Don't You Forget About Me

by Mhairi McFarlane

  I am wheezing with laughter now as I recall this episode and so is everyone else.

  ‘There’s your story,’ says Rav.

  ‘Oh no! There’s been much worse,’ I say, insouciantly, confidently. And then I think: what a really sad boast to be making, Georgina.

  Perhaps my problem is, I keep confusing the difference between making jokes, and being the joke.

  21

  That thing Clem said about working against your own nature, on purpose: it preyed on my mind. My nature has been a pretty terrible sat nav so far, so with this in mind, I went even further with Share Your Shame, and invited Mark and Esther. You don’t mess with people who need babysitters. I’d have to do it then.

  ‘Stay and drink afterwards and you can see my new workplace!’ I say, ‘And Mark can say hi to Devlin.’

  Without having boxed myself in, I might easily have backed out.

  ‘Hey, Georgina. Still doing the writing thing? You’re my hero,’ Dev says, as I hoik my bag over my head, arriving for my shift. The pub seems to have more of a buzz than usual. Is it because of the event upstairs? My skin prickles with danger. I’d told myself it’d be half a dozen people.

  ‘Uhm, yeah,’ I mumble.

  ‘You’ve really stepped up here, I appreciate it. I see the theme tonight is Your Worst Day At Work. Hope it wasn’t here, hahaha.’

  ‘Hah. Yeah, don’t thank me when you don’t know what I’m talking about yet. Or maybe it’s about soiling myself on a rollercoaster …’

  Devlin guffaws as he departs. I am grateful for how easy Devlin is, compared to his brother.

  ‘Have you soiled yourself on a rollercoaster?!’ Kitty squeals, as Kitty has never met a figurative type of speech she understood as such.

  Kitty is the new hire – twenty-three, slim as a whippet, with extravagant, drawn-on eyebrows and long brown hair, and a sing-songy OH MY GAWD! vocal cadence I could swear comes from watching lots of series about ditzy American girls with inherited fortunes.

  ‘Oh, you don’t look scary at all, I was worried you’d be scary,’ Kitty said when she met me, leaving me puzzled and possibly offended.

  ‘Were you told I was scary?’

  ‘No but you’re, like, thirty?’

  ‘I don’t think that makes me Dame Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey.’ I toyed with definitely being offended.

  ‘Hahaha! Lucas said you’ve worked at loads of places.’

  Great. I sound like a raddled old scrubber.

  ‘And you’ve got a posh name, hahaha.’

  ‘Oh … is it?’

  ‘I thought you might be stern.’

  I smile, completely confused. Then, after the first hour of knowing her, I gathered that Kitty operates very few security checks on what’s coming out of her mouth. She’s not unpleasant company, in fact she’s very entertaining, but I have to adjust to the scattershot workings of her mind. A chat about politics and her crush on ‘the last one, President Barry O’Barner’ leaves me reeling.

  Rav, Clem and Jo arrive with Esther and Mark, who they ran into outside. Jo is smiling, post Phil, and it’s not just brave-soldier-smiling. Last time I checked in with her she said now she’s made the decision, she feels better for it. Limbo is always the killer. ‘Knowing I had to do it but not facing it,’ she messaged. ‘THAT was the shittiest part of this. At least I’m not pretending to myself any more.’

  ‘Good luck!’ they all chorus, having loaded up with drinks and heading upstairs to bag the best seats. Please, God, let them hog so many that other people can’t fit in too. I can tell my sister and brother-in-law are politely perplexed as to exactly why I would do this, yet trying to be encouraging about a new avenue of interest for me. It beats a life of only reciting which flavours of crisp we stock.

  Minutes ’til the event starts. I have no idea how long other people’s readings will be. I need to keep my mind occupied. Luckily Kitty is exactly the tension valve release I need.

  She asks if she can call her car insurer back, I say sure, and flit around cutting limes into wedges, while Kitty at the end of the bar discusses the premium on her Fiat Cinquecento.

  Kitty says: ‘Oh, what? K for kilo. Oh I see …’

  I don’t normally listen in on phone calls but I catch her expression at this moment and Kitty looks so perturbed, it’s impossible not to be intrigued.

