Ordinary Miracles (12 page)

‘Do you ski?’ I asked, somewhat accusingly.

‘No.’ He was leaning lazily against the banisters.

‘Then why do you have all this stuff?’

‘I thought I might leave it around – a ski here and snowshoe there. You know, create hints of an athletic, thrusting alter ego.’

I looked at him suspiciously. ‘Well, there’s not much point
leaving them in this box then, is there?’

‘No, I suppose not.’ He smiled wryly. ‘Actually, they don’t
belong to me. They belong to my cousin.’

‘The one with the canoe?’

‘Exactly.’

‘And I suppose he owns all the tennis rackets and rock
climbing equipment in there too?’

‘Yup. He’s gone abroad for a while – he took his hang-
glider.’

I began to heave the box again. Charlie looked on.

‘Are you just going to stand there watching?’ I grumbled.

‘Well, you said you didn’t want any help.’

‘Just take this end will you?’ I pushed the box at him.

‘All right,’ Charlie grinned. ‘But only if you feel it won’t
undermine your macho image.’

We got the stuff cleared pretty quickly after that.

‘Thanks, Charlie,’ I said later, while we were eating. ‘You
were right, it was nice to have some help.’

‘I’ve found that’s often the case.’

‘But I’m beginning to feel guilty. I’ve relied on your
kindness for long enough. I’ve got to decide whether to
find a place of my own or move back with Bruce.’

I thought Charlie would be relieved to hear this, but in
fact he looked a bit surprised.

‘Stay here as long as you want,’ he said solemnly.

‘You keep helping me, Charlie. What can I do to help you?’ I
didn’t mean to make it sound so impatient – angry almost.

‘You do help me. You help me a lot.’

‘How? Tell me one thing I’ve done that’s been of assistance.’

And then Charlie looked at me tenderly, as if to say, ‘If
you don’t know I’m not going to tell you.’

And of course I did know. I don’t know how I could have
fooled myself into thinking that I didn’t. We’re growing closer, Charlie and I. We’re incredibly comfortable with one another. I need his friendship. He understands me better than anyone. And I’ve grown so fond of Rosie, too.

Talking of Rosie, she’s taken to coming into the house. Charlie and I actively discouraged this but, undeterred, she always looked hopefully at the back door each time she passed it. Then, one evening, she started to butt the door with her snout. She’s let out of her big pen at regular intervals for rambles round Charlie’s garden.

We told her to stop butting the door and she did. But as she stood there, quietly looking up at us, it was clear she was deeply offended.

Charlie’s found an old thick rug for her to sit on when she comes in. She joined us for
Coronation Street
the other night. She sat there very quietly, like a child who’s been allowed up way past her bedtime. Every so often her ears twitched, and her small eyes were bright with barely contained excitement.

‘The picture of porcine pleasure,’ said Charlie as he leaned over to scratch her back.

‘Maybe,’ I replied. ‘But I think we should draw the line at
Eastenders.’

I was scared that she might crap all over the carpet, but
Charlie said she uses a corner of her pen as her toilet and is quite fastidious. This turns out to be true. Last night, when she and Charlie were playing with one of those squeaky plastic toys for dogs, she suddenly raced towards the door and started to squeal urgently. The minute she was outside she bolted into her pen, relieved herself, and then smugly trotted back into the house. I think I’m going to have to start being strict because the other day I found her looking, rather longingly, towards my bedroom.

I’m glad I got Katie and Sarah’s rooms ready early this week, because one of the agencies I signed up with has phoned to offer me some temporary secretarial work. I hope I sounded calm and business-like as I took down the details, because I felt like a cross between a Pepsi and a Rennies commercial. Part of me wanted to jump into the air and another wanted to clutch my stomach.

I’m rather surprised that they contacted me. There were piles of young, motivated women filling in forms in all the agencies. In fact some of them almost knocked me over on stairs and in corridors. They smiled hasty apologies, but still scythed their way forwards as they did so. I don’t blame them. Despite their smart suits they looked
vulnerable. The job market is so competitive. Every
mother knows that.

Charlie told me to be creative in my form filling. He told me to make the most of all the voluntary work I’d done and use words like ‘liaise’ a lot. This was good advice because the
last time I worked full-time was nineteen years ago. It was in a
small family planning clinic. I was never quite sure of my title but, facing one of those forms, I decided ‘Office Manager’ sounded good. And not that far-fetched either, because I was the only person in the office.

And now, despite having belatedly discovered that ‘liaise’ has two i’s in it, I’m in another office which overlooks St Stephen’s Green. It’s a big modern building with lots of plants and glass.

