The M Word

by Eileen Wharton

  Bertie is the cleverest in the class, even though all the masters pick on him because he’s poor. He says he is going to be a solicitor when he leaves school. He says he’s going to move away to London and make something of himself. I’ve said he can come and live with us. Mother and Father will like him, and you will too. Can’t wait for the two of you to meet.

  Yours,

  Alice

  Dear Alice,

  I learned a new word last night: Looters. Dad says they’re the lowest of the low. They raid homes and shops during the air raid and steal things. One was caught tonight wearing an ARP Warden’s armband and helmet. The crowd wanted to lynch him, but Mr Jones managed to persuade them to turn him over to the coppers. They led him off in a Black Maria, but next time I saw him, he was black and blue. They say he fell down the stairs at the station. Dad says there are no stairs at the station.

  Tonight, the air rumbles and trembles like a giant thunderstorm brewing. It crackles and fizzes like fireworks. Flashes cast crimson reflections on the buildings in the square. The East End is a sea of blood. All along the road, there’s brick dust and rubble. People’s homes are split down the middle, their bedrooms exposed to public view: wardrobes reduced to splinters, chamber pots and crockery smashed to smithereens. Black smoke shrouds the whole of the common, and all the clocks have stopped. It feels like the end of the world.

  Till we meet again, dear sister.

  Your loving brother,

  Michael

  Letter number twelve:

  03/04/1941 Telegram from London: Bad news stop fatal attack on Lime Street stop no survivors stop

  Letter number thirteen:

  4th April, 1941

  Dear Michael,

  I can’t stop imagining you all sitting round the table in the kitchen. Mother cuts off a chunk of bread and spreads it with molten dripping. Father laughs at you eating at last. Mother smiles, but there’s sadness behind the smile as she realises you will have to join me in the countryside, now that you’re well enough. She knows it would be selfish to keep you there where you’re at risk of being bombed.

  I see the chink in the blackout curtains. I see the pilot in the air noticing the light. I see his expression change as he realises his target. I see the bomb drop, and the house disintegrate. The walls crumble in on themselves, and I see your hand, blue and limp, reaching out from the rubble. I see Mother’s eyes, glassy and lifeless, Father’s inert limbs. I wake crying and sweating. The Missus comes running, threatening me with the belt if I make any more of my noise. I’ll scream silently every night hereafter and call your name into the darkness.

  Yours,

  Alice

  Letter number fourteen:

  10th April, 1941

  Dear Michael,

  I don’t know how it happened. I only know what the telegram told me. I imagine you crouching under the stairs or in a cold, damp shelter while aerial pounding falls all around you with deafening cracks, bangs and flashes of light. Mrs Timms’s baby screaming beside you as she tries in vain to quieten it with a bottle. Mother and Father holding hands, a fortress of love against the Nazis. The realisation that you are about to die. The fear. The dust. The terror. The next one has your name on it. You know. You accept. You wait.

  They tell us the war will soon be over. My war will never be over now.

  Yours,

  Alice

  Poor Mother. I can’t imagine the pain she must have gone through. Stuck in a place she hated, where she was neglected and abused, then receiving the news her whole family was dead. Tears pour down my face. I wish I’d known. If only she’d told us what she suffered, I’d have understood her better.

  Shoni rings to say let bygones be bygones and do I want to meet halfway for a day’s shopping? I’d rather pluck my pubic hair with a plumbing tool, but after reading Mother’s letters, it hit me how important it is to spend time with your family. I’ve also promised myself I’ll try to be nice, so I tell her I’d love to.

  The car’s had another hot flush and collapsed, so I’ve had to take the train. When I get there, I’m sweating like a blind lesbian at a whelk stall.

  ‘You been swimming?’ Shoni asks.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, right. It’s just that you’re wet.’

  ‘So are you, but that’s nothing new.’

  ‘Mother, be nice.’

  ‘You started it.’

  ‘I didn’t. I just thought…oh, never mind. Let’s just get to the shops, shall we? Kevin will take your bag.’

