Olivia’s Luck (2000)

by Catherine Alliot

  Catherine Alliot

  Olivia’s Luck

  2000

  When Olivia’s husband Johnny announces, “I don’t care what colour you paint the hall, I’m leaving,” Olivia is understandably devastated. Left with an eccentric troop of builders camping in her back garden, a ten-year-old daughter with ‘attitude’ and a neurotic neighbour intent on foisting cast-off men in her direction, Olivia’s dream home is suddenly less than dreamy.

  Will Johnny ever come back, and if he doesn’t, will her luck ever change?

  1

  Alf regarded me with his one good eye. It was brown and troubled and beginning to look as glassy as the other one. He frowned as he tried to make sense of it all.

  “What – you mean he’s left you, like?”

  “That’s it, Alf.”

  “For good? Scarpered?”

  “So it appears.”

  He struggled with this conundrum. “And – and so what, ain’t he never coming back then?”

  I caught my breath at the brutality of my husband’s plan laid bare, swallowed hard. “No, Alf, apparently not. Total desertion does indeed seem to be his overall game plan.” I raised my chin and somehow cranked up a smile.

  Alf continued to look mystified. He scratched his grizzled old head, and then the penny – slow to drop at the best of times – began its gradual descent. It finally fell with a deafening clunk.

  “Well, bugger me,” he gaped, stunned.

  I licked my lips. “Quite.”

  Leaving him to his open-mouthed astonishment, I turned briskly to my other two builders, who, thus far, had been silent throughout this gnomic exchange, though more, I suspected, from pity and embarrassment than lack of comprehension.

  Alf’s brother, Mac, the foreman, the boss-man, and the brains of the team, was watching me closely, his blue eyes assessing this dramatic shift in situation, whilst Spiro, the emotional young Greek in my incongruous masonry trio, was having trouble keeping his jaw from wobbling. His black, mournful moustache drooped low and his dark eyes were filling ominously, but then, if you told Spiro it looked like rain he tended to reach for his hanky.

  “He leave you?” he spluttered incredulously. “Your husband leave you? Alone, here, with a young child and a dreadful falling-down house and bad drains and rats and peeling walls and – ” his eyes grew wide as he regarded me with horror – “looking so terrible?”

  “The house, I hope, not me, Spiro,” I quipped nervously.

  He frowned. “Ti?”

  “Um, no, never mind. Yes, well, of course, you’re right, the house is in a terrible state but then we’re bang in the middle of rewiring and replumbing, aren’t we?” I said brightly. “We’re stripping it all back, Spiro, laying it bare, getting back to the bones. It’s bound to look worse before it looks better, but once it’s gutted – ”

  “‘You’re gutted!” he roared. “I’m gutted! I cannot believe what sort of a man do this to you! What sort of – of an animal!” With that he snatched his tea-cosy hat from his head and, with a great wail, buried his face in it. I had a sudden urge to snatch it from him and do exactly the same. Instead I patted his shoulder.

  “Come on now, Spiro,” I muttered. “You’re sweet but, well, it’s not as bad as all that. It’s going to be fine, honestly.” I waited while he composed himself, blowing his nose violently into his hat and then plonking it back on his head at an unusual angle. His dark eyes blazed.

  “All men are bastards,” he informed me unequivocally, shaking his finger furiously. “‘All men.”

  Well, I wasn’t going to argue with that. In fact I rather approved of his fixed-bayonet relish. Perhaps we could both pull on our snotty hats and go and kill the bastards together. Spiro’s blood was certainly fiery, and when it was up, it was hot.

  Mac, meanwhile, was clearing his throat ostentatiously. He spat dexterously on to the concrete beside him.

  “So you’ll be giving all this up then, will you, luv?”

  I straightened up to my working foreman, ever the pragmatist, ever the one to get straight to the point, and met his bright blue eyes defiantly. He wasn’t much bigger than me, fiftyish, tiny, spry and, unlike his bear-like brother, Alf, very switched on, very sharp.

  “How d’you mean, Mac?”

  “Well, now that it’s all gone pear-shaped you’re not gonna want to carry on, are you? You’re not gonna want to cope wiv all this malarkey just for yourself and Claudes, are you?”

