Life and Laughing_ My Story - Michael McIntyre [81]
‘Hello,’ she said.
‘Hi, it’s Michael,’ I said, still clutching her hairclip.
‘I know it is,’ she said, coldly.
‘You seemed a bit weird the other day, is everything OK?’ I asked, wishing I could turn back time.
‘Listen, Michael, I don’t know if I gave you the wrong impression or anything, but I’m kind of busy at the moment and, you know, I am sort of seeing someone.’
Whoever she was seeing, it can’t have been that serious because last week she was with me, kissing me. I had had my chance and I had monumentally blown it.
‘Oh, OK, really, who?’ I asked, defeated.
‘It’s complicated. I’ve got to go, OK?’ she said, winding up the conversation and ending my life.
‘But I thought,’ I pleaded, ‘I thought we had something, I thought, I just thought …’
‘Well, you thought wrong,’ she declared and hung up.
For all the heartache of unrequited love in my life, this was the lowest my heart had ever sunk.
17
H4E1N1D2
‘“Hend”, dat’s only eight, I hev terrible letterrrs,’ my grandmother said, trailing me for once in one of our Scrabble games that were now supporting me financially. I was her friend. She had favoured me since I was a little boy, she cared for me, looked out for me and loved me. But she was cruel, cold and judgemental to just about everybody else. Jim had died while I was at university. Her living alone had accentuated her eccentric behaviour. She had stopped talking to Lucy for literally no reason; she was never that keen on her and seized any excuse to ‘cut her off’. She couldn’t stand Steve, wasn’t all that keen on learning the names of my little brothers, and when it came to my mother, her daughter, she was constantly disappointed. Her treatment of my mum was very damaging and unnecessary. She continued to wield her purse like a light sabre and change her will on a weekly basis. I was torn. I could see that my grandmother was unkind, unpredictable and destructive, but she was old and my visits seemed to make her genuinely happy. So I stuck it out. But what I wasn’t going to accept was the word ‘hend’.
‘There’s no such word as “hend”, Grandma,’ I said.
‘Don’t be zo ztupid, put it down, eight points, “hend”, “hend”!’ she said while waving her hands around.
‘That’s “hand”, Grandma. I should know – I’m a writer,’ I corrected.
‘OK, I vill do another one, but you’re not a bluddy writer. I don’t understand vot you are doing. You say you are a writer, but nobody is interrrested in your vork. You are a vaster and ven are you goin to get a girlfriend? Vot is wrong with you? …’
Just as she was mid-rant, her new Polish cleaner, Marta, entered, dusting and polishing. My grandmother had a remarkably high turnover of staff. This one had been on the scene my last few Scrabble visits. She had the body of a gymnast and seemed to be wearing some kind of white catsuit. She reminded me of Princess Aura, from Flash Gordon, who was responsible for my earliest sexual stirrings. I couldn’t help but enjoy the view as she contorted herself while cleaning. As my grandma continued to rant, Marta caught my eye and licked her lips suggestively and blew me a kiss. I had been waiting years for a girl to do such a thing, but the setting wasn’t ideal.
My mouth must have dropped open because my grandmother stopped her criticisms in mid-flow. ‘Vy are you staring at Marta?’ Then she turned to her Polish cleaner. ‘Marta, daaarling, go and do the kitchen now, vill you, please?’
My grandmother then turned to me and uttered a sentence I will never forget. She said, ‘Do you vant to fuck Marta?’
Now I’m sure as you’re reading this, you might be thinking of your own grandmothers. Sweet little old ladies with black-and-white photos, who make tea and have biscuit tins and make their own jam. My grandmother was part-pimp.
‘No, what are you talking about?’ I said, horrified.
‘She’s alvays talking about you, ven are you coming round, Michael dis, Michael dat. She’s after ze money, don’t flatter yourself, but you can fuck her, because I know