A Midwinter Match

by Jane Lovering

  ‘We’re waiting for – Ah, here he is.’

  Zac came in at the far end of the corridor, bustling along with post in his hand, flicking through envelopes as though he hadn’t seen us.

  ‘Oh God, it’s Tosspot,’ Miriam said, no attempt to keep her voice down.

  ‘Hello, Miriam.’ Zac kept sorting the post, didn’t look up.

  Miriam looked from Zac to me, then back again and her pencil-line of brows rose. ‘Oh. Like that, is it?’

  ‘Like what?’ I finally got the last of my lights turned off.

  ‘You and him. Bloody hell, lass, he’s a—’

  ‘Tosspot, yes, thanks Miriam.’ Zac opened the office door. ‘Well, this tosspot is wondering quite what we’re all doing in the corridor at this time in the morning. Shall we go into the interview room?’ As we all filed through, he made a face at me and lowered his voice. ‘I’m presuming there’s a reason you asked me to get in early? You don’t just want to batter me to death with Miriam to save me the indignity of redundancy?’

  ‘Well, yes, sort of.’ I was newly aware of him, his shape in the doorway as I passed through, the smell of his soap and shampoo, the deliberate way in which he moved. It was as though he was someone else now.

  The coffee machine hadn’t even been switched on, so there were an awkward few minutes while we circulated around the room like particles in a gas cloud, so widely spread as to be in our own little spaces. Zac fiddled with the coffee, changed the filter. I fetched more biscuits, opened packets, arranged them on a plate. Miriam sat in the comfortable chair, watching us with the air of a regent whose minions aren’t quite living up to expectations.

  Eventually, when the machine had spat gobbets of hot coffee, I pulled my sheaf of application forms from my bag. Miriam looked nervous.

  ‘Took me ages,’ I said. ‘But I got there in the end.’

  She shifted about in her chair, pulling at the hem of her jacket. ‘Well. Yes. I’ve had a bit of practice an’ all.’ She flipped a look at Zac. ‘You’re never lettin’ him in on this? I told you, save your job.’

  ‘It turns out that Zac is in more need of saving than I am, Miriam.’ I handed the paperwork to Zac. ‘Look. Look at the forms.’

  He took them from me and casually glanced over first one, then another. ‘Yes. I was responsible for putting Miriam up for most of these jobs.’

  ‘Look at the way they’ve been filled in, Zac. Look at the handwriting.’

  I tapped the topmost piece of paper, looking him in the eye as I did so. Make the connection, Zac, don’t make me tell you.

  ‘Oh. Oh!’

  And there it was. It clicked and I saw his eyes change.

  ‘Miriam.’ I sat opposite her on the less-comfortable chair. ‘Why didn’t you just tell us? Or tell someone, at least.’

  Miriam shifted about. ‘Well.’ She looked down at her designer bag and fiddled with its clasp, clicking it open and shut. ‘It’s kind of shameful, in’t it. Leavin’ school when you can’t read or write proper.’

  It was obvious now I knew. I took the forms from Zac’s hand and laid them out on the little low table between us. Miriam moved them so that the biscuits were uncovered, and I could see her averting her eyes from the wildly differing handwriting on each form. Some had clearly been filled in by the same person, but some looked as though they’d been filled in by someone who’d been watching TV at the same time.

  ‘Our Angel did those ones. Her Ryder did those,’ Miriam tapped a couple with a scarlet nail. ‘Donna did those, but she can’t write as good as her sister, and our Kiara did that one. I just told ’em what to write.’

  ‘Miriam…’ I stopped. She’d had a life I couldn’t even begin to imagine, with my middle-class background, two caring parents whose only bone of contention was my mother’s special trifle. ‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of,’ I finished gently. ‘You should have told us.’

  She shuffled her shoulders in a shrug of combined acceptance, embarrassment and pride. ‘Yeah, well. Not being able to do what even a five-year-old can do. Luckily they’re not ones for havin’ their Nana read bedtime stories. I carried it off, though,’ she said. ‘You never even guessed. I had to tell you what to look for.’

