by J M Gregson
Dick had moved to a small flat near the centre of Brunton after the break-up of his marriage, abandoning his large detached house to his wife and the new partner she had acquired with suspicious speed. He felt a considerable bitterness about this, but he kept it to himself: he’d heard too many other men boring people in Manchester pubs with tales of how wives and their lawyers had exploited divorce settlements. He’d listened to reactions and found they tended to be on the lines of, ‘Well, the poor sod’s suffering now, but he probably behaved like a bastard when he was married, or she wouldn’t have been able to do that.’ Better to shut up and get on with life. He wasn’t short of women, when he wanted them, but he was wary of getting himself into another long-term relationship.
He had taken to working much of his day in the library. He used the reference facilities there to check on any historical or biographical facts he needed – he was still old-fashioned enough to find Google less illuminating than his own researches. And he preferred to check all the morning papers there when he was looking for openings for cartoon humour, and decide which of the nationals were most likely to accept his barbed drawings and comments. Modern technology meant that he could dispatch his finished efforts swiftly from his PC at home to whatever organ he thought most likely to welcome them and reward him most handsomely.
He was generally protective of his efforts, even secretive about them. He didn’t welcome company whilst he was working, and the last thing he wanted was someone looking over his shoulder as he drew. He needed no distraction as his swiftly fashioned lines shaped themselves into telling pictures. His best work was in itself an ironic comment on the events of the day, or the questionable conduct of a senior government minister. Humour was a serious business: it was only those who never produced it who thought otherwise.
That is why the tentative friendship which he had lately developed with one of the part-time workers in the library had surprised him. Almost as much, he suspected, as it had surprised her. She was much older than him: mid-sixties to his forty, he guessed. She was a voluntary worker and he always respected those. Some people would have been surprised by that. They thought of Fosdyke as a hard-headed journalist, who should have despised people who worked for nothing as hopeless idealists. But Dick liked to surprise people and he genuinely cared about libraries. They’d never had books in his working-class household; without the public library and the taste it had given him for reading and enquiry he’d never have achieved what he had in life.
Their alliance came out of nothing, really. It certainly wasn’t sexual, but perhaps that was a relief for both of them. He first spoke to her on a cold mid-December morning, when they were both wringing their hands together for warmth after escaping from the chill wind outside. ‘You seem to be here more than you used to be.’
She looked at him cautiously. ‘You’re very observant.’
‘I’m here almost every day. You get to notice the comings and goings.’
‘The library’s run almost entirely on voluntary staff, since the council cuts. They seem to need me more than they used to do.’
He grinned. ‘Make sure they don’t exploit you. The willing horse always gets more and more weight to carry.’
She smiled back. ‘I’m not sure I like your choice of metaphor, but I appreciate your concern. Actually, I quite enjoy the work here and I’m glad to find worthwhile things to occupy me, at the moment.’
‘Have you taken early retirement, then?’
This time it was she who grinned, and the mischief lit up her face and banished the wrinkles. ‘Flattery will get you anywhere, kind sir. But I’m past retiring age and I wasn’t working anyway. It’s just that I recently lost my husband. He died a month ago.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. I lost my wife three years ago. But she didn’t die. She found a new man and kicked me out. After an expensive divorce.’
He thought she’d say that she was sorry about that and then they’d go their individual ways to their separate tasks of the day. Instead, she looked past him and said dreamily, ‘I almost got divorced myself once. It seems a long time ago and in another place, now.’
‘Do you get a break?’
‘Eleven o’clock or thereabouts. We give each other half an hour if we want it. Privilege of the unpaid. Allows you to get a bit of shopping, if you need to.’
‘I can take half an hour as well. Privilege of the self-employed. Do you fancy a coffee in the place next door?’
And so, almost by accident, a friendship began between Dick Fosdyke and Sharon Burgess.
Jamie Norris wasn’t looking forward to Christmas. The episode with Bigarse and his subsequent sacking had seen to that.
He went to sign on for his unemployment benefit and was given a hard time about losing the job at the supermarket. The woman behind the desk looked at him with some distaste. They had to be careful what they said nowadays, but he knew what she was thinking from the way she looked at him. ‘You’re a man now, not a youth. And you shouldn’t be unemployed. Not with good health and an education. You’ve got six GCSEs. You should be holding down a regular job. You shouldn’t need us to help you.’
It was pep-talk time this morning, then. Usually he just sat and accepted things dully and was apologetic. But this woman was so sure of herself that she annoyed him. ‘You don’t help me. You send me to interviews with people who’ve no intention of employing me. Whatever work I’ve had I’ve obtained for myself.’
She looked at him dispassionately for a few seconds. ‘Are you on drugs?’
‘No.’ You couldn’t count a bit of pot as drugs, not nowadays. Even the police didn’t count a bit of pot as drugs, nowadays. ‘Do I look like a junkie?’
‘No, not to me. But I’m not quite sure how a junkie does look. I’m asking because you’ve got some education but you don’t seem to be able to hold down a job.’
He didn’t want to get involved in a discussion with this woman, who obviously didn’t like him. But he had to give some account of himself. He needed to defend what he was doing, as much to himself as to her. ‘I’m trying to be a writer.’
