You Must Be Jo King

by Moira Murphy

  I cowered into my chair, switched on my computer screen and felt for the mouse. I couldn’t see much, you can’t when you’re wearing sunglasses indoors.

  Then, from the other side of the room and it being only a matter of time, Ian clocked me.

  “Well if it isn’t Yoko friggin’ Ono. And have we just flown in on Air Cystitis or what?”

  I couldn’t see him but I could sense his self-congratulatory smile at his wit. I half turned in my chair and while peeling off the sunglasses, I flicked back a curtain of hair and gave him a sad little look that said, ‘Ian, you can’t make me feel any worse than I already do.’ I was just about to come clean about the whole sorry episode, when he stepped back, in fact it was only the wall behind him that kept him in the room.

  “Hell’s bloody bells, Jo. What’s happened to you? My God you look terrible.” Then pushing himself further against the wall, he attempted a grovelling, camaraderie sort of smile. He tried to sound light hearted but ended up sounding like the gangster boss in the Supranos.

  “Hey Jo-Jo, you know me, bit over the top, bit of gobshite, eh! Ha ha.”

  Then he turned serious. He was worried. Not on my account obviously, but because he thought if I were to expire and he hadn’t taken my sick calls seriously, there could be consequences and he was mentally weighing up what they might be. After all he was still on a warning.

  “But bloody hell, Jo, kidneys and stuff can be a bit er, worrying. I know cos when I was a kid I had Yellow Jaundice… sick all the time I was… yellow stuff… horrible… I looked like a miniature Chairman friggin’ Mao… but Christ Almighty, if you don’t mind me saying so, Jo, you look a helluva lot worse than I did. You look a bit like,” he squinted his eyes, “a bit like… an Orangutan or something, it’s the colours. Orangey, browny. Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the picture… and muffled up like that, this weather, it’s not normal. Tell you what, Jo…”

  His feet walked nearer although he kept his head well back, he obviously didn’t want to breathe the same air. He picked up my bag and all but threw it into my lap. He held the back of my chair at arm’s length and swivelled me round to face the door. It was clear he wasn’t going to risk getting in too close, which was probably just as well really.

  As he propelled me on the castors towards the door he said, and I think it’s possible I might have detected a teensy bit of concern in his voice… “You go home, take some time out… rest up… book some dialysis or something. Don’t worry about this place… I’ll get a temp in… might even be able to get into Simone… er, I mean get Simone in, yes get Simone in… Okay, Jo, you take care now.”

  He all but tipped me out of the chair and into the corridor. My conscience was telling me I should confess, come clean, I wasn’t entitled to take time off, I wasn’t ill. You couldn’t take time off for being stupid. But it had gone too far.

  I straightened up and walked towards the reception desk and Helen. My conscience twanged as I passed Helen, she being the most saintly person you would find this side of heaven and me being a fraud. When she wasn’t on reception, Helen helped to run a kitchen for the homeless. I tried telling myself that was the sort of thing you could do if you were childless, but deep down, I knew childlessness and charity didn’t necessarily live side by side. Helen was just a good person.

  She looked up as I passed and I gave her the sort of shaky little smile you would use if you weren’t long for this world. I tried to shamefacedly scurry away but she called me back.

  “Jo,” she said, “I’m sorry to see you looking so poorly. If you wait a minute, I’ve something for you.” She fished about in her bag before producing a phial of Lourdes water.

  “Honestly, Helen, there’s no need, really. I just need a few days off that’s all. Keep that for somebody who really needs it.”

  “Nonsense, Jo, you take it.” She pressed it into my hand while saying she would remember me in her prayers. I thanked her piously, like the fraud I was and I scurried towards the outside doors.

  This pretence was taking on a life of its own and it seemed that in my case, it was suggestion that was the mother of invention, because once outside, an ache started in my back, just about where my kidneys were. I felt a bit sick and dizzy. Perhaps I needed to lie down, take Ian’s advice and book some dialysis. I walked to the car park and got into my car.

