Pamela Gawler-Wright

LUG NUTS

First Session: 3pm, Wednesday June 5th 2013

When I come in, I can tell what you’re thinking. It’s written all over your face.

I’m not blaming you or nothing. I’m used to it. That’s what happens when people see my name. They get a picture and I’m not it.

It’s the ‘a’ at the end. If it was just ‘Louise’ it wouldn’t upset people so much. ‘Louis-a’ makes people think of a girl with all pink dresses and that. Once, there was a Louisa who wrote a book about some sisters and people think automatic, “Little Women”. That was what the book was called. They’ve all heard of it.

And me, I’m standing here in my work togs and boots, smelling of motor oil, sweat and hair wax.

“Just come off a job. Wasn’t sure I’d make it here at all.”

So now you got to change your story about ‘Louisa’ and it throws you off your stride.

That’s all right. I understand. But still, for a bit, it’s funny watching you try and pretend you’re all calm and in control and that.

I say you can call me ‘Lou’ and you get a bit more comfortable.

You repeat it back. “Lou”. All deliberate, like it’s the first time you’ve heard the word. You smile, as if we’re friends now. You see it as all meaningful and that, like you’re doing a good job. Just because I told you what everyone calls me anyway.

Well, not everybody calls me ‘Lou’. People I knew from school still call me ‘Diesel’. Louisa… Weeza… Weasel… Diesel. It fits, don’t it.

But I’m not going to explain that now. You wouldn’t get why it’s OK if they call me that, but not you. That wouldn’t be OK for you to call me ‘Diesel’. That would be daft. ‘Lou’ is what nearly everyone calls me, so that’ll do fine.

I give a smile back and ask if that’s the chair I should sit on.

You’re embarrassed again because you forgot to ask me to sit down. I know - it’s because you were surprised when you saw me. You lost your routine.

“You’re alright. I’m in me mucky clothes. Not everyone wants me to march in and dirty up the furniture.”

It’s not your fault. Really. Doesn’t bother me. But you still want to do the bit about you’re the one putting me at my ease, so I let you think that. Here we go…

I notice I’ve gone into what Nanna calls ‘talking common’. She’s always had a go at me for it. She prattles on about double negatives that much that me and Grandad do it on purpose just to wind her up. Not that we don’t love her to bits, of course.

“Talk politely, Lou,” she says, but what she means is, “I know that’s how you talk with Grandad and there’s nothing wrong in that, but people will think you’re not clever if you talk common with them. They’ll treat you differently.”

What she’s never understood is that’s the whole point. People are different if they think you’re not too sharp and sometimes that’s better. With some of them I just like to keep my head down.

You’re younger than the one I had to see before. Mind you, I’m older than I was back then. Not surprising. So we’re even.

It might be better that you’re younger. Maybe they got some new methods and that. And you’re not allowed to be prejudiced now. There’s a new law. Jennifer told me.

Jennifer’s the one who called the ambulance when it happened.

And then, when this all started to kick off, she was there and she saw.

I couldn’t do anything, couldn’t even talk. And she’s that sort. Doesn’t think twice about taking charge of a situation. She’s not meaning nothing by it. But she’s more educated. Not snooty. Just that she knew it was something when I fell over, across the street from her shop.

She gets to see a lot from that shop window. After all it’s not like she’s got so many customers blocking her view to the main road. What made her think to open a craft shop around where we live? That’s optimism. But she’s like that. Wants everything to be nice. And she is nice, don’t get me wrong.

It’s just, me, I would have left it. It’s all a lot of bother and coming here isn’t what I thought it was when the doctor brought it up.

But at that moment, when the tarmac come up towards me and I can feel little spikey bits of gravel sticking to my face, I was just trying to keep breathing and was I having a heart attack or something?

And all the while I can hear Grandad talking to me, sounding all warm and calm. “What you scared of, Lou?” The way he does. But it’s like he’s far away from me and it’s weird.

It was all a bit of fuss. Especially when after all that the doctors say they can’t find anything wrong and it’s just stress. Frankly, seeing an ambulance arrive like that was enough to make me panic more.