  ‘I … I mean, Insect. Tits.’

  I frown in startled confusion at her.

  ‘Tits again. Yellow. From the start? Kilo, Insect, Tits, Tits, Yellow.’

  I stuff my fist in my mouth to stop myself from laughing.

  Kitty mutters a few more words, and goodbye, and rings off.

  I cry: ‘What THE HELL was that about?’

  ‘Oh my God, he said to spell my name with the police alphabet and I didn’t know it! Oh my GOD! I said tits!’

  I am nearly bent double laughing.

  ‘Tits Tits Yellow?!’ I gasp.

  ‘I couldn’t think of anything beginning with T! Oh my life.’

  ‘Strangely enough, Tits Tits Yellow is my porn name,’ I say, and as the words leave my mouth, realise Lucas is in earshot, approaching.

  ‘What if they cancel my insurance?!’ Kitty wails.

  ‘What for?’ I say.

  ‘… Lewd wordness?’

  ‘I don’t think “lewd wordness” is an official cause of invalidating insurance.’

  Kitty gets her phone out and starts Googling. ‘Oh no, Georgina, it should’ve been kilo India tango tango Yankee.’

  ‘Yeah that sounds more likely than “tits”. Or “insect”, to be honest.’

  ‘I can never call Direct Line again!’

  ‘Imagine how boring his day is usually, Kitty, you did him a favour.’

  We can’t help corpsing again. Ah, the bonding power of shared laughter. I’m safe to tell Devlin I approve of setting Kitty on.

  ‘Georgina,’ Lucas interrupts. ‘Upstairs? They’re asking for you. You’re on.’

  I startle and look at the time. How has the clock flown forward this fast? Oh, the sudden nausea.

  ‘Oh, oh yeah,’ I turn to find my bag under the bar, and pull my crumpled notes out.

  ‘Good luck,’ Lucas says, when I straighten back up.

  ‘Is it proof I’m out of my mind, to be doing this?’ I say. Stage fright has rushed up on me and my teeth are almost chattering.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re like when you’re in your mind,’ Lucas says, with a smile.

  Ain’t that the truth.

  Kitty had disappeared round the corner of the bar, and she reappears, handing me a prosecco, like it’s a charmed amulet for a quest. ‘Take this with you! Good luck!’

  I do like Kitty.

  In the long walk up to the function room, holding the prosecco aloft, I think about what my dad said, about me being a show-off who hates attention. As I reach the doorway, I see a painter’s easel, set up with the topic – Share Your Shame: MY WORST DAY AT WORK! And a running order. They’ve spelled my name ‘Georgina Hawspool’.

  I’ve been in here when it was empty, full of packing boxes, and now it’s rammed with people, mostly sitting, but some clustered around the small bar at the far end, which Devlin is manning. Thank God it wasn’t Lucas.

  Strings of Edison lightbulbs have been strung up against the green paint and the place still smells spicily musty, you can tell it’s had dust sheets thrown off it mere weeks ago.

  A shallow stage at the far side of the room has a microphone on a stand. It’s real now. What on earth was I thinking?

  The compere is a twenty-something feature writer from The Star called Gareth who introduced himself to me earlier. He’s clearly been killing dead air, as he sights me with relief and says: ‘Georgina? Georgina! A round of applause for Georgina, please, who is doing our last reading.’

  I take to the stage, unfold my two sheets of paper and survey the room, people shuffling in their seats, muttering.

  Oh, there are the judges, sat like three wise owls
, a woman and two men. And yes, Mr Keith IS one of them. Well, that’s that then. Less to lose.

  I open my mouth, cough and feel the weight of expectation.

  ‘Hello, so. Wow,’ the microphone gives out a squawk of feedback and Gareth calls: ‘Stand back a little, that’s it.’

  I already feel like a tit.

  ‘Sorry … I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the Waiter Test. It’s the idea that you can assess a person’s character through how they treat service staff. If you go on a date with someone, don’t just judge them by how they treat you. Having been a waitress, a barmaid, a cocktail waitress, and for a very brief and unhappy time, a nightclub hostess – that isn’t quite as dubious as it sounds, though it almost was – I know how true this is.’

