Waiting for Rain
Three or four patients sit in the dentist’s waiting room: a mother controlling her child, a man reading a magazine, a young woman with her hands in her lap. Mr. Cowan flutters into the surgery like a piece of blown paper. “It’s going to be another scorcher,” he tells Miss Louth, the dental nurse.
The young woman is the first patient. A wisdom tooth is giving her pain. She drops her handbag on the floor and climbs awkwardly into the chair.
The dentist reads her teeth and Miss Louth makes notes. His probe gently and relentlessly investigates. The young woman knows now that she is nothing but a mouth, and lying on this chair the rest of her body is ready to drop out of existence.
But before it has a chance to do so, she must stand up and walk downstairs for an x-ray. The tooth has got to come out.
She leaves the building in tears.
The woman whose body is ready to drop out of existence on the dentist’s chair is twenty-two years old. Her name is Greta. The main thing about Greta is that she has come into some money and is living on it for a while. She has no occupation, nor plans to have any; she has, in fact, no plans.
The necessity of making appointments with the dentist a week, two weeks in advance, is distressing to her. It presumes a future existence, with dates, times and destinations. She wishes to exist only in the present. But her tooth is giving her a great deal of pain, it cannot be ignored. It has made the present peculiarly incisive and unbearable. She has been trapped into making an appointment. That, and the painful prospect of having the tooth removed, cause her to cry as she leaves the surgery.
She takes the short walk home, knowing that from now until the time of the next appointment she will be in limbo, waiting. It had been her intention to remove all possible islands of expectation, except for that last, inevitable one. Now a tooth has robbed her of her peace of mind.
This gritty town, labyrinth of asphalt and exhaust fumes, ferments strangely in the sun’s heat. Tarmac softens. Stone burns. Even metal has transmuted into some brittle, unreliable substance.
The people, too, are going through a process of change. The heat acts on them like a catalyst. For some it is a liberator, loosening their limbs and freeing them of conscience and inhibition. For others it is an oppressor, crushing them into dark corners of constraint and waiting. Crimes of recklessness increase during the time of drought. Doctors are entreated by streams of sleepless people.
The nights are as hot and airless as the days. The eyes of the town are open in the small hours. Mr. Cowan drinks milk in his kitchen and reads a journal; Miss Louth lies in a cold bath and contemplates her naked body; our Greta sleeps the sleep of the just.
The drought has continued for seven weeks.
The treatment will cost about forty pounds. That is more than two pounds a year in lost interest. Should she skip a meal or two to make up for it? That is a false saving, for she will only eat more at the next meal; and our Greta loves her food. Besides, if she once uses the tactic as a money-saving device, she is liable to take it to extremes and starve herself to death.
She is filled with anxiety, not for the first time, as she sees the small island which is her money shrinking around her. Forty pounds here ; two pounds fifty there; fragments washed off by the tide of necessity, never to return. Time and again, in meticulous calculations, she has balanced income against expenditure, only to find it falling just short. She must dip into her capital, in turn reducing the interest, and so on down the slippery slope.
She can economize no further: her life is already pared down to the essentials. She must somehow supplement her income. She decides to seek a job.
(If the personnel manager at the supermarket wonders about the origin of Greta’s Mona Lisa smile, it is this: that money, which is freedom, can only be obtained by enslavement. Even Greta, who thought herself immovable, has compromised. She has agreed to chain herself to the till for fifteen hours a week in order to conserve what little freedom she can.)
Nothing comes free of charge, especially not money. Greta lost a mother to get hers. Others give up their health, their peace of mind, their dreams; most valuable of all, their time. Every life is mortgaged. Greta’s is no different.
It is hot in the supermarket. From where she sits she can see the light beating against the glass doors. Greta is one of those who are released by heat; she adores it; looks out of the doors with the eyes of a lion gazing through the bars of a cage. She is almost literally chained to the till, for she cannot leave it unless a supervisor comes with a little key, attached to a chain, and switches it off so that no-one can get at the money inside.
And now Greta discovers how dirty money really is. The coins are warm and greasy in her palm and the notes dusty and dry. By the end of the afternoon her hands are black from it, and up in the staff toilets she has to soap and rinse, soap and rinse, to remove the metallic smell. Her mouth is full of money words, too: they are all she has spoken all day. When she eats the food tastes of money.
One of the supervisors is kind, the other is cruel. Once they have a disagreement about Greta’s tea break: standing in front of her they argue about it. At last Greta is allowed to go.
The canteen is a dismal place with no windows. Everyone wears the blue uniform with the name badge and the emblem of the supermarket; Greta’s is wrongly spelled. The name badges prevent people from introducing themselves.
The cruel supervisor sits opposite Greta as she drinks her coffee. Greta feels she should speak. She says: “There was some dispute about whether I should have a tea break?”
Immediately she regrets having referred to it. She has stepped out of line. The supervisor leans towards her and her heavy brows almost meet in the middle.
