The M Word

by Eileen Wharton

  7

  #noweddingsandafuneral

  I take a few of Mam’s letters to read on the train to Durham. It’s strange to think of her speaking from beyond the grave. Not that she’s in a grave, but you know what I mean.

  Letter number five:

  19th November, 1940

  Dear Michael,

  You’ve no idea what it’s like here without you. The silence is deafening. When you’re used to the hustle and bustle of London, it’s deathly quiet. The cars and the buses, the trains and the rattle of the underground, the chatter of people down the market, the clitter-clatter of dishes, the shouts of the hawkers. I miss it all so much.

  Here, I wake to the cock crowing at an ungodly hour. I wash in cold water and make breakfast for the family. The Mister is out by this time. He comes in ruddy and hungry, and woe betide me if I don’t have his breakfast on the table. The Missus fetches a pail of fresh milk, and I have to pick out the grass. It’s unnatural. What’s wrong with milk in a bottle? It’s warm, too, like fresh piss. She sees me gurn my face and says, ‘Ooh, look at her majesty. What’s the matter? We not good enough for ye?’

  ‘No, Missus…I mean, yes, Missus.’ I don’t know what I mean, except I mean to stay pain-free without sore lugs. You’ve no idea how strong her arms are. A blow from her has my ears ringing like the bells of Bow.

  Hurry up and get here.

  Yours,

  Alice

  Dear Alice,

  Tonight’s bombing was a shower of slow-burning incendiaries. I sat on the crumbling porch of the store with a crocheted blanket wrapped round my knees watching everyone running around with buckets, smothering the flames with sand and earth. Cassie Moon bravely put out a fire on a man’s roof by climbing up and using a bucket and a stirrup pump. I felt useless, sitting there with my dodgy lungs. As much use as a chocolate teapot, I am. I feel as low as a snake’s belly. Everywhere there are posters about what we can do to do our bit. ‘Keep on, London,’ they tell us. ‘Keep your chin up.’ My chin’s in the dirt and the dust and the rubble with the bones of the dead. The Mister and Missus surely can’t be as cruel as the Germans’ bombs. I think of you every day. I wish I was there, for you wouldn’t want to be here.

  Your loving brother,

  Michael

  Letter number six:

  25th November, 1940

  Dear Michael,

  There’s a dance in the village hall this coming Saturday. I was hoping you’d be here so that we could go together. The Missus says I’m too young for dances, but the Mister says everyone must go as it’s a family dance.

  They’re saying here that the war will be over by Christmas, and I’ll be able to move back to the Smoke. The ugly sisters say, ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish.’ Don’t know who they’re calling rubbish. They wouldn’t say that if you were here.

  Remember that time in school when Mr Barraclough was picking on me? He did it every lesson when I couldn’t remember my seven times table. He’d whacked me with the strap four times already, and you’d just had enough. You jumped on his back to stop him whacking me again. You were given six of the best, and you laughed in his face as you were proud you’d stuck up for me.

  When we got home, Father said he was proud of you, too, and Mother said she was ashamed that a son of hers had had the cane, but we could tell she was pleased, really.

  I have to start a new school here on Monday. I’m dreading it. I imagine the teachers to be monsters and the children to be demons. Wish you were here. See you soon.

  Yours,

  Alice

  Letter number seven:

  6th December, 1940

  Dear Michael,

  School was just as torturous as I imagined it would be. The girls whispered and giggled behind their hands, and the boys threw stones at me and pulled my pigtails.

  When we arrived, a tall girl rang a bell, and we were all shunted into lines. A master patrolled the lines to make sure we were standing straight and tall. He whacked our legs and arms with a cane until we were as tidy as he wanted us to be. We were then marched into our classrooms, and I was told to find a seat. There was only one vacant one at the front of the room, next to a boy with a shaven head, a back-to-front jumper and bare feet.

  ‘Thomas Pye, how many times have I told you, you must wear shoes to school?’ boomed a tall and loud woman in a flowered dress and lace-up shoes. ‘Come out here.’

  The poor boy slunk to the front of the room and held out his hand while she slapped it with a strap.

  ‘He doesn’t have shoes,’ said a red-haired girl with a giggle.

