Stranger Still

by Marilyn Messik

  “Are you alright with all of this?” I said after a while. There was a silence, short, but still longer than I’d have preferred. “David?”

  “Thinking.”

  “Taking too long.”

  “You don’t want a knee-jerk response, do you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Well,” he said, “I have to say, this isn’t quite how I’d planned to start off but I knew what I was buying into,” he sighed theatrically, “any post-purchase issues, I’ve only myself to blame.” I sat back in my seat relieved. I hadn’t really expected him to say anything else, but life is full of surprises and I wasn’t sure I could deal with any more right now.

  “You’ll have to fill me in though?” he continued, “I got the gist but there were gaps and we’ve still got that ruddy book in the boot, shall I stop somewhere and bin it?”

  The bibliophile in me was horrified, “You’re kidding, right? It was a present.”

  “More of an experiment.”

  “I’ll sort it,” I said, “it was a bit of a shock, that’s all... and odd.” I wanted to shrug it off, didn’t want to talk about it. “Look, I’ve dealt with this sort of thing all my life, it will sort itself out, I’ll sort it out. As for the rest…” I paused, there was a fair amount to pass on, but it might not make much sense without its own back history.

  I opened my mouth to start, but what with getting married yesterday and all this morning’s goings-on, I was pretty much talked out. I’d done my best, told Rachael, and Glory too what I was feeling and been soundly sent about my business, there wasn’t much more I could do, but it was only polite to bring David up to speed, I thought I’d take a short cut and put it all straight in his head.

  I turned to see if he had any thoughts or questions. He was tight-lipped as he swung into a service station turn-off; bit unnecessary I thought, if our journey wasn’t going to be that long. He parked neatly between two large vans, turned off the engine and pulled the handbrake sharply to the max. When he does that, it means if I drive the car afterwards, I can’t let it off without two hands and a lot of welly, I started to mention this but he interrupted me.

  “Please don’t do that again,” he said.

  “What?”

  “That,” he touched his head.

  “Oh.” I paused, “I thought... I’m sorry.”

  “Just. Don’t.” I’d never heard that tone before and turned in the seat to face him, I didn’t need ESP to know this was not good. I could see I might have overestimated his definition of alright, and underestimated the impact of shoving an information load into the head of someone not expecting it.

  “Darling, I’m so sorry...” but he was out of the car before I’d finished.

  “I’m going for coffee.”

  “Shall I come?”

  “No. D’you want one?”

  “I’m fine thanks,” but he’d already gone and I wasn’t fine at all. I watched him stride across the crowded car park, he didn’t look back. I sighed; this whole married thing might be trickier than I’d imagined.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I returned from honeymoon a wiser woman, although not necessarily in ways I’d have expected. Salutary lessons had been learnt that perhaps should have been studied earlier, but they do say, don’t they, every marriage has boundaries and learning curves and whilst ours might have been more off-kilter and steeper than most, we’d talked things over and agreed we weren’t going to let that lead to any kind of serious derailment. I appreciated I needed to be a little more judicious and whilst not hiding anything - that wouldn’t be right - maybe in future, exercise a certain amount of discretion.

  An excellent opportunity to put this into practice had arisen a few days into our week in Dorset. It was later in the year, so not Summer-crowded, and with no particular agenda we simply enjoyed exploring, talking and ambling with plenty of refreshment stops. Mercifully, David proved as lazily disinclined as me to do much more, so whilst there were worthy sights aplenty, and we read up and set out with great enthusiasm, we had a shameful tendency to be distracted and seduced by any number of lovely little tea-shops along the way. By the time we’d got a substantial snack under our belts and strolled around the local craft shops, it was more often than not, time to head back to the hotel and put off the sightseeing for another day.