  He jerked his head dismissively at the building site around us: the excuse for the kitchen where we were standing, with its open rafters covered by a flapping blue tarpaulin; the soggy concrete at our feet; the rotten sash windows with their broken cords; the sixties-style Formica units – half of which had been ripped from the walls, the rest still clinging on tenaciously – and finally, the huge gaping hole in the back wall, to which Spiro, on hearing that Greece had been knocked out of the World Cup, had accidentally taken a sledgehammer, and then been so mortified none of us had had the heart to berate him. Yes, this ‘malarkey’ that was my home.

  I cleared my throat. “Actually, Mac, that’s exactly why I’ve asked you all to take a break and down tools for a minute. You see, the thing is, I fully intend to go on.” I drew myself up to my full five foot three and tucked my short dark hair meticulously behind my ears, struggling to look braver than I felt. “Fully intend. The mere fact that my husband has seen fit to abscond is neither here nor there, because as far as I’m concerned, we’re going on as planned. We’re going to finish the kitchen, get all these units out, replaster the walls, put the new cupboards in, get the wooden floor laid, replace all the rotten windows and then, when we’ve finished that, we’re going to start on the upstairs, OK?”

  “She so brave,” whispered Spiro in a choked voice, woolly hat back to mouth. I couldn’t look at him. I raised my chin, suddenly feeling a bit Churchillian.

  “Give up?” I warbled. “Good heavens, no. I took on this tip of a house with the sole intention of restoring it to its former glory, and that’s still very much the plan, very much my dream.” Crikey, I was Martin Luther King now, but there was no stopping me. “And I’m not going to skimp either,” I warned, swelling my oratory to a preacherly roundness. “I don’t want you to rush things and cut corners just to get it finished any old how so I can flog it, because I’m not going to flog it! I’m going to live in it, and I’m going to live in it for a very long time, and – and if I feel having Rococo in the bathroom or…or – I don’t know…” I cast about wildly, “gilding in the guest room, or gazebos in the garden, I’ll jolly well have it. As far as I’m concerned this is still a for ever house and I want it done properly. I want to match up the old panelling, do the picture rails, the dados, and doodahs, and whatnots, the whole blinking shooting match. The master bedroom needs a complete makeover, a total rethink – ” I broke off as, to my horror, my voice wobbled at the mention of this.

  Around me, there was a bit of embarrassed scuffing of toes in the dirt and faces turned to the floor. A moment later I’d regained my composure. I swallowed hard.

  “Listen, boys, I’ll level with you,” I said quietly. “I wanted to put you in the picture because I know there’s been talk,” I eyed Mac beadily here, “and I know you’ve all been wondering where the hell ‘the guv’nor’ is. Well, frankly, I’m fresh out of ideas. I’m right out of management buy-out courses he might be on, or corporate finance lectures he might be attending, or – or weekend golf tournaments that seem to go on all week, and squash matches and – oh God, I’m just sick to the back teeth of having to lie. Constantly. To you, to my friends, to everyone at Claudia’s school. In fact if you must know, I feel like renting a ruddy great billboard and pitching it outside the front g
ate with – “MY HUSBAND’S LEFT ME, OK?” plastered all over it.”

  There was a short and sympathetic silence. Then Mac spat in his dirty hand and, ever the gentleman, wiped it on his trousers. I had a nasty feeling that hand was coming my way for a warm, supportive shake so I braced myself, had mine at the ready. He stuffed it in his pocket.

  “What about the moolah then, luv?”

  I blinked. “Sorry?”

  “The dough, the money.”

  “I’m not with you, Mac.”

  “Well, I hate to seem heartless, but this place is costing you an arm and a leg, and if he’s done a runner and we’re gonna go on wiv the work as planned, we need to be clear that at the end of the day, we’re gonna get paid. That everyfing’s sorted.” He raised his eyebrows and gave me a wry, quizzical smile. “Know what I mean?”

  “I know exactly what you mean, Mac,” I said smoothly, “and I understand your concerns, but believe me, you’ve got no worries on that score. My husband might have seen fit to remove himself physically, but financially, I’m OK. Huge and guilty contributions are still being paid regularly into the Privy Purse – which no doubt assuages his conscience – so money is not a problem. You will be paid.”

  “At the end of ev – ”

  “At the end of every working week.”

  “In the usual – ”

  “In the usual, mutually acceptable manner of folding readies in a big brown envelope – yes, Mac, business as usual.”

