recognize
I lived in a small abode, about three feet by two feet. Or so it seemed. Barely room for my feet, let alone the feet of others to share in such limited space.
In childhood I would seek a refuge in a space beneath the kitchen counter where, normally, the tumble dryer was housed. On days when it was pulled out into the middle of the kitchen, its curtained emptiness would entice me to enter this shelter. I would sit next to the pans, hearing the whir of the absent machine, smelling the clean warmth emitted from the pipe poked out the window to release the lint. And I would live there. Momentarily. In my cave.
That tumble dryer space was far more spacious and comfortable than this place.
From the window came the constant bleat of pigeon cooing, the incessant noise of their filthy existence pushing into my brain. I looked out and saw the winged rats necking, flirting, courting, about to bring more of their diseased kind into the world to sit on my windowsill and annoy me. I picked up a nearby bag, blew air into it and burst it. They fluttered their contaminated wings; one even left the sill by an inch. Then they settled back into their attempted shagging. Time for me to leave, to get out and away from such a delightful place.
Out the door and instantly a large, warm, wet drop of rain fell splat onto my head. It almost hurt. Great. Perfect. Perfect timing. By the time I had reached a decent café I was soaked, my shirt clinging to my body, my hair plastered to my head. I should, of course, have returned back to THE CELL. But I didn’t. Pneumonia or death by pigeon: I knew which was preferable.
I began to ask for a cappuccino and somehow the words, ‘a large gin and tonic’ came out of my mouth instead. I went with it, realising the mad thing I would seem if I withdrew my order now. The bar wench seemed to wink at me but I felt it must be a wet and fevered illusion. She was far too cute and I far too wrecked-looking and far too terminally unlucky to possibly receive such a fleeting flirtatious gesture.
I sat, squelchingly onto the bar stool, swept my wet mop back off my face and when I looked up saw before me a sparkling g & t and a clean hand towel proffered my way. There she was again in all her cuteness: Bar Wench. This time she did wink at me and I found myself involuntarily winking back. Not the subtle, sweet wink that lit up her face. Oh no. An almost spasm, twitching its way manically from my astonished phiz. She giggled.
Nowhere is it written that a terminally-bad-luck-drowned-rat should receive such benevolent attention from one so adorable and saucy as this lady.
This was the thought that travelled through my soggy mind as I processed this occurrence. Sweet, sweet, sweet. She has freckles on her nose and tiny, tiny pale veins visible under translucent skin. Her hair, a soft and rich brunette, is piled on her head in a messy chignon arrangement.
I took a sip of the drink as I took sight of her detail and the power of the strong spirit hit a punch into my blood. There was a sharpness of lime amongst the bitter sparkle. This was a g & t made with care.
I felt I might love this lady, she of the delicious beverage and drying assistance. She who now stood away from me so I could take in her denim and cotton clad goodness. I felt a hot flush pass across me. The gin, the pneumonia or her…maybe a combination of all three: I couldn’t tell.
When I was a wee child I had been bed-ridden for several months with some childhood ailment that turned nasty. The intricacies of what ailed me had never actually been disclosed. Each modern trip to the doctor and I was sorely tempted to ask what mysteries lay hidden in my records. Only the mere embarrassment of ignorance and the terminal fear of THE DOCTOR OF CONTEMPTUOUSNESS kept me from actually asking. As I lay in my bed, day after day, week after week, leaving only to stroll around ‘the grounds’ (this is how my mother referred to our 8 foot back yard) while my bed clothes were changed, my self swaddled in three coats to keep me from catching cold (and probably keeping me ill), I was assisted by a near by neighbour, now a housewife but once a nurse. Her name was Mrs Blakely. Or Sheryl. Oh Sheryl. She was my first true love. She smelled of marshmallows and soft musk. A natural musk I only learned years later emitted from some women. A natural sex odour of the satisfied. Well. This was how I saw it. Never having experienced this first hand I was guessing. But she seemed happy and healthy and I took that to mean that she got her some regular good loving. Oh Sheryl. Oh how I loved her. My anticipation each morning of her entering the room with a breakfast tray and a smile: it kept me, I felt, alive. She had a silky look of a lady of an earlier decade: possibly the forties. Her platinum blonde hair curled slightly at the temples and pinned into a do from that era. Her plump lips with a hint of rose lipstick. Her face a dusting of powder. Her frocks were of that vintage, clinging, shaped to her frame, such a curvy, soft, rounded frame. I would sigh as she leaned over me to plump a pillow, or straighten a sheet as her breasts grazed my arm, her nipple I swore I could feel, slipping along my flesh. I would shudder with want for her and she would take this as a symptom.