  One such afternoon, we’d set off with good intentions but had found ourselves a couple of hours later emerging happily from a tea-time refreshment stop, arguing whether it had been an unwise decision for us both to go for the coffee walnut cake - should we have boxed clever with one slice of that and one of lemon drizzle and thus doubled the taste benefit? As we walked slowly and contentedly back to where we’d parked the car, evening was drawing in and when we turned a corner; there was a rowdy group of teenagers walking ahead of us. Half a dozen boys and a couple of girls, taking the width of the pavement, were not bothering to move when an older woman with a chocolate-brown miniature poodle on a lead made to pass, she had to step off the pavement into the road, her head down, hurrying, clearly made uneasy by their noise and ostentatious lack of courtesy.

  As we moved aside to let her comfortably pass us, I smiled but she didn’t notice, too intent on getting home and shutting the door then locking it behind her. She was a maths teacher. She’d taught a couple of the boys in the group for several years, disciplining them as much as she could; watching naughtiness grow into nastiness. In the past, coming across them out of school, she’d have given them a sharpish piece of her mind for loutish behaviour and stood there, tapping an authoritative toe until they parted sheepishly before her. Not now though, things had happened, things had changed. She hoped, in the dusk, none of them had recognised her, they probably wouldn’t she reasoned, she had her rain hat on and had kept her head down and she despised herself dreadfully. She was scared of them now; she could be honest with herself, if with no-one else. She knew, once you began to feel like that there was no going back - the children smelt it on you. If she could manage on her pension, she’d have retired already.

  As woman and worry moved away, there were laughs and jeers from the boys, and then something else caught their attention, provoking shrieks of shock, horror and encouragement from the girls.

  “What are they up to?” David said and increased speed to catch up with them. I pulled back. I knew what they were up to. They were keying parked cars, deep vicious scores cutting along the sides of previously unmarked vehicles; they were three cars in and just starting on a black van.

  “Bloody hell, look at that, look what they’ve just done!” David had stopped at a red Morris Marina, defaced from boot to bonnet. “Oi,” he yelled, “you lot, yes you. What the hell d’you think you’re doing?” A rhetorical question if ever there was. The group, as one, turned towards us and I felt David’s justifiable anger abate a little as they started swaggering back. Individually they were just complexion challenged teenagers, collectively they were something else.

  “Oooh, I beg yooour paaardon,” one of the two keyers mimicked and David, who was suddenly thinking less public-spiritedly and more along personal safety lines, muttered, “stay behind me, I’ll deal with this,” and I loved him for that. “Look at the damage you’ve done,” he said, “what’s the point, what is the point?” He was standing his ground, but if he thought anybody was going to clap hand to mouth in guilt and fear at being brought to book by a mild-mannered, Jewish journalist, he was sorely mistaken.

  “Derek, you gonna let ’im talk to you like that?” One of the mini-skirted girls who’d hit the pan stick make-up far too hard – under the just-lit street lights she looked terminally anaemic - moved up alongside and Derek, who hated his name above all things and insisted his mates called him Storm, cursed, curled a lip and let his cigarette drop. He was planning on grinding it out menacingly without looking as per John Thaw on The Sweeney. Inconveniently, the still glowing butt rolled off the pavement into the gutter leaving him nothing to be menacing with and, as a giggle from Pan Stick a
nd her friend confirmed, looking a little silly as he felt around with a winkle-pickered toe.

  In my experience, if there’s one thing above all else that precipitates violence, it’s looking silly, because then there’s a lot of lost ground to make up. This occasion was no exception to the rule, and what should and would have stopped with a sneer and some rude words, turned into a move, which I believe surprised the kicker as much as the kicked. He caught David just under the kneecap with one of those viciously toed shoes. David yelped in pain and anger and I got cross.

  I moved out from behind my husband and looked at Derek. His eyes widened instantly and he staggered back and shrieked. Pan Stick and company were baffled for only a few seconds, before they too saw what he saw. Not me moving towards them, but a six-foot scarecrow - we’d commented on one in a field earlier that day, hence the inspiration. This scarecrow though had wide, amber flaming eyes, a mouthful of sharpened teeth, a cheerful grin and welcoming arms with extraordinarily large straw hands flexing, stretching, reaching.

