No Wonder I Take a Drink

by Laura Marney

  I wasn’t, I hadn’t got that far, I was still thinking about her and Jimi Hendrix but I nodded to encourage her.

  ‘I came home every year, Christmas and that kind of thing. You’ll maybe not remember the power cuts and three-day weeks at that time. My father was ill and Mum was trying to look after him and run the shop. I stayed on, just until Dad got better. The thing was, he died, of the flu. It was so stupid. I didn’t have to stay, Mum wanted me to go back, but how was she going to cope on her own? We were running the business by candlelight for God’s sake. Ach, I never liked Kent anyway, too many English.’

  ‘When did your Mum die?’

  ‘Fifteen years ago now. I was glad to see her off. She was in a lot of pain at the end.’

  I thought of that last night with Mum, she’d been so brave. This had the effect of nearly starting me off again, I had to change the subject.

  ‘And you Jenny? Did you never want to get married?’

  ‘You don’t always get what you want in this life Trixie. I’ve a good business and good neighbours, I’ve no regrets, what’s the point? When I was living the high life in London I never dreamt I’d come home but nearly everybody does. It’s the ones that don’t go home that I feel sorry for, they’re not happy. No matter who you are or where you are, instinct tells you to go home.’

  I nodded my head in recognition and agreement. Ever since I’d arrived in Inverfaughie, instinct had been telling me, bawling at me, to go back to Glasgow.

  ‘Marriage? For why would I do that? No man’s going to come in here and tell me how to run my business and take half my profits. Mind you I wouldn’t say no to a wee toy boy maybe. Toy boys are thin on the ground in Inverfaughie but a girl can dream.’

  Jenny was giggling, I was too. I liked the idea of a woman of sixty plus referring to herself as a girl. It meant there was hope for me yet.

  As the talk turned to men I thought of Jackie. Jenny must know that I’d met him, why else would she mention him to me when I left the shop the other day? And what had she meant? She’d said something about the Wee Free I seemed to remember. Had he spoken to her about me? I was dying to know what she knew.

  A good way to broach the subject, I thought, was to talk, or rather moan, about the garden. I told her about the rotting tools in the shed and the wilderness behind the house. My distress was genuine enough even if my motives weren’t, it really was more than I could cope with. I expected Jenny to bring up Jackie, but she didn’t.

  ‘I’ve never had a garden before,’ I bleated. ‘I wouldn’t know where to start and I think the grass is needing cut.’

  It was pathetic, I was disgusted with myself. I was trying to use Jenny, who I now regarded as my friend, as a conduit to Jackie.

  ‘Och that’s easy done, just run over it with the mower.’

  ‘I’ve been out and looked at the mower and I don’t think it’ll work. It’s awful stiff and I don’t know if I’ve the strength to push it round that massive garden.’

  ‘What you need is a hover. Walter has one.’

  Jenny stared at me and waited. I would’ve liked to oblige but I wasn’t sure what kind of reaction she was looking for.

  ‘With the hover you’ll have it done in jig time. Walter’s house is the last one on the Gaffney road, just take it out of the shed, it’s not locked.’

  This time Jenny got a reaction. My face fell with disappointment, and then clambered into a false expression of gratitude. I was going to have to be more direct.

  ‘I was wondering if you knew whether Mr Robertson, Jackie that is, the gardener, was awful busy at the moment?’

  This was transparent but I was beyond caring.

  ‘Och you don’t need him. Go up and get that Flymo and do your own garden. You’ll get a lot of pleasure from it. The mower’s there if you want it, Walter will be pleased someone’s getting the use of it.’

  I supposed I should be grateful, after all I had told Jenny my problem and she’d provided me with a solution. At last I was seeing a bit of the famous Highland hospitality. I supposed I could mow the grass myself, I wasn’t doing anything else. Jackie wasn’t coming back to finish it and the sooner I got over this garden phobia the better. I’d make a good job of it and whenever he cycled past he’d see that Jenny was right, I didn’t need him.

