Light at the End of the Trudge

Leah didn’t in the least mind being expected to do some work in order to get her benefit money. It seemed fair enough. And she knew that volunteering at the Hospice Shop was a cushy number. She didn’t really mind the walk to and from the shop from her house on the outskirts of town, and if the weather really was atrocious, or she was feeling a bit under the weather, she could take the money for a cab from petty cash, though she always had to get a receipt (or at any rate, a note of it on one of their little cards). But that didn’t mean she was remotely convinced that walking or working, or both, were good for your mental health and self-esteem. There was nothing mystical or life-affirming about trudging along potholed pavements and arranging used tops on hooks and shelves. Did the people who wrote such things and preached such things actually believe it themselves? Perhaps they believed they believed it.

     Oh, there were the odd perks. Like all the other volunteers, she could have what Lily, who was nominally the boss, but never called herself that (and didn’t need to) called first dibs on the new (well, the used!) books that came in. Her fellow assistant (there entirely of her own volition, though occasionally she did let slip that her other half, having taken early retirement, could be heavy-going) Bernadette wasn’t much of a reader, and Lily was, but tended to have authors she liked and hunt them out. Leah was far more omnivorous, though she sometimes wondered if at least some of the Leah the bookworm stereotype was a bit overdone. Still, there were worse labels, if you had to be labelled. 

     The three women got on well enough, and if Leah had been bothered about Brownie points, then Lily would have garnered them for saying that people who signed on and did something should at least get an extra tenner a week. But, as she often added, she wasn’t the one who made the decisions. 

     But at least in her own thoughts, Leah wasn’t going to be a hypocrite. At times she wondered uneasily if not being a hypocrite was a rather glib alibi to troll out when she had thoughts she chose not to share with others and never would, and when she did not, in her heart, take pleasure and satisfaction and pride in the things that others did. Not being a hypocrite didn’t render such thoughts or lack of them praiseworthy. Not that she was especially bothered about being praiseworthy, either in her own or others’ eyes.

     Leah was one of those people who thought herself introspective, and yet shied away from introspection – from true introspection. But sometimes, and this was one of the reasons why walking, especially along a dull, familiar route, did more harm than good, she couldn’t stop those thoughts coming. They weren’t even dramatic ones, they were dull and drab and dragging.

     This wasn’t how things were supposed to be, she thought. This isn’t what I imagined for myself, or what anyone else imagined for me. Expectations were high. Oh, I was no genius, and was always one of those lucky ones who can last-minute revise for exams and the like. But I was blessed with brains, and with certain talents, and I was born into a passably well-off family in a passably well-off country, in a time of relative peace and prosperity.

     This wasn’t how it was supposed to turn out, she thought. She didn’t even want to think about the decades that had passed her by, and knew she hadn’t suddenly woken up and found herself middle aged, that was silly talk, but it still felt that way at times.

     I seem to have been sleepwalking; sleepwalking into lethargy and self-delusion, and wrong decisions, and here I am, at my age, not at the height of my profession, not proud of my own children despite empty nest syndrome, but claiming benefit and trudging back and to from a job that doesn’t pay me anything to a house from a housing association, and living on the cheap.

     Not that Leah craved luxuries as such. She thought instant noodles were much maligned, and was generally of the opinion that apart from coffee and toilet roll, the value ranges, or at any rate the own brands, were just as good as the more expensive or branded alternatives.

     But it would be nice to have a choice. It would be nice to be able to get an odd bottle of red wine without pausing to work out if she could afford it once she had paid the bills (and she was still in debt, and sometimes thought she’d never be out of it) and to buy a book by one of her favourite authors (and omnivorous reader she might be, but she still had them!) when it first came out, instead of waiting for a second hand copy, and to take a holiday. Oh yes, to take a holiday!

     Not that she was unaware of the irony of that. Escaping from an unwise relationship (but she had inflated that into something far worse than it was, George had never been in any way abusive) and potential embarrassment, she had spent almost two years living in hotels, drifting, barely earning a thing beyond an odd “filler” for a magazine (and even that was ironic, when she hadn’t really needed the money she seemed to get far more of them accepted than now, when she did) and that had used up her money, used it up not in achieving, or enjoying, or even in speculating, which may or may not have turned out well, but just in escaping. 

     You’d think I’d never want to see the inside of a hotel room again, she thought. But the time of thinking that had passed, and now the thought that she could not in the immediate or even long-term future see how she could spend a night anywhere apart from that neat, dull little house on that neat, dull, little estate, bore down on her with a sensation akin to claustrophobia.

     Sometimes life seemed like her own personal Groundhog Day. She had never especially craved change for change’s sake – the opposite, if anything, she had to admit. 

     But the thought of this, of nothing but this, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year (the throbbing, prosaic words seemed to keep rhythm with her footsteps) made her, sometimes, want to scream.

     Yes, even when she was on public view, though of course, she knew she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t draw attention to herself, or make people ask questions or feel compelled to be “concerned” for her.

     I am a failure, thought Leah, as she turned onto the road that led to her house. She didn’t call it home, even though it would probably, now, be the only home she ever had. That’s all there is to it. I had my chances, and I blew them, and I trusted people I shouldn’t have trusted and rejected people I should have cherished, and ignored advice I should have taken.

     And if only I were only a failure.

