Flying Under Bridges (4 page)

Paul
beamed, Nick beamed, Trish came in and served the wine. Everyone was thrilled.

‘Isn’t
that a great title? I just love the title,’ boomed Paul.

‘Great
title,’ echoed Trish the mouse.

‘Chardonnay?’
enquired Paul. ‘It’s a lovely little oak-smoked—’

‘No,
thanks.’ Inge waited for Trish to go back outside. ‘Great. It’s a great title.
What’s it about?’

Paul
picked up a sheaf of papers and started leafing through them.

‘According
to our Audience Approval Ratings, we thought about.., seven o’clock for half an
hour.’

Inge
shook her head. ‘Sorry, the idea, for the show.’

Nick
blinked and Paul swallowed some wine.

‘Obviously
it’s not finalised but… Nick?’ Paul looked to his trusted deputy.

‘Yes,
well, it’s a panel game with you hosting and other famous sporting
personalities competing in two teams—’

‘Like
A
Question of Sport?
I mean, that’s been done. Sue was brilliant.’

‘Same
sort of set but totally different concept. Obviously that was sports people
answering, you know, questions about sport. This will be different.’

‘How?’
persisted Inge, still reeling from the Wimbledon announcement. None of this was
what she had expected from the meeting. Nothing was what she expected any more.

‘Well,
obviously the actual content of the show is in development.’ Nick faltered for
a moment but then rallied with an idea. ‘But I did think of one section called
Sports
Balls,
where we find footage of famous sportsmen who fall or whatever and
show their, you know, balls, except because it’s seven o’clock and family and
that, we block that bit out and the audience will all say—’

‘Don’t
even go there!’ Inge finished the sentence for him.

Paul
and Nick nodded and drank some more wine. Paul smiled at her. ‘I knew you’d
like it. I think we’re looking at a catch-phrase for the nation. The public
will love it. They love you.’

That
was the day Inge learnt that the corporation had no more sport for their most
famous sports presenter to present. Everything was going to have to change. It
should have been all right. Inge was famous. Everyone knew Inge Holbrook. She
probably should have known better than to move back to Edenford.

Chapter
Three

It’s when you go to the
supermarket that you see the true triumph of women’s liberation. Each
out-of-town superstore is packed with women leading full and satisfying lives.
These are the women who have achieved the serenity of motherhood, the satisfaction
of a creative career and the ability to achieve orgasm during the spin cycle of
one of their many efficient household appliances. Women who know how to fondle
a melon into ripeness, a child into slumber and a man into ecstasy. Is it true?
Wander down any aisle and find out.

While
Inge’s career was being loved and going ‘up, up, up’, her old school friend Eve
Marshall was doing the weekly shop at the giant out-of-town supermarket. She
looked like any of the other countless women who had pulled up in their Ford
Fiestas and their Vauxhall Cavaliers to replenish their food stores and sustain
their loved ones. Slightly overweight, slightly unfit, slightly distracted. Minimal
make-up, maximum perma-press. These are the women who aren’t supposed to exist
any more. They were supposed to have woken to the clarion call of liberation
given in the 1960s and 1970s and reached out to fulfil themselves. Instead,
these women had stolidly followed in their mothers’ silent footsteps. The
women knocking on the glass ceilings of corporate affairs might find it hard to
imagine these suburban lives, but they are still being lived. Some with more
equanimity than others.

The
wire shopping trolleys stood waiting in serried ranks next to the homeless man
selling the
Big Issue.
He had been rather popular when he’d first
started. Many of the women had found paying
50p
a convenient way to feel
they had dealt with the homeless but, annoyingly, the man kept coming back. No
one had said anything, but there was a quiet consensus amongst the shoppers
that he was pushing his luck. Surely he had been there long enough to have
found a home by now? How many 50ps could it take, for goodness’ sake? In quiet
disapproval at the vendor’s persistent life on the street, most of the women
shoppers had stopped buying the paper. Now the thing had gone up to £1 and that
had really overstepped the mark. One could feel sympathetic but there was a
limit. Even Cancer Research only came out with their collecting tins one day a
year, and cancer was something anybody could get. Even, annoyingly, well-off
people with private health care.

