I was serving the customers in front of him. He was staring at my hands and all like anything and thought I didn’t know. Fuck me, he’s the one that’s stupid. I had to say everything over to him. Bleeding stupid – and trying to be clever. Like little Andy in the back stores: he’s so dim he don’t know a fishfinger from a packet of Persil.
I had another letter from Crystal today. I knew it was her straight I saw the pink envelope. And the writing. All loopy and sideways. I always know it’s her. Not just the stamps – there’s a few of them write to me from America. I had loads of replies when I put that ad in the slimming mag, and they come from all over. That was my mum’s idea. She saw it on Kilroy or something: a problem shared is a problem thingummied. It’s true, in fact – Crystal knows the way I am better than anyone and I don’t feel embarrassed at telling her stuff. Anyway, in today’s letter she’d put glitter in again: angel dust, she calls it. With little red shiny hearts mixed in. It went all over the table and bits went in the cornflakes. I hate that. She really does believe in them, though. The angels. Weird. Says she has her own angel watching her. Well, he couldn’t miss her really, could he? She says she’s even bigger than what I am now: not a bad job for an angel if you’ve got to watch someone, I suppose. At least Crystal makes it easy.
And she’d wrote LYLMS on the back of the envelope. God knows what that means. I like her letters but I can’t be arsed to work out all that stupid writing on the back. It was OK when she stuck to LOL for Lots of Love, but now they’ve got so long and complicated I can’t be fucked. And all those stickers with little hearts and teddies and ‘May the Lord be your whatever-it-is. Helper – no, Guide’. Something like that. They’re quite cute, in fact, the stickers, but she uses too many of them.
She’s going over to the other side soon, Crystal. That’s what they call it over there. Anyone who’s done it is ‘on the other side’. ‘The Lord will welcome you, too, Stacey, when you come over to the other side.’ That’s what she said at the end of today’s letter. Some chance. It’s all very well for her: it’s easy to get it over there. No one will listen to me here. So I’m stuck. On this side.
That old guy today wouldn’t have looked at me like that if I was on the other side, would he?
I knew I’d go back to SavaMart, of course. Judy’s attitude to the giant girl behind the checkout had inspired me to take another look at the poor creature, and I still felt an odd shadow of the impulse to help her. Catch my wife unawares on her home ground and some of the old reactionary background seeps out – not that she’s the only one, of course. I know I can be just as guilty of it. And it makes me as patronising as if I were being outright prejudiced, I suppose, even if the effect on both of us is to make us more tolerant than we would otherwise be. Positive discrimination taken to such lengths that we end up bending over so far backwards that we topple over. Wrecking the entire attempt at whatever it was and making an idiot of oneself into the bargain. Class, race, size, whatever – you name it – and there’s a little store of bias hiding in our every gene. Hers and mine. I should have said more to defend the checkout girl really; I despair sometimes at how undynamic I’m becoming, but it just never seems worth it at the time. I know Judy doesn’t mean any harm – she’s the most generous and compassionate of women when you reach her from the right angle, so to speak, and she’d be horrified if it were ever suggested to her that she has an in-built snobbism that can come out as patronising in the extreme. But she can be maddening at times. Particularly about anything domestic, of course. She really does believe that she’s the only one who ever shops or cooks or tidies up or makes the beds; those little glances that she gives when anyone else tries to help – as if no one can ever know the vast amounts of hardship she endures to look after us all. She works too hard, that’s half the problem; since she’s been doing this Ofsted stuff I can see how tired she gets. She’s always nipping up to her room to lie down with one of her headaches. I must get her out for the odd meal again.
So, in any case, on to my trip back to the supermarket and to the banned checkout – no, not banned: the checkout that no one who’s in the know ever uses. A sort of perversity on my part, a challenge to prove Judy wrong. Maybe we should have a bet on it? That the huge creature might just prove herself to be the zippiest, snappiest checkout girl of the lot. Untried for so long; not given a chance; growing ever more bored and less practised without the stimulus of chatty, interesting customers such as myself. What hidden depths of wit, charm and skill might not be buried under those mounds of cushioning flesh. Judy’s always chastising me for not doing my bit for all those good works she promotes: is my charitable role perhaps to be Higgins to this generously endowed Eliza?
The day hadn’t gone too badly. Most of the time I wonder what the hell I’m doing in my work – God knows what happened to all my early ideals and ambitions: I look in despair at this run-of-the-mill, middlingly successful person I’ve become. But my questioning of the father today did just what I wanted: showed him up to be the loving kind of bloke he obviously is. An entirely good influence in my opinion: the two kids will be far better off with some time with him than disappearing to Malaga or wherever. If I can get the judge to agree to his educating them over here as he wants to then it might just be possible to keep everyone happy. Pity the mother’s so good in the box. More than a touch of the ‘all women together’ angle going on, if you ask me. The judge is clearly a bit partial to having her femininity appealed to, specially by someone pretty. Probably because she’s such an old boot herself she’s cheered to find that another female can still identify her as the same gender, let alone treat her as one of the girls. Still, it didn’t go badly at all. And I was in the mood to brave SavaMart again, do my bit for mankind by bringing a little joy into the fat girl’s day and then make a little magic in the kitchen. In any case, I wanted to give Jude a break: the tension in the house when she writes her reports is left strung around like trip wire – the kids and I creep about for fear of falling over it. So I could kill two birds with one stone: give myself the fun of the checkout challenge and set up a peaceful, relaxed evening at home.
I phoned Judy on her mobile and caught her in the car, sounding distinctly weary and defensive – in exactly the right mood to be seduced by the thought of not having to cook. If I’m honest, I have to admit that when she sounds like that there’s a bit of me wishes I didn’t have to go home and face her: I sometimes indulge the fantasy that I could disappear and live quietly round the corner without her ever knowing. Still, it never lasts long. I’ve no doubt she entertains the same kinds of thoughts about me from time to time.
‘I’m going to pick up some bits of chicken and do one of my specials. I know this report’s taking it out of you and you must be exhausted. Go straight home and make yourself a cup of tea.’
‘Charlie, that sounds great. But how was your day? What sort of –’
‘Not bad at all. Not a bad day. I managed to –’
‘Pick up a decent bottle of red, will you, darling? We’ve only got disgusting plonk left and I need something a bit more cheering.’
She was there. Squeezed into the space behind her cash register as tightly as before; as large as I’d remembered. It was a bit disappointing to see she had a small queue at her checkout; not as long as the others, but still a respectable number of people. I had rather hoped to be her only customer: a lone experimenter braving the empty wastes of her conveyor belt and discovering the gem of sensitivity and wit buried under the muffling pounds of surplus fat. Kilos of fat, I should say.
I did my shopping quickly and joined the queue, uncomfortably aware that it appeared to be unchanged since I had entered the store. The same five people were lined up with their trolleys and baskets, although the shopper at the till was