  It became apparent almost immediately, that nobody was planning on hanging about much longer. Chorusing shrieks and energetically elbowing each other out the way, they turned tail and ran, putting on I guessed, far more speed than had ever been displayed on school sports days. I thought it might be a while before any of them felt like doing damage to anyone else’s car - or knee, come to that.

  David limped forward and put a protective arm around me, “Don’t worry, we’re OK, I think I’ve seen them off.”

  “Oh, thank goodness.” I said, maybe I overdid it because he paused,

  “You didn’t do anything did you?”

  “You told me not to,” I said. I like to stick to the truth where possible, “Anyway look,” crossing the road and heading our way was the comfortably solid, long arm of the law.

  “Evening,” he touched forefinger to helmet, “everything all right here, Sir?” he frowned as he saw the damage on the car we were standing by, “yours?”

  David shook his head, “No. There was a gang of kids – I scared them off.”

  “Probably one of them Grundy twins; need a good sound clip round the ear regular, both of ‘em.” He shook his head, “Bad lot that family, best go round see ’em again.” He extracted a notebook, licked the pencil, noted the car number and touching forefinger to helmet again moved off, “Mind how you go now.”

  “I think we just met Dixon of you know where,” I grinned, “and you didn’t tell him about your knee.”

  David shrugged, “No point, anyway that kid’s learnt his lesson, scared stiff, you saw the way he made off.” I nodded; Derek aka Storm, had indeed been somewhat disconcerted by the turn events had taken. David took my hand and we strolled slowly back to the car.

  * * * *

  While we were away, we’d discussed and made a few policy decisions regarding Rachael’s assumption that I’d carry on ‘listening’ and reporting on any shrieks for help that came my way. After all, I argued, it wasn’t a question of actively doing anything, well not really, simply a question of awareness and it was generally only the most fraught of situations which called my attention, and those I wouldn’t and couldn’t ignore. But, I earnestly assured David, alerting Boris was the extent of my future action plan.

  I was still deeply distressed about Ruth, and the same agitated apprehension recurred whenever I thought about her, but I‘d been given unmistakeable marching orders. If the combined power of the others was bent on solving a problem of which they were all aware, there was almost certainly little I could contribute, and truth to tell, I so much wanted what I now had, normality. I’d had it up to my eyes with life and death stuff, I wanted my biggest decisions to be whether we could afford to change the tiles in our bathroom.

  David had sold his flat which together with savings enabled us to get a two-bedroom, ground floor maisonette in Edgware with which we were delighted, despite some of the unorthodox style decisions of the previous owner, Jonathan ‘call me Jonty, everyone does’. I understood on our first visit to view that Jonty, who wouldn’t see either fifty or his waist again, still felt he was a charming young scoundrel, living life on the edge which may have influenced his choice of a mirrored ceiling in the bedroom. If I ever wanted to change careers, David pointed out when we’d looked, left and decided to put in an immediate offer, I’d have been a runaway success in the property market because whilst I knew the price Jonty was asking, I also knew to the last pound what he’d be perfectly happy to accept.

  We’d taken possession a month before the wedding and plunged into a frenzied decorating exercise to save money. We weren’t very good at it. Having purchased some ridiculously expensive, highly fashionable grass paper with a leaf motif, we pasted it enthusiastically onto our lounge walls upside down. Our error didn’t come to light until I happened to look at the illustration on one of the wrappings. Still, it looked fine and we agreed that to hang the last roll the correct way would be bolting the stable door after the horse had long gone. We decided nobody would ever notice and if they did, wouldn’t be tactless enough to mention. We were wrong; although it actually wasn’t the first thing my mother-in-law said when they first came over to see our new home. She was taken aback by the lack of a third bedroom.

  “But it would have given you so much more space,” she said, I was about to exclaim how silly we’d been not to have thought about that, but David frowned, demonstrating as he sometimes did, an uncanny ability to read my thoughts more easily than I read everyone else’s. He put his arm around Laura’s shoulder and pointed out that another bedroom would have taken us way over our limited budget.

