The Tea House on Mulberry Street (19 page)

Brenda said, that was the whole problem of the world in a nutshell: everybody was only interested in their own little empire, and they couldn’t see The Big Picture. That planet Earth was just a fragile, little blue ball; spinning towards who-knows-what?

On her way out of the interview room, she reminded them that if the temperature of the planet increased by just six or seven degrees Celsius, then 99% of all livings things would die out within weeks. (Flags or no flags.) There would only be beetles, or something, left. They thanked her politely for the information.

She didn’t get any of those jobs.

Worst of all was her experience with the Galwally branch of a major supermarket. They must have been absolutely desperate for staff, Brenda thought. Because they hired her straight away, even though she told them the non-stop beeping of the electronic tills made her want to attack somebody. Most likely an impatient customer. And that she was allergic to nylon, and might not be able to wear the blue and orange uniform.

They told her not to worry, that she would soon get used to the job, and that it really wasn’t too difficult. Just scanning groceries, stacking shelves and being generally friendly and helpful. But unfortunately, they couldn’t budge on the uniform issue.

Had they considered issuing a new uniform, Brenda wanted to know. Maybe an all-black ensemble with a jaunty pillbox hat and wide-leg combat trousers? She’d be happy to design one for them.

“No, thank you,” they said firmly, and could she please show in the next candidate? They were on a very tight timetable.

Brenda was very disappointed that they didn’t give her enough time to put some of her ideas to the panel; that they do more to promote Fair Trade tea and coffee, for example, but she thanked them for the job, all the same.

“How hard can it be?” she told her mother, on the phone that night. “It’s only a bit of shelf-stacking. The worst part will be the boredom. And the shame, of course. If any of my arty friends see me with a mop and bucket.”

“Don’t worry, darling. You’ll be promoted in no time,” said her mother, kindly. And it will do you good to get out of the flat for a few hours each day, she thought. “Sure, you’ll be a manager yourself, in no time. Haven’t you a perfectly good degree? You’ll have money in your pocket – you’ll be set!”

Brenda was thrilled with the possibility of being promoted. She hadn’t thought of that, or that she’d finally be taking home a regular pay-packet. She wrote out a big list of ideas, ready to show the manager, and she bought a packet of children’s sparkly hair-clips to keep her fringe out of her eyes. Yellow plastic sunflowers, they were. (In honour of Vincent van Gogh, who was her favourite artist and greatest inspiration.)

She ironed her uniform, and tried it on. It was a little too tight across the chest and hips. Well, that was her own fault. She’d told the panel she was a size 10, when they asked her. But, bloody hell! She wasn’t going to tell a row of complete strangers that she was actually a size 12! Talk about loss of dignity, she fumed. When you were a skivvy on minimum wage, the whole world was entitled to know the exact circumference of your womanly curves. The Blue Donkey Gallery in Galway hadn’t wanted to know the size of her backside, thank God.

With a mixture of dread and excitement, Brenda circled the first day of her new job on the calendar. She turned up at the supermarket, in her too-tight uniform, and was shown the tea room and the warehouse. She was introduced to lots of people, and she forgot all their names at once. The warehouse was a bit scary, all bare concrete walls and pitch-dark shadows. Brenda didn’t like the warehouse. Luckily, they had already allocated a position for her, on the shop floor.

She was sent to the fresh fruit and vegetable section, and told to stack two cages of bright yellow, honeydew melons and dark green watermelons on the shelves.

“Tidy up the straw, and wipe down the island,” said the supervisor.

“The island?”

That was the name for the display stand.

“Right you are,” she beamed, and set to work with gusto. She toiled away for half an hour, thinking that melons were a lot heavier than paint-brushes. In fact, they were very heavy indeed, and the tight uniform made her uncomfortably warm. She was exhausted by the time the cages were empty, and then the supervisor told her they wanted all the potatoes moved from one island at the front, to another island at the back of the section.

“Why?” Brenda wanted to know, beginning to hate the very word, island.

So they could put strawberries and cream at the front of the section, of course.

Brenda hauled her cages and her industrial-sized tub of wipes over to the front section, and started all over again, keeping her head down in case she was recognised by Tom Reilly-Dunseith or any of his friends. She had potato-dust on her face when she was finished. And then she had to go to the warehouse for kiwi fruit and mangoes. Brenda didn’t even know what mangoes looked like. She didn’t know anyone who had ever eaten a mango. She made a mental note to tell the manager that he was wasting his time bringing this fancy stuff halfway across the globe.

While she was walking up and down the dimly-lit aisles, looking for the elusive fruits, some of the teenage staff turned out the lights for a joke. There were no windows and it was suddenly so dark, Brenda couldn’t see her hand in front of her face. She couldn’t remember the way back to the door, either.

She had a panic-attack, stumbled and fell over a bin containing an absolutely filthy mop, which she thought was a zombie-murderer lying in wait for her. She rolled across the floor with it, screaming the place down.

Then, the lights came back on and the pranksters were clinging to the shelves, killing themselves laughing. Brenda had to go to the staffroom and splash cold water on her face. She wasn’t supposed to be there, unless on an official break, and the supervisor caught her and told her off. And another thing; had she found the mangoes yet?

Thankfully, it was time for a tea break. Sod the bloody mangoes, thought Brenda, as she selected a hot chocolate at the vending machine and sat on a delivery of barbeque charcoal to drink it. She couldn’t believe it was still only 10.45am. All too soon, it was back to work.

Most of the customers that morning appeared to be pensioners, all ferried to the supermarket on cut-price buses. They didn’t seem to know where anything was, and they all pinched Brenda’s arms to ask her questions.

