No Wonder I Take a Drink

by Laura Marney

  ‘Well I was thinking maybe a pale peach or a pink.’

  But Steven wasn’t that gullible anymore.

  ‘Aye, sounds good Mum. And what about a wee frilly duvet cover with roses on it?’

  ‘Well what would you like?’

  ‘I don’t mind. Blue. I’m not bothered.’

  ‘Blue. Right.’

  After I dropped him at his Dad’s, all the way home I debated with myself what shade of blue I should get.

  The official reason for Steven moving out was that it would make it easier for me to look after Granny. The real reason was that he didn’t want to live with an old lady who was slowly dying. Who did? At first I hardly noticed him gone. All his friends lived nearby so he was round almost every night anyway. But after the school holidays and when the dark nights came in, he only came on a Wednesday for his tea.

  After Mum died the reason I gutted the place so quickly and thoroughly was for Steven. For myself I didn’t mind Mum’s stuff kicking about the house. In fact it broke my heart to part with her 1960s knitting patterns and her records, The Sound of Music and Calamity Jane, but I knew Steven found it creepy. Old-lady stuff, especially dead-old-lady stuff, freaked him out. I decided that not only Steven’s room but the whole place needed repainting. I couldn’t afford to get anyone in so I bought One Coat paint and a roller. It did exactly what it said on the tin and covered the walls in one coat. Even still it took weeks. When I came home from work I was usually too tired for anything but vegging in front of the telly with a bottle of wine and a packet of fags.

  I started with Steven’s room, evenly applying the paint and taking care around the doors and window. I took down all his old posters – he had probably outgrown them by now, he seemed to have outgrown everything else – but I kept them for him anyway just in case. I must admit that I got bored after that and for the rest of the house I slapped the paint up as fast as I could. I did the living room and the bedrooms as best I could in trendy colours. It was a bit patchy in daylight but it was fresh. The house was now a model of modernity, an Old-Lady-Free Zone. I stashed all my photos of Mum and Dad, Mum’s rings and her birth, death, and swimming certificates, in a biscuit tin in the ottoman in my bedroom. I squirmed at such disloyal revisionism of my own mother but I knew Mum would have understood.

  *

  I was absolutely raging although I suppose I’d always known it would come to this. In amongst the only mail I that usually ever got, junk mail, for stair lifts, walk-in baths and hydraulic beds, was a letter from a solicitor. The letter asked me to ring the office and arrange an appointment at my convenience. Bob was obviously trying to work a fly one. Too cowardly to come and make a deal with me himself, he’d gone to a lawyer. Bob wanted me out of the house or at least pay him the highest amount possible for his share. With Mum hardly cold in the ground, he probably thought I’d be a bit disorientated and ready to agree to anything.

  The name was Donovan O’Hare and Boyle, a firm I’d never heard of. Bob had recruited a bunch of Murphioso shysters to shaft the mother of his child. Oh, he was a slippery one, this way he could minimise pain (his not mine) and maximise profits (his not mine) without getting his hands dirty. Technically he was entitled. Technically he could move back in tomorrow and there would be nothing I could do about it. I could come home and find him and Helga shagging on the couch. Well that wasn’t convenient, not bloody convenient at all.

  ‘Hello, Mr O’Hare?’

  ‘Yes hello Miss McNicholl, thank you very much for calling.’

  ‘Well you’ll not be thanking me when I tell you I’m not coming in to your poxy office. It’s not convenient. It’s not convenient this week or next week or the week after that. It’s not convenient at all.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that Miss McNicholl. Perhaps I could come and visit you at your home?’

  ‘Exactly. It is my home and I won’t be driven out of it, okay? By you or anybody else.’

  I knew I was losing it but in a way I was quite enjoying myself, I had no respect for these sharks anyway.

  ‘Miss McNicholl, I fear we may be at cross purposes here. Our client has instructed…’

  I don’t give a monkey’s what your client has instructed, I’m not having that bastard march in and stain my couch.’

  ‘Miss McNicholl, our client has passed away. It is the matter of his will that I would like to discuss with you.’

