Anjali Joseph: The Living

The curtains at work are striped, ticking I think Nan would have called it: light blue with a few other colours, yellow, white, navy, pink. Pretty. The windows on our side face west. The morning light comes in the other side. I was spraying the heels on a stand of wedding shoes, covering my face because the spray catches in your throat, and when I looked up sunlight was coming through a window on to the trolley, and the spray was caught in a cloud, slowly dancing.

It’s always warm on the floor, and in summer it’s sweaty. The compressor stopped working because of a fault. While we waited for them to fix it we became slower, like bumble bees on a hot afternoon. We did what we could by hand. Tom worked on his lasts. He smiled. You know, lass, this is how we used to do it, he said, in the old days. And we’d be fast.

I know, I said. It was piecework.

It was piecework, he said.

That’s what Nan used to talk about, I said. No time to hang about.

I never took any days’ leave, do you know that? he said. Maybe three or four in thirty years of piecework. There was a week when I started. I think it was the chemicals. I got really sick but I didn’t take a day off. I was going in with a fever.

His hands were working while he talked, pulling tight the leather around the last, hammering it in place. What is it, I thought, about this work; the same thing, over and over, it takes your life but in the process it gives you this quietness, it takes away the struggle. Or maybe that’s just Tom. Or what I see of Tom from the outside.

You’re quiet today, Claire, John said. He smiled at me. I smiled back. He’s a bit older than me, John, but probably not much. He’s nice, too — smiles, and follows me with his eyes. We don’t talk a lot, except if we’re outside smoking. He always looks the same: jeans and t-shirts, his hair cut like it probably was twenty years ago, close and smooth.

Just checking what I can do till the compressor starts, I said. I like talking to Tom, and I don’t like it when people come along. It’s not even that I’m telling Tom private things. It’s just a way of being.

John smiled and went back to his work. He was using his hands too, but more slowly than Tom. It would mostly have been machines when he started.

I went to see Derek at the heel attacher. He was hammering in nails by hand to fix the heels on Eveliina, a red high heel, strappy. One I’d almost wear, if I had somewhere to wear it. Maybe I’ll try it in the factory shop. But what for?

Jane had sent down six boxes of handbags to have them checked and freshened up. We don’t make them, but we sell them as part of the line. The girls and I opened the plastic, took out the bags, checked them for marks, and stuffed them with tissue so they didn’t look crushed. In the shop, people want everything to look perfect.

Does that even look better? I asked Ellie. I held out the bag, plumped out. That looks the same, doesn’t it?

But she said that looked better.

Just before lunch the compressor started again and we all stopped doing the things we’d been doing to keep busy and we worked and worked. It was the busyness again the radio the noise of the machines the smell of leather dust and all of us working without mind, like bees in a hive. I didn’t think till just after four when I thought, I’ve had enough, that’s enough of today. The last twenty minutes crept by but when we were walking out it was still bright and hazy and everyone was chattering about what they were going to do tonight. Helen’s husband came to meet her like he always does — he’s retired. But not in the car, because the weather was so fine. He took her hand and she went off pink-cheeked and smiling like a little girl and the pair of them over sixty. How’s that done, I thought, but I liked it.

On the way home I stopped and sat on the wall near the shop, just to be in the sun. There were three kids messing around next to the bottle bank. The littlest reminded me of Katie. He had expressions on his face that must have come from other people: his stepdad, his older brother: a toughness, a blankness, that didn’t belong to him. Then he scowled, and looked for a minute like an older woman, maybe his mum. It’s like you come into the world a person, with something it means to be you. In no time — a few years — you’re carrying all these things you borrowed, like I started chewing my lip because Jim did. Those habits become what people meet in you.

When I’m tired things are clear. It takes the edge off. I feel like a saint in a stained-glass window, everything coming to me in a halo, revelations.

I shut my eyes and turned my face up. Orange. Red thread veins. Little things like bacteria moving. My body sleepy with a private hum like one of the machines.

Hi. Excuse me, someone said.

I opened my eyes. Everything yellow and blue, like a seventies film. A shirt, white, slim fit, tucked in. Brown trousers. Brogues, nice ones. Up again, slowly. He was standing close.

Sorry to disturb you. (A golden voice. It had a softness it knew would please.) Do you have a light?

His wrist, golden hairs, brown canvas watchstrap. The man from the pub.

Yeah, I said.

While I was looking for it he waited. He put out his hand. Thanks, he said. I watched him look down and light his cigarette. He inhaled, didn’t give me the lighter. Didn’t I see you in the Three Bells the other day? he said easily. In the garden?

Oh! Oh, yeah, probably, I said. What day was that?

He smiled. I’m not sure, he said. Few days ago. Wasn’t as nice as today.

It’s lovely, isn’t it?

It is. He smoked. I got out my tin and started rolling.

He sat next to me on the wall to light it. Held on to the lighter, looked at it. I’d smelled his hand, nicotine and skin. It’s nice to smoke when it’s hot. Some days I want to smoke because something at work’s already irritated my throat. It’s like having a tooth that’s loose, or a cut that’s closing.

What about a half in the Bells? he said. If you have time.

I tried not to smile because the first thing I thought was but this never happens to me.

Now? I said.

Why not? he said.

Could do.

At the Bells we, Damian and me, smoked a lot. He bought the first drink. That’s when I found out his name. He handed me my beer and said, I’m Damian by the way. Claire, I said, but he didn’t hear because we were walking out to the garden. It was nearly full.

Sorry, he said.

Claire, I said again.

Beer garden, it’s one of those phrases, like holiday home, it tells you you’re meant to be having a good time. I did a quick scan but didn’t see anyone I knew. Damian seemed comfortable. He rolled up his sleeves and put his arms on the table.

So, Claire, do you live round here?

I live with my son. Up the road. He’s sixteen, I said quickly. I always say it fast, because I don’t want to have to think about it later.

He nodded. What’s his name?

Jason.

Jason and the Argonauts, he said.

You didn’t say Jason Donovan, I said.

Is he named after Jason Donovan?

No.

That’s good, he said. He laughed. I used to have the piss ripped out of me at school for looking like him.

You don’t really, though, I said. He is blond, but his face isn’t the same. Blue eyes but a bit more round. He looks like a kid, especially when he laughs.

I used to hate my name, he said. Everyone made fun of it. People thought I was posh.

Are you?

He looked down, shook his head.

You don’t have an accent, I said.

Moved around a bit, he said. His eyes asked for understanding. Tell me about you, Claire, he said.