Seahorses Are Real (18 page)

‘Too true,' the man was busily saying to the woman in a pinstripe suit. ‘They have six men now to do the work of twelve – that's how I did my back in. No one would help me lift the tyre. They were all too busy having their tea break.'

‘Oh dear.' The woman's eyes were completely glazed over and she flicked an invisible speck from her sleeve. She hadn't been out of work long, Marly thought. There was still too much of a clean sheen about her. Give her a few months and the suit would go, the heels would go, the highly coiffured hair would go and by next spring there would be nothing to show but dark roots and last year's wardrobe. And she would be glad, moreover, to talk to a man who'd done his back in lifting a tyre.

‘There aren't many people,' the man added mulishly, staring about at the empty desks in the review section. ‘They must be all on their tea breaks!' He glanced at his watch and tutted in exasperation as if he had an appointment. There was no appointment, Marly decided. It was simply the final act of defiance. There was nowhere to go and nothing to do but you didn't want to be held up nonetheless. It was like being kept waiting at the door of eternity – the good lord might be off doing the rounds of Jupiter, Neptune, up Uranus, playing chess with an archangel or toasting his crusts in the light of the moon; but you wanted him to get a wriggle on and open up so you could go through and sit blissfully on the other side of the door. She wondered whether her mother was sat waiting blissfully somewhere in Paradise, the way she'd waited in hospital waiting rooms to be led into smaller waiting rooms to wait to be led into smaller waiting rooms until at the end she got to a room where a doctor the size of a pea carved her up into missing nonentities. There was waiting and there was remembering and there seemed to be nothing much in between. Marly had waited most of her life though she wasn't quite sure what she'd been waiting for: waiting for life to begin, for death to end, for the bell to go, waiting for her favourite television show, to be rid of the wart on the end of her nose, for David to come home, in queues at desks, at checkouts, at interviews, in the early hours for the dawn to break, for the clock to strike midnight and she be transformed out of a pumpkin into something truly audaciously great or at the very least something reasonably okay (like the newspaper cutting about Mr Right. How you had to make do with Mr Reasonably Okay!) Living in a subjunctive case, in a future-perfect tense and speaking out of parentheses – like Michael effing Angelo who butted in on the phone from his easy chair like an old ram with lumbago. Waiting for the fanfare and the parades that had passed long ago or were still to come in a gleaming tomorrow, though Terry had said they were here right now in her ear this very minute if only she could hear them – silly fool, looking for leprechauns in Ireland of all places.... Why doncha just look in the mirror, mate. Save the trip!

‘Next please.' The voice sounded harsh and a little impatient and Marly almost stumbled over to the empty chair, past the poster of the girl with the biggest smile in Britain, having recently landed herself a job. Unbelievable! She dumped her rucksack down on the floor, pulled her chair close and smiled an innocuous smile at the woman with the bunched-up mushroom hair.

‘Have you got your card?'

‘Oh… yes… ' Marly scrambled about in her pocket, pulling out her mother's old shopping list, one of David's handkerchiefs and a few ancient receipts in the process, while the woman drummed her nails impatiently on the desk – they were red today and diamond-encrusted as though she'd fallen from the sky, scraping stars as she went. Marly stared at them a little aghast as she handed over the dog-eared card.

‘Have you contacted at least three employers in the last week?' the voice began in peremptory fashion. Most of the advisors had the grace to appear bored when they went through the list but the woman with the bunched-up mushroom hair did everything ‘most emphatically' by the book, jotting down ticks to Marly's answers and scrutinising her face as she did so.

‘Yes.' (Tick)

‘Have you visited the job centre at least twice in the last week?'

‘Yes.' (Tick, eagle-eyed look)

‘Have you consulted local, national and international magazines, journals and newspapers?'

‘Yes.' (Tick, sliding glance)

‘Have you sent your CV off to employers on spec concerning work?'

‘Yes.' (Tick)

‘Have you liaised with relatives and friends concerning work?'

‘Er no, not this week.' It was best to fake honesty at some point. Being superhuman wasn't entirely convincing or believable. The art of lying dictated that one or two threads of truth had occasionally to appear.

The woman's pen paused over the tick and her face went zing as if she'd stumbled on too much mustard in her ham sandwich or gobbled down a red-hot chilli too quickly. ‘You must leave no stone unturned,' she admonished, ‘in your search for employment. When you've been out of work as long as you have, you're eligible, briefly, for almost anything.'

