“Yes,” said Meredia, all indignant. “She didn’t say how much money I’d come into. She just said that I would…. And I did,” she added defensively. “What’s wrong?” she shouted, as we all drifted back to our desks,
disappointment on our faces. “Your expectations are too high. That’s your trouble.”
“For a moment there I thought the predictions were going to come true. But it doesn’t look like I’ll be meeting the love of my life,” said Hetty sadly.
“And I won’t be having my big split,” said Megan. “Unless it’s a banana split.”
“And I won’t be getting married,” I said.
“Not a hope,” agreed Megan.
“None,” said Hetty, sighing heavily.
Our conversation was cut short by the arrival of our boss, Ivor Simmonds. Or “Poison Ivor” as we sometimes called him. Or “that mean bastard” as we called him at other times.
“Ladies,” he nodded at us, the expression on his face indicating that he thought we were anything but.
“Good morning, Mr. Simmonds,” said Hetty with a polite smile.
“Mumble, mumble,” said the rest of us.
That’s because we hated him.
For no particular reason. Not for his complete absence of a sense of humour—as Megan said, he must have had all charisma surgically removed at birth—or his shortness, or his receding wispy red hair, or his hideous red beard, or his salesman’s tinted spectacles, or his plump red lips that always seemed to be wet, or, worst of all, for his round, low-slung, womanly bottom, or for his nasty, cheap, shiny suit that covered—just about—the aforementioned bottom, or the visible panty line you could see through the shiny seat of the suit.
Of course all these factors helped. But mostly we just hated him because he was our boss. Because it was the rule.
His disgustingness did come in handy on several occasions. Once, when Megan was feeling really nauseous after a night on the Fosters and peach schnapps, it was a great help.
“If only I could puke,” she complained. “Then I’d be fine.”
“Imagine having sex with Ivor,” I suggested, anxious to help.
“Yes,” said Meredia gleefully. “Imagine having to kiss him, that mouth, that beard, Ugh!”
“Christ,” muttered Megan, heaving slightly. “I think it’s working.”
“And I bet he’s a real slurper,” said Meredia, her face twisting in delighted horror.
“And think about what he’d look like just in his underpants,” I suggested. “Think hard. I bet he doesn’t wear normal ones. No nice boxers or anything.”
“No, he doesn’t,” said Hetty, who didn’t usually join in.
We all swivelled around.
“How do you know?” we asked in unison.
“Because…er…you can see…you know…the line.” Hetty blushed delicately.
“Fair enough,” we conceded.
“I bet he wears knickers,” I said gleefully. “Women’s knickers. Big, pink, interlock ones that come up to his armpits, that his wife has to buy for him in an old ladies’ shop because he can’t get any normal ones to fit him.”
“And imagine what his willy looks like,” suggested Meredia.
“Yes,” I said, feeling my stomach begin to turn. “I bet it’s tiny and skinny and that he has red pubic hair and…”
“That was enough to do it. Megan bolted from the office and returned, beaming, about two minutes later.
“Wow,” she grinned. “Projectile! Anyone got any toothpaste?”
“Honestly, Megan,” said Hetty coldly. “You’re just too much sometimes.”
Megan, Meredia and I exchanged raised eyebrow looks, wondering what had annoyed the normally pleasant and polite Hetty.
By a happy coincidence Mr. Simmonds seemed to hate us as much as we hated him.
He glared at us, went into his office and slammed the door.
Meredia, Megan and I made desultory attempts to switch on our computers. Hetty didn’t, because hers was already on.
Hetty did most of the work in the office.
There was a very scary period when Megan first arrived and she had worked really, really hard. Not only did she start work on time, but she actually started work if she came in early. She didn’t unfold a newspaper and look at her watch and say, “Three more minutes. Those bastards aren’t getting a second more out of me than they’re owed,” like the rest of us did.
Meredia and I took her aside and explained that not only was she putting our jobs in jeopardy, but that she could even end up working herself out of a job. (“And then how would you get to Greece?”) So she slowed down, even managed to make a few mistakes. We all got along a lot better after that.