‘Any luck?’
She wasn’t sneering, as he had expected her to be. That made it worse: he wasn’t used to people like this taking him seriously. ‘Not much. I’ve had a poem published in the Brunton Times.’
‘So you wouldn’t call yourself a successful writer?’
He listened for the contempt in her voice, but she sounded quite neutral.
‘Not financially, no. It takes time. Even the good writers struggle, at first.’
‘And you’re not one of them, are you?’
It should have been nasty, but she sounded quite sympathetic. ‘Probably I’m not. But you’ll never know what you can do, if you don’t try.’
She glanced down at his file. ‘You’re twenty-six, Mr Norris. How long are you going to go on trying to be a writer?’
‘I’m going to give it one more year.’ Jamie surprised himself by being so specific; it was a decision he’d taken only as he spoke.
‘And meantime you have to support yourself. You need work.’
‘Yes. I’d rather work. I don’t like taking benefits.’ He’d really no idea whether that was true. He hoped it was.
‘You need to get yourself a job, Mr Norris. You need to carve out some sort of career for yourself. You can go on writing in your spare time. If you’re successful, really successful, you can then consider becoming a full-time writer.’
It was what other people had said. It was what he’d told himself, often enough. But he resented it, coming from her. ‘Expert on the subject of writing, are you?’
‘No. But I know quite a lot about work and the way it’s central to most people’s lives. And I’m supposed to give advice to the people who come and sit where you’re sitting now. That’s part of my job: perhaps it’s the most important part.’
She smiled at him and he found himself smiling back, even though he hadn’t meant to do that. ‘So give me so
me work to support my writing.’
‘I can’t give you work. You know that. I can send you where you might get work, if you show the right attitude.’
He sighed. ‘So send me.’
She flicked through a few cards in front of her. But both of them knew what she was going to say next. ‘I can’t offer you anything very grand, because of your previous record. You haven’t worked anywhere for very long. Three months is your longest period of continuous work, and it’s mostly been measured in weeks. You need to hold down a job and give good value to an employer. Show him or her that you’re reliable as well as honest. Then you should move up the ladder – you’re not stupid and people will recognize that, if your attitude’s right.’
The pep talk again. Jamie resented the fact that it made sense. ‘So send me somewhere.’
She looked at him hard. ‘There’s only temporary work. You’d expect that, with Christmas coming up. But if you show promise, you’ll probably be offered something more permanent.’
He looked at her, studying her face for the first time. She was perhaps forty-five, with neat, short hair and grey eyes which looked at him steadily. He’d had an aunt like her, before he’d moved here and left all that behind. She looked as if she really wanted him to take notice of her. That was something, he supposed, after all the impersonal stuff he’d had here, with people barely looking at him. He said without a smile, ‘Isn’t this the point where you say that it’s really all down to me?’
It was she who gave the smile. ‘I can’t say that. You might give complete satisfaction and still be laid off in a week or two. That’s the nature of temporary work. But your best chance of making it permanent is to keep your head down and work steadily. That’s not specialist knowledge; it’s common sense.’
He sighed inwardly, but spoke quite evenly. ‘Where do I go?’
‘Tesco’s. They need people to cope with the Christmas rush. After that, it’s up to you. They’ll need cover for the regular staff who’re entitled to time off after the holiday rush. And they’re open Boxing Day and New Year’s Day. That’s to your advantage, if you really want work.’
‘I can’t give them references. And I’ve just been sacked from a supermarket.’
‘You probably won’t need references, for temporary work. Convince them that you’re honest and that you really want to work. It’s up to you. No one can do it for you.’
‘I’ll give it a go.’ He picked up the card and slid back his chair.
‘Sell yourself to the employer, Mr Norris.’ She looked up at him as he stood up and gave him a smile of genuine encouragement. ‘Regular work really is the only way to support your writing. And please accept that this is meant in the best possible way: I hope I never see you again, Mr Norris.’
Three hundred yards away from the employment centre, a very different exchange was taking place in the café beside the public library.
‘It’s a while since I invited a woman out for a drink,’ said Dick Fosdyke.
‘It’s only coffee. Perhaps I should insist on buying my own. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.’ She’d been wondering how many years had passed since she’d last drunk even coffee alone with a man, other than Frank.
‘You’re safe enough with me. Especially in the middle of town at eleven o’clock on a cold December morning.’
‘I feel very safe indeed. Not least because I’ve got a son as old as you.’
‘I can hardly believe that. You must have been a child bride.’ But both of them knew that he wasn’t serious, that he was guying the philanderer’s approach rather than making any serious play for her.
It was much easier now than when you were younger and had to decide whether every man was trying to get his hand up your skirt, Sharon thought. Easier, but not as exciting. There wasn’t too much to be said for age and maturity. ‘I’ve seen you a few times in the library. I suspect that like me you like being surrounded by books, Mr Fosdyke.’
She knew his name. That must be from the library records and the books he’d taken out, he supposed. Or perhaps she’d checked him out during the morning, after he’d arranged to come here. It was strange how he felt uneasy and at a disadvantage with someone who knew more about him than he did about her; he’d never thought about that before. ‘It’s Dick, please, not Mr Fosdyke. What did your husband do?’
