Not What They Were Expecting

by Neal Doran

  His chin resting on her head, James thought that this was going better than expected. He didn’t feel like he was going to have to defend himself now, explain why this was going to just be temporary. He thought maybe he should be a bit more up front. Share this a bit more. He’d been stupid to hold things back. She was his wife, what did he think was going to happen? He dipped his head to kiss her hair.

  ‘You know, if it is going to start it could be as early as Monday. I’m expecting to hear in the morning.’

  ‘I’ll iron your checked shirt,’ she said. ‘It’s just temporary, darling, one of your applications will come through before you know it. If you don’t like it we’ll say sod it, and we can live without the few quid you get in and catch up on the insurance later. Who needs access to the NHS anyway?’

  The phone rang. Rebecca and James looked at each other without moving.

  ‘It’ll be your mother,’ said James.

  Rebecca sighed.

  ‘I’ll get it for you,’ he said, bouncing up to get the landline handset.

  ‘Hi, Mum,’ said Rebecca in a distracted, distant voice. James paused the TV, and dug out his phone so he looked busy while Rebecca was speaking to her mother. He thought he’d best stick around, get an idea of how things were going. This could be a tricky one.

  ‘Oh you know, fine,’ Rebecca said after a pause. ‘Work’s all right. Apart from everyone sniggering behind my back about whatever they’ve seen about my family in the local rag. But that all gets forgotten when you get to the Tube and your father’s re-enacting his own humiliation in an installation piece on the station concourse.’

  Flicking through apps and emails on his mobile, James quietly studied Rebecca’s face as she talked. Her expression grew more and more irritated as Penny talked, and she looked ready to launch into a barbed response the second she got a chance.

  ‘Well, he looked like he was loving it, frankly, so I don’t think you need to worry about that too much.’

  There was another pause.

  ‘No, Mum. No. I’m not going to think about how he’s feeling too much. Not until he starts thinking a bit more about everyone else around him.

  ‘It’s so demeaning, Mum! I’m going to have to see this every day! Everyone that comes into my office will know and you just get these smiles… If you took the time to think about it, instead of spending all your time pretending everything’s fine and wilfully ignoring what’s going on around you like a Stepford Wife you’d know that. You’re letting this happen.’

  Glancing past Facebook, he could see Rebecca’s face struggling to maintain a look of justified anger, while flashes of pain scrunched her eyes and wrinkled her forehead while she listened to her mother. The bursts of weakening resolve coincided with spikes in the volume and pitch of what Penny was saying. He couldn’t make out the words, but he was pretty sure they were being said through tears. Finally Rebecca had closed her eyes, and given up her attempt to stay angry.

  ‘What’s he doing to you, Mum?’ Rebecca asked in a sad, worried voice.

  Rebecca clambered up from the sofa and headed for the kitchen. James raised an eyebrow and touched her knee as she went, which was met with a wave of the hand. He wasn’t sure if the raised palm meant, don’t worry, just going to get milk and Gaviscon, or leave me alone I need space to say the things I have to say to my mother. Either way, he figured it was best he didn’t follow her, she’d just get irritated. But did that mean he had to sit here and stare at a frozen TV picture of a bald man apparently climaxing over a gobful of pudding? He was pretty sure that it would act as aversion therapy and put him off both sex and afters for life. They could watch the end of the show later, he figured, and flicked across the channels to a seventies rock documentary.

  He sat and half-listened to anecdotes about Slade and the Sex Pistols, while trying to gauge the progress in the kitchen. The door had been half-closed and, while the words couldn’t be clearly made out, the mood carried through to the living room. It seemed to be swinging between confrontational and conciliatory, which just about summed up Rebecca’s relationship with her mother as far as James was concerned. Becs always hated when she thought her mum was just going along with things for a quiet life, but could get equally angry when Penny talked about herself, or expressed any unhappiness with her lot, which she always took to be an attempt at martyrdom. Then she’d feel bad and start acting like her mum’s personal life coach.