Well, you would, wouldn’t you. Picture it. It’s them blue flashing lights.

So they give me leaflets and I got a referral here. Saw the other one, your supervisor or whatever, who give me an assessment.

Six sessions, they said.

“Just see it as a day out, Lou,” Grandad’s going. “What have you got to lose?”

“Yeah, cos I already lost me dignity,” I’m laughing back.

Honestly. How embarrassing. Getting all worked up like that.

You’re asking your questions. You’re going through a list in your head. I can tell because it’s not like you’re thinking up a new question from the answer I give to the one before. Not like a normal conversation, but you’re trying to pretend it is.

Why don’t you just say, “I have to ask these questions.” Then we could both go through them because it’s a routine you got to follow, ain’ it.

And do it like they’re proper questions. Not all this saying something and then your voice going up at the end. As if I’d tell you if you’re wrong. I’m not going to sit here disagreeing out loud with you, am I. So just ask and then I can say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and no harm done. No offense offered and none taken.

I understand. I do the same when I’m called out on a breakdown. I’m not being funny, but it’s like I have to ask the car a list of questions. So when I think: Fuel? Oil? Battery? Plugs? I run through the routine in a split second, because you’d feel a right idiot if you started faffing about and all the time it’s something plain as day. And you’d be amazed how people don’t think of the obvious when their car’s not doing what it’s supposed to.

That’s one of the first things I remember Grandad teaching me when I was learning the motors. “God gave people brains, Lou,” he’d say, tapping his head. “Your job is to learn how to use ’em. They don’t come with no Haynes Manual. You got to work it out for yourself.”

So when I get a job in, I always look first at what’s right under my nose. Weird how nothing you’re asking (or pretending not to ask) goes anywhere near what’s really been going on. And me, I feel like just coming in here I turned into a kid or something. Like, who’d think that this morning I stopped at the accountant to sign things off and she called me a ‘business proprietor’? Now I’m sitting here like a narky teenager, all of a sulk.

No, I’m not ‘currently in a relationship’.

I’m thinking I’m sure you mean well but I think this is going to waste your time. I mean, it’s not as if anybody can do anything, is it. It’s just how it is.

Here it comes. You’ve got to the question about parents.

Here we go. You’re making out like it’s all just casual, but you’ve been waiting for a chance to ask about Mums and Dads. I chuckle. “All you psychologists think about is Mums and Dads.”

Psychotherapist. Counselor. Whatever. I don’t mind. Call yourself what you like. If you’re a counselor or psycho-whatever-you-wanna-callit. Really, I don’t mind.

There’s a pause now and you’ve lost your thread again. You nearly got us there, to the Mums and Dads, and then you went and had to correct me about calling you a psychologist, (sorry).

You’re thinking now about how to get us back on track. Well, onto your track.

You breath in. And out. You do a smile. Then you raise your eyebrows and I’m learning you do that when the question coming really matters to you.

“Maybe you don’t want to talk about Mum and Dad?”

There you go. Now it’s my problem, as if I’ve got some obsession or something.

You can’t even say ‘your parents’. Or even ‘your mother and father’. I mean I’m not being funny or nothing, but you say, “talk about Mum and Dad”. As if that’s their names. Like they’re people you know. As if that’s automatically what I’d call them.

Look, I know you have to find out about me and it’s not like I mind. I’ve got nothing to hide. But why do you people always make statements, pretending they’re really questions, because we both know that you already think you know the answer, don’t we. You just love putting meanings into everything that were never there. I’m more stressed nowthan when I first come in! And now you’ve found a silly patronizing smile. As if you know this must be causing me some great pain or something.

That’s why I’ve stopped saying anything out loud.

It’s not like I’ve never told the whole story before. It always comes out at some point when you get to know someone. Why wouldn’t it? Just normal to talk about family and that. I’m hardly going to have reached my age and not thought about my own life, am I.

Nanna, Grandad, Ma, me.

And Stanley. But he’s not here anymore.