     No, she thought, banish that thought while you’re walking home, and when people can see you and hear you. Banish it and think about what flavour noodles you’re having for tea, and determine that you’re going to finish your book before you start on another one, and think about the fact that the vacuuming needs doing, and that you ought to get those ideas for a couple of fillers down on screen or on paper, because they might get printed and you need the money. Think about that pretty blue top that you saw and that you know you can’t afford, and about that crossword clue that’s tormenting you. Keep your thoughts safe. 

     The best I can hope for now is safe, she thought. Not safe as in out of real danger. The most I have ever been in danger of, at least so far as others are concerned, is embarrassment. 

     Think about something pleasant. Well, that came close to the positive affirmations business, and that had always struck Leah as a sanctimonious pain in the backside. But there were some things that she termed surface-skim pleasant, and they had their purpose. 

     It hadn’t been a bad day at the shop, by any means. They had been busy enough, but not too busy, and a couple of the “nice” customers had been in but not the “awkward” ones. “And I know folk would say we shouldn’t judge them like that, but there are the nice ones and the awkward ones,” Lily said, “And of course people can have off-days, God knows I do, and I sometimes think I’d rather have someone a bit truculent than the coathanger in mouth brigade!” Leah most certainly heartily endorsed the remark about the coathanger in mouth brigade. Even when her own life had been – well, better than it was now – she had found few phrases more irritating than “Cheer up, it might never happen”. 

     And one of the tops they’d had brought in wasn’t THAT different from the one she’d seen in the shop. She might treat herself to it at staff discount rate the next day. Leah had her own notions about second hand clothes. Coats and cardigans were fine, and even in her better off days she’d bought them from charity shops. Shoes might even be preferable second hand, as she had what Bernadette, a fellow-sufferer, termed iffy feet and there was a lot to be said for someone else having broken them in first. Though she wasn’t over-fastidious, she hoped she would never need to wear second hand underwear, no matter how thoroughly it had been laundered. Tops that fitted next to the skin were a halfway house. But if she wanted a new (to her) blue top that would be the only one she could have, and no point to wishing otherwise.

     There was one other thing. The Course. Even when spoken it seemed to have capital letters. 

     The charity was prepared to finance one of them going on a management training course. They had the brochures to look at – Leah’s was still in her bag. Lily had already said that she doubted she’d be interested in it, she’d been on a couple already, and “It was painless enough, but they didn’t half talk gobbledygook!” Lily was a kind and long-suffering person, but had an almost pathological aversion to gobbledygook. Bernadette made all manner of excuses, and Leah and Lily, exchanging a glance, knew perfectly well that much as she moaned about him, him indoors had been in failing health lately, and leaving him for a few hours a day for shop duty was one thing, leaving him for a week long course was another.

     “And, saving your presence, Leah, we’re all probably too old for stuff like that,” Lily said. Leah wondered if Lily did actually know how old she was. She’d had to put it on the official forms, but her family had a genetic tendency to look younger than they were, and though she told herself such things didn’t matter, and didn’t change a thing, she didn’t feel duty bound to correct anyone who jumped to a slightly erroneous conclusion.

     Though Leah might not quite share Lily’s loathing of gobbledygook, or management-speak, or whatever, she certainly had no craving for such (presumably) up beat and vaguely messianic gatherings. And she seriously doubted she would ever be management material. Perhaps she would have been once.

     She opened the door, and to her relief, there was no post. There had been a time when she had looked forward to post, and a time when she had lived entirely without post. She made herself a coffee (well, at least it was hot, wet, and had caffeine in it) and switched the TV to one of the radio channels for a programme that she told herself she looked forward to, but in truth, had become more of a habit.

     There wasn’t much in her bag. Her book, a packet of value range Rich Tea biscuits, and the brochure. She supposed she ought to at least give it a glance before consigning it to the recycling bin. 

     She had presumed it would be fairly local, well, it was and it wasn’t. It was in Norfolk, about an hour and a half’s drive away.

     She knew Norfolk. She had done her postgraduate studies at the University of East Anglia. She had gone back as a mature student and yet looking back, she seemed so very young then. But the course wasn’t at the university’s out of town campus; it was at a leisure centre, and accommodation was provided, described with both clarity and vagueness as “comfortable but not luxurious”.

     Leah did not immediately consign the brochure to the recycling bin. She still wasn’t sure she was going to volunteer for it, and was certain that if she did, some of the lectures and role-play and whatever would drive her mad. It definitely wouldn’t solve a thing, long-term, either practically or emotionally.

     But it means I have a choice, Leah thought. At least in this one area, in this one thing, I have a choice. I have a chance, and not too long from now, to spend a couple of nights somewhere else, to have a change of scene, even if that scene is half-familiar. 

     A couple of days later, she contacted the course organisers, and told Lily and Bernadette that she would be going on the course.

     “Well, each to their own, and hope you enjoy it,” Lily said, wryly, “And don’t give a second thought to us managing one woman down while you’re getting all above yourself!” She knew Lily well enough, and if she hadn’t, her smile and the pat on the back would have told her, to know that she was only joking about that. And she thought she caught something else in that kind, wry expression. They hadn’t spoken about it, but Lily knew, and understood, more than she had let on. 

     Leah found herself looking forward to the course – and looking forward to coming back to her friends in the shop afterwards.