Losing It

by Jane Asher

  So I’ll start the lean protein tomorrow. We’re having pie and chips for tea tonight so I’ll just eat the meat and the chips and leave off the pastry. That’ll ease me in.

  Charlie

  I loathe SavaMart but I couldn’t face telling Judy I’d rather walk to the car and drive to Sainsbury’s. I knew it would start the whole boring discussion all over again and it just wasn’t worth it: there’s only so much time I’m prepared to donate to questions of mince and potatoes and the quota had been well and truly fulfilled already. A brisk outing in the crisp November air would do me good, in any case, and, once out of the house and round the corner, it would only take me a couple of minutes to walk down Palace Street and into Victoria Street itself. With luck I could be back within fifteen minutes or so and thus gain a bit of kudos for doing the shopping quickly into the bargain. Always helps the atmosphere at home. Especially on days like today when she has her ‘it’s all very well for you to lounge about in that chair’ look when she comes in. I also thought it might help to shake off the unpleasant feeling of ennui that had been stalking me again since lunch time. However much I try to talk myself down from these moods – mentally listing all the pros in my life like in some puerile magazine self-help quiz – nothing but brisk physical action has much effect. There seems to be something immensely helpful in the mere act of walking away from the house, or from Judy or from whatever has triggered the mood: as if I can persuade my mind to distance itself as easily as I can my body.

  The shop was unpleasantly full, and I picked up a basket instead of trying to negotiate the packed aisles with a trolley. I’m extremely organised in my shopping, and, unlike Judy, I would leave the supermarket with only the items I intended to buy, so the basket would be fine. A quick plan of strategy – I’d been often enough to know pretty much where to find the five items I needed – and I launched into the heart of the store, confident that I could make my way round the various sections without too much retracing of steps.

  There was a delicious and strangely comforting smell of warm bread wafting about, contrasting oddly with the packaged, mass-produced look of the food on the shelves on either side. I knew it simply meant, of course, that the ready-made loaves had just come out of being finished off in the oven, but for a second or two I imagined I was somewhere in France, strolling to a small café in the early morning to drink a café au lait and pick up a couple of recently baked croissants and a baguette. It reminded me of the last holiday Judy, the children and I took together a couple of years ago in a rented house in Provence, when my favourite part of each day was my solo walk into the village. I’ve never been the best companion on holiday, but that one pointed up even more sharply than usual just how much our little family unit is changing, and how far our interests have diverged over the last few years. None of us liked to admit it, but I think we all felt a sense of relief once back home and away from the obligatory closeness of a family holiday.

  The cooking smell gave enough hint of good food to be seductive, anyway – no doubt fully intended – and I picked up a loaf in its Cellophane packet, still warm. I resisted the temptation to break off the crusty tip on the spot and eat it, and continued on quickly round the shop, picking up mince, potatoes and milk as I went. Congratulating myself on the speed of the venture, I looked over to the checkouts and was depressed to see how busy they were. This is another thing I’m proud of: my ability to pick the quickest queue at the beastly checkout. I sized them up smartly and found one that was distinctly shorter than the others and – and this is a crucial point in the fine judgement of queues, of course – the trolleys in it didn’t appear to be particularly full. I made a beeline for it, brushing past an elderly lady who tutted at me as I did so.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘just trying to –’

  ‘I can see what you’re doing,’ she interrupted, ‘it’s the way you’re doing it that is unnecessary.’

  Very precise, I thought. You sound like one of my juniors.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said again, attempting a regretful smile. ‘Do you want to go ahead of me?’

  ‘No, no, you go ahead if you’re in such a rush.’

  Wonderfully full of put-upon self-sacrifice, that reply was. Almost up to the standard of my mother on one of her better days, or Judy on one of her worse. I gave her what I hoped was another of my most charming smiles and joined the queue ahead of her, giving in to temptation and pulling the tip off the still-warm baguette to nibble as I prepared to wait my turn.