My mum, not being a nurse, hardly dealt with me at all during this stage. But I didn’t care. I had nurse Sheryl to take care of me. She with her bosom to me contact, her sweet scent, her delightful presence making me feel taken care of and oh so young and randy. She took the look of love in my eyes to be fever. My love to be germs. Love germs. She must have seen this look a lot in her career. Assuming it to be the look of sickness when all us poor schmos were in fact pining for her, wishing she would scoop us out of our beds and into hers. And I was only eleven.
I remember the bitter disappointment I felt when I got better and nurse Sheryl’s visits became less and less. I couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t still visit me to spoon food into my mouth as I gazed at her, change my pyjamas, sponge me down in the bathtub and then tuck me in again. I would no longer get to question her incessantly about her own life: ask where her husband was (turned out, on the road, doing bigamy…how could he?), why she didn’t have children of her own (this would be met by a shaky grin I didn’t have the tact to avoid causing each time I asked this question), why she gave up nursing as she was so good (this would gain me a kiss on the forehead, so I asked this question often). I never, ever got the answers in my sick bed to these queries. However, it did break my heart once she stopped coming around. I guess the excuse to look after a child not her own ceased with my recovered malady. The look of suspicion barely grazing my mum’s face as Sheryl ‘popped in to see the invalid’ who was no longer sickly drove her away. Away from my bed and away from my heart. That love I felt pound each and every day for months was replaced soon enough with my science teacher who would lean over us to light our Bunsen burners and our libidos. Miss Alders, she of the forties looking hair, square face and hearty appetite. Us, doing our utmost to avoid being caught looking down her blouse as she explained to us the periodic table or how to wire a plug or the fascination of symbiosis.
And here before me a modern day goddess to flutter my heart. Bar Wench. She of the kindness above and beyond the call of duty. She of the wink and nice behind clad in blue fabric designed for durability. She who would be another of the handful of maidens I would think about and bottle out of asking out time and time again. She she she. Why would such a dollface give a crap about the likes of me anyway? I would wrestle with this question time and again in my life. One moment feeling I must be worthy to a certain degree. I’d earned it after all the years of bitter disappointment in my life. After all the unrequited love and all the mistaken crushes that had turned into non-entities of the romantic world. Would she, could she? will she, shall we? These were phrases I would allow to pop into the cosmos of my love-life and then settle back into the familiar, nah. I’m just not that type. Not at all lucky. Not at all the kind to have such justice as this. And there she is before me, smiling and proffering a plate of warmed fruitcake. To me. Because I may catch cold and so the heated fruitiness might help some. Should I just imagine that, like nurse Sheryl, she is dedicated to her job as one who is here to help and guide the lost, the in need of beverage and victuals and drying? Or is this a kind of cakey flirting? Should I go out on a limb and make the inevitable fool of myself or just stick to the edge of things and let a possibility slip by without ever really being sure and letting it niggle and bite at me for years – yes years – to come?
I sat on that stool, biting slowly into the fibre-laden confection. It was good, so good and exactly what I wanted. How could she know? Was it innate? Innate for a bar wench? She knew more than I what it was I needed. Was this it? What I needed? My soul mate? Or just another gorgeous girl who would pass through my life and out the other end as a vague possibility, an ever wondered was it what it seemed like?
At school, when I was fifteen there was this girl. Debbie Parker. She was so lovely. As soon as I saw her in humanities, in front and a bit to the left, I knew then and there I would learn nothing more of geography, history or religious studies with her in the room. She was a sweet girl of such lusciousness, of such curvy splendour that I would actually have a little trouble breathing in that class. I was sent to the doctor with possible bronchitis. My inhalers helped some, but the actual symptoms weren’t quenched by Becatide. Over the months, slowly, but surely we became friends. She would sit next to me and copy my wrong answers, offer me a swap of sandwich at lunchtime, go nicking of small items down the shops after school. We were mates. And I was in love with her. And if she ever knew she was gracious about it. Years later someone told me she fancied me and talked about me all the time how I wasn’t interested in her other than as a friend. I didn’t know whether to believe this scandal but it made me so depressed that even the possibility might have been true I didn’t get out of bed for three months. And there was not a nurse Sheryl to keep my spirits up this time. Instead I lost the job I was then pretending to attend and swore that any possible chance in my life from then on in would be taken because life was too short etc etc. and did I? Did I flipping heck did I. No. I didn’t. There were many, many more of these sorry tales in my life. Would this be one of them? Another to add to the list of pathetic woe?
