If it is your life (2 page)

Yeh? I hopped a step sideways to look behind.

Will I zip up yer trousers at the back?

That would be good, I said, thanks, thanks a lot.

Saves a wee bit of embarrassment, he added.

Definitely. I balanced myself against the wall. When the zip was applied I could relax, and I did relax, just that little bit; that little bit was not only necessary it was enough. I flexed my wrist muscles.

Okay? said the old guy.

Yeh.

But when I went to put my hands in my pockets it was so very awkward, very very awkward, just about damn impossible.

What’s up? he said.

Aw nothing. Just life, always something.

Dont I know it!

Thanks anyway.

Take it easy pal. Tricky times ahead.

You’re right, I said.

He was, he was spot on. The experience of age. Suddenly I remembered the £5 deposit on the key to the toilet but I had left the damn thing in the doorlock. It would have vanished by now. There was a café I knew where £5 bought you a cup of tea and a baked potato. The same £5 got you two cups of tea and a sandwich. That was what ye got for yer £5. Not bad really, although it was not so much a café as a snackbar, located at a supermarket entrance. This entrance was also the exit and folks like me, well, anyway, I did go along on occasion. The Security man was always a snag. If he was there individuals had to dodge through.

That was the supermarket this was the Social Security. It too had an exit and I was interested to see it. In the old days I named it ‘the escape hatch’. My heart leapt when I spied it. In future times, whenever I returned here, and was obliged to leave, I would view it differently. But I should have told the old guy about the £5 deposit, he could have taken a chance on the key, but no he wouldnt, he wouldnt, an old fellow like that; to some he was a hero.

There was this upper-middle-class guy who was a genuine goody. Charles was his name. He may have been called after the English monarch. I did not know him personally and might have thought highly of him if I had. We shall never know. He was a boring individual in adult company but children suffered him and allowed him to join their games. On the whole his life was boring insofar as anyone’s life is boring. But I was serious when I said I regarded him highly.

This will have the mark of authenticity about it.

Charles had a full-time upper-middle-class type of job. At the same time he was a complete individual, a whole human being, figuratively. So too was Sian, his wife. Sian is an unusual name for a woman which was of additional interest to myself, as is the Gaelic tradition.

Charles and Sian shared an interest in the arts and were at ease in their own community. This appealed to me. She was of the middling-middle-class; a girl who, prior to the first pregnancy, held a responsible position in a local law firm. She would pick up her career where she had left off. Once her youngest child reached nursery-school age, she hoped. Sian was counting the months.

Theirs were decent children, neither stuck-up nor namby-pamby. They did not feel ill at ease if adults
were in the same room yet had their own little circle of friends. They made no attempt to dominate mixed-age companies. Charles was proud of that. He disliked children being pushed to the fore in adult society. He thought it demeaning.

Sian thought the same but in her it occasioned pangs of guilt. In a curious way she was proud of that guilt. Yet the guilt itself was a secret and she disliked secrets. One night she blurted it out to Charles. His only reply was a smile. Sian liked his smile. It was beautiful. Oddly it was their daughter who inherited the smile. Sian wished it were the boy. Their smile reminded her of her own father and she had never much cared for him, nor his memory.

Twice a year the family holidayed together. These were not unadventurous forays and were thoroughly enjoyed. So much so that Charles and Sian intended selling up and moving abroad to a similar destination if only they could wangle early retirement. Times had become tough but they did stand a chance. I am not sure if ever they did wangle it. We only heard about them from neighbours. Each time I saw these particular neighbours it was not only a reminder but a rejoinder. I was aware of Charles’s existence but was fortunate to have an independent circle of friends I could describe as ‘mine’ rather than ‘ours’.

I should have been working or else calling into the pub for a couple of pints before the last stretch home. I sometimes did that coming off the nightshift on Friday mornings. Even if I was working an overtime shift into Saturday, I still liked that Friday morning. There was a pub near the cross that opened for breakfast. A couple of us went in there. We did not stay long, an hour or so, three or four pints. The lasses were well away to school by the time I strolled home and Cath would be up and about, giving me looks.

