‘There hasn’t been a crime,’ he says.
‘I’ll tell you what’s criminal,’ I say, ‘you calling that thing the other week a hard-on. I’ve seen stiffer six-pinters before, when they can’t raise a smile. I’ve bent them in with the best of them. That felt like a marshmallow pushed into a piggy bank. You’d be done under the trades an’ descriptions for calling that a soft-on.’ It wasn’t true but it’s the easiest way to hurt a man. His mouth had disappeared into this line and he was breathing through his nose. If she hadn’t been there he’d have got out and slapped me around – and not in a nice way. I leaned in and spoke to her. ‘If you’re thinking of giving him a bit of hand relief behind the lock-ups, then make sure it’s a double shift, love.’
He roared off. So much for the fucking authorities.
Ruth, God bless her, didn’t have my gifts when it came to getting men to do what she wanted. She hadn’t a net to cast. She wore out shoe leather asking around, and this from a woman who starts to blush handing across the bus fare. I don’t know if it was the constant rejection, or the gloom of missing her, but she looked like shit. And I suppose I did too, under the war paint. Nobody was seeing me like that. Gina’s absence seemed to get worse, not better. Her not being here, day after day, became like an actual thing in the room with us. It turns out Ruth did visit the police. I found out long afterwards. And she got as much joy as me – without the joy.
Bad as it was we were diverted by another problem her leaving had caused. We were completely, utterly skint. I don’t claim to be any economist, but even I could see how desperate it was if we were to keep the place for her. And on that we both agreed. Instantly. We were going to keep the place for her. She was going to have a place to come back to. To give it up was like somehow giving up on her.
‘I’ll move upstairs,’ Ruth says, ‘keep it nice for her.’
‘It’s not the occupancy you stupid cow – it’s the double rent!’
‘You think I don’t fucking know that?’
‘Stop the world – I want to get off. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you swear.’ And we looked at each other. Her swearing set the seal on it – the seriousness of the situation. Our determination. ‘Come here,’ I said. And I gave her the kind of hug I usually reserved for Gina. And it felt right.
We both agreed we wouldn’t touch her room.
Ruth took on extra shifts. It wasn’t as if her life wasn’t dreary enough already. It wasn’t fair. She was dragging herself home night after night looking more and more like a refugee. I bit the bullet and got a job as a hospital orderly in the Victoria Infirmary. I don’t know why they call it ‘orderly’. The place might run well but nothing I could see was orderly about my job. There was always the thought, in the back of my mind, that I might snare a doctor, some young guy with a shiny stethoscope, clean habits and prospects.
Not a fucking chance. I think there’s a caste system in bits of the NHS that’d put India to shame. I felt like an untouchable. I spent my breaks smoking outside with the porters. It reminded me of Gina having her. I’d walk back into the antiseptic smell with a lump in my throat.
At the end of the first week I’m worn out after my shift, eyes gritty with tiredness. I’m walking to the bus stop to go home. I’ve been working from an hour that a month ago was the middle of the night. It’s still bright daylight and I’m blinking in the glare, when I see a big shapeless sack staring back at me from the glass. I stop dead. So does she. A week and this is what I look like. Other shifts have finished too and a lot of women, cleaners or auxiliaries or orderlies or whatever they are, are all gathering at the bus stop. There are about fifty separate conversations going on at the same time. The noise is tremendous and it makes me feel better. A 66 draws up and the first woman pays to go into town. ‘I’m no’ goin’ to town,’ says the driver. He looks about fifteen. All conversations stop. We all want to go to town, or that direction.
‘What d’ y’ mean?’ says the woman.
‘This bus goes to Shawlands.
‘But it’s a 66.’
‘It’s a 37.’
‘It says 66 on the side.’ And so it does. She points. But it also says 37 on the front. Some useless bastard, probably him, sent it out the garage with two numbers. This is pointed out to him by a chorus of women.
‘Well,’ he says, ‘it says 37 on the front. And this bus goes frontways – no’ sideways.’
‘Sonny,’ says the first woman, ‘I’ve been wipin’ arses all mornin’ and you’re the first one that’s talked back.’
And we all just about piss ourselves laughing and he shuts the door and escapes to Shawlands. And before you know it a 66 has arrived and we’re all feeling like one of the gang and the driver, who looks like the last one’s younger brother, watches me fumble for my pass and says, ‘On you go missus.’