‘No… er… yes,' Marly muttered vaguely. She was often quite vague in the job centre. At first it had been a ploy, a ruse – if they dismissed you they didn't notice you, if they didn't notice you they couldn't judge you – but now it was all too familiar a feeling to have a brain like a bowl of porridge – home-made, no treacle – and to take each thought day by day, step by apathetic step.

‘It says here the Limes never received an application from you.' The blood-red nails drummed like stars over the keyboard. ‘Nor did Argos... nor did the Crayford Nurseries: Roger Short, Manager of Shrubs, says he most emphatically did not receive an application from any M. Smart.'

‘Oh dear,' Marly replied with genuine sadness, though she knew quite well she'd never applied for any of them.

‘Do you have an explanation?' The woman's eyes almost seemed to be popping out of her head in disapproval and the mushroom bun was starting to wobble, ‘briefly, for why your forms did not arrive?'

Not briefly, thought Marly, staring blankly at her hands, her feet, the buses going round and round, the powdered creases in the woman's face. ‘The post is bad,' she mumbled at last. ‘Several things have gone astray. My father wrote to me once, I think, but it never arrived....' The girl smiled mockingly from her clean white poster and Marly's heart shrivelled up in her long dark raincoat.

‘I see.' The voice seemed to suggest that it wasn't born yesterday and didn't suffer fools gladly but something in Marly's face must have softened it a little for it changed tone and added almost kindly for once: ‘Would you like another form for the Limes – the post hasn't yet been filled.'

I bet it hasn't, Marly thought, galvanising herself in defiance. Nobody in their right mind would work for a psychiatric institution where old women flitted about like peculiarly faded ghosts in search of the parade and the man in furry slippers. ‘Okay,' she responded nevertheless (knowing better than to say no) taking the form and cramming it soullessly into her pocket.

‘We have another opportunity here,' the woman with the mushroom hair added brightly, obviously changing to her softly softly catchee monkey routine. ‘Softly softly catchee Marly,' David had whispered to her once, pushing a tendril behind her ear, ‘cos she's a little monkey!' ‘Cleaner required, part-time permanent. £4.20p/h. Previous experience of buffing machine an advantage.'

Buffing machine! Marly smiled weakly. It seemed the most likely thing in the world, the way the woman said it, to have experience of a buffing machine. ‘Okay,' she said again, nodding her head and watching the fingers race like stars over the keyboard, conjuring constellations of Orion, the plough and…

‘Ambient replenishment? Local supermarket. Must be a team player.'

…little bear scything round your Venus Colossus. Stacking shelves – she'd done it before in a downtown upmarket supermarket, ghosting out with a moonlit trolley piled high with Fairy liquid, loo roll, shampoos and dog biscuits, freezing her hands off in the freezer section and gunning prices onto tins of Pedigree Chum and pineapple chunks – before it was all computerised. It had been quite a satisfying job (though she hated shopping) like stocking up the larder, just her and her trolley up and down the rows and aisles and solemn little piles of groceries awaiting their fate....

‘That's all for now.' The woman's eyes were on the next ‘next please' and her mushroom bun bobbed a dismissal. Marly almost felt tempted to bow and salute the way Pegleg Pete did to the cars, waving his handkerchief like a magic trick; but she turned with her rucksack and marched to the door, past Bernie Mungo grinding his teeth beneath the bus video; and she imagined he probably thought that the buses would take him right the way over the warm and oily azure seas to the land of mangoes and coconut trees....

