Love Your Enemies. Nicola Barker
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was working in a bookshop? I don’t think I said that, did I?’
Sammy Jo shrugged, but she was smiling to herself. ‘Forget it Lucy, I’m just a bit stressed out. I promise though, this time you can depend on me, really.’
They rang off. Jason had come into the room during the final stages of their conversation and was sitting on the sofa staring at Sammy Jo inquisitively. Sammy Jo sat down next to him and took hold of his hand. ‘It’s all right, I’m not angry. I’ve cleared it all up with Lucy. I don’t think he’ll be phoning me again.’
Jason squeezed her fingers and kissed her cheek. ‘Sammy Jo, if you want to go to college you could always go in the evenings and I’ll look after Charlie. I wouldn’t mind. Maybe we could give her to a babyminder a couple of days a week and you could go on a course part-time.’
Sammy Jo shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Jason, I don’t think I’m ready for that yet. I don’t feel brave enough. I like being at home with Charlie at the moment, I just appreciate the occasional bit of stimulation. I’m really enjoying this book I’m reading, and there’s no pressure, you know, no need to take exams or to get along with a classful of strangers …’
Jason smiled. ‘You know that you can do anything that you want to do, Sammy Jo. I know that you’ll choose whatever is for the best.’
Sammy Jo smiled back.
The following morning at ten o’clock Sammy Jo picked up her copy of the Yellow Pages and hunted down a number. When she had located it she opened up her new pad and wrote the number down at the top of the first large, white page in big bold print. Then she picked up the telephone and dialled. When someone answered she smiled and said, ‘Hello, this is Sammy Jo, remember me? Yes, I know you’re at work, yes I know you’re busy, but I don’t care. Maybe you should give me your home number and then I wouldn’t have to pester you like this …’
The line went dead. She put down her receiver, picked it up again and then pressed the redial button. She waited for a moment and then continued. ‘Yes, it is me again. No, I don’t care what sort of a disruption this is. I want to carry on our conversations. Apparently you’re working part-time? That means you must have a lot of spare time on your hands during the afternoons, which is good, good for me at any rate. I want you to share that free time with me, on the phone of course, reverse charges. I’ve been thinking about that question you asked me yesterday, I’d like to discuss it at greater length …’
The line went dead. She put down her receiver and then picked it up and, once again, pressed redial. ‘You’re an old hand at this, Mr Sands, I have a redial button and it’s no effort to press it again and again …’
She listened for a moment, then picked up her pen and copied down another number in her white pad. Then she said, ‘Yes, I am enjoying it actually … No, I didn’t tell Lucy, someone else did … No, Lucy didn’t tell me either, it didn’t take much intelligence to realize though … Thank you. Is two o’clock all right? OK, I’ll phone you then. Goodbye.’
She hung up.
The Butcher’s Apprentice
If he had come from a family of butchers maybe his perspective would have been different. He would have been more experienced, hardened, less naïve. His mum had wanted him to work for Marks and Spencers or for British Rail. She said, ‘Why do you want to work in all that blood and mess? There’s something almost obscene about butchery.’
His dad was more phlegmatic. ‘It’s not like cutting the Sunday roast, Owen, it’s guts and gore and entrails. Just the same, it’s a real trade, a proper trade.’
Owen had thought it all through. At school one of his teachers had called him ‘deep’. She had said to his mother on Parents’ Evening, ‘Owen seems deep, but it’s hard to get any sort of real response from him. Maybe it’s just cosmetic.’
His mum had listened to the first statement but had then become preoccupied with a blister on the heel of her right foot. Consequently her grasp of the teacher’s wisdom had been somewhat undermined. When she finally got home that evening, her stomach brimming with sloshy coffee from the school canteen, she had said to Owen, ‘Everyone says that you’re too quiet at school, but your maths teacher thinks that you’re deep. She has modern ideas, that one.’ Owen had appreciated this compliment. It made him try harder at maths that final term before his exams, and leaving. At sixteen he had pass marks in mathematics, home economics and the whole world before him.
In the Careers Office his advisor had given him a leaflet about prospective employment opportunities to fill out. He ticked various boxes. He ticked a yes for ‘Do you like working with your hands?’ He ticked a yes for ‘Do you like working with animals?’ He ticked a yes for ‘Do you like using your imagination?’
When his careers guidance officer had analysed his preferences she declared that his options were quite limited. He seemed such a quiet boy to her, rather dour. She said, ‘Maybe you could be a postman. Postmen see a lot of animals during their rounds and use their hands to deliver letters.’ Owen appeared unimpressed. He stared down at his hands as though they had suddenly become a cause for embarrassment. So she continued, ‘Maybe you could think about working with food. How about training to be a chef or a butcher? Butchers work with animals. You have to use your imagination to make the right cut into a carcass.’ Because he had been in the careers office for well over half an hour, Owen began to feel obliged to make some sort of positive response. A contribution. So he looked up at her and said, ‘Yeah, I suppose I could give it a try.’ He didn’t want to appear stroppy or ungrateful. She smiled at him and gave him an address. The address was for J. Reilly and Sons, Quality Butchers, 103 Oldham Road.
Later that afternoon he phoned J. Reilly’s and spoke to someone called Ralph. Ralph explained how he had bought the business two years before, but that he hadn’t bothered changing the name. Owen said, ‘Well, if it doesn’t bother you then it doesn’t bother me.’
Ralph asked him a few questions about school and then enquired whether he had worked with meat before. Owen said that he hadn’t but that he really liked the sweet smell of a butcher’s shop and the scuffling sawdust on the floor, the false plastic parsley in the window displays and the bright, blue-tinged strip-lights. He said, ‘I think that I could be very happy in a butcher’s as a working environment.’
He remembered how as a child he had so much enjoyed seeing the arrays of different coloured rabbits hung up by their ankles in butcher shop windows, and the bright and golden-speckled pheasants. Ralph offered him a month’s probationary employment with a view to a full-time apprenticeship. Owen accepted readily.
His mum remained uncertain. Over dinner that night she said, ‘It’ll be nice to get cheap meat and good cuts from your new job, Owen, though I still don’t like the idea of a butcher in the family. I’ve nothing against them in principal, but it’s different when it’s so close to home.’
Owen thought carefully for a moment, then put aside his knife and fork and said, ‘I suppose so, but that’s only on the surface. I’m sure that there’s a lot of bloodletting and gore involved in most occupations. I like the idea of being honest and straightforward about things. A butcher is a butcher. There’s no falseness or pretence.’
His dad nodded his approval and then said, ‘Eat up now, don’t let your dinner get cold.’
Owen arrived at the shop at seven sharp the following morning. The window displays were whitely clean and empty. Above the windows the J. Reilly and Sons sign was painted in red with white lettering. The graphics were surprisingly clear and ornate. On the door was hung a sign which said ‘closed’. He knocked anyway. A man with arms like thin twigs opened the door. He looked tiny and consumptive with shrewd grey eyes and rusty hair. Owen noticed his hands, which were reddened with the cold, callused and porkish. The man nodded briskly, introduced himself as Ralph then took Owen through to the back of the shop and introduced him to his work-mate, Marty. Marty was older than Ralph – about fifty or so – with silvery hair and yellow skin. He smiled at Owen kindly and offered him