Personally, I Blame My Fairy Godmother (13 page)

‘No, ta. I just drank a bad pint last night. There’s nothing really that wrong with me.’

‘Dad’s last words,’ I said and we both smiled.

But if I thought I’d chipped away at some of her armour and gained an ally here in the Hammer House of Hell for myself, I was sadly mistaken. Because that night as soon as Maggie got home, it was right back to the grunts and monosyllables and horribleness. So that’s my relationship with Sharon for you then. A perpetual game of one step forward, two steps back.

God I miss my old life. Back then, I used to hold actual, proper conversations with people. We would discuss art, politics, music, culture, whatever was going on in the world. Well, actually, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, as a lot of what I used to talk about was a load of gossipy shite, but you get my point. I once lived a life where you conversed with other human beings and they conversed back and it was all lovely. Now the only person from those glory days who bothers contacting me is Emma. Even though she’s down in Wexford with her family, she still calls regularly, telling me to keep the faith, that everything will be OK. Sending a bright blast of positive energy through my day. Course, that rosy glow only ever lasts for about three seconds or so after I hang up, but you see what I mean. It’s cheering
to think that at least someone remembers me and is actually prepared to talk to me. Because the golden rule in this house is that you’re never, ever in any circumstances allowed to talk while the TV is on, which is pretty much most of the time, and basically if my stepsisters aren’t watching TV then they’re talking about it. And nothing else. You want to hear some of the conversations.

For instance, last night, myself, Maggie and Sharon were tucked in front of the TV watching an old black and white movie on TCM,
Brief Encounter.
Or rather, they were watching it and I was supposed to be dusting in the background, but then exhaustion got the better of me, so I just collapsed down on the end of the sofa beside them and no one said anything. Wonderful, poignant, romantic tearjerker of a movie and all Maggie could say was, ‘Could you imagine how much easier life would have been if they’d just all had mobile phones back then? No pissing around waiting on some bloke in a railway station in the back arse of nowhere, for starters.’ Then we watched
Pride and Prejudice,
one of my all-time favourite books and movies and as the credits rolled, Sharon’s one and only comment was, ‘Jaysus. Imagine living in a world with no gay men.’ So then they switched over to a TV documentary called
Three Sisters Make a Baby,
about one sister who surrogates for another, so the third can adopt the baby.

In the mirror above the fireplace, I caught a glimpse of the reflection of the three of us. Three sisters can make a baby together and look at the state of us. We couldn’t make a cheese toastie together without the riot police being called in.

Come nine o’clock, we went over to RTE One to get the news headlines and Maggie’s comment was, ‘Why do they
let ugly people read the news? I don’t pay a TV licence to watch complete mingers.’

I had to bite my tongue as I looked over at her. God made her in his image, I reminded myself, and I’m sure he doesn’t regret it that much.

Then later that evening, at about 10 p.m., Joan breezed in with Bacardi breath and a whole stack of magazines from the hair salon which she filches from time to time on the grounds that here is the only place she gets to read them properly. I knew she was in one of her better humours; it’s getting so I can usually guess by how loudly she clatters her handbag down on the hall table.

‘Nothing but bloody bad news in the papers,’ she said kicking off her shoes and lighting up a fag as she flung herself down onto the spare armchair. ‘Recession. Global warming. Plane crashes. The Britney miming scandal. So I brought these home for us to have a laugh at. Look Jessica, I found a wonderful article in
Cosmo
that’s right up your alley. It’ll give you great hope. And there’s some wonderful advice for the newly unemployed too.’

‘What’s that?’ I asked, half relieved not to be talking about TV for bloody once.

She flicked through the index until she found the right page, then read it aloud, ‘Losing your job is like being given a gift.’

‘Joan, that better make sense soon, because otherwise there’s a good chance I might start self-harming,’ I said, wondering if she was even aware of the sheer number of calls I’d made to my agent begging and pleading for work. Something, anything. At this stage, I’d gladly welcome a 5 a.m. radio gig broadcasting to a North Sea oil rig. Complete waste of time, of course. Every time I call the office, his
secretary says he’s ‘out at a meeting’. To the point where I was starting to get a mental picture of Roger holding up a placard whenever I rang saying, ‘If that’s Jessie Woods, tell her I’m NOT IN. And that I’ve left the country with no immediate plans to return.’