  I glance up at the room. I can practically feel those people who know me willing me to succeed, and everyone else watching me in detached curiosity.

  ‘A couple of years ago I was working at this charming café with chandeliers, gold wisteria wallpaper and pink Smeg fridges that served Kir Royales, chopped chicken salads and giant lumps of gateau that meant you might as well as not have had the salad. It did a roaring trade in afternoon tea.

  ‘That Christmas, a dozen or so women come in from a nearby office. Everyone is lovely, except for this one character with a sharp bob, very hard eyeliner and the look of an evil weather girl.

  ‘She summons me over and says: “I’m a vegan who can’t have wheat or sugar, so what can you do for me?”’ Bearing in mind here she’s looking at a menu full of sponge, cream, jam and sandwiches. She’s not warned us in advance. And she’s actually asking me to come up with suggestions. We both agree we have no idea what she might eat. “I’ll ask the chef,” I say.

  ‘I head to the kitchen with a flutter in my heart rate and lead in my boots. The café is in full whirling festive meltdown mode with 3,847 walk-ins on top of the large group bookings and you know when you appear with a dipshit customer query, they’re going to be only too pleased to take the stress out on you. I repeat her request and they laugh and say “She can pick the cucumber out of the cuke and tuna mayo baguette” and I say meekly: Definitely, nothing else? Cos I don’t think she will like this.

  ‘And the head chef screams: “EVEN IF I HAD THE TIME TO COOK WHATEVER THE FUCK SHE’S ASKING US TO MAKE I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT SHE’S ASKING US TO MAKE SO THIS FAILS AT BOTH THE LITERAL AND CONCEPTUAL LEVEL, YOU GET ME?”’

  I pause reading and I think, through the pounding of blood in my ears, am I dreaming it, or did that get a laugh? I plough on, with a notch more confidence:

  ‘… I mean, fair enough and nicely put, but not much help to me. I head back out and explain in my most conciliatory tone that without prior warning, there’s not much we can do for her, we’re so so so sorry. Evil Weathergirl starts spitting blood about how this is unacceptable. “You work in catering and you can’t think up a recipe? So I have to go hungry on my work’s Christmas do?!” Like I’m Jamie Oliver and she’s Oliver Twist. And then, she points to italics on the end of the menu saying: If you don’t see what you like here, please tell us & we’ll try our best to accommodate your wishes!

  ‘At that moment, I could stick corn cob forks in whichever innocent-minded simpleton thought it was a good idea to shove that on a menu because it sounded nice, without realising it’s a green light to every crank and moaner, and comes with heavy caveats in these times of clean eating neurotic intolerants.

  ‘I said, “It’s a busy time and your options are very restricted”, doing the grit-smile because I KNOW this lady’s not for turning.

  ‘“Oh so this is MY FAULT,” she says, and now the whole room’s listening.

  ‘I wait for her to calm down while knowing she’s not going to calm down.

  ‘“What am I supposed to eat?” she says.

  ‘“If you haven’t given us any warning there’s a limit to what we can do.”

  ‘“There isn’t a ‘limit’, you can’t do anything at all! For a vegan! In this day and age! I want to speak to your manager please.”

  ‘There was no manager because she was off sick. I told her this.’

  I look up at the room. As luck would have it, my eyes fall on Rav, who is grinning from ear to ear. He gives me the thumbs up.

  ‘At this point the rest of the table is kicking off at me because they can’t order until it’s resolved and I can’t whip up spelt risotto made with coconut milk, seasoned with orphan’s tears, out of mid-air.

  ‘In sheer panic, I ask: “What about a cucumber salad?”

  ‘She accepts, with much huffing and tutting and hissing, that she will have a cucumber salad.

  ‘I go back to the kitchen. They are absolutely FURIOUS I allowed someone to order off menu, when they explicitly refused the request. More shouting and bare refusals. But I’ve told her she can have it. At some point between a rock and a hard place, you have to choose.

  ‘So I end up making it myself, with chefs around me deliberately jostling me because they’re so angry I’m even in there. I serve it, and she looks like I shat in my hand and shook hers.’

  A laugh. That was a bona fide laugh.

