Straight on Till Morning

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  ‘Because I’ve a good mind to get on to him right now and give him a piece of my mind!’

  Though grateful for his concern, I found myself more than a little anxious to forestall such an event. ‘Please don’t do that, Jonathan. It was an accident. He was very sorry.’

  I picked up my mug and took a sip of the contents. It was tepid and treacly.

  ‘I should damn well think so! And all because you will insist on running around after that girl all the time! She runs rings round you! At her beck and call every moment of the day. It’s no wonder she takes advantage.’

  At least some of this was true so I didn’t even bother to try and formulate a response. Which was fine, because he hadn’t finished ranting at me anyway.

  ‘What is it with her?’ he rattled on. ‘We never had all this nonsense with Morgan!’

  Morgan being our eldest. Or more specifically, his eldest, Jonathan having been married before. His first wife, Tricia, had died in a car accident. Morgan had been three when Jonathan and I met. Just four when I became her new mum. And he was right. We hadn’t had these problems with Morgan. Because Morgan was an altogether different kind of girl. Not better. Just different. Just less headstrong and feisty. And not the youngest, which everyone knew made a difference. I glowered into my mug and knew exactly what he was thinking. That Kate was only more trouble than Morgan because of her complement of renegade genes. I glowered at him too. ‘She’s just a teenager, Jonathan. For goodness’ sake, that’s what they’re like.’

  ‘Only because you spoil her,’ he huffed. ‘What that girl needs is to learn her lesson once in a while. So she can bloody well get her backside out of bed and go down and clean my car for me. Kate!’

  He marched out of the bedroom and stomped across the landing.

  ‘And I broke both legs, thank you for asking,’ I muttered. I turned over in bed and tried to go back to sleep.

  Chapter 3

  They say that all sorts of things are written in the stars. Which is an appealing idea, but more than a little woolly in the facts department. Stars are beautiful, heart-stopping, stunningly mysterious. But the notion that life is somehow celestially governed is something I never had much truck with.

  It was beguiling, certainly, to think that my brush with mortality that Friday night had a whiff of the supernatural about it, enticing to think that my chance meeting with a handsome stranger was something other than, well, simple chance. But pondering such abstracts simply because a certain someone has fetched up in your thoughts rather a lot is kooky and daft. Goodness, I thought, as I drove into work on Monday morning, I’d be reading my horoscope next.

  Or maybe not. Fate was for fatalists, not pragmatists. And I was most definitely the latter. I became an optometrist, for instance, not because of any celestial career guidance, but because I had developed a debilitating crush on a boy called Kevin in the sixth form at school, and optometry just so happened to be what he was going to do. Dreadful to think that such major life choices are often made in such a haphazard and arbitrary way. As it was, he didn’t get a place on the course, and by that time I had grown weary of carting so much unreciprocated adoration around with me anyway. But it turned out OK. I liked my job, as it happened. I liked the way it was so complex and interesting and varied, yet still so reassuringly day-to-day samey.

  Or had been, until just lately.

  I worked at a place called Amberley Park, some six or so miles from Gatwick airport. Originally the site of a minor stately home, it was now home to a stately state-of-the-art retail development, which had risen phoenix-like from the ashes of aristocracy and had everything the proletariat could hope to find in such a place. The biggest stores, the biggest car park, the biggest food court, the biggest fountains, the biggest ( the vilest) plastic palm trees imaginable, all stylishly stashed under one cavernous roof. Specifically, it was home to the biggest branch of Sandals the chemists, in which Sandals Opticians resided. Of which, at that moment, I was senior optometrist. Perhaps not the loftiest of career peaks, admittedly, but I was happy enough. Or had been. We’d recently been swallowed up ( though their words had been ‘merged with’) by the Drug U Like group, an aggressively expansive American chain, who had all sorts of plans for our retailing future, ambitions that it seemed did not necessarily include me.

  ‘The R word,’ hissed Ruth, when we met up in the cloakroom. ‘It’s been said. It’s for definite, mark my words.’

  She announced this dramatically, as was entirely usual. My friend Ruth, in her spare time, was a writer of fiction. When she wasn’t stocktaking, or doing contact lens fittings or (more usually) chatting up reps, she was busy selling stories to women’s magazines. I sometimes wondered if she didn’t live her whole life practising snatches of portentous dialogue.

