One Glass Is Never Enough

by Jane Wenham-Jones

  “Thanks, I would appreciate it,” said Claire as Gaynor assured her she’d stick around. “I shall probably have to help Sarah and Benjamin in the kitchen later. I just hope to God the new washer-up turns up today.”

  Gaynor snorted. The last one – a cheerful-looking girl with a nose stud and plaits, called Melody – had left after three weeks saying she couldn’t manage the stress.

  “Stress!” Claire had fumed. “I’ll give her bloody stress.”

  Gaynor had seen Melody later wandering along the jetty wrapped round a boy in a leather jacket. “I think shagging holds more appeal than scrubbing,” she said to Claire now. “Ooh, talking of which…”

  A tall tanned guy with a tight T-shirt and very white teeth was leaning over the other end of the bar. “A bottle of Bolly and some freshly-squeezed orange-juice.” He smiled at Gaynor.

  “That’s more like it,” said Gaynor to Claire as she filled a champagne bucket with ice. “I could do with some of that myself.”

  “We’re out of oranges,” said Claire. “You’ll have to send Ben up to the greengrocers. And,” she added, with her best head-mistressey look. “Don’t you dare. We need you upright!”

  And upright Gaynor was, up and down stairs, backwards and forwards into the restaurant. The minute the breakfast crowd had cleared, another started coming in for lunch.

  “If I go up and down these stairs once more…” she said to Jack who was managing to look incredibly cool and laid-back despite dozens of people around the bar. He threw a bottle of Bud up into the air and deftly caught it again. “Good for the thigh muscles,” he said, grinning.

  “Bollocks,” replied Gaynor.

  Jack winked. “Who knows, might be good for them, too.”

  It had quietened a bit by five although there were groups lingering in the restaurant and clusters of drinkers sitting around tables in the bar. Through the open door, Gaynor could hear Irish folk songs coming from one of the pubs up the road.

  She watched families walking up Harbour Street from the beach, trailing buckets and towels and whining children. The hot sun had softened and the shadows were beginning to lengthen. A group of bare-chested boys in shorts walked by swinging cans of lager. Catching sight of Gaynor in the doorway, one of them yelled “Nice tits!” and the rest erupted into laughter.

  “Isn’t it past your bedtime?” she called back. “Twats,” she said, as Claire collected glasses behind her.

  Claire straightened, the tray of empties balanced against her hip. “That reminds me,” she said in a low voice. “There was a horrible answer-phone message when I opened up this morning. I didn’t tell Sarah – she was upstairs and I didn’t see the point of worrying her.”

  Gaynor nodded. “What did it say?”

  Claire began to carry the tray back towards the bar. “I couldn’t make it all out but it was abusive. ‘You’re an ugly old dog’, something like that.”

  Gaynor picked up a couple of pint pots. “So someone’s got the hots for one of us.”

  Claire gave her a grin. “Bound to be you, then!”

  Gaynor grinned back. “And he’s probably got a very small one and can’t even get that up.”

  “He wouldn’t be able to if I got hold of him,” said Claire. “He’d withheld the number, of course.”

  Gaynor nodded again, thoughtfully. “I suppose we’re going to get that sort of thing – a bar run by women…”

  She stopped as a forty-something blonde wearing too much eye make-up leant across the bar. “Excuse me, is there something wrong with the Ladies? The door’s been locked for ages.”

  Gaynor went out into the corridor with her. “Shouldn’t you have more than one?” the woman enquired. “In a bar this busy?”

  “There’s not really room for any more.” Gaynor tried the door handle. She could hear water running inside. “I expect she’ll be out in a minute!”

  “She’s been ages already.”

  As Gaynor knocked on the loo door for the second time, she was joined by a small anxious-looking woman with, greying hair tied back in a scarf. “I’m her mother,” she said, agitated. “It’s my daughter in there.”

  She pushed her face up against the scrubbed pine. “Nicola! Come out now, darling. Please come out.”

  Claire appeared behind her. “What’s happening?”

  The blonde in the corridor was shifting from foot to foot. “Is she going to be much longer?”

