Chapter 7
Chapter 7
G ertie had felt even more back at school when she walked into the coffee shop on her break to get something to eat. She liked to sit with her needles, or a book she could lose herself in, and the café was nice and not too busy. It was a cozy spot and a treat after she’d been standing up all day, and often if it was quiet in the salon her mum would pop in too.
The last thing she’d expected was the two girls she knew from school, heads together and, to her utter horror, discussing her.
Gertie wondered, sometimes, how other people felt about their senior school. Whether it struck so deep in everyone, or whether she was the only person who really cared about it, who even noticed or remembered what it was like. Maybe everyone else just shrugged school and puberty off like a jacket and got on with their lives completely unencumbered. Maybe if you moved away, you didn’t notice it anymore.
For her, though, it remained, stronger in her memories than many of the years since. All she could remember from lockdown was the tape they had to put on the floor of the ScotNorth, reminding people to stand one cow length apart. But school—she could remember everything. The smell of the whiteboard pens. The dusty library. The art rooms, covered in splatter, and indifferently rendered bunches of flowers on the walls, as well as deeply emo self-portraits. The anxiousness at lunchtime about who she’d sit with: Jeannie McClure, normally, who didn’t really care if she talked about Struan all day. Morag and Nalitha would be together, often mixing with the boys, who were drawn to Nalitha because she was gorgeous and Morag because they liked to talk about engines. (It would have surprised Morag very much to know that Gertie thought she was popular: she and Nalitha thought Amelia Mackie was the popular one because she was blonde and vivacious and all the boys fancied her.)
Gertie remembered acutely what it was like to be the last to be picked at the Scottish country dance classes they did in PE at Christmas time; to be left to dance with Banjo Alexander, who picked his nose and ate it in full view or, almost worse, Jeannie McClure and they couldn’t decide who was leading.
She remembered the crazy teachers, the lazy teachers, the teachers so kind, in retrospect, that it was astonishing. She remembered the smell of the girls’ showers, where nobody wanted to strip down, except those with big boobs who’d developed early, who liked to show off; the tiny skirts and gym shorts that didn’t stop the boys trying to look up them. She remembered the cheap beans in the dinner line; how everyone brought packed lunches because the school lunch was so bogging, except for her, and Jeannie, and a few others, because they were on free school meals, and everybody knew.
She remembered pretending she didn’t want to go to the sixth-year dance. Then Jean made her by saying if she didn’t go, she would dress up as her and go herself. Then Jean slipped her a bottle of vodka and Irn-Bru in case it would help and Jeannie drank it and Jeannie ended up doing it with Banjo Alexander down the playground and everyone was so tainted by this horror they could never speak about it ever again. Gertie remembered it all.
Seeing these two cool, successful girls sitting there, talking about her; looking her up on Facebook (to laugh, she assumed automatically; of course they just wanted to laugh at her) had filled her with a kind of strange fury. Plus she’d had a difficult morning. She wasn’t a little girl anymore. Her life was perfectly fine, thank you. She didn’t have to put up with this crap.
“Can I help you?”
B OTH GIRLS LOOKED incredibly guilty, but Nalitha recovered first.
“Aha!” she said. “We just wanted to see what you’d been up to!”
“Why?” said Gertie.
“Because you were so amazing in the supermarket there. You saved me!”
“From John Paul?” said Gertie. “Not really.”
“Uhm,” said Morag. “Do you want to sit down and have coffee?”
Bee, the young waiter, trotted by and clocked Gertie. “Oh, your mum was by looking for you,” they said. “I said you might be in later.”
Bee had taken it for granted that she was going to be sitting there. Suddenly Gertie found she was in fact sitting down in the chair Morag had pushed out for her, not quite sure why.
“Do you want your usual?” Bee continued, cheerily.
Gertie found herself shaking her head suddenly. Her usual was egg and chips and she didn’t want to make herself look even more unsophisticated.
“Uhm, ham salad, please,” she said quickly. Bee looked puzzled, but shrugged and carried on.
Morag looked at Nalitha, who made a tiny nod. Well, no harm in trying.
“The reason we were looking you up,” said Nalitha, boldly, “was that... we wanted to offer you a job.”
This was absolutely the last thing Gertie had been expecting to hear. She had expected them to insincerely pretend they were delighted to see her and ask after other kids and the teachers from school just because they happened to be in town. And actually because of where she worked, she did see everyone that passed through as it happened, so she did in fact know what everyone was up to, although she wasn’t naturally nosy by nature. Jean was, though, and she got all the gossip through the salon and rechewed every morsel with the KCs, so there wasn’t much Gertie didn’t know.
Gertie frowned. “What do you mean?” she said.
“Obviously Nalitha’s pregnant and I was looking for some help out at the airfield.”
“And you thought of me ?” said Gertie. Something did a little jump inside her. Had they remembered her, all the way back from school? Had they been thinking, do you know who’s brilliant? Gertrude Mooney. Let’s find out where she’s working and go down and ask her. All these years we’ve wanted her to work alongside us...
This little fantasy, however, was rudely punctured a second later as the girls exchanged glances.
“Yes!” said Nalitha, just a fraction of a second too late.
“Oh okay,” said Gertie, flushing. “Well, I’ve got a job, thanks. I’m a supervisor.”
The girls nodded.
“I just thought... it’s only for a few months,” said Morag. “Wouldn’t the supermarket let you take a sabbatical?”