“There was no dispute,” she says scornfully. A pause. She leans closer. Greta cannot quite make out what she says. It sounds like: “You don’t know me, do you?” It sounds like a threat.
Greta hastily leaves the canteen.
More even than operating the till, Greta hates to sweep the floor. Her legs are feeble after long hot hours of sitting. She feels degraded. Even the kind supervisor will mercilessly switch off the till when the store is quiet and ask her to “Give us a sweep.” This reminds Greta that she is the lowest of the low. She is filled with slavish rebellion as she drives the tide of receipts and wrappers before her wide brush. She thinks of Spartacus, of Che Guevara. She will topple the system, she thinks with an inscrutable smile.
She watches the clock as it slowly peels off its hours. Every fifteen minutes make eighty pence. Fifteen minutes have never seemed so long.
The heat has begun to take on a life of its own. It has acquired the nature of an epic: people are aware that they are living through something momentous. There is talk of standpipes, of the dry beds of reservoirs, of deaths.
Now it is as if there has never been a time before this drought, nor will there ever be an end. Even the cautious northerners have discarded their chunky clothes and step out, blinking, into the natural warmth. They walk in a new way. They no longer care. If a road has to be crossed, the cars will stop all right. And if it isn’t done today it can be done tomorrow, for the days are endlessly long.
Everything that is sinister or threatening in the town is lured out like lizards from under rocks. This sort of weather gives people illusions. They imagine they can get away with anything. The night streets crawl with restless youths looking to prove themselves, even if it is only by breaking a window or scaling a wall. There is an imminence of chaos, the breakdown of structure, and then? State of emergency, looting, burning, rioting, the end of the world, and what does it matter? In this heat, what does anything matter?
An elderly man with a shock of long white hair, a frayed waistcoat and an enormous paunch, always chooses her checkout for his groceries. He reads her name from the badge and teases her to know its origin. Her shyness only encourages him. Before long he greets her by name, like a friend.
She can tell from his basket that he lives alone: the box of eggs, the packet of biscuits, the sliced white bread. He does not take care of himself. He is a lonely eccentric, a sort of troglodyte. Perhaps he is drawn to her by their similarity.
Laughingly, she even tells him about her tooth. He is sympathetic. “I promise you it will not hurt,” he says, in his threadbare, academic voice.
She has comforted herself that the extraction will not hurt, because of the anaesthetic, and that has given her a kind of courage during the limbo-time of waiting. The old man’s promise cheers her. It is only when she is seating herself with fragile bravery on Mr. Cowan’s chair that she remembers: when the anaesthetic wears off, then it will begin to hurt. She regards the promise as a betrayal.
It is then that she resigns herself completely. Let everything be done to her. She thought that she had come here through choice, in order to be rid of pain, but in fact it was only a choice between one pain and another (and she has to pay for this!). Since it was not to be avoided, she may as well offer herself up to it entirely, without protest.
To Greta, pain is not a matter of degree. Once it starts, it may as well take over.
The supervisor with the heavy eyebrows is holding a till roll under Greta’s nose. She runs it through her long, manicured fingers, stopping it every so often with an impatient tug.
“And here,” she is saying, “you’ve sub-totalled again. And here - and here.” She says in a voice like honey: “Why do you keep sub-totalling, Greta?”
It is only with great effort that Greta can get herself to speak. “I must have made some mistakes,” she says indifferently.
The supervisor looks at her long and hard. Her mouth is set and there is a dangerous gleam in her eye. “Well, try to be more careful,” she says at last. Her stilettos stab the floor as she struts away.
Down in the canteen one of the girls is crying and crying, while a friend puts an arm round her and smokes a cigarette. Her sobs travel down the tables; people glance over curiously. The crying goes on and on, all the time Greta is drinking her coffee.
She sees that she cannot do even this most basic of jobs properly. She knows that she is making mistakes all the time, cheating customers, robbing the store. Besides, every moment is torture. Her dreams are filled with numbers, lists of prices, endless sub-totals.
Moreover she has discovered another curious and alarming fact. Although she should now be managing to keep her finances on the level, it appears that the money in her account is dropping faster than ever. Increase of income brings increase of expenditure. The earnings from the supermarket are actually having a negative effect. She begins to realise, with creeping horror, that she is caught in a spiral from which there is no escape.
The girl in the blue uniform is still sobbing. Greta decides that she must quit her job.
Cracks are appearing in the square around the cenotaph; it is forbidden to water the withering roses. Air shimmers like cellophane over by the taxi stand where the Asian drivers linger and peel off, one at a time, in their shabby Toyotas. It could be Athens, Cairo, Delhi. It could be a desert shanty. The whole town could be a mirage and be gone tomorrow. It quivers on the edge of crisis, like a mirage.
Now people queue as a form of prayer, with buckets, at standpipes, at supermarket checkouts. (The price of bottled water has doubled.) They believe that if they queue patiently and in an orderly fashion nothing bad can happen to them. It reminds older people comfortingly of the war.
