A Tiny Bit Marvellous (10 page)

Oscar

The majority of today was supremely unlovely. Dippy Dora displayed the true dimensions of her monumental ignorance at breakfast when she announced with giant confidence that she was hitherto only eating white food. She claims that she has been reliably informed (Heat Magazine, I suspect) that should one limit oneself to only a singular colour of food, one will certainly lose weight. I suggested that blue might be a wiser choice since she would then be restricted to a diet of blueberries, blue Smarties and toxic Slush Puppies. On second thoughts, these are representative of Delusional Dora’s favourite food-types and she would be sure to gorge ’til the statistics of the breadth, height and girth of the silly girl were shockingly identical.

I do wish she might demonstrate some restraint, if only because somewhere, under all the paunch and plastic, my sister is hosting the possibility of something akin to beauty. So, Dreary Dora could one day be Dreamy Dora, should she prevail.

I am well aware that I am no David myself, but I’m afraid the bald unjust truth is that it matters less for chaps. A solid bulky frame such as mine can be viewed as not unattractive. It carries the markings of stature and importance. I am a man of notable bearing. At the risk of pronouncing myself as vain or arrogant, I think I can safely claim that I am a significant person. Physically, at any rate. Dizzy Dora presently appears to be someone who couldn’t care less. The irony is all too apparent because, of course, she cares very much, certainly about what others make of her. I know from some of the louder, more gauche fellows at school that she is thought to be very nearly pretty but far too apologetic.

If Dreadful Dora could only know her potential, I do believe she could thrive. However, this latest show of madness will not assist her in that respect. White food. What means she? Perhaps she will live on a diet of clouds.

After that inauspicious start, I had to face the fact that it was Tuesday again and I must inevitably fulfil my promise to George and finish the filing, despite knowing there was absolutely no prospect of viewing my darling. If I were to withdraw from this commitment, I would only alert them all to my passion, so I must needs do these last few pointless, fruitless Tuesdays.

I could hardly bring myself to connect with Lisa, who insists on yabbering incessantly, blissfully unaware of my failing interest. Today was a particularly gruesome diatribe:

‘Right. Listen up. Amputation. Sounds unlikely but, supposing, Peter slash Oscar, that a person was trapped by a limb in a burning wreck, yea? Imagine that. Terrifying. Immediate action is required. One! Application of a makeshift tourniquet using garments as restrictors. Two! The precision of the incisions, to exclude important arteries. Three! The correct severing of the muscles and retraction of the skin are crucial to successful recovery. And you are going to need your buddy to recover fast, mate, believe me, to help you ward off wild animals who will for sure be circling you for the kill once the fire is out and they’ve smelled the blood.’

All these details were apparently crucial, and had to be explained at length. At spleen-wrenching, vomit-inducing length. I was tempted to tie off Lisa’s arteries and, using all the tricks she’d taught me, relieve her of her tongue. Instead I gradually shuffled my way to the door and finally withdrew to the back room.

I only had the last five letters of the alphabet’s worth of files to sort, meaning mercifully, not many. I was interested to see two generations of a family of Vickers had been regular clients, with depression and low self-esteem at the centre of their various difficulties. The problems of the Walker family were mildly entertaining also, including one incident of self-harming with a Stanley knife. I had very nearly finished my task when I noticed a file under ‘W’ was out of place. On closer scrutiny I was curious to find the surname attached was ‘Wilson’. Of course, I had to read on, despite the fact that Wilson is a very common name and it would be highly unlikely that these folk would be attached or related to my particular Wilson.

The case was beyond tragic. It seems that when the boy Luke was three, he and his father were fishing for dabs in the sea when they were cut off on a sandbank by the tide. The boy, at his father’s behest, climbed on to his shoulders to remain above the rising tide. The mother and older brother on the shoreline had called for assistance, but the older brother who was twelve couldn’t bear to wait and had frantically swum out to help. When he reached his father and brother, he discovered that his father’s legs had sunk into the muddy sandbank and he couldn’t get out. Meanwhile the tide was quickly rising and starting to lap over the father’s head. The brother dived down repeatedly to try and extract his father’s legs, to no avail, and gave his life in the attempt. When the rescue boat arrived to gather up Luke, he was still perching precariously on his drowned father’s shoulders.