  Letting her have the benefit of Becs’ years of asserting herself, he thought with a guilty snort.

  What was Bompalomp going to make of the two of them in thirty years’ time though? He reflected on that idea for a while and reassured himself that their kid would be different. They wouldn’t spend their time looking upon their parents with a combination of irritation and guilt. Then he got distracted by something on the documentary involving the song ‘Tiger Feet’ and crop circles, and stopped worrying.

  By the time the call had finished, James had decided prog rock had been given a bad press for too long, and made a mental note to put together a new playlist to listen to at his computer. Or while shifting pallets at the warehouse, he remembered with a wince. Rebecca came in, eyes a little bloodshot, nose snotty from crying. James sat up on the sofa and put the remote and mobile aside in preparation.

  ‘You all right, darl?’ he asked.

  ‘Parents…’

  ‘Need to talk?’

  ‘I’m shattered. I’m going up. You coming?

  It was barely half ten, but James said yes, he’d come up.

  They didn’t talk any further about the phone call. James had asked again about how Penny was coping, but Rebecca was too tired to go over a conversation that had drained her so much in the first place. She felt bad that she was taking out her frustration on her mum when it was her dad who was being the inconsiderate bastard. But she couldn’t even talk to him right now. He’d start to defend himself, or attack her. And his lack of insight, his refusal to give even an inch to see it from another person’s perspective, would leave her mute with fury. So she’d launch tirades against him at her mum, who Rebecca knew wouldn’t respond by attacking her back. That her mum would still insist on seeing dad’s side was maddening, but then it made it easier to give her both barrels.

  He’s such a bastard, she thought.

  They got ready for bed in silence, gliding around each other from the bathroom to the bedroom and back, Rebecca shedding her clothes in a pile on the floor by her bedside cabinet, James folding and sorting his into drawers or the wash basket.

  ‘Wanna read?’ James asked from his side of the bed.

  ‘Too tired, love,’ she said turning off her lamp, ‘but you go ahead if you want to.’

  ‘Nah. Big day tomorrow.’

  He gave his phone a final check, flicked off the light and, with a kiss and a squeeze, rolled over to go to sleep.

  Eyes closed, James started to switch off from the day. She needs a little time to get the row with her mum in context, he figured. Probably good that she doesn’t talk about it now. And it’s not like talking about it is going to change anything anyway. He noticed the subject of his job search and benefits bad news had kind of got dropped once her family’s problems had popped up again. He could almost feel like he was dropping down the priorities list if he wanted to. But he wasn’t going to get huffy about it. In fact, it probably meant he’d be able to drop in that the new temping post was more of a fait accompli than he may have initially implied without it raising too many more questions now. So every cloud…

  James drifted off to sleep thinking about the emergence of hard rock and heavy metal in the industrial Britain of the seventies, and wondered if the factories and warehouses of Britain were still full of wannabe rock gods just waiting to be discovered. He might meet some interesting people at work.

  Rebecca lay in bed, eyes open. Her hand drifted to her belly, and she realised it was the first time she’d really thought of the baby in hours – neglected before they’d even left
the womb. This wasn’t how she’d imagined pregnancy would be. There was nothing in the books about this: Week Eight, tiredness will creep in as your body adapts to the surge of hormones accompanying the rapid changes of early gestation and you may find yourself emotionally conflicted as your father is arrested for public indecency… Week Twelve, the trip to the hospital for your first scan is always a significant time for an expecting mother, made all the more memorable when it coincides with the day your partner loses his well-paid and fulfilling job. Week Twenty, you’re halfway there! Time to start looking forward to fudging the truth in criminal proceedings against a publicity-mad parent.

  She wondered what disaster lay ahead of them for the coming milestones. She certainly wouldn’t bet against any ancient predictions of global apocalypse between now and late August.

