Please

by Peter Wild

  My boy took two days to recover from his night of throwing up, and then it was the weekend, and I had enough seniority by this stage to not have to work on weekends, which was just as well as my wife often had to work right through both days. So by the time I went back to work on Monday I’d forgotten all about my light-hearted and carefree birthday email.

  That morning when I arrived I said hello to the man who does the night shift. Ordinarily he is very cordial and he almost always asks after my wife and my child. But this time he got straight to the point: ‘You’re lucky she’s not going to sue, mate!’

  ‘Who?’ There was no one called Sue in our unit.

  ‘Sue you, of course, you great naked wally. Litigation. Whatever possessed you?’

  Of course, I remembered the video then. But how did the nightshift man know about it? It was between me and my colleague.

  ‘The object of your affection thought it was hilarious–you are lucky she has a good sense of humour, mate. She took it upon herself to spread the news. It’s not the song I would have chosen, of course.’

  ‘Nor I,’ said one of the junior doctors, who had just arrived in the office–clearly they’d been discussing it endlessly. ‘But it does have a sort of poignancy to it, I’ll admit.’ Suddenly the room was full of other people, more of my work colleagues, laughing and talking among themselves, as if they were the audience and I was up on the stage and they were waiting for me to start my performance.

  I cleared my throat, and the crowd fell silent. ‘Where is she?’ I asked.

  ‘You’re lucky, she’s got the day off,’ someone said.

  ‘Today’s her actual birthday, you pillock, not last week,’ added another voice.

  And then they revealed the full truth to me: I had become an overnight sensation. My favourite colleague had forwarded my video to her colleague, who had forwarded it to the whole hospital. The NHS employs people from all over the world these days and they had all forwarded my video to their friends and family who, in turn, had forwarded it to everyone they knew. My birthday greeting video went around the globe and back again, several times. Turned out the entire world–at least, millions of people with access to the Internet–was laughing at me.

  What could I do? I couldn’t quit my job; I love my job and it suits me and my life perfectly. Without this job I’d be even more of an idiot than I already am. I could apologise, I would apologise to my colleague, of course, but I couldn’t apologise to the entire world: I’d have to keep apologising for a very long time. I could front it out and claim the video had nothing to do with me, but then, perhaps, I’d look even more foolish. I could say I’d actually meant to send it to my wife, but that would remind everyone that I have a wife, and I wouldn’t want anyone to have the bright idea of forwarding the video to her as well as the rest of the world. Assuming, of course, that she hadn’t already seen it. Assuming that she hadn’t already been forwarded my famous naked lip-synching video.

  I could not think of anything to say. Luckily for me, one of the ward alarms went off, and everyone rushed away. I sat back down at my desk and wondered whether it was possible to die from humiliation.

  But no, I didn’t die. I got on with the day and was almost offended to discover that my video was, in fact, pretty much old news as far as my colleagues were concerned. They were bored by me and my video already.

  After lunch I made my way home, as always, on the bus. I walked over to my boy’s school in order to pick him up–these days he usually makes his way home by himself, but I wanted to see him, wanted to be distracted by him. Once we got home we played football on the PlayStation together for about twice as long as he was allowed, ordinarily. Then I cooked a big tea, and ate with him, then cooked and ate again once my wife got home at nine. She clearly did not know about the video; unlike the rest of the world, she hadn’t been forwarded that particular email. Our household remained peaceful and calm; I didn’t have to explain why the video had seemed like a good idea at the time. I should have felt relieved, but I was still too embarrassed to feel much of anything. Embarrassed, but full of dread as well: what would happen when my favourite colleague returned to work the next day? I had a bath and went to bed, but none of this was of much use to me.

  I was at my desk when the consultant, the birthday girl herself, came into the office. I kept typing, although what I wrote was complete monkey. I heard her stop and I could tell she was looking at me, but I could not look at her, could not take my eyes away from the computer screen. After a few very long minutes, she said, ‘Hi.’

  I stopped typing. It took all of the fortitude I possessed not to lower my head on to the keyboard and sob. ‘Hello,’ I replied. I forced myself to turn around and look at her.