  Zac was looking at Miriam with a different expression. Before he’d seemed to regard her with a mixture of dread and resignation. As one of those ‘people you just can’t help’. I couldn’t really fault him, hadn’t I also started out seeing her as just one of the work-shy job-avoiders? Even I hadn’t suspected that there may be a very good reason for her ducking and diving, her cash-in-hand short-lived employments; nothing too involved, nothing that needed her to fill in forms, read or write. I hadn’t spotted it until she’d practically handed me the information. Without, I realised now, actually having to say the words.

  ‘And I’m great with numbers,’ Miriam went on, the note of pride strengthening. ‘And somehow they thinks if you’re good at sums you must be able to spell and read long words.’

  ‘Miriam.’ Zac leaned towards her. His voice was gentle now. ‘I am so, so sorry.’

  She sniffed. ‘So you should be,’ she said, but her voice was similarly lacking its normal stridency. ‘You wrote me off. Which is kind of ironic, if you thinks about it.’ She gave a grin that backlit her blue-shaded eyes with mischief.

  Zac acknowledged her words with a sideways shake of the head. ‘Yep. You’re right. I did. And I was wrong. I never even considered— You are devious and I am a tosspot.’

  ‘And now Zac is going to work out the best way of getting you on some of those courses that will help you learn to be functionally literate,’ I said, and stood up. ‘If that’s all right.’

  Miriam looked from me to Zac. ‘What sort of courses?’ She’d huddled herself in again over her bag, was clicking and flicking at the catch.

  ‘Courses that mean you won’t have to apply for jobs for a while,’ he said, and the pair of them smiled a complicit smile at one another. ‘Let’s get your literacy up to standard before we start thinking about application forms again.’

  She relaxed, the bag slid lower on her lap and the catch-clicking stopped. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I was startin’ to think it was time I learned. Other day, I gave our Ryder a thing to read for me an’ he told me it were a final demand from the council, the little bugger. It were a circular about windows.’ She sniffed. ‘I knew it weren’t a bill, they always comes with loads of big red letters on the top, but it gave me a turn for a few minutes.’ A deep breath. ‘So, yeah. Reckon it’s time.’

  I slid out of the room, my cheeks hot with the knowledge that I was doing the right thing, but that it might mean that I had handed over my only hope of triumphing over Zac in the job war. A war that we had never declared and that never should have been.

  In our office, I sat at my desk, looking over the familiar mess, smelling that hot radiator and dust smell that had hung in the background for as long as I’d been here. My job. Part of my identity, since I’d come in after a stint for the CAB, after uni. I’d not really known anything else.

  Cautiously I let the catastrophes run through my head but managed to stop them before the panic built too far. Yes, I could be out of a job. Yes, it would be hard to find anything similar, particularly if my breakdown counted against me. Yes, the bank would still want their money. But. But. I wasn’t responsible for anyone but myself. I’d spent the money, now I had to pay it back, it was as simple as that.

  The walls in my head wobbled a little and I diverted my thoughts. Zac. That kiss. Had it meant something? It had felt as though it did, and I could still feel the remnants of it on my mouth, like a hot echo. And yes, I did fancy him, damn Priya. Now I was going to spend Christmas day with him…

  The phone on my desk rang.

  ‘There’s someone here to see Zac,’ Karen said from Reception. ‘Doesn’t have an appointment, just a bucketload of anxiety.’

  ‘Zac’s in with Miriam.’ I began to scribble a Christmas shopping list on the edge of a bit of
printer paper. ‘He’s going to be tied up for a while.’

  ‘Oh. Poor love.’ Karen had clearly fallen for Zac’s charm and Miriam’s assumed air of brittle ruthlessness. ‘Well, this lad’s come a fair way, any chance you could see him instead?’

  ‘Who is it? I’ll look out the file and give him a ten-minute talk-down. We’ll have to go to the café though, Zac’s taken possession of the interview room, and the other one’s out of commission being repainted.’

  ‘It’s Bob,’ Karen said. ‘I’ll tell him you’ll come up here and collect him.’

  Bob. Bob. I called up the computer files. Luckily Zac only had the one Bob, so I skim-read his file, hoiked out the paper copies of his applications, a file nearly as thick as Miriam’s, but with consistent handwriting. I couldn’t imagine never checking that detail again. Then I bustled down to Reception, where a large bloke with bulky shoulders and a lumberjack shirt was hunched against the main doors.

  This was Bob, of the mechanical tendencies. Bob who was avoiding getting any jobs in the machine fitting he was qualified for. I had my suspicions already as to what he may prefer.

