Civvy Street

by Fiona Field

  Wearily, she hauled herself out of bed, grabbed her dressing gown and went to wake the girls. Katie’s room, when she opened the door and stuck her head around it with as cheerful a ‘Wake up, Katie, dear,’ as she could muster, was a total tip. Katie didn’t acknowledge the call so Susie tiptoed her way as best she could across the floor to the window and drew back the curtains. Not that it made much difference; it was only just getting light and the relentless rain and low cloud seemed to negate any effort the sun might have been trying to make.

  ‘Come on, Katie. Wakey, wakey.’ Susie shook Katie’s shoulder hidden under the duvet.

  ‘Gerroff,’ was the response.

  ‘It’s seven thirty. Time to get up.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’

  Susie gave up and went across the landing to her sister’s room where a similar scene was played out. As Susie was heading back across the messy floor something crunched under foot. Bugger, what had she trodden on? She hoped, as she scrabbled through the layer of discarded clothes, that it wasn’t anything important – or precious. And under a school sweatshirt she found a packet of cigarettes.

  Susie sagged. So was this why they were so keen to high-tail it out of the house every evening and meet their friends? Smoking? As if this family hadn’t had enough trouble with addictions without the girls adding smoking to the list. And the penny dropped as to why, for the last week or so, the girls raced upstairs to get changed as soon as they got back in again – they knew that their clothes would reek and the excuse that they’d been to a house where the parents smoked would wear a bit thin with constant use. Oh, for fuck’s sake, she thought angrily. She slipped the carton into her dressing gown pocket and went back to her room wondering how they could afford them and how they managed to obtain them. Jeez, as if she didn’t have enough on her plate and this was going to mean another row – a row that would have to wait until Mike got home.

  Then she remembered that she was angry with him too. Bollocks, first him and now the twins. What the hell was wrong with her sodding family? She felt close to tears of self-pity as she began to get ready for the day. What had she done to deserve this? she asked herself as she stepped into the shower. But she knew the answer to that. She and Mike hadn’t exactly been shining examples to their children and their problems had probably tipped the balance against them when the redundancy notices had been handed out. As she lathered her body with shower gel she wished – pointlessly, she knew – that she could turn back the clock. Well, she couldn’t, and now she’d just have to make the most of this shit-awful situation.

  *

  In the Red Lion, Mike was coming round. He groaned as he forced his eyes to open. For a second or two his situation made no sense and then slowly bits and bobs of memory kicked in; office drinks, his plan, his phone call to Susie. He lay on the bed contemplating what he’d done and wondering quite how much he’d drunk. Outside his room, in the street, he heard a car horn toot and the deep throbbing purr of an idling bus engine. Shit, what was the time? He reached out to fumble on the bedside table for his watch and felt his hand connect with a glass which tipped over, soaking his hand with liquid. The smell of whisky assaulted his nostrils. He flicked the drops off his skin and sat up. For the second time in as many minutes he felt bewildered. He wasn’t under the covers, but fully clad in slacks, shirt, tie, sports jacket... the full works, lying on top of the bed. And now the cuff of his shirt and jacket were soaked in Scotch. He pulled back the sleeve of his jacket and stared at his watch. Eight thirty? Shit a brick.

  Suddenly wide awake he tumbled off the bed and caught sight of himself in the full-length mirror on the wardrobe door. Horrified, he stared at his reflection. He looked like an unmade bed. His trousers and jacket were creased and rumpled, his eyes bloodshot, his hair tousled and that, together with a five-o’clock shadow, made him look like some sort of tramp. He dashed into the bathroom and grabbed the razor and travel-sized can of shaving foam he’d had the foresight to buy the previous day, before he’d checked into the hotel. Quickly he stripped off his jacket, shirt and tie and then lathered his chin and had a rapid shave. He damped his hands under the tap and smoothed his hair down. There was, he thought, a lot to be said for a short back and sides; not much styling required to make it look half decent. He replaced his shirt and tie, tucking his shirt in firmly to his trousers which straightened out some of the creases. Finally he put on his jacket. He stared at himself critically in the mirror. It was an improvement but he still looked pretty terrible. It’d have to do. Furthermore, he had to hope that the fresh air on his walk from the hotel to the council offices would dissipate the smell of Scotch from the sleeve of his jacket.