  She was smiling. She looked genuinely friendly.

  ‘You don’t have to be mad to work here,’ she said, after a pause.

  I finished the ward motto for her: ‘You have to be bloody crazy.’

  She put her hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. ‘It’s a good song,’ she said.

  ‘It is,’ I replied, ‘it is indeed.’

  Bigmouth Strikes Again

  Nic Kelman

  ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’ appealed to me because of the repressed anger it expresses. With the introduction of Joan of Arc, it then reminded me in some ways of a female version of Thoreau’s quote: ‘The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation’, which is a theme I find I often return to in my work, so this story was born…

  Mexican Flaming Heart Bush (Sanctimonium rubor aeger Mexicana) 13+ Yrs. Recognisable bifurcated trunk, superior flower density and colour saturation. Stolen from 135 Hitchcock Ln. Sat. night. $5,000 reward for information leading to its return.

  The men had arrived early that morning. Pushing their barrows and driving the mini-digger through the bottom corner of the herb garden, they had destroyed much of the coriander and other parsleys. Julia sighed as she pushed at the earth with a pale, bare toe. She could see the leaves, the stems, their green like confetti, scattered through the loam. She even thought she might be able to smell the deaths of the little plants, but she couldn’t be sure. There was a fine breeze and her coffee was strong.

  She regretted now asking to be called so late. She should have been up and about and out here when they came. She knew she had been over everything with them already, that they probably knew what they were doing and where they were supposed to do it. But still. She pushed at the earth with her toe one more time, the red nail turning up an intact Riccio Verde Scuro. She bent, picked up the leafy herb and pushed it into her dressing-gown pocket, the head now adorning the red silk of her kimono, a green pom-pom. Martina could clean it and add it to her salad for lunch.

  With her eyes, Julia followed the trail the men had left across the grass. It joined up with the slate paving stones and disappeared through a gap in the tall wall of privet that separated the herb garden from the orientalist Koi pond. She should put some clothes on and supervise them. She knew from experience they couldn’t be trusted. Left to their own devices, they would take none of the necessary precautions.

  She watched them eat. They had brought their own lunches, of course, but she found they always worked better if she gave them lunch. It didn’t matter whether they were painters or bricklayers or electricians. A few beers and some of Martina’s cooking and coffee and they always worked better in the afternoon. They felt like they owed you something then, not the other way around.

  They ate so quickly, pushing enormous forkfuls of food into their mouths, mopping up the marinara sauce with bread. Julia looked at their hands, at their fingers, as they ate. The dirt there didn’t seem to bother them. Still, it was only soil. Soil was clean, wasn’t it? She didn’t know.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs. Barnes,’ said Jorge, raising his beer to her. The other men said nothing. They had never even really looked at her, she realised. When she needed to convey something, she always spoke to Jorge. Then he would talk to them and they would talk among themselves
in Spanish. Sometimes they laughed. She wondered now whether Jorge ever said something she had not or left out something she had.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Julia said, smiling politely. They were well on their way now; it seemed impossible they could do something wrong at this point. Sure enough, this morning, when she had come out here in her gardening clothes–jeans, sweatshirt, sneakers–they had begun to dig the holes for the bushes on exactly the wrong side of the pond. But they had the location of the three holes correct now and she had watched them add the bags of Japanese fertiliser, the Dutch topsoil and the live Mississippi mudworms. Now all they had to do was drop the bushes into place, the two Dwarf Ylang-Ylang flanking the Pua Keni Keni, and they would be done.

  ‘Phone call for you, Mrs Barnes.’ Martina’s voice from the other side of the hedge.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Charlie.’

  ‘OK–I’ll be right there–thank you.’ Julia looked around at the group of men. They had finished their food and were just taking the last sips of their beers. ‘Jorge, the Pua goes in the middle, right?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Barnes, of course.’

  ‘OK. Good. Well–thank you, I’ll send the cheque over to the nursery tomorrow.’

