“And Jeffrey,” his wife’s shrill voice followed him down the hallway, “don’t forget the shopping bags. Asco’s charge for them now they’ve gone green.”
Jeffrey, thirty years married, knew better than to say anything. Instead he ‘harrumphed’ to flag up his disapproval of the environmental lobby and collected the plastic bags from their appointed position under the coat rack and next to the outdoor shoes. At that moment the door bell rang and he flung it open still juggling the bags with one hand. Two pudding-faced women stood in front of him. One of them switched on an understanding smile and said breathily,
“Are you worried about Armageddon?”
“No, I’m bloody well looking forward to it,” Jeffrey replied with asperity. And then turning his head in the direction of the kitchen he called out “Two visitors for you, dear,” before escaping to his car and roaring away as fast as the refuse collection truck trundling up the road would allow him.
At the supermarket he managed to find a parking space near to the store entrance. He couldn’t imagine why cars chauffeuring children should be given priority. Their drivers seemed to be younger and fitter than him. He was convinced that they all had gym memberships but didn’t consider walking across a car park to be legitimate exercise.
His good mood was short lived. A monster of a four by four roared into the adjacent space and parked so close that he was unable to open his door. He glared at the woman passenger who turned to look at him through Dusty Springfield eyes. She effortlessly produced a pink bladder-like bubble from between her oil-slick lips while raking him with an unblinking stare.
“Move your car.” Jeffrey shouted through the window.
The bubble insolently deflated by way of reply.
“I can’t get out,” he yelled.
He was about to wind down his window and try again when he saw the driver get out. He was as wide as he was tall with a tattooist’s catalogue etched up his arms. Jeffrey promptly locked his door. The woman blew another bubble and slowly stuck one finger up in his direction.
“Hope it bursts all over your stupid face,” he muttered quietly before restarting the engine and relocating further away.
Having made it safely across the car park Jeffrey came to his next problem. He was totally unable to disentangle a trolley from the intricately entwined line at the entrance. He pushed, pulled and jiggled with mounting irritation.
“Bloody hell,” he said to the shocked old people shuffling off the community bus, “They must run courses on creative trolley weaving here. Probably at degree level.”
He then stood back and watched while the frail and elderly each managed to liberate a trolley. They slumped heavily across the handles and propelled themselves, at funeral pace, through the shop’s automatic doors.
“Bloody hell,” he said again as he returned to his battle with the metal ware.
“Are you alright, sir?”
The question came from a gangling youth of about twelve, sporting a large green badge with the cheerful logo ‘Here to Help’ emblazoned on it. Jeffrey ‘harrumphed’ into the enthusiastic face of the store’s youth opportunities scheme. A couple of minutes later, totally unaided, he finally made it into the store’s muzak filled interior and the icy temperatures of the chilled department.
He worked his way methodically through the aisles as per the instructions on his wife’s shopping list. He picked up the television magazine and steered a course through salads and veggies, cringing at the massacre of the English language. He proceeded through the meat department with its film wrapped sacrificial offerings and thence into Aisle 9 ‘Pasta and Rice’. It was here he came across a fellow sufferer on life’s journey. Colin, as he later introduced himself, was standing in front of a promotional display of rice, mobile phone pressed to his ear.
“Come on, come on,” he murmured anxiously.
Jeffrey turned round thinking he was blocking someone’s progress when his eyes met the anguished look on the man’s face.
“I can’t remember what she said,” Colin muttered plaintively. “I can’t remember if we had enough basmati and needed arborio, or if it was the other way round. I can see she’s going to make a fuss because I didn’t write it down.”
Jeffrey had been there, done that and the empathy oozed from him.
“Was she going to cook Indian or Italian?” he asked in an effort to help.
Colin seemed to buckle.
“I can’t remember,” he said weakly, “And now she’s bloody well gone out.” He rang off and slipped his mobile back into his pocket.
“You could buy both,” Jeffry suggested, still in helpful mode. Then with a cheerful smile of encouragement he continued his way up the aisle, negotiating a slalom course around dithering shoppers and lethargic shelf stackers. He didn’t meet up with Colin again until Aisle 12 and the frozen food cabinets.
This time it was Jeffrey who was faced with a crisis. He greeted Colin’s approach with the joy of a sinner sensing salvation.
“She wanted cod,” he said without preamble, “and they’ve only got haddock.”
He stared at the empty space on the shelf in front of him, willing it to be filled by some miracle of modern technology.
“Fancy them running out of cod,” Colin said sympathetically, parking his trolley alongside Jeffrey’s and futilely looking along the other shelves, just in case the cod should have chosen to hide among the kippers.
“Oh bugger this,” Jeffrey suddenly exploded, “what the hell are we doing worrying about rice and fish? Are we men or ....”
“We’re probably ‘or’” Colin said.
“Let’s go and get ourselves a drink,” Jeffrey continued, the fire of revolution having kindled slowly, suddenly blazed up.
“What about the shopping?” Colin asked more cautiously.
“Oh, just leave the trolley, who’s going to notice among this lot? Probably the young child ‘Here to Help’ will be tasked with putting it away and serve him right. Never too soon to learn it’s tough in the grown-up world.”
Feeling like skiving schoolboys, Jeffrey and Colin found an empty window seat in the Carpenter’s Arms just across the car park from Asco’s. Jeffrey wondered aloud if the pub could be had up under the Trade Descriptions Act as there didn’t seem to be a stick of real wood in the place. Colin pointed out there didn’t seem to be any real beer either.
