There was a moment of Mexican stand-off before Terry broke it by whirling around and stalking to the blinds, pulling them down in a rush.
Helena suspected she was not the only one in the room praying to the gods of comedy for them to fall on his head in a clattering slither of bent aluminium, but they were all disappointed, and soon comatose in front of a slide show of prettily-coloured graphs.
Finally time crept round to lunch, and Terry announced they had a buffet laid out in the other room.
“Thank fuck for that,” Clive boomed. “All those pie charts were making me hungry! Eh? Eh?” He looked around the room, beaming, and accepted the general laughter that came his way. Terry pursed his lips and tried to unbend.
“That’s a terrible joke. I’ve made lots of jokes this morning but no one laughed.”
“Did you?” Bet said in surprise.
“Maybe tell us when we ought to laugh,” someone else said.
“Hold up a sign?”
“For God’s sake.” Terry started to look flustered and upset, and Helena felt sorry for him.
“Terry, you’re a manager, not a comedian. Stick with what you’re good at, and ignore this bunch of idiots.”
She got a bit of ribbing for defending him, but he smiled at her. “I suspect these guys would say if I’m to stick with what I’m good at, I shouldn’t be managing at all.”
“Hey-hey! A joke at last! Well done, Terry!” Clive said and everyone turned to laugh with Terry this time, as if they knew they had been going too far and stepping from teasing into bullying.
“Anyway, it’s not true,” Bet said. “Your real strength is in creating slide shows.”
“Oh come on. Knock it off. Sandwiches? Pies?”
“Pies!” Clive was the first to stand and he wove his way between the plastic chairs to stand by Terry at the front of the room. “Come on, Terry. Before they all get ate.”
Clive led Terry through to the door but magnanimously stopped to allow his immediate boss to go in first, a gesture which said more about the balance of power than anything else. Helena was one of the last to trail through and she sat herself on the far end of the table with her paper plate only half-covered in limp quiche and a few bits of salad.
The folks to her side were deep in conversation and she was glad of it. She was longing to be home, where she could watch a film or maybe browse the internet for funny cat pictures, and compose self-pitying status updates that she had the politeness to never actually post. Her friends didn’t need to see the childishness of her inner thoughts.
The noise in the dining room seemed to increase as she sunk into her morose and pointlessly circular ponderings, so when she had finished her food, she nodded to those around her and slunk off to get some fresh air.
Fresh air that was mostly rain. Helena opened the main doors in the lobby and was hit by an icy blast of wind. She scurried down the steps and sidled along the wall, seeking shelter beyond the corner of the building, under a deep eave.
The rain sheeted down, and visibility was reduced. Cars went slower as they sprayed past in a grey fuzz along the road beyond the hedge and she let her eyes unfocus as she pressed her shoulder blades against the brick and tried not to think about anything.
“Bloody hell, this weather!”
She was startled to see one of the warehousemen from Bet’s depot standing beside her, trying to like a damp cigarette. “Mind if I smoke? The smoking shelter is under a foot of water on the inside. I can move along if you want, it’s okay.”
Ordinarily she would have said something scathing about lung cancer but she limply nodded and the chap sparked up gratefully. “Cheers.”
He puffed for a moment, the wind thankfully taking the chemicals away from their direction. She tried to think of something to say but it was all trite and meaningless.
“The missus will kill me when I get home,” he said suddenly.
“Why? What have you done?”
“Smoking. I gave up, you see, months ago. Except when I get stuck inside, in a room where I’ve got to sit all day, I just can’t take it. I’m not for just sitting around, you know.”
“She won’t know you’ve had one.”
“She’ll smell it.”
“You shouldn’t carry them around with you.”
“I don’t,” he said. “I bummed this off of Clive.”
“He should have known better, then. The pair of you. Honestly.” Helena was in no mood to be sympathetic.
“I know. Shit, I know!” Suddenly he threw the half-smoked tube to the ground and stamped his chunky boots on it. “She’s still going to kill me but I guess she has the right to.”