  ‘Then, he’s to be pitied, is he not?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, hark at you, Miss Charity,’ she said.

  ‘Silence in my classroom,’ the teacher shrieked, slamming a ruler down on the desk in front of me and nearly causing me to leave my skin behind. There followed a lesson on fractions where I was in trouble again when she asked what my share of the cake would be, and I answered none.

  ‘Of course, it’s not none,’ she said.

  ‘It is, Missus. If there’s cake to be had in our house, I won’t be getting none,’ I said. She started going on about cheek and double negatives and cockney brats. I thought it best if I just stayed quiet, because you know what I’m like when I start with something, and you weren’t here to jump on her back.

  I can’t believe I have to come here again tomorrow. It’s worse than our school in London.

  Yours,

  Alice

  Dear Alice,

  I’ve had a bit of a relapse, and it doesn’t look like I’ll be coming after all this weekend. I can taste the disappointment. It has lumps in it. Last night was a heavy night of shelling. The sirens screamed, the anti-aircraft guns blazed as the planes dropped their bombs. I didn’t have the energy to get to the shelter in time, so I watched it all from the church.

  A small boy who I recognised to be one of the Wilsons ran across the street and into the church. He grabbed my arm and stared at me with horror in his eyes.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked. He couldn’t even speak. He pointed in the direction of the Anderson shelter on the corner and dragged at my sleeve. When I got there, I realised the shelter had taken a direct hit, and the rest of his family were trapped inside. I started tearing at the rubble with my bare hands, but I couldn’t move enough. They were going to suffocate inside. My eyes cast around for something to use and miraculously a shovel lay in the debris of the school. I dug and dug like my life depended on it. But it was their lives that depended on it. People began to arrive and took over. I collapsed in a heap, wheezing, and the medic attended to me. I watched as they pulled Mr and Mrs Wilson and their twins from the rubble, their eyes red and glassy, their lungs rasping, coughing and retching, but they were alive and smiling. They called me a hero. The word warms my insides.

  Mother called me a stupid boy for not getting to the shelter in time, but her eyes lit up with pride when they told her what I done. I’m not useless after all. Fate’s a funny old thing, innit? If I’d made it to the shelter, I’d never have seen little Johnny, and if little Johnny Wilson had made it to the shelter, he’d have been buried alive with the rest of his family, and no one would have known they were there. No more chocolate teapot. I’m now a champ.

  Your loving brother,

  Michael

  So, Mother had had a hard time at school just like me. I’m surprised, then, that she wasn’t more sympathetic. Maybe she thought being kind would make me soft and the indignities would be worse to bear. I want to give her the benefit of the doubt. I want to believe she had my best interests at heart and that she wasn’t just cold, callous and unloving.

  The funeral goes as well as can be expected, considering my sister and I are in the same room for more than two hours. It’s a humanist ceremony, which itself is ironic, because Mother wasn’t a bit human. It’s a small affair, on account of Mother going out of her way to piss off almost everyone she met. The bingo caller, Boris, is there, and Mr
Vicky, who goes to all local funerals for a free feed. A couple of nurses from the hospital attend out of duty. I thank them for coming and assure them they don’t have to try to find something nice to say about her as they search their brains for complimentary anecdotes.

  ‘She was a character,’ one of them manages. Ten out of ten for effort.

  ‘She was that, alright,’ I say.

  8

  #treadsoftly

  I sleep all day and don’t want to get out of bed. I feel strangely depressed.

  #ladieswhomunch

  Tammy, in her wisdom, thought a trip to Tinderland might make me feel better. How wrong she was. Fifteen minutes in Louis’s company was more than enough. He took a selfie of us at Costa, uploaded it to Facebook, changed his relationship status to “in a relationship” and tagged me in his photo as “The One”. Ten minutes! Now I’ve blocked everyone whose name begins with L, and I’ve disappeared to the pub to meet the work crowd.

  I take a group selfie in the pub and upload it to Facebook. I’m in the foreground, so my biceps look bigger than Mick the Dick’s quads. I must remember to stand at the back in future or put my hands on my hips to disguise the bingo wings, like Tammy taught me.

