Maggsie McNaughton's Second Chance

by Frances Maynard

  This time the ruddy notebook did come out. I had to try and explain ‘hanky-panky’, which was awkward. Him smiling so much made it difficult to know if he was taking the mick or not.

  ‘I will be perfect English gentleman. Wife, Sofia, will not look after that I socialize with colleague.’

  ‘Think you might mean care, TJ. Your wife won’t care.’ Hardly worth him putting his notebook away. I definitely earned my side of our arrangement. We only looked at the Metro for a few minutes, whereas I was on the go all the time, teaching him. I tapped off some fag ash. ‘I don’t know. Might be busy, Sunday. I do my shopping then.’ That was true except I got it done in five minutes at the Co-op. Took another drag. I’d never been a colleague before. Or out with a perfect English gentleman. Specially a Polish one. I blew out smoke. I wasn’t going to let on, but it would be something to do. A lot of empty hours in the weekend, otherwise. I sighed. ‘Might be able to squeeze you in, I suppose.’

  I had to tell Ruby I was meeting TJ. One of the rules was you kept staff informed who you were mixing with. Didn’t know how Kasia managed with that one.

  Ruby was worried TJ might take me to ‘unsuitable’ places. Pubs and drinking dens, she meant. That was a laugh. I told her he was only interested in history and improving his English. We’d be going round old buildings. The famous ones. And then only the outsides. Neither of us had the money to go in. And not likely TJ would lead me astray, when it was me what had been in prison, while all TJ had been up to, far as I knew, was doing something scientific with soil. That hair sticking up, that moon face. He looked more like a crime victim.

  It was like Ruby was my mum. Not that Mum would have worried. She’d have been thrilled I was meeting a man. Any man. A tall man, even if he was married and it wasn’t a date. Mum would have fluttered her eyelashes at TJ, like she did with every man. And I mean literally. She wore too much mascara so it was ruddy obvious. She thought a man paying you attention was a good thing. That’s why she’d ended up with Dad, then Dougie. That’s why she’d never minded Dad, when he’d had a few, pawing at her, his eyes bleary, long as he told her she was a fine-looking woman. She’d be in her dressing gown, pushing back her auburn hair. Laughing.

  Mum had lovely hair. The colour was called Tish something. (Titian, I found out later. How can Tit say Tish, I ask you? It means goldy red.) Sometimes Mum wore it in a French plait. If Nella was around to do it. If Mum had a go herself her arms would get tired, plus she could never work out which bit of hair went where. ‘I’m hopeless,’ she’d say, giggling. Yeah, she was.

  I saw men without Mum’s rose-tinted spectacles, thank you very much. That’s why I didn’t bother with no primping or eyelash-fluttering.

  On my way out to meet TJ I stopped to do up my ponytail in the hall mirror. Big Shirl poked her head round her door and asked if I wanted to borrow some make-up. When I’d told her TJ was going to show me the sights she’d had a good old cackle. She looked me up and down now. Seemed disappointed I wasn’t wearing a short skirt.

  Short skirt? ‘No way, Shirl. I don’t want to look like a kid. Or the other. And I ain’t got the teeth for lipstick.’

  ‘Well, eyeliner, then. Wing it up at the corners. Them’s your best feature.’

  I’d always thought my eyes were a muddy grey colour but Big Shirl swore they were green. ‘Thanks but no thanks, Shirl. I ain’t auditioning for one of your jobs.’

  Big Shirl cackled. It was that laugh that told you, yeah, she had run a brothel. ‘Thank gawd, I’m done with all that. Always a nightmare getting staff, what with my girls all wanting to do different hours.’

  Seeing as we’re talking about mirrors and make-up, I’ll give you some details of what I look like. If you’re interested. You already know my teeth aren’t anything to write home about, and that I’m short. Four foot eleven actually. Just over four foot eleven. Four foot eleven and a fag paper. Some people have said I’ve got issues because of it. Which is a lie. Though it is ruddy irritating, being taken for a kid. Or talked over, like right over the top of my head. Or being teased about booster cushions. Asked what the weather’s like down there. Stuff like that.

