Ordinary Miracles (20 page)

And then he smiled.

It was a nice smile. An inward smile. A witty city smile at
the world. And as his eyes lit up I knew this man meant business. This man who walked through my rooms and wouldn’t
let me hide. This man who watched, and liked what he saw.

We were kindred spirits – I knew that suddenly. There was
a touch of hidden sadness to him. Of unplumbed depths. I
would stroll through his unlit rooms too – flicking switches
– laughing kindly. We would fall madly and beautifully in
love in a wonderfully mysterious way.

But not just yet.

Truth to tell the thought of all this passion made me slightly
phobic. To have so many hopes – dreams – riding on just
one person. A person who, let’s face it, I didn’t know in
the conventional sense, made me walk into that café like a
wanted woman. I didn’t look up or sideways as I ate my
macaroni cheese or the same fish dish with a hundred names.
It was one of the cafe’s little tricks. One of life’s little tricks too. Love – how on earth did one know if one had found it?
But he was different. I wanted to believe that. I wanted to
believe he really was Seafood Mornay and not just the same
flaked haddock disguised in lumpy sauce. I longed for him
so much that just seeing him in the distance made me want
to run in the opposite direction.

Things came to a head at Anne’s party. I saw him across
the room talking to her. How did Anne know him? No one
had said he was coming. And he’d seen me. ‘Oh God!’ I thought, ‘I’ll have to run away.’ Run across the moors and
the marshes, even though my parents’ house was only down
the road.

I was reading rather a lot of Charlotte Brontë at the time.

‘Maybe he’ll run after me,’ I thought. ‘Maybe he’ll grapple
with me warmly, passionately, his firm manly thighs pressed
against mine. Maybe he’ll say “Still, still my beauty. Surren
der my darling. Let go into my arms.”’

But I didn’t run away. I stayed at the other side of the
room. And they snuck up on me from behind.

‘Jasmine, there’s someone I’d like you to meet,’ Anne said
a
s she tapped me on my shoulder. I swung around. ‘Jamie – J
asmine – Jasmine – Jamie,’ she said. Then she smiled inno
cently and disappeared. I learned later that Jamie had seen
Anne with me in the café and asked for an introduction.

Silence followed that introduction. A silence that was so
electric, so full of the unspoken, I was sure people would
soon turn and stare. I looked up, and for a mesmerising
moment met Jamie’s sea blue eyes. I swam into them, as if
dragged by a current, and then pulled myself away. I was out
of my depth. The whirring in my head felt like a helicopter. If I didn’t act soon I would be lost. I opened my mouth, and
then I closed it. When I opened it again I said ‘I’m sorry, but
I have to go.’

A smoochy song was playing as I pushed my way past
the couples. ‘Hey wait!’ Jamie called out – and I started
to run. ‘Hey – wait!’ He was yelling now. What should I
do? Where should I go? With a sigh of relief I saw the open
bathroom door.

‘I’m right of course,’ I thought as I sat in my skirt on
the toilet seat. ‘Absolutely right. A woman can only take a
fantasy so far, and then the fever has to fade – burn itself
out. He’s clearly unbalanced – shouting after me like that.
He’s a desperate man.’

As I sat on that toilet it seemed clear that part of me
came from the wrong side of town. It was full of strange
talk and loud lipstick. But I couldn’t go around throbbing
and palpitating like Lady Chatterley. If I did that I’d never
master Gregg shorthand.

My dilemma was making me hot and sticky. I removed
Anne’s body spray from a shelf and squirted ‘Dynamique’
under my arms. A woman had to wise up – I saw that
now. Otherwise she’d have ‘ants in her pants and an itchin’
round her heart’…like Aunt Bobs used to say. It was a
lmost certainly a quote and probably American. Aunt Bobs
developed a certain fondness for jazz in her later years.

I stood up and flushed the toilet. I ran the taps and spat
and gargled for good measure. I’d been in there five minutes.
People were knocking at the door.

‘He must be gone now,’ I thought, staring at a bottle of
Badedas. He was right outside the loo.

‘Hey wait! Wait a minute!’ he called out. I ran upstairs for
my coat.

There were a mass of coats on Anne’s bed. I dived into them
searching for my Afghan – the coat that my mother said smelt
like a yak had slept on it in a dank Himalayan shed. He came
in. My knees felt like jelly. I wanted to plunge past him and
down the stairs – but I wasn’t sure I’d make it. I wanted
to dive under the bed until he was gone. But he probably
wouldn’t go.

