Maeve's Times (38 page)

The startled couple, who had been waiting for him more than half an hour, lied and said they had only been there for five minutes: the crumbs of 10 bread rolls proved them to be dishonest.

‘Can I take your coat?’ the waiter asked, politely.

‘Look, I don’t need any hassle today, let me tell you.’

The waiter moves nervously away. The man who owns the restaurant arrives to take the coat, which is thrown half on a chair, half on the floor, with the gloves and a scarf and the man looks as if he’s about to strip down to the buff unless somebody stops him and calms him down.

‘A nice drink, perhaps?’ The owner cannot find the right word. There are no right words.

‘Nor do I want to be patronised,’ cries the purple man in a choking voice that terrifies the wits out of his two lunch guests, who had wrongly thought they were going to have a nice meal out.

On the bus, the woman got up three times to ask the bus driver was there no way he could go any faster. The first two times he explained politely that there wasn’t. The third time there was a slight edge to his voice when he asked had she any suggestions. Like maybe ploughing through the solid line of traffic ahead of him? Or revving up seriously and taking the bus into a flight path 10 feet above the line of trucks, cars and buses below?

There were tears in her eyes.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and went back to her seat.

People were kind and came up with suggestions. Could she get off the bus and walk? No, she walked with a stick, she wouldn’t be any quicker.

What about a taxi?

Wouldn’t it be the same snail’s pace?

Yes, but at least the taxi driver could take a different route. People will understand if you’re late, they told her, everyone’s late these days. It just can’t be helped. Everyone understands.

The woman could not be consoled. It was an appointment with the bank. Everything depended on their getting this overdraft. The bank had a feeling that they had been unreliable in the past.

We all had the feeling that she might have been – the tears of mascara didn’t make her look like a good risk.

The bus was silent thinking about banks. Someone gave her a tissue and someone else loaned her a mobile phone. She made a poor job of explaining the traffic situation. None of us had any hope for the loan.

A boy stood at the bus stop – like everyone else he had been waiting forever as things went slowly by, grim-faced people from an adult world staring unhappily ahead.

‘Did you have a nice day at school?’ asked an old lady anxious for a conversation – any conversation – to pass the time. The bus was 200 yards away, it might take 15 minutes to get to us.

‘No,’ he said.

‘Why was that, dear?’

‘The bus was late getting there and the teacher said how was it that the rest of the class got in, and I said they had fathers with cars and they all got up at six o’clock in the morning and I was told not to give cheek.’

‘Yes, well,’ she said.

‘And then we all got late to the football pitch because the bus didn’t come and there was no football, and now the bus hasn’t come and I’m going to be late home and they’re going to say how is it that I’m the only one late home, and none of them go out but if I said that I’d be giving cheek again.’

‘It’s a hard life,’ the old lady said.

‘It’s a shit life,’ said the boy, ending the friendship between them.

Outside a solicitor’s office. An awkward meeting, two one-time friends have fallen out, a business is being wound-up, there are still areas of disagreement about some outstanding debts.

‘Let’s try to get this done in as civilised a way as possible,’ says one of them.

‘Yeah, well it would be easier to be civilised if your bloody lawyer had turned up.’

‘He’s stuck in traffic, his secretary said.’

‘Secretary? Gargoyle, more like. Where’s she coming from not letting us smoke in the building, for God’s sake?’

They stood glumly in the rain smoking while traffic inched by.

Once they had cursed the traffic to the pit of hell, and counted the number of cars that had only one person each in them, there wasn’t much to talk about. So they inhaled. And they talked about the old days, when they were starting out.

When the solicitor arrived yelping about gridlock and the car scrappage scheme and nobody caring and cities coming to a standstill, the two men were looking at each other as normal human beings. One of the few success stories of the Christmas traffic.

