Nicola Barker - Three Button Trick and Other Stories

Martha’s hand paused, momentarily, above the zipper. ‘Promise to come out very quickly,’ she said, ‘and I’ll nick you some baby clothes.’

The foetus snorted in a derisory fashion. ‘Revolutionaries,’ he said, ‘don’t wear baby clothes. Steal me a gun, though, and I’ll fire it through your spleen.’

Martha zipped up quickly, shocked at this vindictive little bundle of vituperation she was unfortunate enough to be carrying. She smoked an entire packet of Marlboro in one sitting, and smirked, when she unzipped, just slightly, at the coughing which emerged.

The foetus decided that he had no option but to rely on his own natural wit and guile to foil both his mother and the forces of the After-Life. He began to secrete various items that Martha stole in private little nooks and crannies about her anatomy.

On the last night of his thirty-sixth week, he put his plan into action. In his arsenal: an indelible pen, a potato, a large piece of cotton from the hem of a dress, a thin piece of wire from the supports of a bra, all craftily reassembled. In the dead of night, while Martha was snoring, he gradually worked the zip open from the inside, and did what he had to do.

The following morning, blissfully unaware of the previous night’s activities, Martha went out shopping to Marks and Spencer’s. She picked up some Belgian chocolates and a bottle of port, took hold of her zipper and tried to open her belly. It wouldn’t open. The zipper seemed smaller and more difficult to hold.

‘That bastard’, she muttered, ‘must be jamming it up from the inside.’ She put down her booty and headed for the exit. On her way out of the shop, she set off the alarms.

‘For Chrissakes!’ she told the detective, ‘I’ve got nothing on me!’ And for once, she meant it.

Back home, Martha attacked her belly with a pair of nail scissors. But the zip wasn’t merely jammed, it was meshing and merging and disappearing, fading like the tail end of a bruise. She was frazzled. She looked around for her cigarettes. She found her packet and opened it. The last couple had gone, and instead, inside, was a note.

Martha , [the note said] I have made good my escape, fully intact. I sewed a pillow into your belly. On the wall of your womb I’ve etched and inked an indelible bar-code. Thanks for the fags.

Love, Baby.

‘But you can’t do that!’ Martha yelled. ‘You don’t have the technology!’ She thought she heard a chuckle, behind her. She span around. On the floor, under the table, she saw a small lump of afterbirth, tied up into a neat parcel by an umbilical cord. She could smell a whiff of cigarette smoke. She thought she heard laughter, outside the door, down the hall. She listened intently, but heard nothing more.

IF HE HAD COME from a family of butchers maybe his perspective would have been different. He would have been more experienced, hardened, less naïve. His mum had wanted him to work for Marks and Spencers or for British Rail. She said, ‘Why do you want to work in all that blood and mess? There’s something almost obscene about butchery.’

His dad was more phlegmatic. ‘It’s not like cutting the Sunday roast, Owen, it’s guts and gore and entrails. Just the same, it’s a real trade, a proper trade.’

Owen had thought it all through. At school one of his teachers had called him ‘deep.’ She had said to his mother on Parents’ Evening, ‘Owen seems deep, but it’s hard to get any sort of real response from him. Maybe it’s just cosmetic.’

His mum had listened to the first statement but had then become preoccupied with a blister on the heel of her right foot. Consequently her grasp of the teacher’s wisdom had been somewhat undermined. When she finally got home that evening, her stomach brimming with sloshy coffee from the school canteen, she had said to Owen, ‘Everyone says that you’re too quiet at school, but your maths teacher thinks that you’re deep. She has modern ideas, that one.’ Owen had appreciated this compliment. It made him try harder at maths that final term before his exams, and leaving. At sixteen he had pass marks in mathematics, home economics and the whole world before him.

In the Careers Office his advisor had given him a leaflet about prospective employment opportunities to fill out. He ticked various boxes. He ticked a yes for ‘Do you like working with your hands?’ He ticked a yes for ‘Do you like working with animals?’ He ticked a yes for ‘Do you like using your imagination?’

When his careers guidance officer had analysed his preferences she declared that his options were quite limited. He seemed such a quiet boy to her, rather dour. She said, ‘Maybe you could be a postman. Postmen see a lot of animals during their rounds and use their hands to deliver letters.’ Owen appeared unimpressed. He stared down at his hands as though they had suddenly become a cause for embarrassment. So she continued, ‘Maybe you could think about working with food. How about training to be a chef or a butcher? Butchers work with animals. You have to use your imagination to make the right cut into a carcass.’ Because he had been in the careers office for well over half an hour, Owen began to feel obliged to make some sort of positive response. A contribution. So he looked up at her and said, ‘Yeah, I suppose I could give it a try.’ He didn’t want to appear stroppy or ungrateful. She smiled at him and gave him an address. The address was for J. Reilly and Sons, Quality Butchers, 103 Oldham Road.

Later that afternoon he phoned J. Reilly’s and spoke to someone called Ralph. Ralph explained how he had bought the business two years before, but that he hadn’t bothered changing the name. Owen said, ‘Well, if it doesn’t bother you then it doesn’t bother me.’

Ralph asked him a few questions about school and then enquired whether he had worked with meat before. Owen said that he hadn’t but that he really liked the sweet smell of a butcher’s shop and the scuffling sawdust on the floor, the false plastic parsley in the window displays and the bright, blue-tinged strip-lights. He said, ‘I think that I could be very happy in a butcher’s as a working environment.’

He remembered how as a child he had so much enjoyed seeing the arrays of different coloured rabbits hung up by their ankles in butcher shop windows, and the bright and golden-speckled pheasants. Ralph offered him a month’s probationary employment with a view to a full-time apprenticeship. Owen accepted readily.

His mum remained uncertain. Over dinner that night she said, ‘It’ll be nice to get cheap meat and good cuts from your new job, Owen, though I still don’t like the idea of a butcher in the family. I’ve nothing against them in principle, but it’s different when it’s so close to home.’

Owen thought carefully for a moment, then put aside his knife and fork and said, ‘I suppose so, but that’s only on the surface. I’m sure that there’s a lot of bloodletting and gore involved in most occupations. I like the idea of being honest and straightforward about things. A butcher is a butcher. There’s no falseness or pretence.’

His dad nodded his approval and then said, ‘Eat up now, don’t let your dinner get cold.’

Owen arrived at the shop at seven sharp the following morning. The window displays were whitely clean and empty. Above the windows the J. Reilly and Sons sign was painted in red with white lettering. The graphics were surprisingly clear and ornate. On the door was hung a sign which said ‘closed’. He knocked anyway. A man with arms like thin twigs opened the door. He looked tiny and consumptive with shrewd grey eyes and rusty hair. Owen noticed his hands, which were reddened with the cold, calloused and porkish. The man nodded briskly, introduced himself as Ralph then took Owen through to the back of the shop and introduced him to his work-mate, Marty. Marty was older than Ralph—about fifty or so— with silvery hair and yellow skin. He smiled at Owen kindly and offered him a clean apron and a bag of sawdust. Owen took the apron and placed it over his head. Ralph helped him to tie at the back. Both Marty and Ralph wore overalls slightly more masculine in design. Owen took the bag of sawdust and said, ‘Is this a woman’s apron, or is it what the apprentice always wears?’