He moved closer and held something out to me.

‘What’s that?’ I asked edgily.

He smiled. ‘It’s your handbag,’ he said. ‘You left your
handbag downstairs.’

At first my giggling was just nervous. A release of tension.
Then it turned to laughter, along with his own. We spluttered
and hiccupped with mirth – and in my case embarrassment.
And when we stopped I wasn’t frightened of him any more.
That’s how we started – me and Jamie. I feel foolish remembering it now.

And I feel foolish wishing I was one of the young girls who
are getting off this bus, giggling, full of Saturday. I watch
them heading home up avenues, clutching their early morning
purchases. The bus is travelling through a leafy part of town.

I want to be young again – to be cradled in my father’s
arms. I want him to say ‘There, there. You didn’t know any
better.’ I want to have inexperience as my excuse.

People have been creatures I’ve coped with for so long now I can barely bring myself to hope that it will ever be
any different. Most of the time I don’t know what they’re up
to. Even with Susan I sometimes feel I’m negotiating some
maze that has no entrance and no exit…just a strange muddled place with huge holes I must not step into. Holes
covered with grass so I cannot see them. I can only feel the
earth give way and then the fall. And as I do I hear carefree
laughter in the distance.

‘I’d hate to be a royal,’ a woman is announcing to a friend
in the seat in front of me. She makes it sound as if being a royal were once, somehow, an option. ‘I simply couldn’t stand all that prying and publicity.’

‘Are you all right Jazz?’

Only one person calls me Jazz. I look up and see the
bright concerned face of Richard MacReamoin, former adult literacy student. He has two gold earrings in his right earlobe
and a long blond ponytail.

‘Oh, hi, Richard. I’m – I’m fine – I was just day-dreaming.’

‘You’re hunched up there like a learner driver. What’s up?’

‘Oh, nothing much. Anyway now you can cheer me up.’

He sits down beside me. ‘Why do you need to be cheered up?’

‘It’s a rather long story.’

‘Well, just give me the headlines.’

And I do.

‘Wow!’ Richard says as I finish. ‘You’ve been through a
lot.’

‘Yes, I suppose I have.’ I suddenly feel more cheerful.

Then Richard hands me a slab of chocolate. As I munch it
I remember I haven’t had any breakfast and it is now almost
lunch time.

‘I’m working at Burger King at the moment. I’ve decided to study graphic design at night classes,’ Richard reveals.

‘Hey, that’s great news. I still have that card you drew for
me. It’s really good.’

‘Was that the one of the pig flying over the rainbow?’

‘Yes.’

‘’Cos you like pigs. Right?’

‘Right.’

Richard tells me how he went to the library last Saturday
and took out a book on Gauguin.

‘Just left stockbroking and fucked off to Tahiti. Great,
isn’t it?’

‘I’m sure his wife was a bit surprised.’

Richard starts on about oils and watercolours versus
acrylics then and as I listen I wish Dad was here with us.
Dad taught adult literacy too. He was a born teacher who
believed in his pupils long before they believed in themselves.
Dad would enjoy this.

Maybe he is enjoying it.

‘You’re day-dreaming again.’ Richard is looking at me.

‘Sorry, Richard. I was thinking about my Dad. He died last year.’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’ He squeezes my shoulder gently.
‘Were you close?’

‘Yes. He was a bit odd, like me. For example he used to
keep bees because he was frightened of them. He thought it
was character forming, or something.’

‘Very Protestant.’

‘As a kid I used to have to check that he had his bee-keeping
gear on right. It was white and rather theatrical. And there
was this strange hat with a kind of veil that made him look
like an astronaut. I had to check that there were no holes
where a bee might get in. He had a smoke box too.’

‘A what?’

‘A little box that puffed out smoke. Bees don’t like smoke.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

I’m beginning to giggle. The memory of my father’s intrepid trek across the lawn to the hives attired in his
weird white suit and clutching his smoke box always does
this to me.

‘The funny thing is’ – I’m gasping with laughter now and Richard is laughing at me laughing. ‘The funny thing is no
matter how many times I checked that suit a bee always got
in. A little while after he reached the hives he’d nearly always
come streaking and shrieking back across the lawn waving
his arms.’

‘Did you ever get any honey?’

‘Oh yes. Loads.’

‘That’s cool. He sounds nice.’

‘He was.’

Richard has to get off at the next stop. We’ve swapped
phone numbers in case he hears of a flat. Just before he gets
up he leans over and kisses my cheek.