  I dropped the phone. Everything jumped into my head at once: Bob was dead. Why was I hearing it from a lawyer? Another horrible funeral. Steven would come back to me. The insurance would pay off the mortgage. Steven didn’t have his Dad anymore. The house would be mine.

  It was all a bit much to take in at once and for some reason the whole thing seemed funny.

  There was a faint squawk coming from the handset. ‘Miss McNicholl, Miss McNicholl!’

  I lifted it and was about to replace it on the cradle when I thought the better of it, these guys were only doing their job.

  ‘Miss McNicholl, I do apologise for alarming you. Perhaps we could start again.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I mumbled. I wanted to hear what he had to say. I wondered if Helga was getting a cut.

  ‘Mr Robertson has made you a bequeathal. There are however certain stipulations…’

  ‘Wait a minute. Just hold it.’ I wasn’t following this. ‘I thought you said Bob was dead. Who the hell is Mr Robertson?’

  ‘Oh dear. I’m afraid I don’t know who Bob is Miss McNicholl, I’m acting only on behalf of Mr Robertson’s estate.’

  I was relieved that Bob wasn’t dead and this surprised me.

  ‘Mr O’Hare, you’ve got the wrong Miss McNicholl,’ I felt embarrassed at having described the poor guy’s office as poxy. ‘I don’t know anyone called Robertson, unfortunately.’

  ‘Mr Robertson, is, or was I should more properly say, a second cousin of your mother, Elizabeth McNicholl, as I understand recently deceased. Mr Robertson has cited you as his next of kin and chief beneficiary of his estate.’

  After hearing this I was gagging to come into his office, but I couldn’t. I was about to go away for three days training in a new product. Nevertheless, Mr O’Hare and I quickly sorted out the next available date.

  ‘I could squeeze you in next Tuesday.’

  ‘Yes, that would be fine Mr O’Hare, thank you.’

  He could hardly keep the sarcastic tone out of his voice but I suppose I’d asked for it.

  ‘Now are you sure that’s quite convenient?’

  *

  In any other job drunkenness may have been frowned upon but in the pharmaceutical industry it was an essential requirement. After the first day’s training the Project Director closed the session by roaring in a motivational way, ‘Are we going to party tonight?’

  Nobody answered. People had travelled from all over the country and sat in a stuffy hotel conference room all day, we were knackered. The Project Director couldn’t help but notice this lack of ebullience; this was a sales force giving less than 110 per cent. He rescued the situation by roaring again, this time in a more threateningly motivational way, ‘I said, are we going to party tonight!’

  ‘Yeah!’ we croaked.

  You had to, it was expected. And not only were you expected to get blind drunk and behave outrageously, you were expected to be up and about, fresh as a daisy next morning.

  At dinner I wore a black full-length velvet skirt I’d got in a charity shop with a lovely lemon long-sleeved blouse. Despite having spent less than the price of Primark pants on my outfit, I looked a million dollars.

  ‘You look terrific Trisha, is that a new skirt?’ said Irene.

  Did the woman never vary her script? Despite what she’d said, subtle waves of disapproval wafted off Irene. When the rest of the team arrived I understood why. If I’d read the programme contained in the ‘welcome pack’ I’d have known about the ‘Most Scantily Clad Team at Dinner,’ competition. Management had organised an evening of wacky icebreakers with games and prizes, d
esigned to loosen everyone up. As I sat there, indecently fully clothed, I was detracting from the team effort. As it turned out, my team won anyway, mostly on the merits of one entrant.

  ‘Well done Alison! You’ve done the Scottish team proud!’ leered the Project Director as he handed over her bottle of Marks and Sparks own brand champagne. Alison was an unattractive girl with heavy glasses and a glaikit expression but she had other attributes. She had a knock-out figure which she’d adorned simply with a nipple-width leather belt across her chest.

  ‘I’m all right as long as I don’t breathe!’ Alison hissed.

  On her bottom half she wore a leather mini. The mini, which was really what swung it, easily fell into the category of ‘fanny pelmet’. Lots of other girls entered into the spirit of things but none were quite so nude as Alison. I thought of Steven and how much he would have enjoyed these nearly naked ladies. Competition was stiff, in more ways than one. A team of lads turned up in only their underpants and dickie bows but they were disqualified on the grounds that boxer shorts were not appropriate dinner attire.