Helena nodded. “If the ciggies don’t kill you first.”
“Like the breast cancer nearly killed her. God, I’m an arsehole, aren’t I?”
Helena stared at him, aghast. “She - what? Yes, you are.”
He shook his head ruefully. “That’s why I gave up, which everyone told me was stupid, because just at the point of greatest stress I gave up my nicotine addiction, like. But I reckoned that whatever stress I felt, it wasn’t nothing to hers, you know.”
“Well, yeah. Um, how is she now? I mean, at the moment?”
“Oh, doing fine. Double mastectomy, you know, but all in remission, thank God. Terry’s been ace. He’s a tit when he’s standing in front of an audience but we all know he means well and everything. I always got the time off I needed to take Yasmin to appointments.”
“Oh.” Helena felt vaguely embarrassed but it wasn’t the first time a virtual stranger had begun to offload onto her. And she knew it was often easier for people, that way. She sought for something supportive to say. “Well done for sticking by her through all that.”
“Why wouldn’t I? She’s my wife. I love her more than anything. Why else would I have married her? I know people took the piss at first, cos of her job, and I think that’s the hardest thing, for her, really.”
“I’m new up here… sorry, I don’t know. What is her job?”
He laughed. “You must be the only person in Gussy’s who doesn’t know that me, lunk of a warehouseman, got married to a plus-size lingerie model!” His smile was broad and genuine. “Fucking plus-size. I tell you, she was - she is - all woman. Size twelve. Plus-size, give me a break. She did those catalogues that middle aged women buy their stuff from.”
Realisation dawned. “But now she’s had a mastectomy…”
“She gave up her job before that. When she got too tired, and ill, and her hair was going. She thought I was going to dump her!” His hands twitched and she realised he was itching for another cigarette. He looked with regret at the mashed mess on the floor. “Ahh shit. God, it’s getting cold out here. August, huh?”
“Yeah.”
He rubbed his hands together and spent a moment contemplating the distant passing traffic before sighing, shoving his hands into his pockets, and saying, “Any road, better get back inside before Terry implodes. You coming?”
Helena glanced at her watch. “Yeah.”
* * *
For the afternoon, they were split into groups and given enormous flip-chart paper and coloured marker pens so they could “mind shower” some new “core values.”
“We sell bits of wood,” Bet complained, squeezing in beside Helena and ignoring Terry’s attempts to direct the composition of the groups. “We sell good wood at a decent price to people who want good wood at a decent price.”
“Hang on…” the lad with the marker pen said. “I didn’t get all that.”
“Don’t write it down!”
“I’ve started now.”
“Christ.”
“Please don’t blaspheme,” someone else said.
“Sorry. Is fuck all right?”
“It’ll do.”
“Huh.”
The eight of them in “Team Squirrel” stared at the paper on the table in front of them. One keen soul started to come out with phrases like “customer appreciation” and Hele
na was content to sit back and let the eager ones get on with it.
“You’re not right,” Bet said, her meaty hand clamping onto Helena’s upper thigh in what was probably supposed to be a reassuring pat. “Spill the beans, love.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Heard you were stepping out with that Richard. Things not going so well?”
Stepping out? The phrase made Helena smile in spite of herself. “It didn’t go anywhere.”
“Ahh, not to worry, plenty more fish in the sea.”
“That’s what my mother says.”
“Mothers are usually right. I ought to know. Seven kids.”
“Really? Wow. My mother thinks she’s right, but…”
“Oh, she will be right. In her world, for her experience, for what she knows. You can have different rights. That’s why I’m always right, even when I’m wrong, or so I tell my kids.”
“Are they all still at home?”
“Hell no. What am I, a hotel?” Bet laughed loudly and tapped the paper on the table, startling the man with the pen. “You can write that down.”
“What, that you’re a hotel? Sorry, I wasn’t really listening.”
“No, that Gussy’s is always right, even when we’re wrong.”
