yammering

On one of the days between Christmas and New Year Margaret sent me over the Brenda’s to deliver a box of sale slippers. Tristan came to the door.

‘Oh hello, mate,’ he said. ‘Mewwy Chwistmas. Are you coming in?’

‘Merry Christmas, Tristan,’ I replied. ‘Yeah, I’ve just got to deliver this box for Brenda. Is she around?’

‘She’s in with a client at the minute, but should be fwee soon.’

‘What’s she doing, a bit of post-Christmas life coaching for one of Santa’s little elves?’

‘Not quite,’ Tristan laughed. ‘But it’s not far off. She’s got Mrs Bywo in with her. This lady is about as tall as a painted teapot and dwesses like a demented wagamuffin. Bwenda knows her from her poetwy group. I tell you she has twied just about evewy thewapy Bwenda knows, for evewything fwom colour blindness to celebwityphilia. She’s come in today for some urgent acupuncture because of stwange tingles in her feet, which she thinks she got from being too close to a starfish while she was talking to the mermaids on the wocks at Cullercoats on Chwistmas Eve.’

‘I didn’t know acupuncture worked for that,’ I said.

‘Imaginawy tweatments often work well for imaginawy complaints,’ Tristan replied.

‘Hmm, good point,’ I said. ‘Any way, how are you? Did you have a good Christmas? Was Santa good to you?’

Tristan grimaced and shrugged, in the way that Trostskyists do. ‘It could have been better,’ he said.

‘Don’t tell me Santa didn’t come,’ I said.

‘Oh, I did okay that way,’ he said. ‘The usual chocolates and aftershave and what have you, and Bwenda got me an electwic scwewdwiver, which will come in vewy handy if business ever picks up again. Oh, and thanks for the socks, by the way, which I thought were weally wadical for me. No, the pwoblem is that I’ve been a bit in the doghouse with Bwenda since she opened her pwesents fwom me.’

‘Oh bloody hell, mate,’ I said. ‘You didn’t cut corners, did you?’

‘No, I shelled out an arm and a leg. But it seems I got the wong bwands for her. You know, Bwenda, she’s got expensive taste, and I thought the stuff I got her was wight up her stweet. I got her a Louis Vuitton handbag, a Cartier watch and a Burbewwy twench coat. When she unwapped them I thought she’d be cockahoop, but she wasn’t. She looked a bit down in the mouth. “Are they fakes?” she says to me. “Fakes?!” says I. “Of course they’re not fakes. You’ve no idea what that little lot cost me.” “Are you sure?” she says, looking at me thwough her hair as if I might be pulling a fast one here. “Absolutely sure,” I says. “Do you want to see the weceipts?” Eventually she came awound to accepting that they were all the weal thing, but she still wasn’t happy – because, she says, evewyone knows you can easily get fakes of these bwands. “Even Chavs wear them,” she says. “Yes,” I says, “but yours aren’t fakes, are they? Not like theirs.” “Yes, but how will anyone know that?” she says. “They don’t look any diffewent.” I tell you mate at that point I was wishing I had bought bloody knock-offs and saved myself a lot of money. “So what do you want me to do, Bwenda?” I says. “Pin a These Are Not Fakes label on them to tell the world they’re weal?!”‘

‘It’s a strange world we live in, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘Someone wearing a fake imagines the world thinks it’s the real thing, and someone wearing the real thing imagines the world thinks it’s a fake! Maybe we should all go back to going around naked, eh?”

‘Anyhow,’ Tristan went on, ‘she eventually came awound, but not before I said I’d make it up to her by taking her for a short bweak in Pwague for Valentine’s Day. Not that I can afford it, of course. Work’s all but dwied up. You can’t get moved for bloody plumbers now that house building’s stopped.’