  Feeling considerably below par, Mike went downstairs, paid his bill at the reception desk and set off through the crowded rush-hour streets to the modern block housing Winterspring District Council offices. Predictably, of course, it was pissing with rain when he left the hotel. Now he was going to be unkempt and bedraggled when he arrived at work. But he had to hope that having a soaking jacket might explain away the creases. And another bonus was that the rain might help wash the smell of alcohol out of the fabric. Maybe, he thought as he trudged along the sodden streets, the rain on this occasion was a good thing.

  He arrived and swiped in through the front door just a few minutes after nine; certainly, he thought with relief, not late enough to cause any comment. Taking the stairs rather than the lift – he was wary of being trapped in a confined space with a work colleague in case the smell of whisky still hung around him – he made his way as swiftly as possible to his workstation, took his jacket off and hung it up on the hanger he kept in his filing cabinet for such occasions – got his head down and began to work. Behind him he could hear a rhythmical pat... pat... as the water dripped out of his jacket and onto the thin carpet. Maybe the wet and the warmth of the office would allow the creases to drop out. And if they didn’t he could explain getting soaked as the reason for the state of his clothing if Susie asked when he got home that night. All in all, Mike felt as if he’d got away with his excesses of the night before.

  The office, he noted thankfully, was pretty quiet. Maybe he wasn’t the only worker who was feeling the effect of the previous night. Thank God it was Friday and he could go home later in the day and collapse till Monday. As it was, he thought that today was going to be a struggle. And he was proved right – by eleven he was starting to flag, big time, so he got up and went to the hot drinks dispenser in the corner of the office to get himself a coffee. He rarely used the machine because the drinks it produced were generally awful but today he needed the caffeine boost. He noted that his jacket was still looking rumpled but was almost dry and, glancing at his reflection in the office window, he reckoned he looked better, much better than he deserved, considering he’d spent the night in his clothes.

  When he got back to his desk his phone was ringing.

  ‘Collins,’ he said into the receiver as he answered it, still standing.

  ‘Mike.’ He recognised Susie’s voice instantly. ‘Good, you’ve sobered up.’

  ‘I... I don’t know what you mean,’ he said, defensively.

  There was a short silence, then, ‘Look, I don’t have the time or the inclination to argue the toss, but you will be home tonight, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course. I would have been home last night except the car went kaput and I had to get it fixed.’

  ‘And has it been?’ The scepticism in her voice was clearly evident.

  Mike played it cool. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t been down to see if the RAC has been out to it yet.’

  ‘Oh? I thought it was the AA that you’d called out.’

  Shit, had he said AA last night? He couldn’t remember. ‘AA, RAC, one and the same,’ he blustered.

  ‘Really?’ Susie sounded far from convinced.

  ‘Anyway, why are you asking if I’ll be home tonight? Why wouldn’t I be?’

  ‘You tell me. I want you home because you and I need to have a
word with the girls. I think they’re smoking. In fact, I am pretty sure of it.’

  ‘What?’ Mike’s exclamation of horror came out far louder than he intended and heads popped up over the workstation divisions across the office. He sat down. ‘You’ve got to be mistaken,’ he hissed.

  ‘Then why did I find a packet of Benson and Hedges on Ella’s floor this morning?’

  ‘It doesn’t mean they belong to the twins.’

  ‘Oh, come off it, Mike. What else can it mean?’

  She was probably right, he thought. Bollocks.

  ‘OK. Do you want me to meet you at the mess, before you get the girls?’

  ‘I think that might be for the best. I’ll see you sometime before five. I’ll ring the guardroom and ask them to have a visitor’s pass ready for you.’

  Mike replaced the receiver of his phone. Things were going from bad to worse. Why was life so intent on kicking him in the teeth?

  *

  Maddy hummed as she made sure her spare room was neat and clean. She was looking forward to having Sam and Luke to stay although she didn’t know Luke terribly well. He’d been a corporal when he’d been stationed with 1 Herts and since he’d got commissioned he’d been posted to another unit. Maddy was sure he’d be nice – after all, Sam was a sweetheart.

