Swimming Upstream (12 page)

Sometimes loneliness would creep up and catch me
unawares. I'd spend an entire weekend holed up in my living room, content and
happy. I'd read and cook and listen to music, watch a film on TV or sit with a cup
of coffee and stare out of the window at the pretty cobbled streets and houses.
Then suddenly the silence would become oppressive and I'd hear a humming noise
in my head and start to feel a bit weird. I'd start to worry that I was going
slightly mad, and I’d realize by Sunday afternoon that maybe it was because I
hadn't spoken to a solitary person in forty-eight hours. So I'd put on my coat
and walk down to Oxford Street, just to be near people. Now I began to see why
old people spent so much time talking to shopkeepers, or to me on buses.

There was the telephone of course. I phoned
Catherine in Cambridge and, less often, she phoned me back, but I could always
sense Martin hanging around in the background and our conversation was stilted
and distracted.

“We must get together, really soon,” Catherine
would say every time we spoke.

“Whenever you like,” I'd answer, flicking through
the blank pages in my diary.

“I'll call you then.” Catherine would sound
panicky, as if she didn't know quite how she was going to manage this.

“Fine. Whatever.” I didn't want her having any
guilt trips on my account.

Occasionally I'd take the train into Cambridge and
go out for a drink after my shift with people from work but mostly they were
either driving, or married and couldn't stay for long. Those who did seemed
bored, or fed up with being stuck where they were and the conversation would
become negative and ultimately depressing. I knew it wasn't really where I
wanted to be either, out there in no man's land.

By mid August I was getting frustrated. Everyone
knew that there was no chance of Greg coming back to the station but there had
been no mention of his long-term replacement. All kinds of speculation had been
made about his future but nothing official had filtered down.

On the Friday before the Bank Holiday, I woke up
with toothache. I realised I must have been grinding my teeth in the night. I
swallowed a codeine tablet and stood by the kitchen sink in my pyjamas,
drinking coffee and emptying the last few slices of bread out of the packet
onto the work surface. I realised that it was time to confront Phil about the
job. While I buttered and peanut-buttered sandwiches for my lunch I started to
compose my opening dialogue. As I dressed for work I practised in front of the
mirror.

At ten o'clock that morning I tapped on Phil's
door.

“Ah Lizzie,” he smiled vaguely, looking up from a
pile of rosters. He was a short, stocky man, in his early forties, although he
looked older and his receding sandy hairline revealed a complicated
configuration of lines that looked as though they had been etched in with a
stencil. He looked like someone does when they're irritated but trying hard to
be polite. I stood in the doorway until he put down his pencil.

“What can I do for you?”

“I need to talk to you,” I said.

“Sounds serious,” Phil laughed, a little
condescendingly. “I'm incredibly busy. Can it wait?”

I paused for a moment, then decided it couldn't. I'd
lose my nerve by this time tomorrow and he'd still be just as busy.

I took a deep breath. “I'm sorry, it can't.”

Phil waved me good-naturedly into a chair in front
of him and gave me his full attention, levelling his eyes at my chest.

“Fire away,” he smiled at my breasts. I crossed my
arms and his eyes flickered upwards and met mine. I abandoned my pre-meditated
preamble and decided to be direct.

“I've been acting up for Greg for three months
this week,” I began.

“- You're doing very well, Lizzie,” Phil interrupted.
“Very well indeed.”

“I like to think so,” I agreed. “What I want to
know is, is Greg coming back and, if not, what's going to happen about
replacing him?”

Phil's surprise at my forwardness was stoically
masked, almost to perfection. He shifted and leaned forward towards me, placing
his elbows on top of his rosters and pressing his stubby fingers together. He
spoke slowly, as if he were talking to a child. “Greg's attachment at IRN was
for eight weeks initially -”

“I know that,” I interrupted, impatiently. “But
it's been three months now. That's my point.”

“- and we expected him back before now. However,”
Phil continued, just as slowly, “it appears that they've decided to extend the
contract.”

“How long for?” It was beyond me how someone who
was allegedly so busy could spend such an inordinate amount of time playing
with his words.