  Mac pursed his lips thoughtfully. Then he smiled. It was a slow illumination. He turned to his workforce.

  “I suppose we’ll have to say that that’s all right then, won’t we, boys?” He raised his eyes to his towering older brother, who, whilst higher up in the vertical scale, was lower down the evolutionary one, where thought processes were slow.

  “You mean,” he said at last, glass eye flashing in bewilderment, “you mean we’re not gonna get paid, like?”

  “No, you dozy prat, we are gonna get paid, that’s what she’s just bin saying!”

  “Has she? Oh. Oh well, yeah. Yeah, that’s all right then.” He scratched his head, still mystified.

  Mac nodded. “Zorba?”

  “I would work for you for nothing,” hissed the young Greek passionately. “I consider it an insult to be asked. On my honour I would feenish the job with my dying breath. I curse the Meester McFarllen who has done this to you. I speet on his mother’s grave and his grandmother’s grave and then I speet – ” he demonstrated with a flash of saliva to concrete – “on his crotch. May it be sore and blistered, may his piles hang like grapes, may his backside gush like a donkey’s, may – ”

  “Oh, thank you, Spiro,” I broke in breathlessly. “That’s so – so supportive of you! So spirited!” Heavens, if I didn’t cut him off in mid curse he’d be impaling himself on his plumbing rods next, kamikaze style.

  He seized my arm and brought his face very close to mine. “I want you to know that I will toil sweat and blood for you, Meesis McFarllen. But him – ” he curled his lip scornfully and I tried not to flinch as I felt his whiskers, “pericolor testatosis!” he finished emphatically.

  “Well quite,” I murmured, backing away. “Um, thank you, Spiro.”

  As I surreptitiously wiped some spittle from my face I wondered what the devil that was all about. I was pretty sure the ‘testatosis’ bit wasn’t particularly polite, though. Young Spiro had his fair share of earthy directness and only the other day he offered to show me his little stiffy. I hadn’t like the sound of it at all but, being too polite to say no, was just preparing to faint nonchalantly, when I realised he was reaching into his jeans pocket for a crumpled photograph. Stiffy, it transpired, short for Stiffano, was his baby son; six months old, almond-eyed and adorable – or at least I thought so, so relieved was I to see him. I sighed. Actually, I couldn’t help thinking a bit more honour and crotch speeting wouldn’t go amiss amongst the jobs-worthy Englishmen.

  “We’ll get on wiv it then, shall we, luv?” said Mac kindly, as if reading my mind. “Get back to work, like?”

  “Please, Mac,” I smiled gratefully, but I also knew that this was my cue to leave. Now that the delicate little matter of the money had been ‘sorted’, the interview was over as far as Mac was concerned. No worries, just so long as they all got paid.

  As I left them to it and moved on through to the hall, I couldn’t resist turning back for a moment, watching them unobserved. “Getting on wiv it” in Mac’s book merely meant that the morning’s work was over and that the lunch ritual was about to begin. At five past twelve it wasn’t worth picking up tools again, and anyway, the table had to be laid. To this end, Alf was lumbering across the concrete floor in search of a milk crate for them to gather round, and various boxes to sit on. He carried this furniture back heavily, seeming always to veer slightly to the left pursued by the rest of his body, then set it all decoratively in the middle of the room, his mouth taut with concentration.

  Mac, meanwhile, pale, sinewy, and dressed for this sweltering weather in a vest and navy-blue shorts, his marble-white legs hairless, and looking nothing like the powerhouse he really was, was attending to the more domestic side of things. Bending down to gather filthy mugs from the floor, he reached also for the broken Pils can that served as the sugar bowl and plonked in a couple of sugar-encrusted spoons. Then he swilled the milk around in its cheesy carton, before plugging in the kettle and preparing to be ‘Mum’.

  Only Spiro, I observed gratefully – who was only in this country in order to earn himself enough money to return to his remote Ionian island, build himself a house, install his young family and set himself up as the local master builder – was still bristling with righteous indignation. Standing alone and ramrod straight, he flicked out a Rothmans, lit up, and puffed away furiously, too distracted to eat or drink.

