Imperfect Strangers

by David Staniforth

  “My niece, Poppy.”

  “Never! Well hasn’t she grown up?”

  “I’ll say. Eleven going on twenty and sharp as a sock full of pins.”

  “For the love of fashion, will you look at them sleeves,” Philippa cries, shoving under Kerry’s nose the photograph that Kerry only just handed to her.

  “Disgusting!” Kerry offers without so much as a glance.

  “Looks like an explosion of white lace. I’d wear sommat classy me, silky and short and slinky.” Philippa sashays her hips by way of an illustration as she takes the last photograph from Kerry. With a theatrical double take, she punches me on the shoulder. “Oy! Where’s the one with him groping the bridesmaid?”

  The punch was rather too hard to be considered playful, especially in my delicate condition. I throw her a snappish stare. “In pieces on my bedroom carpet.”

  “He’ll have moved back in by next week,” Kerry states, before taking a gulp of coffee, savouring the flavour a moment before swallowing. Her eyes lock on mine as if inviting a negative response.

  I’m not even going to give Kerry the satisfaction of a reply. Silently, I gather up the photographs and slip them into the wallet. Inevitably, the words do spill out. “He won’t. He’s had his last chance.”

  Kerry raises her brow and looks at the others, seemingly intimating the phrase, anyone like to bet on it?

  Amid this moment of silence, the telephone on my desk rings. As any one of us in the office would, I glare at the telephone a moment before glancing at the clock, which shows the time of three minutes to nine: a direct call, then, not an internal one. Reception would not put a call through at this time. Nine o’clock I get paid from, and at nine o’clock, I decide, I will answer the phone. Not a minute sooner. No longer will I be a pushover, freely giving my time away, freely giving myself away. No longer will I be – how did Kerry so eloquently put it? – Shite-wipe. The phone continues to ring. My lips form a pout as if of their own accord, and I just know my scowl is child-like and petulant.

  Perhaps seizing the opportunity for a venomous exchange, Kerry picks up the phone. “No. She’s not here.” Her features sharpen, forming the expression for which she has become known. It’s a look that from ten paces away can cause any man to blanch and cower into a corner.

  I can guess who it is, and, thinking he deserves to be answered by Kerry, I let her carry on. Meanwhile, I place the photograph wallet in the second drawer and slam it shut. “Is that Steve?” I eventually snap.

  When Kerry nods I snatch the phone from her. I let him carry on a moment, though, let him carry on thinking that he’s talking to Kerry - “I know she’s there,” he says. “Put her on. Don’t ignore me! Put her on you – just... Listen, I just want to talk to her” Screwing my lips, I look at Kerry who is practically squaring-up, looking ready to fight, as if Steve were about to climb from the phone and face her.

  “Tell him to piss off,” Kerry says, loud enough for Steve to have heard.

  Colleen and Philippa glance at the clock and shuffle to their respective desks.

  “Is that you Sally? You on the line? Listen we’ve gorra talk. Worrif,” he says, giving his voice the air of a little-boy-lost. “Worrif I come round tonight, eh? I could bring a bottle, yeh?”

  I leave him hanging a moment, enjoying the hesitant note in his tone. No doubt he thinks he might possibly have talked baby to a hard-nose like Kerry.

  Talk-baby! That’s one of Steve’s bedroom expressions. Recollecting this increases the anger I already feel. Not that I hate the phrase, just that – he’s just so damn, sucking, glued in my brain, and I want him out.

  “NO!” I shout. “I’ve already got a case thanks: an almost full case of Barolo. Catch that, almost full. Anyway, I said all I ever want to say to you last night. The answer’s no. No chance. Not in this life time.”

  I bang the phone down, screaming the last words as the receiver crashes home. The phone rings again and I pick it up, lift it an inch and then drop it back on the cradle.

  “Hmmm, impressive.” Kerry, turns swiftly, looking pleased, and marches to her desk. When she sits, I see that her face is lit with a victorious grin. Of course it is. I’m almost tempted to get back with Steve just to spite her.

  CHAPTER

  7

  Had father not died, things might have been different.