  *

  The Flymo was great. After all the time I’d spent worrying about it, I mowed the whole garden in an hour. I was annoyed when I ran out of grass. The rest of the garden still terrified me though but, I thought, one step at a time. Along the edge of the grass were big clumps of weeds. I tried to go over them but the hover wasn’t happy, it squealed like a pig and I was scared I’d broken it. I left the weeds alone after that, one step at a time.

  I desperately wanted to leave the other weeds alone and so I crumpled the cardboard packet and threw my Last Ever Packet of Fags in the kitchen bin. Maybe not my first Last Ever, but it was going to be my last, definitely. I didn’t even count how many there were left in the packet, what did it matter?

  The next day, a long silent day, I estimated that there were a minimum of four fags in the packet. They sang to me, a Siren’s song from the bin, ‘We’re here!’ They were in bits when I rescued them, not a whole one left. But desperation is the mother-in-law of invention. I rolled the filtered butt between my fingers, hollowing it out enough to be able to graft another longer stump on. So long as I held it vertically it was smokeable. As I limbo-danced beneath the fag and carefully sooked at it, I couldn’t work out what was more satisfying: creating the Frankenstein fag or smoking it.

  My next attempt was like every other, useless. This time I’d doused the packet of Silk Cut in the sink, soaking the tobacco and then throwing the packet in the outside bin. Inevitably I went to the bin in my nightie, in the dark and freezing cold, and dug out the sodden fag packet.

  I separated and removed the wet paper and then laid out the tobacco in the grill pan. I turned on the oven but I had to turn the heat down to a peep. It was burning the tobacco before I was getting a chance to smoke it. As I wafted the smoke from the grill pan towards my open mouth I was fully aware that I was a pathetic addict, a sad case, and hated myself.

  *

  The weather was beginning to pick up and Rebecca and I were walking further and further each day with Bouncer. We ambled along but Bouncer was always keen to go further, wanting to see what was around the bend.

  Rebecca was a chatterbox and through her, I quickly became acquainted with the pupils and staff of Inverfaughie Primary School. I discovered that, although she had absolutely nothing up top, Sheila McGhee’s mum had bought her a trainer bra. I knew too that Rory Anderson smelled, Helen McCardle never had lunch money and Miss McGivern wore the most gorgeous green eyeshadow. When Rebecca became involved in an ongoing feud with Ailsa Robertson, previously her best pal, I waited every day for the next instalment.

  ‘Do you miss your old school friends, Rebecca?’

  ‘Yes, but we’re better here. As a family.’

  That sounded like it was straight out of Roger’s mouth.

  ‘Your Mummy seems awful homesick, is she all right?’

  ‘Mummy’s not homesick, she’s got stress. She caught it in London, that’s why we moved here. She has medimacation to make her better, and Old Nurse Time, that’s what Dad says. Anyway, loads of kids at this school have Mums with medimacation.’

  As a rep I’d sold an antidepressant for a while. I knew the market, depression was epidemic, the company was cock-a-hoop as sales figures went through the roof. But living in the Highlands, living at a slower pace, could that be a cure? As far as I could see it just created a different kind of stress.

  As with Steven, I’d managed to avoid smoking around Rebecca. She seemed to look up to me and I didn’t want her getting the idea that it was cool or trendy. Her dad hated me enough as it was. I had no idea that she knew until one day when we were going up a steep hill and I was talking, she asked me to stop and get my breath back.

 
‘Auntie Trixie, I don’t want you to smoke. I don’t want you to die from smoking.’

  There were tears in the wee soul’s eyes. It was now or never, I had to beat this bastard smoking. I cuddled her and promised.

  We took the packet of fags down to the sea. It was Rebecca’s idea.

  Bouncer kept trying to get in on the act, as we built the tiny raft.

  ‘See Auntie Trixie? Bouncer’s trying to help, he doesn’t want you to smoke.’

  ‘Actually when I think about it Pet, he always leaves the room when I light up.’

  ‘Well he won’t have to anymore.’

  Rebecca wanted to light it and she was just about to when she suddenly decided that I should do it. With shaking hands I lit the fire. It was nearly extinguished by the sizzling froth at the water’s edge but Rebecca pushed our little Silk Cut longboat out to sea. It rocked a bit on the surf before a wave carried it further out. Darkness was falling as Rebecca and I watched the brief flames die and the pyre sink into the water. I knew then that I’d never smoke again.