I found myself in floods of tears reading this awful account, movingly told to my mother by Luke himself. How would one ever recover from such a disaster? I could see that Mama had been incredibly sage in her analysis of this woeful boy’s long-held guilt. Much of his poor record at school and all-round underachievement, which his distressed mother was so worried about, could clearly be assigned to this tragedy. He was often predicting his own failure, and then living a self-fulfilling prophecy. He was having regular weekly sessions with Mama and was trying to work his way slowly out of the big wretched cement boots of guilt he was clonking about in. Poor Luke. My heart was bleeding for the sad little mite he must have been.

I then looked at the contact details on the top of the last page of the file. Luke’s mother, who attends the sessions with him once a month, is called Karen, and she’s a dinner lady. At my school. Wilson’s mother is a dinner lady at my school. LUKE WILSON. I’ve never known his first name. Year 9s don’t have Christian names. Luke is Wilson.

A Tiny Bit Marvellous

Dora

Right, I’ve GOT to finish my art coursework by the end of this week so what I’m going to do is: I’m going to make a list of all the things I need to get and do for the school prom and for my bunnies party before I start that.

School Prom:

Purple Prom Dress (below knee, strapless with netting petticoats) Bag to go with dress (small, but must fit phone in) Shoes to go with dress (at least 3½ inch heel) Strapless underwired bra. 36DD Pants to match. Not underwired Hairpiece. To match own hair but be able to curl and put up Tiara or flower or blingy hair slide Short jacket or, like fake fur wrap thing Tights (won’t need if legs are tanned) False eyelashes with sparkle on Jewellery – necklace, earrings, rings (expensive-looking or borrow Mum’s) Book a tan session, hairdressers, full manicure and full pedicure with tips Book limousine or check if I can go in someone else’s
Get a camera. Only got the one on my phone and it’s crap Charge up and borrow Dad’s video recorder Get boyfriend or date for the night

Own Party. 18th Bunny Bonanza:

Book a big room in hotel Get Bunny outfit. (Ordinary, sexy outfit but with bunny ears and tail) Fishnet tights Shoes (at least 4 inch heel), ’Black, shiny Big earrings (hoops but not chavvy) Tiara (with BIRTHDAY GIRL written on) Huge cake (with funny but flattering statue of me on top) OR loads of different-coloured cupcakes with like glitter on Book DJ (don’t let Mum do this) Get flashing disco lights Rent karaoke machine Book Hummer limo for me to arrive in Loads of lager, vodka, coke etc. Glasses (with umbrellas, cherries etc.) Get badges with ‘Dora is 18’ printed on for everyone Try to book a boy band or something. (Like maybe an old one like Blue or something to make it cheaper?) Get someone to make a film (get loads of friends and family to wish me happy birthday and say nice stuff about me. I will look surprised and cry when it’s shown on the night – should also film) Organize food – (8 family buckets of KFC?) Get boyfriend or date for the night

A Tiny Bit Marvellous

Mo

Caught sight of myself today in the window of the bank at lunchtime. For a tiny millisecond, I genuinely did not recognize the reflection. Firstly it was moving very fast and so I only glimpsed it momentarily, the way you sometimes see a bird dart into a bush. Swift, sudden, hardly there. It was only after I had passed and was starting to process what I had just seen, that I realized I was moving fairly fast myself, in fact I was entirely in step with the blurry bundle of grey I had just spotted beside me in the window of the bank. In the window. In the reflection of the window. In the reflection.

So then, that must have been me.

The shock of this realization slowed me down ’til eventually I stopped. Right outside the estate agents. I turned to look again, this time in a different window, which was full of property details suspended in clear plastic, behind which was an office of eager, attractive young liars at desks. I wasn’t looking at them, I was confirming my suspicion that the reflection I’d already seen was in fact me. The stack of haggard grey was indeed staring back at me with frightened eyes in a face that was similar to mine but much older, and more like Pamela. No doubt, though. It was definitely me, just not the me I imagine myself to be.

