Mind Games and Ministers

by Chris Longden

  “Yeah. You definitely don’t seem yourself. More uptight.”

  I shrugged.

  “Yeah Stan, maybe you could do with relaxing a bit more. Having a bit of fun every now and then. Can’t be a barrel of laughs being surrounded by a load of abused women and man-haters …”

  I looked down at my drink. The tiny bubbles fizzed, popped. Bubbled to the surface. Shaun trying to goad me. As of the old days. I declined to reply.

  “Tell you what it is Stan. I think that you need to smile more. I miss your smile, Stan. Miss ... well. Miss you, actually.” His fingers moved to touch mine.

  My toes curled inside their stupid clip-cloppy shoes (which I had decided would be going straight down the charity shop tomorrow.) There it was again. He kept saying the damned word. Stan. There had been none of that of course, while we were in the centre.

  Just over a year ago I might have welcomed this kind of conversation. But not now. Not on a Monday lunchtime, in a grotty Medlock public house. Not after everything that had happened. Not after the Michael-weekend.

  So I moved my hand away and changed the subject, gazing at my phone instead. Dismissing the attempts at intimacy, “Matthew was a right little rat-bag this morning. Really crabby. I wondered whether he could be coming down with something. I’m half expecting a message from the nursery with a catalogue of woes. Anyway,” I nudged my phone to one side again, “what was it you wanted to talk about again?” Brightly and briskly. As if I had had a sudden lapse of hearing only ten seconds ago.

  Shaun spread both of his hands out on the table and looked down at them. He’d got the message.

  “Okay, Ms Russell. The professional stuff. There’s a job vacancy in my senior management team. Policy team leader. You’d be perfect for it.”

  I took a sip of my drink.

  “I’ve moved away from policy these days, Shaun. In case you hadn’t noticed …”

  “Oh, frigging hell, Stan!” Shaun leaned back against the seat, stretching his long legs out, clasping his hands behind his head. Doing the Alpha Male without even trying. “You and I both know that you can do the policy stuff in your sleep. And the salary would be nearly double what you’re taking home now. Plus, all the other benefits: car, final salary pension, help with childcare costs, flexi-hours, dah-de-dah.”

  I stood up suddenly. He snapped out of his laid-back, super-confident position, surprised at my movement.

  “Don’t worry,” I opened my eyes wide, exaggerating the expression, “I’m not walking out on you. Not just yet. I need the loo.”

  Once in the ladies, I checked my reflection in the mirror. I wasn’t looking too bad for once. The sun of the last few days had brought my freckles out. Jake had been right. I looked a lot less pale, and healthier than I had done in months. In twenty months, to be precise.

  I grinned at my image. It was always flattering to be asked to apply for a job. But there was no question that I would consider it. I loved my work at Sisters’ Space. Especially the new chocolatier and cafe side of things. I quickly touched up my make-up, shaking away all thoughts of ‘why tart yourself up for a tosser?’ There was nothing wrong with taking a bit of pride in my appearance every now and then. Why not let Shaun know what he was missing? He had had his chance. Chances, even. And screwed all of them up, big time.

  Back in the corner of the tap room, Shaun was waiting for me.

  “So? I’m a very busy and important person. What’s the answer? You going to apply for it, or what?”

  “Oh, Shaun,” I shook my head, “you’re about as crap at fake self-effacement as you are at genuine compassion.”

  “Spare me the insults. What do you think, then? About the job?”

  “Sorry, Shaun. You’d have to pay me ten times more than you could afford. Because I’d be bored shitless. Policy isn’t for me any more. I love what I'm doing at the centre. Plus, there’s the small matter of my kids only having one parent alive these days. The rate you’ve always expected others to work at is legendary. I couldn’t do that. And I wouldn’t want to. It’s kind of important that Lydia and Matthew get to see their only parent from time to time …”

  “Hey,” he put his hand gently on my shoulder, “I know that. I wouldn’t expect anything other than the standard hours.”

  I looked at him pointedly. A man unable to read the subtext. Or unable to decipher social nuances. Or unwilling to take no for an answer from Rachael Russell.

  Or maybe all three.

