Porky

  At lunch-break you could walk to the canteen two ways: one way through what they said was the butchery, and the other way through the kitchens. I avoided the butchery, so it was some days before I met Jock. I preferred the kitchen route.

  You would have liked it too. The first kitchen cooked Japanese: all stainless steel, with a strip of fish laid out and a few spring onions. Perhaps it was Chinese; I never liked to ask. The next kitchen was Indian, and quite different. They had these giant vats, bubbling. One bubbled orange and one bubbled brown, all oily on top. The aroma was wonderful; I’d always liked curries. Men stood there stirring them with ladles the size of boat paddles. They’d pause when I walked by, and stare, their brown faces perspiring. As I said, there weren’t many English girls at JT and most of them were supervisors and older than me.

  The Indian women never looked up. They didn’t do the cooking; they dolloped out the food. They stood in a row, and my heart lifted when I first saw those stacked foil containers. The women wore rubber gloves; their caps bobbed as they moved, putting a handful of steaming rice into each dish. Then they spooned in the curry beside it, and pressed one green chilli into the rice, artful as flower arrangers. I wondered if they envied the food the direction it would travel. I did. I don’t mean Asia; I mean anywhere. I thought that abroad would change me. I dawdled, watching them pinching down the tops. The dishes were slotted into the narrow metal galleys, ready for boarding. See, I knew the jargon, even though I’d never been inside a plane. I repeated the words to myself.

  It might sound mundane to you, the work I did. But that money mattered. And there I was, sealed off in that steamy brick box, with my thoughts to myself. I was needed in the way the others were needed. Can you see how much that meant to me? And nobody knew the first thing about me. I was a new person, not just to them but to myself as well. That’s what made it alarming, meeting Jock.

  I was slimming, as I said, so I didn’t eat much lunch. Just some cottage cheese, perhaps, and salad. The food was good because they used the same ingredients as for the flights. There were always curries, of course, for the staff, and fry-ups for the English chefs. I’d soon finish eating and then there wasn’t a lot to do. I sat reading magazines; other people smoked but I’d never taken up the habit – you wouldn’t, if you’d heard my parents’ dawn chorus.

  Sometimes I wandered outside, if it was sunny, but there wasn’t anywhere to go. Just the traffic out there, slowing down at the lights and starting off again. I wasn’t the age to close my eyes and will the next car to be red, or white, or whatever it was – I’ve forgotten now. I’d watch the planes coming in, their lights winking in the sunshine. But you felt out of place, standing on the road verge. So I usually stayed inside and read other people’s newspapers in the ladies’, and wandered about. That’s how I found myself in the butchery.

  Slumped in the doorway was a new delivery, two plastic sacks of meat, the blood pressed against the sides as if they’d haemorrhaged. Beyond it was a stainless-steel room, the same as the others, and a big man turning round.

  ‘I’ll be buggered,’ he said. ‘Frank’s little girl.’

  He put down the knife and wiped his hands on his apron.

  ‘Sent you round, has he, to check up on me?’

  I paused. ‘I’m working here.’

  ‘Only joking, wasn’t I.’ He nodded at my overalls. ‘Been here long?’

  ‘Ten days.’

  He wiped his hands again. His apron was streaked with brown.

  ‘Now you mention it, your Dad said you was a working girl now.’

  Jock was one of my Dad’s drinking mates. He was a harmless enough bloke, but it shocked me to see him here.

  ‘Never said it was here, did he? Sly bugger.’

  I’d kept it vague, that was why. Dad didn’t know where I worked. I looked at Jock’s ruddy face. It was as if I’d been in a room thinking I was alone, getting undressed, and then seeing two eyes at the window.

  ‘Laugh a minute, this place,’ he said. ‘Catch me being prejudiced. Which bit you on?’

  ‘Department Two.’

  ‘Better keep an eye on you.’

  ‘Why?’ I backed away and stood at the rotisserie.

  ‘Catch it if I didn’t. You know your old man. Thinks the world of his Heather.’

  I watched the smeared glass window. Behind it the chickens turned, glistening yellow. They turned, showing the holes of their bottoms.

  ‘Bashful, eh? He does, honest. Always talking about his little girl.’