  I like to caress his flat cap, but I’d never put it on. That wouldn’t be right. Disrespectful. I handle his fishing-reel, though, and salivate over his harmonica. All these things give me pleasure, but it’s the photographs I like best of all.

  Y’don’t-t’chum, y’hear?

  “Shut up,” I tell her.

  Even mother looks as though she was happy back then. I don’t remember him, the man in the photographs, my father. He almost always wears the flat cap. When pictured with her, he usually has one arm around her waist. On this one, she’s gripping his fingers loosely in hers. In his other arm, lovingly cradled, is me as a baby. I wouldn’t have known but it says so on the back: Keith, 10 months. That would make it August.

  In this photograph they’re standing in almost the same position. My father looks much older, but I do not. Months at the most have passed. The trees in the background are bare. He died mid January, I know that much, because Mrs Sewell told me. Perhaps this was the Autumn before he died. Maybe not. Maybe it is the Autumn before that, over a year before he died.

  On the next photograph my father is sitting on a willow basket, on the bank of a river, frail looking, huddled against the cold in a heavy looking coat. There are daffodils, so it must have been the following spring. A member of the fishing club must have taken the picture. He never missed a match, so said Mrs Sewell. She also told me that, when it came to fishing, my father and her husband had a friendly rivalry. Her thoughts drifted elsewhere, but a moment later her face lit up and she chuckled. “He was a funny man your dad,” she’d said. “Ooh, he did use to make me laugh.”

  Everything I know about my father came from the mouth of Mrs Sewell. Mother never mentioned much more than his name. It was some years after his death, so Mrs Sewell tells, that my mother went a little withdrawn.

  I remember her as being rather more than a little withdrawn. I never told anyone about the worst of it. And what goes on behind closed doors can only be guessed at by even the closest of neighbours, so I suppose she would have seen it as such.

  She got worse when I brought trouble home, as she used to call it.

  You always was a bad un, she’d say.

  But she never said it like that. When she got angry her words became a connected string of sound. Word snakes, I call them – venomous word snakes.

  Yawlas-worrabadun.

  At first she was just a little odd. Perhaps withdrawn would have described her in the early days. She wouldn’t cook.

  She did cook.

  Did she?

  Yes. Just after he died she used to cook. She cooked for herself, and for us, and for Daddy. She cooked lots of food. Nice food. Too much food. Delicious dinners and stodgy puddings thick with warm custard. She would set three places, but say, we may as well eat, looks like your daddy’s going to be late again. But Daddy was already dead. After weeks of scraping food into the bin she stopped cooking altogether.

  So she wasn’t nasty in the beginning?

  No. Sometimes she was nice to us. She gave cuddles, but sometimes a hard slap across the face.

  If it weren’t for you, I would forget all of these memories.

  That’s why you keep me here, isn’t it?

  I often wish you’d just disappear. Perhaps it would be better if I remembered nothing. She rarely shopped. I remember that. There was precious little to cook even if she’d had the inclination. You became skin and bone.

  We survived because of Mrs Sewell.

  A jam butty here, a piece of pie there.

  Little Keith’s memories: they’re like shadows within shadows, making the darkness all the darker just for being there. Little K
eith’s memories mostly remind me of things I would rather forget. Had little Keith died, people would have known what she was like.

  People did know. When I went to school, she would leave the house a few moments after me. She would watch me walk to school, hiding around street corners, crouching behind hedges. She thought I didn’t know that she was there. I knew though. Other people did too, they would watch her sneaking along, shaking their heads. I’d look out of the corner of my eye and see her, the bun on her head bobbing along the top of a privet hedge like a fat wingless bird. I knew she followed me, but I never told her.

  Other mums held their child by the hand, as if the child was a delicate ornament. Our mother followed me with suspicion on her mind. A man called Elvis sang on the radio about it. He sang, we can’t go on together with suspicious minds. I agreed with him.

  She was suspicious right up to the end. When I came home from work, while I cleaned the poo from her bed, she would question me.

  Who are you talking to about me? She would screech, though she said it more like, Whoar-y’talkin-tabartme? Word-snake. Little Keith knows more of them, lots of word-snakes, much more than I myself would dare to recall. The very idea of them makes me shudder; they squirm like eels through my thoughts.