  I should have relished some time off, but I didn’t. I was a cheat and a liar and it was probably the guilt that was making me feel ill.

  I decided I’d call and see my mother.

  I drove into the street, along the row of neat, semi-detached bungalows, differentiated from one another only by the window dressings and the various hanging flower baskets. Elderly people in two’s and three’s stood chatting at their gates no doubt marvelling at the sunshine. Normally I would have given a passing cheery wave and remarked to them myself about the weather through a wound down window, but not today. Today I kept a low profile, skulking behind my curtains of hair and my sunglasses, as though I was Katie Price and they were the paparazzi.

  I pulled up at my mother’s gate and with my head down I walked the short path and rang the bell. My mother opened the door slightly, peered out, and before closing it again said, “Not today thank you.” I rang again. She opened the door as far as the chain would allow blinking her eyes against the sun. She was just about to say another, not today thank you, when recognition dawned. She loosened the chain.

  “Oh, Joanne, it’s you! What on earth is wrong. Come in. Sit down. I’ll put the kettle on. I thought you were that Gypsy woman who sells the heather. She has a swarthy complexion, although having said that you couldn’t call her streaky.”

  “It’s okay, Mam, I’m fine, really I am.”

  “You certainly are not fine. Put that cushion behind you. I’ll make us some tea. I won’t be a minute. Say a decade of the rosary, while you’re waiting. If it doesn’t do you any good, it’ll do you no harm.”

  “Honest, Mam, I don’t need a cushion or tea, or rosary beads or anything else. I know I look weird, but it’s only spray tan.”

  “Spray tan, Joanne! I’m not senile. People wouldn’t make stuff that makes you look like that! Nobody would buy it. You can’t fool me. It’s that mobile phone.”

  “Eh!”

  “It’s the radiation. I’ve read about it.”

  “Honestly Mam, trust me, it isn’t the mobile phone. I used a spray tan meant for black people. I bought it in Beautiful Bargains by mistake.”

  “Spray tan for black people! Beautiful Bargains must have seen you coming Joanne.”

  Day four and normality is rearing its pasty head, although I’m not quite out of the woods yet. I’ve cleaned the house from top to bottom in an effort to expend some of the guilt of not being at work. I’ve dragged the dog out from under the table and wearing my humungous sunglasses, I’ve taken her for long walks. I needed the fresh air and you’re not so conspicuous if you have a dog. She’s still cowering around with her tail between her legs, sneaking to her food bowl when she thinks no one is looking then scurrying back under the table, as if she’s in the presence of something evil. Stupid dog. She knows it’s just me. Talk about attention seeking.

  I rang Ian and told him I was much better and I’d be back to work on Monday. He said that that had reminded him to check his first aid certificate as he thinks it might have run out.

  My mother has written to David Dimbleby to find out his take on mobile phones.

  Day five and I’m pretty much back to normal. I actually seem to look even more doughgirl-ish than I did originally.

  These have been five days in which:

  I have had alcoholic poisoning and the mother of all hangovers.

  Used two cans of a black person’s spray tan and somehow unintentionally managed to achieve a fairly good facial impersonation of a broken-hearted
Smokey Robinson, with the track of tears etc.

  Pledged myself and my children into the services of the church, then decided not to bother.

  Had a lengthy, yet ultimately pointless telephone conversation with a helpline canary.

  Needed to push a written apology through my neighbour’s door – couldn’t knock in case they thought Halloween had come early.

  Cringingly, drunkenly and worryingly declared my love for people who three hours previously, I didn’t know from a hole in the wall.

  Scared the dog, who still needs to be dragged out from under the table. Beginning to think she must get a buzz from having her front legs almost pulled from their sockets.

  Missed Lucy’s parent’s evening.

  Nearly throttled Josh.

  Imagined myself at death’s door.

  Worried my mother half to death.

  Had Helen on reception have a Mass said for my intention.

  Received unjustified sympathy from Ian.

  And vowed to double check all small print on every product purchased and never, ever again, drink copious amounts of Archer’s and lemonade.