  I made my escape. Back at the counter I couldn’t concentrate. That night, most likely, there were the wrong passengers licking the wrong spoons, up in the black sky.

  I hadn’t got away, of course. Jock or no Jock, you don’t escape just by taking a job. Not when you’re still at home. But it was a start. I felt like a plane, poised for take-off. But how would I get off the ground? I had to believe they’d accept me at British Airways, otherwise there was no point in drawing breath each day. But they don’t recruit from backgrounds like mine; not if it shows.

  It was up to me. I was on my own, as I always was; as I am at this minute, telling you this. I had to get away, with no help from anybody but myself. They have to do it through their looks, women have; people fool themselves if they think a nice face doesn’t help. Once, in a pub with Naz, I was picked up by someone big in cosmetics. He said I’d make a buyer, a well-groomed girl like myself, and why didn’t he give me a tinkle? Perhaps we could discuss it over a meal. There was no phone at home so I told him some numbers out of my head; there’s probably some old dear in Hull or some place who had this man ringing her up in 1977. I told him in a fluster because Naz was there. But you see what I mean . . . I could work my way upwards, if I tried.

  Concentrating on this, I managed to lose weight. Mumbling into my recorder, I reached Intermediate in my French. I had always kept myself well-groomed, the cosmetics man had been right about that; it was probably a reaction against the mud. So I had some things going for me.

  I remember one Thursday, my day off, when I was in the launderette. This was before Dad bought our washing machine. I was sitting beside the dryer, reading the beauty tips in Cosmopolitan. In the corner of my eye I saw moving blackness, through the window, which meant that school had finished. All those blazers, dawdling. I kept my back turned. I told myself that I’d left that behind. Kid’s stuff, I said. As I emptied the dryer I heard them calling to each other across the street. Soon I’d be living in London, miles from here; that’s what I’d planned.

  I pulled out my white nylon pullover. Dad’s socks clung to it. They were black socks; they stuck like dried-up leeches. I peeled them off with a crackle of static.

  Just then someone stopped outside.

  It was Jonathan. He was holding hands with a girl I recognized, from the class below mine.

  I turned back, quickly. Jonathan’s hair was longer now, curling round his ears. I told myself it looked silly. He looked silly, long and gaunt. I waited for a moment; in the reflection I saw their shapes move away. Then I stood up and tried to fold up the white pullover. Trouble was, my legs kept bending; so I sat down again.

  When I got home I told Dad I wasn’t going to wash his bloody clothes any more.

  ‘I’m not your bloody wife!’ I shouted.

  We gaped at each other. Outside Teddy was whooping.

  ‘And I’m not Teddy’s bloody mother!’

  We stayed staring. I’d never shouted at him like that.

  Suddenly there was a crash. Teddy started shrieking. Dad and I rushed outside.

  Teddy had been climbing the drainpipe; it had come away in his hand. He lay on the ground, beside it. I flung myself down and held him. He gripped me, his arms and legs tight around me. He’d only cut his lip. I squeezed him.

  He stopped crying soon, but I couldn’t stop. I heaved and shuddered, soaking his shoulder. He clung to me.

  ‘My darling boy . . . my darling . . .’ I gripped his filthy hand and covered
it with kisses.

  Standing near, Dad was blowing his nose too. When I finally disentangled myself and stood up, my tights were laddered and my skirt muddy. So much for grooming. Who cares about bloody grooming?

  You’d think it would be easy, leaving a home like mine. You’d think it would be a relief. But it’s never that simple, is it?

  Naz worked downstairs, in desserts. That’s how I met her. I was promoted, you see, on account of my performance, so two weeks later they sent me downstairs to Tray Prep.

  The crockery rattled its way there on a rubber belt. It was quieter downstairs and not so smelly because the only cooking was done at the far end, in the bakery. It was open-plan. The kings worked here: the First Class Chef and the Pâtissier. They’d both come from the big London hotels. None of us dared speak directly to them; messages were passed through their assistants. I was shown around, my first day. In the pâtisserie there were gâteaux, and for Economy Class there were tin trays like at school, full of Bakewell tart and a sticky, nutty stuff that the Middle Eastern airlines ordered, Arabs having a sweet tooth. In the Cold Room, a dark place lined with shelves, there was a row of milky eyes. That was the crème caramels.