1
It was still raining outside and a howling gale was getting up (dishevelled, in his pyjamas, finding only burnt toast for breakfast), swirling grit into people's eyes and litter about the streets. Marly noticed the woman in the pinstripe suit crouching down beside the wall and talking into a mobile phone; she desperately tried to eavesdrop but all she could catch above the rain and howling wind was ‘New York' and ‘shopping trip'. ‘Bah!' she thought, pulling her hood close and taking refuge in some kind of crazy moral superiority, ‘What an egregious thing to do. Why doncha just shop right here in the precinct dear, save the trip!' She cut across by the Daisy launderette (Fresh as a daisy, that's our motto. We get things squeaky clean... blood, chocolate, stains, vomit. Have you heard our Daisy…) wondering why she felt so excluded. It wasn't that she wanted to be like the woman with her wretched suit and mobile phone… and then came the gaps and the buts... it was more the fact that the woman belonged to something or seemed to belong in any case whereas Marly belonged to nothing, not even herself. You had to belong to something. Everybody had to belong to something. Even the gentlemen and old ladies congregating in the shrubbery per diem for a whiskey mac and packet of nasturtium seeds belonged to the park, that bench, the rocks and the trees. She stared with vague unease at the people milling about her, splashing through puddles, putting up umbrellas; some stared back surprised or annoyed, some laughed at the scarf wrapped right around her neck. ‘It's not that cold,' a man shouted with a titter in his voice and she smiled back, glaring inside. ‘You judge on first appearance at your peril, my lad,' she muttered in her thoughts and in her father's voice, purple fingers winding up the grandfather clock in the attic. ‘You judge on first appearance at your peril, my lad!' You could stare and stare but it didn't get you anywhere; you couldn't see, really see, beneath the bright cagoules and pastel umbrellas, the layers of skin and layers of deception. The human being, in a single psyche, could contain the seeds of a beautiful flowering plant as well as the seeds of a killer. There were acres of room inside to pretend, to be, to live or to die, to count yourself a king or queen of infinite space, to be afraid, to be loyal, to be brave. An old man with a stick could be a war veteran, a tax dodger, cab driver or a burglar and you couldn't tell from the outside. The bodily form took on all manner of disguise; sometimes the body reflected the mind and sometimes it expressed what the mind denied – like the man who'd opened his mouth to scream at Gallipoli and couldn't shut it months later. Stuff lurking in the mind came out in the body, according to Terry. It was easy to scoff at Pegleg Pete saluting the cars or Waltzing Matilda feeding the ducks but how did you know what was going on on the inside? Inside he might be saluting his lost comrades, she feeding the five thousand. Pain made manifest, spilling out in little wiggles, odd behaviour, strange compulsions and disease. Marly had struggled to understand the half-choking language of her own body over the years, her body that had stopped at the doll's house; and no doubt her body had struggled to understand the half-choking language of her mind – but she didn't know which came first or what came where. All she knew was that she didn't belong to her mind or her body, that she was pared right the way down to the bone and somebody in her place was walking through the park, sitting down on the bench by the memorial for the dead, conducting this endless monologue in her head and wrapping the scarf right the way around her neck though it wasn't all that cold – the man was right – in an objective sense.

The grass had a flattened silvery quality and the leaves were brown where the river had left its mark. The flower garden looked quite wrecked – just one or two bright stems braving the rain and howling wind – she imagined the gardener's woebegone expression, standing in the falling rain, her arms full of dying flowers – and a couple of magpies croaking over a crisp packet, no doubt trying to spy the free gift inside: toy soldier, plastic ring, luxury break in the Bahamas for two, if only they could cram all their
objets d'art
in a single suitcase. Pigeons fluffed and coo'd underneath the library's eaves, deafening the silent readers trying to read in the silent reading room; the seagulls were nowhere in sight, having been seen off by the purple-necked Coo Crazy Clan, or pulled back to the angry waves by something stronger than tides or moon. Marly huddled inside her long dark coat on the soaking bench, feeling the rain drumming over her head. There was something reassuring about the rain; it gave you an excuse to go home and sip cocoa in front of your favourite television show, put your feet up, paint your nails, stoke the fire with chestnuts, glowing coals and melting marshmallows; it gave you an excuse to be a small insignificant self, to be pared right the way down to the bone because compared to the wind and the rain you were pretty small and insignificant.... Marly blinked and blew away the droplet of rain that always collected at the end of her nose, noticing out of the corner of her eye an old man and Labrador dog hobbling in her direction; she turned with sudden interest to the memorial for the dead, gazing at it with a feigned and abstract attention: somebody had hung a plimsole around the soldier's arm – it dangled like a peculiarly elegant handbag – and a fat black moustache had been scrawled above his lip. She wondered if it was the work of 9T9 Flake but she couldn't spot any trademark umbrellas depicted on the statue's torso; just knee-length leafen boots the river had left in its wake, giving him the air of some elfin warrior king – Elrond or Celeborn – about to descend on Lothlorien….