  *

  Steven, worried that I wasn’t settling, asked me repeatedly about my friends in Inverfaughie. I reassured him by telling him I had friends from six to sixty. Technically this was true if I included Michaela the six-year-old snitch and Jenny the sixty-year-old swinger, but I made out I had a vast array of mates. Steven asked about Jackie and I told him I hadn’t seen much of him recently. Except for once when I’d spotted him in the distance on his bike, I hadn’t seen him at all.

  I wanted Jackie to see the garden. When I’d replaced Walter’s Flymo Jenny said I could use anything else in the shed so long as I looked after it. A day hardly went by when I didn’t spend an hour or so farting about in the garden. I tidied and trimmed, looking the part in my borrowed gardening gloves. I knew that proper gardeners planted things in spring but I didn’t have a clue where to start. The garden was doing it for me anyway. The sludge greys and browns became greens and then yellows and blues. What I had mistaken for weeds were coming through as daffodils and bluebells. I could hardly believe how cheerful it looked compared to a few weeks ago. Even before I’d come to Harrosie, when the ground was ice hard, the flowers and leaves were here. They’d been here all the time, hiding under the ground, biding their time.

  Now that they had put in an appearance I wanted Jackie to cycle past, but he never did. For such a small community it was remarkable that I never bumped into him. Maybe he saw me coming. Jenny never mentioned his name. It was as if my short but intense friendship with him had never happened.

  I was making do with my small social circle until disaster struck when I had an unpleasant, and ultimately very revealing, altercation with Jenny.

  Chapter 15

  Jenny was nearly wetting herself with excitement when I went into the shop. She stood stacking shelves on the top step of her wee ladder and shouted, ‘¡NO PASARAN!’ in a strange accent.

  ‘Sorry?’

  Then down the ladder she comes, right up to my face and says, ‘They shall not pass: better to die on your feet than live on your knees.’

  I would have laughed but her expression was grim.

  ‘D’you think Anthony Ramos is a bent shot? A lot of these Hollywood actors are you know.’

  Then the penny dropped. The International Brigade. It had finally arrived. Jenny had been going on about it for weeks. She hadn’t gone off her head after all, she was quoting lines from the movie. The International Brigade was a big Hollywood blockbuster set in the Spanish Civil War and Jenny had the serious hots for its star, the Scottish actor Anthony Ramos.

  ‘I don’t mind telling you I’m warm for that boy’s form,’ she smirked, ‘Warm? I’d go as far as to say I’m moist. Anthony Ramos can ram me any day of the week.’

  I was a little shocked. Who knew Jenny was such a slut, if only in her imagination. She couldn’t stop talking about him, on and on she went: was he gay? Had I heard if he was married or not?

  ‘It doesn’t make much difference, he’s not likely to be up in this neck of the woods now is he, Jenny?’ I said.

  I managed to stop myself from saying and if he ever was, he’s hardly going to fancy an old dear like yourself.

  Then, as usual, she starts to tell me the plot.

  ‘He plays a committed socialist from the slums of Glasgow who goes to Spain to join the International Brigade. Him and his lads fight valiantly but when they try to make their way back to Barcelona….’

  Jenny had ruined every movie I’d seen in Inverfaughie. My hand went up as if I was stopping traffic and before I knew what I was saying, the words were out.

  ‘Wait a minute Jenny, don’t tell me any more. I want to see it for myself, I want to enjoy this one.’

  That clamped her. It was the first time I’d stood up to Jenny like that and I don’t think she was expecting it, but it didn’t take her long to come back.

  ‘Well, you’ll have to take your place in the queue, other I.R.V.C. members have priority, there’s plenty in the village who have put in advance orders for it.’

  ‘Fair enough, I’ll wait my turn. I’m not bothered, I’ve managed fine without Anthony Ramos up to now, I’ll just have to manage a wee while longer.’