And then it hits me, like a bucket of freezing water. I am one of them. First of all I’ve got a bus pass, cause I can’t afford a daily return. Then the driver calls me ‘missus’. He sees me as one of the herd, and no harm to them, but that’s what they are. You see them at break time, in uniform, taking up a quarter of the canteen, their noise drowning out everyone else’s. And they drift together, like wildebeests, from work, to shops, to bingo, to wherever, before they all go their separate ways to go home and come back and club together tomorrow to start all over again.
Well that’s not me. It’s just not. I’ve never been a member of any gang in my life. You can take your Girl Guides with your knot tying and your star gazing and your map reading and shove them up your arse. I know fuck all about the team spirit and that’s the way it’s staying. I couldn’t dump the job flat, cause we need the money, so I took another job – on an ice cream van. I’d come home from the Victoria and change, just to tinkle round the housing estates, announced by Greensleeves that got faster when he got the revs going. The owner, Pavel, was decidedly dodgy. I don’t know where his family originally hailed from, but he spoke pure Glasgow at Gatling-gun speed. He used every excuse to rub against me. As far as I could see, all his transactions were on the black. If they looked at his books he probably said he spent a hundred quid on petrol and drove five hundred miles to sell two Magnums and a ninety-nine. That didn’t bother me. I could put up with the groping and him swindling the taxman. It’s the other trade I couldn’t abide. There were certain customers, most of them older than sixteen, he always served himself. Almost nothing was said. He’d hand out tea-bag-sized sachets to them and take the cash. You could spot the type a mile away. They’re waiting for you to turn the corner. When you get close you realise it isn’t an earth tremor, it’s them who’s shaking. They’d all complexions like Gina’s dad, but there’s a difference between drunks and druggies. It’s hard to explain but you can see it a mile away. Druggies are always skinny, more desperate, sinister.
That bastard would sell anything to anyone. He went out with sub-standard ice cream and soggy cones and came back with thousands. For the first time I was the respectable front. I was thinking about chucking it when a brick came through the side window, and Greensleeves upped tempo, like the Keystone Cops or fast motion bit at the end of Benny Hill, while we made our getaway. Maybe it was an unsatisfied customer, who’d just found out that the flake in his 99 wasn’t Cadbury’s. Who knows. Who cares. Not the police, who called Pavel to tell him that the overnight lock up had been jemmied and the van was up on blocks. Oh, and the wheels were stolen. And the contents stripped out. And it had also been torched. Out of curiosity I went round to see it. They’d driven it out to strip it down. It was still smouldering. Pavel’s leaning against the lock-up running his fingers through his greasy hair looking like some refugee who’s lost his whole family in a tidal wave. I’m wondering how much of someone else’s merchandise walked, the kind of stuff you don’t insure. From the look of him you can tell that they won’t be understanding about it. He’ll be avoiding any high-rises in the near future in case his investors help him find the quick route down. Ther
e are some kids throwing stones at the only window that somehow didn’t cave in. The police aren’t even trying to stop them. They don’t give a fuck. Truth be told, neither do I. That was the end of my career in retail.
After that the hospital didn’t seem so bad. I still knew nothing about the team spirit but the older women seemed to like me. It’s as if I became their mascot. They kept asking me about my social life. Mostly they were settled, with kids and stuff, in various stages of happiness, like the rest of the world, but they liked to hear what I had to say. Maybe they liked imagining themselves in my place, if this or that hadn’t happened back then, if their lives had taken a different turning. I used to pile it on. ‘Men are like Alton Towers,’ I said, ‘some rides are tame and some rides are scary.’ They loved that kind of thing. I had them all round for a knees up. When they all arrived they thought the place had been ransacked. Ruth came down at the noise, which was good because I was going to invite her anyway. Somehow she managed to be nice, shy and disapproving all at the same time. After they’d gone she offered to help tidy. ‘Don’t bother,’ I said, ‘stuff takes up the same amount of space whether it’s over there or over there.’ But she hung about anyway, like this cloud of gloom, blaming me. She didn’t say a thing, and the more she didn’t say it the worse it got. I don’t know how long I lasted but it was quite a long time for me. ‘Look,’ I shouted, ‘I can’t bury myself. I just can’t. I’m not like you. Life can’t stop. She chose to leave us.’ But what I couldn’t bring myself to say, because it was too harsh, was that Gina was her only cause because nothing else was happening in her life. ‘Just cause she’s your only cause cause nothing else is happening in your life...’
