The Goddess Workshop

by Margaret K Johnson

  ‘Whatever’s the matter, Estelle?’ Her mother sounded annoyed to have been interrupted.

  Suddenly, Estelle wanted comfort more than she wanted Scott, who had run off and left her there without so much as a backward glance.

  Tears filled her eyes. ‘It’s Tim,’ she sobbed. ‘He attacked me!’

  ‘He what?’

  There was disbelief in her father’s voice even before Tim Lawrence came into the hall behind her.

  ‘For goodness’ sake, Estelle, it was just a cuddle to wish you a happy birthday! What vivid imaginations girls have these days!’

  And that had been that, apart from a hissed reprimand from her father for humiliating him in front of his friend.

  Looking back now, Estelle thought that evening marked the end of her innocence. Something had hardened within her after that. She had always craved more love and attention from her parents. But after that evening, she had given up on them. But that hadn’t made the hot feelings go away. Perhaps that was why she had picked the summerhouse as a venue to have wild, noisy, party-disrupting sex with Rashid ten years ago.

  She’d been very drunk. Not that she’d planned it that way, but the party had been too much of an ordeal to face stone cold sober. Wedged at dinner between a vicar and a dull academic, Estelle had watched her parents lording it on the top table while she worked herself through the best part of a bottle of wine and Rashid flirted with all and sundry.

  And then, after dinner, when she was making her swaying way back from the bathroom, Estelle came face to face with her father in the dimly lit corridor.

  ‘Estelle,’ he said, seeming to loom out of the shadows. ‘We didn’t think you’d come.’

  Nobody else was around. It was years since they’d been alone together. Years during which she’d built up a successful business. Any other father would have been proud of her and shown an interest in what she was doing. But not hers. ‘It was a surprise to me too,’ she said sarcastically.

  ‘You’re looking well,’ he said.

  Estelle flushed. She wanted, suddenly, to hurt him. ‘You’re not,’ she said. ‘The extra weight doesn’t suit you.’

  But Edward Morgan just laughed, patting his stomach. ‘I was always a man of healthy appetites,’ he said.

  Oh yes, that was certainly true. Her mother and father had never been able to get enough of each other. She’d grown up with a constant feeling that she was in the way of their fun. She could remember the look of irritation on her father’s face whenever she had made any demands on his time. Just like when she’d run into the hall from the summerhouse the night of the party.

  ‘I must go and speak to Rashid,’ she said, moving away.

  ‘Oh yes, your pretty Indian boy,’ her father. ‘Yes, you’re probably wise not to leave him alone for very long.’

  Estelle didn’t respond to the bait; she just kept right on walking. She needed air, but she needed not to be alone more, so she went to seek Rashid out. Sure enough, he had an admiring crowd – mostly of women – around him, but she stepped into the throng, taking his arm possessively and surprising him so much she almost put him off the punchline of the joke he was telling.

  ‘I need to see you outside for a moment, Rashid, darling,’ she said as soon as the joke was finished and the laughter had died down, and although he looked surprised by her use of the endearment, he went with her without a fuss.

  ‘What’s so urgent, Estelle darling?’ he asked sarcastically as she led him outside and into the summer-house.

  ‘This,’ she said, reaching up to kiss him while simultaneously grabbing his cock through his trousers.

  Rashid wasn’t one to argue in such circumstances, and they made love without even bothering to close the summerhouse doors. And later, with her fake cries of pleasure so loud they could be heard by anybody and everybody who happened to be taking the air on that hot, balmy night, Estelle heard her mother’s icy voice.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘That’s just my daughter. She always was a little slut.’

  And that had been the last time she had seen her parents.

  Now, ten years later, Estelle looked around the bare interior of the summerhouse again. The passing years hadn’t been enough to erase the bad memories of the things that had happened to her there, and neither had her lovemaking with Rashid. Perhaps there were some bad memories that nothing could erase.

  There were stones mixed with the soil in the pots of the withering plants. Someone, at some point, had cared enough about them to want to give them sufficient drainage. The stones were redundant now, because the plants were too far gone for them to be of any use. But Estelle could think of a perfect use for them.

