‘I see. Well, I’m sure he won’t be long.’
I suppose I deserved the withering look she gave me in return, my remark having been based as it was on a complete lack of evidence of any kind. In a second’s glance she managed to imply that my pronouncement on the timing of Mr Chipstead’s arrival was so entirely awry as to be laughable. I wondered if perhaps his slowness of movement about the store was legendary. His non-appearance surely couldn’t be blamed on a lack of awareness: the volume of the girl’s shouts had been phenomenal, and there could be few customers or staff ignorant of the fact that his presence was required.
‘Couldn’t we carry on with the other things while we wait?’
But the girl had disappeared behind her glasses, and, with one hand still grasping the uncoded chicken, her body seemed to settle down into itself like a collapsing balloon, her head sinking a good two inches lower than before and telescoping onto the rolls of fat at her neck. She floated, as if on a rubber ring in a calm sea, suspended only by the neck, drifting gently out of sight. I felt challenged to bring her back to the conscious world and wondered if the forceful use of her name would return her to shore.
I decided to be bold, and took a quick look at the badge on her chest, semi-buried in the depths of the green-checked bosom. I could just make out the first few words of cheery greeting: ‘Hi – Happy to Help You! I’m St –’ but beyond that it was tucked out of sight. I couldn’t immediately think of many names that would fit – she didn’t look like a Stephanie, which was the only one that leapt to mind – but a second later she shifted in her chair and the remaining letters were revealed.
I leant forward and said, quite firmly, ‘Stacey.’
The reaction was, surprisingly, instant. ‘Yeah?’
‘Um – why don’t we carry on with the other things, meanwhile?’
‘If you want.’
She put the chicken down on the metal side of the till and reached forward for a large iceberg lettuce, grunting as she untelescoped herself and made the effort to negotiate the distance imposed by her own body. Her expression was completely unchanged: releasing her from whatever place she had disappeared to hadn’t brought her attention any closer to the job in hand. She appeared to be able to function physically on automatic pilot while her brain still floated in some vapid limbo.
She dealt with the lettuce without glancing at it, but then I jumped as she suddenly sat up straight – or as straight as the strictures of her trapped figure allowed – and, unnervingly, what I can only describe as interest flickered across her face. Not, unsurprisingly, directed at me, but at someone or something behind me.
I turned to see a young man of thirty or so, with extremely neat, short black hair, striding towards our till. The hair was, indeed, so short, particularly about the ears, as to make his head look too small for his rather gangly body, and the ears themselves curled outwards towards their reddened tips, gnome-like. These, together with his Adam’s apple, were his most outstanding features, in the literal sense of the word. As he approached I could read on the badge pinned to his navy double-breasted jacket that, on this occasion, it was ‘Warren Chipstead’ offering his assistance to all within reach.
He made a sort of smooth, confident swirl of the hips as he manoeuvred himself round the end of the checkout and came to rest beside me in one swooping movement. ‘Yesssss, Stacey,’ he said with his lower lip pulled away from his teeth, followed by a sort of clicking of the tongue against the roof of the mouth, effectively conveying in the brief words just what a busy man he was. It certainly seemed to impress Stacey, who was looking at the young man now with far more than simply interest. She was gazing at him with something approaching animated approval – even her voice seemed to have acquired a new vivacity as she addressed him.
‘Oh, Mr Chipstead. Sorry to bother you: no code.’
‘Another one, eh, Stacey? Rightio, let’s take a look. Yessss, chicken fillets…’ A little more clicking, then a swift scoop of the packet out of Stacey’s hand and a further smooth swivel out of the checkout area. ‘Won’t keep you a moment, sir,’ he threw back over his shoulder as he went, then, louder in the other direction: ‘Denisha! Find me a six-pack chick. fill. and take it to checkout three please.’
A man with a surname on his badge was clearly one to be reckoned with, and an aura of self-imposed superiority wafted after him as he moved briskly away from the till. Poor Stacey. The light faded from those pretty eyes as quickly as Chipstead’s back shimmied its way over towards the frozen peas. At least I could see now that life as we know it did exist somewhere in the depths of the girl’s vast frame, even if it took the presence of Warren Chipstead to allow one a glimpse of it. I wondered if I could use this insight to achieve a little communication.
‘Seems a nice sort of chap,’ I tried. ‘Efficient, I expect.’
‘S’all right.’
‘Have you been here long?’
‘Eleven.’
‘What? Eleven years do you mean?’
It didn’t seem possible: I couldn’t believe even SavaMart, while allowing for its clearly demonstrated profits-before-quality ethos, could find the benefits of employing child labour worth the risks of prosecution.
‘I begun at eleven, didn’t I? My shift. Eleven till seven.’
‘Oh, I see. No, I meant, have you worked here for long? In this shop?’
‘Yeah.’
I could see I wasn’t going to get much further, and I was quite relieved when a pretty Asian girl appeared with a pack of chicken fillets and handed them to Stacey.
‘Y’are.’
Stacey took them without a word, and I had to stop myself telling her to say thank you, as if I were talking to one of the children. I could understand Judy’s objections to her manner, which seemed purposefully designed to be as unfriendly as possible. Denisha – as I assumed it was – didn’t seem to notice though, and had already disappeared by the time Stacey had successfully scanned the pack and dropped it into my open carrier bag.
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘All successfully stock-coded, then?’
‘Eighteen pounds forty.’
‘Right.’
Was there a thin girl inside this one, trying to get out? It was hard to equate a word as active as ‘trying’ with this passive creature. And was it possible that, linked to the thin inner girl, there was a happy, positive personality also just biding its time until the opportunity came along to burst out in a surge of joie de vivre? I put a twenty-pound note into her hand and watched her as she listlessly punched in ‘20’, opened her till and looked up at the ‘1.60’ displayed in green on the tiny electronic screen. Even the small mental effort of calculating the change was denied her; everything that surrounded her conspired to deprive her body and soul of exercise and stimulation.
I felt quite frustrated to be leaving the store with my crusade to evoke a response in my fat checkout girl no further advanced than when I had gone in, and was, again, almost reluctant to go. I pictured myself grabbing her by those huge, rounded shoulders in a desperate attempt to get through, to make her look me straight in the eye, as I shouted: ‘Is there anyone in there?’ or some such. What was she feeling, this apparently indifferent human being with whom I had briefly shared the same small place on the planet? Perhaps she, too, was shy: perhaps the total lack of interest in her surroundings was merely a cover. I had, after all, seen it crack a little at the approach of the manager.
I would describe all this to Judy when I got home, perhaps make her laugh at my description of the girl’s words and expressions, and of her semi-awakening in the presence of Warren thingy.
Warren. Yes, now there was a challenge. Surely, he couldn’t be the only person capable of provoking a reaction. I felt – not jealousy, surely? – more a small challenge to my male pride. No, I