Virtual Strangers

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  But loveliness, on the whole, abounds. The post brings me a copy of Intrepid Explorers! (Nepal and Tibet) - a personalised itinerary for Ms Charlotte Simpson, which, following Rhys’s advice, I requested, from a knowledgeable man with a business in Bolton, who, joy of joys! knows the difference between a drokpa and a daal. I take it off to work to enhance my good Chi. And it’s a morning of further good portents, as, hot on heels of the major downer of the Rutlands taking on Metro as well, in an unprecedented (in Cardiff) two agency shoot out at the OK Corral type scenario, I have taken Mr and Mrs Habib for a second viewing of Cherry Ditchling and they seem, dare I say it, exceedingly keen.

  ‘There’s even a ha ha,’ he enthused to his wife. ‘Jane Austen, I believe, thought very highly of those.’

  But as ever, there is always scope for a disintegration of my luck, as Minnie is due to be moving to the Maltings today and I am scheduled to turn up and collect Kipling, just prior to (please, God) the completion. And I am not disappointed.

  I arrive twenty minutes early in a persistent drizzle and am dismayed to find Austin Metro also in the street, picking wet leaves from the bonnet of his Jag. I lean in to grope around in search of umbrella, rolling jam jars etc. and fully expect scorch marks to appear on the seat of my pond-weed skirt.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ I ask as I back out again.

  He shifts his gaze from my bottom and then lopes across the road. ‘Exactly what I was about to ask,’ he says. ‘I’m here to see this completion completed. What about you? Bit above and beyond, this, isn’t it, lovely?’

  ‘If you must know, I’m having the cat,’ I bark back. ‘There is absolutely no problem with Minnie.’

  Because I’ve also noted the social worker’s car across the road, my words carry less than complete conviction. I’d been told that Minnie was to be collected at midday by the sister from the Maltings and that she would make sure Kipling was in his cat basket when I got there. Hmm. And less conviction still when a siren, closely followed by a shiny white bulk bearing down on us, heralds the arrival of what is clearly an ambulance. Somehow, I just know it’s for Minnie. I bolt for the house, Austin Metro behind me. The front door is open so we both run inside.

  ‘Ah, it’s here,’ says the social worker, glancing up as we enter. ‘All right, Minnie. The ambulance is here, my love. You’re all right now. Don’t fret.’

  I kneel on the floor beside her. Minnie is face down on the hall floor, her head to one side and her eyes closed. There is a trail of dribble glistening at the side of her mouth. The social worker glances up and recognises me.

  ‘Had a fall,’ she confirms, with a sigh. ‘As they do. Difficult to tell, of course, but I suspect her hip’s gone. I’ve not tried to move her - ah, here we are.’

  What little light there is disappears as two paramedics, plus stretcher (plus docusoap film crew?) fill the doorway. Relentlessly jovial, they move in and take over, and with disturbingly little protestation from Minnie, concoct some sort of splint, construct some sort of stretcher and soon have her outside and into the ambulance.

  ‘I think I should go with her,’ I tell the social worker, as we stand by and watch helplessly. She looks relieved.

  ‘Would you? It would be nice to think someone could. I’ve got the Magistrates at one. I’ll let the office know what’s happened.’ She checks her watch then glances down the street. ‘And that’ll be the new people, I suppose. Oh dear.’

  ‘What, already?’ I turn to Austin, who has been standing nearby, gabbling into his mobile. I raise my eyebrows and point up the road. He shakes his head.

  ‘Just the removal men,’ he mouths. Then he nods and speaks. ‘Just completed though. The Applebys’ll be on their way to the office for the keys pretty soon. We clear here?’

  The ambulance driver walks back up the path.

  ‘You coming, love?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I say. ‘But shouldn’t I find her a nightie or something? Is there a nightie? The house has been cleared now, hasn’t it?’

  The social worker nods. ‘But she has a couple of cases of personal bits to take with her, I believe. They’ll be in the hall still. I suppose we could have a look through them, do you think?’

  ‘Tell you what,’ says the ambulance driver. ‘We’ve given her a shedload of painkiller, so she’s pretty well out of it at the moment. Why don’t you get some bits together and follow us down? Come round to A and E and catch up with her there.’

  The social worker nods again. ‘That sounds best, doesn’t it? If it’s all right with you?’