  “Never mind darling,” she patted his arm and reached up to remove a blob of wallpaper paste from his cheek, “it’s lovely anyway – a delightful little home and I know you’ll be happy here,” then belatedly remembering, “you too Stella.” She smiled at me but I knew she was still deeply puzzled as to how I’d turned so swiftly from driver to daughter-in-law. “Melvyn,” she prompted, “new home gift?” My father-in-law, of whom I’d grown very fond, had a tendency to drift away into his own thoughts if he wasn’t actually speaking or being spoken to. He came back with a start and handed over an elegant and excitingly wrapped and bowed item which turned out to be an apron, a pair of oven gloves and a toilet brush and holder. “The sort of practical gift, nobody ever thinks to buy you,” said Laura as I thanked her enthusiastically, showing my appreciation by immediately placing the toilet brush in situ.

  It was Melvyn I’d initially met, when he’d engaged the services of Simple Solutions to ferry Laura around. Both she and the car, at that time, were recovering from a ‘small prang’ and he was uneasy about her getting behind a wheel again until she’d ‘calmed down’. Meeting her, I didn’t think calming down was likely to occur any time in the near future and nothing I’d seen since had persuaded me otherwise, but I’d been and still was, fascinated by Melvyn’s distinctive voice; mellow and smoothly soothing, a shoo-in for a Cadbury’s voiceover. It immediately led you to believe that here was a man who could competently deal with anything and everything life might chuck his way, although this turned out, as do so many things, not to be the case at all.

  They departed shortly afterwards, earlier than planned because Laura had a ‘head’ and I was just congratulating myself we’d got away with the wallpaper when she laid a hand on my arm;

  “Word to the wise dear,” she said, “‘next time you want some wallpapering done, perhaps best get a man in, but not to worry, I’m sure nobody will notice.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Although I’d only been out of the office for a couple of weeks, when I went back I was immediately plunged into a bit of a crisis. I’d paused to pull my sleeve over my hand so I could polish up the rather classy brass nameplate I’d had mounted on the wall to the right of the front door: SIMPLE SOLUTIONS to PRACTICAL PROBLEMS.

  I’d set up the agency nearly three years ago, when I’d come to the conclusion I was never going to make good em
ployee material. Our offices were above a travel agent in Hendon’s Brent Street and we’d expanded from our initial two rooms into four, taking over what Martin, our landlord, had previously been using as storage space for brochures, stationery and a vast disassembled model railway he’d years ago inherited from an uncle.

  My team had expanded; Aunt Kitty was still doing the bookkeeping and credit control, coming in now on an ad hoc basis - although generally not so much when we needed her, as when she fancied we did, and Brenda had moved with stately precision to take up any slack. Brenda was the first official staff member I’d taken on and I’d done it on the basis of immediate liking, although employing a secretary who hadn’t seen hide nor hair of a typewriter in over twenty-five years might have seemed to be overlooking the obvious, but Brenda adapted gleefully to our electric models despite, for the first few months, automatically utilising a brisk left hand for the non-existent carriage return.

  There had been, in the early days, something of a power struggle between Brenda and Kitty, who both put in considerable effort when it came to out-bossing and re-organising the other but time, circumstance and some alarming experiences had smoothed any rough edges, and somehow and I’ve no idea quite how, Brenda had become so much an honorary family member that none of us would have dreamt of not including her in any group gathering. Trudie and Ruby joined us when we took the extra office rooms, although neither Kitty nor Brenda saw eye to eye with me on the new appointees and individually took me aside to voice views which for once, were totally in accord. ‘Mark their word’ they said, ‘those new girls wouldn’t last’.

  Trudie was a mother of five, given to wearing long, peasant style skirts which were constantly tripping her on the stairs. Trudie, like Brenda hadn’t worked for years, not since the children started arriving thick and fast. But it seemed to me that anyone who competently ran a home, husband and five children, must have a mind for logistics, a tendency not to panic in a crisis and a willingness and ability to tackle the totally unexpected.