I suppose that if I think about it at all, I would imagine that if anyone met me, they’d meet an above-average-height woman with a good French-ish shortish darkish haircut, a long face with large very green eyes (often commented on), a fine nose, and a large mouth with lots of tidy teeth. A face that says I’m clever but not intimidating. I have never relished being tall, so I don’t think I read as a tall-and-therefore-more-important-than-you sort of person, but I’ve somehow always imagined my physical persona permits people to know I’m in charge if needs be, that I’m not to be messed with.

I’m not super-fashionable and of course I have to wear the appropriate clothes for work, but even so, I’m pretty sure I’ve got a fairly good sense of style. I know how to wear tonally correct, simple classic clothes. I wear a lot of linens and layers, subtle blues and greens and browns. I like a pashmina and, unlike many tall women, I like a heel. I love jewellery that makes a strong statement. Big necklaces hewn from amber and tiger’s-eye are among my favourites. I prefer stockings to tights (sole reason Husband proposed), and a fountain pen to a biro. I wear fresh sharp citrus scents, nothing sandalwood or musk. I always have one very good coat that I’m prepared to spend a month’s wages on once every two years.

Today I was wearing that good expensive coat, which is one of the reasons I was so shocked to see a tired middle-aged woman in a cheap coat looking back at me. An ill-fitting dreary grey coat. How could I have misunderstood the grey so thoroughly? I thought it was an elegant, mysterious, timeless rich grey, for rich people with immense taste. It’s not, it’s ageing and wersh and weak. My coat is insufficient, and so am I. Everything I have always feared becoming was staring back at me. I seem to have already become it while I am pointlessly fearing it. I looked tired and desperate somehow. I look as if I have been savaged by life. This shouldn’t be happening. Not ever, never mind yet. I look like some bad clothes wearing a woman. I am tall, yet I seem to be a woman of impoverished demeanour. How the hell have I ever assumed that I am even slightly powerful? Evidently … I am a wreck.

Why hasn’t anyone told me about this? Why hasn’t Husband shown signs of shock and dismay? Why hasn’t Pamela given me a warning shot across the bows? Did it happen so gradually, imperceptibly, and that’s why I haven’t seen it? I’ve noticed the surrendering of my face, but when did the entire person give up? I am walking about in this body believing that I am underpinned rather well, but obviously I have subsided, and no one has got the inspectors round or informed me. Is it that I only ever really look in small mirrors, so I haven’t seen the full-length effect?

I was so supremely shocked by the sight of myself that I attempted to walk off several times to escape the reflection, but I had to keep returning to that window, to confirm that what I’d seen was in fact true.

Eventually, one of the young pretty liars emerged from the gloom on the other side of the glass to flash a knowing smile at me. He was mouthing something … What? Smiling and beckoning. Oh Lord, he thought I was looking at one of the properties in the window, when I was actually looking at myself. He came to the door and invited me inside. I was so taken aback by what I’d seen and so embarrassed by what he’d thought I was looking at, that, for some inexplicable reason, I meekly followed him in. Forty minutes later, I emerged from there with a handful of particulars for gorgeous little country cottages that were, apparently, in my price range. My entire lunch break was misspent with a young man I didn’t like, looking at houses I don’t want, pretending to be a person I’m not. What the shitting cock is going on? That’s forty minutes I won’t get back in a life that’s already six months in arrears.

I hurried back to work and spent the few precious remaining minutes of my lunch break in the toilets dabbing away furiously at my face with make-up, in a vain attempt to staunch the horror, applying my own Boots-sponsored mask.

I was amazed that none of my afternoon clients recoiled in shock, so I can only deduce that I am correct in thinking the decline has been gradual and no one wants to be the first to notice it. Or perhaps, worse, none of them ever actually take any note of me whatsoever. They listen to me and they hear me but they don’t really look at me – is that it? Have I become invisible? Would I be more effective as simply audio? Have I become so unfortunate to view that it’s simply easier for everyone to slightly look through me, just as you do when you are face to face with a person with a disfigurement of some sort? We sort of look beyond, we distract ourselves with the importance of what we are saying rather than dwell on the difficulty of the looking.

No one is looking at me, they’re not seeing me. I’m a ghost.

A Tiny Bit Marvellous