Supermarket

A man drifted back to the country of his birth when the difficulties of living in Darkness and the siren sounds of woman had pulled him home. In a scheme to get acquainted and to re learn the mores and means of what was once his own country he took a job in a super market, a small one, Marks and Spencers in Wimbledon. He was surprised to get the job, he presumed they had not really checked the references he gave, or they were so desperate for labour that they could not afford to. He mused that there had been a suggestion from some fool in human resources that older men may be more reliable than the school children and students, former bank clerks, disgruntled nurses, abandoned mothers that were their usual fodder.

The man got on well during the training course and back in the shop. He had an easy smile, a charm made smooth by many years of associating with diplomats and the sensibilities of people of other cultures. He spoke with ease and humour, skills necessary to those who have always to lie. The job was dull but the customers were affable, pleased to find a cheeful fellow amongst the scolds who more usually worked the tills. He helped the older ladies amongst the customers with their gambling on horse races , took bets for them when they were reluctant to go to the bookies themselves, gave tips and made sure the winnings were decently distributed whatever horse won the race. The supervisor, a peroxided proletarian called Tina, found her natural suspicions of this interloper confirmed by the long queues at the mans till point and a reluctance of the customers to move the line to an empty till when invited. Invited is wrong, in paid work the phrase "would you do this or that for me" has become the mantra of the oppressive boss. He felt, so he told me later, the first resurgence of his hatred when he heard this incessantly repeated request.

The supervisor acting on her instinct that this man was not of them started to harass him with the practicised nagging natural to both her profession and her sex. In the morning before the shop opened he had the job of filling the vegetable racks. The trays of old potatoes, the carrots, the chemically preserved salads all had to be put in their places on the shelves according to a store plan carefully devised by merchandising who were represented by freshly made up graduates in black skirts or blue shirts, who arrived early, harassed by the traffic, from their suburban places. The supervisor complained the man filled the shelves too slowly, that it was too close to opening time before the shelves were stacked. He ignored her lies. She increased the pressure by writing out disciplinary reports which he refused to sign. Though he smiled still, she knew he did not fit and would in the end be a cause of some unspecified disruption.

One morning she asked him to move to stacking frozen chickens. I think he saw already the inevitable and after four months there was ready to hasten the outcome. He stacked chickens so slowly, made the others laugh and delay with too many funny remarks that the fellow chicken stackers, two b and t women were pleased to complain to Tina that weight was not being pulled. Tina came to remonstrate.

The man, calmly, but with some deliberation, stepped forward, into what in the culture of women is known as personal space. Softly, but loud enough to be clear to all around, using a very careful diction he said

"Tina if you speak to me like that I will kill you. That would be very bad for you and very bad for me. Don't do it"

The frozen chickens were left across the floor. Tina ashen stepped back, reclaimed her space. The man left by the lift collecting his jacket and stalking though the halls of Centre Court just as the security officers readied to open the doors to the early morning shoppers. He returned mid morning to sign off with personnel represented then by an an over weight professionally amiable man called Bob.

"This woman says you threatened to kill her, and whilst I understand your sentiments, you cannot say that kind of thing in an English workplace"

The man said "You cannot say that type of thing anywhere".

I heard this story in a bar, where I hear all my stories and I never expected to see him again. I have though, in Darkness, to where he returned happier once his attemt to come home had failed and he could comfortably die in Darkness. I see him somtimes, always charming, always witty, always smiling, soft spoken, the careful diction and changing accent covering the stammers his life has created. He survives as he did before on the desperate schemes of migrants every where. He never keeps the company of women, or when they come by his converation quick and quiet he moves away, as if he feels they will notice the change of temperature. But maybe that is a preference: to walk away is the civilised response to insult.