like heavy water.
Okay, right, I said. How much was she making up, I wondered. I started looking around for my tobacco. Did she say he’d seen the doctor? I asked.
She said he says he’s fine, but she’s worried. They’re getting older, he said.
Yeah, I said. I sometimes regret letting those people near him. Especially her. The way she behaved when I was pregnant. I licked the gum strip and stared at the end of my cigarette.
Here. Jason lit it for me. Mum, he said. Don’t get into all that again, all that stuff from the past. His eyes held mine, blue and steady.
Okay, I said. I smoked, and felt depressed.
He straightened up. Anyway, he said, I told you. He squeezed my shoulder and went out.
You did, I said. I got up. Better do the washing-up, I said to no one. I did it carelessly and felt like the clattering dishes were harassing me. Afterwards I wiped up and cleaned the counters. I made my sandwiches. I had a shower and went to bed, but knew I wouldn’t fall asleep for a while. My neck ached, and my shoulders. And I knew it’d be there, waiting to swallow me up: the humming of the machines, the smell of the aerosol, the leather dust, the lights, the heat. I wouldn’t think about it when I’d got going and all day I’d be on the shop floor but something would be leaving me and at the end of the day I wouldn’t even remember what it was.
I thought I’d forgotten the phone call but it came back. I thought about it on the way to work, then decided I wouldn’t think about it any more. Mum in her flowered apron in the kitchen making tea, her eyebrows raised, saying something, complaining. No one ever does things right. I’ll have to tell him, she says. Why do you have to? Dad says.
I don’t even know what they look like now. I’ve seen them since I left, now and again. They used to come and take Jason out for the afternoon. Before Christmas they’d come round with his present, and something for me. A scarf, a bath set. The presents made me angry. Everything about them makes me angry. Dad because he doesn’t say anything, he just lets her go on. And her because …
I got to work on time and smiled at Tom. He’s one of my favourite people. He’s in his late sixties, over retirement age, but he keeps coming in. He likes it. He says he doesn’t want to stay home, find ways to fill the time. He told me about his wife’s grandparents once. They used to be the loveliest couple, but when he retired things changed. They started bickering. You’d look at them and think, That’s not you. And about the retired men where he lives. He doesn’t live this way, he’s the other side of town. There’s a man who goes out for his paper the same time every day, he says. An Indian gentleman, Mr Singh. You could set your watch by him. Every day he goes for a walk, but so slowly, because he’s got nothing to hurry for. I’d hate to be like that.
All right, lass? Tom said. You look better today. He smiled.
I grinned at him. Better than what?
He looked down. All the while, his hand was working, pulling tight a last with the pincers. You were a bit at sixes and sevens, like, yesterday, he said.
And today? I said. Fives and tens?
He smiled, and hammered down the last with the end of the pincers. I like the way he still looks like a boy, small, his head neat.
I worked without thinking till it was near first break. There’s a watchfulness about us all, like animals that measure time. When it gets near break we stop chatting or passing the time and finish as fast as we can. Then when the bell goes it’s silent. People walking across the floor to the coffee machine, or a few of the men – John, Tom, Derek – sitting down near it. I took my coffee to sit with Helen in the closing section. I like the older ladies. Jane was talking to Cathy near her machine. Cathy had the paper open. Karen was doing her puzzle, head down. You could hear the silence and people’s heads humming. I had my book but I didn’t read. I stared at the same part of the same page and thought about the spring when I’d moved into Nan’s house, and all the things my mother said before I left. Don’t think about it, Nan said. She’s always been like that. My mother’s face, her mouth drawn tight then opening to spit out something poisonous. Don’t think about it, I thought. I thought about it furiously.
When the first bell went I shook myself and went to the loo. Someone had used the cubicle before me. I sat breathing in her smell. I thought, nothing’s new. I washed my hands, didn’t look in the mirror, and reached my station before the second bell went. The morning just passed.
A person who could be looked at
Jason’s football practice today. I found myself slowing down on the way home. I went into the Three Bells. I sat in the garden with my shandy, thinking, there’s nothing to do, nothing to do. It was bright, white clouds moving fast across the sky. It wasn’t really warm, but it felt good to sit with my face in the sun. I drank slowly, and thought about smoking. A wasp buzzed around my glass. On another table there was a man with a lanky dog, maybe a lurcher. The man was drinking a pint and talking on the phone. The dog lay at his feet. Every now and then it got up and he would tear off a bit from a slim packet, probably a Peperami, and feed it.
After a while a couple came in. They sat down but got up again and went inside. Then a man on his own. I caught him looking, a sharp glance. Suddenly I thought about my clothes. I go to work wearing anything: jeans, a t-shirt. It’s not worth wearing nice stuff, and anyway half the year I get dressed in the dark. Jane dresses up, but she isn’t working like we are. She wears heels – not stilettos but two or three inches.
I looked at the man again, and saw him looking at me. Was he good-looking? I looked away. The wasp was getting in my drink. I waved my hand at it, caught the glass, and shandy slopped over the side.
Fuck, I said. I moved the glass and shifted away from the wet part of the bench. The man was smiling at me. He was blond, tall maybe, thinnish. His clothes fit well. He looked comfortable on his own, like he always looked the same. I found a tissue in my pocket and wiped shandy off my elbow. Yeah, very cool.
I stared under my hair at the glass, drank from it. I tried to imagine the way he might see me. He probably thought I fancied him. I didn’t want to be looked at, I wasn’t ready. Make a bit more effort, I thought. Try. Wear mascara. Do something with your hair. You’re not dead yet. Something Nan used to say. I’m not dead yet. Then she’d smile. Had I forgotten how to live? Just going on, getting things done.
I finished the shandy, imagined myself outside the factory, and the same person inside, saw myself as though I wasn’t me. A figure in the fluorescent light on the shop floor, walking there in the morning, leaving in the afternoon. A person who could be looked at without disappearing.
I pushed away the glass. A shadow went over me. It was the same man leaving. He slowed as he passed, and looked into my face. He smiled. Afternoon,