She stopped dead still with the tights she was holding. Something was stuck to them. It looked like a trapped bat but it couldn’t have been. And then she started speaking and got quieter till I was holding my breath to hear the end of the sentence.
‘You’re probably right. She is my only cause. She came and found me when I was rotting away with loneliness. She didn’t need me. She had you, and her. She went out of her way to find me and I’ll return the favour if it’s the last thing I do.’ And then she burst into tears. Well, actually, I burst into tears at being cruel. I’m not like that. Well, actually, I am – but only to people who deserve it. And she didn’t. Well she did a bit for having the nerve to come down here, like some ghoul, all silent blame for me daring to enjoy myself. But still I shouldn’t have said it. Or maybe I should have, but only in a nicer way. I couldn’t catch a breath or find a hanky so I snatched the tights from her and blew my nose into them and said, ‘Do you honestly think me looking this way and acting like this make me miss her any less?’ And then she started to cry, really quietly, and I looked at that sack of a person and saw what Gina saw worth prising away from that selfish cow Moira. And I realised I loved her.
‘I love you,’ I said. And a look came over her face that I don’t think any man’s succeeded in putting on mine. And before she could say anything I handed her back the tights. ‘They’re for the bin,’ I said.
I finished a back shift, and for the first time in years I thought it might be nicer to walk for a bit. That’s what wearing flat shoes during working hours does for you. I was passing one of the churches, because they seem to be a religious lot around here, when this thought suddenly struck me. I’m nice to people who deserve it, but maybe I’m not as well-behaved as I like to think I am. I can’t think what I might have done, but maybe Gina’s departure is some kind of punishment. And I ran into the church. There was light coming through the stained glass in shafts, like some old religious film, and when I turned to all the empty pews, all silently shining with devout polishing, I came over all religious and a thought struck me.
Sanctuary! I don’t know if I just thought it or I actually said something. Anyway there was this polite cough from the back. And this guy came forward. He wasn’t wearing a funny collar or anything, but you just knew he was one of the clergy. He was holding a rag like he’d been polishing the brasses. He didn’t look old enough to hold down the job, hardly older than me. He had a nice face, a kind face, the kind of face you’d be prepared to take home to your mum, provided she didn’t behave like Gina’s. It was the sight of that face, kinder than mine, that suddenly made me think it was all my fault.
‘I want to confess!’
‘We – we don’t actually believe in confession here. Not the way I imagine you’re referring to.’
‘A child was delivered unto the womb of my pal and smitten by death and I can’t help feeling that it’s all my fault!’ God knows where I got ‘unto’ and ‘womb’ and ‘smitten’ from. It’s all those big-beard Charlton Heston Bible epics they show at Easter and Christmas. He retreated to the front pew and took all this in. Then he wiped his face with the rag and left a streak. Somehow I couldn’t help liking him for that. It made him look like a wee boy. And then he says, ‘I always find this place a bit sombre. Would you like a cup of tea?’
‘Any biscuits?’
Fondant Fancies. Gone soft. You could tell he was a bachelor. His house was at the side of the church and he had this family kitchen he didn’t know what to do with. He sits there with the streak on his face and asks me what’s wrong. ‘Where do I start?’ I say. It turns out that he wants what I want – to make me feel better. You don’t come across many men like that. I start off with Gina and me as kids and he starts this kind of rolling his hand, like he wants me to fast-forward till we get to what he calls the ‘spiritual crux’ of the matter. So I tell him about Gina and me and her and Ruth and he says it can’t be punishment. ‘Because,’ he says, ‘by extension,’ he says, ‘Millie’s death would be part of that punishment, visited on you, and God doesn’t work that way. I don’t believe in a wrathful God. I believe in a God of infinite compassion, and I don’t think you’ve done anything wrong and even if you had, it isn’t anything that He can’t forgive. You’re no worse, or better, than me. There’s a purpose behind all this. I don’t pretend to know what it is, but I know it’s a good one.’
