The Vale - Part Two

 

Wendy Hooper from IT looks like ET, it’s funny but I’ve never thought of it before. I’ve known her for years but this has only just occurred to me and that’s all I can think about as I sit opposite her listening to the teething troubles; that’s what she claims they are anyway. Her neck is long without being swan-like, it’s rather fused into one angle where she has been seated at a screen for so many decades. 

 

Her hair a dull, caramel shade, her skin is dense, bloodless beige and quite oily, widely spaced pale grey eyes denote a lack of emotion, professional apathy combined with something flat, a flat lovelife perhaps. In short, her pilot light has gone out or is at least reduced to a faint flicker.

 

She sits there, calm as fuck, shakes her head and says, ‘These are just teething troubles Ian. If we send Dev out there for another week or so to sort out the escalation process, the backlog will be gone by the end of next month.’

 

Poor Dev. They’re always sending him away at the drop of a hat to do some trouble shooting or to sort out teething troubles. Why can’t Wendy go? I thought she loved travelling.

 

I find it hard to concentrate at these meetings. I’ve been doing them for too long, I either zone out or sit there continually fighting the urge to shout out something dangerously inappropriate. Wendy looks more tanned than usual, she is known for her love of lavish holidays. That’s all she seems to do, go away, buy a new handbag at the airport, stock up on fags, save up again, book something else, go away again, no kids, no responsibilities. She must be knocking fifty years old now.

 

My inner zone is broken suddenly by the sound of someone clearing their throat and instantly I know that Ian Rook is about to speak and he’s probably going to target me. ‘Jamie, what’s your take on this? Is there anything you can do from your end to reduce our turnaround times?’

 

It’s all about damage limitation with him. I’m loath to fall into one of his traps whereby he pushes me to say something stupid or to agree to a near impossible outcome and by the time I’ve realised what’s happened it’s too late to backtrack without appearing petty. I chew some imaginary chewing gum for a few seconds. Unfortunately there is no sign of Gary; he is rarely around for work gigs, my line of work clearly not something which interests him so I cannot rely on him for moral support in these situations.

 

All eyes turn on me as I babble on, being careful not making any promises but presenting my case in a helpful, accommodating way, bringing in a couple of lower ranking colleagues for support despite knowing full well that their schedules are stacked to bursting.

 

‘I need you to commit to a target, a real figure Jamie, otherwise there’s a danger that the outsource will be seen by the shareholders as failing at the first hurdle. Let’s say a six percent reduction in urgent cases by the end of next week.’

 

He moves on quickly before I can defend my team. Damn bastard got me. Now I have to commit to an unachievable target so that he can shift the blame onto me when the inevitable shit hits the fan. I don’t know how I got from pissing about on computers to sitting in pointless meetings each day trying to make a case for higher budgets when everyone else wants to screw me and my colleagues over.

 

Wendy begins speaking again, she always got so much to say for an extra terrestrial. At least her far-flung ethnicity means that she refrains from getting emotionally involved, she’s detached, untouched by the pressures of earthly capitalism. I can tell simply by observing her body language that her blood pressure and heart rate remain low and stable despite the grilling she’s getting from senior management regarding the apparent failures of the outsourced customer helpdesk.

 

I was around ten years old when I watched E.T. The Extraterrestrial, on our dusty video player in the living room. I turned off all the lights, placed some threadbare cushions on the floor, there might even have been popcorn but this is unlikely. A film about an alien made me feel as if I was a real part of the terrestrial world, people who lived in houses, went on holiday, and just did modern stuff.

 

There was a man who lived down on the second floor of our block called DJ Tony and he always had videos, records, posters, you name it and he always seemed to have them before everybody else. My sister had already watched E.T. with her friend, round at his flat and she came home and told me about it. I begged and begged her to arrange with DJ Tony to somehow let me watch it. She was adamant she wouldn’t let me go to Tony’s. He didn’t want to loan his precious video to us but she somehow managed to pinch it from his flat and return it another time without his knowledge.