  Nan said the best things in life came in small packages. She was a tiny little thing herself, mind. And she might have been referring to jewellery.

  I’m slim as well. Skinny, some people would say. Rude people. My spine sticks out like a row of beads. I move too quick for weight to settle.

  As you know, I dye my hair black because of it being ginger underneath. Strawberry blonde, Mum calls it and Nan used to say ripe corn, but trust me, it’s ginger.

  Ginger hair, pasty skin, fair eyelashes, small. Only things I wasn’t was gay or black. Or trans. Although that was tempting sometimes. Seeing as blokes had it easier. Got bigger livers for a start. A doc, the one that was nice to me, told me that.

  I’ve got tattoos but everybody’s got those. Everybody I know. We did them to each other, inside. Needle, sterilized in a fag lighter if you was lucky, and ink from a biro, green or red if the girl doing it was artistic. I was still thinking about getting cool head in a crisis done one day.

  TJ could take me or leave me. Actually I’d just as soon he left me. I wasn’t going to doll myself up for him. Ridiculous, people treating it like a date.

  15

  Woman’s World, 21 February 2018

  Explore London – Five Must-see Sights!

  I got off the tube at Waterloo. Upstairs the railway station was huge, heaving. It was Sunday; didn’t people ever stop in London? People rushing in different directions, running to catch trains, shouting into mobiles. And when you glared at them they just looked straight through you. But I wasn’t supposed to glare. I was supposed to power-walk away, Ruby said. Breathe out. Alastair or Jack wouldn’t look up to someone who glared.

  Easy to feel small when you’re on your own in a great big crowded place. Not a nice feeling. Same as at the coach station when I first got to London. And when I looked out of the window too long back at the house. I stuck my hands in my pockets. I could have been back there now, reading a Woman’s World, having a cup of tea and a fag with the girls, trying to get Audrey to come into the kitchen.

  TJ said he’d meet me by the bookshop at the back of the station. I spotted him first because of him being so big and his hair sticking up. Funny, seeing him without his apron. He was wearing a donkey jacket and black trousers, not jeans.

  I pulled down my denim jacket and walked over. Even though it was old, it was a good one, a designer rip-off. And my jeans were clean on this morning.

  He gave me a big smile, and then, straight away, handed me a plastic bread bag. Why’s he giving me sandwiches, I thought? But no, he said it was a present. Some kind of book. It was a dictionary, a school one. Big print and explained things simple, he said. He’d got it from a charity shop.

  Funny giving me a present. Funny kind of present, a dictionary. He must have thought I was really thick to need something simple. I narrowed my eyes up at him. Nearly handed it back.

  He said people in his English class had ones like it. ‘They are English but have trouble spelling. Have dyslexia.’ He looked at me, like I might not know the word.

  I knew it alright. Hoped he knew it meant I wasn’t thick. I stood there, holding the dictionary. It wouldn’t fit into my pocket. What right did he have to give me a label? Come on the expert?

  And it would be useless, anyway. At school, when I’d asked how you spelt a word, they’d banged a dictionary down on my desk. But if you didn’t know how to spell a word in the first place, how on earth were you going to find it in a dictionary?

  From TJ’s expression, mind, you’d have thought he’d just handed me the Crown Jewels. ‘You can look up words in Metro now. Help spelling. When I am not there.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I stared up at him. He was getting big ideas.

  Next thing I knew he’d taken hold of my elbow. I snatched it away. ‘No funny stuff.’ He looked hurt. Said he was being polite. ‘Pull the
other one,’ I said, under my breath, in case I had to explain it. Being held on to made it like he was in charge, like I was going to escape. I’d had the same on the way to the headmaster’s office. And in a supermarket more than once.

  We walked along the side of the river. The South Bank, TJ said. Big boats going up and down with tourists hanging over the rails and loudspeakers telling them what they was seeing. I didn’t need a loudspeaker because TJ knew everything.

  ‘Blackfriars Bridge,’ he pointed out. ‘New skyscrapers, the Gherkin, the Shard. One day we go up. Have cocktail. Look out over London. Twenty-five floors higher than roof garden at work.’