  ‘OK, Mrs Barnes, thank you.’

  Julia smiled at him, and turned to smile at the other men, but they avoided her eyes. She walked as far as the gap in the hedge and then turned back, suddenly remembering. ‘Oh, and don’t worry about the plates, you can just leave them there. Martina or someone will come out and get them.’

  Jorge smiled at her and waved ‘OK’ but one of the men, looking down at his beer bottle, said something in Spanish and everyone laughed. She smiled again, uncertain, then made her way back to the house.

  ‘But, Charles, you promised.’ She cursed herself when she heard her tone, winced, her face tightening up as she damned herself in silence. She knew the last thing he would respond to was a plea. Just like Robert. She listened to his response, to his excuses–the latest girl, the invitation from her family, St Moritz. It was all nonsense, she knew. Not a fabrication, but nonsense nonetheless. She nodded quietly, not caring that he could not see her. The acquiescence was not intended for him. She put the cordless down on the empty kitchen counter. ‘We could have all gone together,’ she said to the back of the phone, its screen still displaying Charlie’s number on the caller ID.

  ‘Scusi, signora?’ said Martina, looking up from the deep-freezer. Around her black hair, her dark eyes, the frosty air rose, drifted, white.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Julia, ‘It’s nothing.’

  Creeping Jew’s Gold (Serpere aurum Iudaicus) detached from conservatory wall at 13 Bridge Road Sat. night. Unique specimen–recessive variegated blood-blue leaves and stem. VERY RARE. $11,000 reward for information leading to its return.

  Julia stared in disbelief at the far side of the orientalist Koi pond. The Pua Keni Keni was on the right-hand side, the two Dwarf Ylang-Ylangs next to each other on the left. It seemed impossible, she had been so clear. How could they not have understood what she wanted? It was so simple. She could hear Robert now, ‘You always have to watch them…Always…They just don’t care about their work.’ She sighed. At least she hadn’t delivered the cheque to the nursery yet. She walked slowly back to the house and in through the kitchen door. The phone was ringing.

  ‘Hello? Robert! What a nice surprise! You found a minute then…Oh, right. OK. Yes. No, he said he had decided to go with Lynn’s family to St Moritz. No, I told you Sarah said she wasn’t coming either this year–something about Teach for America. Well, we could go to the American Hotel–it’ll be like our first year here, it’ll be fun. Oh. I see. But don’t you think it would be nice to see each other? Yes, of course I understand–I always have, haven’t I? Yes. Yes, of course, but—Yes, Robert. I love you too.’ She put the phone down gently, hesitating for a moment before actually placing it in its cradle, as if it were this action of hers that would end the conversation.

  Through the kitchen windows she caught sight of Charlie’s garden shed. It had been there for nearly twenty years, but had stood unused now for at least a dozen. During Charlie’s sixth birthday party (or was it seventh? or ninth?) he had announced he wanted to help Julia in her garden. Julia and her friends, in the absence of any men, had been amused by the proclamation and one of them had suggested Charlie needed his own gardening shed to be ‘effective’. They had all laughed, but Charlie had clung to the idea. He brought it up with such persistence that, in spite of Robert’s disapproval, Julia had eventually bought a small shed for him, placing it within sight of the kitchen so someone could keep an eye on him as he came and went. Looking at it now she noticed it was slightly open and must have been for some time–between the frame and the door the grass was quite long.

  Stopping by the garage for some trimming shears, she walked to the shed and pulled at the door, yanking at the wood until it opened past the overgrown grass around its base. She crouched and trimmed the grass by hand, down to the level of the rest of the lawn. When she was satisfied, she stood and, after surveying her work, looked inside. Dust drifted, moved by a breeze Julia could not feel. The small tools were still hung at the back on tiny hooks without any sharp points or edges and on the shelves to the left and right all the gnomes were intact but one. It had turned out Charlie was not as interested in gardening as he was in the small gnomes he had seen in other people’s gardens on the way to school. ‘I don’t understand,’ he had said, ‘our garden is so much bigger–why don’t we have gnomes?’ Robert, relieved, began to bring gnomes home with him whenever he returned from a trip, but only on the condition Charlie keep them in his shed when he was not playing with them.