“Initially a further ten weeks.” Phillip was
losing interest in the conversation. He began shifting the papers about on his
desk. He held a letter up to the glare of his desk lamp, scrutinized it
closely, tore it into strips and dropped it in the bin.

“And then?” I persisted.

“There's every chance that his position there will
be given long-term consideration.”

“Long-term consideration,” I echoed, frustrated
anger welling up inside me. I knew my voice was wobbling. “It's at least four
weeks into the extension of his contract. You must know what's going to happen.
When were you going to tell me?”

Phil sat back defensively, picked up his pencil
and wagged it at me.

“Now just calm down a minute, Lizzie.”

“I
am
calm.”

Phil sat and stared at me, tapping his pencil.
Under the pretence of waiting for me to recover from my loss of control, I
could tell that he was playing for time; he was barely managing to conceal his
own annoyance at my refusal to play out the role of demure child to his kindly
parent. He'd hardly passed the time of day with me since he’d sent me the
letter offering me the opportunity to cover for a senior member of staff on
half the pay and a quarter of the respect, for which I was supposed to remain
eternally in his debt.

“An announcement will be made once the vacancy
becomes official.” Phil’s tone had become detached and professional.

“An announcement?” I shook my head in disbelief. “You
mean you were going to stick up a notice on the staff board?”

“The job has to be advertised,” Phil said. “You
will be welcome to apply, naturally.”

I stood up. “I’ll do that,” I said. “Naturally.”

I spent the rest of the morning preparing the
twelve and one o’clock bulletins for someone else to read and news wraps for
the programme that someone else would present and cues for interviews that
someone else would conduct. By the time the programme finished at two o’clock,
I’d had enough. I had been up since five and had been too worked up to eat all
day. Now I was tired and starving and awaiting the moment when I could sit down
with a coffee, eat my sandwiches and read a chapter of my book before I faced the
long drive back to London.

I pushed open the door to the staff room. There
sat Phil, smoking a cigarette and reading a magazine. I couldn’t believe it -
he almost never mingled with the minions, and there he was, feet up, occupying
two and a half seats and leafing through a copy of Cosmopolitan, chortling
affectedly, in the nearest thing to a retreat that could be found in the
building and in my first free ten minutes all day. I stormed into the toilets
and poured my coffee down the sink. I glared at my reflection in the mirror. Pink
spots of anger were forming on my cheeks. Time to get out of here.

One advantage of the lunchtime shift was missing
the evening rush hour. I cruised down the M11 at a steady seventy, pushed Ella
Fitzgerald into the cassette deck, and fished around in my handbag for my
sandwiches. However, as I passed the Bishops Stortford turnoff, I noticed the
traffic had slowed down considerably. Within a mile of the M25 the dual
carriageway was down to one lane, the road was strewn with police warning
beacons and I became another reluctant statistic in a tailback a mile long.

I sighed and leaned back in my seat. I ripped open
the packet on the passenger seat beside me; my stomach growled in anticipation.
Inside, I discovered that my peanut butter sandwiches now exhibited small rings
of blue and white mould.

It was gone five by the time I pulled up outside
the flat. The street was jam-packed with cars and I had to drive round the
block three times before I could find a space. Finally, as I rounded the corner
onto the road parallel to mine, a Volvo pulled out sharply in front of me and I
edged nervously into the gap behind a gleaming bottle-green Mercedes.

As I crossed the street to my flat, I felt my jaw
aching with tension. I closed the front door behind me, dropped my bag onto the
floor and poured myself a large glass of red wine. I checked the answer phone:
no messages. I lit a cigarette and sank to the floor, leaning my head against
the telephone table.

The wine went straight to my head. I knew I should
eat something really, although by this point, the idea of drinking myself into
a stupor was infinitely more appealing. Eventually, after half an hour of
staring inanely into space I managed to motivate myself into taking a final
journey round the corner for a Chinese takeaway and another bottle of wine. Dragging
myself wearily up with the aid of the table legs, I went to fetch my purse.
After an agitated rummage through my bag, I realised that it must have fallen
out of my bag in the car. I found my car keys, grabbed my jacket and stepped
out into the warm night air.