My boss is a rather distinguished small, trim man who’s near retirement age and prefers ‘mature secretaries’. He’s held lots of important posts and is now in a consultative position with this particular organisation. This does not appear to be too taxing and can accommodate late arrivals, long lunches, and early departures. So far, I’ve spent most of my time here taking down long letters to friends of his in s
horthand. These are not just friends, they are also business contacts, but to read the letters you wouldn’t think so. Many
of them are to people who live abroad, and they’re dotted
with reminiscences of dinners in palm-fringed restaurants on
the Riviera and such places.

Mr McClaren, that’s his name, explained to me that he
sends these letters out a month or two before Christmas so that, when it comes to the cards, he can just send
his best wishes and sign his name. He’s very methodical, is
Mr McClaren. He likes things to be done in a certain way.
For example he only likes a certain blend of tea, and he likes
that tea to be served in bone china cups at a certain time in
the morning, and a certain time in the afternoon. He also
likes a certain brand of austere looking biscuit. As I tend his
china, or dash out for his
Daily Telegraph
and
Irish Times,
I sometimes feel as though I’ve been entrusted with the care
of a benign but rather fastidious creature. And indeed, when
Mr McClaren peers at me through his bifocals across his large, leather covered desk, he does sometimes remind me
of a marmoset.

Thank goodness the course covered the software I’m using, so the word-processing’s been fairly okay so far. If I do make
a mistake Mr McClaren is very nice about it and marks it
in black ink with his fountain pen. He has big, confident,
not quite scrawly writing, though his occasional artistic
flourishes render some sentences illegible. Bruce has this tendency too. I can’t help thinking that when someone leaves
you a note that is unreadable it is, in fact, communicating a
great deal.

So now I’m looking at one of Mr McClaren’s corrections and wondering if he really wants to say, ‘Please send my
regards to Mabel and tell her she has great tits in wine.’ As
I check back over other examples of Mr McClaren’s writing
I notice that, though he sometimes does not dot his i’s, he
also often only partially forms his a’s, and his e’s and s’s
are sometimes indistinguishable. From this I deduce that
Mabel has ‘great taste’ rather than ‘great tits’ in wine. This
is rather a pity because images of a more abandoned Mabel
momentarily relieved the tedium of a long afternoon.

Mr McClaren is at one of his club lunches and the other
secretary in this office, Bronwyn, does so much dictaphone
typing that she scarcely ever speaks. Her boss is a young, tall,
driven woman called Ms Armitage who has endless meetings.
So, apart from typing reams of letters, poor Bronwyn keeps
having to bring huge trays of teas and coffees and chocolate
digestives into Ms Armitage’s office. It also turns out that Ms
Armitage doesn’t have time to talk to a large proportion of
the people who phone her, so Bronwyn keeps having to tell
people she’s ‘at a conference’ or has ‘just gone to a meeting’
– which is probably true anyway. But the callers are clearly
no longer accepting these excuses without a protest. They
keep asking when Ms Armitage will return so that they can
phone back.

Mr McClaren’s world is very sedate in comparison to Ms
Armitage’s. In fact I feel something of a memsahib as I sit
here, leisurely unwrapping the new paperback I bought
at lunchtime. It’s called
Lesbianism: Old Myths
–
New
Realities.
I hope it may give me some insight into Katie’s
sexual predicament.

Katie and Sarah are arriving this evening. I’m glad I had to
come to the office, because otherwise I’d be dashing round
the house in a panic. I’ve been hoovering and tidying every
evening this week, and worrying hard while I did so. When I told Susan I didn’t know why all these worries surfaced so suddenly, she said that they’ve obviously been there all the
time. I’ve been repressing them, she said. Repressed worries
are, apparently, like a jack-in-the-box. They stay quietly
hidden for a while, then they suddenly jump up and leer at you.

My attitude towards this forthcoming weekend with Katie
and Sarah somehow reminds me of a booklet that I found in our house when I was twelve. It was about what to do in the
event of a nuclear holocaust.

The main thing I remember from it is an illustration. The
nuclear family featured had collected all its essentials in one
small corner of the house. They had constructed a sort of semi-triangular shed, using planks and blankets that sloped from floor to ceiling. Squatting in this sad little cubby-hole was their attempt at safety. Obsessive advance planning and
frantic polishing seem to be mine. I’ve even taken to scattering
diluted fabric conditioner on the carpets to make them smell
‘Summer Fresh’.

Though my marriage is now a wasteland, some vestige
of family life must somehow be salvaged for Katie’s sake.
If I do not manage to do this she will, of course, turn into
a drug addict who feeds her habit through prostitution or
petty crime. I’ve had recurring and graphic dreams about
this lately in which court scenes are prevalent.

‘It’s all my mother’s fault,’ a tear-stained Katie tells
the judge. ‘She left my father because he borrowed her
hairdryer.’

I stand up in the dock to protest. ‘No, no, your honour,
it was a hair grip! He took my fake diamond hair grip.’