  Picking up a handful of the stones, she began to throw them at the summerhouse windows; one at a time at first, but then by the handful, in an increasing pebbledash frenzy. The glass began to break, quietly at first, but as she put more force into it, with satisfyingly loud splintering and cracking sounds. The stones ran out while there was still glass intact, and long before Estelle’s fury was spent. So she took off one of her shoes and began to beat at the windows with the heel, scarcely noticing when shards of glass splintered into her face.

  ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ Estelle ignored the burly man who tore in from the rain outside. He had to grab hold of her and drag her outside as she continued to kick and scream, still attempting to smash the remaining glass with her shoe.

  The rain was torrential. Flailing about helplessly in the man’s grasp, her hair plastered to her face, Estelle dimly heard him bellow to someone near the house. ‘Call the police! There’s a fucking lunatic on the premises.’

  Twenty-four

  The atmosphere in the catering classroom was as tense as a Wild West saloon pre-shoot-out. Feeling like a sheriff, Kate stood between Marcia and Stuart, the boy who had been on the receiving end of Marcia’s chip fat. The normal boisterous hubbub of the classroom was silenced, and every pair of student eyes was focused on the trio at the front.

  Kate was as tense as the rest of them. She had stuck her neck out to get Marcia back on the course; it had taken hours of negotiation with the Principal, Stuart and even Marcia herself. Reenie had been endlessly grateful for her efforts, but she wouldn’t be so grateful if Marcia failed to keep to her word and Kate was forced to sling her out again.

  Marcia was currently gazing at the floor, her expression unpromisingly sullen, toeing the pattern of the lino with a grubby trainer. Kate felt like shaking her, but resisted the temptation, restricting herself instead to a firm squeeze of the girl’s shoulder. Marcia ought to know what was expected of her. Kate had spelt it out to her clearly enough. It was up to her now.

  Just when Kate had begun to think all her efforts had been a waste of time, Marcia lifted her head and – miracle of miracles – looked Stuart directly in the face.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she told him in a halfway audible voice. ‘I’m sorry I …you know.’

  As apologies went, it wasn’t world class, and Kate held her breath, knowing it was the best they were going to get, and hoping it would be good enough. Stuart took his time responding. Obviously aware of his power, he was making the most of having the normally over-feisty Marcia humbled, and while in one sense Kate didn’t blame him, she also had a strong urge to give him a good slapping.

  She gave his foot a little kick instead, and he blinked. ‘And I’m sorry I said what I said about – ’ he started, but Kate swiftly cut him off.

  ‘No need to rake all that up again,’ she said. ‘Now, shake hands.’

  Obediently, the two young people shook hands, inspiring a loud cheer from the rest of the class, and Kate smiled and gave them both a little shove away from her. ‘Right, go and get on with your work. And the rest of you! That pork won’t cook itself!’

  It was only as the students drifted off towards their chopping boards and pans, still chattering excitedly, that Kate realised Geoff was grinning at her from the doorway of the classroom. For
some unaccountable reason, she felt embarrassed. ‘How much of that did you see?’ she asked.

  ‘All of it,’ he smiled, leaning against the doorframe with his arms folded, watching her. ‘You did good, Katie.’

  Geoff had flour up to his elbows as well as a smudge of it on his nose, and his baker’s hat was jauntily askew on his head. As for his baker’s whites, they were buttoned up wrongly and straining over his paunch so badly the buttons looked in severe danger of popping off.

  The man could be irritating as hell, but he had been there for her all through the last long, painful year. Without the thought of him here at work, a friendly face to greet her amongst the sea of spotty-faced, unmotivated youths and the pinched-faced, over-motivated college management team, Kate doubted whether she’d have been able to keep rolling up day after day.

  Geoff levered himself away from the doorframe. ‘By the way,’ he said, just before he turned away, ‘like your new hairstyle. It suits you.’ And then he was gone, strolling across the corridor to the bakery and leaving her to face the catcalls of her students.

  ‘You’re in there, Miss!’

  ‘Like your hair, Miss!’