  There were three people ahead of me. The young man in the process of stacking his goods onto the moving belt had lank hair falling forward out of a hooded anorak and sniffed as he unloaded his basket. I could see a tin of beans, two packets of sliced bread, four yoghurts strapped together under a brightly coloured foil topping and two large bottles of Coke. As they neared the till they were picked up by the extremely chunky-looking arm of the checkout girl, and then swept briskly in front of the beeping eye of the scanner.

  I leant forward to get a better view. That arm was more than chunky. It really did look extraordinarily big. And the fingers on its end were – sausages. The cliché description had leapt into my head and was the perfect word for them, suiting their shiny pink roundness to a T and seeming particularly apt in the surroundings. I felt as if I could stretch across, lean forward and gather them up in a full, squashy handful and pop them in my basket for Judy to use in one of her toad-in-the-holes.

  I shuffled forward as the young man finished packing his goods into a carrier bag and reached into his pocket to pay, but the elderly woman two in front of me moved in the way just as I tried to take a look at the owner of the sausage fingers, and I could see no more than the arm and hand I’d already studied. I looked down again at the latest load of shopping to make its way along the belt. Dog food; packets of sauce mix; frozen peas. I pictured the grey-haired woman at a dining table sitting next to a large dog, the two of them tucking into huge piles of peas and Pal respectively. Meanwhile, the sausage fingers waved to and fro as the goods were picked up one by one and passed across the magic eye, the huge hand moving heavily and slowly, pausing every now and then when the beep took an extra repetition or two to encourage it to respond. Chips, loo paper, tomatoes. All glided silently along the belt until grasped by the chipolatas. No – not chipolatas: the big ones. Bangers. As the arm moved, relentlessly and rhythmically, and the shopper shifted to the side of the till to reach over for a carrier, I lifted my eyes and for a moment felt confused between what I saw and the images of the food still passing across the bottom of my field of vision. Why was the vast packet of pink marshmallows wearing glasses? And why was it moving: squidging and undulating in sticky, sweaty ripples? When the eyes behind the glasses looked up into mine it shocked me, breaking the moment and forcing me to recognise what I’d been staring at unthinkingly. I dropped my gaze quickly from the face but I was even more unnerved at the sight of the shiny pink folds of flesh continuing downwards in vast Michelin-like coils towards the open neck of a green-checked overall.

  And that was just the beginning. I went on working my way down the overall in disbelieving fascination. From where the material began at the collar everything was tension: trussed, straining dollops of flesh, battling to burst free of the huge swathes of green-checked cotton encasing them, pulling at the poppers and oozing from the spaces in between in pale-pink polyester-covered bubbles. The entire human parcel was jammed into the space behind the counter, spilling over the edges in pleats of green-checked fat, as if the unfortunate girl had been crammed in there as forcefully as an ugly sister’s foot into the glass slipper.

  As I shifted forward towards the end of the belt, with just one young woman remaining in front of me, I glanced back up at the girl’s face. She was still looking at me while she continued her relentless scanning, and I realised – with a sudden jolt of guilt – that she was aware of me studying her, had probably been aware of it the whole time. I looked away quickly and began to unpack my shopping onto the belt
, stopping to reach over and grab the plastic divider with NEXT SHOPPER on it and placing it hastily between my sliding packs of depressed-looking mince and the large box of Persil belonging to the woman in front of me. I arranged and rearranged my five rather pathetic items as they were carried towards the giant fingers, placing the baguette diagonally across the other things, carefully avoiding glancing up, and assuming what I hoped was a look of casual introspection. I removed the plastic divider as the Persil woman got out her purse, and placed it neatly behind my little assortment of goodies, separating them from the rest of the as yet empty belt. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the pink bangers reaching towards my baguette.

  ‘Bog off!’