  ‘She doesn’t touch the salad. The whole table doesn’t tip, and leave giving me dirty looks. I got laid off two weeks later because “We don’t need so many people after the rush is over” and it’s in no way because this woman emailed to complain about “your waitress’s attitude” afterwards and her company regularly spent money at this café and had a tab there. No way. I had to sell some of my Christmas presents to make my rent.

  ‘Anyway, a few weeks later I walk past this woman in town and she’s demolishing a mint choc chip Cornetto.’ I give a small bow. ‘The End.’

  The room erupts into applause. I step off the stage and neck my prosecco in one, feeling like a badass. I side-eye the judges’ table and even Mr Keith is patting his hands together, albeit in a desultory fashion.

  ‘Was that the right sort of thing to read?’ I say, shakily, to a beaming Gareth.

  ‘If you want to win the competition, I’d say yes.’

  22

  I’d thought doing my stand-up debut during a shift at work would be unnecessarily pressuring but in fact, coming back to the bar and saying assertively: ‘Who’s next, please!’ is a good way of dealing with the post-performance ebbs and jitters.

  ‘Hey, come here, you!’ Devlin says, following the punters as they trickle back out. He grabs me into an awkward embrace over the bar. ‘No one’s had this good a laugh in one of my pubs since my nude photos leaked. Luc – this girl was fantastic.’

  Lucas is by us, holding a box of Britvic bitter lemons, and merely jerks his head in acknowledgement. Hmm. Appropriate beverage.

  ‘Did you win?’ he asks.

  ‘Don’t find out until the last one, it’s a best of three,’ Devlin says. ‘You’re going to do them all, right?’

  ‘Yes, that was the plan,’ I shrug and smile. ‘If I didn’t tank on the first.’

  ‘That was very far from a tank.’

  Lucas glances at me and looks away.

  I have déjà vu, all of a sudden. The guarded expression on his face resembles a look he once gave me, when we had to jointly present an essay on ‘Is Wuthering Heights a story of redemption or despair?’ I quoted him without his permission, veering off script to get a laugh.

  His face said, back in that classroom: ‘I’m not sure who you are.’ Only why feel that now? Of course he doesn’t know who I am. Maybe people have the same face all their life, the same tics, and I’m overthinking this.

  ‘Was that story true, or did you make it up?’ Dev says, jolting me back into the room.

  ‘All true, unfortunately. I’d have preferred not to have lived it.’

  It was a well-worn anecdote, polished up. That’s the problem with my life: it produces too many anecdotes and not much else. No one wants to be miserable in order to leave a funny-poignant memoir, like Kenneth Williams.

  ‘It was about this vegan,
Luc …’ Dev says, but Lucas has suffered selective hearing, ignoring Devlin in favour of an incoming customer. Even in my euphoria, I have a little flicker of Why can’t he be pleased for me?

  ‘Here she is!’ Rav leads Clem, Jo, Esther and Mark up to the pumps. ‘Really good choice, George, told with perfect timing.’

  They collectively burble about how much they enjoyed it and I bask in it. I know I have to subtract percentages from the whole for 1) their knowing me, and 2) their being glad I didn’t stuff it up, but some of this is authentic admiration. I glow, an unfamiliar feeling which feels like a shaft of sunshine after weeks of rain. For once, I am not in the middle of the mess, but centre of a tiny triumph. I have done something valuable, using my own initiative. I feel … oh this sounds daft, but I feel like an individual for a change. My workplaces only ever usually afford me the identity of ‘love’ or ‘darling’ or ‘the blonde lass’.

  My friends pile off to the snug; even Esther and Mark have decided to stay for one more ‘as we paid the babysitter ’til ten’. All is well, and calm, until I’m flipping the tap on the fourth European lager in a round for a man in a FAC 51 t-shirt, when the door opens and a windswept Robin saunters in.

  He’s in a funnel-necked navy coat I’ve not seen before and is wearing an air of cocky insouciance I’ve definitely seen before. He’s with a short, balding man in a camel Crombie coat who, to my eyes, whispers quiet wealth, in a ‘London’ way. Robin surveys the room in that way he has, as if he is both apart from and above the company, and it’s the job of the contents of the room to impress him. Natural self-consequence.

  He sees me mere seconds after I see him, no time for any ducking or dissembling.