Break Point (10 page)

The voices
stay low until Mrs Parrott says, "Anyway I hope you'll be all right
this weekend because don't forget we're off to Lincoln tomorrow for
a few days so we shan't be able to take you out. Do tell your
helper girl to pick more strawberries or anything else in our
garden while we're away, won't you? I'll see you on Monday
then."

SECOND
THURSDAY

Hazel phoned
again this morning. "We're sending someone over at lunchtime," she
said. "A youngster called Shari Mott."

A
youngster called Shari?
The
Shari, I shouldn't wonder, from Kingham Community
with her skirt up her bum.

Later, I open
the door to the youngster. Her blond hair's all bound up with white
braid in a top knot and paler lips you never saw. She's not wearing
the official Carewise uniform either but is kitted out in this
white lace-trimmed short-sleeved blouse and a high white skirt and
frilly apron.

White for
tennis. But it's like something a waitress in one of them oldie
worldie tea shops would wear, and I'm sure she is the Kingham Shari
who passed Elliot's every day.

"Hi, I'm
Shari." She's got a sugar-coated voice. “I’ve been sent from
Carewise."

People aren't
just a few years younger than me these days, not even a decade.
They're yarns younger, by half a lifetime.

"Gwen, your
new carer's here. Shari."

"Shari? What
kind of a name ... ? Good Lord. They didn't tell me they were
sending along a schoolgirl. How old are you, child?"

"Seventeen."

"I'll make us
all a cup of tea," I say.

"You'll do no
such thing," says Gwen. "Isn't it time for your tennis? Besides, I
want to see how the newcomer shapes up."

So I'm
dispatched off upstairs but having a new carer downstairs, one this
young, whose ways I don't know, isn't as good as it sounds. It's a
big distraction. She might need to borrow me for my experience and
so I'm on guard, waiting for the ball to come from any
direction.

Just like
Venus and Steffi. The great black Venus is wearing a clingy white
halter-neck tunic, tiny above her long legs with the dark purple
knees. Her beaded hair shimmies and clacks above her bare
shoulders. It's like she's dancing. Anyway, I think Venus is
stunning, she'll win it one day, but I can hear girlie footsteps on
the stairs, a dainty knock on my door, and it's Tracey Austin
walking out on court for the first time in her Alice-in-Wonderland
frock. With her bunches and braces and two-handed
backhand.

"Mrs McMahon
told me to have a good look round the house," says Shari, all sort
of simpery.

I open the
door wider and she slithers in.

"It was Gwen's
old room but she spends most of her time downstairs
now."

Shari's got
thin bits of jewellery shining on her wrist and neck and ears. "You
don't mind me looking around, do you?"

She has a look
about, and I'm suddenly craving a male workmate. Sometimes working
around women all day gets dead claustrophobic. I used to love being
among the bus drivers and going into a den of men first thing.
Because men don't stick together in their den. They go out into the
world.

"She whinges
on a bit sometimes, doesn't she?"

"You'll get
used to her, duck."

Shari sits on
the padded stool where Anne The Great sat.

"Done much
work with the elderly before, have you?"

"Not much,”
she says. “Did a bit in a nursing home."

"Oh yeah?
Which one?"

"Oh it was in
Newminster. I've looked after my grandfather too."

She brushes
off my attempts to glean any more on the matter.

"You still at
school?" I ask.

"Why?"

"Thought I'd
seen you in school uniform. Kingham, ain't it?"

She twiddles
with the sliver of chain on her collar bone. "You know what she
said to me?" Her skin is so pale it is lilac, like frozen chicken.
"She said you're just out of nappies so I wouldn't expect you to
know what to do in emergency."

"Well, there
aren't many compensations about getting old. One of 'em is putting
down younger people when you get the chance. Don't let it get to
you, duck."

"It
doesn't."

Tougher than
they look, these wispy teenagers. They've already upset some of the
top seeds.

"She called me
Rosemary. Was that the last helper?"

"It's her
daughter. They don't have much contact."

"Why's
that?"

I
shrug.

She suddenly
remembers the tennis and apologizes. "Oh sorry. You're watching
that. Is it good?"

"I like
it."

"I like
watching the men playing," she says, a glee in her eye.

Just like I
thought. A boy-driven girl. Always thinking of, yacking on about,
acting differently around, lads. A traitor.

She stands up
and walks onto the landing, rattling the door up to the attic.
"What's in here?"

"The
attic."

"Could I go up
and look at it please, miss?" I fish about in the pocket of my
overall and hand her the key.

Just take it.
Go. You little superbrat. Miss, my arse!

When Shari
comes down from the attic, I hear her in the bathroom opening the
gigantic doors of the airing cupboard, trying out the vintage bath
taps, making the geyser wheeze. Then I hear her going across to
Rosemary's bedroom for a good few minutes before coming back in
here. "I'm just going to take her out," she says. "She wants a walk
round the block. As far as some seat or something."

"See you later
then."

*

The phone's
ringing. And ringing. It'll be someone about one of Gwen's
check-ups or Carewise making sure everything's turning out for the
new recruit, and the ringing's not stopping. The caller knows
someone's in.

I pick it
up.

"You took your
chuffin' time."

"Elliot, you
daft pillock. You could have called during the rain break. It's
live again."

"Sorry, but
I've just had June on t' phone."

"June? You're
kidding."

"I gave her
your phone number. She said she'd try and ring you at the
weekend."

"That
it?"