  Kate slapped on the scowl she’d perfected over fifteen years of being a catering lecturer. ‘That will do, thank you,’ she said. ‘Get on with your work.’

  Why had Geoff paid her such a public compliment? He of all people knew what the students were like, and anyway, it wasn’t like him to pay her compliments at all. That wasn’t what their relationship was like; normally he wouldn’t even notice if she’d had her hair changed. Not that she had changed her hair recently. Or in fact as long as she could remember.

  It had been Reenie’s idea. Her daughter Gaynor was a hairdresser, trying to start up a mobile business following a break to have her children.

  ‘Go on, Kate, give her a go,’ Reenie had persuaded her. ‘My treat for what you’ve done for Marcia. It’ll give you a bit of a boost and it’ll be a customer for Gaynor too.’

  Kate had been doubtful, and not just because it was a very long time since she’d bothered much about her appearance. ‘I don’t know, Reenie,’ she said. ‘I’d have to spend weeks clearing up my place until it was fit to have a mobile hairdresser round.’

  They were sitting in Reenie’s pristine kitchen drinking tea. ‘Well, come round here then,’ Reenie said. ‘Gaynor’s always round here anyway. There’s almost as much hair cut in this kitchen as there are meals cooked.’

  So that was what Kate had done, and she had to admit she was pleased with the results. Gaynor had not only given her a younger-looking hairstyle, but she had persuaded her to have a dark auburn tint put in. So far the new cut had stayed sleek and manageable, and it definitely made her look younger. She got a jolt of surprise every time she looked in the mirror.

  But for Geoff to notice and comment… Well, that felt weird, very weird.

  But things were to get even weirder later on.

  Kate was on her own in the catering staff room catching up on some paperwork when Geoff came in, minus the flour smudges and the jaunty baker’s hat.

  ‘Glad that class is over,’ he said, dumping a bag of books and equipment onto his desk, which was adjacent to Kate’s. ‘Felt like shoving Trevor Barton and his ugly gob right into the dough mixture. Little bastard’s far too fond of his adjectives for my liking. Especially since the only ones he knows are the ones beginning with F.’

  Kate, normally quick off the mark coming up with one-liners about students, could think of absolutely nothing to say to this. Somehow Geoff’s unexpected compliment about her hair had made her feel shy and awkward with him. He was still her funny, no-hope pal; the guy who still hadn’t noticed by three o’clock in the afternoon that his bakery whites were buttoned up wrongly, one side yanked up a good six inches higher than the other, but at the same time… Well, he wasn’t as well. To the newly sensitised Kate, there seemed to be something just a little bit false about her friend’s tone of voice.

  When Kate didn’t say anything, Geoff raised his eyebrows at her. ‘You all right?’

  She nodded quickly and got back to her work. ‘Mmm hmm,’ she said. ‘Apart from a ton of marking to do.’

  She could tell Geoff was still looking at her. ‘Now I know something’s wrong with you,’ he said, reaching out playfully to put a hand on her brow to feel her temperature. ‘Not like you to be so conscientious.’

  His hand was hot, and Kate flinched away from it. Geoff noticed. He couldn’t help it – she’d wrenched away from the bodily contact as decisively as if his hand was coated with poison.

  He looked at her. ‘Seriously, Katie,’ he said at last. ‘Are you all right? Really?’

  The genuine concern in his voice made her feel emotional. ‘Yes!’ she snapped. ‘I’m all right, OK? How many times do I have to say it?’

  Geoff sat down abruptly at his desk. ‘OK,’ he said, sounding offended. ‘Keep your hair on.’ Picking up his bag, Geoff upturned it, emptying its contents out as noisily as a child having a tantrum. Kate glared at him, but Geoff ignored her, proceeding to swipe everything he didn’t want to one side of his desk, opening a large book with a thump and generally, it seemed to Kate, making as much noise as he possibly could.

  Kate’s face was turned in the direction of her NVQ Level Two Catering students’ workbooks, but very little of their incorrectly spelt and poorly punctuated scrawlings permeated her brain. Geoff had started to hum a little tune now, although humming was quite a generous term for the tuneless vibration issuing from his throat.