  Shutting the door on the bedroom Maddy ran lightly down the stairs, stepped over the stairgate and went back to the kitchen to carry on making that night’s supper. Sam had told her that Luke was due to arrive at their quarter around six in the evening. Perfect, thought Maddy, as it would give them all time to have a drink together and get to know each other before the meal. She just hoped that the kids didn’t play up. It would be nice for once if Nathan didn’t throw a strop. She’d like her visitors to think her family was adorable rather than the spawn of the devil himself – because Nathan was more than capable of doing a very passable impression of being possessed by evil spirits, especially when he was tired at the end of the day. Maybe this time he would be sweet and adorable and lovable – like he could be. OK, she was very biased when it came to her kids and maybe not everyone thought he was as sweet and adorable and lovable as she did, but all the same, she could do with having a child who showed its best side to outsiders rather than the opposite. Were kids, she wondered idly as she chopped onions, programmed to be naughty, to push the boundaries, or did they pick it all up as they grew up? Because if Nathan’s naughtiness carried on developing at the rate it had been of late, by the time he was a teenager he was going to be a right handful.

  Half an hour later, still faintly musing on how her kids might turn out, she left the house with Rose in her pushchair to pick up Nathan from playgroup. Rose was snuggled up in her thick fleecy foot muff and sheltered under the clear plastic rain-canopy while Maddy, unable to hold an umbrella, had to cope with the rain that drizzled constantly from the low cloud and trickled down the back of her neck. Waiting outside the playgroup which took place in the garrison church hall Maddy grumbled with the other mothers about the shocking weather and wondered, as they all did, if it was ever going to stop raining.

  After what seemed like an eternity to those getting cold and wet – although it was bang on the dot of midday, the allotted time for the playgroup to end – the playgroup leader finally opened the door and the toddlers surged out, all dressed in their raincoats or anoraks and wellies. Nathan proffered a still-wet painting to his mother which Maddy exclaimed over before putting it in the buggy’s tray for safe keeping.

  ‘Right,’ she said, as Nathan stood on the buggy-board, ‘let’s get home.’

  They scooted along the road, Maddy walking as fast as she could, head down against the miserable weather.

  ‘You’re in a hurry.’

  Maddy looked up. It was Jenna, coming out of the community centre.

  ‘Hi, Jen. Yeah, I want to get this pair home before they get soaked through.’

  ‘Miserable, ain’t it?’

  Maddy nodded. ‘You busy? Only if you fancy coming back to ours we could have a bite of lunch. Seb is working through today – he took in sandwiches. I expect your Dan is busy too, isn’t he? What with this wretched exercise next week.’

  Jenna nodded. ‘If you’re sure?’

  ‘Totally. I’ll be glad of the company, if I’m honest.’

  ‘Great.’ Jenna fell into step beside her friend, her high heels clacking manically on the asphalt as she pushed Eliot in his buggy.

  Maddy had her keys out as they turned onto the path to her front door and she had the door open as fast as possible. A few minutes later she and Jenna had the kids out of their wet things, the gas fire lit in the sitting room, a big pan of soup heating up on the hob and a glass of wine poured for them both.

  ‘This is a bit naughty,’ said Jenna, accepting the glass.

  ‘I know, but I’m so sick of the weather I need cheering up.’

  ‘Know how you feel.’

  Maddy stopped stirring and looked at her guest. ‘You sound proper fed up.’

  Jenna sighed. ‘Business isn’t going that well, if I’m honest. I get one customer a day if I’m lucky. A few weeks back, before that sergeant major’s wife—’

  ‘Mrs Laycock?’

  ‘That’s the one. Well, before she witnessed Chrissie and me having that spat, it was all going swimmingly. I was even thinking I might need a receptionist. But now...’ Jenna sighed. ‘Now, honestly, some days I don’t get a single customer.’