“That’s not really a core value.”
“It’s my core value. I’m being marginalised. Here, Terry,” she called. “My views aren’t being heard. Is it because I’m a woman of a certain age?”
Clive was on another table and leapt gratefully into the growing chaos. “No, it’s because you’re a busy-body who doesn’t actually know what she’s talking about! Ha!”
Terry threw his hands in the air as the room descended into shouted ribaldry once more.
* * *
Helena drove slowly on her way home. The rain had abated at last, but the roads were slick with standing water in unexpected places, and she had been using the bus as much as possible, so she wanted to enjoy the sensation of being in her car for a while.
They had finished at four, and she had escaped out of the door as fast as she could. Snippets of the day’s conversations lingered in her mind, and she couldn’t put her finger on anything definite, but something was bothering her. So much so, that when she saw a lay-by up ahead, she pulled off the road and parked up.
It wasn’t that her head was full of thoughts or regrets about Richard. To her surprise, she kept dwelling on her mother. She thought over her childhood; things hadn’t become difficult until her teenage years.
Then, she’d wanted to continue being a tomboy, but her mother had encouraged her to wear nice clothes and make-up, to visit better salons and have her hair styled.
Helena remembered how at first all that glitz and glamour had intrigued her. Her mother had become increasingly fixated on her looks, and had begun a series of relationships with wealthy men who could wine and dine her in luxury.
Invariably, the relationships had ended - often explosively - and her mother would spend a few days in tearful hysterics before picking herself up, having a day at a spa with her crow-like friends, and moving on.
What a dreadful time. Why had her mother done it? Bounced from one man to another, desperately plastering on more and more foundation to hide her age? How awful. How sad. To be loved for how you looked, and ultimately rejected as just not good enough.
“Oh, mum.” Helena dug her phone out of her bag and called her mother’s landline before the sympathetic feelings faded. Vicky called me selfish and she was right. I’m going to act like an adult and listen to my mother for a change, and try to see things from her point of view.
“Hello?”
“Hi mum.”
“Helena, darling! Is everything all right?”
“Yes. I just called for a chat.”
“Oh, how lovely. What dreadful weather we’re having. What’s it like where you are?”
“Awful. The rain’s eased off a bit though.”
“Awful,” her mother echoed. “You never ring for a chat. You cannot fool a mother. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing! For heaven’s sake, can’t I ring my mum? Tell me how you are. I want to know. How’s… Giles?”
“Oh, Giles is over. The man was a bore. An utter bore. I was so relieved when he finished with me. I didn’t think he had it in him.”
“Oh, sorry to hear that. At least you didn’t take it too hard.”
“What? Oh darling, I moped for days, I can tell you! Eventually Eliza had to rescue me and we spent a day in Leeds. Retail therapy. I have the most delightful new handbag. Dolce and Gabbana.”
“But if he was a bore… why did you mope?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s what one does at the end of a relationship.”
“Mum, this is a really odd question, but, have you ever finished with them? Or do they always finish with you?”
“Oh God, darling, they do the finishing. I would never be the evil one! You must know how these things work, surely? It’s far better to be the wronged party, though it took some effort on my part in Giles’s case. I had to be thoroughly dreadful for weeks before he took the hint.”
Oh. My. God. Helena started to chew a thumbnail but wrenched her hand away as she heard her mum’s criticism in her head. “Mum, that’s terrible. Don’t you want to settle down?”
“How utterly tedious. No, why would I?”
“I thought… all these years… and when I was a kid…” Has she ever told me to be in a long-term relationship? No… just to be with someone, anyone, but not necessarily long-term. Oh.
“Pfft. What about when you were a kid? Are you in therapy or something and they want you to ring me and blame me for an awful childhood? Everyone has an awful childhood. It’s a condition of growing up.”
“No, I’m not in therapy. And… no, mum, I didn’t have an awful childhood.” As she said it, she realised it was true.
