Not What They Were Expecting

by Neal Doran

  ‘She’s a lefty! They think everyone is a bit of one.’

  ‘But look! Look at the painting!’

  ‘That’s a pretty good representation of the bedroom I think. That’s not the colour of the duvet, but it’s not one of those Impressionist Picasso things where everyone’s got noses on their foreheads. Art’s a matter of taste you know.’

  ‘She’s got you coming out of the closet, Dad. Out of the closet!’

  ‘That’s a built-in wardrobe I’m standing next to, Becky. I could never fit in there. We had those hand-built twenty-five years ago. Everyone said we could have got the same thing for a fraction of the cost at MFI, but they’re still standing – not like that flat-pack rot. They’d have never coped with your mother’s shoes.’

  ‘Eft, gft, irggh!’

  ‘Are you all right, darling?’

  Rebecca scanned the ticket hall in frustration as words failed her. The kid from dad’s office was jumping out from behind a noticeboard attempting to ambush people into instinctively taking a leaflet with an old election photo of Howard emblazoned across it. Her mother-in-law was standing next to an effigy of her dad, telling some young woman about her work while a man with a camera took snaps from funny angles. She was probably spelling out the statement she was making with the piece, which had nothing really to do with what her dad was trying to do. What it was her dad was actually trying to do, she just didn’t know, putting her mum through this humiliation.

  ‘Forget it. Never mind,’ she said.

  Unable to say anything more without bursting into tears, she rushed to the platform gates, flapping her overcoat in frustration as she tried to extract her Oyster card from a tangle of tissues and gloves in her pocket. Eventually she just whacked the gate sensor with the inside lining of her pocket until the barriers thunked open and she ran through, her coat catching on the bars as she struggled through before running down the steps to the platform.

  ‘Is everything OK with Rebecca?’ Margaret asked, walking across to join Howard again.

  ‘I think she heard her train coming in. Or maybe she was annoyed about the shoes. Girls these days don’t seem to like it when you make jokes about all their shoes.’

  ‘Women don’t like it, Howard. They’re called women. Girls are probably more worried about the unrealistic body images they’re being force-fed by doll manufacturers.’

  ‘Right. Gotcha,’ said Howard.

  Watching the whispered row with Howard, and Rebecca’s flustered escape to the platform, the photographer turned and nudged the journalist who was dictating notes on her conversation with Margaret into her mobile. They chatted briefly, the reporter looking quizzical and thoughtful, before recording another note to herself, and heading over to get a quick quote from Howard. Howard bounded towards them, a hand outstretched, before putting his arm around his dummy doppelgänger and putting on his ‘not angry but saddened’ face for the photos.

  Chapter 19

  A warehouse job? He was going to have to temp at a warehouse job? James’s feelings were jumping all over the place after he got back from the job centre, and to try and calm himself he’d gone upstairs to sort some things out for storage from the spare room. He’d been ambushed at the dole. The guy he usually saw was off sick, so he had to see somebody new who didn’t know how hard he’d been working to find a job. Or at least how hard he’d been saying he’d been working. Today, Trisha had not really appreciated his qualifications and skillset. It was all a bit new and the interview got a bit more confrontational.

  His thumbnail scratched for the invisible end of the packing tape on the roll. This surprising change of environment had been the reason that he found himself saying, after an increasingly heated exchange, that he’d be willing to try anything and that he was about to have a young family to support. That was supposed to be a trump card for him. Trisha had been implying that he wasn’t taking the search for a job seriously enough and was being too fussy. After he mentioned the stresses of impending fatherhood she was supposed to feel guilty and tell him to come back in three weeks, and ask him to try and think laterally about his transferable skills and what he could do with his qualifications. That’s what had happened every other time he’d been. Instead she said that, seeing as it was a time of increased responsibility for him, she’d put him forward for some temping. A position that was opening next Monday.

