The Job Club was held in a Portakabin situated in a carpark in the grounds of a defunct Victorian school, now converted into a skills training centre. The Portakabin next door was occupied by the Samaritans. Their tall radio mast swayed in the wind. Christopher watched it through the smeared window as he waited for other members of the Job Club to arrive. He had forgotten how to speak to people about unimportant things, so he kept his back to them.
At five past nine he heard a man’s voice asking them to take a seat, and he turned around to see Barry Dearman standing beside a flow chart, with a black marker pen in his hand. Barry was smiling, showing his white crooked teeth. He told the assembled unemployed men and women that they almost certainly ‘by now’ suffered from low self-esteem, and that today’s session would concentrate on getting their confidence back. He wrote ‘SeLf-eSTeem’ and ‘COnFiDenCe’ on the flow chart, in a mixture of upper- and lower-case letters, which irritated Christopher. A bald man sitting next to Christopher carefully copied ‘self-esteem’ and ‘confidence’ on the first page of a notebook which he took out of a W.H. Smith paper bag.
Barry then wrote ‘Biography’ on to the flow chart, then launched into an explanation of the word. He then handed out a sheet of thin A4 lined paper, so thin that Christopher could see his fingers through it when he took it from Barry’s hand. “When you’ve finished writing your biography, we’re going to turn it into a CV,” said Barry; “and some of you will get a chance to get on the computer and type it out, professional, like.” Thirty heads turned towards the lone computer which stood on a Formica table, trailing wires. The man next to Christopher wrote ‘Computer’ in his notebook. Christopher wrote:
My name is Christopher Moore. I was born on July 20th, 1947. My parents were called Audrey and Harry. My father was a knitting machine engineer, and my mother worked in the hosiery making children’s socks. However, due to circumstances, I lived with my grandparents from an early age. I attended Dovecote infant and junior schools and Ladymount Green Secondary School. My favourite subjects were English and History. In my last year I was in charge of the school library. I represented the school at table tennis. I left school when I was fifteen. I went to work in an electrical appliances shop, where I stayed for six years. During that time I learned to mend electrical appliances, including televisions, which not many people had then.
This was how I first met Angela. Her father came into the shop and asked if somebody would call at their house and have a look at their television, which had very poor picture quality. It took two buses to get there, they lived at Willoughby Harcourt, a small village. There was no such thing as the firm’s van then, and anyway, I couldn’t drive. The Carrs lived in a big house with a drive. I had to carry my toolbox all the way, and by the time I rang the bell I was glad to have arrived. Mrs Garr answered the door and showed me into a room she called the lounge. There were two bookcases, one on either side of the fireplace. The shelves were full of English classics: Dickens, Shakespeare, Waugh, Hardy: I’d heard of most of them. Televisions were big then, and this one (it was a Ferguson I think) stood in the corner, towering over all the other furniture. I’d taken the back off and was checking the wiring inside when Angela came in with a tray which held a cup of tea, a sugar bowl, and two digestives on a plate. Her first words to me were, “My mother sent this.” She had a posh accent. My first words to her were, “Thank you.” I think she was anxious to prove that she was intelligent, because she asked me a lot of questions about the science of television.
She had just taken an exam in physics, so I had to think very carefully before I answered her questions. She was eighteen, I was twenty-one. She was wearing a straight short dress. Her legs looked bright orange because of the stockings she was wearing and she wore white square-toed shoes. But it was her hair I liked. It was so black. I used to go bird-watching when I was a kid, and it was the same colour as a blackbird’s wing. The tea went cold on the tray. I didn’t dare risk making a slurping noise when I drank it. I asked her to turn the horizontal hold knob while I adjusted a few wires at the back, and after about fifteen minutes we got a perfect picture.
She was waiting to go to Leeds University. I have never loved anybody else. She didn’t go. Her mother died after a long illness (cancer of the liver). She had to listen to her mother screaming with the pain. Then she had to stay at home and look after her father, who suffered from depression until he died, two years later. There was no money and Angela got a job in a travel agent’s: her other A levels were in Spanish and German.
I next saw her in a jazz club. She was with a thin man with a beard. I hated him on sight. We were all on the dance floor. I asked her to dance. The bloke with the beard objected. I hated him so much that I hit him and he fell down.
Here Christopher asked for another piece of paper. Barry handed it to him begrudgingly, as if it were a sheet of gold leaf. Everyone else had long since finished writing.
It was the first time in my life that I had hit anybody before they hit me. Angela bent over her bearded friend and I was thrown out of the jazz club and told not to come back.
She came out with the bearded bloke. He tried to put his arm around her, but she threw it off. I knew that she had lost respect for him. I crossed the street and I said, “Angela I love you.” I wasn’t drunk. She started to cry. The bearded bloke hit me hard on the shoulder. I hit him back. Blood dripped from his nostrils.
“Don’t, he’s a poet!” Angela shouted. Her black hair fell across her face. I told her again that I loved her. She cried harder. The poet ran down the wet street and turned the corner. In those days there was nothing open in the town after 11 PM at night, so we sat in the bus station and talked until it got light. She told me about the deaths of her parents, and I told her that I loved her, repeatedly. I didn’t touch her, though I wanted to. We had breakfast in the bus station café. It was two years before I saw her again at night school. Then another three before we lived together. I knew we would one day. Right from the moment we got the perfect picture together in the lounge at Willoughby Harcourt.
Barry walked around and gathered up the A4 sheets. He read them sitting on a chair by the computer. The unemployed adults watched him. “Mr Moore,” he said, eventually. “Could I have a word?”
Christopher had to stand in front of him. There was not a handy unoccupied chair. Barry craned his head and looked up into Christopher’s face.
“Look, chap,” he said. “I haven’t got the time to play silly buggers. I’m not here to read about Angela, or fucking liver cancer. I’m here to help you find a job!”
Christopher said, “Don’t say fucking in the same sentence you say Angela.” in a voice that reminded Barry of a British gangster film he’d seen in which softly spoken men did unspeakably cruel things to those who had offended them. Christopher realised that he didn’t want to have any contact whatsoever with this man Barry. He knew he would never return to the Portakabin with the undulating floor. Or ever meet again the other job seekers. He decided to forfeit his job-seeker’s allowance. He would live independently of the government and he would win Angela back. He slowed down as he passed the Samaritans’ Portakabin, then decided that he didn’t need them either. He walked in the direction of the city centre, increasing his pace as he neared the travel agency.