Chapter 6
Elizabeth woke up on her first day of being unemployed, feeling that she had been properly asleep for no longer than five seconds in the whole night. She dressed, went downstairs, made a long job of a forced piece of toast and then went back to bed again where she slept solidly for three more hours. She felt a lot better for being able to give in to her bodily demands, but she wasn’t used to sitting around doing nothing, and once she was up she was soon twiddling her thumbs and trying to think of something more positive to do than watch reruns of Quincy on the telly. Janey’s suggestion that she decorate her bedroom was becoming more and more attractive by the minute. At present, it was boring magnolia with an old, past-it beige carpet. It needed warming up and some interest of colour–maybe a nice strawberry carpet and creamy pink walls, she thought. She had seen a room decorated like that in a recent magazine and it looked lovely.
Screwing her unruly hair back tightly into a scrunchie, she changed into an old T-shirt and a pair of baggy black leggings, which were going along the inner-thigh seam but were perfectly adequate for painting in. Then she went hunting for sandpaper in the small storehouse in the garden, which had once been an outside loo. Halfway through roughing up the skirting boards, she had to go and change her bra for an old comfy one because the one she had on seemed to be rubbing her raw in strategic places. She put it down to the new washing powder and carried on priming the bedroom, then when it was done, she set off into town to buy some paint.
It was unexpectedly relaxing, wandering up and down the aisles of the decorating giant’s store ‘Just the Job’, and her head emptied of everything but the task in hand–buying brushes, white spirit, undercoat, non-drip gloss and masking tape. It was as she was deciding between the nuances of Candy Floss and Lollipop emulsions that she saw him cross the top of her aisle. Commonsense told her it couldn’t possibly be him because he was in Germany, but her eyes were seeing the indisputable evidence for themselves and there was no mistaking who it was, even after all this time. The sight of him winded her. Her whole body locked. She didn’t know what to do. Yes, she did. She had to get out and find some oxygen to breathe. She pivoted around so sharply that she went the full 360 degrees and ended up back where she started. It appeared the small chemical factory that had blown up inside her had temporarily disabled her ability to co-ordinate.
From time to time, she had wondered what she would do if she saw him again, and presumed she would be totally indifferent to him after all these years, maybe even ignore him or at best give him no more than a second glance. Yeah, right! Her head was swirling, memories were bombarding her as fresh as the day they were made, and the overwhelming effect of it all was making her stomach so jittery that she wanted to vomit.
All the things she had told him. Everything…
She edged round for a second look but he was gone. Where? She dumped her trolley and crept across the top of the aisles, checking down each one like a crap actor in a cheap spy film. Where the flipping heck was he? She felt someone come up behind her and she jumped back, flattening herself against the Black & Deckers, but it wasn’t him, just someone who looked at her as if suspecting she might have escaped from a secure mental hospital. She doubled back, looking out for the sight of his black leather jacket and hoping that no one was watching all this on CCTV. A pulse was throbbing in her ears that totally drowned out the tinny tones of the Musak that was struggling out of the overhead speakers. Where the bloody hell had he gone? She did another thorough check and decided he must have left the store. Her heart was bouncing like a mad ping-pong ball inside her and she needed the loo again–and fast.
It then occurred to her that she was nearly forty, not twelve, and that at this age she should have the maturity to bypass such a ludicrous scenario. On the offchance he did not ignore her, what on earth was wrong in saying a normal, ‘Hello, how are you? What are you doing back from Germany then? How is Lisa? Does she still cling to you like a brain-damaged limpet?’ Therein lay the problem with ‘normal’. Not only did her indifference gland need a major tweak, but having felt the Full Monty effect of how her body reacted to a mere flashing sight of him, she knew there was no way in heaven or hell that she could act ‘normal’ with John Silkstone in a face-to-face encounter. Not in a million years.
