You see? Ex-wives: really, everybody should have at least one.
Maureen
I feel a bit daft explaining what happened at the end of the intervention day, because it all sounds like too much of a coincidence. But I think it probably only sounds like a coincidence to me. I know I said before that I’m learning to feel the weight of things, which means learning what to say and what not to say in case you make people feel badly for you. So if I say that nothing happened in my life before I met the others, I don’t want to make it sound as though I’m grumbling. It was just how things were. If you spend all your time in a very quiet room and someone comes up behind you and says “Boo!”, you jump. If you spend all your time with short people, and you see a six-foot-tall policeman, he looks like a giant. And if nothing happens and then something happens, then the something seems to be peculiar, almost like an Act of God. The nothingness stretches the something, the happening, out of shape.
Here’s what happened. Stephen and Sean helped me get Matty home; we hailed a black cab, and the four of us just about squashed in, although the two nurses and I were pressed up against each other in the seat. And even that seemed like something. A few months ago, I’d have gone home and told Matty about that, if he hadn’t been there with me. But of course if he hadn’t been there with me, there’d have been nothing to tell. I wouldn’t have needed Stephen and Sean, and we wouldn’t have been there in a taxi. I’d have been on a bus, on my own, even supposing I’d gone anywhere. You see what I mean about something and nothing?
Once we were all settled, Stephen said to Sean, “Have you got anyone else yet?” And Sean said, “No, and I don’t think I’m going to be able to.” And Stephen said, “It’s just the three of us, then? We’ll get slaughtered.” And Sean just shrugged, and we all sat looking out of the window for a little while. I didn’t know what they’d been talking about.
And then Sean said, “Any good at quizzes, Maureen? Fancy joining our team? It doesn’t matter if you don’t know anything. We’re desperate.”
Now, that’s not the most amazing story you’ve ever heard, is it?
I listen to Jess and JJ and Martin, and that sort of thing happens to them all the time. They meet someone in a lift or a bar, and that someone says, “Would you like a drink?”, or even, “Would you like intercourse?” And perhaps they’d been thinking that they’d like intercourse, so it could seem to them that being offered intercourse, just when they’d been thinking they might like it, is the most amazing coincidence. But my impression is that this isn’t how they think, or how many people think. It’s just life. One person bumps into another person, and that person wants something, or knows someone else who wants something, and as a result, things happen. Or, to put it another way, if you don’t go out, and never meet anyone, then nothing happens. How could it? But for a moment, I could hardly talk. I’d wanted to take part in a quiz, and these people needed someone for their quiz team, and I felt a shiver go down my spine.
So instead of going home, we took Matty to the respite home. Sean and Stephen weren’t working, but they were friends with all the people who were, so they just told their friends that Matty was staying there for the evening, and no one turned a hair. We arranged to meet in the pub where they do their quizzing, and I went home to get changed.
I don’t know which part of the story to tell you about next. There’s another coincidence involved, so I don’t know whether to put it here, in the coincidences section, or later on, after I’ve told you about the quiz. Maybe if I separate the coincidences out, push them further apart, you might believe them more. On the other hand, I don’t care whether you believe them, because they’re true. And in any case, I still can’t decide whether they are coincidences or not, these things: perhaps getting something you want is never a coincidence. If you want a cheese sandwich and you get a cheese sandwich, that can’t be a coincidence, can it? And by the same token, if you want a job and you get a job, that can’t be a coincidence either. These things can only be coincidental if you think you have no power over your life at all. So I’ll tell you here: the other person on the team was an older man called Jack, who has a newsagent’s just off Archway, and he offered me a job.
It’s not much of a job—three mornings a week. And it doesn’t pay very well—Ј4.75 an hour. And he told me I’d be on probation at first. But he’s getting on a bit, and he wants to go back to bed at nine, after he’s opened the shop and sorted the papers and dealt with the early-morning rush. He offered me the job in the same way that Stephen and Sean had asked me whether I wanted to join the quiz team—as a joke, out of desperation. In between the TV round and the sport round, he asked me what I did, and I told him I didn’t do anything much apart from look after Matty, and then he said, “You don’t want a job, do you?” And a shiver went back up my spine.
We didn’t win the quiz. We came fourth out of eleven teams, but the boys were quite pleased with that. And I knew some things that they didn’t know. I knew that the name of Mary Tyler Moore’s boss was Lou Grant, for example. I knew that John Major’s son married Emma Noble, and I knew that Catherine Cookson had written about Tilly Trotter and Mary Ann Shaughnessy. So there were three points they wouldn’t have got, right there, which might be why they said I could come again. The fourth chap is unreliable, apparently, because he’s just got a girlfriend. I told them I was the most reliable person they could possibly hope to meet.
A couple of months ago, I read a library book about a girl who found herself falling in love with her long-lost brother. But of course it turned out he wasn’t her long-lost brother after all, and he’d only told her that because he liked the look of her. Also it turned out that he wasn’t poor. He was very rich. And on top of that, they found out that the bone marrow of his dog matched the bone marrow of her dog, who had leukemia, so his dog saved the life of her dog.
It wasn’t as good as I’m making it sound, to tell you the truth. It was a bit soppy. But the point I’m trying to make is that I’m worried I’m starting to sound like that book, what with the job, and the quiz team. And if I’m starting to sound like that to you, then I’d like to point out two things. Firstly I’d like to point out that getting care for Matty costs more than Ј4.75 an hour, so I’m not even as well off as I was, and a story that ends with you not as well off as you were isn’t really a fairy-story, is it? Secondly I’d like to point out that the fourth chap in the quiz team will turn up sometimes, so I won’t be in every week.
I was drinking gin and bitter lemons in the pub, and the others wouldn’t even let me buy a round; they said I was a ringer, and had to be paid for. Maybe it was the drink that left me feeling so positive, but at the end of the evening, I knew that when we met again on March 31st, I wouldn’t be wanting to throw myself off the roof, not for a while. And that feeling, the feeling that I could cope for now… I wanted to hang on to that for as long as possible. It’s going all right so far.
The morning after the quiz, I went back to the church. I hadn’t been to any church since we were on holiday, and I hadn’t been to mine for weeks and weeks, ever since I’d met the others on the roof. But I could go back now because I didn’t think I’d be committing the sin of despair for a while, so I could go back and ask for God’s forgiveness. He can only help you if you’ve stopped despairing, which if you think about it… Well, it’s not my business to think about it. It was a quiet Friday morning, and there was hardly anybody in. The old Italian woman who never misses a Mass was there, and there were a couple of African ladies I’d never seen before. There were no men, and there were no young people. I was nervous before I went to the confessional, but it was fine, really. I told the truth about how long it had been since my last confession, and I confessed to the sin of despair, and I was given fifteen Decades of the Rosary, which I thought seemed on the steep side, even for the sin of despair, but I won’t complain. Sometimes you can forget that God is infinite in His mercy. He wouldn’t have been infinite if I’d jumped, mind you, but I hadn’t.