PERCENTAGES
Helen slams her briefcase on to the kitchen table, slaps down the court order for the unpaid council tax, “Jenny-“
“I’m sorry Helen, I’ve just not had-”
“Then run a city Jenny. You say you haven’t had time to pay the City, try running it.”
An unpaid bill is not what I need to talk about. “No Helen, look-”
“You know what I’ve been having meetings about all afternoon? Chewing gum. I thought we were supposed to manage the serious stuff: cars, acids, asbestos. Today? Chewing gum. The City’s paved with it.”
“H”
“Then drain covers: people suing us because they’ve been -”
I have something to tell Helen, “I-”
“Now we have to have a team to check whether-“
I have perfected the art of listening just enough to say ‘Yes’ occasionally, ‘No’ in the right place, to bob my head, purse my lips attentively while thinking about the things I would say if Helen let me get a word in. But tonight I’m biting my thumb knuckle and wondering if Cyd will keep in touch.
Cyd’s one of our banking assistants, coasting between her degree and working out what it is she wants to do with the rest of her life, she’s the brightest brain in the branch. On her first morning we discovered we both remembered places by taste rather than scenery or buildings: Cranachan Kilmartin. Hetton dill lamb. Live cockles in Carnac. Rouen Gewurztraminer, an ice pile of snails, mussels, cockles, oysters, langoustine. Bruges chips with mayonnaise. St Petersburg ice cream. Anjuna bel puri, Vancouver bo nhung dam. We both had parents whose sacred texts were Elizabeth David, Claudia Roden, Jane Grigson, so as kids beans on toast, egg and chips, were exotic; things you only got at other kid’s houses. I looked forward to family camping holidays: Angel Delight, Fray Bentos pies, Chunky Chicken.
Cyd says “Fray Bentos? Chunky Chicken?” like she’s turning over bits of wreckage. I haven’t dared tell her the menu of the first restaurant where I worked in the seventies: prawn cocktails, whitebait, melon with an orange slice and a cherry on sticks, steak diannes, trout and almonds, ice creams, fruit salad meringue for pud. And I have not told Helen how I watch for Cyd putting her pens in her pot, closing down her computer, how ‘accidental’ meetings on the way to the station have become a drink most nights.
Helen’s well into her unloading, now it’s all the things being the Chief Exec of a city means she’s responsible for, market traders, teachers, taxis, paedophiles, “rivers, soil, we’re even policing the bloody air now.”
One time, standing in the packed carriage home, I was telling Cyd how all those family holidays - the tents, campsites, lakes, forests, beaches, towns - all blend into a memory of sticky car seats on the back of hot legs, a scratchy impatience in the small of my back.
She said, “A scratchy impatience in the small of your back?”
In the Arts Bar once I was telling her about my first job in a real restaurant, how I loved the way we ordered, took delivery, gathered, turned out, prepared, arranged taste, colour, shape, sent plates out on a waiter’s arm into the buzz of covers.
She said, “The buzz of covers?” Her smile like hot breath on my arm.
Another time, in one of those bars where the kitchen seems three floors or even blocks away and the menu is a slim card and the waitress all about drinks, Cyd asked me why I had left restaurants to work in a bank. I was shouting against the sound system, shredding my voice, my lips on her ear, “Realised … that kinda life … slavery … too many hours … too hot … grind. Loved it … but.” I held up my hand. “Burnt too bad to grip … look.” did the finger yap yap talking thing that shows how I still can’t close my palm even after twenty years, “The owner then … wonderful man … gave me a chance … kept me on … taught me the books.”
Cyd holds my hand, prods the scar tissue with her thumb.
On the train later, sitting at Platform 2a waiting for a crew. “That guy taught me to see the bumps and holes in budgets, cashflows.”
“So?”
“So I went into banking, specialised in restaurant, bar accounts, people moved their accounts because of me, it was fantastic, I was one of them. I could make the bank work for them.”
“Could?”
“Yes could. In a way that I can’t now.”
Cyd said. “The trouble with you love, is everything you say’s in the past tense.” A scratchy impatience in the small of your back. A buzz of covers. Everything you say is in the past tense. I love the way Cyd says things in a way that means afterwards I have to shake out our conversations and, opening my fingers slightly, blow in my palm.
“Are you listening to me?” Helen gets a Sauvignon from the fridge, “Today Prescott’s office told me that by next Tuesday. Next. Tuesday. They want a policy on how we manage seven hundred and fifteen thousand people’s weight.”
THE FULL STORY IS AVAILABLE IN NAKED CITY