It's not alright, and it's not okay

Matilda didn’t go in much for TV police series, whether real or fictional – she was more of a one for costume dramas and antique shows. But she’d always had a bit of a soft spot for that one with the theme tune It’s alright, it’s okay, it really doesn’t matter if you’re old and grey. She wouldn’t have gone so far as to call it her anthem; she wasn’t that kind of a person and thought it was only rightly applied to national anthems. But it was catchy and it was no bad philosophy.

     The trouble was, though she was undeniably still old and grey (and there wasn’t much she could do about that) things weren’t alright and they weren’t okay. And there was no point to pretending that they were.

     She had never been the kind of person to shout, let alone use bad language, at a TV or radio if someone said something she disagreed with, even quite vehemently. As her mother would have said, it was foolish and not ladylike, and as she recognised, it was also utterly futile. But now things were beginning to change.

     Oh, it was all very well them showing those feel-good images and making everyone feel as if they were doing the most virtuous and wonderful thing in the world just by obeying the injunction to stay home. It’s not even good grammar, she thought, it ought to be stay AT home! When it came to rhetoric she could imagine Mr Churchill spinning in his grave, though she had never been one of those old ladies who pretended she could remember the war when she had only been born in 1945. 

     Of course it wasn’t alright and it wasn’t okay for anyone (though she suspected there were those who were quite grateful to have the government positively sanction them having non-stop screen time, and perhaps they were the ones who should be worried about most of all!) but for some folk it was bearable and had its compensations. For those people with balconies and with gardens, for those people who had someone who could stay home with them. Matilda’s flat was comfortable and in, for the most part, a quiet development, but there were no balconies, and looking out of the window there was nothing to see but a car park and the top end of the high street. If she strained and stretched she could just about see one of the planters on the high street with some lonely looking daffodils that needed dead-heading. She had a cactus and a yucca in her flat, but both of them had been well-meaning presents from people who succumbed to the doctrine of it being the thought that counted. She wasn’t much of a pot plant person. Still, at least she supposed they were something green and growing even if, letting her imagination run away with her, she fancied that they weren’t just physically spiky.

     Then there were the jolly old ladies and gentleman face-timing with their adorable grandchildren. Matilda had finally taken it into her head that it was time she came to grips with modern technology, at least to some extent, and had started attending a course in the local library. She wasn’t a natural, but had picked up a few things, and going to it was something to look forward to. Of course she couldn’t go to it now. She hadn’t got round to getting her own laptop. The library was closed for the foreseeable future. And that meant she couldn’t get any fresh library books either, nor could she pick up a supply of “previously loved” (that sign made her wince, but now she longed to see it) from the local charity shop, because that was closed, too. She rationed the books she hadn’t read yet, selected the ones that would stand re-reading, and listened to all the readings on offer on the radio, even by authors she didn’t normally like or hadn’t tried. But even the radio had cut back, and was repeating the same thing in ever diminishing cycles.

     Matilda was the sort of woman who was happy with her own company, but not without any break or without any respite. As well as her computer course at the library, she was in a local choir and the local Senior Swimmers. But of course the church hall where they practised was closed as well as the church, and the swimming pool was, too.

     She had never been an instigator when it came to rebelliousness, but she had not been averse to joining in if someone else started it. But she knew there wasn’t the slightest chance of anyone starting up these activities again for the foreseeable future (had that phrase ever been used so much at any time in history?) and even if anyone were brave enough, they would never be allowed to use the venues. She sighed. The phrase about there being no point to crying over spilt milk wasn’t quite appropriate. Not when someone had banned the bottle. 

     That public information film had come on again. She muted the volume. 

     Am I a bad person for feeling this way, she wondered. But she was determined not to go down that path. It wasn’t alright and it wasn’t okay. What was the world coming to when people were pilloried in the press and even faced arrest just for daring to sit too close to each other? And Matilda had every respect in the world for the NHS. Her sister, Adeline, had been a nurse. She rose to being a ward sister, and seemed to genuinely mean it when she said she’d never had any aspirations to be a matron. She could be very stern, too! But Matilda couldn’t imagine that Adeline would be happy with the thought of millions ofpeople living like this, and she was certain she wasn’t the only one who thought it wasn’t alright and it wasn’t okay. So why didn’t more folk come out and say this? 