  There was a ripping crack as he stretched off a length of tape and closed up another box. He managed to give the edge of his lip a paper cut as he bit through the sticky plastic. He couldn’t stop flicking his tongue against the drops of blood appearing on his lip. So this was what his life was going to be about in his future career in packaging and storage solutions for Higgins Warehouses.

  But then again, he thought to himself, as he hoisted the box up and gingerly climbed the attic folding staircase, it might actually be good for him, working in a warehouse. Actual physical work. A concrete task. Doing something that can be quantified. Feeling properly tired at the end of a tough day. Coming home, showering off the sweat, opening a beer, being a man. They’d have to live within their reduced means. But he’d never have to get up in the middle of the night to write notes to himself to remember to email a client. Never again lie awake for hours with strings of numbers and tax regulations circling in his head.

  He stacked the cardboard box neatly under the eaves at the front of the house, fished a marker from his back pocket and neatly printed ‘spare room books’ on the side. It was looking organised up there. A new job would mean no more all-nighters knocking together rescue packages so some failing business could limp along for another six months before the inevitable.

  He might get to use a forklift.

  But he was a qualified, excellent accountant! The absurdity of the idea rushed back as he came down the rickety ladder. He could manage people, make decisions that affected people’s lives, create wealth and opportunities. He had occasional twitches in his back and sudden physical work would cause permanent disc damage. Probably.

  And how could he explain to Rebecca he was having to take the job, even on a temping basis? He’d have to tell her about what had been going on for the past couple of months. He’d have to explain about the conviction and that there had been some things he’d been keeping from her. She’d been so angry after he’d tried to ‘manage’ the news about what her dad was doing, that he didn’t fancy a trip into that area again. And he hadn’t exactly kept to the spirit of his commitment to keep her informed on that front either…

  Standing and thinking, halfway down the attic ladder, he heard a jangle of keys in the quiet, and a creak that reminded him he wanted to oil that front door.

  ‘Hi, love,’ he shouted down the stairs as the door brushed over the rug in the hall.

  ‘You will not believe what he’s done now.’

  Well, James thought, he’s gone ahead with it. Maybe I won’t have to break the dole news tonight after all.

  As he headed down from the spare room he practised his facial expressions a couple of times, limbering up for the shift from ‘hey honey, what’s wrong?’ to ‘He didn’t!’

  By the time he got downstairs, Rebecca had made it to the kitchen, and was pouring a very large glass of wine. Suddenly she stopped pouring.

  ‘Bugger. Bloody Bompalomp.’

  She thrust the glass in James’s direction.

  ‘You all right, darling?’ he asked.

  ‘Your mother!’

  ‘All right I was only asking, no need for playground insults.’

  The look he got let James know that now was not the time to try and lighten the mood.

  ‘A statue of him. She made a statue of him and is exhibiting him in a waxwork outtake from a George Michael video. For all the world to see!’

  ‘What’s this?’ James attempted phase one of his facial expression transformation.

  ‘There’s a protest installation at Harrow on the Hill, and your mother’s making him out to be some sort of gay martyr.’
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  ‘Does he know about it?’

  ‘He was there! Fucking handing out leaflets and gurning for cameras.’

  ‘Well, are you sure you’re not over—’

  James paused to rethink what he was about to say so he could avoid the word ‘overreacting’. It was a word he knew not to use lightly. He’d really only understood the true meaning of ‘overreaction’ after he once suggested that Rebecca’s negative interpretation of a joke in a client meeting might have been a little over the top. That had made for a lovely remainder of their anniversary night out in a posh London restaurant.

  ‘Look,’ he continued, ‘are you sure you’ve interpreted it right? He’s hardly likely to be involved in something that’s too overtly gay. I remember how out of sorts he got when they had that lesbian reality TV couple on Celebrity Mr & Mrs.’

  ‘His dummy’s handcuffed and looking lustfully at a muscly cop’s truncheon.’

  ‘Maybe you’re just seeing it in a different context ’cos you’re so close to it. And it probably won’t be there for long.’