“It was reorganisation that did for me,” Jeffrey confided, as they took a cautious sip from their pints and silently contemplated the quality of it. “All those years of commuting and suddenly Sales and Marketing were sent to Mumbai. Poor devils didn’t know what was coming,” he said as an aside, adding resentfully, “It appears I was surplus to requirements.”
Colin nodded morosely. “I was told it was rationalisation.” He put on a posh voice, “We value your contribution but, due to the current financial climate, we are forced to let you go.”
Jeffrey grimaced sympathetically before joining in.
“Of course, I could see it coming. I never got on with all that team building and bonding. Karaoke! Huh! ‘It’s not unusual’”.
Colin waited for him to continue but then he realised it was what he had sung.
“And Maureen whinging on about it,” Jeffrey continued. “As though I wanted to stand up and wiggle my hips like a geriatric Presley. Ritual humiliation that’s what it was.”
“Go-karting,” Colin said his eyes morose with the memory of it. “Couldn’t get the damn thing round the bends. Every time Billington from Accounts drove past I was out of the kart heaving it back on the track. I can hear him now yelling to the others about how cutting corners didn’t pay.”
“And all that bloody gobbledegook they talked. It was like working in a foreign language” Jeffrey was on a roll now. “What we want is blue sky thinking,” he mimicked in a high little voice. “While all the time I was thinking what a load of twats they were.”
The two men sighed at their unhappy experiences and contemplated the scene outside the window.
“Bugger me, look at that,” Colin said suddenly as two young men walked by with babies strapped to their chests. “With a bit of innovation you could probably strap another to your back and still leave the hands free for washing the car. What the hell can they be thinking of?”
Jeffrey watched the men closely.
“D’you know, they look really pleased with themselves. They look like Blue Peter presenters saying ‘here’s one I made earlier’.“
Jeffrey paused thinking about Dan, who was nearly thirty now. He had a mental image of them being strapped together like a parachute instructor with his student. He imagined them manoeuvring around the supermarket. Dan would have to navigate with himself walking tippy-toed behind because of their height difference. He shook his head to clear the vision.
“Would you have been seen walking about like that?”
“No way,” Colin said firmly. “Besides which, we never had any children.”
An awkward silence fell between them.
“I was looking forward to going travelling once I finished work,” Jeffrey mused setting off on another track, “I got all the books from the library. New Zealand, the land of the long white cloud.”
“Ah yes, Lord of the Rings, brilliant film.” Colin reflected on it before continuing, "it was Alaska with me. Whale watching; meeting the inuit, walking with wolves. That sort of thing."
“So what happened?” Jeffrey asked.
“It seems, while I was lining the pockets of the shareholders, the wife had got herself a life. Readers’ group on the first Monday of the month, writers’ group on alternate Thursdays and drumming on Wednesday evenings. All set in concrete. Verboten to miss, apparently.”
“With Maureen it was the patchwork circle. Bloody stupid hobby that it. You take a perfectly good piece of material, cut it up and sew it together again. Then on Tuesdays it’s the over fifties keep fit.
I’m only surprised our wives haven’t met but I suppose they’re too busy.”
“They seem to be too busy to do the shopping at Asco’s,” Jeffrey said.
“Well, let’s face it, they just want us out of the house. We could do the shopping online and get it delivered.”
“Bloody good idea,” Jeffrey said embracing the suggestion with enthusiasm. “But you’re right; they just want us from under their feet. Perhaps we could go to a football match or something? I’m a Man U man myself.”
“Arsenal,” Colin said sensing there might be conflict. “How about cricket? It lasts longer.”
“We could be gone for days at a time,” Jeffrey mused with a certain longing in his voice.
“I don’t really know much about cricket,” Colin confessed, “but they stop regularly for meals so I guess it’s my kind of game.”
“We could take sandwiches,” Jeffrey said getting into the swing of things. “And one of those radios so we could listen to the BBC commentary. D’you remember John Arlott? Those were the days. No youngsters shrieking hysterically across the airways.”
Colin laughed. “You don’t just think it’s because we’re getting old, do you?”
“No,” Jeffrey said seriously, thinking about the really old people getting off the community bus.
“Still,” Colin said, “it feels odd not getting up every morning and rushing out to catch that train?”
“We’ll get used to it I expect,” Jeffrey said more to convince himself than Colin. “How long has it been?”
“What since I ....”
“Yes”
“Must be three weeks now. It was the end of last month.”
“Same for me,” Colin said with a tight smile.
They drained their pint glasses and looked at their watches.
“What now then?” Jeffrey asked eyebrows raised.
“Suppose we’d better get back to the shopping.”
“Not going to do it online then?”
“Not today,” Colin gave an apologetic shrug. “She’ll be wanting that damn rice for tonight I expect.”
“Give me your phone number Colin,” Jeffrey said, taking out his shopping list and preparing to write on the back of it. “Perhaps we could meet up for a drink?”
“Yeah, good idea,” Colin said, “and what about golf? D’you play. Never tried it myself but we could give it a go.”
“Great, great,” Jeffrey said disproportionately pleased with the idea. “Come on then, back to Asco’s. We’re men on a mission now.”
They stood awkwardly together outside the pub like a pair of lovers reluctant to say goodbye.
“I’ll phone you tomorrow then,” Jeffrey said.
“Excellent.”
The silence lengthened between them. Then Colin suddenly clapped Jeffrey on the shoulder like a boxing coach psyching up a contestant.
“Bloody hell,” he said in bracing tones. “Look at us. Come on man, chin up. Remember Neil Armstrong stepping out onto the moon and saying ‘That’s one small step for man and one giant leap for ...”
“Poofters!” yelled a very old man swerving his mobility scooter to avoid them.
(c) Anne Ayres 2008