In Storage

[Lincolnshirelass]

It's the kind of job that makes people say 'How interesting' in that tone of voice that actually means 'how boring'. But I like it. It suits me. Or at least it used to. I work in admin in a storage facility. One of those places you know exist but, if you think about it at all, probably hope you never have to use. Where people who are in transit for whatever reason (sometimes good, but more often bad) leave either what they cherish or the clutter they can't face sorting through in locked storage units. It's called Supa-Store, and it's on the outer edges of the town where I live, on the industrial estate. That sounds pretty grim, but it's not bad at all. It's mostly what you might call 'clean' industry; offices, a wool factory, some local government stuff. There are expanses of grass where people walk their dogs, and when the tide's right, seagulls swoop over. I once read that there can be more wildlife in places like this, at the edges of town, than in designated nature reserves. Well, I wouldn't go that far, but I've certainly seen squirrels hop around in the rather tatty trees, and hares caught in my headlights when I'm doing a night or early shift.

Of course, there are those who think that doing a graveyard shift in a place like Supa-Store is even worse than the normal ones, and doubt if it's necessary as we have CCTV, but I always used to like it, especially when I was on duty with Ronnie. Folk always joked and said we were like an old married couple, and there was a degree of truth in it, though our relationship was entirely platonic. We knew each other well enough not to mind spending stretches of silence in each others' company with our books, then I would put aside my Jodi Picoult and he would put aside his James Patterson, and one or the other of us would make tea with sugar for him and coffee without for me, and we would say we shouldn't really have those biscuits, but we did - he favoured digestives, and I liked ginger nuts. We usually had the radio on at a low volume. Don't ask me why it was at a low volume - there was nobody within disturbing distance, but somehow, you just DO put the radio on at a low volume in the small hours.

One or other of us had to say it first - it had reached the stage when we couldn't pretend that it didn't exist. Ronnie, after dunking his digestive with a studiedly casual air, said, in the manner of an extra in a play delivering an aside, 'Becky, can you hear that scrabbling?' He said 'Scrabbling' but we both knew what he really meant, though we could, undeniably, hear scrabbling, was, was there a R.A.T. Now all the cases were supposed to be utterly rodent proof, but you know these tales about super rats that can gnaw their way through anything.

'It's coming from that one - one of the Merrydale ones,' Ronnie said, unnecessarily.

Now the Merrydale was a local private girls' school that had closed down a couple of months back, but, officially at least, was only supposed to have closed temporarily, and we went along with the fiction, relieved that those 'above us' would deal with any unpleasantness that arose if the crates outstayed their welcome.

The Merrydale was one of those establishments that served a purpose - or used to. It was what people called a 'Nice Little Private School'. The pupils were an odd mixture. Local doctors and shopkeepers whose daughters had failed their 11-plus but dreaded exposing them to the comprehensive were kitted out in the Merrydale uniform with its royal blue blazers and hats with badges, and boaters in Summer. The other main input was from military families who were overseas in places without 'suitable' schools but who could certainly not have afforded the prices at Roedean or Benenden. At one point it hadn't been a bad school, though it was never going to win any awards for academic attainment. But numbers dwindled, and at the end there had only been a handful of pupils and the headmistress, Miss Farndon.

Now in her day, Miss Farndon had been a high achiever - she had an excellent degree, and was widely travelled. But by the time she was in her seventies she was a leftover from a bygone age, the sort of woman who never felt fully dressed without a string of pearls round her neck, who never forgave the Church of England for abandoning the Book of Common Prayer, and who would not have been seen dead in trousers - even when she was fit and went on long walking holidays in the dales and the Lake District with sturdy brogues or boots on her remarkably small feet, she always wore a hardwearing tweed or tartan skirt. As that last handful of pupils testified, even though her mind appeared to ramble at times, and, on the occasions when lessons nominally did take place, tell anecdotes of her younger days rather than teaching, she was still a force to be reckoned with.

All the same, she was a good-hearted woman underneath. 'If you were really in trouble,' one of her ex-pupils, a friend of mine, said, 'Credit where it's due - she'd do what she could to help, and as long as you weren't cheeky, she'd listen to your point of view.'

That was borne out by her attitude to Marianne Lomax. Marianne was one of the youngest pupils - at one point the school had had a junior section, but had long since only taken girls of eleven and over - and though she didn't actually have any learning disability, there was something hapless and helpless about her. She was the kind of girl who even at twelve needed help tying her shoelaces and plaiting her hair. Her parents, who were in the forces, rarely came to see her - there was an Aunt who often looked after her in the holidays. There were rumours that her school fees were in arrears but Miss Farndon would not turn a child away.

'We'll have to do something about it,' Ronnie said, the next night. 'Perhaps we should open the crate.'

Now in the world of Supa-Storage, 'opening the crate' was akin to revealing Masonic Secrets or blabbing if you knew where the Holy Grail was hidden. The firm had keys of course, but only the manager, Mr Robinson (grandson of the founder of the firm) would authorise an opening. Mr Robinson, we agreed, was turning into his grandfather. In his younger days he had been quite a moderniser, had changed the name from Robinson's Superior Storage to Supa-Store (a decision we suspected he regretted now) and introduced a computer and air conditioning to the unit. But now he peppered his conversation with words like trust and tradition, had voted against allowing 'the ladies' into the local golf club, and was rarely seen without a tie.

Ronnie and I didn't know if we were relieved or perturbed when the scrabbling stopped. Was a dead rat really that preferable to a live rat?

The thing was, there was a definite smell starting to pervade the air. Our crates were pretty firm but not absolutely hermetically sealed. We tried to persuade ourselves it was our imagination, but though, at least in the early days, that may well have exacerbated it, the fact remained, it WASN'T our imagination. We began to notice other clients wrinkling their noses and coughing.

It was no good. Mr Robinson would have to be told. The crate would have to be opened. We tried to seek Miss Farndon's permission, but discovered that her condition had deteriorated rapidly and she was now in a care home where she lived in a world largely of her own, treating the staff like her pupils.

I'd rather not dwell too much on what happened next, but of course I can't help it.

Not for one minute do I believe Miss Farndon did it on purpose. By all accounts she was a kind woman and had been fond of Marianne. But her mind had already failed more than most people realised.

Marianne's family didn't launch a prosecution against her. There would have been little point.

Ronnie took early retirement, and I have a new colleague now called Patricia. We get on well enough, but the easy cameraderie has gone, and I'll probably leave myself soon. That's if the business survives anyway. It's not easy to get over something like that.

I'm coping with it as well as I can. But I still can't see little girls with their hair in plaits and their shoelaces untied without hearing that scrabbling ...

[DATo]

Very nicely done Lassie! This was very well written in my opinion. I loved the Hitchcock flavor of the ending - the seemingly innocuous flow of the narrative's description punctuated by the sudden realization of what had happened to Marianne.

Thanks for sharing. A pleasure to read.