‘Envy, I suppose, and suppressed anger when they have to seek professional services themselves, and then get the bill at a bad time.’
‘Paul had a falling out with his partners, and it all got pretty nasty. It comes home, doesn’t it, one way or another. I don’t mean anything physical, nothing like that. Just impatience and loss of involvement. Nothing you do is good enough for an unhappy person.’
We were two people who had no connections that weren’t entirely circumstantial. Summer had come to introduce herself to her neighbours and ended up sitting between a garage and a hire firm while her son with fresh stitches in his eyebrow, played among second-hand tyres. And she was telling me of the difficulties in her marriage and her hopes that the shift to a new place would solve them. She had no one else to talk to I suppose.
‘A new start can be a good thing,’ I said. ‘How does your husband like the firm he’s with now?’
‘Yeah, he does, but he’s lost a lot a confidence. He used to be quite gung-ho, and now he has this oppressive fear of failure.’
‘It could be just a bad patch,’ I said.
‘I told you not to do that, Jack,’ and she half rose from the seat and then sat again when her son obeyed. ‘You don’t think of someone changing that much when you marry them, do you?’ she said. ‘You imagine one personality for all the time. That sounds stupid I suppose.’
‘Not at all.’
‘We’ve both been so unhappy.’
‘Maybe the shift here will make the difference,’ I said.
‘If it wasn’t for Jack I don’t think we’d make a go of it at all. But then you have to go through stuff, I guess.’
I thought she might cry, but was relieved when she got up and went over to play with her son. It was getting colder in the late afternoon, and in the hire yard a tall, slow man was putting tarpaulins over some of the equipment. I wished I could say something to Summer that was as candid as her own admission, but far more encouraging, something about love, resilience and sacrifice, but I was too much on the outside of her life. We retreated to talk of the cold, Jack’s dexterity on the tyres and his lack of concern with Dr Posswillow’s stitches.
The mechanic was as good as his word. He had the car right within half an hour. Jack sat on his mother’s knee on the way home, but the Italian heart-throb didn’t appear. Emma insisted that Summer come in to warm up and have a drink, and she’d dug out some of our children’s old toys and had them on the carpet for Jack. I recognised them all with a twinge of family nostalgia. The wooden duck with oval wheels to make it waddle, and the robust jungle jigsaw that was more suited to Jack’s age.
Summer appreciated the kindness, seemed almost reluctant to leave, although she said she needed to get back to her own place. ‘God, what a strange day,’ she said. ‘I come over to introduce myself and end up imposing on you both for the whole afternoon. And relying on you to find a doctor, and not having my purse to pay him. I don’t know what you must think.’
‘We’re glad to help,’ said Emma. ‘I’m just so pleased that Jack’s okay. That’s all that matters.’
‘You’ve been so kind.’ Summer took Jack’s hand and we followed them to the door. The little boy’s patch had become an accustomed part of his face. She thanked Emma and then me. ‘Thanks, Robin, for the help and the understanding,’ she said.
‘Good luck,’ I said.
We watched them going home to their own lives. ‘Good luck?’ said my wife.
‘She said a few things about why they shifted. Just semaphore really. There’s stuff going on in the marriage.’
‘Yes, there is something, isn’t there.’
‘Anyway, after all that excitement I could do with a rest.’
‘You know you never sleep in the afternoon,’ Emma said.