  He carried on.

  “Of course your circumstances would be taken into account. In fact,” he tagged on, “we could even talk about part time, or job-share. If you like?”

  I burst out laughing.

  “Bleeding hell, Shaun! You, of all people – offering a post as a job-share? Everyone and his dog knows you hate part-timers!”

  He stuck his bottom lip out at me, disagreeing.

  “Not true, Stan. No. I just need someone I can trust to do a good job. Someone with new ideas. You know. Innovation. And I can trust you.”

  “Jeez. You’re making it sound like you’re head-hunting me for MI5! Not for some poxy local authority policy job where I’d no doubt be fudging performance indicators in relation to overdue library books …”

  “Very amusing, Stan.”

  “And as for trust? Well, you’ve certainly been able to trust me to keep my mouth shut about us. Both times round, I mean. That’s for sure”.

  “You see! There you go again!” he replied, picking up his glass. “This isn’t about the past. This is about now. Going forward. Look,” he added, taking several gulps of his drink, “this is going to be a win-win situation for everyone.”

  “Oh, God, no, Shaun. No. And to hear you coming out with management-speak like that! You used to detest that kind of crap!” I heard a hard edge of air escape from his mouth as he exhaled. The scent of best bitter. He was getting riled now. Good.

  “OK, I promise no more management jargon in the presence of Ms Russell. Because it upsets her sensitivities. Bloody hell, Stan, I shouldn’t have to try and convince you about such a lucrative job offer – it makes perfect bloody sense!”

  I shrugged and moved my empty glass to one side.

  “And Stan, to set the record straight, if it makes you feel more comfortable about all of this. I don’t fancy you any more. I don’t know what you’ve done to yourself these days, but I actually find you physically repulsive. There. I’ve said it.”

  I glowered at him. He drained his glass and put it back down, grinning. Wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then stabbed his finger at me.

  I noticed that Shaun didn’t wear a wedding ring. Jess would be the sort that didn’t mind. Probably thought that only the married female should have to display the symbol of possession; of property, even. But what would I know? Never met the woman.

  “And I’m a crap liar when it comes to you,” said Shaun. “Always have been. But if we have to pretend that you remind me of the Elephant Woman in order for you to consider this, so be it.”

  “Great. You can put that bit in the employment contract then. ‘Rachael Russell will be treated like the Elephant Woman and hidden away, as she always was in the past.’”

  “Jesus wept!” Shaun muttered. I stood up to go. He followed me out of the door.

  Back into the lunchtime sunshine, enhanced by the yellow tinge of carbon monoxide – courtesy of the A6 – we walked back towards the women’s centre. I tried to retain some semblance of politeness, making small talk and asking Shaun if he was enjoying his new job.

  “Love it. Especially the fact that I’ve got Martyn Pointer and New Banks delivering the housing contract for us. Having them dancing to my tune. Good fun, that.”

  I declined to comment.

  “But between you and me, things are going to be changing pretty soon. Kath Casey as leader of the council has the biggest say over who gets to step into Roger Wheelan’s shoes when he retires as the chief exec in a few months time. And apparently I’m her number one
favourite for the post.”

  “Really? Even though you’ve only been with Medlock for just a couple of months? Well. That’s nice,” My voice sounding as flat as it could ever be. Singularly unimpressed.

  By now we had yet again subconsciously taken the route through the Secret Glade.

  “Yeah, well. I’m telling you, I could do the chief exec’s job in my sleep. Roger couldn’t run a piss-up in a brewery. I’ll sort the place out, all right.”

  The man was unbelievable. His ego was growing to monstrous proportions. Or had he always been like this? Were the scales finally falling from my eyes?

  I turned to him and stopped walking, shaking my head.

  “Shaun, I’m racking my brains to try to dredge up whatever it was that I once saw in you. And do you know what? I’m really struggling here.”

  WHALLEY RANGE COUNCIL HOUSING OFFICE, SOUTH MANCHESTER. AUGUST 1998

  Well-meaning sixth-form teachers and their curriculum texts for English literature A level sadly failed to conjugate any ethereal notions of love and romance into the mind of this teenage girl.