  “Use the Men’s.” Claire was short. “It’s just the same.”

  The mother turned beseechingly to Gaynor. “We must get her out of there. Can you break the door down?”

  A tall, thin, man in cord trousers and a baggy shirt came in from the courtyard. “I’ve looked outside – the window’s tiny.”

  “What exactly is the problem here?” Claire frowned at the mother who was wringing her hands. “What do you think your daughter’s going to do?”

  Neither parent answered her. Several more women filed into the passageway. “You’ll have to use the Men’s,” Claire said over her shoulder.

  “Look we’re very busy here,” she called, raising her voice.” She rapped sharply on the loo door. “Can you come out, please? There are people waiting!”

  “No!” The mother clapped her hands to her face. “Don’t shout at her.”

  “I’m trying to run a business here!” Claire turned on her heel and stalked back into the bar.

  Gaynor followed a few minutes later. “They want us to call the police or the Fire Brigade and get her out. They seem to think she’s having some sort of turn in there.”

  “Bloody hell,” Claire muttered. “OK, we’d better do something – we don’t want her carried out of here, do we? Not exactly a good recommendation.”

  She spoke to the small brown-haired girl behind the bar. “You OK here for a moment, Kate?” Kate smiled. She was down from Leeds University for the summer and seemed to smile at everything. Claire looked at Gaynor. “Let’s see what Sarah says.”

  She went down into the kitchen with Gaynor behind her. Sarah was pulling things out of the big fridge. “Some nutty girl’s locked herself in the loo,” Claire said. “The mother wants the emergency services called in.”

  Sarah looked up, wiping her hair back from her face with the back of a plastic-gloved hand. “Oh joy,” she said. “Well, you’d better then. Try and find out what we’re dealing with.”

  But back upstairs the mother was in full negotiation at the keyhole while the father was standing on a chair in the courtyard so he could deliver his own brand of persuasion through the tiny window to the Ladies. This mainly consisted of him barking: “Come out right now, you’re upsetting your mother,” at regular intervals.

  “Have you called someone?” The mother sounded desperate.

  “I was just going to ask you…” Claire began, as the door slowly opened and the mother started shrieking. The girl stood quite still in the doorway – a long black, greasy curtain of hair falling across her face, eyes cast downwards, holding her hands out in front of her. They were red and livid, already starting to blister.

  “Oh my God,” Claire muttered. She ran back down the corridor. “Ice!” she shouted to Kate. “Bring ice!”

  The ambulance bloke was matter of fact. “What medication is she on?”

  Gaynor heard the mother say Olanzapine and a name she didn’t recognise and begin to recite dosages in a low voice. Gaynor’s stomach went into a tight ball.

  The ambulance man nodded and put a blanket around the girl’s shoulders. “OK, my love, let’s get you along to the hospital.” He spoke again to her parents. “History of this sort of thing?”

  The mother turned furiously on Claire. “How could you have the water so hot?”

  Her husband pulled her towards the door. “We’ll deal with it,” he said. “We’ll get on to Health and Safety.”

  “We’ve been fully checked,” said Claire tightly. “It’s all within guidelines.”

  “We’ll see about that,” said the father.
“Have you seen the state of her hands?” He turned to his wife. “You go with her, I’ll follow in the car. We’ll do the complaints procedure later.”

  Gaynor’s heart began to pound. She felt the adrenalin race through her body, sending shocks to her fingertips.

  “It’s not our fault,” she cried, as customers fell silent and listened. “Your daughter burned herself deliberately.”

  “She shouldn’t have been able to.” The father stopped and faced Gaynor. Over his shoulder, she watched the girl climb into the back of the ambulance and her mother follow. The father spoke coldly. “I shall be taking it up with the Environmental Health department. That water should have been…”

  Gaynor gave a hiss of frustration. “And if she’d smashed the mirror and then slashed her wrists with the broken glass? Would that have been our fault too?”

  He turned on his heel. “I’m not listening to this!”