“Get Hetty to do it,” was the office motto. Only Hetty didn’t know about it.
I couldn’t ever really figure out why Hetty had a job. She certainly didn’t need the money. But Meredia and I decided that the boards of all the charities in London must have been oversubscribed when Hetty decided that she was bored and needed amusing, so she lowered her sights and came to work for us instead.
Which wasn’t unlike working for a charity.
Indeed, Meredia and I often joked that working for Wholesale Metals and Plastics was exactly the same as working for a charity, so pitifully small were our stipends.
The day progressed. We went about our work. Sort of. No further mention was made of Mrs. Nolan, loves of lives, big splits, coming into money or of me getting married.
Later that day my mother called and I braced myself for news of a disaster, because she never called me just for a chat, to shoot the breeze, to aimlessly while away a few minutes of my employer’s time. She only rang to breathlessly report catastrophes—deaths were her favourite, but most things would do. A chance of layoffs at my brothers’ place of work, a lump on my uncle’s thyroid, a fire in a barn in Monaghan or an unmarried cousin falling pregnant (a particular favourite, up there with deaths in the works of a combine harvester).
“D’you know Maisie Patterson?” she demanded excitedly.
“Yes,” I said, thinking “Maisie who?” but knowing better than to say so because we could have been there all day while I got the Maisie Patterson family tree. (“She was one of the Finertans before she married…but, of course you know the Finertans, don’t you remember when you were small I took you over to their house, a fine big house with a green gate, just behind the Nealons, but you know the Nealons, don’t you remember Bridie Nealon, the day she gave you two Marietta biscuits, sure you know what a Marietta biscuit is, don’t you remember squeezing the butter out through the holes…”)
“Well…” said my mother, building up some suspense. Maisie Patterson had obviously gone to meet her maker, but it wasn’t enough just to say it like that.
“Yes,” I said patiently.
“They buried her yesterday!” she finally exclaimed.
“Why did they do that?” I asked mildly. “Had she annoyed them? When are they letting her out?”
“Oh, you’re very smart,” my mother said bitterly, annoyed that her news hadn’t sent me gasping and reeling. “You’re to send them a Mass card.”
“How did it happen?” I asked, hoping to cheer her up. “Did she catch her head in the combine harvester? Drown in the grain silo? Or was she savaged by a hen?”
“Not at all,” she said, annoyed. “Don’t be ridiculous, sure, hasn’t she been living in Chicago this long time?”
“Oh, er…yes.”
“No, t’was terribly sad,” she said, dropping her voice a couple of decibels as a mark of respect and for the next fifteen minutes she gave me Maisie Patterson’s medical history. The mysterious headaches that she got, the glasses she was prescribed to correct the headaches, the CAT scan she was given when the glasses didn’t work, the X-rays, the medication, the spells in the hospital being prodded and poked by bewildered specialists, the eventual all-clear and, finally, the red Toyota that knocked her down, ran her over, ruptured her spleen and sent her somersaulti
ng into the next world.
Chapter 8
On Thursday morning the day started badly and got worse.
When I woke up feeling totally miserable, I wasn’t to know that Megan’s “prediction” was due to come “true” that day.
If I had known I might have found it easier to get up.
As it was, it was touch and go whether I’d manage to break free from my bed’s loving, warm embrace.
I always found it hard to get up in the mornings—one of the legacies of my teenage bout of depression, at least that’s what I liked to say. It was probably just laziness, but calling it depression made me feel a lot less guilty. I could barely drag myself into the bathroom and once I was there I had my work cut out to force myself to have a shower.
My bedroom was freezing and I couldn’t find clean underpants and I hadn’t ironed anything so I had to wear the same clothes that I had worn to work the day before and that I’d just thrown on the floor the previous night and I couldn’t find any clean underpants in Karen’s or Charlotte’s rooms either so I had to go to work wearing my bikini bottoms from my swimsuit.