OE CALLS HOME
Who’s that? — Oh, you, Spam. Yeah, things are okay, but look I need to talk to Mum. — Italy. I’m calling from a place in Italy called Ventimiglia. — Yeah, of course it’s filled with hot Italian women. What do you bloody expect, Mexicans? — Yeah, yeah, of course I am: more bangs than hot dinners. I’m beating them off with a stick here. But I haven’t got time for you to be rabbiting on, this call’s costing heaps. Put Mum on. — Okay, you too, you big dork. See you, bro. — Hi Mum. I’m fine. How are you? — Yes I did. I got all of those, I just haven’t had time to reply because I’m on the move so much that I never seem to get to a post office and that. I’ve actually got cards in my pack written out to you and some of the rellies. — I’ll do that. Okay. Look, the thing is that I’m over my limit on the credit card, and I wonder if you and Dad could kick in a few bucks just to tide me over. — Well, I know you did, but everything costs a packet over here. You wouldn’t believe it. — I know I did, I know, but there weren’t as many picking days as they’d hoped because of the rain, a rat ate some of my Euros, and I had to pay for a mirror that got broken somehow in the room I shared with this Dutch guy. — I’ve no idea. I think the Dutch guy was an epileptic, or a stoner, or something. — Stoner? Well, it doesn’t matter what it is, Mum, the thing is I had to cough up for the mirror, and someone had been sick on some linen, or something, I don’t know. You don’t argue with these people. Konrad is a white giant, and besides I don’t speak Dutch, or Italian. — You wouldn’t, Mum, believe me you wouldn’t. — No, it just doesn’t work that way here, Mum. Anyway, as I say, one way or another I just need a few hundred to tide me over until I get a job. This Russian girl I met at the backpackers’ says they’re crying out for English speakers to work on the cruise boats around the Greek islands. — Well, I was heading for London, but the exchange rate of our dollar to the pound sucks. — Yeah, but when I do have some, the exchange will crucify me. You see it’s all this pressure that I’m under at the moment. I wasn’t going to bother you, but actually I haven’t been feeling so good. I was crook in Switzerland most of the time. — Well, the symptoms were just general, Mum, you know, I kept feeling bad in the mornings, might be the altitude, and now the heat here on the coast fries your brains. A few times I’ve had to go without food. — Yes I did, and thanks very much. It was a lifesaver, but unfortunately I got this court fine in Paris which took most of it. — Oh, they reckoned some guys were drunk in a cruddy fountain, and I happened to be resting nearby and got grabbed as well. — I don’t want to go into it all, everyone’s on the take here. Money’s everything, and I hate that attitude. It’s sickening, and if you can’t speak their language the French go ape. — I’m not saying that I need to come back. It’s just if I could feel there was a little emergency money, you know, probably I wouldn’t need it, but it’s the peace of mind. — I know I did, and I’m sorry it worked out that way. — Well, it’s what I thought at the time, but things change quickly here, Mum, it’s a different world. — No, I’m not travelling with Kevin now. He got all sour when there was a miscalculation at Istanbul and we had to pawn his watch. — Well, his mother would see it that way, though, wouldn’t she. — Anyway, the Croatian girl was just someone I thought we should help out. You and Dad brought us up to offer a helping hand, I thought. Getting back to the money thing, what do you reckon? — Yeah, well I’m pretty peeved that Granddad mentioned that to you and Dad at all. I mean I asked him to treat that request just as a private arrangement between him and me. Anyway, I’m letting you know the situation ’cause you’re my family, and what action you take is up to you. — Sure, sure put Dad on. That’s great. I haven’t actually got a lot of time before I try to get something from a chemist here for my skin, and the call will cost me an arm and a leg, but I thought it important to check in with you all. — You too. Hi, Dad. — Not too bad all things considered. I tried calling from France a week or so back, but there’s always some foul-up on the exchange in these places. It’s mad, but people just don’t seem to understand English over here. — Sure, sure, I will, you bet. — I don’t want to go on about money you know, it’s just — I did, yes, — What’s that? — No, nothing like that, not that sort of thi
ng, I keep to myself, it’s just being under pressure, run down, and crook in the guts sometimes. I try to be responsible and that. Actually I didn’t like to mention it to Mum, but one of the things is I’d like to bring back something decent for her, you know? There’s some beaut jewellery here. — Well, I did yes, I was about to use what you sent for that, but I was robbed in Naples. — I thought I told you that? Yeah, yeah, I’m sure I did. At least I wasn’t injured much. — No, the bruising’s pretty much gone. Anyway, I’m mainly ringing just to check in and say I miss you all. You know my card number. — Sure, I understand that. No sweat, but just think about it — Eh? — Well, I thought I had, Dad. I’m sure. — Is it that much? I haven’t kept an exact tally. — No, no that’ll be all right, and I appreciate it. — Yeah, I can see that. Anyway, better go. Calls cost a bundle here, Jesus. — Yes, you too, you too. — That’s okay, see you. Bye.