  Gaynor was screeching. “Would it? Your daughter’s ill. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s yours! You shouldn’t have left her alone. You shouldn’t have brought her in here. It’s your responsibility – don’t you dare blame us…”

  “Gaynor, that’s enough!” Claire had a hand on her arm.

  “No, it’s not!” He was going out of the door. Gaynor wanted to run after him and shake him. “They make me sick

  – blaming everyone else but themselves. She’s mentally ill. She’s self-harming.” She raised her voice and yelled after the father’s retreating back: “If she’d stabbed herself with one of our steak knives would you get Health and Safety in to say they’re too sharp?”

  “Stop it, Gaynor!” Sarah had come upstairs and was standing next to Claire. “We’ll get it sorted out. Don’t say anything else.”

  “Bloody hell!” Gaynor swung away from them, went behind the bar and pulled a bottle of Pinot Grigio from the fridge. “Jesus!”

  Kate had stopped smiling. “Are you OK sweet-pea?” Jack asked. Gaynor glared at them both. “NO!”

  The voices had started up again in the bar. It was five to six. Gaynor glowered at the knots of Happy Folkers who sat about drinking, as a guy walked in with a guitar and a Labrador dog.

  “OK if I busk a couple of numbers?” “Sure.” Claire walked round the bar and smiled down at the animal. “We don’t allow dogs unless you’re blind.” Gaynor poured herself another drink. Claire frowned at her. “It’s fine, really,” she said to the man. “You go right ahead.”

  “Give us all a treat,” said Gaynor sourly.

  Claire came back behind the bar, her voice low. “Look, I can see you’re still upset, Gaynor, but you can’t take it out on the customers.”

  “He’s not a customer. He’s just going to make some ungodly racket, while his mangy mongrel lies on the floor and licks its balls.”

  “Don’t be so silly.” Claire glared, her voice annoyed. “If you can’t behave, I think you’d better go home.”

  Gaynor tossed the rest of her drink down her throat and banged the glass down sharply. “Don’t worry, I’m going.”

  “It makes me so fucking angry.” She paced up and down in front of Sam’s piano. She’d found herself going there almost without thinking. There was no point going home. Even if Victor had been there, which he wasn’t, he’d hardly have cared.

  “What does?” Sam asked quietly.

  “People blaming other people. That girl stood in there with her hands under the hot tap until she had to go to hospital and her bloody parents say it’s our fault.”

  Sam reached up for his tobacco and pulled out a cigarette paper. “They were frightened. It’s a natural reaction to look for someone to pin the blame on – it helps one make sense of it. Poor kid.”

  Gaynor stopped. “Poor kid?” Her voice was aggressive.

  Sam put a tiny pinch from the pouch into the paper and began to roll. “She’s obviously in a bad way,” he said calmly.

  Gaynor began walking about the room again. “Yes, she probably is, but it’s always the poor depressive we feel sorry for, isn’t it? The poor old flake. My mother used to cut out articles about depression. Try and make me read them so that I’d feel sorry for my father or David or whoever was currently staring at the ceiling muttering. Bought me a whole damn book on it once. How to treat a depressed person. One , do not tell them to snap out of it. Two , remember they cannot help it…”

  Sam closed the lid of the piano. “They can’t. We can’t. I’ve been there, Gaynor. The depressed person often feels a lot of guilt because they feel they should be able to pull themselves together. It’s an illness, Gaynor. It’s just the same as...”

  She scowled at him. “I know it’s a fucking illness. My mother told me every day of my life. But however much you know that, however much you read, you still have to actually cope with it. You still have to put up with that person being like that day in and day bloody out. I used to want to shake David. I used to want to say: ‘get a bloody grip!’ Don’t givel me that crap about it being like telling the man with the broken leg to skip down the High Street. I know that! OK? I bloody know it!” She was trembling.

  Sam sat down. “I wasn’t going to say anything like that. What about your father? Did you want to shake him too?”

  “Huh.” Gaynor tossed her head contemptuously. “I’d lost interest in him. Which made us about equal.”

  Sam flicked at his Zippo lighter and lit his little roll-up.