You look at a man like him, Mark, his name is, and you look at Quick Nick and Wee Tam, and you can’t believe they’re the same species. I was tempted to lick my hanky and lean across and wipe his face, make a joke about mark and Mark, and take it from there. But I didn’t, cause with ten sentences he made me feel as if I’d fallen in love and climbed Everest at the same time. I floated home congratulating myself on how I’d held back. I always knew I’d a spiritual side.
He phoned me up a week later and I thought – here we go. But I was wrong. I’d told him about our money worries and he’d got me an opening in a chicken factory. The shifts were better and the money more than the hospital, so it was goodbye to all that. When he got me the job I don’t think he quite knew what was involved. There’s the ethics of animals and stuff to consider, but if it means half your day with your hands up a chicken’s arse pulling out innards to keep the flat for her, then I can only say tough luck for the chickens.
We’d to wear wellies and coats and hairnets and latex gloves and the whole nine yards. Every last man of us on the production line was a woman. There was a bit of banter in the canteen with some of the guys who worked in other parts of the plant, but you trudged in there, still wearing half the stuff, looking about as sexual as a Dalek. I couldn’t employ my assets. Looking round you could barely tell one of us from the other. Well – Danny could. He came up to me and said he needed to take a swab.
‘Is that code?’ I said.
He ran some kind of lab in the place, or said he did, to make sure we don’t all die, or kill the customers, with some kind of bird lurgy. There wasn’t much of me he didn’t investigate.
‘Is this standard procedure?’ I said. He was very, very clean. I pointed it out.
‘Scientific protocols,’ he said. I’m not sure I was so flattered by that.
‘And so, what can you do for me?’ I said. And lo and behold I became a receptionist – just like t
hat. If that’s all it took then I could see my career in the place going up like a meteor. Half a dozen office parties and I’d be vice president. But the truth is I liked being a receptionist. You get to meet lots of people and you can chat and be nice to them if they deserve it, or send them in the wrong direction and make things generally rubbish if they’re not. I phoned Mark to tell him I got a promotion. I didn’t tell him how I got it.
‘That’s marvellous,’ he said.
‘Too right,’ I said, ‘beats the hell out of fist-fucking dead poultry – excuse my French.’
Reception was a place where I could employ my assets, and I made the best of it. If we were really pushed for money I could get time and a half for Saturdays, or pull an extra shift downstairs with the buggered birds, which I did sometimes, just to keep up with the girls and the factory floor chat.
All in all things were going very well. I couldn’t have been happier. Well actually I could. Well, truth be told, I wasn’t happy at all. I was fucking miserable. My first ever Christmas without her was looming. I was dreading it. I told Ruth one titanic thing was missing in my life. ‘Kids?’ she said. ‘No – Gina!’ I said. She made a point of cooking Christmas dinner. I offered.
‘I’m thinking of something more substantial than Pot Noodles,’ she said. Since I told her I loved her she seemed to be taking certain liberties, but I couldn’t take it back because it was true.
‘Fair enough, but don’t go all sanctimonious about it. And another thing – no poultry. I’ve shaken hands with enough wishbones from the arse up to last me a lifetime.’
So she made a pot roast. And we sat, the two of us, upstairs, at a table she laid out in the living room, some collapsible Formica thing she’d rescued from a canteen clear out. It sat four, and you could see the four placings where the veneer had been worn out by countless plates and elbows and cutlery, like rocks rubbed out by geology. So we sit across from one another, beside the two ghost settings. And suddenly I get this vision of what it would have been like, five years from now, if she hadn’t died and she hadn’t left. The four of us round the table. Laughing. A little girl with her mum and two aunties who love her to distraction, confident as the focus of all that feeling, sitting with her own special paper hat. And a big tear plopped off the end of my nose into the gravy. And I was just about to say ‘I can’t do this’ and get up from the table when I realised that would have been selfish. She was going through this too. This was her way of coping, the way mine was to paste some slap on and go out for a knees up. And she had made this effort. She leaned across and rubbed my hand and said ‘Eat up’ and I said ‘Merry Christmas’ and we pulled two crackers and put the hats on and read the jokes and she put on a CD, Dean Martin’s Christmas Extravaganza or something. We were halfway through Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, that I must have heard a million times without listening when, for the first time, I actually pay attention to the words. He croons out ‘Faithful friends who are dear to us, gather near to us once more’. I smile across at her but I swear to God I felt like one of those chickens, that some gigantic hand had just taken a hold of my insides and pulled them out.
Four New Words for Love Page 18
