Other People

It has been a strange old night, full of other people’s triumphs and heartaches.

First was Number Two Daughter, who called from Dubai this evening. Actually she didn’t call: in the manner of daughters the world over she sent me a text mentioning how much she would like to talk to me and coincidentally happened to be free right away: so of course I was maternally pleased and flattered and called her back despite knowing that calls between the UK and Dubai chalk up at £1 per minute. She is in the middle of giving up smoking and drinking in an effort not to die young and also to raise money for an African charity which one of her friends runs, called by the rather appealing name of Sparkle Malawi. Anyway, she was enormously proud because she has raised lots of money already and also rediscovered the pleasures of respiration, which seem to have taken her by surprise: she talked delightedly at some length about how after only seven days she can already do exercise like walking up the stairs without coughing hardly at all. In retrospect I think I may not have been paying attention to that bit, as she lives on the 52nd floor: so it is unlikely that she would be able to walk up the stairs without an oxygen tank, no matter how many cigarettes she has forsworn. Anyway, she was bouncing with clean-living well being, and I was pleased for her, and she told me a lot about how happy and pleased she was until I glanced at my phone and realised that she had been pleased for 17 minutes and 15 seconds, and I could not afford any further pleasedness and called a hasty halt.

After that I went for a swim and bumped into my nemesis the cleaner, whose acquaintance you have already made in the post called Danse Macabre. To my surprise she seemed to have come to the conclusion that our brief encounter last week was indicative of me being a benign and unthreatening sort of presence, and unexpectedly sat down next to me whilst I was getting dry and spilled out a tragic and tearful tale about leaving her little son behind in Poland (or maybe Rumania: definitely somewhere abroad) with her parents until her father died two days ago, and she worked sixteen hours a day scrubbing horrible greasy stains off changing rooms and living in ghastly staff accommodation with a lot of hotel porters and cockroaches and longed to go home. We were both in tears by the time she had finished, and I resolved never to be horrid about the loo roll again but to guard against misfortune in future by  ensuring I had a pocket full of tissues. I had one at that moment, which came in handy, and she blew her nose and sniffled and eventually cheered up, and I felt so very sad for her little private unnoticed tragedy and sat in the taxi all evening hoping that the hotel would be kindly and help her to get home.

Then at the end of the night something splendid happened. Two young men got in the taxi to be taken home to Windermere, and in response to my polite taxi-driver questions explained that they had suddenly decided to come for a celebratory night away. Of course I enquired about what they were celebrating, and they were quiet for a moment, and then one of them said: “Well…we haven’t actually told anybody yet…you’re the first to know…it’s so exciting, we’ve been approved for adoption, we’re going to have a baby,” – and then they both started crying happy tears.

I squeaked with the excitingness of it, and it all tumbled out, they’d been through all sorts of horrible interviews and visits and dreadful prying questions, and had almost given up: and felt awful because all they wanted was a youngster to love and care about, and they knew they could look after one and make it feel safe and brave and happy, and suddenly this morning after ages of hoping and almost giving up and hoping again it had all happened: so they had come to sail on Windermere and be joyful in the sunshine. It was such a lovely thing: I almost cried all over again and wouldn’t take any money for the taxi fare by way of sharing in their celebration: and went off home feeling much richer than the four quid fare would have made me feel. Sometimes it is such an amazing world: so full of lovely moments and heartbreaking ones and little victories, lots of stories unfolding invisibly all around you all the time, and just occasionally you get a tiny glimpse into some of them. It has been a truly good evening.