Pieters

It’s almost frightening to think about how long ago I started in this job…how long I’ve been here. It’s nearly eight years. Christ, just thinking about that number takes me aback every time – how could so much time have passed, almost without me noticing? Frightening, frightening.

Anyway. Back then the department didn’t even supply the free boots, so you had to wear your own. That year, when I went home on leave in the autumn – that was the time when the gabbling bloke with the funny laugh was here covering for me while I was on leave…the one who left the toilet in a disgusting state – when I got home my mum had bought me some winter boots (second hand, of course). They were nice boots. Well kept. But they were a bit stiff, and the seamed pieces at the back of the heels dug into the backs of my ankles, just there between the bone and the tendon, where your skin is stretched and sensitive. And it really hurt, the way that that stiff leather and the stitching chafed on the day before’s scabs and sore skin. But I kept wearing them, for mum’s sake, even though she wouldn’t have known if I’d have left them off. It just doesn’t feel right not to appreciate and make use of the things that people have bought you out of generosity or love, does it? Not to me, anyway. That’s always been something big in our family – the whole extended family, not just our houseful – even though we don’t talk about it out loud with each other. We look after each other. We want everyone to be OK. We care about each other, and we look out for one another. Like I say, we don’t talk about it, not really, but it’s there in the handshakes, in the pats on the back, in the arms around the shoulders. That’s the sort of thing that makes our family – the whole community, really – hang together: those kind of instinctive values and unspoken understandings. Hard to put your finger on where they come from, or how you learned them, but they’re there all the same, and you wouldn’t be you if you hadn’t learned them.

Although sometimes I wonder if I’m too soft – if I think about these things more than some of the others. Sometimes they can blank you, or treat you like you don’t deserve the same attention or time as some of the other relatives. That’s especially the case with some of the younger men, I think, like at Christmas parties or at family weddings, when the younger men cluster around the bar in an aggressive little group, smelling of cheap aftershave and beer, with their smooth skin and their sleek black hair, and all they’re interested in is shouting and laughing and the young single women. It’s almost like you don’t exist for them. They just sort of look past you if you talk to them, tapping their fingertips on the side of their glass, nodding, but desperate for you to get out of their line of sight. I know it’s them, and not me, but sometimes you can’t help but feel hurt – ignored. But that’s me being too soft, as I say.