  I wasn’t shown round the First Class section, where the other chef worked. I got to know that only too well later, but when I started all I saw was this tall man, in his white hat, shouting at his underlings. Boxes of lobsters were carried over to him like maidens, their claws bound and their feelers nodding.

  I worked at the counter in the middle of the room. We did snacks and light meals. I think I was the only one who read the orders; the others weren’t interested. When the supervisor was out of sight I’d go over to her desk, where the forms were pinned. The destinations were written there, with the flight number and the quantity of meals needed. As I wedged in the sandwiches, I knew where they were going. Sausage roll, sealed orange juice and a Jacob’s Chocolate Club . . . I thought myself into their flight . . . to Istambul, then to Bahrein. Beef sausage roll, because they were Muslims.

  Next counter was desserts. There was an Indian girl there; she wasn’t as shy as most of the others and she was a wonderful mimic. She hated the First Class Chef and copied his Manchester accent.

  ‘Call that a roody radish flower!’ she boomed. ‘You nincompoop!’

  We became friends that winter and sometimes went out together on Friday nights, to that disco I told you about. Naz said her family was very strict and they didn’t know what to do with her. She pretended to be her father, with his sing-song Indian voice:

  ‘What are we deserving, that you behave like this? Why are you running wild all over town, giving heartache to your mother?’

  She wriggled the straw in her Coke, and resumed her normal voice: ‘You’re so lucky, Heather. You don’t know how lucky you are.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Ten-thirty. Half an hour before he’s picking me up. God it’s so claustrophobic.’

  In my bones I felt the old longing. I was used to it by now. I told myself over again: poor Naz, what a drag. That usually did the trick.

  ‘Poor Naz,’ I said.

  In fact she wasn’t that wild; just cheeky and a bit rebellious. In other words, quite normal. Just like that social worker recommended me to be. It was all talk, like it was with Gwen. All bravado.

  She didn’t know anything about me and I never talked about my home, or took her there. I wanted her to be separate from all that; I was trying to add more and more things to my life which home couldn’t spoil. One night we were down at the Crown, for Golden Oldies’ Nite.

  ‘Time’s up,’ she said. Her Dad was waiting outside, as per usual. ‘Want a lift?’

  I didn’t want them to see my bungalow, even in the dark. I could walk back; it was only a mile.

  ‘Oh no,’ I said quickly. ‘I’m waiting for Tim.’

  ‘Who’s Tim?’

  ‘He’s my steady.’

  ‘You never told!’ She stared. ‘You’re a sly one! Are you engaged?’

  I looked serene, and decided to nod.

  ‘A whole month, and you never let on! I’m hurt.’

  ‘He’s a pilot,’ I said quickly. ‘He’s often away, you see. In the States.’

  Her Dad loomed out of the cigarette smoke then, so she had to leave.

  Dear God, what had I said? Who was this Tim? I’d never lied to anyone I liked before, only to people I hoped never to see again.

  I panicked at myself. Sometimes these surprises seeped out, vapours from doorways in my heart that I thought I kept closed.

  The next day, to make matters worse, we bumped into Jock outside the gents’.

  ‘Well, well, it’s Heth,’ he said, buttoning up his trousers. He turned to Naz. ‘You looking after our girl, then?’

  ‘She doesn’t need looking after. Not Heather.’

  ‘I’ve been told to keep an eye on her.’ Jock winked. ‘By someone.’

  He meant Dad, of course. But Naz meant Tim. ‘Did he?’ she said, looking interested.

  ‘See she don’t get into no mischief.’

  Naz smiled. ‘The possessive type, is he?’ She turned to me. ‘Ah . . . I’m knowing him better every minute . . . our mystery man.’

  ‘She knows him?’ Jock turned to me.

  I looked longingly at the door of the ladies’.

  ‘It’s because he’s away a lot, I expect,’ said Naz. ‘On his flights.’

  ‘Oh yep,’ said Jock vaguely. ‘Always off, here and there.’

  ‘Heather told me. I’m dying to know more.’

  ‘It’s the nature of his business, see,’ said Jock. ‘The travelling. That’s the haulage trade for you.’

  ‘Haulage!’ said Naz. ‘Yes, it must seem like that sometimes . . . Jumbos full of bodies.’