A
s soon as the sun started to shine in London it was as if someone had shouted ‘Strip’. They stood half naked outside the pubs, pints in hands and faces upturned to the hot sky. In the parks they lay out on rugs in shorts and bikinis, their skin glistening with oil. They had dragged tables and chairs out into front gardens and people without gardens draped themselves over steps and footpaths. It was only the first day of May but there was terrific heat in the sun – and those who live in a city of nearly 12 million people will take any opportunity at all that might suggest closing their eyes and pretending it’s Midsummer’s Day.

And even at the polling station in a west London school there was a holiday air. A woman with sunglasses on her head, two small children by the hand, came to the gate of the little school.

‘Don’t talk to anyone at all, just look at all the lovely pictures the other children have drawn while Mummy votes,’ she said.

‘I want to vote,’ said the five-year-old.

‘Not now, darling, later … look at the nice pictures on the wall.’

‘You never let me vote.’

The seven-year-old was examining the artwork. ‘These are no good. Our school is better,’ he pronounced.

‘Shush, darling, they’re doing their best, it’s a very little school.’

‘It’s a
normous
school,’ said the child.

‘I meant they don’t have all the marvellous classrooms and lots of good teachers like your school does.’

‘It’s an awful school, Mummy, why are you voting here?’

‘It’s where we vote, darling, now
do
look after Charles.’

‘I
want
to vote,’ said Charles in the querulous tones that he may still have in 13 years’ time when he is allowed to vote.

‘Charles, darling, just a little patience for Mummy then we buy mangoes and ice-cream, all go to Grandmother’s garden for a lovely, lovely visit.’

‘I hate Grandmother,’ said Charles.

Most people smiled tolerantly at each other as if to acknowledge that children always speak their minds.

‘I bet she hates you, too,’ said an old unshaven man bent over a stick, a bottle of ginger wine peeping from his pocket.

It did the trick and silenced Charles and his discontented elder brother. They stood fearfully in the small, run-down school, worrying about what the future might hold for them.

In the restaurant the waitress said that she was doing her own poll. She asked every single person who came in which way they had voted and amazingly as soon as they had got over the shock of breaching the secret ballot, they all told her.

‘It’s going to be a landslide,’ she said cheerfully to the owner as she bustled through the In door and the Out door of the kitchen.

‘You wish,’ said the dour owner, who had worked out with two accountants and a man from a money house that he would be marginally better off if the Tories won, but that the country was going down the tubes no matter who won.

‘Aren’t you excited?’ the waitress asked him.

‘Takes a lot more than a bit of unscientific research bothering the customers to make me excited,’ he said.

‘It’s not unscientific, we get them from every walk of life here.’

‘I’ll bet my whole week’s wages Labour gets in with a majority of over 160,’ she said.

‘Your week’s wages? Don’t be so foolish, woman.’ It was easy winnings but he didn’t want to bankrupt the staff at the same time. She was determined, however. She asked three customers to be witnesses to the deal. Even those of us who were not regulars could telephone and make sure that he would honour the bet if she won – or lost.

‘Don’t be specific about the majority,’ people warned her. But she was a confident, New Dawn Woman. She wouldn’t reduce it – 160 or more, she said – and went on serving tables, her face full of smiles.

I rang the place yesterday to check the situation. Apparently they had all stayed up most of the night watching the television. When the majority topped 160 the waitress had bought champagne.

‘Fine bloody socialist she turned out to be,’ said the owner glumly. A hangover, a lost bet, the wrong government in power – it was not a good Friday.

‘Did you tell her that?’ I wondered.

He had, of course, several times during the night but as she poured the champagne she had said that this was what it was all about, champagne for everyone, not just the fat cats.

‘Fine bloody grip on reality she has,’ the owner added, as he bid me farewell.

A woman who works in a factory reports that they all began the day yesterday by dancing round in a conga line singing ‘They’ve gone and dumped Portillo … They’ve gone and dumped Portillo … da da da da da.’ And it proved so catchy that even the supervisors and management side of things thought it was funny and sang it too.