  ‘R word?’ I asked. I was busy checking the list in the back of my diary. ‘Speak to caterer/ think table plan/ arrange date for b.maid fitting ( v.imp!!!)/ buy dog food.’ I was just trying to work out quite why it was that I’d recently scribbled down ‘ring my MP’.

  Ruth loomed in front of me. ‘Redundancy, Sally.’

  I glanced up now. ‘What? You’re kidding.’ I recalled the letter I’d been sent by Drug U Like the previous week. It had alluded to the prospect of changes, certainly. But career options, it had said. Not redundancy. Redundancy had never occurred to me.

  She shook her head. ‘Wish I was, but I’m not, I’m afraid. Russell heard Dennis banging on about it in the staff room on Friday.’

  Russell was one of the other three optometrists. In his words, a chick magnet. In mine, a big wuss. But a nice enough one. We got along OK.

  Ruth slammed her locker door shut and moved away to the basins, twisting up a fat plummy lipstick as she went.

  ‘So that’s me, then,’ she added, puckering her generous lips at the mirror. ‘Last in, first out, is my guess.’

  I didn’t want Ruth to go. Ruth didn’t have a job title as such. She’d been originally brought in as an optical assistant, but in the three years she’d been here, she’d taken over pretty much everything not done by one of us, and a good bit of that stuff as well. Without her, the practice would soon collapse into chaos.

  ‘But they can’t do that,’ I said. ‘I’m sure they can’t do that. There was that agreement, wasn’t there? I’m sure there was.’

  She jiggled the lipstick lid at me. ‘Oh, yes. But that’s not worth the paper it’s written on. You watch. It’ll be all jolly-pals-from-across-the-pond stuff this evening, but you mark my words. Give it a month and it’ll be “off you go, then”, or a stint on the tills down in Sanitary Protection. No thank you. No. I’ll take the redundancy money and go write my novel. You’ll be all right, though.’ She made a kiss at the mirror. ‘They’ll hang on to you. You’re not sales staff, of course. Mind you, I wouldn’t rule out rollerblades.’

  ‘Rollerblades? What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘Well, you know Americans. Anything you can sell you can sell faster on wheels. Mark my words. Just a matter of time.’

  To help facilitate the forward momentum of the Sandals/Drug U Like union, the entire staff of Sandals’ southern division had been asked to attend an evening meeting at a swanky hotel just outside Horley. A team-building (oh, how I would come to rue that expression) meeting, to enable, so the memo had enthusiastically promised, us ‘folks’ to get to know each other better.

  We’d arrived, in wary dribbles, and been welcomed effusively. There were no wheels in evidence, but there was instead a reception, which was useful in that it enabled us folks to understand that the Drug U Like folks had deemed us the sort of people for whom the cocktail onion and the Twiglet would be the snack foods of choice. This would be followed, we were told, by a short presentation, which presumably would also be useful in that it would enable the Drug U Like folk to ease us gently along the rocky road to retail enlightenment without the need for leg irons or prescription drugs. To that end, we were ushered into
some sort of conference facility with floor to ceiling, wall to wall midnight blue drapes, behind which pinpoints of light twinkled gaily. Things didn’t look promising. At our seats were some shocking pink Drug U Like folders. Plus a Drug U Like pencil and Drug U Like pen. There was also a shocking pink Drug U Like bum-bag, which proved, once unzippered, to be positively bursting with similarly hued and badged Drug U Like stuff. A Lip U Like chapstick, some Sun U Like suncream, a Smooth U Like razor and some Legs U Like tights.

  In American tan, naturally.

  ‘Christ,’ observed Russell, who was rummaging beside me. ‘What’s this thing then? A Shag U Like jonnie?’

  A head swivelled in front of us. ‘You’re kidding,’ I said.

  ‘I sure hope so,’ he answered, fingering it gingerly. ‘No, no. Don’t panic. Another girl-thing I think. A ‘breathable Soft U Like scented whisper,’ it says here. A what?’

  I pulled mine from my bum-bag.‘It’s a panty pad, Russell.’

  ‘So why can’t it say so?’

  ‘Because it’s American,’ said Ruth. ‘Americans,’ she explained, ‘for all their in-yer-face manner are actually the most Victorian people on the planet. Everyone knows that. Hold up, guys. Here comes the posse.’