  “One in four,” said Gaynor bitterly. “One in four of us suffer from depression. That means three-quarters of the population have a hell of a lot to put up with.”

  She stopped and held up the bottle of Chardonnay she’d grabbed on her way out of Greens. “Do you want some of this?”

  He shook his head. “No thanks.”

  “Don’t you ever drink?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Don’t you like it?” He smiled. “Sometimes. I used to drink whisky. But I gave it up when I realised it didn’t make any difference.” She looked at him. “It makes a difference to me. It

  makes me feel better.”

  “Doesn’t look like it from where I’m standing.”

  She glared at him. “You don’t know how I’d be if I was sober. Well I am sober, sort of.”

  He laughed. “You’re about as sort of sober as I’m sort of flying around the room. Come here.” He sat down on the sofa and patted the space beside him. “Come and tell me why this has upset you so much.”

  She felt calmer after another glass of wine. She refilled the goblet Sam had found her and watched him rhythmically stroking Brutus, who purred like an engine.

  “Do you get support?” asked Sam quietly. “What does your husband say?”

  “Victor? Oh not much. He’s charming to my mother on the rare occasions he sees her. Polite to my father. Can’t understand what David’s all about. Thinks he’s a bit of a nuisance. What’s he doing still living at home at his age, etc. I don’t think Victor gives it much thought. Why should he?”

  “Because they’re your family.”

  “My family.” Gaynor took a mouthful of wine. “Doesn’t feel like it much. I used to see David a lot. We were very close. But it’s been a while now. I should get up there one weekend, I know I should. My mother phoned, she said David hasn’t been very good. I said I’d see him. I have been thinking about him but what with the wine bar and Victor, and then Chloe’s supposed to be coming down soon…” She trailed off.

  Sam’s voice was reassuring. “You can only do what you can do.”

  “The thing is.” Gaynor looked at him, stricken. “The truth is – I don’t want to go.”

  Sam nodded. “I can understand that,” he said slowly.

  “Can you?” She jumped up from the sofa. “There was one time – David was in hospital and there was this woman there waiting to see her sister. The sister had had ECT – she’d had it about six times, it was the only thing that ever worked and the woman said they just struggled along and she’d be OK for a while and then she’d gradually get
worse till she had to have some more…”

  Gaynor stooped and picked up her glass. “And this woman, she said to me, you could be in for a long haul so don’t sacrifice yourself. Just give what you have to give because other people’s depression is a black hole. That’s what she said. She said you could throw your whole life in there.” Gaynor made a sudden sucking noise like waste being swirled away down a pipe. “And it would swallow you all up and still never be enough…”

  Sam leant out and took her hand. Gaynor felt her chin wobble. “That’s what my poor mother has done – chucked her whole life in and they’ve gulped her down. You know she’s sort of washed away now – if you look at her, she looks like she’s had all the life sucked out of her. Last time I saw her she was wearing this awful droopy beige cardigan. I got cross – said why didn’t she put on some colours for a change…”

  Sam pulled her down to sit beside him again. “Do you miss her?”

  Gaynor made a contemptuous noise. “Didn’t really ever have her to miss.” For a second she had a lump in her throat.

  Sam was speaking very softly. “You look as though you need to cry.”

  She swallowed more wine. “Nah, I don’t really do that.”

  “Perhaps you should.”

  She shook her head. “I haven’t cried for a long time. I feel like it sometimes – you know, the tears come into my eyes.” She gave a short laugh. “I grizzle a bit but I always stop. I never cry properly. I wouldn’t sob. It always seems such a lonely thing to do.”

  “Doesn’t have to be.” Sam was rolling another cigarette.

  “I thought you said you were giving that up.”

  “I am – that’s why I’m making small ones.”

  “Small? That one’s hardly worth it – it’s going to be over in one puff.”

  “When I got ill,” he said, ignoring her, “I cried for the first time in years and years and years. And then I started to recover. One of the doctors told me after Eleanor died, not crying’s not good. If you can’t cry, you’re in trouble.”