  ‘I suppose so, I say. ‘What should I do with all her stuff though?’

  She looks at her watch again. ‘I suppose the best thing would be to have the people from the Maltings take it, wouldn’t it? And she’s due soon, is she not? Or should we telephone and stop her? Given the time. What do you think?’

  I feel frazzled and fretty. I want to say I don’t bloody know, you’re the social worker, but I don’t, of course. Instead I say, ‘well, it is her new address now, so that would seem to make sense. Yes, righty - ho. Let’s get on then, shall we?’ I take the door keys the social worker then proffers and I head off back towards the house with my jam.

  Austin follows.

  ‘How about the keys then? D’you want to let me have them? Drop them off to Davina for you? I assume you’ll be a while getting back to the office.’

  I know it’s the silliest thing, and I know it’s not his fault, and I know he’s only trying to get the details sorted and so on, and I know giving him the keys would be a sensible thing to do, but I feel quite unreasonably furious with him. As if, somehow, this mess is all of his making.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say sniffily. ‘But it’s against company policy. I will find Minnie’s nightie, give the cases to the sister at the Maltings, and then take the keys to the office myself. Once the solicitor confirms that the sale is completed, we will, of course, hand them over.’ I step into the hall and pick up the cases. They are ridiculously light. As we arrive shall we go? The cat basket, however, is nowhere to be seen. ‘I will,’ I add, shutting both him and the rain out, ‘return to the office as soon as I can.’

  Cats and Simpsons don’t mix. Never have. I am barmy.

  ‘Your Minnie’s a ninny,’ I tell this one, conversationally, while trying to pretend that my purse is a juicy fat mouse. He’s having none of it, of course. Ninny or not, she’s been mother to him for as many years, I suspect, as I’ve been mother to Ben.

  We spend a good twenty minutes engaged in no claws barred hostilities, but he is lured into the basket, in the end, by a small tin of cat food, which I remembered I saw in the bottom of one of Minnie’s cases.

  By the time we get home, my car smells like a fishmonger’s toilet. But at least he’s stopped spitting and lacerating the wicker.

  ‘Okay, Kipling,’ I tell him. ‘This is the deal for all four legged Simpsons. No peeing, no crapping, no clawing the chair legs, no climbing on beds and no bringing in corpses. And make sure you keep your eyes off the sofa. Oh, and the worktops in the kitchen are right out of bounds. And one more thing -’ I waggle my finger. ‘Don’t expect Whiskas at this house, okay?’

  Kipling’s ears flatten as I undo the buckles.

  ‘Oh,’ I add. ‘And if you mangle the decorations, you’re for it.’

  He bolts from the basket and shoots straight up the tree.

  My father appears while I am in the middle of trying to reassemble the carefully constructed tonal cascade that was my bauble arrangement this year. Luckily for him, he refrains from passing comment. He does, however, manage to rouse more than a little consternation (and a touch of angst), with a)a cravat, and b) the gleeful announcement that not only are him and Hester formally an item, but that he’s invited her over for Christmas as well.

  ‘So much for bijou,’ I tell Rose, when I call her. ‘I have Dan, I have Ben, I have Jack, I have Dad, I have Hester now too, I may yet have Francesca, and I have a psychotic cat with unbelievable br
eath.’

  ‘You’ll have fun!’

  ‘All I’ll have is a hundredweight of sprouts and a headache.’

  ‘But I thought a big family Christmas was just what you wanted.’

  ‘It was. So can I come to yours? I’d much rather bring the boys down and look after you.’

  ‘You know you can, Charlie. My God, don’t you know it. But I don’t need looking after.’

  ‘Yes you do. You need succour. You need someone to lean on.’

  ‘I need no such thing, so stop this fussing, okay?’ Something in her tone made its point and I took it.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘So, come on. Buck up. You’ll enjoy yourselves. You’re just feeling mopey. Get that sherry open early is my advice.’

  ‘I don’t dare. I may just have to scarper. Can you really see Jack and that Hester together? Don’t know why I don’t just leave home myself and have done with it.’

  ‘Tsh!’ she says. ‘Calm down. It’s just this Adam business, isn’t it?’

  ‘No!’ I say. Yes. ‘I just feel like escaping.’

  ‘You’ll be okay,’ she soothes. ‘You’ll all get along fine.’

