Break Out The Bubbly

by Rick Adams

  She clocked me straightaway.

  ‘As if on cue,’ she sneered, ‘the ride approaches.’

  ‘He’s right, you know,’ I said, ‘your bracelet has got a camera, in the middle diamond. If it’s a real one, obviously.’

  ‘Of course it’s real,’ she mustered, ‘and now I know from whence my son has derived such obvious nonsense. This is not some mystery, you know, despite the missing champagne. We have solved the case.’

  ‘But you’d keep it under wraps. We have photographic evidence of the culprit. And I shall forward it to the police unless you apologise to your son, right now, for hitting him.’

  ‘You have no such thing.’

  ‘And for all the other times you have done so.’

  She withdrew her hand. ‘You shan’t have it.’

  ‘Then I shall take it from you.’

  ‘You may try,’ she said firmly, ‘but if you even as much as brush past me, I shall report you to the authorities.’

  I looked at Matthew.

  ‘And I’d forget about him too, you’re not in his league.’

  ‘He’s working at Sheila’s,’ I replied tartly, ‘that puts him right in my league.’

  ‘If so,’ she smirked, ‘he is leading the division, and you, well you are in danger of, what do they call it in that silly game?’

  ‘Relegation,’ offered her son.

  I stared daggers at him.

  ‘Well done Matthew,’ chimed Mrs. Osgood, ‘now on your way, assistant.’

  I stood firm. ‘You can’t just dismiss me, like some, some....Matthew, do something.’

  I looked at him imploringly.

  His mother held her gaze on him

  And so, once more, he found himself trapped between a rock and a hard place.

  This time though, I was sure he’d come down on my side.

  He had to, I mean we’d kissed last night.

  He had to choose me over his mother.

  And he did.

  For the briefest of moments, he opened his mouth, and I was certain it was to reprimand her.

  But she twitched.

  It was the slightest of movements, yet it was enough.

  And so he capitulated.

  ‘Emily,’ he began.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think you should…’

  ‘What, Matthew?’

  ‘Be about your business.’

  ‘I beg your pardon.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  He stared at the floor.

  ‘Matthew.’

  I didn’t want to be with someone who couldn’t stand up to his own parent.

  It was pathetic.

  Puerile.

  But then as I let the thought marinate in my mind, I heard again the same words that had seemed to float through my mind in Adrian’s, and as I flung imaginary rocks at Matthew’s flaccid impotence in the face of his mother’s bullying I suddenly found myself thinking of my own family.

  They’d moved away.

  And I hadn’t gone with them.

  I hadn’t been there for them.

  I’d gone in my own direction, to where, a tiny bedsit and a dead-end job in a dead end town with a totally dead love life.

  The only man I could get I’d stolen off my own boss, and this one, the one I was looking at and lamenting, well it would never work, especially with her breathing down our necks the whole time.

  And where was her husband?

  Where was Matthew’s father?

  And what the hell was his mum doing keeping company with someone like Carol?

  Why was she helping the hopeless kleptomaniac?

  And why was I suddenly thinking about my parents?

  They’d moved away.

  And I hadn’t gone with them.

  I hadn’t gone with them.

  I should have spoken up, made a stand, done something other than shrug my shoulders and let them head off into the sunset.

  ‘Why are you crimson?’ she snapped, ‘you’d better remove yourself and apply something. You do wear make-up, don’t you?’

  ‘Not as much as you do evidently,’ I grinned, ‘Judith.’

  Matthew sniggered.

  The speed with which she turned on him was startling.

  Almost as surprising as hearing Carol bark over the tannoy:

  ‘Emily! Get in here now!’

  I spun round.

  She was in the office of course, looking through the window.

  Why the hell did she keep shouting over the bloody speaker system?

  She beckoned me aggressively.

  I turned back to Matthew and his mother.

  But she was already frog-marching him out of the place.

  I made to go after them, but Carol’s yell brought the whole shop to a standstill.

  Just one word, yet it rang in the air with the aggression loaded in its delivery:

  Tranter!!

  I spun on a sixpence, and headed straight for the office, utterly under the control of her ferocious command.

  The door stuck, of course, as I pushed it open.

  But then, you should have seen the place.

  It was immaculate.

  All vestige of Tabatha had gone.

  Even her desk.

  There was just one now, and it was brand new, with a brand new chair, a brand new computer, brand new printer, brand new, what the hell, how could she have afforded all that, much less got it installed between yesterday and this afternoon?

  ‘Don’t gawp Emily,’ she chastised, ‘it’s nothing special.’

  ‘Nothing special!’ I choked, ‘you’ve just blown a quarter’s budget in one go. What on earth are you thinking?’

  ‘Less than a quarter’s actually,’ she corrected, ‘and don’t worry, the books are still balancing very nicely, with Adrian’s help of course. Oh he’s put a little something towards it,’ she said when she saw the look on my face, ‘but then, when you become an item, it’s usually common sense to pool funds and create a joint account with one another. Don’t you think?’

  I swallowed hard. ‘You’re with Adrian?’

  ‘We are together,’ she beamed. ‘In business, and in pleasure.’