  ‘So, this article I was reading says you lose your libido,’ I tell Tammy. I never in a million years thought I’d be swapping stories with anyone about mood changes, muffin tops, and moustaches.

  ‘What’s a sunbed got to do with it?’ she asks.

  ‘You are a thicket,’ I say. ‘It means you don’t want to have sex. You have no sex drive.’

  ‘That’s news to me,’ she says. ‘Last I heard, you were gagging for it and had even contemplated shagging Dave.’

  ‘Tammy, can we get one thing straight – in no circumstance, alive or dead, whether I was the last woman on Earth, he’d undergone a full body and face transplant and I was under the influence of chloroform would I ever consider sleeping with Dave. He’s worse than Mick the Dick. And I don’t mean it’s happened to me yet. But this article is about the things nobody tells you about the menopause. Loss of libido means the loss of your sex drive. It’s one of the symptoms, losing your mojo.’

  ‘Ah, right, but you haven’t?’

  ‘No. But I might.’

  ‘So, we’re still trying to find a victim. While you’ve still got it, I mean. Your lido.’

  ‘That makes me sound like a praying mantis in a paddling pool.’

  ‘A conquest, then?’ she says. ‘That reminds me – William from HR with the big nose has been asking after you. Think he’s got the hots. Mick said you were taken.’

  ‘What did he do that for? I quite like William the Conk.’

  ‘Cos he’s a miserable sod, and he doesn’t want anyone else to be happy?’

  As if summoned by our conversation, Mick wanders over pretending to be nonchalant. ‘You ladies going out to lunch today?’

  ‘I’m nipping to Greggs,’ Tammy says. Great – now we sound like skanks, and Mick will look down his nose at us.

  ‘Actually, I was thinking of going to Jamie Oliver’s,’ I say.

  ‘Were you?’ Tammy says. ‘You never mentioned it. I thought you wanted me to get you a pie from Greggs cos the serving girl thinks you fancy her.’ I kick her twice during this little spiel, and still, she doesn’t get the hint. Frickin’ moron.

  ‘So, we’re holidaying in Lesbos this year,’ Mick says.

  ‘You’re such a pig,’ I say.

  ‘Ooh, I love it when you talk dirty. Me and some of the lads are going for a drink after work, if you fancy joining us.’

  ‘I’d rather swim with stingrays,’ I say.

  ‘Yes, alright,’ Tammy says at exactly the same time.

  ‘Good, I’ll see you in the Dog and Gun about six,’ he says. Great, now, I won’t be able to relax. I never can in Mick’s company. Maybe because I’m secretly attracted to him. There’s no way anyone’s going to know that, though. Not even Tammy. Especially not Tammy. Mick is not relationship material and is best avoided.

  As often happens at moments like this, I subconsciously picture Mick and me in bed. He kisses me softly and whispers how gorgeous he thinks I am. Lies. All lies. He can’t wait to get away from me the next day.

  A flush comes from my boots and burns my face.

  ‘Geez, Bob, you’ve lit up like a Belisha beacon.’ He’s been calling me Bob since the first time we met. I was working on a new contract, and he TUPE’d over from Madleson-Ferris and Wolf. He called me Robbie, and when I asked him not to call me that, as I didn’t like shortened versions of my name, he decided to be even more annoying and shorten it to Bob.

  ‘So, Dog and Gun?’ Mick asks.

  ‘Yes,’ Tammy says. ‘We’ll be there.’

  ‘What did you have to do that for?’ I ask her when he’s gone.

  ‘Jonathon from accounts is going with them.’

  ‘Jonathon?’

  ‘The sexy new lad with the blond surfer hair and tattooed sleeve.’

  ‘Jesus, Tam. I’ve got bras older than him. I have a rule: if I could’ve given birth to it, I don’t shag it.’

  ‘Not for you, for me,’ she says.

  ‘You’re the same age as me.’

  ‘Yeah, but I look younger.’

  ‘Cheeky bitch.’

  So here we are, in a dingy pub, with Jonathon from accounts (hereafter known as the Foetus), Mick the Dick, Nigel, and a gaggle of giggling twenty-something girls.