Gertie laughed at the very idea, even though, despite the faff, the supermarket absolutely would have let her go and come back; in fact they encouraged good employees to go to university or traveling and held their jobs open for them. They were kind of trying to be a good employer but also it meant they didn’t have to pay their staff any more money by simply never paying them when they weren’t there.
Gertrude shrugged. “What would the job be?” she asked, tentatively.
“Well, you’d be checking in passengers, loading luggage, checking rosters, updating the website...” began Morag.
“But I wouldn’t be on the plane?” said Gertie, looking worried.
“Oh no, we do all that,” Morag replied. “The plane isn’t big enough for stewardess service. Nal sometimes comes along for fun or if we need a bit of extra help. You can do that, only if you like.”
Gertie’s heart quickened a little. They sounded so casual about it. No constant spot checks for stealing, she guessed. No double signing in of alcohol and tobacco. No clocking on. No scary boss always grumbling about wastage.
“You’re ground staff,” confirmed Morag. “There’s some training, but not much. Don’t walk under the wings, basically, and don’t be a foreign spy. Nalitha will tell you everything else.”
“I will!” said Nalitha, trying to look encouraging.
“The hours can be a bit antisocial...” said Morag.
“Like all night?” said Gertie, who’d recently been up till four doing the inventory.
“Oh God, no. I mean, you start at six a lot of days but you’re done by two; that’s our last run.”
Gertie frowned. “I start at six now,” she said. “But I don’t get off till five.”
They seemed to be at something of an awkward lull, as Gertie tried to think about it, and the waiter set down two coffees, one decaf, two cheese scones, one “ham salad,” they announced, displaying a plate with limp lettuce, some sweaty-looking tomatoes, one slice of flabby ham, and a huge dollop of salad cream. This was a café that clearly resented having to make anyone a salad. After all, if you make the decision to come and sit down somewhere lovely with—normally—people you liked, and have a little treat, you might as well commit. The cheese scones on the other hand were bountiful; huge, striped with Orkney cheddar, scented and delicious. Gertie suddenly found herself regretting a lot of things, including her lunch choice.
“There you are!” said Jean, bearing down. She was wearing one of her own creations that day; a very fluffy black mohair jumper with gold knitted into a repeating cross pattern. This week her hair was dark red. Gertie loved her mum very much but she had a particular concept of “making the best of yourself,” which involved huge spidery false lashes and a style of lipstick—outlined on the outside of your mouth—which had last been in fashion in 1994. Normally Gertie didn’t mind it, but today, Morag looked neat and scrubbed clean and Nalitha had perfect black eyeliner in little wings by the sides of her eyes and her mum looked... well, she looked old.
Jean sat down, beaming, clearly delighted to see Gertie out with friends. She recognized Morag.
“Not getting your egg and chips?” she said to Gertrude. “That’s not like you!”
Gertie shrugged. “Just thought I’d try something different,” she whispered, going pink.
“Looks bogging,” said Jean, with some accuracy. Gertie pushed a dismal lettuce leaf around with her fork.
“So, hello, Morag!” said Jean. “How’s your gramps? Still single?”
Morag smiled. “Hello,” she said. “He’s totally fine. But I think Peigi has first dibs on him.”
“That woman,” tutted Jean. “Got her claws in good and proper.”
Morag didn’t disagree with her, but it was a little disconcerting to hear family news being related back to her by this total stranger. She smiled a little tightly as Jean introduced herself to Nalitha, who smiled politely.
“So are you just having a girls’ catch-up?” said Jean, nodding at Bee to get them to bring over some egg and chips.
“Actually,” said Nalitha, “we were offering Gertie a job. At the airline.”
Jean was gobsmacked.
At first she’d just been pleased to see Gertie had someone to eat lunch with; usually she was on her own. But a job! With an airline! This was even better. She was proud of her sweet-natured daughter, but she did feel a pang every time someone else got a new grandchild, or announced their child was off to university or Australia or even Inverness for God’s sake, whilst Gertie didn’t ever seem to want to go anywhere.
“Well, this is fantastic!” said Jean. “Is this for the bairn?”
Nalitha nodded.
“So there’s no point giving up the job I have,” chipped in Gertie.
Jean snorted. “In a supermarket? You could get one of those any day of the week. She’s overqualified. I’m always telling her.”
She was. The problem also was, it never seemed to occur to Jean to envisage a life without her. Jean looked at confident, happy Morag and Nalitha and then at Gertie, staring miserably into her horrible-looking ham salad, and felt an uncomfortable twinge. She had, she knew, been too happy to have her daughter around. She liked them all being a little gang. But it didn’t stop her conscience pricking that there should maybe be more to Gertie’s life than knitting and Britain’s Got Talent and a pizza on a Friday night.
“Yeah! Do it! It’ll be brilliant!”
“Great,” said Nalitha, who was feeling very in need of a nap and wanted to wind things up.
“Hang on!” said Morag, who’d kept a rather sharper eye on proceedings. “I think Gertie will need to make up her mind, won’t you?”
Gertie looked at her with some gratitude. Often, she wanted to say something and her mother would get in there first and then she’d feel it was pointless to add her side.
“Well, there’s only one thing...” she said nervously. Jean looked at her and read her mind.
“Don’t tell them that!” she said, knowing immediately what she was about to say and trying to turn it into a joke. “They don’t need to hear it.”
“... I’ve never been on a plane,” finished Gertie, red as a tomato.