Intimations of Mortality - 13

Being a series of random but loosely connected musings on my life, the world I have lived in and what the future - what's left of it - may hold.


It was a job like any other. Well, ok, not quite like any other. But, all the same…

I stuffed the envelope down to the bottom of my handbag. Didn't bother to count the money. He wanted me to come back. Why would he cheat me?

As it turned out, he didn't cheat me. But I was naïve to assume that he wouldn't. I wasn't long in learning that people cheat for all sorts of reasons that aren't reasons at all. And in so many little ways that gain them nothing but the satisfaction of having cheated. Something for nothing, even when the something itself amounts to nothing.

I made my way back to the high street. Hopped on a bus back into the city centre. It was only a few stops but I wanted to sit down and I wanted a fag. So, like John Lennon, I went upstairs and had a smoke.

The bus dropped me off about ten minutes' walk from the pub where I had a six-to-eight shift. Clearing tables, emptying ashtrays, serving the occasional drink. Smiling all the time.

There was an actual staff room at the back, with actual lockable lockers. I signed in with the bar manager. Secured my jacket and handbag in my locker, slipping the key onto my belt. Rolled my sleeves up. Rolled my skirt up an extra inch. Opened the top two buttons of my blouse. Slapped on my drip-dry, crease-proof grin.

Made my second entrance of the day, before my adoring public.

Unlike at the Camera Club, this room was oblivious to my sudden appearance. No heads were turned. No breaths bated. The babble of conversation continued uninterrupted. I surveyed the room from behind the bar. The room did not survey me.

This was one of the modern city centre pubs, where the old Public and Saloon bars had been knocked into one large egalitarian drinking place. The spit-and-sawdust ruffians of the lower orders mixed elbow to elbow, arse to arse, with the polished brogue brigade.

I spotted a few empty glasses dotted about the room. Plunged into the crowd on a mission to retrieve.

And so the evening went. At least, my part of it. I still had a nine o'clock curfew at home so at eight o'clock I checked out with the manager, collected my two hours' pay from the till, made it to the bus stop just in time to wait ten minutes for my bus. At quarter to nine, I was slipping my key into our front door Yale lock.

My parents were sitting in the kitchen, watching some American detective series on the television. They already had cups of tea so I made one for myself. Gave my mother the money from the bar. It wasn't much but every little helped, as she told me later.

I was hungry, hadn't eaten since dinner time, but I was not going to get involved in a discussion with them about what I had been doing all day. I took my cup of tea and a couple of biscuits up to the room I shared with my younger sister. Sat on my bed and wolfed them down.

Little sis was still awake. Her bedtime was ridiculously early for a fourteen year old, even in those days. She was reading by torchlight and glad when I switched on my bedside lamp.

She was full of questions, curious about the adventures of my day. Between mouthfuls of biscuit I told her about my morning in the boutique and my evening in the bar. I wove the two strands together, closing the gap between them so that there was no hint of my afternoon in front of the cameras.

I sat at our shared dressing table, cleaned off the little make up I was permitted to wear. Went to the bathroom. Brushed my teeth. Washed my face and hands.

Back in the bedroom, I changed into my pyjamas, aware of the ironic modesty I exercised in front of my sister.

I climbed into bed, bade her goodnight. Switched off the lamp.

I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling. Wondering at this strange world, where men would pay me money to look at my body.