  We sat in the café in silence. Bob had failed yet another interview and been told to report back to us, although I wasn’t sure why. I think his local office thought he may be throwing the interviews on purpose and wanted to make counselling him out of doing that our problem. But I thought there may be other reasons, I just didn’t know quite how to raise the issue.

  In the end, I decided to bite the bullet and go for it. ‘Bob, are you sure that mechanical engineering is the career you want?’ I sat back with my coffee held tightly, in case he exploded – he was six foot three and any anger would at least tip the table. ‘You haven’t considered doing something else?’

  Instead of any kind of display of temper or frustration, I got a quiet nod and a raised eyebrow. ‘You know, don’t you?’ he said, in a very low voice. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Tell me what you’d really like to do with your life,’ I said, neatly ducking the question. ‘I might be able to help you. To achieve it, I mean, not talk you out of it or anything,’ I added quickly.

  Under the table, he tapped a foot. Impatience? Or it could have been following the beat of ‘Merry Christmas, Everybody’ which was playing over the café sound system. ‘Dunno if I can,’ he muttered. ‘Sounds stupid.’

  ‘My job,’ I said, as quietly as he was speaking, ‘is to get people into work doing things they want to do. Not just a quick fix, not just a six-week placement. I want everyone to be doing what they love. And I don’t think you love mechanical engineering, however much Zac might think that’s what you’re qualified to do. Now, if you tell me, I might be able to help you not spend the next thirty years hating every second of your life. So?’

  Bob’s large, smooth face relaxed a little. ‘Can you do that?’ he whispered. ‘Are there jobs? I mean, things that pay?’

  ‘I’m sure we can find something.’

  ‘Only I’ve done a couple for free, just for a laugh, couple of pub parties, that kind of thing.’ Bob squared his shoulders, and the table rocked. ‘But what I’d really like, one day…’ he leaned forward and his voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper, ‘is to be on that Ru Paul’s Drag Race. I can sing,’ he added, a little louder, sitting back in his chair. ‘And dance.’

  ‘You’d like to work in the world of entertainment.’

  Bob gave a shy nod. ‘I know it’s tough. I know there’s a lot of competition, but it’s what I’ve always wanted to do. But Dad said – Anyway, I went into his trade. Only, my heart’s not in it.’ He fiddled with the sugar bowl. ‘I’m not gay,’ he’d gone back to a whisper. ‘I just like the dresses.’

  I was so relieved that I’d guessed right that I swallowed almost the entire contents of my coffee cup down in one. It hadn’t been a total guess, of course, the very close shave, the shaped eyebrows, manicured hands and the slight traces of mascara still clinging to his lashes had given me a heads-up.

  ‘I may be able to find you some Musical Theatre courses; we can put it down as retraining,’ I said, once the coffee had slid past my windpipe. ‘What about that?’

  Bob’s face relaxed again. ‘Can you do that?’

  I felt a sudden, unaccustomed elation. This was what my job was meant to be like. Helping people. Reassuring them that they weren’t bad people for not wanting to be doomed always to work away the edges of their square peg, weathering them down in that tight round hole they’d got nailed into. Why couldn’t it always be more like this?

  ‘Yes,’ I said, and the certainty in my voice made him smile. ‘Yes, I can.’

  ‘Cos Zac never… he never picked up on that. Even if I told him about performing and all that, he just thought it was, like, a hobby. He got hooked up on my qualifications and my experience, like. But I don’t want to do that any more.’ He looked wistfully at the café speakers, now belting out Wizzard, and his foot tapped again. ‘I want to sing,’ he said. I just hoped it wasn’t right now. The café was not the place for a six-foot bloke to stand up and belt out ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day’ without repercussions.

  When I got back into the office, I felt like a fairy godmother, as though I’d tapped my magic wand and sent Bob to the ball, even though all I’d done was raise his spirits a bit and given him several application forms. But maybe that’s all it took, I mused, wandering down the corridor, feeling the dampness of my shoes. Maybe people just wanted to be heard and their choices appreciated. Not to be judged.

  Priya lurked louchely through the door, eating a Twix. ‘I hear you did a swap,’ she said, chewing caramel. ‘He’s got Miriam and you took his client?’