  A group of half a dozen men and women with clipboards and perfect teeth were beginning to take their seats on the stage, behind a long table which was dotted with flagons of water and swathed in a monogrammed shocking pink cloth. Around us a laser-driven Drug U Like logo was drifting bumper car-style off the walls and floor. The lights began to dim. Strident music began to play. I began to regret my last tumbler of juice.

  Plunged into sudden blackness, it occurred to me that this was a little like a Disneyland ride. Perhaps the floor would move. Perhaps dinosaurs would poke heavy green heads from the folds in the curtains and snort corpse-flavoured breath into the audience. Russell groaned. ’Stand by. It’s Crap U Like showtime.’ He started idly unwrapping his Teeth U Like gum.

  But there were no dinosaurs. Just a short film about Drug U Like’s illustrious (boring) history, and a preponderance of rhetoric about how nice they all were. Drug U Like were, it explained to us, everything a Drugstore should be Wholesome. Principled. Uncompromising on pricing.

  And, of course, pink.

  The presentation over, the lights blinked back on again, and a short man in a pink shirt took up his place at the podium. He thanked us all warmly for coming along. We would, he hoped, work with our Drug U Like colleagues to ensure a smooth and comradely transitional phase. There was no mention of redundancies, though lots of other R words. Like rationalization, re-organization, remits, re-structuring, reconnaissance and rout, which were plopped into his speech at regular intervals, seemingly regardless of whether they’d fit.

  ‘So,’ he said, beaming at the largely stupefied audience. ‘It’s question time now, folks. Who’s going to be first up?’

  There was a lengthy silence, overlaid with a variety of tracheal manoeuvres.

  ‘Come on, guys. Shoot!’ he tried. Nobody shot.

  ‘How’s about a –’

  A hand surfaced up in the front row.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he said brightly, flapping his clipboard.

  ‘I was wondering if your plans encompass any initiative for installing a new vending machine in the gent’s toilet,’ a man said.

  Nobody tittered. Somebody sneezed.

  ‘I’m glad you asked that,’ he said, with admirable earnestness. ‘We have a focus group, right now, on to human resource management. Staff welfare is one of our number one thrusts.’

  Finally, We were allowed out, and encouraged to return to the function room, where we were split into more focus groups, where there would be an opportunity to put questions in a less formal environment. Hopefully, one that wasn’t pink. We would then re-convene for the vast buffet supper that was already being trolleyed in around us.

  Russell sniffed his way past it. ‘Well, that was pretty excruciating, wasn’t it? I don’t know about you guys, but I need a decent drink. Shall we slink off and get a beer at the hotel bar?’

  It was our habit to go for a drink after work on Mondays. On Monday night Jonathan always stayed up in London, and Kate rehearsed with her dance troupe.

  ‘Ooh, I don’t know,’ said Ruth, who was becoming rather pink herself and had affixed her bum bag around her middle as a gesture of support. ‘I’d quite like to stick around here for a while, actually. Can’t hurt to get a better look at the enemy, can it? Sal? You staying here? Yes? Get me one in while I zip to the loo.’

  I left Russell to ferret out a Foster’s pump somewhere and headed back to the function room. By now, lubricated by wine and free toiletries, people were beginning to mill with markedly more enthusiasm. Edging my way towards the already crowded bar area I wondered about Ruth’s observation that I was not sales staff. It seemed to me she was wrong on that count. Everyone seemed to be sales staff in the Drug U Like culture. Everyone united with the single ambition of getting our wares sold and cash in the till. I wondered about the likes of some of our elderly patients. All the pensioners, clutching their NHS vouchers, for whom a trip for new glasses was a rare day out. What would happen to the service we provided for them? Shoved in, back to back, between sunglasses promotions and two for one frames deals and contact-lens sales. I spotted our manager, Dennis, deep in conversation with the blonde from the podium. His gentle nudges about productivity seemed suddenly rather benign.

  Ruth, impatient with my shuffling progress towards the tepid vin de pays, grabbed two glasses of some murky fruit cocktail from a circling waiter and downed half of hers at a stroke. ‘Well isn’t this jolly?’ she said. ‘I’m kind of warming to all these thrusting Americans, aren’t you? Oh, I know the bottom line is going to be hassle and ridiculous sales initiatives and the demise of the entire Anglo-Saxon culture as we know it and everything, but it makes a change, doesn’t it? All grist to the novelist’s mill.’

