Round here they hury up. If you’re not married and settled by the time you’re nineteen, if you haven’t got kids hanging round you all through your twenties, then they reckon something’s wrong with you. That’s not right. People make wrong decisions under that kind of pressure. I’ve warned my two not to get daft. You have to live with all your mistakes. And I think my two are being sensible. They’re twenty-four apiece now.
Twins—not identical—a lass and a lad. The apples of my eyes. Andrew and Joanne.
Maybe it was the divorce and me having them on my own for those years, but we’ve made it different to how other families on this town work. I’ve drummed it into the pair of them, mind, but they understand all the same. They don’t have to be like everyone else round here. They don’t have to chuck themselves into something they’ll regret. No one will think any worse of them for lagging. Well, they might, but their mam won’t. And I don’t.
I’m proud of them and will be even if they wait until they’re in their thirties to marry and give me grandchildren to fuss over and spoil and take to the park and stuff.
The reason you have to take your time is this:
One you have the bairns and the council have given you a house and you have a job you think ought to last...then that’s you. You’re sorted out and, even at your luckiest, this will be how your life will stay. Until you’re dead old and you’re in the British legion or you’re a glamorous granny dancing with another glamorous granny down the Rec.
What I like to think I’m doing for my two—by telling them to slow down, to play the field, to think hard before doing what everyone else they know has done—is giving them a bit of space.
I want them to have chances. That’s all I want. That’s all any parent wants, I suppose, though you’d never guess, the way some of them round here shove their bairns straight out on the street, or take them out of school, or get them a job in the same factory as their dad. And that’s if they’re lucky, if they have a dad. That’s no life.
Anyway, yeah, that Roseanne. She’s had a hard time of it by all accounts. And you can tell. Although she makes you laugh and stuff—eeh, I nearly pissed mesel’ one week, there was summat on, I can’t remember, but it was bloody funny—you can see in her eyes that she’s had a bad time really. It’s always in the eyes. There’s a sincerity in the eyes.
You can never see it in your own eyes. Only other people can see it for you. Only, they aren’t always up to the job of seeing the hurt in other people’s eyes. Yet you have to rely on them. Mind, you don’t want just anyone seeing into you. That’s like broadcasting all your business.
It’s funny, mind, when you look in a mirror you can never see your own hurt. You might feel—I don’t know—wounded or whatever, shat upon, but when you look in a mirror yours eyes are suddenly bright and glassy and smiling just as mine were when I was being glamorous and young for my years at Grab a Granny night.
That’s daft, though. As if anyone—especially a woman—can hide stuff from herself.
On the cover of this stack of TV Times Roseanne’s smiling and advertising her new series. They reckon she’s lost weight and she looks pleased with hersel’. She’s got a new hairdo but I can see what’s in them eyes and she’s had it up to here, poor cow.
Sincerity.
I’M PUTTING ON ME ANORAK ROUND THE BACK AT THE END OF MY SHIFT. The staff room is tiny and it’s full of all the breakages ready to go back. I tell you Eric’s greedy—he wants his money back off everything dropped on his lino. There’s smashed jars of pickles in the staff room and it reeks of vinegar.
So I’m zipping up me coat and crunching a pickle when Eric comes in with a full carrier bag. He gives us a smile like he knows summat I don’t. Since he’s the boss that’s usually true, like, and I worry some day he’s gonna just give us me cards and that’ll be the friggin’ surprise. But that night he just gives us this filled carrier.
“You might as well have these, Judith,” he says. “You’ve most prob’ly read them all already, but they’re left over and I can’t do nowt with them.”
I look in the bag and there’s all this week’s unsold magazines in there. What’s on TV, Top Santy, Just Seventeen, the bloody lot. Well, I’m not too sure whether he’s taking the piss or what, so I just shove it under me arm, collect me things, say good night and then I go. I know for a fact he can usually get a few pence for leftover magazines, so I decide he must be trying to be nice to me. He gives us a silly little wave from the back door.
I reckon it must be like that male menopause he’s getting. i read about it and he’s the proper age.
The proper age! It’s not right that he shouldn’t still be twelve. The age he was at first when I knew him.
He looked tireder just lately. But he’s all right ‘cause him and his younger wife are off on a holiday next week anyway. Second honeymoon. They get about. Florida, he reckons. They’ll visit the place with the killer whales and Disneyland. Not that they’ve any bairns to take. His son Alex is looking after the shop next week, that’s why he was telling me all about it. Besides showing off, like. I had to nod and say how lovely it sounded and how I hoped it kept nice for them all the while I was thinking I’ll have to