  ‘I think I got the best out of that deal.’ I sat down and twiddled my seat round. ‘I’ll have Bob on a course by the New Year.’

  ‘Nice work. Should give you some brownie points. By the way, Michael wants to see you both upstairs, day after tomorrow. The fact he’s giving warning means it’s going to be big.’ Her eyes narrowed in concern. ‘You okay about that, Ruby?’

  I’m going to lose my job. This is it. ‘Well, at least he’s given me a couple of days to get over the shock,’ I said.

  ‘I think that’s why. You know Michael, he won’t want anyone breaking down in his office.’

  ‘He’s the king of the stiff-upper-lip.’

  She looked at me through narrowed eyes. ‘You’re very chipper for someone who might lose their job. I mean, compared to how you have been.’

  ‘I’m not, Pri. I’m really not. It will all get to me at about–’ I looked at the clock on the wall ‘– about three o’clock in the morning. Anxiety doesn’t just get displaced.’ I twirled the seat around a few more times. ‘It pads along at your shoulder just waiting for you to weaken.’

  ‘Yes, yes, very poetic,’ Priya shoved the rest of the Twix into her mouth and leaned towards me across the desk. ‘But what are you going to do?’ she finished, somewhat muffled around the flakes of biscuit and chocolate.

  ‘I’m going to let Zac have the job.’

  Priya recoiled, her chin tucking back into her collar. ‘What? After all this?’ She waved an arm to indicate the office, although I wasn’t sure why that qualified as ‘all this’. It was just a small dusty office with dreadful heating and not enough storage. ‘What about–’ she lowered her voice ‘– you know. All the debts?’

  I shrugged. ‘I don’t want to work somewhere where they behave like this. It’s unethical, making us try to get the dirt on one another, just to score points. And anyway,’ I looked around the office again, ‘I think I want a change.’

  ‘I’ll miss you.’ Priya sat on the edge of the desk. ‘You’ll still come over though, won’t you? You’re the only one who eats Nettie’s vegan loaf.’

  ‘Of course I will. You’re both still my friends. And Zac…’ I wanted to say that Zac would still be here and maybe, just maybe, Zac and I could have something that wasn’t based on competition. ‘I like her vegan loaf,’ I
finished instead. ‘You should give it a proper go. Just because it doesn’t come with buttercream icing on doesn’t make it horrible.’

  Priya was not convinced. ‘Yeah, you and Zac.’ She fiddled with a Post-it pad. ‘I knew you’d be good together.’

  ‘We haven’t really been anything together.’ That kiss. ‘But he’s not as bad as I thought when he first came, that’s all.’

  ‘Despite the fact that YouBack2Work have been trying to set you at one another’s throats ever since we merged? And you still managed not to hate one another? That’s got to mean something.’

  ‘There were moments,’ I said darkly. ‘But he’s actually a really nice guy.’

  ‘And he’s hot. That doesn’t hurt either.’

  ‘I shall tell Nettie you said that.’ I twizzled my chair a bit more. It squeaked its protest.

  ‘I’m just being heteronormative,’ Priya said complacently. ‘I’m the Gay Best Friend, remember? My job is to make sure you know your worth.’ Then she sighed. ‘And it’s a bloody hard job sometimes. I’d be delighted to see you go and work somewhere that appreciated you with more than a vague smile and some of Michael’s top-class biscuits.’

  ‘Yes, all the fries I can eat, probably.’

  She gave me a sudden, very direct, look. ‘You’re better than this place, Rubes. You have to know it. You could make a difference out there if you got the anxiety sorted. Don’t let it keep you trapped in this place.’

  ‘Oh.’ I hadn’t realised that she felt quite as strongly as that. ‘I wasn’t aware that I was trapped.’

  ‘Well, as Gay Best Friend I am here to tell you that you need to move on. I never thought you’d stay as long as you did, but once you got with Gareth and then you got all complacent and settled and everything – well. And then he went and you couldn’t cope with change, but now…’

  ‘I still have the anxiety, Pri.’

  ‘But you handle it better now. You know what to expect from it.’ She slid down off the desk, causing a shower of sticky labels to hit the floor, and swept off to the door. ‘If you don’t find somewhere better than this, more useful than this, I’ll donate the whole of my confectionary stash to… to… someone who will appreciate it!’