 

The film made America look like an incredible and exciting place to live with its wide streets and plethora of places to ride bicycles and have super cool adventures. Children lived in huge houses, had huge bedrooms with cupboards brimming full of toys, even the moon was bigger. I never liked Elliott though, there was something mean and superior about that kid. 

 

I remember looking out of the window and trying to imagine that scene with E.T. and the children riding their bikes across the sky but it just wouldn’t have been possible, not from my home. They would have bumped into the unforgiving, brutalist brick concrete walls of the other tower blocks and landed in a bloodied heap on the ground. There were so many people in our neighbourhood who were even more physically bizarre than E.T. Chances are that any alien would have blended in and gone about its business unnoticed.  

 

My sister Christina and her best friend, Kerry went through an intense phase of hanging out at DJ Tony’s flat. My dad never knew. He didn’t really know Tony, only of him, and simply referred to him as ‘that fella with the van and the moustache’. It would never have occurred to Dad that my sister would have formed any kind of relationship with the guy. Christina just used to tell him she was going out and he never questioned her. The only rules she had to follow were to remain on the estate during the week, at the weekend she could venture into the city as long as she had a prearranged lift back home. 

 

Tony was a popular guy, well known with his handlebar moustache and tight trousers. He was typically out every night, he’d go off in his little blue van doing his DJ gigs but during the day he was home and regularly had mates round. He was also open to youngsters off the estate popping in and out. I noticed how the two girls would spend ages getting dressed up before going there and there was a sort of giggly, erratic energy in their voices which I heard coming from Christina’s bedroom.

 

It was a frequent thing for a while. They would come back to our flat after school, get ready, then go down to Tony’s flat, stinking of body spray. This went on for about five or six months. Even my mum noticed and became suspicious. She would take a deep breath and say, ‘Where are you going Christina?’

 

‘Just out with Kerry.’

 

‘Out where?’

 

‘Just to sit on the bench and talk.’

 

‘Where’s your coat? It’s windy today.’

 

‘I don’t feel the cold anymore, Mum. I’ve grown out of it.’

 

Mum was too tired to probe and ask another question. A simple sentence could leave her exhausted for hours. She’d have to light another cigarette and stare into space for a while with glazed eyes.

 

Then one day Christina fell out with Kerry, they’d had some big argument and she arrived back home alone and tearful. After that day, she immediately became very withdrawn and stayed inside her bedroom for a few weeks. She lost a lot of weight very quickly and then one Saturday, Dad was out in the corridor rubbing old paint off an antique bureau he’d brought in a junk shop. He had layers of newspaper all laid out and pieces of sandpaper, he also had a green metal bottle, filled with some strong smelling chemical. 

 

He called out to Christina and asked her to make him a cup of tea. She brought it out to him with a plate of biscuits and he said he needed to wash his hands. It was when he was in the bathroom that she drank the chemical. I was in the living room and I just remember the sound of her coughing and retching and then Dad calling her name and then shouting out, ‘Oh God Christina, oh God! What did you do?’ He called for the ambulance with a trembling voice, he told them his daughter had drunk a chemical called, Nitromors. 

 

Our mum left her chair and unhelpfully began screaming as he told the call handler our address so that he had to repeat it again. I was calm, Gary was with me and he looked at me in such a way that I knew she was going to be alright.

 

Christina stayed in the hospital for two nights. The first night she was very sick and couldn’t speak. On the second night when we went to visit her, she had recovered somewhat and was more like herself. While our parents were out of earshot, she beckoned me over and despite barely being very hoarse, she instructed me to make sure DJ Tony was informed. ‘Just tell him, he needs to know!’ she whispered, squeezing my wrist to impart a sense of urgency.

 

I was very nervous about doing this, worried sick in fact because I was too young to hang around alone outside and there was something slimy about DJ Tony that set my alarm bells ringing but Christina made me promise her. I waited in the parking area by his van for two evenings in a row but there was no sign of him. On the third evening, he came out, dressed in a grey leather jacket and clutching a box of records. While he was loading them into the boot, I sidled up to him, feeling really uncomfortable because somehow I knew that DJ Tony wouldn’t give a shit. ‘My sister’s in hospital,’ I blurted out, hating the sound of my voice.