  ‘That’s not fair!’ they complained, moaning that obviously women’s clothes were more suited to brevity. They were missing the point.

  These pathetic 18–30-club-type stunts were amusing in their way but what was far more entertaining was the way everyone vied to increase their reputation for scandalous behaviour. Throughout dinner there was the usual unofficial competition as drunk show offs went to any lengths to ‘out mad’ each other.

  ‘Oh, there’s Margaret at it! That woman is completely bonkers!’ squealed Irene.

  A woman in her late forties, Margaret Pearson, the manager of the north of England team, a person who should have known better, made an early bid for glory. After unsuccessfully throwing herself at the young men under her management, the boys in the boxers and dickies, she used their heads for support and with the slow deliberate movements befitting an older lady, mounted the dinner table. As she’d very publicly failed to mount anything else, she shuffled around the table top proving to them all that she didn’t give two hoots. While she shimmied, an uncoordinated knee action caused her spangly sandals to send red wine pulsing over their melon balls. But it was a poor show. Gary Cook from the South East team let it be known that he’d run up a hotel phone bill of three hundred pounds calling his girlfriend in Los Angeles.

  ‘Only three hundred Gary?’ I tutted. ‘You cheapskate.’

  This was generally held to be more impressive, with high marks for stylish extravagance. Andrew, a senior rep in my team who was close to retirement, always wore national dress to functions. After dinner and before he was too drunk to stand, he would customarily visit each table lifting his kilt and placing his flaccid member in the prettiest girl’s dinner.

  ‘Oh Sally, there’s a wee noodle on your plate,’ I said while I attempted to prong it.

  This old trick was affectionately tolerated but was not of itself particularly noteworthy. In the end, a rank outsider, Evelyn, a New Start, stole the contest when she trashed her hotel room and was rushed away in an ambulance after slitting her wrists.

  On the second day the last session had been scheduled to end at 5pm and lasted until after six. Dinner was at eight. Pre-dinner drinks in the foyer were at seven thirty and pre-pre-dinner drinks were in Irene’s room with the rest of the team at quarter to seven. Attendance was compulsory. There was little time in between for luxuriating in a hot tub in the privacy of my five-star hotel room. It would be a quick dip, a lick and a promise really, and then throwing my kit on and scuttling along to Irene’s room. There, through a fixed smile, I’d participate in the corporate hilarity, the hollow jokey mateyness of it all.

  As usual I was the last to arrive in Irene’s room. Always at the coo’s tail, Mum used to say. But they had planned on me being late.

  ‘Surprise!’ my team-mates shouted as they jumped out from behind the curtains.

  ‘Happy birthday!’

  I tried to look pleased. Most of these people I had only met for the first time a few days ago and now they were gathered round me with a cake that was on fire. Everyone was smiling, politely waiting their turn to kiss me while they sang ‘Happy Birthday to You’. They even managed the wee harmony bit at the end. I couldn’t tell them it wasn’t my birthday. But Irene did.

  ‘Now Trisha, we know it’s not officially your birthday for another week yet, but seeing as the team aren’t all going to be together again for another month we thought we’d have a wee early celebration and give you your prezzie.’

  I didn’t want my birthday a week early. I’d been holding off my fortieth birthday since my thirtieth. For the last ten years I’d suffered recurring bouts of fortyphobia. When I was a wee girl I would think ‘What will I be, what will I have done by the time I’m forty?’ I was going to be a pop star. Like Brotherhood of Man before me, I would win the Eurovision Song Contest. After that, with the altruism of youth, I intended turning my back on fame and fortune to become a missionary in Africa. Then marriage, big white wedding, obviously, and kids. Here I was, a sales rep with no husband and a part time son, in a hotel room with a crowd of strangers. And it wasn’t even my birthday yet.

  ‘Trisha, on behalf of the team I’d like to give you this small token of our appreciation and wish you all the very best for your fortieth.’