  ‘Why can’t you just—’

  Rebecca stamped open the push-pedal bin and dumped half of the banana she’d been eating into it, before swinging open the larder to grab a large Dairy Milk. He never could just take her word.

  ‘And it doesn’t matter how long it’s going to be there as your dad is no doubt going to plaster him all over the front page again. I had to put up with the sniggers about that all day.’

  ‘It wasn’t the front page.’

  ‘What does it matter? Are they deliberately trying to make him a laughing stock? Is this some sort of revenge for Thatcher?’

  ‘Howard knows what he’s doing. He’s not stupid.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what he is – he’s too trusting, and too innocent to deal with out-of-date lefties setting him up for humiliation.’

  ‘Well, excuse my parents for having some principles,’ snapped James. ‘And priorities beyond screwing as much as they can out of people for as little as possible.’

  ‘And what is it you do for a living?’

  ‘Fucking nothing. Remember?’

  There was a pause as both Rebecca and James tried to figure out where that was taking the row. An unexploded incendiary remark lay in front of them. They were supposed to be arguing about their parents, but this was threatening to blow them into more dangerous territory.

  Despite the frustration of the day – watching her father make a fool of himself in public, and James’s inability to just for once listen – she didn’t want to make this about them tonight. She remembered that she’d left work determined to make James feel better about himself after his crappy day, not worse. Saying a quick prayer that she was cutting the right wire, Rebecca decided to defuse the situation.

  ‘I thought I was supposed to criticise my parents and you were the one who defended them,’ she said softly, ‘and vice-versa.’

  ‘Yeah, well…’

  ‘So how was the dole?’ she asked.

  James looked at her, feeling a bit bad about the guilt trip he’d sent her on. Perhaps it’s time to be honest, he thought. Tell her what’s going on. But then she’s had a shit of a day, and maybe doesn’t want to hear that her husband isn’t quite on the career trajectory they expected when they decided to start a family. Especially not on top of the fact the soon-to-be grandparents are literally making an exhibition of themselves.

  ‘Same old same old,’ he finally said.

  But, if he wasn’t going to tell the whole truth, he decided perhaps the least he could do was lay a little groundwork. Make sure it wasn’t too much of a surprise later.

  ‘I did have someone new looking out for me today, though,’ he continued. ‘Mentioned something about a new restart programme coming in. But she didn’t think it’d apply to me. There’s probably a way around it.’

  ‘Playing the system are you? You’re starting to sound like Dec.’

  James cleared his throat, put on his Music Hall grin, and started playing his imaginary ukulele.

  ‘Ohh, Decades on the Dole Dec Dolan, he says all the good jobs have gone to Poland. Or, he’s buggered by his spastic colon. He’s Decades on the Dole Dec Dolan.’

  ‘He’s got lyrics now – bit of a long wait today was there?’

  ‘I was going to go mental hanging about if I hadn’t done something and my phone battery died. Hopefully I’ll be back in work before I finish too many more verses.’

  ‘You’ll get something really soon,’ Rebecca said, leaning over to give him a kiss. ‘You’re brilliant.’

  ‘Thanks, darling. You’re brilliant too.’

  ‘Aw, you’re a darling, darling. Now where’s my dinner?’

  ‘I’ll phone for a pizza, darling.’

  ‘The best househusband in the world. Could you—’

  ‘Check what flavours of ice cream they have?’

  ‘You should be earning a fortune as a mindreader.’

  Chapter 20

  An hour later they were collapsed on the sofa together, watching a cooking show, James nibbling the scraps of crusts, Rebecca scraping the walls of her ice-cream tub with a small green plastic shovel.

  ‘Why is every contestant on this show obsessed with scallops?’ James asked. ‘And scotch eggs. I predict the winner will be the guy who finds a way to stuff pork and breadcrumbs with shellfish and turn it into a pudding.’

  ‘Maybe if the judges are pregnant…’

  ‘That guy is beginning to look like he might be,’ James said as one of the hosts shovelled another impolitely large forkful of food into his mouth. ‘How’s Bomp enjoying the ice cream?’