  Wat’re-yupta? Whydyershitinmibed?

  What happened when you got to school?

  When I got to school, she would stand at the other side of the railings, looking into the yard, face pressed between the bars, a hand gripping the rails on either side, her venomous word-snakes lashing abuse at any who dared to glance at her.

  Wotyur-lukinat?

  That’s when the bullying began.

  Yes. But keep that memory in the dark, please.

  Why didn’t you die instead of my John, she’d say. Mymanomymanomymano, why’d he have togoandieo? And then she’d cry and cry for ages and ages, rocking back and forth in a chair by the fire.

  Sometimes I wish little Keith would just go away. I know he’s just an element of me, my younger voice constantly rattling around in my head, reminding me of things I’d rather forget. Go away, I think, and take our horrid memories with you.

  I need to move on.

  I’m going to ask Sally today. It’ll be like a birthday present. There’s no time like the present. It’s settled. I’m going to ask Sally this evening.

  CHAPTER

  8

  At the entrance to the office I stand unobserved, looking at my unoccupied desk in the centre, wondering if I should rush back to the toilet for another bout of emptying my guts. People are going back and forth, photocopying, filing, others sit tapping keyboards, shuffling documents from one side of their desk to the other. Amongst this commotion a telephone rings insistently. It’s coming from my desk. Colleen’s sitting at her own desk, snared by the ringing-telephone.

  “Just leave it,” Kerry says, looking up, her voice sharp, as Colleen rises from her chair and walks to my desk. I’m about to step forward and say, it’s okay I’ll get it, when my stomach churns and a familiar watery sensation floods my tongue.

  Colleen coughs into a loose fist, smiles demurely at Kerry, and picks up the receiver. “Hello, Miss Bradwell’s desk. Colleen speaking.” She listens a moment, then sighs. Her face says it all. The skin between her eyebrows bunches into a frown. “No, Steve, Sally’s not here at the moment.”

  “Told you to leave it.” Kerry’s face tightens in on itself, and as she looks up our eyes snag. She looks as if she’s going to tell Colleen I’m back, but doesn’t.

  Colleen casts a slow glance around the room. Her eyes settle on the large window and the sheets of rain lashing the glass and obscuring the view of the city beyond. “Well, no... I don’t think I want to get involved... Well, it’s not my place really, is it?” She speaks professionally, not with any sign of anger or reproach, but with a subtle note of impatience creeping in. You’d have to know her to be aware. Steve won’t even notice. The phone is by now a couple of inches away from her ear, and she lets out a weary sigh. It’s obvious she wants to end the call, but she is just not that kind of person, not the sort to put a phone on its cradle while someone is talking at the other end.

  Kerry marches over, her eyes narrowed into a spiteful squint, and snatches the phone from Colleen. “STEVE!” she bellows into the mouthpiece. “Piss off!”

  When Kerry slams the phone down, Martin Smith, the office manager, is staring at her from his office door. Colleen stoops as if hiding behind an invisible shrubbery. Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment, she scuttles back to her desk. Kerry elevates her shoulders, lifts her chin, and returns Martin’s stare. She holds his eye until he retreats.

  “Men! Atchggrrr!” Kerry growls, as he turns away. “They just don’t seem to understand the word no.”

  I feel like crap – green around the gills, as they say. I wipe the corners of my mouth with a tissue, convinced that my face is not entirely clean. I’ve been gone for over twenty minutes. The watery sensation fills the back of my mouth and once again I think I’m going to be sick. It’s the taste of it, I tell myself, and fish through my bag for a tube of mints that have been in there for months.

  “Sally,” Colleen closes in, her whispered words landing on my face. “Your Steven’s phoned again.”

  “He’s not...” I say, a hand shielding Colleen from my sour breath. “We’re finished.”

  “Well, I hope you mean that,” Colleen says, her voice lowered further still, even though she backs away, “because Kerry told him to, er...”

  “Piss off. I told him to piss off. Fuck! Colleen, you can be such a prissy thing. If you say a word like piss, you’re not going to be struck by lightning, you know.” The grin on Kerry’s face contradicts the harshness of her tone, but Colleen still looks a little perturbed. “Anyway, Sally heard me tell him. She was standing in the doorway.”

