Short story

The Day of the Ironing Board

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Today, from the house I am about to leave, I can see the oaks exposing every fracture to the frosted wind that’s cutting across the heath like razor blades. On other days in these empty, early months of the year rain falls half-heartedly from a grey shapeless sky. And yet, at this moment, there seems little in the world with more appeal than the tedium of a London winter. Certainly not a decrepit, steaming city several thousand miles away just holding its own against the encroaching Sahara.

 

Diane works for a French perfume company, in marketing. She’d phoned me the day she heard.

 

‘Get your sun block out. We’re off to Senegal,’ she said.

 

I thought she had a damn cheek quite honestly. No ‘Would you mind if…’ Just an assumption that whatever she wanted I’d be there.

‘I’m still in the middle of my thesis,’ I protested. My French is also pretty useless but I didn’t mention that at the time.

‘You do most of that over the web. You can always come back for the odd few weeks if you have to.’

‘Lets talk about it over dinner.’

 

I’m not a Luddite. I enjoy change but I like to live in an unchanging place like Hampstead because it provides me with choice. When I want change, like the neon of a London evening, I can find it quite simply a few stops along the tube. Diane lives in the South London suburbs. She doesn’t appreciate the real London with its random jumble of regal parks, tawdry back alleys and monumental buildings holding a million secrets. History turns corners here. There’s no need to travel to another continent.

 

‘You’re not going to go all domestic on me,’ she said once we’d started on our Gimchi at a Korean restaurant near Soho.

‘Do what you have to do,’ I said. ‘It’ll be good for your CV. But I need to do what’s best for me, and Senegal isn’t it.’

‘A bit young to be losing your sense of adventure, aren’t you?’

 

I replenished our wine glasses. It was a Bulgarian white, cheap but why pay more? Korean food was never designed for European wines.

 

‘Sense of adventure? You’re the one who lives in Putney.’

‘Oh I see. Hampstead Heath is adventurous is it? You can traipse across the moors and not see another building for ten minutes.’

 

The main course arrived. It was Sinseollo and working out what everything was allowed the moment to lose some heat. Diane showed me some photos of the local offices and staff. They were beautiful people. The women in their psychedelic colours were stunning.  Then she touched my hand.

 

‘If you don’t come,’ she said eventually, ‘how will you and me….you know, keep things going?’

‘Look, you’re the one taking the risk. You work it out.’ The words came out more harshly than I’d intended. I softened my tone. ‘I’m perfectly happy as things are. What’s there to decide?’

 

The plane is very comfortable. I’m in Club Class because I’m formally accompanying Diane, though she went a few weeks ago. As I sit here with my legs stretched out, notebook in hand, munching an apple and listening to Vivaldi. I recall our Soho evening. I was wrong of course. I had to decide something because Diane had forced a choice on me, Senegal with her or England on my own. I could have told her to get stuffed I suppose. Maybe she was testing me. Would I follow her to the ends of the Earth? and all that nonsense. It could have been her way of saying it was over unless I agreed to rip my life up. I know I don’t want it to end. Diane is bright and sparky, just as I like it. But it was the bit about adventure that tipped the balance. How could I refuse? I know I’d wonder for the rest of my life what it would have been like to get to know people about whom each of us has little understanding of the standards and norms the other finds mere truisms. So I’m going to get some answers. But it feels like no choice and I resent it, damn her.

 

‘What’s with the guards?’ I asked when I’d dumped my things in the cavernous living room. The place was a French colonial sort of building near the centre of Dakar. It was almost devoid of soft furnishings and every word echoed round the walls revisiting my ears while Diane added her sounds to the confusion.

‘All staff get twenty four hour guards. Company policy.’

‘It’s that dangerous?’

‘Of course it isn’t dangerous.’

‘Then why have guards?’

‘I told you. Company policy.’

 

I looked out of the windows. There were bars across each of them fixed diagonally. Like a prison, only prettier. The surrounding walls were topped off with reams of barbed wire. Night had fallen but the damp heat still hung heavily in the air.

 

‘A glass of water would go down well,’ I said.

‘You can’t drink the water from the tap. I’ll show you the filter.’

‘Can’t you buy bottled water?’

‘Yes but I’m nearly out. It’s such a weight so I only buy two at a time.’

 

That night I lay gently over her. The air-conditioning had broken down and we were both sweating. I took the weight on my arms to allow Diane some space and relief from the sticky heat. Robotic sex can be fun when you choose it as a brief variation. You can concentrate on the moving parts so to speak. But the humidity turned a pleasant obligation into a chore.

 

There are pavements in the centre of Dakar but they’re largely invisible, smothered in vegetable and peanut sellers, parked cars and coffee stalls of plywood sheets on tea chests. Dotted amongst them, often minus a leg or an arm are the beggars. They stare at me, knowing as well as I do that coins I wouldn’t even notice losing would provide a day’s food. I start to drop a bit of cash in the laps of one or two but rapidly run out of change if not guilt complexes.  So, like everyone else, I walk in the road and pretend they don’t exist. This place stresses me out.

 

Walking in the road is no easier. Street traders attack from all directions, selling watches, bags, mops, belts, calculators, towels, shoes, socks, accosting everyone with a white face.

 

‘If one more comes up and asks me to buy something,’ I said to Diane as she led me round the frenzied streets, ‘I may strangle him.’

‘They’re only trying to make a living,’ she said.