  In your dreams, I thought, because: one, I’d stopped drinking, two, could you see me in a cocktail bar, and three, he was married.

  A big reddish building came up on the right. TJ said it was an art gallery.

  I followed him in to get out of the cold. I’d never been in an art gallery before. All I knew about art was Louise’s wall of postcards, in prison. Inside the gallery it was nearly as crowded as Waterloo station. As usual, everyone was posh. They had guidebooks and brayed to each other, never mind if you were standing in between.

  We spent half an hour just looking round the one room. The pictures weren’t my cup of tea. White figures in robes. Nervy-looking women. People with no clothes on frolicking behind trees. Like the porn magazines Dad kept under his bed, only muddy colours.

  TJ knew about the people that had painted the pictures. Trust him. Where they came from, who their mates were. All about their complicated love lives.

  Louise had known about that stuff as well. Droned on about it, given half the chance. We were only interested in her postcards of nude men. Just Enid who’d looked at the other ones and gone Ah look! or Oh, I say!

  I’d had a postcard from Enid yesterday. An arty one, a bowl of fruit, real-looking. She’d got it from Louise, actually. One Louise had two of. Made my day to get a letter from you, Enid had wrote. Pity it was just a postcard.

  A girl stood right in front of a painting while me and TJ were looking at it. Tossed back her hair and giggled while her friend took a photo. I told her to get out of our faces, sharpish, but TJ moved away. Looked uncomfortable. I was beginning to think he was a bit soft, the type that could get himself pushed around. The two slags scarpered. I flexed my shoulders. Result. The next painting was of a woman in a shawl, rocking a cradle. I breathed o-u-t. Didn’t stay long, looking at that one.

  We had a look at Shakespeare’s Globe theatre after. I’d heard of Shakespeare. The theatre was only a copy, not the real thing. Then we crossed a footbridge with loads of little padlocks and key rings attached to the railings. TJ didn’t smile when I asked what they were. His face had lit up when I’d asked him other stuff. That was why I’d kept it to a minimum. He said couples put the padlocks there to show their love couldn’t be broken. Then he changed the subject to how the bridge had wobbled when it was first put up. Made me wonder what his wife was up to, all on her own back in Poland. Load of guff anyway. Plenty of girls inside who could have undone any one of those flimsy little things quicker than it took to say I’ll love you for ever, darling.

  On the other side of the river – ‘Name is Thames,’ TJ said. ‘The Thames,’ I got in – was St Paul’s Cathedral. Never mind Primrose’s Church of the Everlasting Light – she’d told me it shared a building with a playgroup – this was the real deal.

  Loads of steps to climb up just to get inside. Through the door, the entrance bit was a huge high ceiling with echoes and black and white floor tiles, like in Nan’s kitchen, only stretching for miles.

  We had a coffee in a café round the back afterwards. TJ never went into pubs, he said. Didn’t know why he’d brought that up. He didn’t drink at all. Seen too many alcoholics in his own country, he said. And his own dad had died of it. Not much to say to that. I didn’t tell him my dad had too. Or about my past drinking. Didn’t want him asking questions. Thinking we had stuff, bad stuff, in common.

  I couldn’t make out half the fancy words on the menu. It put me at a disadvantage. Made me feel I shouldn’t be there. Made my face burn. I looked around to see if anyone was laughing at me struggling. In the end TJ ordered me something with a fancy name, but which turned out to be just a milky coffee, the same as he’d got.

  Once I’d opened all the sugar packets and finished stirring them in, I didn’t know what to say. I was sitting opposite TJ and it made me nervous. Don’t know why. He wasn’t saying much either so I couldn’t even correct his English.

  He paid, which was OK seeing as I’d worked hard putting him right on his words the previous couple of hours. Our coffees cost an arm and a leg because of it being London and a tourist place. I’d have been happier with a takeaway cup. And tea, not coffee.

  It was better when we lit up outside. When we weren’t squashed up close together. Then it was like being on our fag break at work.

  We walked back to Waterloo station. He lived south of the river. Lewisham. My place was north. Finsbury Park. Big Shirl said the house was nearly in Crouch End like that was an advantage, but Finsbury Park sounded better.