There was still no sign of him as she stealthily recollected her trolley and wheeled it slowly towards the checkout. She wasn’t in touch with her own feelings enough to know if the adrenaline coursing through her inner motorways was sourced in excitement or relief or fear. What she did know was that she just wanted to get out of there and to the safety of her car as soon as possible. Satisfied that he had left the building, she joined a queue and allowed herself to relax a little. She was halfway through paying for her goods when up he popped again, two tills down, faffing about with his wallet. Her heart started galloping again, but it didn’t look as if he had seen her. So far so good. She whipped out her Switchcard and signed her name on the receipt quickly before pushing the trolley victoriously out towards the exit. Done it. Then the metal arch thing at the door went off, didn’t it, because Mr Efficient Just the Job till operator hadn’t swiped something properly. Then the customer two tills down lifted his head at the commotion and saw her at the centre of it.
Elizabeth didn’t know what was making her blush more–the fact that she’d alerted the stares of everyone in the shop when the spotty stringbean cross between Sebastian Coe and a Los Angeles cop rushed over, or that he saw her in her finest gear–no make-up on, a Barnes Wallace bra and crotchless decorating gear. He hung around until Harry Callaghan had cleared her for bombs and drugs and reswiped her non-drip gloss, and then she waited for the inevitable.
She did a really bad acting job of pretending to spot him for the first time as she watched him out of the corner of her eye slowly approach her.
‘My goodness, it’s you! How are you?’ she said with a pathetic attempt at casual, whilst pulling the back of her T-shirt down over her bottom. There was an incredibly awkward exchange of plastic smiles and head-nodding of the like that was only to be seen between animals squaring up against each other in Chester Zoo.
‘Elizabeth,’ he said. ‘How are you? You look…good.’
The pause before the complimentary word was telling, she thought.
‘Oh yeah!’ she said. ‘A regular catwalk queen in my decorating gear.’ Pleased to get that in just in case he thought this was her normal garb these days and that she had gone really downhill.
‘So, how’ve you been?’ she said.
‘Good–and you?’
‘Smashing,’ she said. ‘And you?’
‘Good. And yourself?’
Flaming hell, this loop could go on for years if she didn’t break it.
‘Holidaying?’ she said.
‘No, I’m home for good.’
‘Oh, both of you?’ She tried not to sound nosy. Even though she was.
‘Both? Lisa, you mean? No, we aren’t together any more.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,’ she forced herself to say. ‘So…er…how will you cope without German beer then?’ Ha, you prize-winning conversationalist you, Elizabeth Collier!
‘I think I’ll manage,’ he said.
She tried to think of something witty and incisive, but was already desperately scraping around the bottom of her mental barrel of ‘things to say to a bloke you haven’t seen for seven years’ and he wasn’t helping, standing there like a mountain range just looking at her. If she did not get away soon she would faint, she felt uncomfortably h-o-t.
‘Well, I best get on,’ she said, doing a nervous little dance-step as she started to trundle out the trolley.
‘What are you painting?’ he said, looking at her wares.
‘My bedroom,’ she said.
‘You still at Rhymer Street?’
‘Yes.’
‘On holiday from work, are you?’
No, actually, I told my boss to stick his job up his jacksey.
> ‘Er…yes. So what are you doing these days then?’
‘Me and the bank have bought some land. I’m knocking up some houses and hoping to sell ’em off.’
‘Oh great,’ she said, as the danger alarm on her bladder started to throb red.
‘Well.’
‘Well.’
‘Well.’
‘So, this is…’ she said, trailing off because she had absolutely no idea of where the sentence was going.
‘Yeah. It’s been nice seeing you,’ he said, looking as if he had just snapped out of a trance. An interesting silence followed in which he might have said, ‘We could catch up and go for a drink or something,’ to which she wasn’t sure how she would have reacted. Not that she got the chance to find out because what he actually said was, ‘Well,’ bye then, take care,’ and he was off without so much as a backward glance.