VAPOUR TRAILS
‘Bums, aren’t they,’ said Matthew. ‘In the States they’re derelicts, winos, bag crap, hobos, vagrants, tramps. Jesus Christ.’
‘Not that so often, I reckon,’ said Felicity.
‘What?’ Matthew stood at the office window and looked down on the small group forming in the alley off the busy street. ‘They’ll all be on P, or some bloody thing. Fucked up by being groped by an uncle, or some such, so they’ll tell the courts. Useless buggers.’
Matthew, who imported office equipment like the rest of us, stood as a big guy by the window in the cheap, black shoes of a lower echelon city suit. The vagrants didn’t have to put in the hours he did, had no responsibility, were never going to provide a client base. Their essential, dilatory uselessness and weakness pissed him off.
Usually they were later coming back to the alley, but the day was cold and the wind came up the street from the harbour with a drizzle before it like a swarm of sandflies. The alley offered protection, and ended in a plot of bushes and zigzag steps to a car park accessed from another street. There were cartons and light, Warehouse garden sheeting made into shelters in the bushes, a suitcase in which a Labrador slept. Close to the steps was a deep, rear doorway in a commercial building where the vagrants gathered to drink and shout at one another. ‘Useless, noisy fuckers.’ Matthew never got used to them.
‘Language,’ said Felicity.
‘You’re not doing a hell of a lot yourself,’ said Ramon.
Here we call them street people, or the homeless, don’t we. It’s more PC, and collective terms somehow seem less invidious, more suggestive of society’s neglect rather than personal failure. We knew of the alley dwellers because of the noise they made and the openness of their lives to others’ gaze: they knew nothing of our closed community on level four. We were aware of them, while knowing next to nothing of the people who shared the building with us — like those who sold insurance from level two, the dental practice and insurance brokerage that shared our floor, Acme Investments, Catalogue Empowerment, Scientific Aromatherapy, level three, and the legal firm of Ramage, Browne, Poole on level six. The Icarus Private Academy of the Performing Arts, always deathly quiet above us. Each day an army of people came through the same street-level main door, nodded perhaps, and went to their own stations. For the life of me I wouldn’t have been able to pick out Messrs Ramage, Browne, Poole or Icarus, in a police line-up.
I knew Sex Slut from the alley: not her face so much because of the bird’s-eye view, although I had passed her in the street, but the fall of her lank, brown hair, or the green beanie in winter, and the shouts and shrieks of her name. And she would shriek foully back, or laugh, which was a shriek too. Alcoholics and druggies need to be loud from the fug of their addiction, or maybe it’s some unconscious defiance of everything around them. The street people were loudest at the end of the day, when they gathered in the doorway and bushes by the steps after their meanderings. Maybe noise was the only way they could impinge on the world. If I was working till half six, I would have a window open to the limited extent the mechanism allowed — was it feared we would cast ourselves to death? — and listen to the ravings below.
Sex Slut had a shrill voice that carried well, but I learnt to identify others as well: Puli the Pacific boy, Jimmy in the grey overcoat who owned the dog, I think, the thin man with a bald top and yet long hair down his back that he sometimes wore in a pony-tail. When they shouted his name it sounded like Saucer, but must have been something else. Mostly they were guys. Mostly they seemed to hate each other: fierce abuse, dramatic collapse into sobs, savage group persecution of each member in turn, especially Sex Slut, who would retreat down the alley to scream back at them, sometimes wander quite away, but usually rejoin the others in time. Abuse could turn to laughter within one phase of the distant traffic lights, and sometimes they went into a huddle like a basketball ball team to share some dirty secret, or some substance to put coloured stars into their firmament. Late at night they must have slept there in the deep doorway and the bushes fashioned into bivvies with scraps.
Our own community was so much more civilised and fortunate, yet so similar in disillusion. Matthew, Ramon, Felicity, Becky and me in the main office, and Mr Cusip in the glassed-off alcove by the photocopier, the fax machine, the hiccuping water dispenser, the yellowed Zip and the notice board that bore no tidings. After Mr Cusip, Matthew was senior by virtue of long service and institutional knowledge, but he was denied any formal title to recognise that status, and received bugger all more money. Matthew was a model study in thwarted ambition. He would often come and put one half of his substantial arse on my desk, and talk in an undertone of how his loyalty and talent were insufficiently recognised. He wasn’t a great one for cultural sensitivity. ‘If I chose to toss it in here,’ he’d say, ‘old Cusip would be in the shit, for sure. Whole show down the gurgler in no bloody time at all.’