  She also wondered what was going on with James. He seemed determined not to let go of his ‘everything’s fine’ mantra, despite all evidence to the contrary. She hated how he always seemed to be holding something back from her. Like what’s happening at the dole. From the look on his face she’d known that he already knew he was going to have to take this short-term warehouse job to keep his insurance contributions up, but he couldn’t just come out and say it. But she decided she was going to have to take his lead on things like this, and if he didn’t want to talk about what was going on, she wasn’t going to harangue him on it. It must be so difficult for him, she thought, as snores started drifting across from James’s side of the bed. The nagging suspicion that he was also one step ahead of her on the antics of her father and his bloody mother wouldn’t go away though.

  It was maddening if she thought about it too much, so she tried to let it go for now. And she could hardly talk, considering how little she’d said about her ‘evidence’ for the trial.

  All day she’d been looking forward to the time she could get into her cosy bed and now she couldn’t sleep. Her heartburn was showing signs of creeping back up on her too, so she took a swig of her bedside Gaviscon, and shifted in the bed trying to get comfortable tucked up against James’s back. ‘What are we going to do with them, Bompalomp?’ she asked herself silently. She closed her eyes, and concentrated on going over the shopping list she was compiling of all the things they’d need to go and buy to make their home ready for their new arrival. Finally, Rebecca fell asleep, imagining a sunshine-filled baby’s room bursting with primary colours, gently tinkling nursery rhymes, and fluffy cuddly toy sheep.

  Chapter 21

  James’s head rose sharply, and his eyes flitted from side to side. He couldn’t see anyone, but he was sure he’d heard tuneful whistling and was pretty sure it was directed at him. Nobody seemed to be about, though.

  In a window he caught a reflection of himself. He was in an old pair of jeans, usually not worn because they had a ludicrous inside leg measurement that was too long even for him, forcing him to have chunky turn-ups. Beneath them, he’d done his best to clean up his big brown hiking boots, which he figured would be the closest he would have to protective footwear in his wardrobe. He was wearing the checked shirt that Rebecca had ironed for him as promised for his big day –although she hadn’t noticed that the first button beneath the collar had come off, so now the shirt gaped widely at the chest, exposing a broad expanse of the white thermal T-shirt he’d worn underneath, on the assumption that warehouses would probably be freezing on cold dribbly days like today.

  But of course it turned out he wasn’t working in the warehouse. He was working at the warehouse, or rather, in the office that overlooked it. He was at a desk within a vast expanse of carpet-tiled floor, broken up by the electric-blue padded polyester of banks of cubicle dividers, behind a wall of glass looking down on aisles of stacked pallets and beeping yellow machinery. He was also sitting directly underneath an air conditioning unit that was, according to everyone he’d met so far, ‘on the blink’ and churning out heat. It was like sitting under a giant hairdryer.

  The whistling had gone, and the only sound from within the office was the tapping of keyboards and the occasional soft trill of a phone, and subsequent quiet murmured conversation. He thought maybe he should give Rebecca a call, let her know what was going on. But then, things hadn’t quite resolved after the rows of the weekend, and he wasn’t going to phone her to be blanked on his first day.

  And also she hadn’t even texted to check he wasn’t trapped under a shipping container full of Blu-Ray players, even though they both knew full well from watching Casualty that working in warehouses was an even more hazardous career than driving a tanker full of potentially explosive chemicals.

  At least he assumed she hadn’t texted – he hadn’t heard a bleep. He thought he’d better check his phone.

  ‘So how are you getting on in “the oven”?’

  As he rummaged through his coat pocket to get his mobile, James’s temp boss, Robert the financial controller, appeared behind him.

  James had been sent to see Robert when he first came in, and a look of disapproval had enveloped his face when he saw the get-up James had turned up to work in. It had dissipated, though, when they got to his office and he glanced over James’s CV. He looked like he’d discovered a kindred spirit – Robert had done some chartered accountancy training himself, but in the end had ‘chosen to take another path’. James took this to mean he’d flunked the exams one time too many and his firm had shown him the door. So he said something he hoped was nice rather than patronising about Robert being more of a do-er than an exam drone. He was very conscious that the guy from the dole, dressed like the sixth member of the Village People, was not in a position to consider the career path he’d travelled to be better than anyone else’s.