  It was hard to buy into all that highbrow literary tosh when you lived on the eastern fringes of the Mancunian urban sprawl. When you spent half of your life trailing to college on the 343 Hyde bus route. When your every weekend was devoted to serving pernickety pensioners on the hot roast chicken counter at Morrisons. And when, by the age of sixteen your most exciting romantic encounter to date had been a drunken snog at the Christmas do with greasy Gavin from the Fishmonger’s stall next door.

  It was even more difficult to believe in any future grand love affairs hurtling towards you when blessed with parents like Patricia and Terry Stanley. Mum and Dad were ever the cynics.

  “You’d best not be thinking that relationships are anything like they say they are in the films,” Mum used to trot out to her two daughters, if we ever got onto the subject of boys and romance.

  Dad would add his two-penn’orth to the pot. “I beg to bloody differ,” he would say. “I reckon relationships are exactly like you see in the films. Every time I watch Psycho or The Omen I think of my own marriage.”

  Mum’s rapid reply, directed at her girls again: “Yes, well. I discovered the truth about romance for myself on our honeymoon, didn’t I? When I saw your dad’s false teeth in a glass of water next to the bed. And how silly did I feel? Remembering that just before I waltzed up the aisle, I’d been telling our Marjorie that your dad’s best asset was his lovely smile with all those pearly whites …”

  Dad would give it back.

  “Not my bloody fault I fell off the tram and landed on me face at the Ashton terminal when I were thirteen and my parents took me to a dodgy dentist. Bloke who came from Aberystwyth, he was. Never trusted the Welsh since then.”

  But parental relationship disappointments aside, by the age of twenty-three I had managed to amass sufficient romantic and sexual encounters in order to consider myself to be a young adult woman, now quite au fait with the art of grown-up relationships.

  Still, by that age, on the grand scale of things I was unimpressed by the hearts and flowers stuff. Because the main thrust of lust in my life was entirely directed at my chosen career.

  Housing.

  But not just any old housing. Not your high-street estate agency stuff. Not your getting rich through renovation side of things. No. I fell, hook, line and sinker, for social housing. The properties formerly known as ‘shitty council estates’. This was the profession that managed to get my juices a-flowing. And here was a vocation with hideously strong similarities to working for the police or serving in the armed forces.

  Most days, I certainly saw the military analogies on the estates. During my first week at Whalley Range I witnessed a couple of seven-year-old boys tinkering with some spare concrete sewer pipes that had been left behind after recent road works. It was a couple of weeks before Bonfire Night and the kids had set the pipes up on bricks, creating a pair of rocket-launchers to aim fireworks at elderly ladies who were trundling to and from the local shops. Mocked-up council-estate mortar attacks on the grey-haired enemy definitely fell into your anti-social behaviour category of course, but in some regards it was quite an ingenious little invention, I thought. Almost admirable.

  Hanging around on social-housing estates and trying to evict drug dealers meant that the work often possessed a dangerously attractive edginess for some of us housing professionals. But there were plenty more of the more tedious aspects of anti-social behaviour to deal with (‘The neighbours are poisoning my plants/dog/toddler’, ‘The tap water has funny mould in it and it tastes like Blue Stilton’). Not exactly glamorous work, but the vast majority of our residents were decent, honest folk who all too often suffered from societal postcode prejudice.

  So with feet placed firmly on the ground (while trying to avoid the dog shit) it took me a while to cotton on to The Subtext. Something was rumbling just beneath the surface.

  To begin with, Shaun Elliot was just another name. Just one of a dozen unfamiliar colleagues I had to meet and greet at my new workplace. I was one of the more junior members of staff at the Whalley Range housing office. Shaun was the deputy manager. Five years older than me. Clearly clever. Probably a bit posher, too, because he was from Harrogate or somewhere a bit up-itself like that.

  I wasn’t initially attracted to him at all. I preferred the long-haired, metal-head, biker types. So with his number-two haircut and his shirt and his tie, he definitely didn’t look like my type. And over my twenty-three years I had mastered the art of screening out any uncomfortable feelings that did not compute. So there were no big fanfares or overtures when Linda Beveridge (who had taken it upon herself to mother me) first introduced me to Shaun. Simply a quick handshake and a ‘Shaun – this is Rachael Stanley, our new housing assistant. Do be nice to her.” And then a gruff “All right?” from Shaun. Always full of the airs and graces.