"She got cut
off. She only had a couple of minutes."

I hear him
clanking the spoon round and round in his builder’s tea.

"By the way,
El, you ain't let your spare room out yet, have you?"

"No, but
someone at work's dead interested."

"Well, hang
fire on it a bit longer, can you?" (Even the background noises from
the forecourt sound like music to my ears at this minute.) "I dunno
how much more of this I can stick."

"Thought you
didn't mind it there. She's all right Gwen."

"There's been
a high turnover of people. Anne left because Gwen gave me this room
instead of her and then there was someone called Karen who only
lasted a couple of days ... "

"What, all
this since Sunday?"

"Mad, ain't
it? Dunno where I am. I've just got to see how this new kid works
out. "

"Well, let us
know by next week then. At the latest."

*

Rain has
interrupted live play once more. I drift downstairs where Gwen's
asleep in front of the TV and Shari's eating spoonfuls of dessert.
Her hair looks fine like a doll's, her eyes and lips dead pale, and
I feel like slapping the girl but I smile at her because I want her
to stay. I go and assemble one of my easy TV dinners and take it
upstairs, just in case the covers come off again this evening, and
I’m wondering what June wanted.

It should be
the Ladies' Semi's today, Second Thursday. Normally we'd also be
watching some live Doubles by this stage of Week Two but after a
few more cameos of the ever-patient crowd, they return to the
recorded game they started showing earlier between a dead
young-looking Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert, and then Shari
knocks on the door. Is it all right if she comes in? She burrows
deep in the pocket of her outlandish pinny for something. A packet
of John Players.

"How are you
finding your first day then?"

"Yeah OK.
D'you smoke?" She slides a couple of fags forward from the rest and
points them at me. I shake my head.

"It's all
right if I smoke up here, isn't it? I'm just dying for a
fag."

"I don't think
Gwen's lungs will like it much."

"I'll smoke it
out the window then."

She leans
forward through the window in her silly obsolete uniform and blows
across the road towards Mrs Parrott's. She's wearing white tights
or stockings on her legs, I can't tell from here.

When she's
finished her fag, she stubs it on the outside ledge and sparks
fall. She fans away the smoke, and closes up the window a
bit.

"Not long now
till you knock off."

"Oh yeah. I'll
go up and get my room ready in a minute," she says, attic key in
hand. "Cor, look at those frilly knickers she's
wearing."

"What
room?"

"She said I
could stay in the attic if I could find some bedding. I saw some in
the airing cupboard before. Smelt a bit though. Got any
perfume?"

I look at her,
gobsmacked. "What, stay the night? Have you come a long way
then?"

"No, I'm
moving in. I'll bring over the rest of my things in the
morning."

Bloody hell.
They're dead cocky these little girls. Nothing fazes them.
Wimbledon feels like home to them already.

But I mustn’t
knock it because it won't be such a blow for Gwen when I come to
leave next week.

SECOND
FRIDAY

As I'm coming
out of the bathroom I see Shari on her way upstairs in only her bra
and knickers, hair all loose. I'll have to have words, I think to
myself as I dress and head downstairs.

"Morning,
Gwen. Sleep well?"

"Is that
cigarette smoke?" she wrinkles up her nose like a rabbit. " I can't
have cigarette smoke in the house. It's my chest. Anyway, I didn't
know you smoked, Robina. Filthy habit."

"Oh, it's not
mine. It must be Shari's."

"Whose? What's
she doing here? I don't need her until this afternoon."

"The attic,
Gwen. She said you let her move in up there."

"I said no
such thing."

"Well, she's
up there. She's moving some more stuff in this morning she said.
Should I tell her not to bother?"

"Oh, I don't
know. It all seems out of my hands these days. If it makes things
easier her being on the premises ... whatever you decide, Rosemary,
I'll go along with."

I help Gwen
out of bed, offer her a supporting arm, a helping hand, they go a
long way in soothing misunderstandings. I take her across to the
sink and toilet and linger outside in the hall.

"I'm still out
here," I say from time to time, in case she needs me. And then
Shari flies down the stairs and out through the stained glass
door.

*

After
breakfast, I go shopping for Gwen, and when I return there's a
great Hackney cab purring outside Number Nine, all black and
glossy. Shari's unloading on to the pavement. Her wares don't
amount to much. Three or four boxes, along with the few sacks. Too
young for accumulation.

"Here. Let me
give you a hand, duck."

I feel like
Big June next to her, sort of sturdy.

"And then," I
say, all senior like, "could I have a word, please?"

*

As I'm
scrubbing out the toilet, Shari comes in wearing a pale viscose
dress, thigh-high.

"You wanted
me."

"Well, it's a
couple of things," I say, hands on hips. "Gwen told me she didn't
say you could stay in the attic."

"She did,
she's just forgotten."

"You may think
she's in her dotage - "

"Her
what?"

"Dotage. You
know, a bit senile."

"A
bit
."

"Don't mean
she don't deserve a bit of dignity though. A bit of
respect."

"Does she mind
me staying then? I've moved my stuff in now."

"Well, put it
this way, she ain't asked you to go. But I'll have to check with
her later, to make sure." I crank up the authority in my tone. "The
other thing ... well, it's your dress code. Or should I say lack of
it. Not so much your uniform, though that's a bit off-the-wall, but
walking round the house in only your underwear like you were this
morning." Shari's got her head down in a dead annoying way and
there's a slight smile hidden in her frozen-chicken cheeks. "It's
not on, OK?"