‘Let me finish, will you? It says here, “Starting at rock bottom is a precious bequest”. So don’t knock it, will you? Eh…oh yes, here’s the bit I wanted you to read. Says here that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. Then it talks about Simon Cowell.’

‘What about Simon Cowell?’

‘Bit here about how he was a millionaire in the 1980s, then he lost it all and ended up moving back into his mother’s house. And look at him now, for God’s sake, richer than the Queen.’

‘I don’t understand, Joan. What exactly are you saying? That I should go on
X Factor?’

‘If you pair want to talk shite, can you go into the kitchen?’ Maggie snarled at us, looking like she was about to have an embolism. ‘Some of us are trying to watch telly here.’

‘The point I’m trying to make, if I could be allowed to finish my sentence please, is that there are some great pointers here about hauling yourself back up from the depths again. All you have to do is follow a few simple steps. Listen to this: “With a positive mental attitude, you could be back in the game in no time.”’

I grabbed the magazine from Joan to see for myself what this wonderful advice for the newly unemployed was, but all I could see was a
Cosmo
quiz where question one says, ‘Describe your life in a single word.’

Hmm. Is ‘shit-hole’ one word?
I wonder.

‘Not the quiz, you eejit,’ said Joan, getting up to go to
the drinks cabinet and pouring herself out another Bacardi chaser. ‘Read down to the bottom of the page. The bit where it tells you the first things that you should do in the short term.’

‘Joan! What?’

‘Well sign on the dole, of course.’

Hours later, long after the others had dragged themselves up to their comfortable beds, I lay on the sofa, still wide awake. Dole. Brilliant. Genius. Never thought of that. My mind raced. I mean, I paid taxes all my working life, surely I must be entitled to get something back from the system? Then I’d have cash. Actual cold, hard cash. Then I could pay some money towards the housekeeping here. Then I wouldn’t have to wash industrial-size knickers day in day out any more. Then I could…My thoughts were interrupted by the light streaming through from the kitchen behind me. Maggie probably, getting one of her late-night snacks. Because sometimes the wait between supper and breakfast just gets too much for her. It wasn’t Maggie though, it was Sharon. She came into the TV room and plonked down on the armchair beside me.

‘You awake?’

‘Uh-huh.’ Jeez, all the grunting in this house must be contagious.

‘It’s just that…well…if you were going to sign on the dole then…well, I can help you.’

‘What did you just say?’ I sat up, stunned.

‘I’ve signed on loads of times. I can tell you where to go, what to bring with you, which welfare officers are nice and which ones are the bastards. If Ma gives us a lend of the car, I’ll even drive you.’

It took a beat for all this to sink in. ‘Sharon, that’s really nice of you to offer, but why are you doing this for me? I don’t get it.’

‘Because I need a favour in return. And if I help you, then you can help me.’

‘Help with what exactly?’

There was a long pause before she eventually spoke.

‘I’d like you to help me get a boyfriend.’

‘You would?’

‘Yeah. Remember the other day when you asked me if I’d ever had my heart smashed and I said no? Well, I’ve been thinking, maybe it’s…you know…time that…I did. I don’t want to spend the next twenty years sitting at home getting pissed on cider and watching TV, night in, night out. Sure I’ve my twilight years for all that, haven’t I?’

After she’d gone, I was left staring in disbelief into the dying embers of the fire.

Well whaddya know?
Breakthrough.

If anyone I know sees me here, I will die.