  Robert was probably less than ten years older than James, but the age gap looked a chasm to James. Everything about Robert looked slumped; his face, his shoulders, his stomach. Earlier, when Robert had stood up to find the temps’ copy of the office manual, James noticed that even his arse was slumped. He hoped it was the deadening job and work environment that had worn him down, and not the two kids in the photos on his desk, next to a picture of his quite attractive wife.

  Now, discreetly letting the unchecked phone drop back into his pocket, James looked up at his short-term boss, and adjusted the collar on his increasingly clingy thermals.

  ‘The job ad did say something about working in a pressure cooker environment. Hadn’t realised it was quite so literal.’

  ‘Ha! Very good!’

  For a couple of seconds Robert looked like he was about to add a witty reply but in the end settled for a sigh and repeating the words ‘pressure cooker’. After a pause, he got back to the subject that had brought him to James’s cubicle in the first place, with an apologetic look on his face.

  ‘How long do you reckon before you can get the delivery receipt dockets into the system?’ he asked.

  ‘I should be done in a couple of hours,’ James said, ‘three if you want it well done.’

  ‘I know it’s a bit dull but the data is the foundation for all our accounts so we would always expect entry to be completed to the best of… Oh wait – in an oven. “Well done.” Yes! Nearly missed that one. It’s “rare” we get a temp in with a bit of humour about them. Lovely.’

  Robert’s eyes shifted from side to side as he leaned in to James’s desk and he looked a little embarrassed.

  ‘A discreet word to the wise. We’re a bit old-fashioned around here, dress down policies haven’t quite reached this far, so for tomorrow…’

  ‘Appropriately booted and suited, that’s no problem.’

  A smile of relief crossed the financial controller’s face as the guidance on appropriate work attire for once wasn’t met with tutting and huffing from a temp. James wondered if it might be worth being a bit cheeky, seeing as they were pals now.

  ‘And Robert, I was wondering is there anything that can be done with the heating unit in the roof up here? I can manage but I think I could be much more productive in a more tempera
te climate.’

  Robert’s face dropped.

  ‘We do appreciate it’s less than ideal, but with a full complement in the office it’s the only workstation available, and priority does have to go to longer-serving staff who can get quite territorial about their spaces.’

  ‘Absolutely understand, just flagging the issue for you. I’d spotted the empty desk in the room next to yours.’

  ‘The teleconferencing office?’

  Panic flashed in Robert’s eyes.

  ‘Look, I’ll leave it with you. I don’t need to go through an entire cost benefit analysis with someone of your experience.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Robert tapping the desk. ‘Anyway, just shoot me an email when the receipts are in, and I’ll talk you through the despatch dockets.’

  Robert bustled away down the aisle with a skippy walk.

  ‘Way to go sucking up to management, cowboy,’ James thought to himself.

  It was force of habit. One of the few things he’d learnt about work is that the work you do doesn’t matter nearly as much as the desk you do it from. Plus a week of sitting here and he’d be so dehydrated he’d have the consistency of wafer. Still, he really needn’t start planning a meteoric rise to the top here. This was only temporary. He was not going to be raising a family on a derisory wage with a deadening job that would make his shoulder blades slump down to the point they were almost touching his belly. He sat up straight in his creaking office chair, and got back to entering numbers from bits of paper onto a computer, so they could be lined up neatly and printed out on a different piece of paper.

  A solid forty-five minutes of typing and he’d got through near enough all of the work he’d been set aside to do for the day. He’d better slow down, he decided. If the work was finite, he could be sent home before he knew it, and while that idea was appealing, the prospect of the dole trying to send him out to do something even more soul-destroying lurked. He could quietly get on with his job search from here while getting paid for it, if he could persuade old Bob to let him have a computer with internet access. He’d work on that after a coffee, he decided, and headed to the staff kitchen.