  ‘That’s what I’m worried about.’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘Nothing.’ My mouth is firmly closed. No accusations about the drug-dealing degenerate shall pass my lips.

  ‘I thought we could go in Mystique to look at the mother of the bride outfits.’

  ‘Ok.’ Best to say as little as possible then I can’t be blamed for causing World War Three.

  It should be called Mistake, because the outfits there are big bloopers. If I wanted to look like a stuffed manatee, then perhaps they’d suffice. Sea monster, however, is not my look of choice for my firstborn’s first wedding (I’m under no illusion that it will be her last).

  I bite my tongue – really. I try on a couple of dresses that look like a blancmange and an STI respectively. I merely say I don’t think they suit my skin tone. I’m on my best behaviour, I promise. I don’t mention custard substitutes or syphilis. And I could. I don’t say I’d rather eat my own ovaries than wear those creations. I’m distinctly polite, and still, my daughter berates me like an angry head teacher.

  ‘Why do you have to be so sarcastic? Why do you always make a fuss? Why can’t you just be happy for me?’

  ‘Why do you have to ask rhetorical questions?’

  ‘I just wish I had a loving mother. A mother who cares, who wants to do things with me and for me. It’s not enough, Mother, to feed and clothe us, to make sure we’re educated, to brush our teeth and our hair. Our souls need nourishment.’

  ‘Really? I didn’t look after your feet?’

  ‘Why can’t you be serious for one minute?’

  ‘I didn’t know we were raking over old coals. I thought, stupidly, we were here to try on dresses.’

  ‘All I’ve ever wanted was a mother who cared.’ Join the club.

  ‘That’s not entirely true. You wanted a Pippa doll, a pink sequined jewellery box and a Chihuahua.’

  ‘I wanted a mother who was prepared to be there for her child.’

  ‘Children.’ One gets the feeling my eldest won’t be happy until I’ve nailed myself to a cross in her honour. ‘Best be getting back,’ I say.

  ‘Yes, that’s right, as soon as the conversation turns to anything serious, let’s just brush it under the carpet.’

  Actually, if the truth be known, it isn’t just the conversation that has me heading out but also my need to pee. Lately, when I’ve got to go, I’ve really got to go. I don’t want a repeat of the gym fiasco. ‘I’ll just nip to the loo.’

  ‘That’s right, bury your head in the sand.’ I’m not burying anything. Except perhaps my womanhood in the ruddy great tomb of the menopause.

  ‘I’ll come back,’ I say. ‘Get me the green one again in a size twelve.’

  ‘A twelve?’ Shoni says, her voice shrieking incredulously.

  ‘Yes, daughter dear, a twelve.’

  ‘You do know they’re snug sizes?’

  ‘Ok, I’ll try the fourteen too.’

  ‘She’ll have the sixteen,’ Shoni says as I leave the store. I’m tempted to carry on walking and not go back, but I must have somehow acquired a modicum of maternal instinct. I’m determined the sixteen will be too big if I have to chop off a limb and have liposuction on the way back from the loo.

  It turns out the sixteen is too tight. Shoni stands there, oozing smugness, while I try to squeeze my bum cheeks through the gap. It won’t go up, so I try to pull it down. The ripping sound resonates round the whole shop, and the assistant comes ru
nning – to haul back the curtains and show my bum cheeks to the world. There’s a piece of sleeve wrapped round my face that looks like a lion’s mane. You’d think I’d taken a pee in the corner of the cubicle, the way she’s going on. She threatens me with the police if I don’t pay for the damaged goods. So, now, I have half a mother of the bride outfit and badly bruised pride.

  Tammy calls to say she got off with the Foetus last night, and they ended up at her flat. She was hammered, so she couldn’t remember whether they’d done it or not, but she was sure they must have as she has a bout of cystitis brewing.

  For the rest of the day, I shall be mainly drinking wine, eating chocolate and feeling sorry for myself.