  I Wish I could believe her. When I get into the study and boot up the computer, it is with the realisation that my air of festive jollity and joy de vivre is but a thin veneer over the fretwork of my stresses; that there isn’t a bauble arrangement in the world that can lift this sort of low. And when I see he has emailed me, it is almost with a sense that none of this stuff is within my control. Cannot believe some people.

  thesimpsons@cymserve.co.uk

  Dear Charlie,

  Thought I would get in touch as Davina told me about Minnie. I’m sorry. Is she going to be okay?

  Didn’t respond to your last email because, well, you told me not to, of course, but also because I do take your point. But spoke to Rhys today and found myself stupidly dismayed by his (how shall I put this?) appreciation of your charms. In retrospect, not a particularly sensible position to have put myself in. None of which (I know you will tell me) is of the least concern to you. Yet here I am again. I seem unable to stop myself. A bit of a mess all round, eh? I’m sorry.

  Adamxx

  I am cross. I am more than a little cross. I am very, very cross.

  I am cross at myself for having emailed him in the first place. I’m cross at him for having emailed me back. Mainly I’m cross that, despite me telling him in no uncertain tones not to, I’m secretly so thrilled and excited that he did.

  But stuff that. When I was fourteen I received a valentine card from a boy in my class that I was nuts about. It had been sent anonymously, of course, but I knew it was him because he had a left-handed italic fountain pen, which caused his thick strokes to be thin and his thin ones fat. He’d written ‘Dear Charlotte, I think you’re really lovely and I’d really like to go out with you.’ I didn’t say anything. He was already going out with my second best friend. Instead, I waited. I waited and waited. But still he went out with her. And I couldn’t bring myself to give him a sign.

  Still don’t know why he sent it. What was the point? Sure as hell made me mad.

  Rose, I tell you, this is bad. Think seismic activity (and you know how seismic activity is measured i.e. exponentially) and you’ll know what I mean when I tell you this email rates an eight. Forget San Francisco, forget Mount St Helens, forget, in fact, all the parameters you usually apply at a time like this and that’s how bad this is. This is real. This is not dreaming. This is not imagining. This is not reading things into things. Oh no. Nor fashioning a romantic epic from a few pedestrian encounters and writing myself the romantic lead. Nor fancying I noticed a particular nuance in his manner where there was simply a friendly smile. Nor telling myself I was being fanciful, period, while believing, inside, the reverse to be true. This is not about wishing, or hoping, or wanting. This is real. It’s all real. It’s all real. It’s all real. It’s - well, what it is, is - well, mutual, basically.

  I couldn’t actually email Rose, of course, as the last thing I wanted was to bother her with my problems right now. So, ho hum, off I went to bed, up my twinkly staircase, on my featherlight feet, with my gossamer, billowy negligee billowing, to lay my head on the soft pastel silk of my pillow and dream torrid dreams about making love in edelweiss-dotted grassy knolls. But this time the nameless GP grew some horns and had the words forbidden fruit stamped on his rump.

  Chapter 14

  I’ve decided to go for a festive buffet style Christmas Eve supper as I cannot face the stress involved in making the usual sit down pig out meal. In fact, I can’t face the stress involved in making any sort of meal, given the amount of stress I’ve already expended in trying not to allocate ridiculous chunks of time to thinking; yet here I am again. I seem unable to stop myself. So have instead decided to splurge a big lump of ;my derisory Christmas Bonus on buying everything in a black box that says ‘Occasions’ on it in Sainsburys.

  Which proves to be something of a shrewd move early on, as there are no straining and plate warming agendas to adhere to and therefore no flash points of familial unease in the air. Until....

  Until some time after dinner, when we could all be happily watching an undemanding Frost, or Morse, or crappy TV Xmas special even, but instead Hester decides to regale us with her apocryphal tale about high jinks and much drama in the matter of the elderly person’s seat on the bus going to Grangetown last week. Suddenly I’m whisked from our mundane but familiar dynamic and plonked down, hard, in the middle of a sit-com - a truly bad sit-com with terrible ratings, that is peopled (albeit in very twinkly surroundings) by a huddle of humourless numbskulls and geeks.

  Hester; ‘So I thought, well, it was only to be expected, wasn’t it?’

  Dad; ‘How so, love?’