‘He ran his own firm. Burgess Electronics.’
One of the biggest units on the industrial estate to the east of the town. No wonder she didn’t need to work. ‘I’m sorry. I’d forgotten he’d died so recently. Perhaps you don’t want to talk about him.’
‘No, that’s fine. It’s something of a relief, actually. People tiptoe around you as if they’re on broken glass; they take great pains to avoid any mention of Frank. It’s quite a relief to be able to talk about him. His death wasn’t a shock. He was fourteen years older than me, so I suppose I’d been preparing for his death for years. But it still shocks you, when it comes.’
‘I’m sure it is. But it should be, don’t you think? When death ceases to move us, we’re diminished as human beings.’
She nodded, studying her coffee whilst she stirred it thoughtfully. ‘I’m Sharon, by the way. What do you do for a living, Dick?’ She used his name as if she were trying it out.
‘I’m a cartoonist. Political, mostly. I try to be the “abstract and brief chronicle of our time”. But in fact I also do anything I’m asked: I’m a whore with a pencil, really. You have to be, when you’re freelance.’
‘Are you very cruel?’
‘Very cruel and very unfair, sometimes. It’s part of the cartoonist’s brief. You can make a point very quickly in a drawing. I tell myself that I’m satirising silly or outrageous conduct rather than the individuals themselves. You can’t afford the luxury of a delicate conscience, when you’ve got a single picture and perhaps a few words to make a telling comment.’
He was an interesting man, Sharon thought. He’d quoted from Hamlet a moment ago. Not many men did that at a first meeting. And he talked about serious things immediately. She liked that in a man. It was many months since she’d talked about anything serious with anyone. Except for Frank’s illness. She said, ‘It must be a very special skill. I’ve never really thought about it before.’
He said, ‘The skill comes in making a point quickly. Ideally, without using any words at all.’ He turned over the menu card on the table and drew swiftly and boldly upon the back of it. It took him no more than ninety seconds in all, but his concentration was intense and he spoke not a word whilst he drew. When he passed the card to her, she saw two very different images of Queen Elizabeth II. One was a benign old lady, totally harmless and smiling as softly as a saint. The other was of a witch-like creature who would bring only evil to anything she chose to touch. Both were immediately recognizable.
‘That’s very clever.’ She was quite sincere and very impressed. There were only a few bold lines in each sketch, but they presented two very different images.
He grinned at her. ‘It’s not completely off the cuff. It’s a bit of a party trick. I used to do it when I was much younger, to sell myself to newspaper editors.’
He wouldn’t have revealed that to a younger woman, he thought. But it helped you to relax when you felt you could really be honest. There was a pause whilst she studied his handiwork. She must have been a very pretty woman, when she was in her prime. He said, ‘I used to know someone who worked for Burgess Electronics. It’s a long time ago now. You wouldn’t know her, of course. Except that she had the kind of odd name you tend to remember. Enid Frott.’
‘I spoke to Enid only a couple of weeks ago. She became Frank’s PA eventually. He relied on her a lot.’
Dick Fosdyke noticed how studiously neutral they had both become with the mention of Ms Frott.
The manager at Tesco looked at Jamie Norris coolly across his desk. He wasn’t many years older than the man who wanted to stack his shelves, which Jamie found an unnerving thought.
> ‘So why do you want to work here, Mr Norris?’
‘I need to work. It’s that or the social.’ Jamie pulled himself up there, trying hard to think of something the man might want to hear. ‘And Tesco’s is a good firm to work for. I know that I’d be starting at the bottom, and I can’t expect to do anything else. I’ve frittered away a lot of time, but I want to think about a career now.’
‘You’ve frittered away opportunities, as well as time.’ The manager glanced down at the brief summary in front of him. ‘This is the record of a man who doesn’t seem to be able to hold down a job.’
‘I know. There are reasons for that. But I’m not on drugs and I never have been.’
The man didn’t ask about reasons. Jamie didn’t know it, but the manager had allocated himself only five minutes for this meeting, and he didn’t intend to take more. ‘Your last job was in a supermarket. Why did you leave there?’
‘I didn’t leave of my own accord. I was sacked.’ Might as well be honest – that question meant that he wasn’t going to get the job here now. Visions of Bigarse flashed across his vision. ‘I had a clash of personalities with the manager.’
‘Shelf-stackers can’t afford personalities. They get on with their work and keep their heads down.’
‘That’s what I was doing. I’d just mopped up a mess after a kid had dropped a jar of baby food. The manager slipped on it before I could post the warning notice. He fell on his fat arse and slung me out.’
He hadn’t meant to use those words, but they’d come upon him without warning, as words did very occasionally as he struggled with his poetry. The man behind the desk said, ‘And who was this man with the sensitive posterior?’
‘Mr Garner.’
The manager’s face was twitching. Jamie thought at first that he was annoyed, then realized that it was mirth which he was struggling to suppress. ‘Start tomorrow morning. Seven o’clock. Don’t be late.’