  13

  #breakdown

  No one tells you about the menopausal sickness. You hear about the hot flushes and the night sweats, the moustache and the loss of sex drive, but no one talks about the nausea and sickness. I wake up this morning feeling like I’m going to throw up every time I move. I shove a couple of ginger biscuits down my neck and jump in the old jalopy. She coughs and splutters into life and then purrs like a kitten. The purring, however, ceases at the traffic lights where she cuts out and refuses to move. I try coaxing, stroking, whispering, and when that doesn’t work, I get out and kick her.

  A policeman (muscular, manly, dishy) wanders up to me and asks what the problem is and can he help.

  ‘She’s broken down,’ I say.

  ‘Let’s have a look,’ he says, jumping behind the steering wheel and turning the key. I surreptitiously take a selfie of him and me. ‘Oh, aye, ah see what the problem is.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘And do you know how to fix it?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘That’s great.’

  ‘Come here,’ he says. I do as he bids, wondering if this is just a ploy. Maybe he likes older women. ‘See that little line there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And see that gauge there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It sez empty.’ He jumps out of the car and points to the petrol cap. ‘See this ’ere?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You put petrol in ’ere, and the car will gan.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Sarcastic Geordie twat.

  It costs me £180 to have her towed to the nearest garage so I can fill up. I’m late for work again, and Oldham gives me a first written warning while I retch over the waste-paper bin. Unfeeling, insensitive pig.

  I post the selfie of me and the local Bobby. There are no likes on Facebook yet. Maybe his helmet’s not big enough.

  #whocares?

  People have been breathing all day. It makes me want to kill them. A swift knife to the ribs and an upward tear resulting in tortured screams and gurgling, frothy, bloody spit. Anything’s got to be better than this constant breathing. The pen tapping is also criminal. If the Foetus taps his pen on the desk one more time, I’m going to have him aborted.

  The sneezing is infuriating too. That prat from payroll has hay fever. Sabina Somethingorother. I’m so sick of her snot-ridden, sniffling, sneezy conversations. She’s telling me about her husband’s mother’s cat’s cancer, and I think, who cares? No one gives a tiny rat’s testicle. The thing is, I don’t just think it, I say it aloud. So now, she’s put in a grievance, and Oldham wants to speak with me tomorrow. Some people need to grow a pair.

  Of course, Mick thinks it’s hilarious. ‘I told you, you needed to brush up on your people skills,’ he says. ‘I bet they send you on a course.’ Jesus, that’s all I need, to spend the day with a bunch of ignorant bigots. At least I’m consistent. I hate everyone.

  I receive another weird email. The subject line says: “You know how subtle are the links that bind two souls which are so closely allied”. Haven’t a clue what it means or who sent it, but I’m not even going to try to open it in case it is a virus.

  I’ve been on a few other dates, most of them too embarrassing to document. There was Psycho, Sicko and Face-licker. Litigator was probably the worst of a bad bunch. I think his given name was Carl or Craig. He picked me up in his Subaru with gold (I kid you not) dashboard and fur-lined seats. He had something green stuck between his two front teeth. I tried to gesture, but he was too thick-skinned (or just plain thick) to realise, so I had to tell him. He checked in the huge mirror tucked behind his sun visor and offered, ‘Guac,’ as an explanation before screeching away and doing seventy in second gear.

  When we got to the Odeon, he paid for the ticket (one point in his favour. Tight Wad had just had to “nip to the loo” and left me to pay for us both). He bought popcorn and asked me if I’d like a hotdog. I declined, remembering Tammy’s dictum that they’re made from pigs’ lips and bums.

  I didn’t want to see anything erotic, in case he got the wrong idea. I didn’t want a repeat of Shoe Boy. We settled on It, the remake of the Stephen King classic. I’m not scared easily, and clowns don’t freak me out the way they do Tammy. He might have hoped I’d cuddle up to him, but he was mistaken.

  I’m not that keen on popcorn, as it happens. It’s a bit like chewing polystyrene and the kernels get stuck in my teeth. After a few irate looks from him for rattling the box, I tried to just suck the caramel to lessen the noise.

  When he complained about me texting during the film, I decided to leave. I nipped to the loo, texted Tammy and waited outside for her to show up.