As I rounded the corner I stopped suddenly and
stood rooted to the pavement. My car was gone; a black cab sat purring in its
place. At first I wondered if I'd got the wrong street, but with a sick lurch
of the stomach I saw, beyond the taxi, the shiny silver bumper of the bottle-green
Merc, still gleaming under the streetlight.

The cab driver drew back the glass and popped his
head out.

“Need a cab, love?”

“My car's gone,” I said, bewildered.

“Gone?”

“Stolen.” The word seemed to echo around me. “It's
only an Astra,” I added, pointing at the Merc. “Why didn't they take that
instead?”

“Doubt it's been nicked, love, not round 'ere,”
said the cabbie. “How much did you put in the meter?”

“What? No, no ... I've got a permit,” I explained.

“Not along here you haven't,” said the cabbie. He
pointed at the pavement. “Meters only.”

I turned round; a few yards away stood a parking
meter.

“You've been towed,” said the cabbie, smugly.

“Thank you,” I said. “You've been very helpful.”

“Need a cab?” he repeated.

“No thank you.” I
sighed, my vision of a night by the fire with a Chinese take-away and a bottle
of wine flickering before me and fading out of sight. “I've got no money. And
anyway, I don't know where I have to go to get it back.”

“West Kensington police pound,” said the man from the Met.

“Thank you.” Thank you for towing my car away and
then telling me how to get it back again.

“Make sure you're there by seven,” he added. “Otherwise
you'll have to pay for an extra day.”

My neighbour, when I knocked, was having a better
evening. She was evidently somewhere in the middle of a working out session, as
Larsen used to call it. She just managed to deposit a couple of pound coins into
my hand before her other half appeared behind her and dragged her off squealing
by the belt of her dressing gown, kicking the door shut in my face in the
process.

I sighed and headed up
the road to Baker Street. As I walked into the tube station my bad ankle gave
way. I lost my footing, stumbled forward, and tumbled down the steps.

“Tell me, is it Friday the thirteenth today?” I asked the
sister in charge. I was sitting in the A & E department at St Bartholomew’s
Hospital, my left ankle once again elevated in front of me and wrapped in a
bandage.

“No,” she replied confidently, after a moment's
consideration. “That's next week”.

I looked up at the ceiling. “Oh Christ.”

A bony finger tapped my arm. “You watch your
language, young lady,” croaked its owner, a spindly geriatric patient, who had
stopped beside me in her wheelchair. I stared at her, dully, until she clicked
her tongue and wheeled herself off again, glaring back at me as she went.

“There. You'll live,” said the Sister. She patted
my shoulder reassuringly. “Nothing broken, just a sprain. Keep it up for a few
days, and you'll be right as rain.”

I smiled; it sounded like a song.

It was all quite funny really, I reflected, a
little hysterically. I'd gone out for a Chinese takeaway in Marylebone, I was
supposed to be at the police compound in West Kensington, and now here I was in
hospital in Islington. I glanced at my watch. It was too late to pick up the
car, in any case. I might as well worry about that tomorrow.

I'd been lucky to get offered a lift to the
nearest hospital by a kind couple who had been parked up on Marylebone Road. It
was
their
nearest hospital in fact; they lived in ClerkenwelI. The
sister had also very kindly given me a cup of tea and a biscuit, which was
strictly beyond the call of duty, I was well aware, and probably beyond the
budget of the National Health Service. You normally at least had to give them a
pint of blood first. I wasn't complaining, not really. It was just that I was tired,
hungry, and in pain and now I wasn't at all sure how I was going to get home
again.

“Good lord!” said a loud voice, very close to my
ear. I jumped in my seat and turned to see the starched corner of a nurse's cap
and a familiar elfin face, its bright blue eyes peering amusedly at me from
behind a stray lock of honey blonde hair.

“Zara? My God, what are you doing here?” I asked,
redundantly, as she stood back to reveal her light blue uniform.

“What have you done?” she indicated my bandaged
ankle.