out on the folded sheet in his backpack, right there on the floor. He tries to catch the next line, one of many hovering like insects.