  TJ didn’t even try to touch my elbow this time, which was a ruddy good thing.

  Soon as I got upstairs I took the dictionary out of TJ’s bread bag and scratched the word School off its cover. Didn’t want the other girls seeing it and having a laugh. I put it next to the Woman’s Worlds on my desk.

  They reminded me of Enid. I’d have a go at another letter. Now, before I could weaken. She’d love to think of me seeing the London sights. Nice to have someone to tell that to. Not long till she’d be out herself.

  I tried to make it better than the first one. I knew what I wanted to say, I could say it alright. But the words slipped away soon as my pen hit the page. Came out jumbled. And my handwriting was terrible. I was concentrating so hard on nailing down the right letters, everything else went out the window.

  I been out and seen the sites of London I been in St Pauls I hop you allright not long to gow now I got a calendar now at the end I rite to my son I have got a son but I niver said. This is my second leter, Enid

  lov of

  Maggsie M x

  My calendar had the word calendar written on it, and I managed to find sites in TJ’s dictionary so at least they were spelt right. (Like he said, it was easy to use. Words printed in blue. Nice and clear. Easier than the ones they’d thumped down on my desk at school.)

  I pictured Enid reading about me writing to ‘my son’. Putting things together in her mind. Her saying, Ah, love him. Reaching out to give me a pat.

  16

  Woman’s World, 14 March 2018

  Ten Top Tips for Internet Searches

  Audrey had seen sense. Given up living under the shed. I’d moved the pilchard closer and closer to the kitchen door, and then just inside.

  In the end she cottoned on it was warmer in the kitchen and we weren’t going to barbecue her. She was OK as long as the door was open a fraction. The other girls grumbled about the draught, but fresh air was good for you. Plus it took away the smell of Juice’s vegetables.

  Trudie, the old girl next to me, was the worst. Felt the cold because she’d lived in Greece for years, apparently. Said she’d been a Mother Teresa to the stray cats over there. Thought that made her some kind of expert. Hung round the kitchen now Audrey was there. When she wasn’t helping out on a mate’s bric-a-brac stall down the market. That was why her room was full of junk.

  She wore tie-dyed stuff. Drank her tea black. Real old hippie. When she smiled, her face was a thousand creases. Too many fags, too much sunning herself on that Greek island.

  I made Audrey a bed out of a cardboard box from the Co-op. Stuck it under the radiator in the kitchen. Trudie brought down a jumper that had got scorched when she’d dropped a fag on it. Audrey’s little paws went up and down on the jumper. Trudie kept on about it, when it was my pilchards that had brought Audrey inside.

  Juice had told me why Tru
die had done time. It was internet fraud. Stringing men along. Making out she was twenty years old and luscious.

  We had a giggle over that. Juice was making some kind of sauce. She took a lot of trouble over her meals, ate all those vegetables, but then there was a lot of her to feed. Still took her a while to cotton on to things, in spite of the vegetables.

  Telling me about Trudie got Juice talking about herself. There was a code inside, and in the house: you didn’t ask another girl what she’d been sent down for. You didn’t ask but sometimes you got told. She’d had ‘issues’, she said. She didn’t look the type who’d go off the rails, being so big and slow, but, take a tip from me, don’t go on appearances.

  I put the kettle on. Juice’s ‘issues’ turned out to be drugs. No surprise there. Nor with there being a bloke behind them. She’d worked in a post office, which was a surprise. I couldn’t imagine her getting parcels off to the right places. Stolen bits of money to pay for her boyfriend’s habit. Then hers. Not long before she was caught.

  Off drugs completely now. Turning her life around, she said. Proving she was capable. That was why she was eating healthy.

  Juice’s sauce was glooping, time she’d said all that. She poured a great dollop of it over a whole half of cauliflower. It was rigid looking, like it was still on the raw side, and there was a withered leaf clinging to its knobbly stalk. I wondered, not for the first time, if she knew what she was doing. ‘Fancy a bit, Maggsie?’ She held out her plate. ‘I’ve got plenty.’

  ‘No, no, you’re alright. Got my sandwiches from work. And soup. Loads.’ Sat down quick before she offered again.