  I swallowed again. ‘And he’s funding you?’

  ‘Us,’ she corrected me, ‘Sheila’s.’

  ‘But you never let men get anywhere near the place.’

  ‘We have one working for us.’

  ‘As a shop hand, not co-owner.’

  ‘Incorrect surmise,’ she said playfully.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I want us to be sharers, Emily, in this enterprise. All in it together, for want of a better phrase. Except, Tabatha has left.’

  ‘You fired her.’

  ‘Ginger is happy as Assistant Assistant Manager.’

  ‘You promoted her over me.’

  ‘Marilyn is content as our new front till operative.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘And you,’ she studied me, ‘well you do your own thing, don’t you Emily? And so I have made an investment, by signing over to Adrian.’

  ‘By signing over,’ I gulped, ‘you mean you’ve gone into joint partnership? Ownership? Whatever the term is.’

  ‘No. He has control.’

  ‘You’ve sold him Sheila’s?’

  ‘In a sense.’

  ‘What do you mean, Carol? Have you sold him the shop?’

  ‘It’s more of a gift.’

  ‘You’ve given it to him?!!’

  ‘That I have,’ she purred. ‘He is really such an amazing man, you know, and I feel secure now knowing that the shop will be in good hands.’

  ‘You’re going?’ I mouthed, staggering under the weight of these ridiculous revelations.

  ‘It is time for me to retire.’

  ‘But you can’t,’ I stammered, ‘I mean, you’re, you’re, the Manager.’

  ‘There will be another,’ she said religiously, ‘someone will come after me. Adrian has h
is eye on the candidate already. His new co-owner.’

  ‘Matthew,’ I sighed.

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘But he’s only been here five minutes,’ I stammered, ‘and, you’re going against everything you believe in. You hate men. Why the hell are you handing over to two of them? Why the hell are you leaving?’ I panicked at her. ‘This is your life.’

  ‘And one which is making me miserable. I keep losing my temper Emily, that state of mind is not sustainable.’

  ‘I quit,’ I said.

  ‘That’s your decision.’

  ‘Do you know that Ginger and Tabatha are setting up the New Year’s Eve party in Adrian’s attic? With the champagne you’ve been stealing.’

  She looked hard at me. ‘I do.’

  ‘They told me you’ve asked them to do so.’

  ‘Yes,’ she sighed, ‘I have.’

  ‘Then what the bloody hell is going on? You sacked Tabatha yesterday. I saw you do it, remember, and it wasn’t with a golden handshake. So what the blue blazes is she doing you a favour for now? You need to come clean with me. Right now.’

  There was silence.

  I thought she was going to burst into tears again.

  Or lose her rag.

  And I didn’t want to be the only one in the room when that happened.

  For long seconds, she tried to regain her composure, and somehow in the end she managed to do so, looking up at me in desperation. ‘I have no idea what I’m doing,’ she managed weakly. ‘Help me, Emily.’

  Of all the disclosures, that was the one that stung the most.

  Admitting impotence, and leaning on me.

  Me!

  I studied her.

  This was the woman, whose ex-husband I’d had an affair with, asking me for aid and assistance.

  I looked desperately round the room.

  The desk, the computer, the printer (why the hell had they always had one in the boardroom?) the tannoy, the CCTV…

  The CCTV.

  My God, that was gone too.

  ‘Where’s the CCTV?’

  ‘I’ve had it dismantled,’ she said curtly, ‘it was cluttering up the place.’

  ‘But it was here for one day. It must have cost a bomb.’

  ‘Adrian will be using it now.’

  ‘Was that a gift too?’

  ‘Oh yes, he has much more use for it now. He really wants to catch whoever’s responsible for stealing his flutes.’

  ‘But it’s you!’ I shouted at her, ‘the whole thing is you, Carol. All the upheaval, the mess, the conniving, the bickering…’

  I stopped, only because she was crumbling before me.

  Someone pushed the door open.

  It was Marilyn.

  Time to close the shop, apparently.

  And so, the administration of life took over, and we shut up for the evening.

  What had become of Ginger, Tabatha and Leafy Hollow, I had no idea.

  Though as I left Sheila’s and headed to catch my bus, a clue came.

  Soft light flickered up in the attic.

  The party preparations had clearly resumed.

  New Year’s Eve at Adrian’s.

  I went on my way, completely oblivious to the makeshift bridge I passed under linking the first floors of the two shops now.

  Two shops, I suppose, that were soon to become one.

  Chapter 10

  MEDIA

  My grandparents had the telly.

  That was it really.

  That, and the fact that it only had two or three channels on it.

  But at least it was in colour.

  Not like their olds, who only watched in black and white.

  By the time my parents were growing up, channel choice had increased a bit, but the internet was still virtually an unknown, and as for mobile phones…

  By the time our generation was growing up though, you had it all.

  Not just huge television screens, but hundreds of channels to go with them, terrestrial, satellite, on demand, playback, with dozens and dozens of films from which to choose from, and that every single day.

  My mum had always said Christmas was special in their house, because you got to see movies on the television which you’d never seen before, just heard about, so it was a real treat.

