She lay further down, pulling over the quilt and snuggling in. I grinned. She was more awake now, squinting at me which meant I was to speak. Explain yourself man! I might have smiled.
My presence at such an ungodly hour! I could only shrug and tell her the truth, an approximation to the truth. I had a fall-out with the gaffer, there was a bit of bother. Other women might have accepted that. Cath was not other women, and her silence continued. Are you going back to sleep? I said.
She ignored this. What does ‘ignored’ mean? I do not know. I have to be honest, I was rather weary. I sat down on the bedside chair and unknotted my shoelaces. Oh dear, the shoes. She hated me wearing shoes in the house, especially the bedroom, but anyplace where bare feet were liable to tread. Our lasses had pals and when they brought them into the house they forgot to tell them to take off their shoes. This drove Cath nuts. I did not blame her but it caused emotional mayhem in the highways and byways of our apartment. Then again the lasses did not like telling their pals to take off their shoes. It made them seem stupid, that was what they said. Oh mum nobody else does it.
I dont care what nobody else does.
But they tell people in school and they laugh at us!
I stayed out it. Domestic issues are an awkward reality. Very much so in our house.
What I was thinking was get my own shoes off and a quick wash and into bed. Tomorrow is a brand-new day. Except literally it was not. It was the exact same day as here and now. It was Friday morning and would be Friday dinnertime when I arose Sir Frederick, arise ye and walk the plank ere doom befall ye.
Man, what a life.
She lowered the quilt to beneath her boobs. I was about to say something further but the mammarian physicality beat me. I reached to hold her hand instead. But even that was off-putting. Cath’s hand is a really sort of pleasant thing, it is soft and warm. I always found it pleasing in an aesthetic way. I used to like drawing when I was a boy. I would have drawn her hand. Her fingers were long and seemed to taper, and then if she had a varnish on her nails. It just looked good. Had I been that way inclined I would have varnished my nails.
And what do I mean ‘that way inclined’! So now when I looked at her, with silly thoughts crossing my mind, I could only smile and this made her suspicious. So how are you doing? I said. Did you sleep?
She did not answer. I was suddenly tired, most tired, needing to stretch out beside her on the bed here and now, right here and now. I took off my second shoe but continued sitting there. And a song went through my mind. My little nephew sang it to me a week past and it went something like:
I’m so silly
silly silly silly.
Me and him sang it walking up and down the hallway like a pair of demented soldiers:
I’m so silly
silly silly silly.
I would like to have done it with the gaffer. That bastard. I would have goose-stepped him along the factory floor, Groucho Marx and Ginger Rogers:
I’m so silly
silly silly silly.
Aw well. And my neck. Interesting to note that I had developed a nervous condition on the right side of my neck; it entered spasms at the slightest emotional activity in one’s brainbox. All soldiers are demented. All professional ones anyway. Everytime I hear one talking I want to have their parents arrested for child abuse. I mean ordinary soldiers, not these upper-class fuckers who march them as to war.
I sighed, I was enjoying the seat. So: this was Cath I was talking to. Well well well.
The truth is me and her were incompatible. On occasion. Was this such an occasion! I guffawed inwardly, and needed to sneeze immediately, grabbed for a tissue from her side of the bed, and gave the snout a hearty blow. I think there is something wrong with my nose, I said.
Oh that is interesting, muttered one’s missis.
What is that new-fangled expression, ‘pear-shaped’? I think it might describe my life.
So what happens now? she said.
In what respect I thought but said nothing. What happens now? Worth pondering. What does ‘what’ mean? Even before getting to ‘now’ that statement was beyond my intellectual capacity. ‘Happens’ is just a verb, which makes comprehension easy. With verbs concepts are straightforward, it is the actual doing that causes trouble, translating into action, getting from concept to movement.
Man, how many pints did I not have? This is the last time I would forgo my Friday-morning breakfast booze-up.
But I felt like a sandwich, a bit of toast or something.
Cath sighed. I sighed as well. But her sighs were significant. Mine were just sighs.
Fucked again I thought, but in what way? I did not answer the sigh lest incriminated. Except when Cath sighs one is required to answer. What is troubling you madame?
No, I did not say that. I did not, in nowise, say that. Fear. Not in so many words. Nor was I sure what to say. I got up from the chair and walked to the window, parted the curtains a little. Your Honour, I cannot deny that that is what occurred on the morning of the fourteenth.
Maybe she wanted a cup of teh. Her pronunciation of this aye reminded me of her grannie, a lass from Mayo whom I met and loved for one week in the merry month of July, during my courtship of the illustrious Catrine her granddaughter.
I was about to ask if she wanted a cup but she spoke first. Do you mean you have got the sack?
Of course not!
Of course not? Did I actually say that? What a fucking liar man! I would have burst out laughing except she was staring at me, staring me down. I had been about to look out the window. Now I felt like a total tube, like a naughty boy, I said, caught in the act. That is what I feel like.
So what is it? she said. What happened? Was it a fallout? What actually happened? Do you really mean you got the sack?
I smiled. You are some woman, telling you, the way ye say stuff.
So you have not been sacked?
Sacked! Even the word sounds strange to the ear, to my ear anyway. When the hell was I ever sacked? Have I ever been sacked? I cannot remember. I do not think I was ever sacked, not in my whole life.
‘Sacked’. There is something anti-human about that term. I do not care for it. Here you are as an adult human being, a thinking being to use the ppolitical terminology, and then you are to be ‘sacked’, this canvas bag is to be pulled over you, hiding you completely. None can see one. Then one is smuggled publicly from the place of one’s employment, in the erstwhile sense.
Sacked, I said, what a word!
Cath looked into my eyes with a steady gaze, her sparkling blue eyes shining as befits a latterday femme fatale, one who is given to ascertaining the thoughts of a mancub by return so to speak; in other words, as soon as one has the thoughts they are transcribed into her nut.
I hope this makes sense, I said, what happened apparently is that I was sacked.
She wanted further information. Her continued silence indicated that. The truth is she was an innocent. There are a lot of women like Cath. They know nothing. Cath knew nothing. She had never experienced the actuality of work. Genuine work. Jobs where things like ‘angry gaffer’ and ‘sack’ crop up regularly. In her whole life she had never worked in an ordinary hourly paid job. Office stuff was all she did. That was a thing about women, they were all middle-class. She knew nothing about real life, the kind of job where if ye told a gaffer to eff off you collect yer cards at the end of the week. That was power and that was powerlessness.