And when I got to the tube station all the newspapers were sold out and I’d just missed a train. And while I was waiting I thought I’d try and buy a chocolate bar from the machine on the platform and for once the bloody thing worked and then I ate the candy bar in two seconds and immediately felt really guilty and then I started to worry that maybe I had an eating disorder if I was internalizing chocolate first thing in the morning.
I was miserable.
It was cold and wet and there seemed so little to look forward to and I wanted to be at home in my warm bed, eating potato chips, weighty piles of glossy magazines beside me.
Megan looked up from her newspaper when I dragged myself in, twenty minutes late.
“Didn’t you get undressed last night?” she asked cheerfully.
“What do you mean?” I asked wearily.
“I mean did you sleep in your clothes?” she said.
“Oh shut up,” I said. On days like that one, Megan’s Australian plain speaking was just too much for me.
“And anyway,” I said, “if you think I look bad on the outside, you’d want to see what I’ve got on as underpants.”
Even if Megan had only had five minutes sleep, she still got up in time to iron her clothes. And if she didn’t have any clean panties, she gave herself enough time to stop somewhere on the way to work and buy a pair. Not that Megan ever didn’t have clean panties because she always did her washing long before her underwear drawer was empty. But that was Australians for you. Organized. Hardworking. Capable.
The day proceeded along normal lines. Every now and then I would fantasize about a Lockerbie-style disaster where a plane would fall from the sky and land on my office. Preferably on my desk, just to be on the safe side. Then I wouldn’t have to come to work for ages. I might be dead, of course, but so what? I still wouldn’t have to come to work.
The door to Mr. Simmonds’s office would open regularly and he’d stomp out, bottom wobbling, and throw something on my desk or Meredia’s desk or Megan’s desk and shout, “There’s forty-eight mistakes in that. You’re getting better,” or “Which one of you has bought shares in Liquid Paper” or something equally unkind.
He was never mean to Hetty, because he was afraid of her. Her poshness reminded him that he was a middleclass boy made average and that he wore suits of man-made fibres.
It was about ten to two, when I was slumped over my desk reading some article about how coffee is actually good for you again, and Meredia was snoring gently at her desk, a large bar of chocolate by her hand, that a small drama burst into the office, and lo and behold Megan’s prediction proceeded to come true.
Kind of…
Megan lurched in, her face as white as a ghost, blood pouring from her mouth.
“Megan!” I shouted in alarm, jumping up from my desk. “What happened to you?”
“Eh? What?” said Meredia, jerking awake, all confused, the merest hint of a dribble exiting her mouth by the left side.
“It’s nothing,” said Megan, but she looked a bit wobbly and sat on my desk. Blood was pouring down her chin and onto her shirt.
“I’ve got to ring an ambulance,” said Megan.
“Jesus, no you don’t,” I said panicking, giving her a handful of tissues, which were soaked red in an instant. “I’ll do it. You’d better lie down. Meredia, get up off your fat ass and help her to lie down!”
“No, it’s not for me, you fool,” said Megan irritably, shaking Meredia off her. “It’s for the bloke who fell off his bike and landed on me.”
“Oh my God!” I exclaimed. “Is he badly hurt?”
“No,” said Megan shortly, “But he bloody well will be by the time I’ve finished with him. He’ll need a body bag, not an ambulance.”
Before I could do it, she had picked up the phone and, through a mouthful of blood, called the emergency services and asked for an ambulance.
“Where is he?” asked Meredia.
“Out front, lying on the road, holding up the traffic,” said Megan.
She was in a very bad mood.
“Is someone looking after him?” asked Meredia, an acquisitive gleam appearing in her eyes.
“Loads of people,” barked Megan. “You Brits love a good accident, don’t you?”
“Well, I’d better check on him anyway,” said Meredia, lumbering toward the door. “He may be in shock so I’ll cover him with my shawl.”
“No need,” complained Megan, blood bubbling as she spoke. “Someone’s already put a coat over him.”