‘Think of the disruption to the office equipment supply industry throughout the country,’ I’d say, or some such. Actually, although I didn’t like Matthew, it was true that he kept the place going. Cusip was like a rabbit in burrow, fearful of the ferret. In all the time I worked there he never addressed us as a group, but sidled up to us individually if there were instructions to be given.
‘I see you as someone with a career path in this office,’ he said to me once, and touched his nose like a character from Dickens. How Ramon and I laughed at that on the roof: how we teased out the magnificence of a career path among the five of us in that office.
Ramon showed me how to get onto the roof. He and I kept it as a secret. You went to the top floor and at the end of a corridor next to the fire hose was a ceiling flap and a counter-weighted folding ladder that you pulled down. Lunchtimes sometimes we went there, using the ladder only when all was quiet. The roof was flat concrete with drain grilles and ducts and pipes poking up. We’d sit in the sun, forget about the office for a while, forget about the inventories of business equipment and exchange rates and the rudeness of people you have to deal with. Even there occasionally, even in the middle of day, we would hear people shouting in the alley, and could look down on their foreshortened figures.
Ramon’s name was ludicrously inappropriate. He was a tall, red-headed Californian named after some forgotten matinée idol. Almost everything about our jobs was a source of humour for him, but then he was younger than me, and knew it was a passing phase of his life. He was waiting for his overseas accounting qualifications to be verified, after which he’d float upwards into a rarefied professional world in which office equipment was just something you sat on, or manipulated, without thought. He hadn’t told that to the others, and when he was rebuked by Matthew, or patronised by Felicity who’d been to a private school, he’d take it with mock contrition, and a glance towards me. I would have enjoyed a greater share in his derision had I been as assured of a future. Maybe in ten or fifteen years, following the career path proffered by Mr Cusip, I would inherit Matthew’s seniority in the office, still peddling mundane merchandise, still at the same desk hearing the shouted profanity from th
e alley below, still wearing cheap shoes, while Ramon flew to business deals in Singapore, or wound up national corporations as official receiver.
‘You should sign up for one of those evening courses at university,’ said Ramon on the roof. His lunch was a supermarket brie cheese that he ate like a bun.
‘I’m okay,’ I said.
‘You’ll get screwed down there. You’ll end up like Cusip, or Matthew.’ Felicity and Becky didn’t count. Felicity made the most of herself, went to the right parties and would marry security with a big dick. Becky would stop working when her husband agreed to have a kid.
‘It’s a job,’ I said.
‘You need to move on, man. It’s no way to spend your life down there. Those people, they’re just rotting.’ Down there meant the office on level four, not the alley. In the alley people were already rotting surely, but then you don’t look below you, do you, you look at those doing better than yourself. Dissatisfaction and envy are ambition’s goads. Yet I couldn’t persuade myself that Puli, Jimmy, Saucer, the limping guy with the grey hoodie, the Sex Slut and others would be breaking their necks to move to level four, except for warmth.
‘I’ve got plans, don’t you worry,’ I said. I had no plans: dreams, yes, but there was no bridge between dreams and the office on level four. I needed a plan. Sometimes at my desk with invoices, or being belittled on the phone by the manager of some tin-pot store in the provinces, I felt a sort of panic rising because my life was unchanging, yet passing in futility day by day. It would move through me like a liquid shiver and leave just dull despondency.
‘The thing is, you got to make things happen sometimes. Strike out on your own in some way. Badminton’s no bloody living,’ said Ramon. ‘No good just waiting for Godot.’ He was testing the last of the cheese round in his fingers, and the sunlight brought out the ginger in his hair, although he didn’t have a single freckle. There was cloud drift over the hills, and the traffic noise rose like the sound of a great river in a canyon. Gusts of car fumes and the persistent fragrance of the ethnic food malls overlay the smell of the tar sealant on the roof. Sensory perception was most acute, yet the sum total of it had no connection with my life.
Living As a Moon Page 6