Halting Matilda
written by: David Milner
Ten minutes she’d been trying to find a parking space. Watching other cars slip like buttered sprouts from a heated serving spoon into parking spots she’d missed. Passing the same spots after misjudging them, spatially, of course, trying to judge as the minutes dissolved around her if there’d be enough room to open the door and get out and not feel hemmed in by the four-wheel drives and other fat looking automobiles, she didn’t know the name of. Cars, cars, cars side by side, and neatly packed as though they were about to be shipped out or zoomed up into space. And so, it is Christmas, steering to avoid over-stuffed trolleys, pushed by people festooned with bright orange carrier bags. Her bra felt as tight as a latex glove. She should have gone bra-less, with a jounce and a sway and a Ho Ho Ho and who would have noticed, as these days Matilda Swain is invisible.
In time and space….
And here of all places that had once been acres of playing fields, where, as a young girl, she had spent many a happy afternoon, cheering her dad as he refereed his Sunday league football matches. Before the earth was churned over, hollowed out and spread with tarmac in some hope of re-generation. And there now… there, Matilda’s eyes widened onto the spot (a spot where her dad might once have stood with his whistle) a parking space that was hers, by Christmas lights and baubles! Yes, yes, job’s a good ‘un, not so useless after all, the car was tucked up, tidy… Parked!
Now all she had to do was get the shopping done. And that was microwave easy, girl. Even in this old underwired bra.
She got out of the car. And, on tired, weary legs had travelled no more than ten metres when it suddenly occurred to Matilda that she had left something behind…
At 15:47 hours on the last Saturday before Xmas, Dean Driscoll was beginning to regret his decision to come to the front of the supermarket for his “official” cigarette break. He’d already smoked the one he’d prepared earlier. The place was heaving. He started to roll another. Dean Driscoll was proud of his cigarette rolling abilities. He could roll one handed. One handed whilst standing on one leg given half the chance (if you’ve got a gift, share it!). He could roll ‘em with his eyes closed, he could roll them on the move, and he would soon perfect the art of rolling a cigarette in one hand whilst simultaneously juggling two balls (or satsumas) in the other. Yep, Dean Driscoll was a man of many parts, an actor by training, if not by trading. An actor from the day he was born his mother was fond of saying, but that was Mother’s Day for you. Only Dean Driscoll hadn’t worked professionally, or, for that matter, unprofessionally in …Anyway he was stacking shelves for a living. On his days off he was usually drunk, or in tears somewhere, on good days he’d be both drunk and in tears. Dean Driscoll wasn’t a stoic. He was a doleful little prince exiled to a joyless world of dead-end jobs. He came out front to roll ‘em and smoke ‘em because he couldn’t stand to be out back, in the designated smoking area. He spent the better part of his working hours mentally avoiding his colleagues, so he wasn’t going to spend his break, out back, in the designated smoking area, listening to the rabbit shit that passed for conversation. Not at these prices, thank you very much. It was all Cartons and Tins, for which he couldn’t give a two-for-one offer of figs! In fact, it was all Cartons and Tins-Ah, as the song that kept him halfway sane, whenever he had to suffer his work colleagues, which was all but constantly as he was working alongside them, was that old song “Needles and PinsAh” by the… Hollies… or the Searchers? Only he sang Cartons and TinsAh, silently in his head. And why needles and pins? Whoever suffered from needles and pins? It was the other way round. Such were the thoughts of a frustrated Hamlet…
“O that this too too sullied flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew.”
And oh, how the place was heaving, man alive it was seething all over the gaff, all over the car park, all heading his way. George A. Romero was bang on putting all those zombies into a shopping mall. That was satire of the highest and deftest order. Because that is what Dean Driscoll was witnessing, a frenzy of last Saturday before Xmas Zombies, all shapes, sizes, faiths and creeds. Zombies come to infect him with their rapacious, brainless, two for one offer desires. Dear God, Dean Driscoll was not made for this. Last week he’d had one, salivating at the sight of a twenty-four pack of lager, insanely reduced in price, salivating it was. And there was nothing on the man, couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred-and-thirty pound dripping wet with goose fat, and yet, and yet, it had to have that last twenty-four pack of cut-price lager. “Let me help you with that, sir.” Dean Driscoll had been patience personified, “Urnth urnth urnth” came the noise from its mouth “Gimme, gimme, gimme urnth…” in its eyes and on its breath, a foul pestilence of late market capitalism, and couldn’t lift the weight of the twenty-four pack. “Let me help you, sir, really it’s not a problem.” “Urnth urnth urnth…” it salivated, before the contents spilled out of the packaging and the cans crashed onto the freshly mopped floor. The stick thin, denim wearing zombie was on all fours then, panting for the spinning cans, which were still intact, if a little shaken and dented. Zombie had enough of a brain to realize this was the last of the dirt-cheap lager. “Nyar wannit… wannit…. Mine.” So, patience personified, Dean Driscoll had put all the dented cans, one by one, back into the flimsy box and pointed zombie in the direction of the self-service checkout. The bar code was visible and detectable. That was the main thing, was it not, the bar code visible and detectable? The zombie had made its choice. It hadn’t walked out with the goods. Everyone’s a winner? Not on your Nelly. The sector manager, Ian Temple and his assistant Sharon Knight had called him in for a Confab (which as everyone knows is management speak for a bollocking) and were both in sound and resolute agreement that he, Dean Driscoll – the fastest cigarette roller in the northern hemisphere – had demonstrated a “total lack of accountability.” Sharon Knight had gone even further when she added that he, Dean Driscoll – twice runner up at the National Student Drama Awards – had handled the situation “appallingly badly.” And, okay, one must learn to take one’s lumps in this life but let’s be upfront, on the shelf at eye level clear about this, appallingly badly was an adverb too far, no? “Appallingly badly” indeed…
Matilda Swain wasn’t sure what she’d hit. Only that she’d heard something as she backed the car out of the parking space. Once she’d got back in the car, she hadn’t wanted to get out again. She couldn’t face the supermarket after all, not today, whatever day it happened to be. She wasn’t sure what she’d hit, could have been a trolley, someone’s leg or foot, or… whatever. She wasn’t sure and didn’t care. And she’d kept on going until she stopped.