“Damn right you didn’t, missy. I waited until you were fourteen before I started seeing other men, for a start. I had to know you were able to cope with that.”
“I… did you?”
“Of course. What kind of monster do you think I am? I refused to be one of those women who bring endless men back home, a succession of new daddies for their kids. Ugh. Helena, tell me, what is this about? Shall I come over? I can be there in an hour.”
She’d come. She’d come if I needed her. She’d come with her make-up and her expensive nails and her perfume and her immaculate hair, but she’d come. The truth overwhelmed Helena. “No, mum. Thank you. It’s enough to know… that you’re there for me.”
“Of course I am.” She sounded almost cross. “Why would you ever doubt it?”
“Because sometimes I don’t see further than the inside of my own head.”
Her mother made another disparaging noise. “And you’ve only just realised that? Darling, if you’re sure you’re okay, then I have to go. John has been waiting in the car for a while now.”
“Oh God! I’m sorry. Please, go. Thank you.”
“It’s all right. I’m your mum. Helena?”
“Mum?”
“Ring again.”
* * *
“Henry?”
Jemima’s voice was faint. Richard slid onto the chair at the head of her bed and leaned closer. “Mother, it’s me, Richard.” And so began the futile dance.
“Henry!”
Richard stretched out his hand and placed it firmly on her claw-like one that clutched and twitched on the eiderdown. “It’s all right. Shall we have a cup of tea?”
“That would be lovely.”
He patted her one more time, and stood up. He would rather be anywhere than here, doing anything else. But he had his duty and so he went off in search of a cup of tea.
He wondered, as he went along the warm pink and orange corridors, why he was there. He was starting to think that he was there because he was expected to be there, and he didn’t want the nurses and care home staff to think less of him for not visiting. It clearly made no
difference to his mother.
Or did it? When he accepted his role as his late father, though it still made him quiver in distaste, she seemed calmer. Perhaps it was a small price to pay to bring rest to an ill, frail woman.
He wandered back into his mother’s room with two tiny cups of tea. She blinked as he entered. “Henry?”
“Yes. Here’s your tea.”
She took it and sipped at it straight away. “It’s cold. It’s always cold.”
He’d put cold water in to stop her burning herself, of course. Still. “It’s not cold.”
“It is.” She made a face and drank it anyway. “When is Richard going to get married? That boy can’t run around alone for ever. We should step in.”
Oh God, not this, not now. He rolled his eyes but her failing vision still caught his gesture. “Henry! You need to take a firm hand with the boy. The way your father did with you. I remember when he all but marched you to my house, and made you propose. But we haven’t regretted it, have we?”
That was news and Richard didn’t know what to say. “Er… no.”
“Exactly. No regrets. Arguments, fights, and the odd broken plate. But no regrets. You took me as I am, Henry, and once you made up your mind to do a thing, by golly you did it. That’s how we won the war. Bloody mindedness and carrots.”
“Carrots?”
Jemima’s face worked constantly as she moved her lips and tongue around, seeking gaps in her teeth or trying to find words or just seeking movement; Richard wasn’t sure. But she didn’t respond to his question. Her gaze lengthened, passing him by, looking back to a past that never really existed. She’d been born after the second world war, for a start. Her dementia had come early and swiftly and like the grim reaper had missed with his aim, swinging his scythe awkwardly and leaving her half-dead, her soul trapped in a false past.
“Hiraeth,” he said aloud, and she muttered wordlessly in response.
Hiraeth. The Welsh word that conveyed a sense of longing and nostalgia for an idealised past. History - true or not - had such a pull on people. Our rose-tinted memories. Our overgrown ogres of childhood. Our misremembered conversations and lingering feelings that change in the retelling as we rewrite our own stories to make sense of what we’ve done. How we justify our actions to ourselves just so we can sleep at night. I didn’t mean. I didn’t say. She thought I meant. I never intended. I can’t help how.
Bad Boys and Billionaires (The Naughty List Bundles) Page 56
