The Whistling Woman

It was as if she had walked into a TV commercial for a holiday , thought Marie. In fact she even knew the one she was thinking of – the person who was on a ferry crossing where the sky was always blue and the sea was always calm, but with just enough flecks of clouds and just enough little white crested waves to keep it interesting. The crossing over the protagonist appeared to cross miles of lush countryside effortlessly on a bike that had mysteriously materialised, and paused in some sand dunes out of a child’s storybook to decide which fork in the route to take, with the implication that either would be entirely wonderful.

     But Marie was not in a commercial, and nor was she on holiday, though she was walking on a beach, well, at any rate, alongside one. She had decided to take what her colleague Fiona called the “Scenic Route” home instead of the short cut through the industrial estate.

     I suppose it is quite scenic, thought Marie, and lots of people dream of living by the sea. But she was used to it, and probably didn’t appreciate it as much as she should.

     Not that she was in the mood for appreciating anything. It had been what her mother always called one of those days and Fiona called a bad hair day (though in Fiona’s case it was largely figurative as she was blessed with beautiful naturally wavy chestnut hair that never seemed to need anything more than a quick shampoo every couple of days, a brief blow dry, and a perfunctory brushing). Well, whatever you called them, they were becoming more frequent. 

     Marie had never been one of those people who lived to work, and made no bones about the fact that if she won the Lottery she would give up her current job without any great regrets. But it had always been pleasant enough at Marigold’s. The name wasn’t entirely fanciful (or studiedly appropriate!). The founder, long retired and now living with her daughter in Australia, actually was called Marigold.

     It occupied a hybrid ground somewhere between a florists and a garden centre. It sold fewer cut flowers and more pieces of garden equipment than many of the former, but was smaller than many of the latter, and had never had a café, though there was a coffee machine that worked when it felt like it. It wasn’t posh, but it wasn’t that cheap, either. Still, it was the only shop of its kind in the town (though of course the discount supermarkets sold bunches of flowers, and frankly Marie didn’t blame people who bought them there instead!). 

     It had chugged along steadily enough. And it was still chugging. Unless they were all in for a nasty shock, there was no risk of its imminent closure or even of redundancies. Indeed, they had recently taken on a new manager – and that was the source of a lot of the trouble. Marie was the first to admit that Marigold’s probably needed a bit of a shake-up and a new broom, and all that business. But Dave – and he never answered to David – Meek seemed to be the high priest of the religion of breeziness. Having a borderline problematic surname herself – Short – though luckily she was neither especially short nor especially tall so it didn’t become that much of an issue – Marie was naturally inclined to sympathise about that. But did he really have to go to such extremes to prove that he didn’t live up, or down, to his name? Oh, he made much of saying things like, “I willingly bow to the experience of you ladies,” or “Modesty prevents me from…..mentioning …..” what he promptly did proceed to mention, and at great length. But nobody was fooled. He thought that Marigold’s had been allowed to stagnate and to stand still and to get caught in a time warp and to fall into bad habits and that was just the start. He didn’t even like the name. It sounded too much like the rubber gloves! On that, Marie had to reluctantly admit, he had a certain justification and was by no means the first to say it, but that wasn’t the point. It always had been called Marigold’s and she also dreaded to think what he might propose calling it instead. Luckily, the original and real life Marigold was still a majority shareholder and had put her foot down on this, though no doubt Dave still had notions of changing it and stamping his authority.