No one ever called her Tilly, or Tilda. It was always Matilda. Even with people she didn’t know that well, like the bloke at the newsagents, and people she was never that friendly with from school and things, everyone she met really knew her as …Matilda.
She could hear laughter. It sounded familiar, although she didn’t feel like she was laughing. She could see her hands though, and the fingers gripping the steering wheel, each knuckle a strain of deathly white. The car wasn’t moving. Maybe it had stopped of its own accord. There were cars called Accords, weren’t there… sort of… something Accords? The car wasn’t moving. And neither were all the cars behind her. That’s called backed up. Well, someone had to laugh all the cars backed up like that…
There were a lot of angry people out there. They could stay that way for all she cared. Though she looked out with pity, Matilda Swain didn’t owe no-one nothing.
In the several years since leaving drama school Dean Driscoll had been forced to work in a variety of jobs. None of which had lasted more than six months, before he was sacked or told, politely, not to bother coming back. He’d taken to each new experience as an actor should (shouldn’t he?) and couldn’t help himself acting the part of say, a road sweeper, or trainee forklift truck operative, or whatever job he was forced to take to stop himself falling into penury. He, who had once shared a stage with Orlando Bloom.
Dean Driscoll had closed his eyes because he is now aware that he has opened them and cannot comprehend why a whole load of cars are backed up. Some commotion or something happening in Sub-Section 6. And what are the Zombies doing, turning on their heels, away from the citadel…? What in the name of flying fishcakes was going on, dozens of cars backed up from the main entrance in the time it’s taken for him to open his eyes? Where are the security guards – the team of would-be assassins – when you need them? Taking as a psychological cue the plain old fact that the show must always go on, Dean Driscoll set off towards the commotion in Sub-Section 6. It was like a rolling news item, as he walked with a strangely invigorated bounce in his step, through a dissonance of car horns sounding off in threes and fives, offering a near perfect soundtrack to these times… Eeeh Eeeh Eeeh… Awrh Awrh Awrh Awrh Awrh… Car after car backed up, confused angry hot heads bobbing in and out, trying to get a better look, when there was nowhere to go. He offered sincere apologies, assurances, silent movie type shrugs and smiles. It was mayhem!
He knew that people were struggling.
“I’m not having this ruining my Christmas!” Roared an angry voice.
That people in various pockets of the globe were sick and tired and hungry for change.
He saw Nuno the homeless dude holding two halves of a black plastic bucket, one in each hand, up to the darkening skies, “Ma bucket… Look what she’s did to ma bucket…”
As it was Christmas the management had decided that Nuno’s time would be better served washing a few cars to earn his keep, sort of contribute to the wider community. Nuno took to the task like a duck to water; wore a little elf’s pointy hat which was red and green with tinkling bells.
“Nuno, what is the matter, my friend?” Dean inquired.
“Look what she’s did to ma bucket…”
“Who did this?”
“The crazy car lady… she crazy…”
Several heavy-set men wearing dark leather jackets, some of whom had military style haircuts, a couple sporting tattoos on their bulging necks had surrounded a small red car. In amongst them was a toothless man on crutches, hopping mad. It was difficult to see the driver. There were women beyond these men, like a harridans’ chorus of pursed pinched faces, women with kids and women with dogs. All focusing their ire on the little red car. God in heaven what was going on? The zombies had morphed into belligerent baboons, drunk as lords on pilfered whisky.
Time out of joint in Sub-Section 6.
“STOP.” It never leaves you. The voice once trained is there to be called on when the need arises, when there is something important to say.
The angry mob fell silent. All eyes turning to him, as though he were the veritable prince of all the world’s leading men: “Give me the man that is not passion’s slave.”
Gently, professionally and with due diligence, Dean Driscoll approached the dull red car. It was a twenty-odd-year-old Nova, rusting bashfully about its bumpers and doors, such a little old motor for all this noise. He saw her. She was a Thousand Yard Stare behind the wheel. An attractive, dark-haired woman brought low and beaten to a standstill. Then he saw… the baby… swathed in woollen blankets, white as driven snow, the baby… locked into a car seat in the back, safe and sound, sleeping peacefully through this freak storm of human frailty.
And in this moment Dean Driscoll knew, knew that for the first time in his selfishly disappointed life he knew what he was doing. Like her, the luminous beauty behind the wheel, he was truly in this moment, and yet, completely detached from his surroundings. Able to see the ordinary miracle of another human being; he knew, without feeling or attempting or pretending to feel, he knew, and he could understand this woman was suffering, and suffering specifically, with post natal depression.
One day, in time, and there was time enough – he wasn’t quite thirty-five – he might get to play Hamlet. Be given the chance to get inside the nutshell, make himself a king of infinite space. But before any of that, and come what may, this Christmas Dean Driscoll would get to know this woman…
- Halting Matilda - December 21, 2024
- Far Out - September 22, 2024
- Gates of Heaven - June 20, 2024