Still, fourteen and a half years isn’t bad for a dog.

But I don’t say any of that now. It’s like now, I don’t even want to tell you what I do call them. And I didn’t come in feeling like that. But you’ll make out it’s my fault.

I can’t believe I agreed to come here. Bloody Jennifer.

I can hear my heart beating and it reminds me about something in the leaflets.

“I only knew my mum,” I say. “And my grandparents. We all share the house.”

“Share the house?”

There you go. So why didn’t I say, ‘live together’?

“It’s just we’ve all been talking about the house lately, that’s all. Thinking about making some improvements. Nanna’s saying maybe she wants a change and seeing as the stairs are causing her a bit of jip, I’ve been looking into converting the back room for her. Maybe even a small extension. Uncle Cliff says he’ll look over any plumbing I do and it’s a way to get her the right kind of bath without anyone harping on about her getting older. If I just bung a handrail on the wall while I’m doing up a new bathroom then it’s no big deal, is it. It’s not saying, ‘You’re not as strong as you once was, Nanna.’ I can tell she hates all this fuss. And of course we know a sparky or two. I’m not daft. I’m not messing about with electrics.”

How did I get talking about this?

“Sounds like you’re taking on a lot of responsibility.”

I could pretend I don’t know that really you’re asking a question.

Why not say, “Are you taking on too much responsibility? Is that what started your panic attacks?”

Or even better, “That sounds very enterprising, Lou. Are you good at things like that?” and I’d go, “Ta very much. I like jobs where I can see the results. It’s more satisfying. And turning my hand to something a bit new takes my interest. You never stop learning.”

But you’re just looking for the problem. Like it’s that simple.

Like 1. dish the dirt on ‘Dad’, 2. roll out the coffin, 3. cut down on the DIY and aren’t we a clever psychowhatever!

You’re not interested in how all our friends want to help in the best way they know how. Or that I call him UncleCliff even though he’s not my uncle and I’m just a few years shy of forty (yes, thanks, I know I look younger).

It’s too much work to explain. Before you could understand, you’d have to rub out what you’ve got written in your head. Everything you think you know already. That you reckoned you understood before I even walked in. And now you think you understand more, just because I’m handy and I don’t look anything like Louisa M. Fucking “Little Women”.

And now I’m thinking what the leaflet says about getting irritable.

And I’m not normally such a cow. I’m being unfair on you because of what it was like before.

And you don’t mean anything by it.

Christ. You don’t even know you’re doing it.

And it’s doing my head in.

And I haven’t said a word since you asked about responsibility.

And in the quiet my heart is thumping.

I take a breath.

I say, “I like doing that sort of thing. It runs in the family.”

That’s why Grandad chose the navy. It was the best way in them days for a fella to learn a trade. He liked motorcars from a boy. But when would someone like him ever own a motorcar, he’d say whenever people asked his story.

And they’d all laugh. Everything changes.

He just loved the way things worked. Could lose himself for hours on anything that needed fixing or coaxing into running smooth. The artist under the bonnet, Jennifer called it – that’s what everyone thinks of him. Getting on a ship was his idea of riding the biggest motor ever, even if you did have to share it with a few hundred other lads. After that it was docking for a year or two. And look at that now. Half the docks are gone. More than half.

I’m telling you. Everything changes.

Grandad would say that in them days it was different if the navy had shown you a bit of the world because most people round our way had never even gone abroad.

“It was how a young man in them days could learn to think.” He’d tap his head. “Not everyone thinks the same. Not everyone is the same. And that’s how God made ’em.”

He wasn’t religious or nothing. That’s just the way he talked. The way he still talks.

One thing I can guess about my ‘Dad’, as you call him, (since you and him are so well acquainted) is he must have been tall. Because I ended up taller than the whole family. It’s not that I’m that tall, obviously, it’s just that our family… I’m not being funny, but they’re short.

So the only time I ever think of how he might have been is when Grandad or Ma or Nanna are trying to reach something on a shelf and I can get it down for them, all smug. If it’s just Grandad there I sometimes look up at heaven and say, “Thanks, Pop” and then I hand over what he wanted. Grandad gets the joke.