  Alf and Mac, of course, had no such qualms. They lowered their backsides slowly to their wooden boxes, Alf gave a great ceremonial belch in lieu of grace, and then they were off, tucking into their usual fishpaste sandwiches and PG Tips with relish. To be fair, in between mouthfuls, there was a degree of deliberation on the downfall of my marriage, and even some pondering on man’s inhumanity to woman.

  “Bastard.”

  “Yeah.”

  “S not on.”

  “S right.”

  “Not wiv a kiddie.”

  “Nah.”

  “Pot Noodle?”

  “Yeah, go on then.”

  Oh no, they weren’t completely heartless.

  I took one last look at the happy domestic scene unfolding under the flapping blue tarpaulin, which, crackling in the sunshine, cast a light like some subterranean swimming pool, then turned and went on through to the hall.

  “Mind you,” Alf’s muffled tones stopped me again, “s not gonna be easy for her, is it? I mean – how old d’you reckon she is?”

  I didn’t hear the entirety of Mac’s response, but enough to suggest that had I been a chicken, it certainly wouldn’t be springtime. Clenching my fists and swallowing hard I passed by the front door, stopped at the loo, opened the door, and pausing only to take the briefest of glances at my bloodless reflection in the mirror, turned to the lavatory pan and threw up.

  2

  I’d been testing some Crown Matchpots in the front hall when Johnny had announced his intentions.

  There I was, behind the front door, painting away merrily above the skirting boards, when I heard the garden gate go, heard his familiar footsteps up the gravel path. Knowing instinctively that hot foot from his evening commute, from the human lasagna of the City trains, he’d be tired, bad-tempered and in need of a drink, I knew better than to smile brightly and enquire, “Good day, darling?” to which he’d probably snap irritably, “Tedious, thank you,” and instead, sat back on my heels and arranged my expression into one of amused contemplation. As his head came round the door, I looked up with a wry smile.

  “You know, anyone would think they aim these paint
s at the dirty-mac brigade,” I said, holding up my two little pots. “You have a choice here, my darling,” I waggled them at him, “Beaver or Muff!”

  I grinned, enjoying my little joke and waiting for him to laugh, but as he stared back I noticed his face was very pale, his lips tight.

  “I don’t care what colour you paint the sodding hall,” he muttered. “I’m leaving.”

  And so saying, he pushed past me and on up the stairs, at which point I do recall that I at least managed to say – in a voice fully intended to travel – “Beaver it is then!” Knowing full well he’d prefer Muff.

  Yes, that was how my husband left me. Those were the very special words with which he chose to end our marriage. I remember sitting there with my paintbrush in my hand thinking – in a shocked and stunned sort of way – that you had to hand it to Johnny. Not for him the usual garbage departing husbands give about needing to find themselves and having room to breathe, blah, blah, blah. No, his was very much in the Rhett Butler school of departure, because frankly, my dear – I paused. Except that, no, that wasn’t true either. Up until recently he had given a damn. Up until five months ago to be precise, and for the last five months I’d certainly seen this coming but, in the same way as one sees the articulated lorry hurtling round the corner, it’s still quite a shock when it hits you.

  Functioning on automatic I dipped my brush conscientiously into the turps to stop it drying out, then rested my head back against the wall and shut my eyes tight. Squeezed the life out of them, in fact. For a while there I couldn’t move, but I knew I had to, because, after all, he was only upstairs packing a suitcase, and in a few minutes’ time he’d be pounding downstairs again before exiting through the front door, and I surely didn’t want to be the stepped-over wife, as well as the passed-over one, did I?

  Somehow I eased myself up and stumbled blindly towards our tiny makeshift kitchen. Originally I think it had been the old scullery, but now it just housed an ancient Baby Belling stove, a small sink I’d found in a junk yard and a mini fridge, a temporary arrangement all cobbled together any old how because, after all, we were only using it until our splendid new kitchen was finished. In the middle was a small pine table. I sat down shakily, resting my elbows and clasping my hands together, almost in an attitude of prayer. I listened. Upstairs, drawers were shooting in and out with a vengeance, coat hangers were clanking and the wardrobe slammed shut – wham bang – all sounds of a speedy exit. As I reached for a cigarette I noticed my hand was shaking. I shut my eyes again, and his pale, tight-lipped face swam to mind. Chin jutting out, that hard, impenetrable look in his eye – now where had I seen that look recently…?