Writing for Fun
February 2017
What if? - Vivian Burdon
My Dad’s words faded as I walked back to the house I had shared with the same people for the last three years. In the piss fueled telephone box I had been petulant. ‘No of course I hadn’t got a job yet! No I wasn’t coming home. But Dad, it’s not even the end of term yet.’
On the way back I had savored my slow pace and gave freedom to a swell of elation. Knowing the hot summer yawned out in front of me was just delicious. I clutched at this brief pause, this precious moment in life that hides between education and work. I also breathed in my deep infatuation with olive skinned Simon. Steamy and sensual, I couldn’t get enough of him.
So why did I capitulate when Dad told me his good news? ‘Hey guess what Vivie . . . me and your mum called in the Beauchief for Sunday lunch and I asked the manager if he had any work. You start a week Monday and we can pick you and your stuff up the weekend before. It’s only part time but it will tide you over.’
My excuse of waiting to hear from all the applications I’d made for cartographic jobs didn’t hold up. He knew and I knew I had no money. The grant was gone, the student let was up on the shared house and Simon had moved back into dorms for a shock re-sit year. In one week I would be skint and homeless. Luton was not an option anymore, and the Steel City pulled me back.
It was OK working in the pub, but living at home was purgatory. Then I got the most tedious job on the planet working in the drawing office of the Yorkshire Electricity Board. The dispiriting serried ranks of drawing boards and the tedious plotting of 11kv cables onto 1250 plans with obstinate Rotering pens was soul destroying. ‘It’s cartographic at least,’ my mum smiled encouragingly.
Simon very quickly broke my heart by embracing wholeheartedly our 1970’s open relationship policy, whereas I had become a devoted celibate. Fortunately the job from hell paid for a place of my own and other fun stuff.
My job eventually became so unbearable I jacked it in and traveled, just took off – I needed to find myself! I came back lost. Then Dad saw the advert for a Cartographic Technician at Sheffield Poly. ‘Your name’s written all over this one Vivie,’ and indeed it was . . . I had a decent job and a flat of my own, and then John. John, the older man – married before with kids, John, the foundation of my self-centered life, my childless life.
But what if?
What if I had stayed and got that flat we had planned . . . Me and Simon. ‘I’ll get you a job in a pub down here,’ he pleaded. I think he was genuinely upset, ‘and you are bound to get a job in London soon. And anyway in a year I’ll have my degree and a job and we can move then.’
What if I had stuck it out, found another place to live and worked locally and me and Simon were still me and Simon? I Face-booked him recently . . . A company Director – high flier, so I would have been well provided for. A detached pile in the leafy suburbs was a dead cert.
And kids . . . we would have been like other young couples starting out. Not a couple with one partner on his second time around. I would have agreed. ‘Yes let’s have children early, so we can have a life post-babies.’ I suspect I wouldn’t have gone back to work after, not back to proper work. Not professional career type work with independent finance. I think too, I would never have quite fitted in with the PTA crowd or with the wives of his work colleagues. I am from the Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire after all. There would be emotionally destructive disagreements about Thatcher, the Miners’ Strike, New Labour and Clause 4! He had been remarkably right wing for a student in the 70s.
And then of course the deliciously gorgeous Simon would have had to work late, and there would be business trips too. He had form, hadn’t he strayed the moment I was on the train to Sheffield? He confessed, amongst others, to a second year diploma student in the Geology cupboard.
Work would be his life. ‘The way he provided for our lifestyle,’ he’d say, ‘your lifestyle,’ he’d yell. I can hear him, ‘Well you take the kids to Florida if you want a holiday, I’ll join you if I can!’
‘Florida?’ I would spit back. ‘But I want to take a Winnebago across the deserts with you and the kids. Let’s go, take off for a year, while they, we, are young. Let’s have an adventure. Let’s have fun, me and you.’ But of course I wouldn’t have said that. I had children, I would be dependent. I would have to put up or shut up.
Well no thank you.
Maybe it wouldn’t have been exactly like that but there were clues. It could have been like that. So maybe, just maybe, my Dad saved my life that day, enjoying his Sunday roast with mum. He gave me another world. A world where I met John.
I had just got back from my travels and started work at the Poly. He was the new, must see singer in my friend’s band. I asked him out. We had all met in a pub before a party . . . I was dressed as a Ladybird . . . black leotard, cardboard shell and pipe cleaner antennae. He was Lord Nelson complete with hired singlet pantaloons. We had shared tales of toilet mishaps! He applied for and got a job at Southend College. I followed a year later securing a cartographic job at the Council and we married.
John became the rock from which we lived, breathed and explored the world. There was music, always music. He provided a foundation on which I grew – independent and strong. I had freedom to study and build a fabulously rewarding career and develop friendships and social groups that have flavoured my life.
There were problems, deficiencies and disappointments. But who knows. If he had agreed to more children we may have been cursed with years of IVF and the strain may have broke the relationship. Or maybe our kids would have brought us terrible sorrow.
Who knows? So many different paths, so many possible lives. I think I’ll stick to this one, because now there is Dave. Another good decision. My Dad would be proud of me.