It’s not that Nanna and Ma don’t like a laugh. It’s just, you know, I wouldn’t want them to ever worry about, you know, whether I’m all cut up about not knowing him. Because I never give him a moment’s thought. I got being tall from him and I got having skin that tans easier from him. Ma goes pink in the sun and has to put on lotion. People say nice things about my suntan so I’m glad of that too. Not too bad as the two things I have from him. So I say, “Cheers, Pop” when it’s a sunny day and I don’t have to worry about sunburn and when I get something down from a high shelf.

It’s even funnier to say it when Grandad’s around because, truth be told, his size never let anyone get the better of him. Least of all him-what-was-my-dearly-departed-father.

Grandad’s the strongest man I’ve ever seen. It’s weird how he’s so strong. He’d say, “Strength is a little bit of brawn and the rest of it is brain,” and if that’s true then I think he’s a flipping genius. So many years of using his hands and arms. But it’s not just that, because he’s like wire all over. Even when he got older and his skin went baggy over his chest and round his arse. He could easy lift a load that Uncle Cliff wouldn’t even try to shift. Or loosen a bolt with a hand spanner where someone else would plug in the Black and Decker.

And him and Nanna. What a pair. Ma and me would call them ‘the lovebirds’. I’d say to them “Get a roooom, you two,” (after I heard someone say it to Gary Pender and Donna Johnson at school).

But we liked it of course. The way they’d dance around the living room, doing the steps they’d learned in the fifties. We’ve still got a record player and I reckon some of them old vinyls are worth a bob or two. Not that we’d ever get rid of them.

I think it’s good for kids and that, to see people having cuddles. I been thinking a lot about my bringing up lately and it’s pretty clear to me that none of this is to do with anything going wrong there. Maybe to some people we’d look a bit soft, but we were a family for squeezing up on the sofa even when there was an armchair going spare. Stanley liked it as much as anyone. Always managed to push in between two of us and make himself comfortable. Then just sit there grinning, going “Whaaat?!”

Better that than a family like Rebecca’s, frankly. I mean, on the outside you’d go “that’s a good family,” but I’m telling you. No wonder she was so desperate to get away.

I’d be scared to breathe when I’d go round her house. Like everything was about to kick off any minute; only it never did. And even though I was always taught good manners I would end up feeling like I’d done something wrong.

I mean what’s the point of saying to God, “For what we are about to receive may God make us grateful,” when even before her Dad had taken a mouthful, he’d inspect his dinner like it was a dead mouse or something, going, “It’s rather dry”? Then her Mum would be running out for more gravy and never sit down and relax.

I’d think, “It hasn’t worked, your praying, has it. Because neither of you looks very grateful.”

And later, after I’d eaten everything on my plate, if I’d say, “That was very nice, Mrs. Powell. Thank you,” he’d shoot me a look as if I was contradicting him or something. But if I hadn’t said ‘thank you’ it’d be rude, wouldn’t it, so you can’t win.

I’d want to say, “Your prayers are answered, Mr. Powell. I thought it was very nice of Mrs. Powell to cook me my dinner, so I think God is blessing me with some of that being grateful you’re always asking for everyone. It’s a miracle!”

But I wouldn’t ever say it of course.

Now this is where you’re going to think we were mad, but at our house we’d show more gratitude to the chicken than the Powells did to God.

On Sunday morning, after Stanley and me had our play in the park, I’d wash my hands and come into the kitchen where Ma and Nanna would be sat with their cup of tea, Ma with her magazine and Nanna with a historical novel. I’d go to the fridge and say, “Where’s the big fella? Out you come, baby.” Between us we’d come up with a name and christen it. Naming the Sunday chicken. It was a family tradition, you might say.

Sometimes it would be someone from Ma’s celebrity gossip and we’d call our chicken “Brad” or “Kylie”. If it was Nanna’s turn, we’d name it “Elizabeth” or “Cedric”, depending on what bit of history she was into at the time.