At that point I heard the door of Brenda’s consulting room open. Mrs Byro came out and shuffled down the hall to the front door. I could see what Tristan meant. At first glance Mrs Byro appears to be to haute couture what Hugo is to horticultural design and you’d assume that her wardrobe must be a junkyard, a random accretion of disparate garments.  She is no bigger than a hobbit and has long hippy dippy hair of a curiously neutral colour. She struck me as the kind of woman you’d imagine must always choose her outfit for the day before she puts the light on. She has that sort of ostensibly accidental charity shop eclecticism that you never actually see among the poor (who are for the most part running around in fake Levi’s carrying fake Louis Vuitton handbags, of course). But I suspect it would be a mistake to think that the Mrs Byros and the Brendas of this world are at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of their wardrobe strategies. They are in fact sisters.

‘Hi, Brenda,’ I said. ‘Merry Christmas.’

‘And a very merry Christmas to you too,’ she replied, giving me a big hug and a kiss on each cheek. ‘Did Tristan tell you about Prague? Oh, I’m so excited!’

‘Yes, he did,’ I said. ‘It sounds fab. Hey, and thanks for the Christmas present. It’s really interesting and, er, you know, unusual.’

‘Yes, I thought you might like it,’ she said. ‘I thought it would look good on your desk at work.’

‘Hey, I’d never thought of that. Yeah, I see what you mean, though. It’d be really good to be able to just turn it on whenever things become a bit too stressful. I must remember to get some batteries for it on my way home.’

I gave Brenda the box of sale slippers and drove back up the coast, listening to Lucinda William’s latest album. She’s made better, but it’s good. It hardly matters what she sings though, her blistered paint and rusty broken nails voice says it all.

When I got back Margaret was peeling some carrots. I asked her what Brenda had got her for Christmas. ‘Did she get you a fountain too,’ I asked.

‘No,’ Margaret replied. ‘She got me a Strength Rune silver necklace, a collection of Nam Champa soaps, a Green Man candle holder and some candles. Oh, and a black beret. It’s all very good quality stuff, of course.’

‘Yes, it all sounds very Brenda to me,’ I said. ‘But it doesn’t sound especially you. When did you last wear a beret?’

Margaret continued peeling carrots. She said nothing. I picked up The Guardian and wandered through to the conservatory. De Kooning joined me.

‘If you had a friend who was a goldfish,’ I said, ‘and she had bought you a Christmas present, what would you have liked her to have got you?’ 

De Kooning looked up at me for a moment. He licked his paw and began to clean his face.

‘Okay’ I said, ‘if the choice was between a wrecked pirate ship aquarium ornament and a catnip-filled fluffy toy mouse, which one would you go for?’

De Kooning stopped cleaning himself for a moment and looked at me as if I was daft.

‘Okay, okay, it’s a no-brainer, you’re right. Unless the goldfish was called Brenda. If Brenda was your goldfish friend you would have got the pirate ship.’

Sunday was bright and frosty. I drove up to Lordenshaw. I walked over to Spylaw and from there contoured across the moors around the southern slopes of Simonside before climbing up to the crag on the path that passes Croppy’s Hole. There was a fair amount of ice here and there and the peat on top was frozen rock solid. But it was dry and sunny and it was easy walking over the top on the newly laid stone slabs. To the north there was snow on Cheviot and Hedgehope Hill, shining like a bride in the winter sun. It was a beautiful day. It was 2009. As I walked east off Dove Crag I began to think about Basil Bunting.

When I got home Hugo was on his drive. He was working on the Alligator with what appeared to be an angle grinder. He gave me a wave as I went up my path. I went out into the back garden and looked over the fence into Hugo’s garden, which I hadn’t seen for a while. It was much the same as before, except that there was a straggle of silvery tinsel on the moose’s antlers. The waterfall was turned off and the pond was frozen. The ducks and the otter were in there usual places. The grey heron gazed at the ice and never blinked, not even once. It was late afternoon. The last rays of the sun were glinting on the still naked girders of the Citadel.

.