Nicola Barker - Three Button Trick and Other Stories

Stephanie looked overwhelmed, ‘I … I needed a shower. I hired a towel.’

Jane began to pull a fastidious expression.

‘Honestly, it was perfectly clean.’ Stephanie’s face crumpled. Oh God! I feel … I don’t know. I was going to say I feel awful, but in fact I feel almost the opposite.’ She thought for a moment. ‘I feel rather, almost hysterical. Pent up. I’ve done the strangest thing.’

Jane was frowning. ‘Is everything all right at work?’

Stephanie nodded wordlessly.

‘Chris? Nothing’s happened between you and Chris?’

Stephanie shook her head, ‘No, Chris is fine.’ She frowned. ‘I don’t feel as if I can tell you …’

Jane clucked her tongue, exasperated. “What can’t you tell me? You always tell me everything. What’s going on?’

They had been best friends since primary school. Jane had always been dominant and Stephanie softer, better intentioned but easily swayed. She saw life as a set of rules which she obeyed. Jane saw life as a set of rules which she supported. She thought Stephanie’s passivity occasionally subversive, but knew her well enough to be sure of her back-up and understanding in most situations. They came from the same stock, a simmering, warm if unadventurous stew of suburban values; their schooling the same, parents the same, boyfriends the same, and their ambitions …?

Jane stared at Stephanie across the table and wondered what it was that she had done. She shoved around a set of geometric boundaries in her mind, a variety of fully contained and containable possibilities. ‘Pregnant?’

Stephanie grimaced. She looked up at Jane and felt almost helpless; she must tell her because who else could she tell? (God knows, not her mother.) And the notion of saying nothing was virtually inconceivable. She knew that all acts suffered in the doing because of the inevitability of the telling. She must tell her.

Jane watched, waiting. Stephanie took a further sip of her drink, laced her hands together on her lap and then took a deep breath. ‘I’m downstairs in the Men’s Knitwear Department this week, occasionally on the till, but mainly involved with stock, pricing, you know …’

Jane nodded, she had a picture of the knitwear department in her mind, and a cardigan that she wanted to buy for Mitch. ‘Knitwear Department. So?’

Stephanie looked down at her hands. ‘Well, I was … It was dead during the last hour, you know how it can be, hardly anyone about, and I was tidying up, straightening jumpers on hangers and refolding … I don’t know if it’s the same in the bank, but the last hour is always the worst and the best, the way the minute-hand keeps you in but the hour-hand points towards the door …’

Jane was nonplussed by Stephanie’s attempts to wax lyrical. ‘The last hour. Right.’

Stephanie took a deep breath. She knew this wasn’t going to be easy. ‘I was folding up some vests and socks when I noticed a man near by, well, I think that initially there were two of them, but the other one wandered off. They were skins, really tall in puffy green jackets and tight, short jeans and boots …’

Jane frowned. ‘White trash.’

Stephanie bit her lip and nodded. ‘Really short hair, just like, just really short, soft, like a coloured shadow on the scalp. But smart, not like normal skins, with bleached trousers and tatoos on their necks, like ugly roosters, dirty. This one was smart …’

Jane reiterated her earlier point, which made a class distinction as opposed to a value judgement. ‘White trash. Yuk. Shoplifting I bet. Pringle jumpers or long socks for under their boots.’

Stephanie nodded. ‘Socks.’

She was silent for a moment. In her mind she outlined what she was going to say and felt her stomach contract with the extremity of it. She thought momentarily of not telling and then knew that she must tell. She tried a different approach. ‘Do you ever have that feeling sometimes when everything feels sort of, strong, like soup or evaporated milk, sort of condensed, as though some things just must happen in a specific way, like a recipe …?’

Jane looked uncomprehending. ‘Like what? No, I don’t think so.’

Stephanie frowned. ‘Like when you first fell in love with Mitch, like when you first decided to have your hair cut, or the feeling you get when you want to dive into a pool but know that the water is cold, but you want to dive in anyway.’

Jane sipped her lager and watched as one of the men at the bar walked over and put some money into the juke box. Doris Day started singing ‘Move Over Darling.’ She tapped her foot in time and tried to respond appropriately to what Stephanie was saying.

‘I don’t know what you mean. Did you go swimming after all? Why all this talk about swimming all of a sudden?’

Stephanie looked crestfallen. She knew that she was already losing Jane’s sympathy. ‘That was a simile. Remember? Like Gerard Manley Hopkins or someone. I was trying to explain a feeling.’

Jane rolled her eyes. ‘Just tell me what you mean. What about that skinhead, the shoplifter. Did you catch him?’

Stephanie nodded. ‘Yes, I caught him.’

‘And then?’ Jane drained her glass of lager and placed it decisively down on a beermat. Stephanie studied her own glass, watched the condensation on the exterior of its bowl and around its base. The glass left a ring of moisture on the surface of the table when she picked it up. She took a sip and replaced it, but in a different place so that she could study the damp ring on the table’s surface, moisten her finger in the dampness and then draw on the polished wood. She drew another circle. ‘I walked over to him and told him that I knew he had placed some socks inside his jacket. I asked whether he intended to pay for them.’

‘What did he say? Didn’t you try and call the store detective? I would have.’

Stephanie drew two dots inside the circle and then a straight line. The circle was now a face, a round, rather simple but glum-looking face. ‘No, I didn’t call the store detective. It was almost twenty-to-six. I didn’t want the hassle.’

‘Weren’t you frightened?’

She nodded. ‘I suppose so. He was tall. At first he just stared at me. Then he turned, as if he was going to walk away’

‘And then?’

‘I put out my hand and grabbed his arm. He had one of those weird jackets on, a puffy green jacket. He must’ve been almost six feet tall. Mean-looking.’

Jane stopped tapping her foot as the Doris Day song finished on the juke box. She looked over to see if the two young men at the bar were going to put another song on but they had recently been joined by a third man and were deep in conversation. Stephanie smiled at her. ‘Can I get you another drink yet?’

Jane shook her head. ‘Not yet. Wait a while. So what happened then?’

Stephanie looked down at the table again, at the face she had drawn, which was already evaporating. She picked up some more moistness from the ring left by the glass and cut across the face with several rapid strokes. ‘I took hold of his arm and said, “You can’t leave here until you put those socks back.” He grinned at me and said, “Which socks? I haven’t got any.” ’

‘Did he pull his arm away?’

Stephanie looked disconcerted. ‘Um. No. I don’t think he pulled his arm away. It was all very quick. The aisle was empty. The whole shop seemed empty.’

‘What did you say then?’

Stephanie took another sip of her drink. ‘I said, “You have got socks there, I saw you pick them up. I’m not stupid. Please just put them back and I’ll leave you alone.” ’

‘And did he?’

She shook her head. ‘No. He looked down at my hand on his arm and started to smile. He said, “I haven’t got any socks, only on my feet.” I said, “I know you’ve got them,” and indicated with my other hand towards a bulge in his jacket where I’d seen him put the socks.’