Pulling me out of this reverie was the fact that she wasn’t there any more: Terry, the owner, was instead. Where had she gone? Oh fer chissakes, it wasn’t bad enough I had let this possibility of bar-wench-induced-happiness slide through my fingers, I couldn’t even ogle at her and fantasise about it. I began to open my mouth and order another boozy woe-drowner and I felt the presence of a being near my shoulder. And the scent…that scent that drifted up, it was heady enough to make me lose my senses and my fear of foolishness to turn around and see her there before me.
“OK Cassie, you’re off now then, love?” Terry asked her with a nod.
“Yep, that’s me for the day!” she looked at me with a wide-eyed grin.
“Oh,” was the witty banter that escaped from my mouth.
“You coming then?” she asked. Was she really this brazen? Was it really this easy after all? Was she actually talking to me or did she have a wandering eye and was in fact talking to someone just beyond me and I had it all terribly wrong?
“Hmmmfumuh?” I said. God I was a killer with the ladies.
“Yes, you.” She put her hand on my shoulder.
“Uh, yeh. Of course” I said and slid, ungracefully off the stool.
Cassie, the goddess bar wench Cassie led the way. I followed that denim delight all the way to the street.
“Well at least it’s stopped raining,” she proffered. And I knew this was the time to wow her with my sharp wit and smooth banter. But it wasn’t there and I knew if I forced it, then that would be it. It would fall to the ground like the pathetic strained effort it was.
“You know,” she said, “when I was a kid there was this family next door. And I was so in love with just about all of them at one time or another. Each one stole my heart and I crushed madly and moved onto the next. Each one. I would sit in our empty dog kennel in the yard and watch them. And when they were all used up they moved away. I saw one of them the other day and you know what I realised?”
I shook my head, mesmerised as we sauntered down the street.
“I realised that missed opportunities are more and more of a pisser as you get older. When you are a kid, what does it matter right? You would only have made a mistake and it would have ended badly. But when you get to be an adult…well then it becomes more of a challenge. Let it slip by or take your chance? This morning I looked in the mirror and said ‘it’s time to take a chance. It’s time to live your life like you mean it. It’s time to take the goddamn bull by the horns.’”
I gulped.
“And I told myself that if you came in today we were going to bloody well go somewhere and have some kind of chat and so when you did come in I knew then and there I was right and it was fate and the rains just added to it all because why would you be there if it weren’t meant to be?”
She wasn’t making any real sense but I didn’t care. It was my kind of skewed logic and by god she was talking about being interested in me, in waiting for me to come into that place. Was this the Debbie Parker moment of my adulthood? Was this the payoff for all those years of unrequited love?
“Hang on a moment”, she asked me and disappeared into a strange establishment. I’d never noticed it before and looked on in mild worry at the peculiar implements in the windows. Shiny, scary looking gear, rubber, uniforms, oddness I couldn’t quite fathom. She appeared again with a grin on her face.
“Thanks for waiting,” she said and linked her arm into mine. “I’m studying part time and had to make a stop for some stuff.”
She offered me her wares to look at. There was a nurse’s watch and a science textbook.
“You’re training to be a nurse?” I asked, weakly
“Yeh. But I’m crap at science. Ironic I know! The hot teacher puts me off. Always leaning over me to light the Bunsen burner!” she winked and strolled me happily down the street.
I was too stunned and a little bit spooked to even ask her where it was we were headed. And pretty much, I didn’t actually care. A couple of pigeons flew across our path and she squealed a little and clung onto me, momentarily startled. She looked at me, a slightly nervous giggle and a blush. I smiled and strolled more purposefully along, wherever it was we were going.
Copyright corinna tomrley 2005