Liz Nugent - Lying in Wait

The claimants were usually nice to me – I guess because they thought I was making the decision whether to give them money or not. We did have a little power, and if someone was particularly aggressive I learned there were ways of delaying a claim, or ‘losing’ the paperwork, if you were so inclined.

In a few months, I learned far more about the world than my years of schooling had given me. And I had real friends in a way I had never had before. Mum didn’t understand that, and it was only when I was out in the world that I realized how unusual she was in that respect. She had no friends.

Work was good for me. My job was not difficult and my colleagues were very nice. I almost couldn’t believe my luck. I got to go and spend every day with a bunch of people who didn’t bully or demean me, doing work that didn’t exactly tax me, and at the end of every week I got money for it. Not a lot of money, but I didn’t have rent or a mortgage to pay, so there was almost enough to pay our household bills and have the occasional cinema trip and a few drinks after work most Friday nights before catching the last bus home. The section I worked on was made up of all kinds of people of all ages.

Dominic was a gum-chewing DJ at his soccer-club disco who couldn’t say a sentence without the words ‘know what I mean?’ tacked on the end. He didn’t want to be thirty, I think. He’d have preferred to be my age. Chinese Sally was a little older than me. She was actually half Korean, half Irish, but had grown up in Tralee. Everyone still referred to her as Chinese Sally and she had got bored with correcting them. Evelyn was the oldest of us all. She was a bitter, chain-smoking alcoholic with a line in filthy jokes and no-good ex-boyfriends. She had grown up in the inner city. Pretty Jane was my age. She was the first lesbian I had ever met. She wasn’t at all what I expected. She had long hair, and wore skirts. Arnold was a 24-year-old father of three who didn’t like children – ‘I love my boys, right? I just can’t stand them.’ He was always broke and miserable. He was a grade above me, but clearly wasn’t earning enough to keep a family of five.

We were a strange mix and yet we all got along. Not one person mentioned my weight. Everybody’s quirks were accepted, though they did call me Posh Boy because of my south County Dublin accent, but in an affectionate way. It seemed to me that none of us had had a childhood dream of working in an unemployment benefit office. We had all just landed there from our different walks of life and would probably pass the time there until retirement.

In June 1982, even though I had only been in the job seven months, I was promoted from clerical assistant to clerical officer (now I was allowed to talk to claimants on my own!). There was a small pay increase. Sally was furious. ‘Just because you’re a man!’ she said. She had been there for nearly two years without promotion, but I couldn’t help my gender. Mum and I were just about keeping our heads above water.

There were girls in the office who were perfectly nice, and reasonable-looking, and while they didn’t run screaming when I talked to them, neither did they give any hint of encouragement. I didn’t feel romantically attracted to them at all. I was still in touch with Helen, who had a succession of boyfriends and was never stuck for company. Helen and I had a strange kind of friendship. As awfully obnoxious as she was, part of me liked her honesty, her ability to say what she thought without fear. If she’d discovered her dad had killed someone, she’d probably have beaten the shit out of him before she called the guards. She took a proprietorial interest in my sex life.

‘Why don’t you ask out a fat girl?’ she said. It was her idea of being pragmatic. ‘They probably feel as self-conscious as you do. You need to get into the dating game soon or you’ll be stuck with your crazy mother for the rest of your life.’

I didn’t like the way Helen always referred to my mother as unstable or mad. It wasn’t fair.

‘I’ll tell you what’s not fair,’ insisted Helen, ‘it’s not fair that your mum has never suggested that you could move out on your own. She seems to expect you to look after her for the rest of her life. She could sell that fecking mansion and you could both get apartments and live your own lives. It’s ridiculous the way you carry on – as if she’s your wife rather than your mother!’

This was a sore point with me. Even people in work had said the same thing. They just didn’t get it. I liked living at home. Avalon was huge. My mother and I got on well, and I wasn’t heartless enough to leave her on her own. Mum wasn’t like other women. She would have hated the idea of an apartment. There was no reason for me to change my domestic circumstances. Besides, I didn’t want to leave her alone with the corpse beyond the kitchen window. Though, strangely, it seemed to bother me more than her. Maybe in the future, if I fell in love and wanted to get married, I might consider it, but that was extremely unlikely.

At the end of the summer of 1984, two things happened.

A new girl, Bridget Gough, had joined the office. I didn’t notice her until Jane informed me that someone had a crush on me. Apparently, I had held the door open for Bridget one day, and another time I’d got up to give her a seat in the break room. Bridget was eighteen, and worked as a secretary to one of the managers, Mr Monroe. She had indirectly asked questions about me, Jane said – where I lived, if I was single. I was stunned. Somebody had a crush on me ? Jane pointed out the girl to me. She was normal-looking with shoulder-length brown hair. She was a little overweight perhaps, and had a bad squint, but she was not a freak like me.

Jane and Sally were determined to play Cupid, and inveigled everyone else into their childish plot. It was mortifying. They invited her to Mulligan’s with us one Friday, insisting that she should sit beside me. As soon as we’d had our first round, Arnold went to the bar and returned with drinks for Bridget and me only, as everyone else made excuses that they had to go, had things to do. I was convinced they were just going to decamp to the nearest pub. Bridget and I sat mutely. I tried to be polite.

‘So, do you like the job so far?’

‘Yes!’ She beamed at me.

Silence.

‘And Mr Monroe treats you well?’

‘Yes!’

Silence.

‘Do you have any hobbies?’ I remembered writing a similar question to a German pen pal when I was ten.

‘Yes! Photography,’ she said, still grinning inanely at me with her good eye. Her bad eye looked at the nicotine-stained ceiling.

I think she realized that she needed to pull her weight in the conversation then. She spoke very fast, almost without taking a breath.

‘I love taking photos of just ordinary things, you know? Leaves, raindrops on glass, the way a chair is positioned in a room, or a bin lorry at the end of the street. When I was fourteen, I won a camera in a school raffle. It was quite a good one and I’ve been taking photos ever since.’

‘That’s good.’

‘You were the first person to speak to me in the office, you know. I’d been there two weeks and nobody apart from Mr Monroe and Geraldine had said anything to me, and they were just talking about work stuff, you know the way it is, and then on the fifth of June – I remember because it was my birthday – on the fifth of June, you came out of the gents and I came out of the ladies at the same time and you bumped into me and you said, “Excuse me.” It was so nice of you. I really appreciated that.’

Bridget was clearly someone who’d never been the focus of much attention in her life.

‘And then, one day in the break room, you offered me a seat beside Sally and then she started talking to me, and really, if it wasn’t for you, nobody would have talked to me at all!’