I am slowly building up a narrative around two characters named Derek and Emma – it will turn into a novel at some stage – and I am enjoying the many twists and turns that it is taking. 😉 Here is the scene where the two first meet.
Derek remembers his wife lecturing him on the importance of buying organic produce wherever possible, how she went on at him about pesticides and agricultural run-off and dying fish until his head was spinning. This bag here says organic … but hang on, they’re from New Zealand. The carbon footprint of them must be astronomical. His wife wouldn’t be too happy about that either. Anyway, the other stuff is cheaper. He throws a bag of non-organic apples from Holland into his trolley, ignoring the momentary twinge of guilt that assails him. Sure, normal fruit can’t possibly be as bad as she made it out to be.
The air is thick with the noise of wailing children and clattering trolleys, punctuated by the rhythmic bip-bip-bip of cash registers. At one of the self-service checkouts, a man is loudly accusing the machine of eating up all of his money without having registered the payment, while two harassed-looking employees attempt to placate him.
A head of lettuce. Toilet roll. Washing-up liquid. What else does he need? He should whip up something special for dinner tonight. Not spag bol. They’ve had that for three nights in a row, and his kids haven’t stopped whining about it for a moment – telling him that it contains too many carrots, accusing him of using rotten onions, and informing him that the sauce ‘just doesn’t taste right,’ amongst other things.
He hovers by the butcher’s counter for a few moments, not sure what he should go for. How long does it take to cook a chicken? Perhaps he could just throw it in the oven until it looks alright, and hope for the best. But he’d still have to make something to go with it, wouldn’t he? He’d have to peel spuds and chop up vegetables and all the rest of it.
Ah, feck it. Spag bol it is. He steers the trolley toward the sauces and condiments aisle, then vaguely scans all of the products on offer until one label catches his eye. Our finest Bolognese Sauce – now with 33% less fat, it screams at him. Extra mushrooms!
Sophie might like that, Derek muses. He loves mushrooms as well. But Luke hates them, doesn’t he? Oh, well. That lad can like it or lump it. When he was his age, he ate whatever was put on the plate before him, and that was that! He reaches out and…
… and he’ll never hold her again.
Even in the midst of the chaos that follows his remembrance of this – even above the din of splintering glass, the shock of finding himself on all fours, and the unpleasant sensation of bright red bolognese sauce drenching his trousers – Derek is dimly aware of two elderly women standing at the end of the aisle, absolutely agog.
‘I don’t believe it, Breda,’ one of them hisses. ‘Is that … your man? Derek Fitz?’
‘Jesus Christ, it is … God love him.’
‘My Tommy is mad about the team, d’you think he’d give me an autograph? If I said it was for Tommy, like?’
‘Ah no, Marjorie, are you mad? Don’t be asking him for that, sure would you look at the state of him…’
And now there is a shop employee hovering nearby, staring anxiously at him – a small young woman with shoulder-length light brown hair and wide blue eyes. She glances around the aisle, obviously hoping that a colleague will come along soon, so she won’t have to deal with him on her own. Derek supposes that comforting grief-stricken international rugby players was never a part of her training.
‘Sir? Um … sir, are you okay?’ she ventures.
‘I – I’m –’ Derek begins, but struggles to think of anything to say, apart from, ‘I’m sorry. About the … the mess. I’ll … clean it.’
‘No, no, you don’t have to do that!’ the woman screeches, looking hugely alarmed. She looks around a second time, her eyes frantic, until she sees that a colleague has arrived at last – a short, bespectacled young man who is almost as gobsmacked by Derek’s condition as Breda and Marjorie. Her shoulders sag with relief.
‘Stefan, could you get some cleaning supplies out here?’ Then, with a glance at Derek’s tear-stained face, she adds, ‘tell Emma about this as well. I’ll take him into the kitchen, he’ll have more privacy in there.’
Stefan immediately rushes off, while she gingerly approaches Derek and lays a hand on his shoulder.
‘Um … can you stand up, sir?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he bleats again. ‘I didn’t … mean to.’
‘It’s okay, sir. We can take care of it.’
At this point, Marjorie – seemingly unable to hold in her excitement any longer – approaches them. ‘Mr Fitz? Mr Fitz, listen, I was so sorry to hear about your wife.’
Derek glares at her, but she, barely pausing to take a breath, ploughs on regardless. ‘It must be a terrible thing for you, of course … but listen, Mr Fitz, I was wondering … I do understand that this mightn’t be the best time, but my grandson, Tommy, he’s a great fan of yours, and –’
Marjorie’s friend Breda now strides up to them – an expression of great impatience written all over her face. ‘For feck’s sake, Marjorie. Didn’t I tell you not to be annoying the poor man? Didn’t I tell you?’
‘Ah now, Breda, all I wanted was –’
‘Look at the state of him, for God’s sake! Couldn’t you have left him in peace?’
As the two women bicker, the supermarket employee bites her lip and glances at the small crowd of shoppers who have gathered at the end of the aisle – some of whom are craning their necks to get a better glimpse of Derek.
‘Mr Fitzmaurice, would you like some tea or coffee? If you want to come in to the kitchen for a while … well, maybe it would be more private.’ She eyes him with some trepidation. ‘Do you need help standing up, or –’
‘No. No, I can manage.’
He awkwardly rises to his feet, then stands on the spot for a moment, swaying slightly.
‘If you’d like to come with me, sir,’ she mumbles, ‘the kitchen is just around here…’
Derek trails after her as she makes her way past a disappointed-looking Marjorie, past the small knot of shoppers at the end of the aisle – all of whom respectfully clear a path for him – and towards a small door behind the baked goods section. She then leads him down a long, narrow corridor to the staff kitchen.