Eve
wasn’t shunning anyone. She just didn’t see the homeless man. She didn’t see
anybody. She was trying not to think about shopping. Actually, she was trying
not to think. She had recently decided that thinking did her no good at all so
she was trying to shut down her brain, but something always sent it whirring
off again. A woman in front of her was pulling at a trolley that clung to its
metal colleagues, desperate not to be put to work.

‘Dreadful,
aren’t they?’ Eve said brightly to the struggling woman. ‘Did you know that the
shopping trolley was invented in Oklahoma City in 1937 by the owner of the
Humpty Dumpty Store? Oh yes. The first ones were made out of folding chairs.
The feet were put on wheels, then there was a basket on the seat and you pushed
the whole thing with the back.’ Eve’s audience was unimpressed. Eve smiled. ‘Had
to be invented by a man, don’t you think? I’ve got a book called
Facts You
Didn’t Know,’
she called, as the woman salvaged her trolley and disappeared
into the shop.

Eve
sighed. What a useless piece of information. Facts You Didn’t Know and Didn’t
Care About. She eyed the wheeled basket selection. She had a theory about
shopping trolleys. There had been a time when she thought they all had one
wonky wheel, but then she had decided that would be an odd thing to invent.
Lately she had concluded it was personal. There was just one defective trolley
and she always chose it. Eve moved slowly towards one of the carts and then
darted to another by surprise to see if that made a difference. She moved off
towards the automatic doors and her trolley lurched and tripped over its
inevitably faulty wheel.

The
place was full of two types of women: those with lists and those without. Those
with had their heads down and were busy efficiency shopping around the acres of
sustenance. Those without had arrived in the hope of inspiration. That the
Muse de Manger, St Creuset, might suddenly appear over the wet-fish counter.
Eve was listless in every sense. She couldn’t be bothered to write a list any
more and she could hardly bring herself to drag round the aisles. She hated
shopping. She passed the flowers and moved into the fruit and veg. The
supermarket had provided a paradise of fresh produce to lure her into the
bowels of the shop. Here was freshness, here was goodness, here was that
just-picked wonder of Mother Nature, which her family cried out for. Eve
supposed she ought to buy some but she resented it.

‘The
lure of the lemon and the call of the kiwi fruit drag us ignorant women in to
buy fresh things, which rot in a bowl on the dining-room table, and tinned
things, which don’t. They think we are stupid and it will make us buy more. We
are and it does.’ Eve spoke to herself in her head. It was a new habit. She had
so much to say and no one much to say it to.

She
looked at the fresh herbs and the exotica. A large sign asked her ‘Why not do
something successful with a star fruit?’

It was
an impossible question to answer, so Eve moved on. There was a special on
plums. A woman with screaming twins in her trolley jammed the aisle ahead. The
poor woman was trying everything to quieten her shrieking pair of babies. She
waved rubber toys, made curious noises with her teeth, shook the trolley in a
gentle sway, but the babies just screamed. The woman was at a complete loss.
Eve looked at the babies. Perhaps they weren’t the woman’s children at all.
Perhaps, as there were two of them, they were some special offer she had picked
up at the front. Buy one, get one free. Eve couldn’t get past, so she picked up
some of the plums beside her and put them in her trolley.

From
where she stood, Eve could survey the lie of the land. She knew it would not be
a good day. In an attempt to add to the joy of the supermarket experience, the
powers in charge had moved everything.

‘Look
everyone, here’s something fun — Bakewell tarts are now in the crisps section!’