  ‘These stupid little servings aren’t enough to fill a foetus,’ Rebecca sighed.

  She put the squashed ice-cream tub in with the last of the crusts on the cheese-encrusted corrugated cardboard base of the pizza box, and slid the box under the coffee table before curling up into James’s side, her feet pulled up onto the sofa.

  ‘Isn’t it the problem that the Polish are coming here and taking the jobs?’ she asked after one of the cooking contestants finished crying over a split crème anglaise.

  ‘You been speaking to your mum again?’ James replied.

  ‘No, the song. Dec Dolan. The jobs aren’t going to Poland, Poland’s coming here. And not that that’s a bad thing, of course.’

  ‘And that’s what’s been on your mind tonight?’

  ‘It’s better than thinking about some things.’

  He lent down to kiss her on the forehead, while he rubbed her bum in a sympathetic manner.

  ‘How come we’re arguing so much now?’ she asked.

  ‘We always did a bit. You know the cycle…’

  The cycle. It had originally been planned as a joke. James had once, after a huge argument that had seen him slam doors and storm out of the house, made a spreadsheet of the events leading up to the row, and also to some other big disagreements that had become part of their own couples’ folklore. The argument had started about how he spent too much time at work with Excel, so he thought it might be a funny way to say sorry. But then he noticed there did seem to be a bit of a pattern. A roughly three-month cycle when all the minor irritations and grievances that had been swallowed because they weren’t that big a deal built to a point where one or the other of them would snap. There was usually a big event that was tied to the breaching of the dams, an upcoming birthday, a holiday, a work do. In the spreadsheet James had also attributed the cause of the big row to one or the other of them. He was behind 3-2 in the blame stakes by his calculations. When he showed the spreadsheet to Rebecca he’d kept that column hidden though.

  At the mention of his Marital Harmony Tracker, Rebecca tried to suppress a grin that was a little too wide for a situation where they were still technically in the radius of a quarrel.

  ‘So you’re saying it’s your time of the quarter, is that it?’

  ‘There’s a lot going on,’ said James, offering conclusive proof.

&nbs
p; ‘Does this mean we’re reset back to zero in time for Ikea?’

  After weeks of poring over an out-of-date catalogue, and nights looking at kids’ rooms online, they had finally agreed to visit the boxy blue warehouse that loomed over the outskirts of their neighbourhood. The tension of the last visit had lingered in the air for over a year, albeit dissipated into running jokes. Every time he complained about not being able to find a document, he was referred back to the thirty-drawer organiser cabinet he said they couldn’t fit in the car because he didn’t want to pay twenty quid for it. On the semi-regular occasions she lit a couple of tea candles for a romantic dinner, he always checked she still had enough after she bought twelve hundred because they were on special.

  ‘This could be one of those twin peak cycles I think,’ James responded.

  ‘We need to have a look at the stuff in reality. I think what we might be going for is a bit boysy seeing as we don’t know what Bompalomp is.’

  ‘You think it’s a girl?’

  ‘I dunno, which is kinda the point. Although one of the women in the office said the way I was carrying meant it would be.’

  ‘What, she’s riding side-saddle in there? I thought all the early puking meant it was a boy?’

  ‘Maybe I could have been sick more.’

  ‘More sick? Pffff, who’d want boys?’

  ‘So what’s the story with this jobs scheme you’re up for?’

  ‘It’s a new thing. To keep your national insurance up to date you have to do something if it’s offered. You know, those coalition bastards…’

  ‘Did they say what you’d be doing? Stacking shelves?’

  ‘It’s all early days, and it might not even happen. She said something about maybe a warehouse job. Or something.’

  ‘Don’t they know you’ve got a dodgy back?’

  ‘I can manage a bit of physical work,’ he huffed.

  ‘Do you think they’ll let you drive a forklift?’

  ‘I’d been wondering the same thing. But it’s far from certain that that’s what I’ll be doing.’