Mind you, that equally applies if anyone recognises me, but I think I’m fairly well camouflaged, with my trusty baseball cap pulled so low down over my eyes that I keep inadvertently bumping into Sharon. Add to that a pair of shades so huge they disguise most of my face, along with my hair scraped back into a tight ponytail and, for God’s sake,
I
barely recognise me. Besides, as Sharon keeps on saying, there’s no shame in signing on the dole these days, not with almost twelve per cent of the country out of work. OK, so maybe most of them were made redundant through no fault of their own and didn’t necessarily make holy shows of themselves live to the nation like I did, but the fact is we’re all in the same boat now. Plus, Sharon, who turns out to be something of a welfare expert, tells me that I can qualify for €204.37 every single week for a full twelve months. A king’s ransom where I’m coming from. Then I get a lightning-quick stab to the heart when I think back to the money I used to make in Channel Six, and how €200 would barely have lasted me a morning, forget about a full week. But the guilt quickly passes. That was then and this is now. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about my life in the
last few miserable weeks, it’s this: when fate teaches me a lesson, it really goes the whole hog.

Anyway, true to her word, Sharon got me up and out the door early this morning and even paid my bus fare all the way here to the gates of hell. Sorry, I mean the dole office. Unbelievable. It’s not even 9 a.m. and already the queue is snaking half-way down the street. And that’s not the queue to sign on by the way, that’s just the queue to get in the door. It’s like humanity’s giant melting pot here. I’m not messing, there are be-suited and bewildered-looking business people, all pale and stressed, looking like they don’t belong here, shell shocked as to how this could have come to pass. It’s a mystery all right. One minute, our economy is the envy of Europe, next thing it’s like a flashback to Depression-era America. It would break your heart to see these people. A lot of them look like they should be on their way to senior management meetings in boardrooms, not standing on the pavement in one of the roughest parts of town, on a chilly Monday morning, utterly dependent on welfare to get them through the week.

God, just standing here in this queue is the most monumental reality check you’ll ever get. Dole queues really are the great leveller. By the look of these people, I’m guessing some of them have mortgages to pay and young families to look after. Some of them might even have bought houses at ridiculously over-inflated prices at the height of the property boom and now find themselves in dreaded negative equity situations with absolutely no hope of ever getting out of it. Loads of young people are queuing up as well, looking like they just left school. In fact, there’s more boob tubes and hoop earrings here than you’d normally see in late-night bars in town any night of the
week. A few enterprising barrow women from nearby Moore Street have come round too and are now working their way down the queue selling everything from pineapples to kids’ toys.

‘Six mandarin oranges for the price of five, only one Euro, Dolebusters’ Special’ one of them is yelling. But they’re not doing much in the way of trade. The business types just bury their heads in their newspapers, desperately trying to blend into the background and look invisible. Just like me, hoping and praying that no one sees them.

Tell you something else: I’m bloody glad to have Sharon with me. Turns out she was on the dole, or ‘the scratch’ as she calls it, for almost two years. Then they threatened to stop it on her, unless she did a CERT back-to-work course.

‘But can they do that?’ I ask her innocently.

‘Course they can, you eejit,’ she says, lighting up her third fag since we got here. ‘The whole point of being on the scratch is that the government want to get you off it as quick as they can. They made me go on a personal development course with a load of women who were out of their heads on methadone half the time. A few of them had even been in prison. Then I got the job at Smiley Burger which paid me more than I ever got on the scratch anyway, so that was the end of that. Best day of my life, the day I was able to tell the aul’ bitch of a welfare officer where to shove her personal development course.’

To Sharon’s credit, she’s really keeping up her side of our little Faustian pact and has been amazing about all this whole signing-on lark. I hate to put a hex on it but I think we’re actually starting to get on reasonably well. But then, I figure, if Robbie Williams and Take That can put their differences aside, why can’t we?

Anyway, according to her, the doors don’t even properly open until 9.30, so to pass the time in the queue, I start to ask her loose, broad questions about her dating history/ideal man/perfect relationship. Fair’s fair and I’ve gotta keep up my end of the bargain. Least I can do after she’s sacrificed her lie-in and more importantly, all her early morning TV shows.

‘Right then. The way I look on the whole dating game,’ is my opener, ‘is that it’s a bit like buying a house. You’ve got to work out a list of what you absolutely refuse to compromise on, versus things that may drive you mad in the short term, but that you’re ultimately prepared to put up with.’

‘Is that what you did with Sam?’

