By Sam Smith
Published: February 21, 2008
Updated: October 27, 2008 PrintEmail
19) Phoning
Julie has let herself into her mother's kitchen.
"Can I call work?" Julie speaks softly, doesn't want to wake the children, alarm them.
Her mother, in blue dressing gown, is emptying the plastic kettle into the tall white teapot.
"What's up?" sleepy.
"Paul got into a scrape last night."
"Oh?" interest.
"I told you how his grandfather talks...? Well we went for a quiet drink afterwards. Only some bloke hit Paul."
"What for?" amusement.
This, so far, has Julie's mother's approval. This is rebellion. Sensible people go to work and sensibly spend their wages on boring things like cars and videos and holidays for all the family. Alive people, rebellious people, drink.
"No reason at all."
"Paul was drunk?" Eyebrows are arched.
Julie has come here, instead of to the phone box, to get her mother's reaction. She can use that as a measure for what her own reaction will be. She can also practise the telling of this new tale.
"He had some wine with the meal. And a pint in the pub. Neither of us though had seen this bloke before. Oldish he was..."
"And he just started on you..?"
This is the sort of pub-centred drama her mother revels in. Julie wants last night to be different: it is too important for such easy excitement.
"No, he just straight out hit Paul. Didn't say a word, just hit him. Then Paul hit him, and they were pushed outside. As luck would have it the police were already there." Julie drops a sigh, "So they both ended up in the cells. Anyway," she forestalls her mother's misplaced sympathy, "the police let them go because they were both quiet. But, no sooner had they got up the road, than the bloke started fighting all over again."
"Poor old Paul," her mother pityingly shakes her head and pours two cups of tea, "always seems to happen to him."
Julie doesn't want Paul to be just a victim, "So Paul really laid into him. Now he's worried that he hurt him maybe too much."
"Oh no," her mother sits at the table.
"So, if he's going to get done for it, he wants one last day out on his bike."
Her mother slowly shakes her head. The first cigarette gets lit.
"Shall I keep the kids here?" She wants to contribute to this drama, to be a part of it in the future telling.
"Thanks. But Michael's got to go to school anyway. And I'd like to be around. Just in case. The bloke's probably alright, it's just... Can I phone?'
"Why can't anything go right for us?" her mother asks the tall white teapot. Julie dials. listens.
"Hello it's Julie... Morning. Yea... No, I won't be in today... No, Paul's not feeling so good..."
commentary .... Julie may have appeared here, in light of her mother's readiness to help, to be ungrateful to her mother. But Julie had decided, in her own childhood, that it had been her mother's love of drama that had gotten her so intimately involved in her children's concerns, and not her concern for her children.
Julie would sooner have foregone and forgot life's little unpleasantnesses, was not an enjoyer of scenes, wanted only to slip away at the first snarl. But there was nowhere, in her life, to go.
Julie doubted that her mother could remember half the battles she had been involved in; her mother didn't look deeply into herself; and for all the dramas of a life like that, for all the years accumulated, it was only days here and there that were remembered, and then only moments in those days. That's all that Julie's own life had been in retrospect — a small collection of moments.
Julie wanted an existence that would unfold for her like a plan, like the well-known plot of a book. Here I am at Volume Three of Life. And here I am at Chapter Four, childbearing and nappies.... It wasn't that Julie wanted life to be wholly safe, nothing at all happening, no surprises, but she did crave a particle of certainty in her life — other than the sooner-or-later inexorability of death.
True Stories
In March 1989, while employed as night security guards in Brean Down Pontin's, Andrew Trimms, of Highbridge, and Steven Hardcastle, of Furlongs Avenue, Bridgwater, stole more then £9,000 from the fruit machines.
At 1:3Oam, on April 30th 1989, Simon John Burrell, of Bayford Road, Bridgwater, was urinating in St Mary Street, Bridgwater. On being approached by a policeman Simon John Burrell said, "You're not going to do me for that?" Sedgemoor Magistrates fined Simon John Burrell £20 with £20 costs.
At 10am, on Wednesday November 29th 1989, a fire was discovered on the premises of Severnside Waste Paper, Colley Lane Estate, Bridgwater. Over 300 tonnes of waste paper were subsequently destroyed by fire. Because of there being plastic in amongst the paper being burnt, and its giving off toxic fumes, police patrolled the Rhode Lane area advising Hamp residents to avoid going out and to close all doors and windows.
On March 16th 1990 Keith Watts, of Thornton Crescent, Bridgwater, was in a field near Fairfax Road when an alsatian leapt at him, gripping hold of his hand in its jaw. The alsatian, called Rambo, was owned by Nigel Stephen Walford, of Fairfax Road. He told Sedgemoor Magistrates that the dog was not dangerous. Nigel Stephen Walford also told Sedgemoor Magistrates that the dog was now always muzzled when it was taken out.
