She wasn’t doing badly, though. She could offload her superfluous waves of negativity into the work, try to turn them, make them innocently spin. She couldn’t face the animals, was unable to withstand their type of grief, but she was meant to be emotional about her work: it was an advantage. So she harnessed her general outrage and turned it into outrage on their behalf. It was a source of energy. And if she described the candidates — her living responsibilities — with enough energy, then they’d have the best chance of being liberated quickly and fitting their new owners.
The tiny things — hamsters, guinea pigs, gerbils, lizards — they don’t give you much to work with unless they’re little bastards and it wouldn’t do to mention that.
The little bastards are termed sprightly.
I say ‘sprightly’, rather than ‘miniature, violent git who will try your patience’. I say ‘cheeky’. ‘Vivacious’.
A vivacious gerbil.
As if.
‘A little package for a big personality.’
It’s justifiable to say that if it will get the thing into the care of kind hands, let them hold it and understand that it’s alive and should be able to stay that way, because even unpleasant things deserve to live.
One of my many personal mottoes.
I’m just one great big Christmas cracker, me — stuffed full of mottoes.
And when she worked on the films — the mostly honest and completely well-intentioned films — she’d added some open-source music from a couple of places that were OK with GFH using the material in dog- and cat-loving, not-for-profit ways. She aimed to find a score — big word for what was just a tune, a couple of minutes of a tune — a score that set the proper level of not melancholy exactly, but appeal. The filmed sections were appeals.
Here’s Laika rolling about on her back and hamming it up and giving a paw in return for a treat, because she’s a star and knows a thing or two and how could you refuse her? She’s sad without you. You’re sad without her.
‘Like I’m sad without you.’ Meg was at her desk now, having made a cup of powdery instant coffee — that was only her first cup, so she was all right on caffeine consumption — and she was sitting with Hector’s breathing leaned tight against her foot, at rest exactly where he liked it. Paul wasn’t in today, Laura was off sluicing, Susan was looking into something to do with the wrong kind of hay.
Meg only spoke to Hector when they were alone.
‘Because I don’t want to seem daft.’
And she moved her foot slightly, pressed his ribs, so that he was aware she was speaking to him and not the telephone. He was perfectly able, anyway, to distinguish between her telephone voice and the one that was for human beings and the one that was for him. Only the last was of any real importance. If she was occupied too long on the phone, especially, he would find it dismaying and ask for attention, come up from under the desk and stare at her starvingly, or set his front paws on her and try to lick her face. (This last was not allowed and would only happen towards the end of a very long call.)
Meg patted her knee and he scuffled up and forward to set his chin there flat, so that his head could be made a fuss of. This was intended to please and calm them both.
And maybe she still smelled of hospital at the moment and of anxiety — traces remaining — and Hector wanted her to smell of him instead.
‘It isn’t daft to say I’m sad without you. So there. I would say that to anyone who asked me. I am sad without Hector.’ Which was, of course, too sentimental a thing to mention in an empty room with a fond dog when you were still slightly hurt in a number of ways and also thinking that you’ve got the definitive statement now — your menopause is here, pretty much here, and that happens to adult women, it does happen — it’s only that you would have wanted to exist as a female person in receipt of tenderness before it did.
It’s not that you wanted children.
You never have given children that much thought.
Your biology — tick, tick — had simply been waiting — unreasonably waiting — for a fondness in touch. Your body had an expectation of mercy and it was unfortunate this had not generally been fulfilled.
Meg’s hand stroked Hector’s warm and silky, spanielly fur — bred for ease of touching, to please. And inside her palm and fingers there was the echo of touching on other occasions — or more likely a hope for her hand after this. She wanted — unreasonably wanted — tick, tick — to be gentle in another setting and another time.
But I’m clumsy.
I might not be able to please anybody.
I might not be able.
She closed her eyes.
I might be rubbish at rubbing a dog’s ears.
Hector might not let me know. His breeding is against him and he wouldn’t let me know if I was doing something wrong.
She kept on, though, practising the shapes and the intentions of tenderness.
A man stands by the door in the Caterham train as it slows and approaches London Bridge. He is holding the handle of a new bright red pram and putting a slight bounce in it for the entertainment of his child. The pram is of the modern and stylish type, one which is a marked, if expensive, improvement on more traditional models: easier to manoeuvre in crowded shops — or in trains — and raising the baby up high so it can look about. The man is half smiling, bouncing the pram handle, glancing in under the hood, bouncing again.
Another man of similar age — early thirties — stands so that he will be ready when the platform is reached. He says to the recent father, ‘It’s like a Ferrari.’
‘I’m sorry …?’
‘It’s like a Ferrari. The red.’ And the stranger points to the pram with a slight hopefulness, as if it would help him greatly should a pram be able to resemble an iconic and thrilling sports car in a meaningful way.
The father nods, maybe because he would also find this helpful. ‘Oh, yes. Like a Ferrari.’ He bounces the handle with slightly more vigour. ‘It’s new.’
‘I have one that age.’ It’s unclear whether the stranger is referring to the pram or the baby.
‘My wife’s choice.’ It’s unclear whether the father is referring to the baby or the pram.
The men smile at each other. Their expressions suggest they both feel they have been assaulted in some vast way, but are now redefining their injuries as pleasures.
13:45
MEG WAS WAITING for Laura. When the bloody woman was around, she managed to over-occupy the office, but it was worse when she wasn’t there. Laura being in front of you and looking the way Laura looked was horrible, of course: she was all layers of flimsy cloth and too many colours and a bag that would suit a ten-year-old and which matched the shoes that would suit a ten-year-old and had that indelible, burrowing smell of fags and also hemp and perhaps more than one form of hemp. The whole experience could fill a ballroom to its choking point, should you have a ballroom. Meg was glorying in Laura’s absence right now, but knew there would be an eventual return to put a kink in every bit of tranquillity generated by the blissful absence.
Eventually, the expectation of Laura became worse than having to sit across the desk from Laura and trying to be happy as she clacked randomly away at her keyboard, or chatted to event-arranging people with floral names, while drinking her herbal infusions and — when off the phone — throwing out strange conversational non-starters.