 

‘Who the fuck are you and who’s your sister?’ he said, without even looking at me.

 

‘Jam, that’s me and my sister’s Christina.’

 

He grunted. ‘I hope she feels better,’ he said, very quietly. He had a gentle way of speaking which wasn’t what I expected. ‘But I’m afraid I need to be somewhere and I’m late.’  He said and got into his van, slammed the door and drove off. 

 

Christina was never the same after that. She frowned a lot and wore baggy clothes. She didn’t socialise as much, stayed in her bedroom with headphones on. The positive thing that came out of it was that she began working harder at school. Eventually, she became a nurse. Kerry seemed to go the opposite way; she was always in the local pubs, dressed up in heavy make-up and revealing clothes. She had lots of older boyfriends and two children by the time she was twenty.

 

There were some comments on the estate about DJ Tony making videos of young girls and selling them. I don’t want to believe this but unfortunately, as sickening as it is, it just seems too thoroughly plausible to be untrue and the more time that passes, the more plausible it seems.

 

Wendy Hooper is dying for a cigarette now, I can sense it; there appears to be a sort of micro flicker in her body language, a tiny, barely detectable tremor. If I was to film her and then slow it down then it would be plain to see but nobody else seems to notice except me, that’s because we have been working together for several years now. She gets up from the table, pushing her chair back clumsily and stomps out of the room in her heavy, block-heeled boots. 

 

I follow her outside, feeling a desperate need to communicate with her because she is a voice of reason and usually on my side. She’s leaning up against a concrete pillar with her back to me. ‘Wendy, you know Ian’s targets aren’t realistic..’

 

For a few seconds she ignores me, instead scrolling on her phone and sighing. ‘Mmmm, they never are.’

 

‘I don’t know why we need him. What’s the point of him?’

 

‘He just fits the bill I guess.’

 

‘What bill?’

 

‘Somebody to keep pressing us. He’s clearly pressing on you, Jamie. Just ignore him, I’m not sure why he bothers you so much….I’ve just thought,’ Wendy looks up at me and says, ‘he’s coming to the social thing in the pub, this evening after work. Why don’t you come along, he’s different outside of work, less of a bully, well a bit. It’ll be shit boring but you never know, it might break the spell.’

 

I put my hand up against the concrete pillar, it feels cold, rough and damp. I love concrete, my kingdom used to be built from it. It doesn’t have an energy, a charge, it’s more of an earth and it calms me down. I really don’t like the idea of socialising with Ian Rook or colleagues in general. ‘What spell?’

 

‘The one that Ian Rook has cast on you.’ 

 

‘He hasn’t cast any spell on me, he just...annoys me that’s all. I can’t anyway,’ I say, ‘I’ve got a baby now.’

 

Wendy winces and rolls her eyes. ‘Oh well, your life’s over then. Look, to be honest, I won’t be staying long. I’ve got a life too. I want to go home, see my cat and watch Leftovers.’

 

‘Leftovers? Don’t you mean eat leftovers.’

 

‘No! I don’t eat leftovers, Jamie. It’s just a TV programme, sci-fi.’

 

‘Oh.’

 

‘Nevermind, we won’t miss you. Good luck with the baby. We should never have set you up with the lovely Lori.’

 

‘Best thing that ever happened to me,’ I say, walking away.

 

I can feel her cold eyes on me. She doesn’t believe me, somehow I just know. I’m not sure if I believe me either but it’s definitely not the worst thing I’ve done. Being married and having a child is a great gap filler, it fills up the big space in the middle of your life which otherwise might be filled with workaholism, extreme but futile sporting pursuits, sex addiction, drinking, being angry with people who do have kids, travelling or many, many worse things than that.

 

The idea of Lori elevates me to a higher plane. There is no way I could have let her go to someone else, someone who might abuse her, take her for granted. The problem is when you have a twin and your twin has no life, you’re always holding something back. The space immediately around you, the one reserved for those closest to you, well mine is taken up by Gary and now Fox too. I’ve been thinking recently, I think Fox can see him.