  Julia stepped inside and straightened one or two, her hands coming away covered in dust. She looked down at the one that had fallen and shattered on the ground and crouched and picked up the pieces one by one, placing all but the two largest in her pockets. As she left, she paused for one last look. Certain the little men were now all in order, she closed the door and threw the latch.

  When she returned to see the kitchen, there was a note from Martina on the fridge, on the whiteboard with the little clay model of Capri at the top. ‘No worry, signora-I take cheque for you to nursery.’ There was a happy face drawn underneath the message, its eyes in the European style-not just two dots, but horseshoe lids and pupils like semicolons. Julia sighed. She would deal with the nursery later, or perhaps tomorrow. For now, she had to be certain Martina and Ceylon had put everything out correctly for her guests. She looked at the clock. A couple of hours before everyone arrived. She felt she should eat something, but she wasn’t hungry.

  ‘But Julia, sweet-thing, how could you not know?’ Lawrence, president of the East Hampton Garden Club, pressed a caviar-laden toast-point into his mouth. ‘Beluga?’

  ‘Oscetra,’ replied Julia. ‘I don’t know-I don’t know how…no one told me…’

  ‘But we’ve all been talking about it!’ He sipped his champagne. ‘This is lovely, by the way…lovely.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘No one told you what?’ Henrietta had drifted over, Miriam in tow. Behind them, Martina replaced an almost empty tray of hors d’oeuvres.

  ‘About the missing plants.’

  ‘Stolen plants, sweet-thing.’

  ‘But Julia,’ said Miriam, ‘we’ve all been talking about it.’ She looked up at Julia as she did at everyone, her fat little face pursed into a perpetual ‘oh’.

  ‘Apparently,’ said Julia, looking for Ceylon to tell her to refill Susan’s glass. Ceylon really wasn’t working out. She’d hired the girl only out of pity when Francis St John across the estuary had gone bankrupt.

  ‘It’s been in the papers as well, you know,’ said Henrietta. Lawrence had told Julia Henrietta had been quite insulted the social committee had chosen Julia to host the annual holiday party.

  ‘I’m sure,’ said Julia, smiling, although she couldn’t say why. Henrietta made her nerv
ous. Her husband was an unknown number of years younger than her and no one was quite sure where or how they had met. His accent was vaguely European but could also have been African or Oceanic by way of Germany. Furthermore, the divorce settlement which supported them both was equally mysterious in its size. ‘I’ve been busy with the house, getting everything ready for Christmas.’

  ‘Yes, I saw your new Ylangs and the Pua–interesting decision with the placement. Asymmetry is so important for that true oriental feel…’ Henrietta smiled at her. Lawrence coughed. Miriam, oblivious, looked about for another canapé, lost.

  Martina took a third tray of glasses to the kitchen while Ceylon moved about the room picking up one napkin at a time, placing each one on a pile off to one side before returning for another. Julia and Lawrence sat on the comfortable couch, sunken into each other. Julia’s glass was still full, Lawrence’s still empty. With one eye, Julia watched Ceylon through the champagne, moving the glass back and forth as Ceylon drifted here and there, tiny bubbles rising from her arms, her hair, her shoulders. ‘I just don’t want to be one of those women,’ she said, ‘I can’t. You know? I’m not Henrietta. I can’t do that. I can’t pretend to be happy with a ski instructor.’

  ‘A masseur. And I don’t think she’s pretending…I wouldn’t be.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘Yes, sorry, sweet-thing, I do, I do–I’m sorry–I shouldn’t make light–I know exactly what you mean.’

  ‘I know Charles and Sarah will come back. I know they will–I did, my brothers did–they’re just at that age–I know that. But what I know in my head doesn’t make it any easier…And I don’t know what to make of Robert. He’s not having an affair, I know that much.’

  ‘You never have known, even when you married him. Especially when you married him. He’ll come back too. You’ll see, I think.’