But Meredia was gone. She had heard opportunity knocking. Although she had a pretty (if extremely fat) face, she had little success with men. The only men who actively pursued her were the odd ones who had a definite “thing” for obese women. And as Meredia said, with dignity, “Who wants a man who just wants you for your body?”
But the alternative was nearly as bad, I thought. She liked meeting men when they were vulnerable, either emotionally or physically, taking care of them, making herself indispensable, giving them all the support a weak person might need.
The only fly in the ointment was that the moment they were well enough to move, that’s exactly what they did. Headed for the hills and away from Meredia’s loving embrace as fast as their recently healed legs could carry them.
“Well, I’d better clean up this mess,” said Megan, wiping her mouth on her sleeve.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “You’re going to need stitches.”
“No, I’m not,” said Megan scornfully. “This is nothing. Have you ever seen what a combine harvester can do to a man’s arm…?”
“Oh stop being so…so…Australian!” I exclaimed. “You need stitches. You need to go to the hospital. I’ll come with you.”
If she thought I was going to miss the chance to have an afternoon off work, then she had another think coming.
“No, you bloody well won’t come with me,” she said tartly. “What do you think I am? Some kind of kid?”
Just then the office door opened and in came Hetty back from lunch. She looked suitably appalled at the showing of Apocalypse Now that was taking place on Megan’s face.
Two seconds later, Mr. Simmonds arrived, also back from lunch. A separate lunch from Hetty’s lunch, he seemed peculiarly keen to emphasize. Apparently they had just bumped into each other at the front door—not that anyone cared.
He too looked appalled. He was obviously upset about Megan’s blood being spilled, but I think he was more upset about where Megan’s blood was being spilled. On the desks and files and phones and letters and documents of his precious little empire.
He said that of course Megan must go to the hospital, and that of course I must go with her and when Meredia returned to say that the ambulance had arrived he said that she could go too. He said that Hetty had better stay behind because he wanted someone to hold the fort.
As I joyfull
y turned off my computer and got my coat, it suddenly struck me that whatever it was Mr. Simmonds wanted Hetty to hold, it certainly wasn’t his fort.
Chapter 9
When we got to the ambulance, there was no room for Meredia. Undeterred, she said she’d get a taxi and see us there. As we drove away from the curb, I felt a bit like a pop star—it must have been the tinted windows and the small crowd of onlookers staring after us.
They were reluctant to leave, wringing the last few drops of excitement from the accident before they started to drift back to their lives, disappointed that the drama was over, and even more disappointed that someone hadn’t died.
“He looked okay, didn’t he?” said one bystander to another.
“Yes,” came the bitter reply.
We spent four hours sitting on hard chairs in a crowded, manic, overworked emergency room. People with injuries far worse than Megan’s or Shane’s (the cyclist—by now we were all fairly intimate) sat waiting also, stoically holding in their laps whatever limbs they had severed and managed to retrieve. Trolleys with dying people on them were rushed past us regularly. No one seemed able to tell us what was happening or when Megan or Shane would be seen. The coffee machine wasn’t working. The place was freezing.
“Just think.” I closed my eyes in bliss. “We could be at work now.”
“Yes,” sighed Megan, bits of dried blood flaking away from her face as she spoke. “What a stroke of luck, eh?”
“God.” I smiled. “I was so miserable earlier. I wish I’d known what a treat I had in store for me.”
“I hope I’ll be seen soon,” said Shane, looking anxious and confused. “Because they’re waiting for those documents in WC1. They said they were urgent. Has anyone seen my radio?”
Shane was a bike messenger and had been en route to a delivery when he veered off his path and landed on Megan.
He kept kind of dozing off to sleep and then jerking awake and going on about his delivery in WC1. Megan and I exchanged long-suffering looks when he launched into it for about the tenth time, while Meredia smiled at him like he was a sweet little child and it gradually dawned on us that maybe he wasn’t a moron and that perhaps he was concussed.