“What’s on special offer, the day, love?”

Brenda didn’t know.

“Have you tights to match my coat, love?”

Brenda didn’t know.

“Would this kind of fruitcake cause constipation?”

Brenda didn’t know, and she didn’t
want
to know.

“Stop pinching me, for heaven’s sake,” she said to the elderly woman, who was a lot stronger than she looked. “My poor arms are black and blue.”

“It’s a pity of you,” replied the outraged lady. “I’m going to report you to the Manager. You have a shocking attitude-problem.”

“I’m sorry, but I am only asking you not to
pinch
my
arms
. This is a supermarket, not a kinky brothel!”

“You cheeky article!”

“It’s just, you’re very
strong
. What are you looking for, anyway?
Spinach
?” “Right! That’s it! Manager! Where’s the manager? I’m going to have you sacked.”

“Oh, oh… Hi! Missus! Come back! I’m sorry.”

But the outraged woman was off on a mission to rid the store of cheeky articles. The manager was found, and a shouting match ensued between the three of them. Brenda won.

She was fired, of course.

She decided it would be better not to tell Nicolas that she had lost her temper completely at that point, and started wrecking the nearby displays. It was all just too unbearable: getting the boot after less than three hours. She’d only earned twelve pounds, for heaven’s sake. And for that princely sum, she’d endured potato-dust in her eyes and quite painful arm-pinching and a dirty mop falling in her face. And now she was getting sacked because she didn’t know enough about constipation. And the uniform was making her skin itch like mad.

She’d grabbed melon after melon, both yellow and green, and heaved them up into the air, in all directions – as high as her strength would allow.

“
Come and get your hands on my lovely, juicy melons!
” she’d screamed, as she sent the terrified shoppers running for cover.

“
Come and devour my priceless melons of delight!
” they heard her cry, as the huge soft fruits exploded on the tiled floor, and babies began to cry, and four pensioners fell over in the scramble to get away.

Some people were cut with broken glass, as they stood filling their little plastic containers with grated-carrots-in-jelly and bacon-flavoured croûtons, when the biggest melon in the store came thundering through the glass roof of the coleslaw display. Brenda herself was chased around the store by the security guards, pulling over the displays of washing-powder and tins of biscuits, as she made her way to the manager’s office and locked herself in.

“
Dunnes Stores is way better than this!
” she roared into the in-store loudspeaker system, as the guards tried to force the door open with a wooden plank. “
Dunnes, Dunnes, Dunnes, we want Dunnes! We want Dunnes!
”

(The manager was speechless with rage. This madness was taking place in one of the biggest branches of the biggest supermarket chain in the UK. He told someone to call an ambulance, so they could blame the whole thing on Brenda’s mental instability, in the court-case, should anyone take legal action.)

She didn’t tell Nicolas that the staff had been quite kind at the end, as they waited with her in the carpark for the ambulance to arrive, and gave her a cup of tea with lots of sugar in it. Someone said that working in a supermarket could be very stressful. It was the non-stop beeping of the electronic tills, Brenda told them. It was a kind of psychological torture, especially to someone like her, who lived on her own and wasn’t used to noise of any kind.

Brenda pretended to be calming down and, when the guards let go of her arms, she ran away across the carpark, like a greyhound let off the leash. When she got home, she discovered her lovely sunflower clips had fallen off.

After much deliberation, the manager decided not to get poor Brenda into trouble with the police or the mental-health people, and he let the matter drop. He was a decent sort of man and, anyway, he was too preoccupied with trying to calm down the hysterical woman who had triggered off the whole thing. He offered to buy her a new coat, as he wiped the melon seeds off her lapels, and he wondered again if he should take early retirement.

Chapter 22

T
WO
’
S
C
OMPANY
,
T
HREE
’
S
A
C
ROWD

Two days after Brenda posted her latest letter to America, Sadie left the house at lunch-time. She knew that Arnold was meeting some colleagues for lunch in the Europa Hotel. Sadie had bought him a new shirt and tie for the grand event.

She’d been dithering for weeks, putting off the moment when she would have to stand up for herself. She’d eaten dozens of toasted bagels spread with raspberry jam, and chilled chocolate profiteroles with hot custard. Strangely enough, the bagels and profiteroles had no effect whatsoever on Sadie’s personal life. Except to make Arnold say some very hurtful things: like he would have to have the furniture reinforced with steel girders if Sadie got any fatter. (She was nearly thirteen stone, now.)

So, very reluctantly, she made her way into the city and went quietly up the stairs to his office. It was on the second floor of a Victorian house on Eglantine Avenue. Sadie tried every key until she found the right one. No-one saw her go inside. She locked the door behind her. There was no sign on Arnold’s desk of the framed picture she had given him of the two of them on the beach in Portrush last year. Her plan was to hide in the office until she heard something that would prove his infidelity. A phone call, or piece of conversation. Then she could decide what to do next. She had been looking in his desk and checking his pockets for months, but she had discovered nothing. That was why she was forced into this ridiculous position, today. She quickly scanned the office. There was only one hiding place.

Sadie pulled the large cupboard in the corner out from the wall, and set a small chair in the space behind it. With her mouth in a hard line, she stepped into the corner and pulled the cupboard back into place. She sat down on the chair and shifted about until she felt comfortable. It was quite a squash. She took a paperback, and a bag of butter toffees out of her handbag. She popped a toffee into her mouth and she began to read.

At two o’clock precisely, Arnold returned to the office. Sadie held her breath as the door opened with a rattle, and the overhead lights flickered on.