‘Some intelligence would be useful. If I wanted a towel I’d go and buy one. I don’t need to be asked.’

‘It’s impulse buying. Ever heard of it.’

‘Impulse? Look. Over there.’ I looked at her with wide eyes. ‘That one’s selling ironing boards. Who buys an ironing board on impulse?’

 

The man caught my eye and walked towards us raising the boards to our faces. He had three on one arm and flowered covers draped over the other, at extra cost no doubt.

 

‘No I don’t want an ironing board.’ I screamed. ‘Bugger off.’

 

The man looked shocked, almost hurt. Whether or not he understood my English the underlying meaning was clear to everyone within yards of us. The man pointed to his chocolate brown arm.

 

‘This why you no want. You racist.’

‘Come on,’ said Diane. ‘Don’t get involved.’

 

But it was too late for non-involvement. I’d mentally already stepped on to my soap box.

 

‘Do you think I give a fuck what colour your skin is?’ I shouted. ‘You're selling ironing boards. Believe it or not, at this point in time, I do not need an ironing board.’

‘Pete!’ screamed Diane. ‘Walk away, Walk away. You’re only making things worse.’

 

I let out a few more expletives and stormed off, almost ran. The crowd that had quickly gathered to watch the show parted as I marched through them. Diane trotted after me.

 

‘Pete, slow down. Lets get a coffee and relax.’

 

We found a coffee bar in a patisserie. One of the few places where you could trust the water.

 

‘What the hell are you playing at, Pete? Lost your sense of proportion? You could have been duffed over back there.’

‘I like my space. I want to walk down the road and just look around without

being attacked every yard. It’s not much to ask.’

‘Yes it is,’ said Diane. ‘They do things differently here. You’re going to have to learn to adapt or you won’t survive.’

‘Adapting means changing my clothes to suit the climate. It doesn’t mean changing me.’

 

We sat there in silence sipping coffee. I felt Diane staring at me. There was no love in her eyes.

 

‘You’re becoming a bit of a bore, Pete,’ she said as she reached in her pocket. Then her face changed. ‘My mobile. I can’t find it.’ She looked in other places, everywhere it shouldn’t be. And it wasn’t.

‘Maybe you left it at home,’ I said.

‘No, I know I brought it with me. I was due to phone a couple of people from the office to arrange to meet tonight.’ She looked at me accusingly. ‘This was going to be a pleasant walk round town and a fun evening.’

‘Take that look off your face,’ I said. ‘I’m not the one sticking ironing boards in people’s faces. Nor am I stealing phones.’

‘It must have been in that crowd. If you hadn’t made such an arsehole of yourself this would never have happened.’

 

The days following the day of the ironing board were no improvement, specially between Diane and me. That day was ruined of course.  It was a company mobile and she was forced to arrange a police report to get a replacement. Otherwise the several hours of hassle that that entailed would not have been worth it. I walked round town on my own many times to harden myself to incessant unrequired contact, to the

squalor and the heat but never succeeded in removing the strain of it.

 

‘What is it with you?’ asked Diane as we sat down for a meal one evening. We’d prepared Thiof, neatly gutted by the fishmonger, with rice. ‘You’ve lost your spark.’

‘It’s this bloody town.’

‘You’ve been abroad before. What’s so different about Senegal?’

‘Maybe it isn’t different. Except now I’m not a visitor. It’s different because I live here.’

‘Just grow up Pete and accept the challenge.’

 

I took a large gulp of red wine. ‘If I was a visitor I could take the culture shocks and experience Dakar in all its poverty stricken glory. I could look at the place like one vast entertainment centre and take the “wows”, the “oh my gods” home with me.’ I finished my wine and poured us both another glass. ‘You can’t do that when you live here.’

‘Why not? You can’t really experience the culture shocks unless you do. That’s what makes it interesting.’

‘It’s like I feel part of the entertainment.’

‘Pete, this isn’t a West End show. These people aren’t on stage so you can feel good about touching their lives for an hour or so. They live here. This is how it is.’

‘I’m not denigrating them. They’ve got more problems than I could imagine. But for the moment this is supposed to be my city, my decrepit pavements, my stinking, open-sewered street corners. I’m beginning to catch a sense of belonging and that’s the last thing I want.’

 

Diane got up and collected the used plates. ‘You’ve changed Pete. You used to be a bundle of fun. Why don’t you just go back to your cosy Hampstead flat?’

 

I knew quite a few of Diane’s work colleagues. I saw one unexpectedly after I’d gone on a brief walk through the morning crowds, holding tight on to my wallet, and ended up at a pizza parlour I’d not been to before. It was Andy, the admin guy who’d arranged another mobile phone for Diane. The two of them were eating when I walked in. You shouldn’t get paranoid about these things. Work mates often lunch together. But it was the way they were looking at each other. And I saw their hands. They were on the table either side of their plates, almost touching.

 

I can see virtually nothing from my window today. The rain is thudding against the glass and over the heath the trees, still bare, are but waving featureless shadows. Yes, it is appealing and I’m not sure why. I’ve been back now for over a week. I walked out after I told her what I thought of her. Probably a bundle of clichés but maybe it’s what I should have said in the first place. Yesterday I wondered round the back of the village and found one of those little alleys barely wide enough for a horse and cart. A few yards down was a hardware shop with some brooms, mops and buckets displayed neatly outside the door. I thought I might go in and buy an ironing board because I could if I wanted. I didn’t so I walked on. It feels good to be home.