  22

  IN AT THE DEEP END

  Why, when all I wanted was to sit with my feet up in front Prime Suspect, did Josh decide to tell me, when he’d had all night, in fact all week, to do so, that he needed pyjamas for his swimming lesson the following morning? He was being taught life saving; on a brick. I sent him upstairs to look for some pyjamas. He said he had looked but couldn’t find any.

  I grudgingly trudged upstairs to turn out his drawers while suspecting it was probably a futile exercise, as Josh had grown so much lately I kind of knew the only pyjamas not being worn or in the wash, would be half way up his back. And I was right. However, there were some with a picture of Donny Osmond on the front that had been passed from Sadie’s family to us, via my mother, who said they had hardly been worn.

  When I suggested those to Josh he said, “You have to be kidding! I’d rather drown myself than wear those poncy things!” Lucy patronisingly said she had been going to suggest he could borrow her outgrown Care Bear ones, but drowning himself was a much better idea. After he’d pulled her arm into a Half Nelson and she’d deposited a backwards kick on his shin so that he hopped around on one leg, he said I’d have to write him a note to excuse him from swimming. I said he should have told me earlier and I would have sorted some pyjamas out. He said he did, he had told me last week but I took no notice. He said I was too busy looking at my profile in the mirror.

  There was no arguing with that but I was in a dilemma. I thought it important that Josh should learn life-saving techniques, albeit on a brick, but could I be bothered to stay up till midnight washing and drying pyjamas which would just be dunked in water anyway?

  Who was I kidding? I pulled some from the washing basket, rolled them in a towel and made my way downstairs, hoping to catch the end of Prime Suspect.

  As I passed the phone in the hall, it rang. It was Alison.

  “Jo-ooo,” she said, ominously.

  “Ye-es,” I said, equally ominously.

  “How – do – you – fancy… ablinddate?”

  “A blind date!”

  “Yes. You see Nigel has this friend Michael, and Michael has this friend Colin who Michael says could do with a bit of cheering up – bringing out of himself – you know the sort of thing, and he thinks some female company might just do the trick.”

  “And?”

  “And – Nigel thought of you.”

  “No, I mean, AND what’s the back story?”

  “There isn’t one really. Just it seems Colin’s wife ran off with his sister to live in a Norwegian wood where they whittle wildlife out of sticks.”

  “That’s story enough. I don’t think so somehow.”

  “Oh go on, be a devil. You know you want to.”

  “Are you kidding? He could turn out to be Hannibal Lector, for God’s sake.”

  “No he couldn’t, that was Anthony Hopkins. Anyway, Colin’s a policeman.”

  “So?”

  “Sooooo. Play your cards right and you might cop off.”

  “Ha, ha. Have you seen him – this Colin? What does he look like?”

  “I haven’t seen him, but I think Nigel might have. He’s in the kitchen, hang on, I’ll ask.”

  “Mam,” called Josh, from the living room, “Millie’s on the coffee table, lapping at your wine, innit. Should I get her down?”

  Oh, for goodness sake! “Well what do you think, Josh?” That’s all I need, a drunken dog to have to sober up.

  “You still there, Jo? Nigel says he has seen Colin but only from a distance. Big bloke, broad, smartly dressed, didn’t get a look at his face though and he doesn’t know much about him apart from what I’ve said.”

  “Hmmm… Okay, I might think about it. The emphasis being very much on the might. When do you need to know by?”

  “Just whenever.”

  “As long as he doesn’t want me in handcuffs. Been there, done that. Don’t suppose you know any Donny Osmond fans in need of pyjamas… hardly worn?”

  She said if she did, she wouldn’t admit it.