  “Oh, well that wasn’t very nice of you Kerry. To say that while Sally was in the room.”

  “It’s alright Colleen, I’m not bothered. He needs telling straight. Only language he understands.” I realise I’m fiddling with the chain around my neck: the one Steve bought for me in Florence. The token item he felt forced to purchase when I suddenly went moody after he’d confessed to buying that case of wine.

  “Steve never used to say piss off.” I smile as my eyes drift to the ceiling. “Not to me, anyway. He always said forward-slash. You know, like jokingly. Like, if I asked him to get me a cuppa or something. Forward-slash, he’d say. Then he’d go and make me a brew.”

  Martin is back at his office door, hovering, looking very much like a rabbit at the entrance to its burrow, its eye on a carrot surrounded by foxes. Looking slightly nervous, his mouth twitching somewhat, he heads in our direction. He’ll cough into his hand, any moment now, I think. Sure enough he does so, before inflating his chest and allowing his managerial voice to emerge.

  “Do you girls intend to do any work today?”

  I get the feeling it’s mainly aimed at me, being as I was away from my desk for so long. Or is that just my guilty conscience? I’ve never been any different. Tipping my head in his direction, I strike a provocative pose and wind a strand of hair around my forefinger. “Sorry Mr Smith. Only I’ve been sick, and I’ve a touch of women’s trouble.”

  “Right, well... that’s, er... yes, right. Well, either get some work done or go home.”

  Martin suddenly loses his managerial edge and surreptitiously glances toward the safety of his office.

  “Sorry. No, I’ll be alright,” I say standing, brushing creases from my skirt, before picking up a pile of letters from the desk. “I’m just going to frank these for posting.” For Kerry’s amusement, I curl my upper lip and dip into a mock curtsy as Martin turns away.

  “Work to do,” he says, retreating. “Get on now.”

  “Forward-slash, Mr Smith!” Colleen says, matter-of-factly, as he walks past her desk.

  His eyes, and therefore his attention, are attached to Philippa’s legs four seats beyond, no do
ubt hoping for a flash of silky pant-V, spattered with hearts. His reaction, therefore, is somewhat delayed. Suddenly he stops and turns, his face screwed into a knot of bewilderment. Kerry looks at Colleen in disbelief, drawing her cheeks into her teeth, her whole body shaking, as Colleen shrinks into her chair.

  “What?” Martin asks her, walking back, placing the flat of his hand on her desk, and leaning in towards her face. He looks down on her. Her eyes are half-closed and her expression seems to scream go away. I’m sorry. What was I thinking?

  Colleen’s expression gradually changes, though. She opens her eyes wide, and looking up, glares at him, unexpectedly fierce, like a cornered animal. Had it been Kerry, Martin would likely have carried on walking, pretending he’d not heard. Had I said it he would have flushed or swooned or both – perhaps made a joke of it. Had Philippa said it he would have laughed, likely leaned forward, used it as a chance to stare at her legs, perhaps he would have dropped his pen and looked up her skirt.

  Colleen firms her jaw, and holding his glare repeats the statement. “Forward-slash, Mr Smith.” Only now, she says it with conviction. There is a distinct tone underneath the words that snarl a suggestion of something like: you don’t scare me. She can’t actually say piss off, probably never could, likely never will, but it is conveyed in her tone. “That’s what they call it, isn’t it? The internet address thingy. That!” She points to the keyboard. “Forward-slash?”

  Martin turns the colour of putty. The office is silent, and he must realise all eyes are on him. He looks unsure of himself as he stands straight, removes his hand from Colleen’s desk and looks around the office. There’s no support, not for him, not in here, not for something like this. “Er, yes, forward-slash. Yes, yes it is.”

  Kerry snorts, the kind of snort that comes like a sneeze that can’t be held any longer. She then cackles with delight. “Idiot,” she gasps and shakes her head in seeming disbelief as Martin looks in her direction.

  Martin makes for his office, glancing back as if to say what happened? His eyes imploringly stating, I’m supposed to be the one in charge here. “Time’s ticking,” he squeaks, turning away. “Get on now,” he says, disappearing beyond the door to his office.