  Hester; ‘Well, he was a coloured chap, of course.’

  Jack; ‘Pardon?’

  Hester; ‘And it has to be said, some of them -’

  Jack; ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Stableford - did you say “and it has to be said”?’

  Me; ‘Who’s for a hot chocolate?’

  Hester; ‘Don’t get me wrong dear - I’m not saying that had anything to do with -’

  Jack; ‘And it has to be said that some of them what?’

  Dan; ‘Jack, drop it. It isn’t important.’

  Jack; ‘I beg to differ, Dan. It’s extremely important. This is exactly the kind of nasty latent racism that percolates through generations and infects everybody with its horrible canker.’

  Me; ‘Or a glass of something, perhaps?’

  Hester; ‘There’s no need to point, dear. And I’m not saying it was anything to do with his colour. I have nothing against coloured people. I have friends who are coloured, and they are all very nice. It’s just that, on this occasion -’

  Jack (pointing); ‘So why mention it? Why slip it into the conversation at all? Why give him (Ben) the impression that there is a correlation between the man’s behaviour and his colour -’

  Ben; ‘Don’t bring me into this!’

  Me; ‘Or a date? Piece of crystallised fruit, maybe?’

  Dan; ‘Come on Jack, let’s leave it.’

  Jack; ‘Oh, so you think I’m wrong then, do you? That’s not what you said at Deb. Soc last week. It was all -’

  Dan; ‘Of course I don’t think you’re wrong. You’re absolutely right. I abhor racism. You know that. It’s just -’

  Dad; ‘Now come on, lad. Hester’s no racist. I don’t think we need to start bandying unkind words around.’

  Dan; ‘I am aware of that, Grandad. But Jack is simply making the point that sometimes these things are, well, innate. Not meant exactly. But nevertheless there. Latent. I don’t -’

  Jack; ‘Exactly! Which makes her a racist! You can’t go around making assumptions about people based on the colour of their skin and then deny that you’re a racist! God! This is exactly what I mean! Until we stand up and question that sort of behaviour in ourselves it will just go on and on and on!�
�

  Dad; ‘Bit of respect for your elders wouldn’t go amiss here, young lady.’

  Dan; ‘There is no lack of respect here, Grandad. Jack is simply trying to -’

  Jack; ‘Yes there is! I hate all this respect your elders crap!’

  Ben (tittering); ‘Obviously!’

  Me; ‘Ben!’

  Jack; ‘Since when do we have to respect people just because they are older than we are? I have respect for any number of people, believe me, but for their character, their intellect, their vision - not their ignorance!’

  Dad; ‘You’re going to just sit there and let her speak to Hester like that, are you, lad?’

  Dan; ‘Grandad, it’s not my place to -’

  Jack; ‘Quite. I am an educated, intelligent person and I do not need to be told-’

  Hester (sniffing); ‘Yes, well. Just goes to show what a waste of money all that so-called education is, doesn’t it? Manners is as manners does, young lady, and I’m sorry to see how few you young people seem to have these days. When I was young we knew our place -’

  Jack (rising); ‘Oh, yes, I’ll bet. Riding roughshod over the colonies and exploiting the indigenous populations. That was about the size of it, wasn’t it? Oh, and having nothing to do with niggers, of course.’

  Me/Dan/Dad; ‘Jack!’

  Hester (reddening); ‘I don’t think I need to listen to any more of this, thank you very much. Leonard, I’m going to bed.’

  Ben; ‘Oh-er!’

  Jack (bursting into tears); ‘Good! Good riddance! I’m fussy about the company I keep. Dan, I want to go home.’

  Dan; ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’

  Me; ‘Dan!’

  Dad (leaving); ‘Well, I just hope you’re both satisfied.’

  Me (standing); ‘Come on, Dad -’

  Ben (grinning); ‘Can I watch South Park on Sky now, Mum?’

  Me; ‘Ben, it’s -’

  Ping.

  Me (again. Rubbing my eyes/blinking); ‘Hmmm. Evidently not.’

  And cut.

  When you suddenly find yourself standing in absolute impenetrable darkness the last thing you should do is start dashing around the room like a headless chicken, particularly when the room in question has played host to several people, a monster tree, a large quantity of glassware and the half eaten debris from a buffet style supper. At least two glasses and a meat dish fell victim.