Living dangerously
Jeremy Clarke
Sharon's been at home for a fortnight trying to write the final 5,000-word essay of her two-year social work diploma course. She's been at it day and night. Fortunately, she's currently barred from the only pub in town worth going to, so it's been a blessing in disguise really. With a day to go before the essay deadline. I get a call from her. She's crying. She's got 5.000 words down on paper, she sobs, but they don't make any sense. Would I go over there and read it and tell her what to do?
So I drive over. The kitchen is littered with sheets of paper. The strain of composition has turned Sharon into a regressive wreck. She's perched on a chair in a foetal position cuddling a hot-water bottle to her stomach and rocking herself to and fro. The tips of her cigarette fingers, I notice, are orange with nicotine. 'Yeah, I'm chaining,' she says, reaching for her tobacco tin.
Normally I live there. But when Sharon's there it's best to keep away. Especially when she's got an essay to write. 'Your Dad in?' I say. She gives a contemptuous jerk of the head towards the ceiling. 'James?' I say. (James is her brother.) 'Upstairs ill,' she says. 'Pleurisy.' She picks up a stapled sheaf of paper, chucks it across the table to me, then gets up and puts the kettle on. I pick up a pencil and examine the first page of small densely packed print. The essay is entitled, 'The mentally ill are treated at the expense of their rights. Discuss in relation to the medical model.' Her opening sentence, however I look at it, makes no sense at all. Nor does the second. I take off my coat and hang it on the back of the chair. It's going to be a long job. While I'm working on the essay, there's a knock at the door. Sharon likes to be always at the centre of a web of sexual intrigue. The door-knocker has almost been worn away by the peremptory tattoos of illicit lovers, official lovers, would-be lovers and ex-lovers. 'Roll them all together and they still wouldn't make a whole man,' says Sharon ruefully. The first visitor, however, is her new dope dealer. She brings him into the kitchen. I look up from her essay expecting to be formally introduced, but I'm just an anonymous member of the emergency services and it doesn't happen. He's a small, very personable camp chap. He's all excited. he says, because his boyfriend has just been promoted to area manager. He retrieves a cellophane-wrapped lump of hashish from his handbag and Sharon pays him and sees him out again.
When she comes back she says, 'He kissed me!' 'So?' I say. 'I didn't think gay men were supposed to have those kinds of feelings for women!' she says. I don't answer this. I'm too busy. I've really got my work cut out. The content of the essay is fine, as academic bollocks goes. The main problem is her relentless placing of the predicate of a sentence before the subject. That and the bizarre positioning of her commas. Also, she seems to be under the impression that simple sentences aren't allowed. It's tough going and I have to concentrate. I can do without the sinterruptions.
'Look at this, Jerry,' she says, shoving the lump under my nose. 'That's never half an ounce! It's a quarter more like. Where's my scales?' The hunt for the kitchen scales takes her all over the house. I can follow it by the sound of doors slamming. Then I can hear her berating her father in one bedroom and her sick brother in another for the disgusting lack of scales in the house.
She's still up there reading the riot act when there's another knock on the front door, I go and answer it, It's Trevor, this bloke she left to go out with me. Trevor can't read and write but makes up for it by punching people. He knows me from the pub. I've bought a car from him, but he still hasn't quite worked out who I am. Trevor is trying to woo Sharon back at the moment. 'What are you doing here, my bird?' says Trevor. (Hereabouts, 'my bird' is a double-edged term expressing contempt as well as endearment.) 'I live here.' I say. He is visibly taken aback at this. 'I haven't seen you here before,' he says. 'I'm not here much,' I say. 'Anyway my bird, tell Sharon that Darren is coming round here with a claw-hammer in a minute, and he's going to smash her car up.' Right-ho,' I say. Trevor's about to go, but a thought strikes him. He folds his arms, cocks his head on one side and says, 'How long have you been living here, then?'
And thus begins another eventful evening round at Sharon's.
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