  We’d just arrived at mine, cracked open a smooth Rioja and were sipping while swapping stories about sad bastards, when I got a text from the Litigator telling me I owed him, ‘£10 for the cinema ticket and £4.99 for the popcorn.’

  I showed Tammy the message, and she burst out laughing, spluttering red wine onto my new top. ‘Oh my God, you can certainly pick them.’

  ‘I blame you,’ I said.

  ‘Me?’ she said. ‘I merely led you to the water. I did not drop poison in it.’

  Because I ignored the text, he sent me a barrage of abusive messages calling me everything from a freeloader to a dirty toe-sucking whore. I blocked his number, of course, but it didn’t end there. A letter from the County Court duly informed me the Litigator was taking me to court for the price of a cinema ticket, popcorn and for the emotional damage caused to his person as a result of my inappropriate, inconsiderate and appalling behaviour. My behaviour (texting during the film and ruining it for other people as well as violating the cinema’s policy) apparently was a threat to civilised society. You could not make this shit up.

  The next date, the Mansplainer, wasn’t nearly as much trouble as the Litigator but was as irritating as thrush on a dirty weekend. We arranged to meet at my local. He explained how to get there using a map and compass.

  ‘I have GPS,’ I said, ‘if I get lost in the next hundred yards.’ He then mansplained the history of said local pub, even though I told him I was responsible in part for creating the historical pamphlet which explains that it was a place where coachmen stopped on their way from London to Edinburgh. He mansplained Chateaubriand is a tenderloin cut of beef. He mansplained what the sauce should contain. I swear, if I hadn’t thrown him a filthy look, he’d have mansplained to the nursing mother at a nearby table how to breastfeed her child. By this point, I was ready to leave the perfect steak and head home. I texted Tammy, and she rang me. He mansplained dinner etiquette and mobile phones.

  ‘Sorry, I’ve got to go,’ I said. ‘Speak soon.’ I immediately blocked him on Tinder, Facebook and Instagram. How had I not noticed his mansplaining in his emails?

  ‘He is quite hot,’ Tammy said. ‘Maybe you were swayed by the topless torso pics.’ I immediately deleted all males with topless torso profile pics.

  #moodswings

  My doctor prescribes me a course of antidepressants. Me. Depressed? I don’t feel depressed. Those “woe is me” types exasperate me. The “I must have been terrible in a former life” types who sit and bewail every misfortune to become them. Needless to say, I don’t go to the chemists. Fluoxetine, indeed. H
e said they would improve my mood.

  There’s nothing wrong with my fucking mood, I wanted to say.

  I’m changing doctors.

  #blackdeath

  I’m called into the office and spoken to about my treatment of the prat from payroll. I say in my defence she was sneezing and spreading germs all over the office. Oldham says that’s not a defence, and if she decides to pursue it, I could be dismissed for gross misconduct. I’m sure spreading the bubonic plague is gross misconduct, but she’s not getting into trouble. Bet he’s sleeping with her. Eeew, I do not want that mental picture. He says I have to apologise. ‘Over my dead body,’ I say. He says he’ll give me the weekend to think about what it would be like to be out of work in this climate and approaching fifty. Cheeky sod. How does he know I’m nearly fifty? I look nothing like my age. I tell him he’s lucky I haven’t been headhunted by now.

  ‘Get real, Gallbreath. It’s a wonder you haven’t been given the chop.’

  #grammargripes

  I get a text from Drew asking to lend a tenner. ‘Who you gonna lend it to?’ I text.

  He rings me and says, ‘For God’s sake, Mother, I’m on the bones of my arse, and you’re correcting my grammar.’

  ‘Get a job, son,’ I say.

  ‘I’ve tried.’

  ‘You should be still trying. And don’t give up until you get one.’

  ‘Huh.’

  ‘Well, it’s been lovely conversing with you on this fine Saturday, but I must go. I have things to do.’

  He cuts me off before I finish speaking.

  ‘Ten pounds transferred to your account,’ I text. I wait for the thank you, but it doesn’t arrive. Bloody typical.

  Letter number fifteen:

  10th May, 1941

  Dear Michael,