Once
she was released from Fresh Produce, Eve moved methodically up and down the
aisles until she reached Household Goods. Whoever was in charge of this section
had made something of an effort. A display of tin foil had been rather
artistically laid out to encourage people to cook turkey out of season. Fans of
foil were splayed out to look like metallic Christmas birds on a bright, orange
board. Eve had stood for some time in front of Paper Goods trying to decide
whether 100 per cent recycled toilet tissue was more or less environmentally
friendly than Sustainable Forest paper, when she suddenly looked up and caught
sight of herself in the fold of a foil bird. She was frowning and all she could
think was that what really needed recycling was herself.

It was
sort of shocking. Life-changing moments ought to be big, cataclysmic affairs,
things that shake and change the shape of your world, but if your life is
already made up of minutiae then perhaps the big change arrives with a tiny
herald. All that happened was a glance at the arse of a bird made of kitchen
wrap, but Eve could hardly get her breath. She saw herself, really saw herself,
for the first time in years. It was not some glance in the morning mirror to
see if she absolutely had to wash her hair. It was a long look in a distorting
display and she knew suddenly that she looked old and fat. She looked like
somebody’s mother. In that instant, that insignificant instant, Eve suddenly
wanted out of her own life. She walked on in a haze of discontent and
depression.

The
vicar, Reverend Davies, was in Frozen Food, rummaging through the veg section.
The man had rather an unfortunate harelip, so no one could have been the least
bit surprised to see him selecting washed and peeled carrots for his tea.

‘Ah,
the lovely Mrs Marshall,’ he beamed, clutching a dripping bag of orange rabbit
food. Reverend Davies’s top lip was hardly there at all. His mouth seemed to be
entirely made up of bottom lip and huge front teeth. The effect was to create
something of a spray when he spoke. The Lord loved him but not enough to provide
orthodontic work.

‘The
flowerth are looking lovely in the north aisle. I alwayth thay there’th nothing
tho thummer-like ath thunflowerth in theathon.’ Water dripped from the carrots
and from the end of Eve’s nose. She always forgot not to stand too close when
the Reverend came up with a sentence containing a lot of Ss. Later she would think
that perhaps she should have paid more attention to Reverend Davies. This was
God’s envoy. This was her passport to Paradise. Perhaps he could have helped
her. The pastor of St Mary the Virgin of Edenford. Unfortunate name for a
church, she always thought. Made it sound as if Edenford had just the one
virgin.

‘Thee
you for the Thummer Thocial?’ he enquired, with a fresh gush of saliva. Maybe
it was a test from God and Eve failed. She nodded her answer and moved on to
drip dry amongst the custard tarts and bottled waters. Eve didn’t know why she
did the flowers at the church. Reverend Davies came round one day for jumble
and she didn’t have any so she ended up doing the flowers instead. She wasn’t a
churchgoer at all, but Eve liked arranging the large bunches. She liked cutting
the fat stems of new flowers so that the sap ran down on the wrapping paper.
She liked watching the green stems dive into the clean water in the tall vases.

The
shopping trolley dragged Eve from one zigzag to another, finally leaving her
jammed against a display of foreign goods. She had selected nothing for any
meal whatsoever. Just the special-offer-near-at-hand plums. In a dump-bin by
the till the Lords of Food were trying to shift starter kits for Mexican food,
so Eve bought one of those and left.

The cat
was waiting when Eve got home. It hid behind the hat stand in the hall watching
her unload the bags. There was no love lost between Eve and that cat. Adam had
bought it for her one Christmas. He never asked Eve if she wanted a cat or,
indeed, what she thought about cats in general, because it was meant to be a
surprise. It certainly was. Eve didn’t like cats at all. They seemed to her
snooty creatures and somehow the cat, Claudette, seemed to know this. It bided
its time. Eve was just bringing in the last lot of perishables when it pounced.
For a moggy it had exceptional athletic ability. From behind the hat stand Claudette
flew into the air and landed in the middle of Eve’s shoulders. Eve dropped the
shopping and the box of plums spilled out over the floor. Claudette clung on
for a good minute and Eve could have sworn she heard her laughing. Then for no
reason whatsoever the cat just dropped to the floor and buggered off. She did
it all the time. Never when anyone was watching. Just when Eve was alone.