  There was a card signed by all of them and thirty pounds worth of Marks and Spencer vouchers. There was a bottle of champagne and a box of luxury chocolates (both Marks own brand). Marks and Spencer vouchers were the company’s standard giveaway. Not only had she hijacked my birthday to use as a team bonding exercise, Irene had financed it from expenses. Manners dictated that I open the chocs and champers. Shared amongst nine people, they were gone in sixty seconds.

  ‘Guys,’ said Irene. Including her, six of us were women but Irene called everyone guys. ‘Guys, as you know Trisha is new to our team but she brings with her four years of experience in this business. Her experience, skill and professionalism is apparent in the figures she has consistently brought in since she joined us. Now this isn’t a blame culture (bingo!) and I’m not being negative when I say that with the piss poor figures you’ve brought in lately, without Trisha this team would have gone belly up.’

  I was going to be popular. Irene was using me as a stick to beat the rest of them with.

  ‘For the team meeting next month I’d like to ask Trisha to share her experience with us. Trisha, make us a presentation, inspire us, show us how it’s done!’

  Irene beamed at me as the team dutifully applauded. This was a great honour, she was letting it be known that she was grooming me for stardom. At dinner I asked her exactly what she wanted me to do.

  ‘Oh you know, the usual: facts and figures, case studies, couple of witty anecdotes then finish with the inspirational stuff. About half an hour’s worth should do it.’

  Half an hour! That would take me months to prepare. I decided to be honest with her, I told her the way I was feeling at the moment, the only thing I could inspire anyone to do was stick their head in the oven. Irene was not sympathetic. She wanted to see it for approval at least two weeks before the meeting. As most of the team were ignoring me after dinner it was easy to slip away. Fags were my only friends so I sneaked back to my room and smoked myself skinny.

  The new product was an analgesic and next morning we were given a written exam to see how much we had retained. One of the questions was, ‘Can you name an instance where pain relief might be required?’ What kind of a stupid question was that? I wrote down ‘shark attack.’ Then we practised our sales pitch.

  Two hundred reps sat in long rows. The first row turned and kneeled on their chairs to work with the person sitting behind them. I had the easy job. The man in front of me, Michael from Wales, played the part of the rep. All I had to do was pretend to be the doctor. He sold me the drug and I asked questions. He was a nice old bloke so I gave him an easy time. Then we switched roles. After a few runs through the Project
Director clapped his hands above his head. Two hundred reps talking at the same time made a sound like flies trapped in the neck of a bottle. Only those near the front heard him. Unused to being cold shouldered, the Project Director put two fingers in his mouth and whistled, nearly bursting my eardrum.

  ‘Okay people, listen up.’

  It was part of a Project Director’s remit to talk like an American.

  ‘For the benefit of the new reps, this is a third line product. In GP land you’ll only have a few minutes to sell it. So now you know it, let me hear you sell it! But fast, do it in five minutes.’

  It was my turn to detail my partner now and he smiled encouragingly as I rattled off the main points about the product.

  ‘Fantastic!’ said the Project Director, ‘I can hear some really exciting detailing going on out there. Now do it in two minutes.’

  Now everyone started screaming at each other. Michael, although he grumbled about having to kneel in his seat, had been sweet and gentle until this point. Bright red from the exertion, he was poised above me spitting in my face while he bawled out the Key Selling Points.

  ‘25MGS THREE TIMES A DAY!’

  Despite this he was having difficulty making himself heard above the hellish din. Michael was a heavy man and when he leaned forward he very nearly couped on top of me. As he toppled, instinct made him grab at the air with his pudgy hands. Unfortunately for us both, the air he grabbed was right next to my breasts. I had narrowly missed being squashed and/or publicly groped.

  ‘Trisha, I’m so sorry!’

  ‘Whoa tiger!’

  ‘I didn’t mean anything…’

  ‘I know. Forget it. Are you okay?’

  He nodded but the poor man was suffering. To spare Michael further embarrassment and possibly a heart attack, I excused myself saying I needed to go to the loo. As I fought my way through 200 frenzied reps shrieking their sales mantras, I wondered how it was that I, an ordinary person, had fallen into this huckster’s snake pit. Not for the first time I thought that there must be less humiliating ways of making a living.