     Marie supposed they were only little things, but little things can accrue. It started with him abolishing the longstanding custom of giving free wrapping with such cut flowers as they did sell. It was second nature when someone bought their bunch or their bouquet to offer a swathe of paper – usually a choice between plain and patterned, with some seasonal adjustments, and to seal it with a strip of sellotape from the dispenser. But Dave had a saying – come to think of it he had plenty of sayings, though it might be more appropriate to call them slogans – that something for nothing isn’t worth anything and replaced what he called the cheap and nasty free paper with a costly and (theoretically) optional alternative. The next step was the tabards. In theory, Marie had no objection to that. At times it could be a bit of a messy job, though they went for days on end without their hands touching a grain of soil, and particularly if you had a top clean on, protecting your clothing was no bad idea. But there were a couple of old “pinnies” hanging on a hook behind the counter, and they served their purpose if need be. Dave, she swore it, positively blanched when he saw them, and ordered the tabards. They weren’t consulted on the matter, and were also, it transpired, required to wear them all the time. In fact he had smuggled in a uniform by the back door. Even that need not necessarily have been a bad thing. But they were a shade of green that they called lime green faute de mieux but bore little resemblance to any citrus fruit Marie had ever seen. It was bordered with yellow and had a picture of a little girl with a nauseating smile holding a watering can and ministering to a simpering sunflower. She had been so bold as to point out that they didn’t sell sunflowers (though they had a couple of packets of sunflower seeds) and that though, at the moment, their staff were all female, they’d had male employees in the past and no doubt would in the future and they might not quite like the tabards with what she had already christened Miss Sick Making Sunflower. It hadn’t escaped her notice that Call me Dave himself didn’t wear one. He had merely said, at his breeziest, “Bridges to cross when we come to them, Marie, bridges to cross when we come to them!” He seemed to believe that strangling the syntax of a cliché rendered it more original. But the worst of all was that Miss Sick Making Sunflower had a speech bubble coming out of her mouth proclaiming “Blooming glad to help you!”

     No, come to think of it, that wasn’t the worst of all. They had always prided themselves on good customer service at Marigold’s. Marigold herself had instated it, and her successors continued to at least try to be always polite and patient even if, as anyone who worked in any kind of shop could have told you, the customer most definitely wasn’t always right. But Dave worshipped at the shrine of smiliness even more than he worshipped at the smile of breeziness. “Let the customers see those smiles, ladies!” he said. He conceded that if anyone were buying funeral flowers then a more restrained and sympathetic smile was fine, but otherwise broad beams at all times, and certainly when dealing with the customers was the order of the day. It wasn’t even as if the customers appreciated it! Certainly not always. Only that morning Betty from Arundel Drive had been in to get a new trowel and looking somewhat bemused had said, “No offence, but what are you two grinning like idiots about?” Betty was one of the few people who meant it when she said no offence and it was very hard to take it. As it happened, Dave was in the back room talking to a stockist at the time, and Marie decided she had to “vent” to someone. “Blame His Nibs,” she said, “Call me Dave, the new boss. He thinks folk like it if we have fixed smiles all the time.”

     “Well, he’s sadly mistaken. It can be highly irritating, not to mention you poor girls ending up with faceache.” 

     They chatted for a couple of minutes, and as they did, Dave came back into the shop, giving the somewhat bemused looking salesman a hearty handshake (they suspected he’d already given him one) and saying “Excellent, top rate, and remember, doing your best isn’t enough when only the best will do!”

     Not many people could manage whistling with a deadpan expression, but Betty pulled it off, and was whistling Jesus wants me for a Sunbeam.  Betty was an expert whistler, with a lovely, fluting, resonant sound. She’d said before now it was a shame it appeared to be a dying art, and she certainly intended teaching her grandchildren to whistle, if only in defiance against her own grandmother who had been, generally, a good sort, but was far too fond of that saying about a whistling woman and a crowing hen being use to neither God nor men.  Dave did give her a rather funny look, but he could hardly take issue with a valued customer for whistling a hymn. He turned his own most hectic smile on her, held the door, and said that he hoped she would find nothing but joy from honest toil with her trowel. 

     Yes, thought Marie. There was a funny side to it. But it could also be bloody hard going. It hadn’t quite reached the stage where she dreaded going to work in the morning, but it wasn’t that far off. Fiona seemed to be able to manage to be more laidback about it, not to let it get to her. But unlike Marie, Fiona had a family of her own, and Marie supposed that meant both that she had more to worry about than Dave’s irritating ways and also that she could go home to her family and forget all about it. Still, it also meant that she had other considerations and couldn’t just up sticks. Marie could. And she had a chance to. She earned a bit of extra money and kept her brain active by doing some bits and pieces of freelance translation and now, out of the blue, there was the chance to do something that fell well outside the bits and pieces category. 