The phrase got into people’s heads and at lunchtime when they went to the pub they started it again and this time the whole pub joined in.

‘What’s Portillo done to them?’ the barman asked.

‘He looks like a prat,’ said a man at the bar.

‘Not fair to judge the poor fellow by his face,’ said the barman.

‘He talks like a prat.’

‘Oh well, then,’ said the barman, as the pub danced on.

M
rs Perfect got married in May 1970 and to this day she has never forgiven Charlie Haughey for upstaging her at the wedding. The guests talked of nothing but the arms-smuggling charges that had just been announced. She felt nobody gave her even a passing glance as she walked up and down the aisle. Their wedding seemed only like a supporting act to the dramas that were going on elsewhere. She was 25 years old, she looked wonderful – she can show you the wedding pictures to prove it – but they were more interested in Blaney and Haughey that day.

She knew that you have to work at marriage – her mother told her that long, long ago. Let nobody tell you that running a home was easy, her mother had always said; it involved ceaseless vigilance and planning.

So Mrs Perfect had done exactly that, and never more so than at Christmas.

Hers was going to be the Christmas that would be remembered by everyone. Planning began in early summer, when she would start the present list. Her gifts were never extravagant but very thoughtful.

If you ever said to Mrs Perfect that you liked chutney, she would write it down, and she would cross-reference this on her chutney list.

She made two summer shopping trips to the North, where many things were much cheaper, and she never travelled without her list, plus the list of what she had given for the past five years.

She knew how dangerously easy it would be to give the same person an aromatic herb pillow year after year if you didn’t keep proper records.

All her Christmas cards are sent on December 6th; she books her Christmas Eve hair appointment in November to make sure she gets the right time. The turkey, ham and spiced beef are ordered weeks in advance and the shopping list, the Christmas countdown and two stuffing recipes are photocopied and pasted to the back of a cupboard door by the beginning of the month.

She knows a place where you can get a non-shedding tree, and bought it long before the rush so that she could get the right shape. The lights have been tested, a candle bought for the window, a holly wreath for the door.

The fridge and the freezer are filled with things that can be brought out instantly for unexpected guests, though there seems to be fewer of those than there once were.

Still, it’s good to be prepared.

The children have all left home now, so you would think it would be less pressurised than it used to be. But Mrs Perfect laughs at this notion. It’s worse than ever, she says: you have to remember all their in-laws – a tin of mince pies here, a potted plant there. Not that in-laws is the right word, more like common-law in-laws. None of them married, all in what people call ‘relationships’ and not a sign of a grandchild from anyone.

Mrs Perfect says it doesn’t look at all good at the bridge club, where she has no pictures to show. You can’t show snaps of your gorgeous home – only grubby faces of little toddlers are acceptable, followed by screeches from the others saying that you don’t look old enough to be a granny.

No brownie points for having made the cakes and the puddings in November, tippexed-out the changes of address in the Christmas card list book, polished the brasses and decorated the house within an inch of its life.

They have a drinks party about two weeks before Christmas and Mrs Perfect used to love the way people oohed and aahed over the way the house was already festive and decorated.

People groaned and said they hadn’t even begun their shopping yet and everything was so rushed and there was so much to do and the Christmas season started earlier and earlier, preventing them from doing anything at all. She used to think this was just a way of going on, a style of speaking, until she noticed that it was quite possibly true. She saw neighbours dragging home a tree on Christmas Eve, and she would get the same, guilty poinsettia from apologetic friends who said it was so hard to think of anything but at least this would be colourful.

Mrs Perfect had been thinking of their presents for at least six months. Wasn’t it odd that other people didn’t do the same?

It’s hard to know who to talk to about it. Mrs Perfect’s considerably less than perfect husband isn’t around all that much. He seems very delighted with his comfortable, well-run home. Well, she thinks he is. But honestly, it’s hard to know. Things have changed, probably, from the way they were in her own mother’s day when you were judged by how you ran a house.