  ‘My dinner had a bigger IQ than most of these,’ Mick says, sidling up to me gripping a cocktail in his greasy paw. I’m annoyed at the excitement rising inside me. I feel a flutter in my chest, and my legs turn cold and feel weak. I hate myself for wanting to be kissed by him.

  As you may be aware by now, Mick and I have history. It’s no great romance, like Gone with the Wind or Wuthering Heights. More Bad with the Wind and Withering Tights.

  It happened at a two-day conference in Harrogate. I stayed at the Swan, and he did a bit of ducking and diving. Before I knew it, I was in his room on the pretence of having coffee (such a bloody cliché). I was vulnerable. My boyfriend at the time had been bonking Barbara from the prize bingo.

  Mick told a couple of jokes during dinner, and in my cocktail-induced reverie, I might have cracked a smile, so he thought his luck was in. Turns out, it was. His luck. In. Only because I’d drunk three litres of tequila, and with every pint, he got better looking. By the fourth pitcher, I’d have humped the Bee Gees.

  We fell into his hotel room doorway, ripping off each other’s clothes and panting. The next thing I remember is waking up next to him and panicking. I threw on my crumpled clothes, glanced in the mirror and left before he could surface. He spent the whole day at the conference avoiding eye contact. I skipped lunch, even though I was starving, just so I didn’t have to bump into him in the queue. You could have stirred the tension with a shitty stick. I left the conference early that afternoon on the pretence I’d had a call to say my house had been burgled.

  When he was transferred to our department, he took great pleasure in being obnoxious to me and making me squirm every chance he got.

  I pretended, of course, that I couldn’t care less, but it was a bit hurtful. I mean, we had shared bodily fluids. They reckon you only regret the things you don’t do, but that’s rubbish. I’ve been regretting that night ever since. Now, he thinks he has one over on me.

  ‘What did you have?’ I ask Mick about his meal.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘For dinner. You said these girls have a lower IQ than your dinner. What did you have? It makes a difference. A chicken has a lower IQ than a cow and a pig…’

  ‘I had cabbage,’ he says.

  ‘That is an insult.’

  ‘It’s the truth,’ he says.

  ‘I’m flattered.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, you’ve come to sit with me,’ I say.

  ‘I thought you’d be missing me,’ says Mick.

  ‘I didn’t try to hit you.’
>
  ‘Very droll. You still got a date for the company ball?’ he asks.

  ‘Of course,’ I lie. ‘In fact, I have to dash right now, as I have a very hot date.’

  It becomes apparent my “hot” date really isn’t. He turns up on a motorbike, man-mountain size like the Hulk, carrying a spare helmet for me. I’ve just spent two hours in the hairdressers having a cut and blow dry, so I’m not best pleased.

  He speeds around town like a jerk and then pulls up outside McDonald’s. I hate McDonald’s, and I hate the fact that he orders for me. Two large fries, two Big Macs and two Cokes. When we sit in a booth, he asks me why I didn’t order anything. It transpires both meals are for him. When he drops me off, he asks for petrol money. When I refuse, he screams at me that I’m a tight bitch. Chivalry isn’t dead yet. I check his Facebook status later, and he’s written that he checked out tonight’s date in Boots’ window as she was riding pillion, and she looked chunky. Cheeky bastard!

  9

  #midwifecrisis

  Today’s selfie is of me, my eldest, Shoni, and her Essex boy (actually he’s not from Essex, but he should be. If you saw his teeth and ridiculous hairstyle, you’d get me). I upload it to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram after making myself look thinner and younger with the use of filters and Photoshop. I get twenty-four likes and three comments within minutes. One of the comments is from Mick: ‘Looking good, kid.’ Sarcastic twat. And what’s with the kid? How patronising.

  Don’t ask about Shoni’s name. Knobhead picked it. I’m sure he named her after an ex-girlfriend, but I could never prove it. I wanted to call her Miranda, but he vetoed that. He vetoed all my ideas. She’s living with a drug dealer in Dagenham. She wanted to know if they could come and stay at mine for the weekend, as she had something to tell me. Please, God, don’t let it be that she’s pregnant, I thought. I can’t be a granny on top of the mid-life crisis.