  ‘That’s not right,’ said Maddy. ‘We need to do something about that.’ She went back to stirring the soup while Jenna sipped her drink. ‘Maybe,’ she said after a minute or so, ‘we ought to leaflet all the houses in the garrison. I mean, the 1 Herts wives know about your salon and we advertised in the garrison newsletter for a stylist, but do the wives from the other units know that you’ve opened for business or where to find you?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘And the big advantage of doing that is the other wives aren’t aware of...’ Maddy paused, slightly unsure as to how to put her thoughts.

  ‘My past.’

  ‘Exactly. So, after lunch I suggest you and I get busy on my laptop. I’m sure, between us, we can come up with a flier that’ll drive some business your way.’

  Jenna smiled. ‘What would I do without you, Mads? You’re such a mate.’

  ‘It’s payback for what you did when I had to deal with Seb’s Other Woman.’

  Chapter 34

  Mike had managed to survive the day at work despite a thumping headache that kicked in mid-morning and the worry about his daughters. Why were they growing up to be so bloody difficult? Why did they think that alienating their teachers and their parents was cool? And why on earth had they taken up smoking? he kept asking himself. In order to take his mind off his children he looked at the briefing papers from the local water authority about flood defences along the Winterspring and Bavant rivers and their costings. Given the reaction that moronic little shit Rob had had to the comments he’d made some weeks earlier about the cuts to the emergency planning budget, Mike had no faith that there was the least chance of these flood defence measures being adopted but he’d have to try and make the case. Wearily, he drafted a report to Rob pointing out all the pros and the very few cons and summed up his findings in a conclusion that would leave even Rob in no doubt as to the folly of failing to implement the recommendations. Mike knew he really ought to take the file over to Rob personally, to explain to him the foolishness of opting for a short-term saving over the long-term risk, but he didn’t have the energy. Not today. He chucked the file in his out-tray, flagged up for Rob, and pulled the next piece of work that needed his attention towards him.

  It was with relief that he shoved everything back in his filing cabinet and switched off his terminal at the end of the day and made his way to the staff car park. As he plipped his car and the indicator lights flashed in acknowledgement he offered up a small prayer that it was going to start. There was no reason at all why it shouldn’t b
ut having lied about its reliability, given his recent luck, it would be sod’s law if it had really broken down now. He slipped into the driver’s seat, glad to get out of the rain that had been falling all day – when were they going to get a day when it didn’t rain? he wondered – put the key in the ignition, and with a quick prayer, turned it. The engine fired first time. Thank God.

  Mike drove out of the district council offices’ car park and headed towards Warminster. On either side of the main road the fields, now devoid of crops, were glistening with standing water and the roadside ditches were almost overflowing. Everywhere Mike looked the countryside looked sodden and waterlogged. And not surprising, he thought. He reviewed the weather since that torrential thunderstorm and it seemed to him that it had rained almost every day since. There had been a couple of nice summer days immediately after the cloudburst but shortly after that it was as if the taps had been turned on and left running. So much, he thought, for the gloom-and-doom predictions of depleted aquifers and the need for water management. Still, as long as the weather didn’t get worse, the drainage system and the rivers across the county seemed to be coping and it couldn’t keep raining like it had for the whole winter, could it?

  Before long Mike pulled up at the guardroom at the barracks, parked in the visitor’s lay-by and went to book in.

  ‘Oh, hello, sir,’ said a soldier he recognised. Mike felt a little puff of pleasure at this show of deference. He hadn’t had that in a very long time.

  ‘Hello, Corporal. No need for the “sir” bit now. I’m a civvy these days.’

  ‘Sorry, sir, but old habits and all that. Mrs Collins phoned down. Here’s your pass and if you’d just like to sign for it here and remember to hand it back in on your way out.’

  ‘Sure thing,’ said Mike.

  He took the proffered pass and the pen, scribbled his name in the visitors’ book and then returned to his car. The barrier raised, he drove up to the mess. It seemed far longer than just a few months since he’d last done this, in uniform, being saluted, entitled to be there. He sighed – so much had changed and almost all of it for the worse. He drove to the back of the building and parked his car next to the Grundon bins. Gone were the days of being able to use the mess members’ spaces at the front, now he was reduced to parking by the rubbish skips. What a comedown.