Sam.
Although he’s never out of my mind, just hearing someone else say his name still is like a kick right in the solar plexus. Funny, how a heart can be broken and yet still beat. ‘No, no it was never like that with Sam,’ I eventually force myself to answer her. ‘He was…well…pretty much perfect.’

Well, OK, so maybe not perfect, I mean, come on, what bloke is? Yes, he was a bit work obsessive and yes, all his talk about winners versus losers and mental discipline could drive me scatty at times, but then…but then in the end, he wasn’t the problem, was he? I was. And now the best I can hope for is that he’ll get bolter’s regret and come crawling back to me. It’s been weeks now and yet every single time my mobile rings, I keep silently hoping that it’s him to say that he’s made a terrible mistake and that he wants nothing more than for us to get back together again. Whereupon I’ll finally get a chance to vent my anger and chew the face off him for ignoring me/airbrushing me out
of his life running to the papers etc. Whereupon he’ll grovel and crawl and declare undying love…whereupon we’ll both live happily ever after and treat this whole miserable episode as an amusing anecdote to tell our grandkids. I’ve the entire fantasy conversation all worked out in my head. But then that would be asking for miracles wouldn’t it? And miracles don’t happen in dole queues.

Anyway, something in my expression must give Sharon the hint that this is one of those deeply painful, out of bounds topics because next thing she’s looking at me, almost with kindness in her eyes. ‘Do you want a Crunchie?’ she offers, fishing one out from the pocket of her tracksuit. Like a baby gorilla in a zoo thrusting out a spare banana at a teary child.

‘No, thanks.’

‘I don’t care what you say,’ she says firmly. ‘Sam can’t have been that bleeding perfect. There must have been some things about him that annoyed you. You know, the kind of things women are always bitching about in problem pages. Are you telling me that he never once, ever…like left the toilet seat up, or something?’

She means well, so I haven’t the heart to tell her that his house has approximately seven bathrooms at the last count, so toilet seats were never really that much of an issue. I’ll say this much though, I’m getting to like this more humane side of Sharon. The side you never get to see when Maggie’s around.

‘It’ll get easier, you know,’ she eventually says, stubbing out her fag on the pavement.

‘It is easier. Look at me, I’m dressed. And out of the house.’

Anyway, right now a subject change would be really good,
so I get back to asking Sharon what’s on her boyfriend ‘cosmic ordering’ shopping list.

‘OK then. I’m assuming you’re going after the big three?’ I ask her, trying to sound efficient and business-like. ‘Looks, manners and money.’

‘Jessie, I’m a realist. I live at home with my mother and sister and I flip burgers for a living. What the feck do you think I’m doing with my life anyway, living the dream? And you might have been too dazzled by personality to notice, but I’m not exactly Scarlett Johansson in the looks department either. Now if women’s magazines have taught me anything it’s that you have to punch your weight in relationships. So all I really want is…just…just someone who doesn’t make me miserable.’

‘Come on, you’re setting the bar way too low! You can do far better than that. What you want to find is a soulmate.’

‘Anyway,’ she says, but she’s gone off on a bit of a tangent. ‘I’m back on my diet. I lost three whole pounds when I was sick, you know. And I was doing really well yesterday too. I’d a Smiley Salad in work for lunch and then the low-fat Smiley Chicken Soup for dinner. You saw me, didn’t you?’

‘Yes…yes…I did. You were, emm…a model of discipline and self-control.’ We’re getting on well here so it’s probably not the best time to remind her about the fish supper she had right before she went to bed. Washed down with three tins of Bulmers.

‘And I might join Weight Watchers too. They have meetings in the Whitehall Parish Centre and that’s only five minutes away from us. ’Cos, be honest with me now, Jessie. Do you think I’ve a better chance of meeting a fella if I can get a stone off me?’

‘Emm…’

‘Tell me the truth, now.’

‘Well…you see…’ There’s just no right answer to that question.

‘Then on the other hand, I look at you and think, sure you’re skin and bone. You go around the place looking like all you weigh is your keys and clothes and you’ve no fella to show for yourself either, do you?’ A vintage Sharon comment, but to be fair to her, she’s being honest, not cruel.