  Kate sighed heavily, attempting to return her attention to her workbooks. Geoff turned a page noisily and crossed his leg, his foot almost coming into contact with her knee. Kate gritted her teeth, shifting in her seat.

  Thus they had sat, free period after free period, for five years, she and Geoff – ever since he had first started to work at the college. Not that they had often sat like this, both supposedly hard at work. Normally they were engaged in a paper dart throwing com-petition or sneaking a crafty fag or just bitching to each other about the staff or the students.

  ‘Worse than the flaming students, you two are,’ Tom, a colleague had said once, on an impromptu visit from the more earnest Humanities Department. And Kate and Geoff had just grinned at each other, not denying it, simultaneously chucking paper darts at Tom’s head.

  But now those carefree days seemed like an invention or an aberration of memory, and finally the tension was more than Kate could stick. Scraping back her chair, she stood up and shoved her workbooks into her bag.

  Geoff looked up. ‘You off?’ he asked, sounding surprised.

  ‘Yep,’ she grunted, snatching up her coat from the back of her chair.

  ‘Well look,’ Geoff detained her as she headed for the door. ‘I was going to say… Well, ask really I suppose…’

  She paused, looking at him suspiciously. ‘What?’

  ‘Well,’ Geoff continued awkwardly. ‘How about going for a meal later on?’

  She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. ‘A meal?’

  He cleared his throat, keeping his eyes on his books. ‘Dinner,’ he said. ‘In a restaurant.’

  He looked at her then; the merest flicker of a glance, and Kate realised all of a sudden that he was…embarrassed. Alarm bells went off in her head.

  ‘Is Tom coming?’ she asked, and now he looked at her, surprised. ‘Or anyone else?’

  ‘Wasn’t going to ask anyone else, no,’ he said.

  ‘Oh.’ Kate was confused to say the least. First the compliment, and now an invitation that seemed almost like… a date. What was going on?

  The pause while Geoff waited for her reply and she struggled to make sense out of what it all meant lasted for quite some time. Too long. Suddenly Geoff stood up, tucking his book under his arm and sweeping past her on his way out of the door. ‘It was just a thought,’ he said gruffly. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  And then he was gone.

  * * * * *


  In Reenie’s house, it was uncharacteristically quiet with Marcia back at college. True, she had only been off for three months, but Reenie had got used to having her around, even if she had usually been asleep in bed or shut away with her music. But now she was back at college, and Gaynor was busy getting her business off the ground, Reenie knew she was going to have to get used to spending a lot more time in her own company. Funny how you could be totally glad for people and miss them like crazy too. But then everybody on the planet wanted to have their cake and eat it, so why not her too?

  It was like the song said though: if you loved somebody, you had to set them free. Even if there was a great big festering place inside of you that knew only too well what could happen when you went about handing freedom out willy-nilly.

  ‘This won’t get the windows washed, Reen.’ Reenie spoke to herself, trying and failing to spur herself into action.

  Normally she wasn’t the type to be idle. She liked her home to be spick and span, and with the amount of people who passed through the house, there was always something to do.

  But somehow today there seemed little point to it all. What did it matter whether the windows were washed or not? Nobody noticed anyway; it was only her with her mental rota of jobs that got them done at all. Every fortnight of her married life, weather allowing. Her mother had washed her windows every fortnight, and no doubt her mother had done the same before her. But it didn’t seem likely that any of her three daughters were going to carry on the family tradition; none of them seemed to make housework her priority.

  What would her mother have made of her three girls now they were all grown up? They’d been kids really when her mother had died, but even then they’d been starting to get on her nerves with their teenage tantrums and sulks. She’d have disapproved of Marcia of course. It was a blessing really that she had been saved the stress of dealing with her mother’s disapproval while Marcia had been in trouble. Reenie’s mum had been a forceful traditionalist, a woman never scared of voicing her opinions on any given subject. While Reenie had always known that her parents loved her, her upbringing had been very strict, and as a result she had always tried to give her own children more freedom than she’d had herself.