Her knees were knocking across that car park. She was as wobbly as the trolley wheels. John Silkstone. It felt like November the Fifth in her head, with his name all lit up in fireworks, which was pretty ironic really considering the last time she saw him, she told him to piss off and leave her alone for ever because she hated him.
As usual, there were no interesting jobs on the Situations Vacant board. Janey was vaguely aware of some man hanging behind her looking over her shoulder but she presumed it was just some hopeful other, like herself, looking for his overdue chance to shine. It was not though, it was Barry Parrish, the Head of Personnel, and he had been waiting for her to finish reading before interrupting her.
‘You’ve saved me a trip, Jane,’ he said in a silky voice that belonged to James Bond. ‘I was coming up to see you this afternoon.’
‘Oh?’ she said, taken aback.
‘Have you time for a coffee?’
‘Y…yes, of course,’ she stammered, suddenly wondering if the excitement building up in her boots was misplaced and this was actually P45 time.
He bought her a cappuccino from the machine and they went to sit behind a big plant.
‘I’ll come straight to the point,’ he said. ‘There’s a vacancy to be posted on the board in the next couple of days and I think you should apply for it.’
‘Er…oh?’ she said, hoping the position wasn’t Head of Devastating Wit, judging by this performance so far. It was not, though–it was much, much better.
‘Manager of Customer Services,’ he clarified.
It was a good thing she didn’t have a mouthful of coffee just then, because she would have spat it all over him. There she was, waiting for a step up the ladder courtesy of Old Coughing Lungs, and all the while Personnel were sending her up in a gold-plated lift to the top of the Empire State Building.
‘I…I…don’t know what to say,’ she said. Well, she did, but she didn’t think all those Fs would have gone down too well.
‘You could do it, Jane. You have just what that Department needs–stability, maturity, efficiency and organization. I–that is, we–happen to think you’re our girl for the job.’
He pulled a sheet out of the folder he had with him and set it on the table.
‘Here’s the job description that will go up on the board. By law I have to advertise it but I’m taking it as read that you’ll be called up for interview. The salary is commensurate with the position and there’s a car, private health insurance and profit-sharing at that level.’
Janey read the sheet. It sounded fantastic, and yes, she knew she could do it. This was the chance she had been waiting for all her life to show what she could do. ‘Slow But Sure’ was what it said on all her reports–not ‘Natural Clever Clogs’ like Elizabeth and Hels. Not that it had done them much good: Elizabeth might have moved through the secretarial ranks at Handi-Save, but she had enough brains to run the place if she wanted to. As for Helen–part-time legal secretary after quitting a Law degree at University? What a waste! Janey had always followed what her mam and dad told her: she took care over everything she did, she did not make mistakes, she watched and learned and she had worked hard. Now it could all pay off.
‘Yes, I want to be considered, Barry,’ she said calmly, even though her heart was as busy as a drumkit on a Cozy Powell LP.
‘Good,’ he said, and the Head of Personnel himself lifted up his coffee to her and said, ‘Cheers!’
Chapter 7
Over the years, each of them had found their own individual ways to unwind. Helen had always been into photography and was official recorder of their various hairstyles and gallivanting. She owned bulging albums that would have been worth millions in blackmail money if any of them ever became famous, especially ‘the perm years’ for Janey, and Elizabeth’s Mod phase in which she turned up to all things in a parka and a long, dangerous pair of winkle-pickers. Janey liked to sew and was an absolute whizz with a needle or a machine, even though it almost constituted a domestic chore. Not that she was dirty or would have had a germ-ridden house had George not been so handy with a duster and a Dyson, but she didn’t get the same sense of achievement that Elizabeth did from scrubbing a floor or polishing a room until it shone.
Janey had always been a big girl–tall as well as broad–and in the days of their youthful exploits, the fashion industry seemed to be under the impression that women of a certain size might prefer to cover up their substantial attributes in shame rather than decorate them. Hip, funky clothes for figures like hers were very thin on the ground so the only solution was for her to make her own, especially during the New Romantic era. She was the appointed dress designer when they went out in frilly white shirts and dandy satin cummerbunds to dance to Ant Music, and when full circle skirts were in vogue, she had run them all up matching grey ones for school. They had gone around together looking like three rejects from Grease and Helen had the picture to prove it.
