‘When life gives you lemons, make lemonade!’
Bloody patronising twaddle. Some people have this crap set out on a distressed, rustic sign on their kitchen counter tops – kitchens where I guarantee you that lemonade has never, ever been made. Life has never given me lemons, or any other fruit for that matter. Pretty unlikely I’d be getting lemons this far north anyway. Everyone knows lemons won’t grow beyond Preston.
What life has given me recently, however, is invisibility. I could be grand and say it’s an invisibility cloak, but realistically it’s more of an invisibility duffel coat – ugly, impenetrable and dead heavy. And like a duffel coat, invisibility is pretty common round here if you’re over forty and female. No one notices you, no one is interested. You’re too old for a date, but too young for a scam.
At first, you don’t know you’ve got the invisibility duffel coat on. You’re left standing at the bar, the shop assistant looks straight through you, or the estate agent assumes you’ve only come in to get out of the rain. But eventually, you get it. Only the doctor and the solicitor pay you more attention than before, and the lass in the building society tries to sell you a funeral plan. But everyone else leaves you alone. And that’s when you realise it’s a reality, a reality that’s only going to get worse.
So, if life throws you a duffel coat of invisibility – once you’ve had a ratch through the pockets and had it dry-cleaned – what do you do with it? Here’s what I did.
At first, it was just the shoplifting. I’d go into one of those big, chain stores on the high street and browse for a while, picking up the merchandise, checking the price and putting it back to make sure the assistants had disregarded me as one of the invisible and weren’t going to rush over to help in an uncharacteristic moment of zeal. You never know.
Then, with a deep breath and a shaky hand, heart pounding, I would slip the items into my bag. My duffel bag, of course. Capacious and robust, to match my duffel coat.
I didn’t take anything for myself, you understand. Padmini, two doors down, needed stuff for the baby, and Vera wanted new bedding and knickknacks for her spare room since she’d packed in the taxidermy.
After one of these thieving sessions, I would be all of a quiver, head throbbing, mouth parched. There was no finesse or swagger. I was no Robin Hood. Mind you, he obviously didn’t have a duffel coat of invisibility, or else his was faulty, because we’ve all heard of Robin Hood, and no one’s ever heard of Betty Lofthouse.
Well, they hadn’t then.
To calm my nerves afterwards, and get my breath back, I’d pop across to the foyer of the town hall where there were clusters of rubbery black armchairs you could loll in, a bit like sitting in a giant tyre inner tube. And it was when I was half sitting, half lying in one of these monstrosities one morning, being ignored by both the town hall receptionists simultaneously, that two men strolled out of the lift and stood right in front of me. They were discussing the meeting they’d just had. My ears pricked up at the mention of my own street. Did this mean they’d be finally fixing the flickering street lights that set off Margery Swaby’s migraines something chronic? Or perhaps sending some poor sod to empty the overflowing dog shit bin on the corner?
As if in answer to my questions, one of the fellas dropped his file. He took the fallen papers back from me without acknowledgement, still talking to his mate, as if my sole purpose was to clear up his mess. But even in that briefest of moments, I’d clocked the heading on one of the letters: The Charles Street Redevelopment.
As I listened to their conversation, my nerves began to ping. They were discussing plans to build apartments all over the Charles Street allotments. The allotments where my father had grown all our winter veg, where our pet dogs were buried, where I still sit in the sun sometimes and think maybe I’ll give life another go. Apparently, there was going to be a meeting of the planning committee but, after that formality, it was a done deal.
The following week, me and Vera attended the meeting of the planning committee and sat at the back. Vera is also the proud possessor of an invisibility duffel coat, being a couple of years older than I am, and now that she’s not stuffing squirrels in the back bedroom, she’s got time on her hands. The presentation to the councillors confirmed our worst fears: The allotments’ days were numbered – unless we could do something to save them.
The thing about my invisibility duffel coat is that it doesn’t operate with friends and neighbours. They can see me perfectly clearly. So, armed with the free notepads and pens from the estate agency, me and Vera went door to door. Three days later, we handed our petition to save the Charles Street allotments in to the town hall. There were six hundred and thirty-seven signatures.
I had heard about malfeasance in local government, so I’d taken the precaution of copying the petition on the machine in the local library. I’d been quite prepared to pay, but after hanging about for twenty minutes whilst the librarian re-alphabetised the Catherine Cooksons, I took it as a freebie. After my visit to the town hall, I delivered the duplicate petition to the offices of The Herald.
A reporter from the paper was on my doorstep the next day.
“Was it you who organised the petition to save the Charles Street allotments?” she asked thrusting her dictaphone towards me.
“Yes, that’s me,” I said. “I’m Betty Lofthouse.”
Obviously, I wasn’t wearing The Duffel Coat of Invisibility while inside the house. No, I was wearing The House Coat of Omnipotence.
G S Walker’s first short story appeared in Redline Magazine in 2014 and since then her work has been published by Writers’ Forum, Scribble Magazine, The Fiction Pool and Eunoia Review.
Story image by Ospan Ali via Unsplash