Anyway, she had been asleep when I opened the door. So how come I was home like this? I saw the question. She was frowning and blinking at the alarm clock on the dressing table. Dont worry, I said, it’s no time to get up yet.

She turned her head from me, her eyes closed. She aye had difficulty getting out of bed. I had difficulty getting in it.

I leaned across to her, laying my hand on her thigh. She screwed up her eyes, gave a slight shudder instead of a smile then her exaggerated shiver; she should have had that copyrighted – or copywritten, whatever you say.

She lay further down, pulling over the quilt and snuggling in. I grinned. She was more awake now, squinting
at me which meant I was to speak. Explain yourself man! I might have smiled.

My presence at such an ungodly hour! I could only shrug and tell her the truth, an approximation to the truth. I had a fall-out with the gaffer, there was a bit of bother. Other women might have accepted that. Cath was not other women, and her silence continued. Are you going back to sleep? I said.

She ignored this. What does ‘ignored’ mean? I do not know. I have to be honest, I was rather weary. I sat down on the bedside chair and unknotted my shoelaces. Oh dear, the shoes. She hated me wearing shoes in the house, especially the bedroom, but anyplace where bare feet were liable to tread. Our lasses had pals and when they brought them into the house they forgot to tell them to take off their shoes. This drove Cath nuts. I did not blame her but it caused emotional mayhem in the highways and byways of our apartment. Then again the lasses did not like telling their pals to take off their shoes. It made them seem stupid, that was what they said. Oh mum nobody else does it.

I dont care what nobody else does.

But they tell people in school and they laugh at us!

I stayed out it. Domestic issues are an awkward reality. Very much so in our house.

What I was thinking was get my own shoes off and a quick wash and into bed. Tomorrow is a brand-new day. Except literally it was not. It was the exact same day as here and now. It was Friday morning and would be Friday dinnertime when I arose Sir Frederick, arise ye and walk the plank ere doom befall ye.

Man, what a life.

She lowered the quilt to beneath her boobs. I was about to say something further but the mammarian physicality beat me. I reached to hold her hand instead. But even that was off-putting. Cath’s hand is a really sort of pleasant thing, it is soft and warm. I always found it pleasing in an aesthetic way. I used to like drawing when I was a boy. I would have drawn her hand. Her fingers were long and seemed to taper, and then if she had a varnish on her nails. It just looked good. Had I been that way inclined I would have varnished my nails.

And what do I mean ‘that way inclined’! So now when I looked at her, with silly thoughts crossing my mind, I could only smile and this made her suspicious. So how are
you
doing? I said. Did
you
sleep?

She did not answer. I was suddenly tired, most tired, needing to stretch out beside her on the bed here and now, right here and now. I took off my second shoe but continued sitting there. And a song went through my mind. My little nephew sang it to me a week past and it went something like:

I’m so silly
silly silly silly.

Me and him sang it walking up and down the hallway like a pair of demented soldiers:

I’m so silly
silly silly silly.

I would like to have done it with the gaffer. That bastard. I would have goose-stepped him along the factory floor, Groucho Marx and Ginger Rogers:

I’m so silly
silly silly silly.

Aw well. And my neck. Interesting to note that I had developed a nervous condition on the right side of my neck; it entered spasms at the slightest emotional activity in one’s brainbox. All soldiers are demented. All professional ones anyway. Everytime I hear one talking I want to have their parents arrested for child abuse. I mean ordinary soldiers, not these upper-class fuckers who march them as to war.

I sighed, I was enjoying the seat. So: this was Cath I was talking to. Well well well.

The truth is me and her were incompatible. On occasion. Was this such an occasion! I guffawed inwardly, and needed to sneeze immediately, grabbed for a tissue from her side of the bed, and gave the snout a hearty blow. I think there is something wrong with my nose, I said.

Oh that is interesting, muttered one’s missis.