     Marie had one of those hidden talents that might not be up there with a secret genius for quantum physics or the ability to paint pictures that made Rembrandt look like an amateur, and she had to admit that up until now it hadn’t even been that useful, though she had kept it up. She spoke Dutch. Not just a smattering, but fluently – she wouldn’t have gone as to say she was totally bilingual, but wasn’t that far off. Her father, who, sadly, had passed away when she was only twelve, was from Leyden, and they had lived there when she was a child. As her mother wryly put it, they were a complicated family. His father had been English, thus the English name! At one point, though now long gone, she’d even have said it was her first language. She still often travelled to the country and though it was almost true that most of the Dutch spoke perfect English they were still charmed and surprised to discover that an apparent tourist spoke their language so well and easily. She had never thought it would amount to any more than that, and most of her translation work was from the German. 

     But that notice on one of the online agencies she used immediately caught her eye. And not only because it was for a translation from the Dutch, but because of the unusual, personal, precise wording and the attendant – well, you could call them either perks or conditions. Or both.

     Cornelia De Jong, who preferred to answer to “Corrie” was, as she said, in good health, but also in her eighties. And she had a life story she thought the world ought to know. Well, she’s not the first person to think that, thought Marie. But in Corrie’s case there was justification. She had been a nurse in Surinam, and specialised in tropical medicine, but had also done anthropological work. Yes, it could truly be called a rich and fascinating life. And she had written it down, “But don’t worry, though I’m a bit of a dinosaur, it’s not in my awful handwriting, it’s in Word, “ she assured Marie. But she wanted Marie to work at it intensively – and to life with her in Amsterdam while she did. “I want you to see places that are familiar to me, and see them properly and not just on a screen. Ideally I’d like to take you to Surinam, too, but I accept that it’s not going to happen. You can see my old “home movies” though, and actually touch the things I brought back with me.” She also was insistent that though most Dutch people, herself included, spoke fluent English, she wanted it to be done by what she called a “Definite first language speaker” as she thought it would read better and be altogether “more satisfactory”. “I know you could quote Conrad at me,” she said, “But he was exceptional”.   Marie realised with a start that despite her own Dutch roots she had never actually been to Amsterdam. At first she had thought, well, it’s an interesting offer, and Corrie is a fascinating person, but of course I’m not going to do it. Or I’ll try to persuade her to change her mind about my actually staying with her, or see if she’ll accept just an odd visit. In these economic times, I can’t just give up a steady job. It had also occurred to her (though of course she didn’t say so to Corrie, despite realising that she would know it perfectly well herself ) that although she was in good health she was, after all, in her eighties. And if she were to pass away soon after Marie had burnt her bridges – well, to put it mildly she would wish she hadn’t burnt those bridges.

     But work at Marigold’s was getting more tiresome every day. And was it – well, sensible always to be sensible? 

     There was no denying that living in Amsterdam with Corrie and getting her teeth into a proper, full-length translation project, not to mention not only seeing but touching the artefacts from Surinam (she’d always had an interest in such things) was decidedly appealing. Certainly more so, though she’d miss Fiona and most of their customers, than day after day listening to Call me Dave’s slogans and wearing a tabard with Miss Sick Making Sunflower whilst keeping a fixed grin on her face. 

     Almost without realising it she had gone down the steps on the walkway and onto the beach itself. She plucked restlessly at the grasses growing on the dunes, realising that she would have to make her mind up before long.

     Looking up, she realised that though they were on one of the more deserted areas of the beach, she had company, walking a little ahead of her – and she knew who it was – Betty. She was wearing her favourite bright crimson headscarf, and a little ahead of her was her hyperactive Jack Russell terrier Sammy, running round in circles joyfully chasing his own tail. Betty whistled – this time a more piercing one! – for him to come to her, and while he was making up his mind whether to obey or not, she stooped down – apparently to pick up a seashell that had taken her fancy – and started to whistle for her own pleasure. 

     Her clear, skilful whistling carried on the fresh sea air stirred by a little breeze. Marie recognised the tune she was whistling, and drew a deep breath and smiled. Her mind was made up for her! And before she called out to Betty and went to join her, she listened to a few more seconds of Tulips from Amsterdam.