  For us then, Christmas was every day.

  Maybe that’s why I didn’t enjoy the real one anymore.

  Anyway, even as I grew into adulthood, the internet was growing at a faster rate than ever before, and mobile phones were starting to do things that they were genuinely not able to manage only a couple of years previously.

  And as for computer games…

  Well, I’d never really been into the scene, but the graphics, the sound, the sheer violence and gore of some of the stuff…

  You see, that’s why I’d enrolled on the media course.

  I wanted to find out what drove the whole machine.

  I wanted to understand why the news had stopped giving us a funny story at the end of its segment, and why it was seemingly fixated on reporting only the bad things that happened in the world.

  I was no genius, but like most ordinary folk I could see that this was one-sided reporting, that the globe on which we lived, our home, could be both kind and cruel to the inhabitants that walked upon it.

  Trouble is, I never saw that balance in a bulletin.

  And I rarely saw it on the internet, on video games, in the cinema.

  Yet the powers that be wandered round scratching their heads like a bunch of chimpanzees wondering why everyone seemed to be so bloody depressed.

  I thought I knew the answer.

  I saw real life, every day in Sheila’s, and then I saw it created afresh, when I engaged with it, through all this media.

  Someone had called the industry a blob once.

  I wasn’t sure that was the right name.

  I thought something more along the lines of, I don’t know, a great serpent twining and coiling its way throughout our lives, a constrictor choking us for air by robbing us of humour.

  Why, I had no idea.

  Conspiracy crossed my mind, that the powers that be were doing it on purpose, but the older I got and the more I learned about human nature, and institutions, the more I realized I had vastly overestimated the productive capacity of any organization to get anything official right in the first place, let alone something kept under wraps that had to remain a secret when most of us couldn’t stop from blabbing at the first thing we could tell our nearest and dearest about.

  Conspiracies were an idiotic notion because none of us could agree on anything for enough time to hoodwink thousands and hundreds of thousands of other people into believing the falsehood we were supposed to be concocting.

  It was much more likely to have something to do with money.

  Most of us wanted more of it.

  And even the ones who had the most desired more.

  Maybe that was it, maybe it had something to do with generating more funds.

  But for who?

  And so, here I was, in lecture room six listening to some tedious speaker expound upon the saviour that was technology whilst I couldn’t help thinking about Tabatha and how she hated it so much that if she was here she’d probably be driven to take the stage and have it out with the guy there and then.

  That gave me an idea.

  I raised my hand.

  I was ignored, whilst the lecturer continued.

  After several minutes, I raised my hand again.

  Once more, I was ignored.

  So the next time, I didn’t bother with the gesture.

  I just spoke.

  ‘What’s so good about technology?’ I asked simply.

  The room fell silent.

  Everyone looked at me.

  The lecturer began speaking again.

  ‘I said, what’s so good about technology?’

  This time, he was inflamed enough to address me.

  ‘We are living,’ he opined
condescendingly, ‘through a technological revolution. Everything in our lives is affected by this surrounding, and the media have been astute enough to understand that they have been chosen to lead us through this sea of possibility.’

  ‘Moses, are they?’ asked someone a little way off to my right.

  I leant forward to gauge the identity of my supporter, and smiled broadly.

  I didn’t know his name, but I knew who he was, because he was fit!

  And then he winked at me.

  I went bright scarlet.

  ‘Who are you?’ the lecturer asked me.

  ‘A student on this course,’ I replied tersely.

  ‘And one,’ he said gravely, ‘who should show more respect to it, and its representatives, if she wishes to stay upon it.’

  ‘Freedom of speech,’ said my new friend. ‘What do you say to that, Moses?’

  ‘Why do you keep uttering that name?’ he replied brusquely. ‘Who is he? What can you mean?

  ‘The Ten Commandments,’ he said.

  ‘Ah, the biblical, you make reference to fairy tale and myth.’

  ‘Which you subvert.’

  ‘It requires subversion,’ declared the po-faced academic, ‘and more so. Only its demise and absolute dismissal may pave the way for…progress!’ he shouted across the theatre. ‘Movement, and that forward.’

  He collected himself. ‘Who are you? What are you doing here?’

  ‘Wondering the same thing as Emily. What’s so good about this technological revolution? From where I stand, it seems to be going round in circles.’

  ‘Get out!’

  He saw me grinning.

  ‘You too.’

  ‘Gladly,’ I chirped, standing from my seat and following my new friend up to the back of the lecture theatre, ‘I quit.’

  And that was that.

  I was out of the hall, out of the course, and out of my mind.

  Now, I had no future beyond Sheila’s.

  But I didn’t care.

  Because I was bought a drink to celebrate.

  ‘How do you know my name?’ I asked as we sat on the concourse, he with a beer, I with a glass of wine.

  ‘Everyone knows who Emily Tranter is,’ he said mischievously.

  Wow, he was like Matthew.

  ‘Have I got a reputation?’ I asked worriedly.

  ‘No,’ he laughed, ‘not at all. I just have a good memory for names, especially when we’ve met and talked previously.’