  I was quite startled by the volume and confidence of her voice. There was such a ring of command in the tone of the incomprehensible words that I started guiltily, assuming I was being given some sort of large person’s reprimand, that she had seen me watching her and was giving me a justified insult in return.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Did you know it was a bogoff?’ she went on, looking straight at me through the slightly smeared lenses of her glasses

  I didn’t know how to answer this. While being more than a little relieved to discover that she had not, after all, been retaliating with a mysterious term of abuse for my uncharitable thoughts on her size, I was still at a loss as to the main drift of her communication. I hadn’t, in other words, the faintest idea what she was talking about, and, before I could decide if I knew it was a bogoff, it was clear I would have to establish not only to which object the ‘it’ in question referred, but also what exactly was the meaning of the term ‘bogoff.

  ‘What was a – I’m sorry,’ I ventured, ‘I still don’t quite –’

  ‘It’s a Buy One Get One Free – did you know? The baguette. We have to ask.’

  The resignation in her voice told me that I was probably not alone in my ignorance, and that she had had to translate the simple acronym many times before. I was glad to find myself alone at the checkout, unembarrassed by any smirking housewives behind me (the elderly woman I had supposedly pushed in front of having given up the wait and moved to another till).

  ‘Oh, I see!’ I smiled at her. ‘Sorry, I’m with you. Buy One Get One – yes, yes I see. Bogof! I had no idea. I mean I had no idea that bogof meant two for the price of thingummy and I had no idea that baguettes were – um – bogofs.’

  ‘Well?’

  She looked bored, but not impatient, I thought, and her eyes – a startlingly cat-like shade of yellowy brown – seemed surprisingly young behind the up-tilted spectacles amid the puffy cushioning of the cheeks around them.

  ‘Oh, I see. Well, yes, of course, I’d be a fool not to have the free one, wouldn’t I? Thanks for telling me – I’ll just pop over and get one.’

  I walked quickly back to the large cardboard stand that held the baguettes, grabbed one and brought it back to the till. As the girl grasped it in a large, sweaty hand, I was pleased to see that the fingers touched only the Cellophane.

  ‘Six pounds thirty.’

  As I handed over a twenty-pound note, I couldn’t help having another good look at this dumpling of a girl in front of me. Her hair was shoulder length, mousey and lank except for the ends, where it frizzed out into curls that seemed to have a life of their own and bear little relationship to the rest of the head. On her forehead, in particular, the tightly curled fringe looked completely out of place, as if it had been separately attached to her somewhere near the dead-straight, white parting that crossed her head in a scurfy furrow. I can never quite make out how women’s hairdos go, in any case. Judy winds hers up and clasps it back in one of those bulldog clip things with teeth – a croc, I think she calls it – in the most extraordinary, gravity-defying ways. But it does at least always look as if it belongs to her. This girl just didn’t come together physically in any rational sort of way: even the bright-pink lipstick that she wore, instead of emphasising her mouth – presumably the intention – just seemed to accentuate its lack of size against the huge background of her face. Her nose, too, was delicate and small, looking almost comically out of proportion to the rest of her. I guessed her to be in her early twenties – perhaps even younger. While she opened her till I quickly scanned the four checkouts behind her: the other assistants were of normal proportions. This mammoth young girl was one of a kind.

  The open drawer of the till was pressed into her abdomen and I wondered if it hurt. She took out my change with one hand and with the other burrowed into the soft folds of her body to find the edge of the drawer so she could push it shut, then passed the money into my hand. As she did so, she glanced up at me, and for a split second I found myself looking straight into those oddly mesmeric amber eyes. I think I must have been frowning slightly: I know I was wondering just how this poor creature coped with the physical difficulties she must surely face at every stage of her day.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ she asked half-heartedly, in the same tone of dreary boredom that her voice had had all along. It would be hard to imagine anyone sounding less as if they had the tiniest speck of interest in knowing if I had a problem. In an attempt to elicit some sort of response I briefly considered telling her that my leg had fallen off or that a man with a bloody axe was standing immediately behind her, but decided not to bother.