On one side of the room is a rickety plastic table with two foldable chairs perched alongside it, while a drab steel sink and formica countertop grace the opposite wall. The walls are dingy and covered in stains.
‘It’s not great,’ she apologises, ‘but … we have tea. Or at least, we will do, when I get this kettle to work. It’s kind of old. It takes ages to get going.’
She opens the lid of the kettle – a tiny contraption which must once have been white, but has long since been tinged light brown in places – and sticks it under the tap. Once it has been filled, she sets it back on its base, flicks it on and smiles awkwardly at Derek.
‘Emma is coming.’
Derek gazes blankly at her and she blushes, as though only just realising that this will mean very little to him. ‘The manager.’
He nods, then looks away from her and sits on one of the chairs. A fresh wave of memories has come upon him now: Anne-Marie, standing under that old chestnut tree on the night that he met her; Anne-Marie, in her best navy dress and the shoes she always referred to as her ‘lucky stilettos’; Anne-Marie laughing at him; Anne-Marie running through their local park with the kids in tow…
He bows his head and allows the tears to roll down his cheeks, while the employee stares into a corner of the room, pretending not to notice.
The silence is broken by the click of high heels. ‘Hello, Mr Fitzmaurice,’ Derek hears someone say. ‘I’m Emma Harrison, general manager.’ He looks up and sees a tall, thin woman in her late thirties wearing a well-fitted navy suit, with her dark red hair scraped back into a bun. She is squinting a little suspiciously at him.
‘I’m sorry about the mess,’ he mutters. ‘I don’t know what came over me, I just –’
‘Do you need medical attention?’ she interrupts him.
‘No, no, nothing like that. I just want to sit down for a moment.’
Emma Harrison nods somewhat impatiently. She glances at his stained trousers and – obviously fearing that her supermarket might have to bear the cost of cleaning them – adds, ‘and you are not planning to take any legal action?’
‘No,’ Derek snaps, slightly irritated. ‘Why would I do that?’
She lowers her gaze slightly – ashamed, but not overly so. ‘My apologies, Mr Fitzmaurice. I just wanted to be sure. You have suffered a shock, and –’
‘I had a trolley,’ he interrupts, suddenly remembering. ‘There were apples in it. And washing-up liquid. Things like that.’
‘Don’t worry about that, Mr Fitzmaurice,’ she replies, with a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. ‘We have retrieved your products, and you can collect them at checkout number three on your way out.’
A vague gurgling sound finally begins to emerge from the kettle. The employee turns to the cupboard underneath the sink and begins to rummage around in the back of it, retrieving a slightly chipped yellow mug. ‘Do you … do you want sugar, sir, or –’
‘No,’ he replies, a bit more abruptly than he had intended. ‘I take it black.’
‘Right.’
She places a teabag into his mug, waits for the water in the kettle to stop boiling, and, with a slightly shaky hand, begins to pour it out for him.
‘It’s alright, Sarah,’ her manager informs her crisply. ‘You can go back to work now, and I will remain with Mr Fitzmaurice until he is ready to leave.’
Sarah nods, relieved, and darts away.
Derek gets up to add some cold water to his tea, then sits back down and begins to drink it. An awkward silence prevails for a minute, until Emma Harrison clears her throat and sits down on the vacant chair opposite him. ‘I was, of course, sorry to hear about your wife, Mr Fitzmaurice,’ she tells him, though her eyes are turned to a spot somewhere over his left shoulder, as if she is too embarrassed to look directly at him. Derek’s jaw clenches slightly. ‘I know it must have been a terrible shock.’
‘Do you know that, Ms Harrison?! Really?’
Her eyes meet his and she frowns at his tone. ‘I certainly didn’t intend to cause you any offence, Mr Fitzmaurice.’
‘One of the first things you did, Ms Harrison, when you came into this room, was to ask me whether I’d be taking legal action against this supermarket.’
‘I have to be prepared for all eventualities, Mr Fitzmaurice.’
Derek continues to stare at her for a few moments, then exhales deeply and closes his eyes. These days, he just doesn’t have the energy to sustain his outrage for any significant length of time. They lapse into a long silence, broken only by the distant noises of the supermarket beyond them. At last, Derek checks his watch and sees that it is almost twenty past two. The kids will be getting out of school soon. He drains his mug and rises to his feet. Emma Harrison glances at him with some concern.
‘Are you sure you’ll be alright?’
‘I will,’ he replies curtly. ‘Which checkout do I need to go to again?’
‘Number three.’
‘Alright. Thank you.’
The people who were gathered at the end of the sauces aisle have now dispersed, and he is able to make his way to checkout number three without further incident – picking up a jar of black bean sauce as he goes. Somehow, he is no longer in the mood for spag bol. A stir fry will do instead. The checkout is being manned by a boy who looks as though he can’t be much older than his mid teens. As soon as he sees Derek coming towards him, his eyes widen and his cheeks turn a vivid shade of pink. Derek has to glance away for a moment to conceal a smile.
‘Fitzy!’
He looks at the boy again, and – on seeing his enormous, face-splitting grin – immediately feels his mood begin to lift.
‘Fitzy! I loved your winning try against France last year!’
Derek smiles at him and inclines his head, smoothly slipping back into the role of courteous national hero. ‘Thank you.’
Image Sources:
Supermarket – New York Times
Old women gossiping – Tareynland/Blogspot
Manager staring at man – Dreamstime