‘Do you want a Polo mint?’ I ask her, rooting around in my bag, all this talk about dieting making me suddenly aware that I’d no breakfast.

‘Yeah. Givvus two to make up for the hole.’

Half nine on the dot and the queue slowly begins to shuffle forward as the doors are opened. More waiting, then as soon as we get inside, Sharon tells me I need to queue up again at hatch fifteen. New claims. So yet more queuing as we slowly inch our way forwards. At the very top of the queue there’s a woman stridently saying at the top of her voice, ‘But you can’t do that to me! I know my entitlements!’ Then, at the hatch right beside her, there’s a little kid of about four scribbling on the walls in crayon while his dad signs on.

‘Could you kindly ask your child to refrain from drawing on my office wall?’ asks the welfare officer, a youngish guy with roundey glasses that kind of give him a look of Harry Potter.

‘What do you mean,
your
office wall?’ he retorts. ‘This is government property and the government work for me, so when you think about it, this is really
my
office, isn’t it?’

Sniggers from everyone in the queue behind. And still
more sniggers from Sharon when I naively ask whether or not I’ll get any actual cash today.

‘No, eejit. All you’re here for now is to make an appointment to come back to see the welfare officer. Then you come back in a few weeks and they’ll means test you.’

‘You mean we’ve queued for this long just to get an appointment? Couldn’t I have just…I dunno…rung up instead?’

‘Where exactly do you think you are, Cinderella Rockefeller? The hairdressers? The beauty salon?’ she almost guffaws into my face.

‘So when do I get to see any money is what I really want to know.’

‘Depends. Your claim will be backdated to today but if they feel sorry for you, then they might give you an emergency payout.’

‘So…is there any chance they might give me some of that emergency cash today?’

‘Are you joking?’ she nearly guffaws into my face. ‘You have to go to the local health centre to apply for it from the HSE. Oh yeah, and you have to be sure to tell them you’re actively seeking employment or else you won’t get a bean. And you have to say it like you mean it. You’ve no idea what a shower of suspicious bastards they can be.’

‘But how am I supposed to actively seek employment when no TV show for miles will touch me with a bargepole? Even my agent says there’s nothing for me at all until…well…until what happened blows over. Can’t I just explain to them that I’m like…a unique case?’

‘Well excuse me, your majesty. For feck’s sake, Jessie, just look around you. Everyone here is a “unique case”. Now build a bridge and get over yourself. And would you ever
take off the sunglasses? Only Goodfellas wear sunglasses indoors.’

‘The point I’m trying to make,’ I argue back at her, reluctantly taking off the glasses and shoving them into my bag, ‘is I’m an un-hireable TV presenter. Which has to make me a special case.’

‘Listen to you, Little Miss Oh Don’t You Know Who I Am. Everyone here is in the exact same boat as you, except none of them got fired for being greedy and grabbing free cars in front of half the country. Now shut up and sign on.’

It’s at this point that I’m about to give up, run outside and open a vein, but lo and behold, miracle of miracles, my turn finally comes. The dole woman is brisk and business-like as she hands me out a UB90 form to fill out, completely uninterested in who I am or what my ‘special’ circumstances are. When she sees the name on my passport, it’s the first time she actually makes eye contact with me, with a tiny flicker of interest in her eyes.

‘You’re Jessie Woods? Oh yes, well, under question fourteen of the Jobseeker’s Benefit Form, where it asks why your previous employment ended, just put that your employment was suddenly terminated.’

Living in total isolation from the world at large as I am now, I’m inclined to forget that the dogs on the streets know all my business. Anyway, expertly groomed by Sharon, I must have answered all her questions right because after less than five minutes she’s going, ‘Next!’

And that’s when it happens.

I turn around and head over to where Sharon’s grabbed a free seat for herself, delighted to be done and dusted, and with a ‘can we go now?’ expression etched onto my face. But there’s two women standing right beside her, one with
a buggy and one with a stroller, with about three kids each hanging out of them.