  I didn’t know about grist, but I wasn’t sure about the making of changes . I didn’t like change as a rule.

  ‘Anyway, she went on, ‘lets mingle, shall we? You can’t deny there’s some decent talent knocking about here. Let’s put ourselves about a bit, shall we? I think the optoms are meeting in that room over there.’ She gestured. ‘Oh, and guess what?’ She gave me a nudge. ‘I’ve already clocked the prototype model for the Hunk U Like range.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘A vision,’ she said, scouring the headscape and grinning like a mad person. ‘A vision of what?’

  She sighed extravagantly. ‘A vision of utter shagability, Sal. Let’s just say,’ she added, dipping her glistening lips to my earlobe, ‘that he can bundle me into a darkened room and check out my prescription anytime.’ ‘Ah! Look sharp,’ she hissed suddenly, poking me. ‘If I’m not mistaken, it’s heading our way.’

  ‘What’s heading our way? ’

  ‘The guy I just saw, stupid! Hunk U Like, Shag U Like, Snog U Like – uh oh! And coming up behind you. Ten past two.’

  What? She thrust out an arm. ‘Hello. Ruthie Preston, optometry sales management.’

  Ruthie? Optometry sales management? Eh? I was just wondering quite where she dredged that one up from, when a long male, suited arm extended from behind me.

  I swivelled. ‘Hello there,’ he said. ‘I’m Nick Brown.’

  It took about two seconds for the name and face to register. One more, at any rate, than it took him to say, ‘Well, well! We meet again, Sally!’ Then, ‘Is Sally OK with you?’ with that sing-song, unusual accent he had. I extended my own arm and he shook my hand firmly. ‘What a very, very pleasant surprise!’

  He’d remembered my name. ‘Sally’s fine,’ I said, feeling myself go the colour of the punch. For what reason I knew not. But go it I did.

  ‘Oh! You two know each other, do you?’ said Ruth, looking confused and a little peeved. I was still blinking under the intense blue of his gaze.

 
; ‘In a way,’ he went on. ‘We met on Friday night. Though I have to say, Sally, I almost didn’t recognise you with your clothes on.’

  I couldn’t think of anything witty to say in response to this, so I ended up just smiling stupidly at him while the blush slithered on down my neck.

  ‘Actually, that’s not true,’ he went on, gesturing towards me with his glass and grinning. ‘I recognised you straight away. But I couldn’t place you. No cricket bat tonight. It was the absence of a cricket bat that had me stumped.’

  ‘Gracious!’ said Ruth, spluttering though her mouthful of drink and gaping in mock horror. ‘Shouldn’t you carry a licence for jokes that bad? And is someone going to fill me in here, or what?’

  ‘Ruth, Nick’s the man I told you about. The accident?’

  ‘Aha!’ she said. ‘What a turn up! So it was you, was it?’ She poked him.

  ‘Guilty as charged,’ he said, dipping his head. His hair ran in waves across the top of his head. Like sand once the tide’s out, only glossy and milk-chocolate brown.

  ‘You found your way home then?’ I said.

  ‘Eventually,’ he answered. ‘By way of Croydon and Horsham.’

  ‘Croydon? You’re kidding!’ I said.

  He sipped his drink and winked.

  ‘Ri-ight,’ said Ruth, poking at the ice in her glass now instead and pushing her chest out a bit. ‘American. Got it. So that would explain why you were driving on the wrong side of the road.’

  I was still two seconds behind. Of course. Of course. He nodded and flicked his eyes back and forth between us. I felt suddenly rather awful that I’d told Ruth about it. As if I’d broken a confidence. Talked about him behind his back.

  ‘Kind of, I guess,’ he said ruefully. ‘Though I’m not American, as it happens. English by birth. I’ve been out there twenty odd years now, though.’ Which would explain his strange accent. ‘And here I am. Back. Another drink, anyone, before we go in?’

  Our focus group – the eight staff that made up Sandals Opticians at Amberley park, together with those from our neighbouring branches – clustered self-consciously in the small conference room that was to play host to our meeting. As well as Nick Brown, who was introduced formally as their UK Optometry Human Resources Development Co-ordinator (which was why his badge just said Nick Brown, I supposed), there was an Area Director, who introduced himself as Donald, and who started by reassuring us all firmly that nothing dreadful was about to happen. Which, we quietly agreed, meant it probably was.