  I put the phone down while telling myself that if I wanted to ‘get a life’ then this was the sort of thing I would need to do. Prime Suspect was forgotten as I continued to sit on the chair in the hall. A blind date! I’d never been on a blind date before. Come to think of it, excluding George and that Kevin Scott from the school disco, I’d never been on any date before. A blind date! If I did decide to do it, I wouldn’t tell anyone – it smacks of desperation. Of course Alison and Nigel would know but I’d swear them to secrecy. Anyway, if nothing else it would give me a chance to dress up. I had that really nice skirt and top which had yet to see the light of day and I’d been waiting for ages for an excuse to have some red highlights put in my hair. I’d get those done.

  I realised I was talking myself into it. Oh, why not? Life’s too short. In for a penny and all that. I smiled indulgently at my impending decadence. Then I shuddered. What would I do if this Colin turns out to look like Robbie from the loading bay? G-o-d! Run a mile that’s what!! But then again, he might turn out to look like Leon from the Trading Office. I wouldn’t run then, no sir-ree.

  I couldn’t decide if I felt excited or scared. He might turn out to be the man I’ve been waiting for all my life, yet knowing my luck, he’s more likely to be a homicidal maniac who should be doing life.

  Oh, what the hell! I knew, although Alison’s ‘just whenever’ had been said ever so nonchalantly, she would be bursting at the seams to find out what I’d decided. I would ring her tomorrow and tell her I’d do it.

  I’d need to brush up on my cheering up techniques, that’s for sure. Actually, I’d need to acquire some first. I practised in the mirror, “Is that ya truncheon in ya pocket…?”

  23

  TAMPON TROUBLE

  Josh was eating his Weetabix while planning his revenge on Bobby Peterson. Bobby Peterson had told Josh it was fun to chew silver paper on a filling. Josh had only recently acquired a filling. Josh said he would jump out at Bobby Peterson as he walked past the science lab, get him in a Half Nelson, push soil into his mouth and if the soil had a worm in it then so much the better.

  “That is enough, Josh,” I said, “I don’t want to hear any more of that nonsense. If Bobby Peterson had told you to jump off a bridge, would you have done that? Of course you wouldn’t, now go upstairs, get your bag ready for school and if I get reports from school about any bad behaviour, boy will you be in trouble!”

  On his way out he said, “Do you think I should just turn the other cheek, Mam?”

  I was surprised, moreover, impressed. I said, “Yes, Josh, that’s exactly what you should do. Well done. Was that something Gran told you to do?”
<
br />   He said, “Nah. Miss Nightingale was twittering on about turning the other cheek during Spiritual Studies and Craig Bolton stood up and dropped his pants and said, which one Miss?”

  I groaned, “Upstairs NOW and don’t forget to clean your teeth.”

  “Please Mam, ple-eese.”

  “No, Lucy, I’ve told you before, I’ve got all the responsibility I can handle at the moment, without taking on a gorilla.”

  “But Mam, the poor thing’s an orphan. Its parents have been murdered…”

  “That’s as maybe Lucy, but the thought of my foster child gorilla, stomping about in a huff and bashing its thirty-stone chest in a strop because he would rather have Signorney Weaver as his foster mother, is not something that appeals to me somehow. Perhaps if it was on only child, but I’ve got you and Josh to contend with as well.”

  “But Mam, this is just a tiny, cute baby.”

  “It won’t stay tiny and cute forever, Lucy. Trust me.”

  “But all you have to do, is pledge some money every month and Michaela Strachan will actually look after it.”

  “Lucy! How could I possibly hand over the care of my poor little gorilla to a complete stranger. It doesn’t bear thinking about.”

  “Mam! It’s Michaela Stra-chan, it’s not a stran-ger,” she sing-songed.

  “Sorry Lucy, the answer is no. As I told you last week when you wanted a horse, anything to do with money is not an option at the moment I’m afraid.”

  “Huh! It wasn’t that when Josh got a new football and new footie boots.”

  “Hmmm. A new football and boots compared to a horse. Could there be something of a fiscal discrepancy there? Something in the region of say four thousand pounds perhaps? Then of course there’s the after care costs, stabling and livery, versus a tin of Dubbin. Oh and have we forgotten the trip to Miss Selfridge last week and your new jeans and top?”