  Shaun was a giant. But he bore his height formidably. No stooping or hunching in the manner that some of the more self-conscious Goliaths in the world tend to adopt. Shaun Elliot was not afraid to use his height. His eyes were just as unnerving as his size. Such a deep shade of brown that they appeared to be pupilless. Framed by thick-set brows that all too often glowered at people, even when he was trying to be friendly. Dark features and dark skin. Maybe some Mediterranean blood? But when he opened his mouth, it was hardly Latino. A strong Yorkshire accent. Shaun was one of the many tykes who had defected from that side of the Pennines for Manchester University and a mistaken belief that life might somehow prove to be more sophisticated in the land made famous by The Smiths and New Order.

  “So, you’ve been here a week already then?” he asked me as he whacked the top of his VDU screen, shaking up particles of dust that glimmered in the fluorescent strip of the office light. I swallowed a sneeze and pointed to his desk.

  “Yes. Sorry, though – I’ve had to put zillions of affidavits in your in-tray. Not a very nice welcome back for you.”

  “No. But more exciting than a week-long training course on equal opportunities. Complete insult to anyone’s intelligence. Total waste of time ...”

  Was he trying to provoke the new recruit into a senseless debate on equal opportunities? A sardonic smile played around his lips as he swatted the screen again. Just a wavy yellow line on a green background.

  Our first conversation was interrupted by shouting from downstairs. Yelling in the reception was pretty routine in our office, but it was usually the tenant bollocking the staff, rather than the other way round. This time we could hear Eric’s – our area manager’s – voice reverberating up through the floorboards. It turned out that he was having a go at Jed Crowley, one of the nastier residents on the estate. Pretty bolshy of him, really, as Crowley had had many a stay at Strangeways and had a list of henchmen as long as your arm.

  Eric stomped back upstairs and into Shaun’s office.

  “I’m sick of him and his bloody scumbag lot! Bunch of bastards! Th
ey’re ruining this estate!”

  Eric noticed me – new girl – hovering on the sidelines and shook his head.

  “’Scuse my French. Rachael, love. But they drive you to it …” Eric was a cool character and rarely lost his temper, but when he did, we all knew about it. Even Jed Crowley left the office pretty damned quick that morning, after his encounter with Eric.

  A couple of days later, my lunch break coincided with Shaun’s. Our office had been converted from two council houses – knocked through – in order to provide a presence on the estate. We had a small kitchen downstairs. It overlooked the back garden. No flowers, decking or bird tables, however. The back yard was a stark strip of mud where staff only ventured for a quick smoke or to disinfect themselves. In fact, at the time when the non-event (otherwise known as The Kitchen Non-Incident) occurred between me and Shaun, Stinky Dave the technical officer was hopping about in the garden. De-lousing himself after a visit to a flea-riddled abandoned property in Fallowfield. I popped the kettle on and could hear his spray can. Hoping to God that he wouldn’t wander through the back door and into the kitchen area in his undies.

  I parked my bum at the crappy formica table and bit into my ham butty, leafing through The Guardian . Usually I shared my lunch break with one of the other housing officers – Jake Bamber or Linda – but today, Shaun mooched into the kitchen. He was wearing his navy-blue council coat and had been out onto the estate, to the local sandwich shop. Tossing his paper-bagged purchase onto the table next to me (his favourite, ‘cheese salad, no onions, loads of salad cream’)

  “Mind if I join you?”

  I shook my head and halved the annoyingly large newspaper in order to make some room for him at the tiny table. We made a bit of small talk. Shaun asking me about my postgraduate evening course. Me enquiring about his house-hunting in Chorlton-cum-Hardy and being told, “We’re still looking. Prices are coming down a bit, but it’s by far the most expensive part of the area. Still, all our mates are in Chorlton and we wouldn’t want to live anywhere else in bloody Manchester. The rest of the place is a shithole. No offence, like.”