Читать книгу The Living - Anjali Joseph - Страница 11

Jason’s football practice today. I found myself slowing down on the way home. I went into the Three Bells. I sat in the garden with my shandy, thinking, there’s nothing to do, nothing to do. It was bright, white clouds moving fast across the sky. It wasn’t really warm, but it felt good to sit with my face in the sun. I drank slowly, and thought about smoking. A wasp buzzed around my glass. On another table there was a man with a lanky dog, maybe a lurcher. The man was drinking a pint and talking on the phone. The dog lay at his feet. Every now and then it got up and he would tear off a bit from a slim packet, probably a Peperami, and feed it.

After a while a couple came in. They sat down but got up again and went inside. Then a man on his own. I caught him looking, a sharp glance. Suddenly I thought about my clothes. I go to work wearing anything: jeans, a t-shirt. It’s not worth wearing nice stuff, and anyway half the year I get dressed in the dark. Jane dresses up, but she isn’t working like we are. She wears heels – not stilettos but two or three inches.

I looked at the man again, and saw him looking at me. Was he good-looking? I looked away. The wasp was getting in my drink. I waved my hand at it, caught the glass, and shandy slopped over the side.

Fuck, I said. I moved the glass and shifted away from the wet part of the bench. The man was smiling at me. He was blond, tall maybe, thinnish. His clothes fit well. He looked comfortable on his own, like he always looked the same. I found a tissue in my pocket and wiped shandy off my elbow. Yeah, very cool.

I stared under my hair at the glass, drank from it. I tried to imagine the way he might see me. He probably thought I fancied him. I didn’t want to be looked at, I wasn’t ready. Make a bit more effort, I thought. Try. Wear mascara. Do something with your hair. You’re not dead yet. Something Nan used to say. I’m not dead yet. Then she’d smile. Had I forgotten how to live? Just going on, getting things done.

I finished the shandy, imagined myself outside the factory, and the same person inside, saw myself as though I wasn’t me. A figure in the fluorescent light on the shop floor, walking there in the morning, leaving in the afternoon. A person who could be looked at without disappearing.

I pushed away the glass. A shadow went over me. It was the same man leaving. He slowed as he passed, and looked into my face. He smiled. Afternoon, he said. Nice day. I stared at him, like someone in a dark room when the light goes on. In the puddle of spilt shandy the wasp was on its side, buzzing and flailing. I had the urge to bring the glass down on it, then I was ashamed. I should have said something back. When I got up, I picked up the wasp on the edge of a beer mat and left it to dry in the sun. All the way home I was aware of myself, and my sticky elbow. What each person I passed near the shops and on the road saw when they looked at me, if they did look. I got home and took out the clothes I’d wear tomorrow.