D. Connell - Sherry Cracker Gets Normal

The door to the office stairs is located behind one of the ornate pillars and is reinforced by steel rails to prevent access with a crowbar. Mr Chin had another steel door with a powerful spring hinge installed at the top of the stairs. He monitors the doorway from where he sits which happens to be directly above the trapdoor to the old projection room. This trapdoor is locked and covered with a colourful Chinese carpet square. Mr Chin’s desk and chair are positioned on top of the carpet. He says the projection room is dangerous and has forbidden me to go anywhere near it. I obey his instructions but do not understand his decision to sit above an unsafe trapdoor.

By the time Mr Chin returned to the office, I had called two more dentists and set up purchases of several more crowns. Mr Chin looked very different after his early lunch. His cheeks were red and shiny and his eyes were bloodshot. In his hand was a plastic bag from the Mandarin restaurant. It clinked as he placed it on his desk. Licking his lips, he circled the furniture, saying, ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ The only time I had seen him so agitated was during the Chinese New Year celebrations when he won a bottle of plum liquor in a raffle. I had not been working at the office very long and was quite surprised by the sudden liveliness of his manner. He was now showing the same vivacity and looking very pleased with himself.

‘Today now holiday. Chin require rest and relaxation,’ he said, waving his small hand around. He sat down on his Komfort King and pushed his head against its vinyl cushion. ‘Go home. Go shopping. Go find boyfriend. Do what normal girl do.’

‘Normally I work,’ I said. ‘Today is Friday, a normal working day.’

‘Normally, normally, normally. What normally? You not normal girl. Very abnormal in fact.’

‘Abnormal?’ I sat up straight and made a mental note to record the word in the COMMENTS subsection of my OBSERVATIONS ring binder. It is the Chinese custom to criticise and I have learned to take such criticism as encouragement. Mr Chin’s assessment was like a red flag.

‘Certainly abnormal. No friend. No boyfriend. No dog. Not even small dog that is high-quality Pekinese. You very peculiar girl.’

‘Peculiar?’ Another word to file away.

‘Peculiar. Abnormal. No matter what.’ Mr Chin closed his eyes and smiled to himself. Opening them again, he pointed a finger at me. ‘You come to office too early, work too late. Never complain. Never thieve ballpoint pen. Never make private phone call and email. What English girl do such? Certainly not normal English girl.’

‘But as you said, I have no friends to call or email. And you don’t supply pens so I couldn’t steal one even if I were that way inclined.’

‘Crazy and nuts. I supply petty cash box of ten pounds sterling in rolling drawer. Normal person buy pen with petty cash then thieve. That is most regular English solution.’ He looked at me and shook his head. ‘You like house of too many window. Wind blow through house always. Take force and energy. House too empty. You too yin, too damp-cold. Need yang.’

‘My feet do get cold in winter.’ In fact my feet were cold as I spoke and it was not even winter. ‘Is there a cure?’

‘Eat meat of pork and so on. Take more yang force. Warm up feets.’

‘I couldn’t eat pork and so on. Modern animal husbandry is not humane and mass-produced meat is full of chemicals. You never know what you might find inside a sausage.’ I did not bother to tell him that my mother believed sausages were stuffed with sweepings from the floor of the abattoir.

‘Abnormal.’ Mr Chin pursed his lips into a point and shook his head. ‘Sausage is traditional English. Normal English love sausage and so on.’

‘Correct.’ Despite my mother’s beliefs about their contents, she bought pork sausages every week from Mr Da Silva. ‘I am partial to vegetarian sausages.’

‘You need professional expert. American Jewish make highest-quality expert for head. Go find such person.’ He hesitated a moment, as if thinking over something important. ‘I give you present of one hundred pound liquid cash.’

‘One hundred pounds! That’s a very handsome gift!’ I was stunned by the offer. Mr Chin never gave money away, ever. My condition had to be a lot more serious than I imagined.

‘One-time only investment.’ Mr Chin lifted his heavy money belt out from under his shirt. It was made of flesh-coloured leather and perfectly camouflaged against his skin. He removed a wad of banknotes, counting five twenties across the table in a fan. With a thumb and forefinger, he then pinched each note to make sure it was a single. Mr Chin was a great believer in the power of money and liked to say that ‘cash is king’.

‘Here, take as bonus. Now leave premise. Come back Monday for work at normal time. Come back more normal. Normal girl with friend and so on.’ He leaned back in his Komfort King and patted his chest with authority. ‘Order of kind and generous boss.’

I felt a jolt. The chalk message from the gardens flashed through my mind: ‘HAIL TO THE KING OF KINGS. HE IS THE KINDEST BOSS.’

‘One-time offer only.’ Mr Chin zipped up his money belt and tucked it back inside his shirt where it protruded like the stomach of an Australian lager drinker. He looked at me again but with an expression flickering between kindness and irritation. From experience, I knew that irritation was the more dominant of Mr Chin’s moods and sprang into action before it could settle over him.

I slipped on my cardigan and, leaning down, opened my file drawer, taking care to roll it slowly. The hypnotherapist had not cured me of my bad habits but I had discovered that with concentration, I could control my impulse to yank the drawer open. I had also been training myself to chew my cuticles instead of my nails. This habit gave me almost the same pleasure as nail biting but allowed my fingernails to grow. In the week since my visit to Industry Drive, my nails had developed a ridge and I was now able to pick up coins and even scratch my forearms where the wool of my cardigan rubbed. It was a new sensation and thoroughly enjoyable.

Mr Chin nodded as I removed the fan of twenty-pound notes from his desk and folded them into my new vinyl purse. Neither of us spoke but I had no illusions about the gravity of the moment. He had set me a formidable task and had given me the means to achieve it by Monday. It was a challenge and I knew from reading about Sir Edmund Percival Hillary that challenges were an integral part of character building. I wanted to be a better person and win Mr Chin’s approval. Indeed, my future depended on it.

It was Sir Edmund who once said, ‘It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves,’ which is quite a profound statement when you think about it. He certainly knew what he was talking about. He was the first person to reach the summit of Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world. Mountain climbing is a rigorous activity and carries considerable risk. I would not like to die on a mountainside or lose a nose or fingers to frostbite. Fortunately, Sir Edmund never lost any facial features or extremities. After his adventures, he returned to beekeeping, which is a job that requires considerable manual dexterity.

The idea of normality was flashing in my mind’s eye like the rotating beacon of a lighthouse as I made my way down the office stairs. The stairwell was pitch dark but I knew the width and squeak of every stair by heart. I used to run up and down the stairs until Mr Chin forbade it: ‘This run, run, run get on my nerve. Walk up stair at normal human speed or forget interesting and exciting job.’

The stairwell lights do not work because their electrical supply is connected to the faulty circuitry of the cinema. It would cost hundreds of thousands of pounds to rewire the Babylon and make the building fireproof, which had been the original plan when the council purchased it from its bankrupt owner in 1990. The Babylon was going to be refurbished and turned into a centre of local culture and history with photo panels and audiovisual displays. This plan was one of the first things to go when Jerry Clench became mayor. Mr Clench was not interested in the cinema’s architecture or its historical value. It was an eyesore and a fleapit, he said. He not only refused to allocate funds for its renovation but also said there was no budget to have it pulled down.