For Elizabeth, her number one way to relax had been with a quiet place and her artbox, especially when she felt the need to escape from the world. At school, Art had a secondary place on the curriculum as a useful hobby but was never afforded the same respect as the more ‘serious subjects’ like History or Latin. Then, when Elizabeth was twelve Miss Fairclough arrived as a new teacher and saw in Elizabeth a real flair for the subject and she nurtured her like a precious plant. The residing Head of Art, Mr Pierrepoint, was bored and unenthusiastic and ticking off the days to his retirement but Miss Fairclough was a passionate teacher. She set up an after-school club for interested parties, for which Elizabeth was first in the queue. There, Miss Fairclough showed them all the finer points of perspective and shading, as well as enthralling her students with lively tales of the great artists and their wild and wicked ways, and how the various phases in their lives would reflect in their drawings. The example that always stuck in Elizabeth’s mind had been one of Picasso’s later works, Grande Maternité. She would never forget the flowing lines, the serenity of the picture of a mother feeding her baby at the breast that told of the inner contentment of the artist. Miss Fairclough might only have been at the school for a year, but it was at a time when Elizabeth had needed a safe and quiet expression for her confused emotions. She was to find what she learned with Miss Fairclough useful for the rest of her life and she would always be grateful to her old teacher for it.
Before she went up to tackle the bedroom, Elizabeth relaxed with a glass of juice and a sandwich in her bright little kitchen. She’d had it done up last year after one of the ancient units fell off, taking half the wall with it. Now it was bright and yellow, more so in the afternoons when the sun streamed full in through the large window, which framed the neat little back garden like a pretty picture. Cleef was gently snoring on the seat next to her, one leg sticking out like Superman mid-flight. She had the sudden urge to draw him and reached behind her to the drawer where she kept her pencilbox and sketchpad. She would need a new one soon; most of the pages had been torn out of that one. She used a 3H pencil for a delicate outline and it moved quickly over the paper to capture Cleef before he shifted into a more conventional position, a
lthough there was a fat chance of that unless a mouse-flavoured bomb went off under his nose. His paw twitched a little and his claws made a brief appearance as if he was dreaming of an adversary. Then he was still again and allowed her to finish. Elizabeth had never kept a diary, but in the forgotten pictures stored up in the loft was a graphic record of her young life. Unlike the picture of Cleef, there was no delicacy in them, only great outpourings of emotion in thick, black, angry strokes, as in the recently ripped-out pages of her sketchpad.
As Elizabeth entered her bedroom, she saw the room for the first time through Janey’s eyes and it was just like she said, in desperate need of a makeover, although it was faultlessly clean. In comparison to the bright pink paint in the tin the present beige walls looked extra dull and boring and tired, but not for much longer. She climbed the ladder, dipped her brush and started the job off. The problem was that painting walls gave Elizabeth far too much time to think. It was all very well ‘letting her mind wander’, as Janey put it, but it wandered straight over to John Silkstone and stayed there, wondering. Had he actually got divorced or was it just a temporary split from Lisa? Did they have any kids? Was he courting someone else? Did he ever think of her? God knows, she had tried not to think about him these years past. There was little point, for she didn’t imagine they could ever be friends again. When you hurt someone like she had hurt him, you didn’t deserve the privilege anyway and Lisa, for all her fluffy dolly looks, had been head over heels about him. He had deserved some good loving; Elizabeth had missed her chance and that was that. Still, that knowledge did not stop the image of all he had once meant to her start to reconstitute itself out of the ashes in her head and rise up slowly like a great big black-haired Phoenix with massive builder’s boots on. Her mind wondered about him a bit more and then the phone rang.
The Yorkshire Pudding Club Page 6