     Technically she wasn’t even “supposed” to nip out for a bit of shopping, after all, she was one of the “shielded senior citizens” and could have her groceries delivered by the nice young lady from Coastal Carers. But if Matilda wasn’t given to instigating rebellions on major matters, she was feisty enough to push her luck on smaller ones and a couple of times a week she determinedly quit her flat, wishing she didn’t feel like a criminal who risked being caught on CCTV, and made her way to the convenience shop on the high street. There were queues even there, people dutifully standing on lines taped on the pavement. Though she couldn’t remember the war and had no intention of making out she could, she had still been brought up on war films, and could still just about remember some of the post-war queuing. This wasn’t the same – after the initial panic buying, for the most part, common sense had prevailed and there were very few actual shortages. But there were still echoes. She recognised the person two in front of her in the queue – Sheena Rowe, from “two doors across the corridor” as she thought of it, and her little boy Adam. They had always said hello and passed the time of day with pleasantries about the weather, but it hadn’t amounted to much more than that. Adam struck her as a nice little lad, cheeky, but not in a nasty way. Social distancing didn’t seem to stop people expressing their opinion, and it made it come over louder and clearer. Behind her in the queue there were what would normally have been murmurs about it being disgraceful her bringing the child out. So just what is she supposed to do, thought Matilda. She’s a single mother and they’d have quite a lot to say if she left a six year old alone in the flat, now the schools are closed too. They’ll be starting on me next! They didn’t within her hearing. She didn’t doubt they might have done after. 

     Her path crossed Sheena and Adam’s and Sheena said, “Oh, it’s so good to see you, Matilda!” 

     “You too, and Adam,” she replied.

     They exchanged a few words and Matilda decided to dare to say, “This is so unnatural!”

     “Tell me!” Sheena agreed, “And Adam is driving me crazy, but the trouble is, I can’t blame him.” It transpired that they had to go to the pharmacy, Sheena adding, “It’s to pick up a prescription for a skin problem Adam has, nothing to do with You Know What.”

     “Good luck,” Matilda said, bleakly humorous. The queue at the pharmacy was twice as long as the one at the convenience store. In any normal circumstances she would have offered to take Adam home with her but of course that was forbidden now, wasn’t it? How could it be alright and be okay that a normal act of kindness and helping out a neighbour was forbidden? She had picked up a couple of magazines in the convenience store ones she wouldn’t normally have read, but at least it was fresh reading matter and they had some puzzles in them.

     That wasn’t an overwhelming success. The stories in them were either sensationalist so-called real-life ones or impossibly feelgood fiction. As for the puzzles, well, they either seemed to be crosswords so simple that a child Adam’s age could probably have managed them or number puzzles with rules so complicated that she wondered how anyone could be bothered and names that sounded like exotic oriental food items. 

     Perhaps I should bake a cake, she thought, wryly, or even think about making bread. Apparently there’s a surge in breadmaking. She had no inclination to do either. At one point she’d been quite keen on drawing, though she had no illusions that it would ever be anything more than a hobby, but that held no appeal either.

     She didn’t hear it at first when something was pushed under the door; she was in the bathroom. Just don’t let it be one of those wretched leaflets, she thought. It was not. It was a drawing, in bright red and dark blue crayon. And it showed a young woman and a little boy, and an old woman, standing in a queue. They were drawn as children often draw, with arms sticking out from the side of the body, and with not much attempt at perspective, and what she presumed were supposed to be shops were smaller than the people. But the people were labelled in surprisingly clear handwriting, though the artist hadn’t quite grasped the difference between “d” and “b” yet. Mummy  Me  Matilba. And underneath, in bigger letters and underlined US.

     She realised, too, that there were three colours in the picture, there was a little yellow sun at the top, and that there were sunbeams in the same yellow around the “us”. 

     Blinking furiously, she found some drawing pins and pinned it to the kitchen wall. I want to thank him, she said, but I don’t even know the number. Then she remembered that in one of their conversations that had drifted beyond the weather, Adam had said he would like a rabbit, he would really, really, like a rabbit. “It’s allowed, Mummy!” he had insisted, “Leastways, Kathy at school lives in this block and she has a guinea pig!”

     “I still don’t think it’s right to keep animals inside in a flat with no lawn to run around on,” she had said. He had pushed his lower lip out but not made a scene. That incident spoke well for both of them, thought Matilda. Sheena had told the truth and Matilda was inclined to agree with her, though she remembered that Adeline had kept a budgie who didn’t seem especially traumatised, but maybe that was different. And Adam had made it plain he didn’t like it, but had behaved himself, though she suspected that Sheena hadn’t hurt the last of it.

     I wish I had some kind of a sketch pad, she thought. Then she remembered that she did still have the poster for the concert the choir was planning to give in June, though scant hope of that there was now. The other side of it was completely blank and would serve as well as anything else. She didn’t have bright crayons, but did have one of those ballpoint pens with different colours, and she was quite proud of the rabbit she managed to produce. She had never underestimated children’s standards, but it was at least undeniably recognisable as a rabbit. Underneath she wrote Thank you so much for the lovely picture. I hope you like this one of a rabbit. Love from Matilda. And she added her phone number.

     Still feeling vaguely furtive she slipped across the corridor, and pushed it underneath Sheena and Adam’s flat. She had resigned herself to it being a one-off.

     But it wasn’t. It became quite a daily occurrence, and they often phoned each other, too.

     It still wasn’t alright and wasn’t okay. But the “foreseeable future” had become just that little bit more bearable.