  There was a right frosty atmosphere after that. I’d actually gone in for a bottle of wine, among other things. She never said anything, but sometimes when I bought drink, or more drink than Jenny considered reasonable, she tilted her head to one side as she served me. I noticed although I pretended not to, that her accent was always more sing-song on those occasions. I resolved the problem: I just bought less drink more frequently. It meant more trips to the shop but we both enjoyed that. Or we had, up until now. I couldn’t buy wine now, I was bloody sure I wasn’t going to let her look down her nose at me.

  ‘Just a loaf today thank you Jenny,’ I said.

  *

  I held out two days but the freezer was getting empty and I realised that if I wanted to eat I was going to have to face her. She had the International Brigade poster up now. It was huge, taking up most of one wall, but I kidded on I didn’t see it. The look on her face when I bought a few bottles of wine! Her head inclined so much it was resting on her shoulder. I’d hoped she might behave a bit more professionally, what with her twelve years’ experience in middle management at Woolworth’s and all. If this atmosphere kept up it was going to make things a bit tickly.

  Jenny’s was the only shop for miles and she knew it. Thank God I had stopped smoking but unless I was prepared to pay off-sales prices from the Calley hotel, I’d have to go to her for drink. My face burned when I thought of her mock sympathy for me. If she wanted her head permanently at that angle I could oblige with a swift karate chop. Then she’d have difficulty in indulging what was no doubt her other great hobby: slobbering all over her stinking International Brigade poster when she shut up shop for the night.

  I considered doing a big shop in Inverness. I looked up the phone book and there was a shop where you could buy kits for making your own beer. It would be quite expensive initially with the plastic barrel and all the tubes and everything but in the long run it worked out at five pence a pint. On the phone the man said he sold wine making kits as well but wine took a few weeks longer to mature. I asked him what was the quickest beer and he said I could be self-sufficient in three weeks. I decided to go down to Jenny’s and give her one last chance before I took my business elsewhere. If she wouldn’t straighten her face it would be the home brew for me.

  *

  When I went into the shop it was empty and Jenny was nowhere to be seen. This was good. This put me in a position of strength. When she came back she’d have to apologise for keeping the customer waiting. She’d be raging that, on this occasion, the customer was me. I’d give her a warm forgiving smile, thereby letting bygones be bygones, and we could take it from there.

  Actually it wasn’t that unusual for Jenny to be absent when the shop was quiet. Locals knew that they just had to shout, ‘Shop!’ and eve
ntually Jenny would stop what she was doing, stocktaking or whatever she did in there, and come through. Her multicoloured plastic fringe curtain was the dividing line between home and work and she popped between them all day long. Although we were friends, it was strictly front shop. I had no idea what her living quarters were like seeing as she’d never asked me in.

  I’d never passed through the curtain, and I often thought that it could be another world in there. Sometimes at night, when time hung heavy, I entertained myself imagining what lay beyond the fringe. I picture it like Narnia or the Land of Oz or London of the Swinging Sixties. How my long dark evenings would fly in as I fancied Jenny’s decor in swirling psychedelic purples and greens. This would be broken up by posters of topless black girls with outsize Afros smoking outsize spliffs. Curled inside one of those white plastic egg-shaped suspended chairs, Jenny maybe smoked a few spliffs herself.

  Jenny footered about in the back shop even when she knew she had customers, she could hear the bell on the door. At first it annoyed me but later, as I adjusted to the pace of village life, it didn’t. I wasn’t one who shouted, ‘Shop!’ If Jenny wasn’t there I’d take the chance and get a free read at her magazines.

  A precedent had been set a few weeks ago, in those happy days before our International Brigade tiff. Jenny was leaning across the counter, mug of tea in hand reading the Press and Journal. This reminded me that I wanted one and I asked her for a copy. Cool as a cucumber she finishes what she’s reading, folds it up and hands it to me. I had to laugh.

  ‘I’m not having that, it’s second-hand, you’ve just read it.’

  Jenny was laughing as well but it didn’t stop her making an excellent retort.

  ‘Och no dear, you’re mistaken, I wasn’t reading it, I don’t have time to read while I’m at my work. I was checking it for mistakes, typing errors and the like, smudged photos. I wouldn’t want you getting a defective newspaper. It’s not second-hand, it’s quality assured. We aim to please.’