  ‘Is there a problem with your change?’

  ‘Oh, I see. No, no, not at all. It’s fine. Thank you. Good night.’ If I’d had a hat on, I think I’d have tipped it. That’s just the way it felt, somehow. The benevolent old gentleman being charming to the young unattractive pleb. How did I come to cast myself in that role? Why did I sound to my own ears so patronisingly middle-class?

  But she’d already turned away and was sitting with her hands now resting on the top of the till drawer. There was still no one waiting at her checkout and she slumped back a little in her chair and began to scratch her nose with one fingertip.

  When I reached the exit with my plastic carrier I turned and watched her for a moment. She sat unmoving, not scratching now, looking like a huge, unwanted soft toy stuffed into an open drawer. She seemed to have caved in on herself since I’d left the checkout, and her head was barely visible above the magazine rack. I wondered if she needed help to get out at the end of her shift, and for a second I was reluctant to leave. Now that the thought had occurred to me that the poor creature might need a hand to extract her from her packed-in position behind the till, I felt oddly responsible: she didn’t look the type to find help easily.

  A woman pushed briskly past me as she made her way into the store, and her busy purposefulness brought me back to thoughts of Judy, home and the waiting frying pan. I turned and headed out into a chilly Victoria Street.

  Judy

  Charlie was longer than I expected doing the shopping. I even began to feel a tiny hint of unease – he’s usually the fastest shopper of us all, and if he says he’ll be less than twenty minutes he always is. Ben tends to get waylaid by the magazines and the sweets, and Sally’s just like me – she gets diverted and remembers a hundred other things we need – or spots something we didn’t know we needed but now that she sees it she knows that we patently do, if you see what I mean. I may be the one to handle all the finances in this family, but I have to admit that Charlie is by far the most economical of us when it comes to shopping: he sticks to a list and is seldom tempted by special offers and new products. I go for the magnetic school of purchasing: things just seem to be drawn to me as I move about the shop, even in a down-market little shop like SavaMart. Charlie says I come back encrusted, like a barnacled ship. More than a hint of truth in that.

  So, after twenty-five minutes or so had passed I started glancing at the clock. I couldn’t identify my hovering worry: I didn’t picture road accidents or muggings, and I knew it was ridiculous that I should be disturbed by his marginally extended absence. I can only describe it as an irritating shadow in the background. When he reappeared, I f
elt not relief but annoyance that I should have taken the time to be concerned, and his perfectly reasonable explanation of having to queue at a slow till underlined to me my own stupidity.

  I took out my mild irritation on him, irrationally blaming him for having caused me to feel uneasy. It makes me quite melancholy sometimes when I think about our conversations: most of them have become a matter of scoring invisible points, and I sometimes wonder when and how we reached the stage where simple pleasure in each other’s company was no longer enough. I couldn’t leave it alone, even once he’d explained what he’d been doing.

  ‘Why on earth did you go for a long queue? They must have had them all open at this time of the evening, surely?’

  ‘I obviously wouldn’t have done so intentionally, would I, Judy? In fact it looked shorter than the others – it was just that the girl herself was unbelievably slow. She’s huge – I mean really extraordinarily fat – have you seen her? Do you know the one I mean? I felt quite sorry for the poor kid – there must be something wrong – she’s vast. And so young.’

  ‘Oh, her – yes, I know exactly the one you mean. She’s hopeless. Very young: not much more than Sally’s age, I should think. I do feel a bit sorry for her sometimes, although I’m sure she could make more of an effort if she really minded. And she always seems perfectly happy, even if a bit abstracted. Very unfriendly, though. Lucky to have the job, if you ask me. I can’t believe she was that size when she first went or she’d never have got it.’

  ‘She didn’t seem to make any mistakes, though. In fact she quite clearly pointed out my rights as a customer. Two baguettes for the price of one.’

  ‘Is that why you got two? I did wonder. We’ll never get through all that before it starts to dry out.’