What is that new-fangled expression, ‘pear-shaped’? I think it might describe my life.

So what happens now? she said.

In what respect I thought but said nothing. What happens now? Worth pondering. What does ‘what’ mean? Even before getting to ‘now’ that statement was
beyond my intellectual capacity. ‘Happens’ is just a verb, which makes comprehension easy. With verbs concepts are straightforward, it is the actual doing that causes trouble, translating into action, getting from concept to movement.

Man, how many pints did I not have? This is the last time I would forgo my Friday-morning breakfast booze-up.

But I felt like a sandwich, a bit of toast or something.

Cath sighed. I sighed as well. But her sighs were significant. Mine were just sighs.

Fucked again I thought, but in what way? I did not answer the sigh lest incriminated. Except when Cath sighs one is required to answer. What is troubling you madame?

No, I did not say that. I did not, in nowise, say that. Fear. Not in so many words. Nor was I sure what to say. I got up from the chair and walked to the window, parted the curtains a little. Your Honour, I cannot deny that that is what occurred on the morning of the fourteenth.

Maybe she wanted a cup of teh. Her pronunciation of this aye reminded me of her grannie, a lass from Mayo whom I met and loved for one week in the merry month of July, during my courtship of the illustrious Catrine her granddaughter.

I was about to ask if she wanted a cup but she spoke first. Do you mean you have got the sack?

Of course not!

Of course not? Did I actually say that? What a fucking liar man! I would have burst out laughing except she was staring at me, staring me down. I had been about to look out the window. Now I felt like a total tube, like a naughty boy, I said, caught in the act. That is what I feel like.

So what is it? she said. What happened? Was it a fallout? What actually happened? Do you really mean you got the sack?

I smiled. You are some woman, telling you, the way ye say stuff.

So you have not been sacked?

Sacked! Even the word sounds strange to the ear, to my ear anyway. When the hell was I ever sacked? Have I ever been sacked? I cannot remember. I do not think I was ever sacked, not in my whole life.

‘Sacked’. There is something anti-human about that term. I do not care for it. Here you are as an adult human being, a thinking being to use the ppolitical terminology, and then you are to be ‘sacked’, this canvas bag is to be pulled over you, hiding you completely. None can see one. Then one is smuggled publicly from the place of one’s employment, in the erstwhile sense.

Sacked, I said, what a word!

Cath looked into my eyes with a steady gaze, her sparkling blue eyes shining as befits a latterday femme fatale, one who is given to ascertaining the thoughts of a mancub by return so to speak; in other words, as soon as one has the thoughts they are transcribed into her nut.

I hope this makes sense, I said, what happened apparently is that I was sacked.

She wanted further information. Her continued silence indicated that. The truth is she was an innocent. There are a lot of women like Cath. They know nothing. Cath knew nothing. She had never experienced the actuality of work. Genuine work. Jobs where things like ‘angry gaffer’ and ‘sack’ crop up regularly. In her whole life she had never worked in an ordinary hourly paid job. Office stuff was all she did. That was a thing about women, they were all middle-class. She knew nothing about real life, the kind of job where if ye told a gaffer to eff off you collect yer cards at the end of the week. That was power and that was powerlessness.

Would you like a slice of toast? I said.

She did not answer. Other matters were of moment, weightier than toast.

No they were not. Come on, I said, let us have a bit of toast, a cup of tea.

Cath studied me. This was no time for toast and tea. Life was too important. Seriously, I said, I am not powerless, I have it in me to act and here I am not so much acting as in action, I am making toast and tea.

Cath did not smile. My attitude is more being than assumption of such. She knows this and does not care for it. When we were winching, back in the good old days when choice was probable

I lost that train of thought.

Here is the reality: I was an ordinary worker. Power there is none. It did not matter I was a would-be author
on matters cultural, ppolitical and historical, to wit my life. None of that mattered. I existed in the world of ‘angry gaffers’, data such as ‘sack’ and other matters of fact.