  ‘Poor little buggers.’ Jock was picturing Dad’s piglets. ‘Off to meet their maker.’

  Naz burst into laughter. ‘Some pilot! I should hope not!’

  This had got out of control. Luckily, Jock ambled off then.

  As we went downstairs she linked my arm.

  ‘A hoot, isn’t he,’ she said. ‘Your friend.’

  I didn’t want a Tim, did I? That was what made it so ridiculous. I didn’t want anybody. Not Jonathan, not anybody. I imagined this Tim. He was no spectre now, he’d grown solid. He had a sense of responsibility, and he wanted two kids. He had the scentless good looks of an American TV actor. Mum would be overwhelmed at my luck. I didn’t want to put a face to any man and here was Tim, risen from nowhere.

  That afternoon I promoted him and sent him away on a training course. States-side, I told Naz. Six months. And I didn’t want to talk about it, I was too sad.

  Work was easy. ‘Always a smile,’ said my supervisor, ‘from our Heather.’

  It’s simple, isn’t it: the jokes, the clatter. I wonder if my Mum felt the same way. Walking in there each morning, I felt lighter.

  You live for the brisk present, your fingers busy. You can push everything else aside. I thought I could, anyway. The things I was ashamed of – I closed them away, like the junk in Dad’s sheds. It was important to keep work separate; at work, at least, I wouldn’t have anything to make me feel confused.

  That’s why it was such a mistake, the business with the chef.

  It was a rainy lunch-time in January that the First Class Chef sat down beside me. With his fork he pointed at my lettuce leaves.

  ‘That keep body and soul together?’

  ‘I’m watching my weight.’

  He cut his sausage. It spurted. ‘You must be joking.’ His voice lowered. ‘You might be watching your weight, love, but I’ve been watching something else.’

  A year ago I might have asked: watching what? Now I said languidly, ‘Oh yeah?’

  The old war machinery clanked into action.

  ‘Looks nice enough to me, the shape you are.’ The egg spilled out. ‘Not offending you, am I? They tell me I’m blunt.’

  ‘You’re from Manchester,’ I said, all pert. ‘That explains it.’ br />
  He laughed. ‘I like that. Know something? I think I like you.’ He swabbed his bacon in the yolk. ‘What else’ve they told you?’

  ‘Nothing. They’re all too frightened.’

  ‘Of little me?’ He looked pleased. ‘And yourself?’

  ‘Oh no,’ I lied. ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Good for you, love. Know something?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s a girl with spirit. That’s what I said to myself, first time I clapped eyes on you.’ He slewed his chip in the ketchup, just like my Dad did. He was a big, florid, handsome man. ‘Know when it was? When our Eric was showing you round. You stopped him. You put your hand on his arm, like this.’ He touched my arm and gave me a squeeze. ‘You asked him some question.’

  I remembered. It was about night flights, what they ate then, but I didn’t feel like telling this man. I wanted to keep him out of all that. I smiled warmly.

  ‘. . . And I thought, here’s a lass who won’t take yea or nay for an answer.’

  The fat had whitened round his plate. I waited, half hoping that he wouldn’t say it, but he did.

  ‘Care to join me in a drink?’

  I paused, knowing this was a mistake. But I felt stupidly flattered too. ‘OK,’ I said.

  He glanced round. We were yards from the nearest member of staff but his voice dropped.

  ‘Wait outside, love. The red Ford Granada.’

  I waited for his sauntering exit; after all, the vans loaded here and he was a married man. We drove down the dual carriageway and stopped at a pub. Along our nowhere roads, pubs have an olde-worlde flimsiness, like stage sets: beams and warming pans and such. I had a Bacardi and he had a double Scotch. In his overcoat, with his greased grey hair, I had to get used to him all over again; without his chef’s hat he looked shrunk and ordinary. Perhaps he, too, was adjusting to my outdoors self: my mauve hands and pom-pom beret. We looked so different that neither of us could think of anything to say.

  But in the car, on the return journey, he stroked my knee. People do all sorts of things in cars, I’ve noticed, that they’d never do on dry land. It’s a voyage, isn’t it – disconnected. It releases you. And you don’t have to look at the other person, which makes it simpler.