Every household has received a Government leaflet: Save and Survive: Getting through the Drought. On the front are two hands cupped protectively around a drop of water. Of course there is nothing sinister behind the absence of rain. Of course it will rain before long - but meanwhile, follow these simple rules…
The rules are repeated on posters and billboards all over the town. It really does remind one of a war.
When he hears that she is leaving, her friend the troglodyte is genuinely sorry. He wants to know what she will do and where she is going. Greta, fearing his motives, is guarded and obscure. She smiles cheerfully as she says good bye.
Two minutes later he is back with a bunch of flowers (they sell them from a bucket by the door). He thrusts them into her hand and, before she can speak, kisses her. His hair, waxy and unwashed, rubs against her cheek, and his stink is enveloping. The next moment he is gone.
Greta stares at her browning chrysanthemums, at once flattered and appalled.
“Do you know that man?” the supervisor asks.
Greta looks at her in bewilderment. She is not sure whether to answer yes or no.
“Only,” the supervisor goes on confidentially, “it’s not the first time he’s bothered girls around here.” She drops her voice. “I’d be careful if I were you. Don’t encourage him. You know what I mean.”
The stitches in her gum have been removed and Greta is invited to pay her bill. But she is also invited to make another appointment. There may be more trouble: fillings, another wisdom tooth. Curious fact: once a dentist has you in his hooks, it is very difficult for him to let go. If he cannot make capital out of pain he will play on fear.
Greta firmly refuses. There will be no more islands of expectation. She is methodically dismantling her life. And this is not difficult to do: notice given on a bedsit, a discarded job, a building society account closed. The cheque is neatly folded in her pocket.
She is clean of everything now, except this money, which is her freedom. What will she do with it? She could buy a car. That is another form of freedom, only, like money, one which depreciates. She could buy a ‘plane ticket to—anywhere. She could take a ship or a train. She could buy a motorhome and travel round the country. She could buy herself clothes, luxuries, a further education. Schemes extravagant and absurd tumble through her mind, but she cannot choose one because it must be to the exclusion of all the others.
If her inheritance had never existed she would have been forced to make a life for herself. As it is, she is paralyzed. Dimly she becomes aware that the money is not in fact her freedom but her prison.
Though it should be autumn, nature too seems paralyzed, unable to progress. No wind strips the leaves from the trees and makes them dance; instead they drop with straight funereal slowness. Colour is bleached from the roses in the town square.
The people of the town stand in their queues and wait. And now their minds are full of bewilderment and suspicion: perhaps they have been betrayed or misled, perhaps they have been lied to and manipulated. But it must have been way back now, and anyway they are too tired to do anything about it. These are the people who stand meekly in their queues and hope.
In the heart of the town, which has become a middle eastern souk, a shanty, a trembling mirage, others are ready for the conflagration. These have taken possession of the woven streets and created a zone. They are bound not by plans or schemes or networks of subversion but by anger.
There is a strange glow about the town at night, as if the leftover heat of day is boiling off. The pavements are almost luminous; the beat of a walking boot creates weird reverberations. A glass shatters and a dustbin lid falls, and the aftershocks echo into every sleepless bedroom.
This is how the conflagration starts: a glass shatters and an alarm goes off, and a young man in a windcheater bearing the legend “Illinois 32” has broken into the supermarket. The alarm is ringing fiercely as his companions follow him in. They are past caring about an alarm, about punishment. They have a raging thirst to quench. They are going for the bottled spring water. No, they are going for the wines and spirits. Illinois 32 screws the top off a litre bottle of whisky and pours it down his throat. The others follow suit: they snap the rings from beer cans, one pops the cork of a champagne bottle. Here is something to celebrate! Here is a party worth coming to, a birthday, a holiday, a festival all in one.
The ringing alarm casts a note of frenzy over the jubilation. Time is short. Drink! Drink as much as you can before it’s taken away!
Illinois 32 smashes the neck from a bottle of ten-year-old brandy and pours it onto the floor. It sinks into the carpet which Greta once had to vacuum. He signals to his friends, who, with bottles under their arms and in their pockets, step back and watch. A distant siren has joined the ringing of the alarm.
The young man strikes a match and drops it. At once, fires break out all over the town in an act of spontaneous combustion.
The people are tossed out of their houses and into the streets. Even Greta, sleeping the sleep of the just, has woken and joins them.
There is no time to put on more than a light summer dress. She cannot discover her shoes. Barefoot she runs out into the street, to watch the town on fire.
The building next to hers is burning; the surgery, the building society, the supermarket, burning. Now the roses in the town square are going up like paper; the cenotaph is circled by a ring of fire.
Some are already trying to escape. But the roads are black with people: their cars cannot get through. Horns, sirens, alarms: the town is screaming.
Greta ducks and bobs her way amongst the crowd. She cannot be looking for anyone. There is nobody in the town for whom she bears any concern.
She becomes aware of something immensely heavy in her pocket. Something is pulling at it like a lead weight. She puts her hand in her pocket and takes out a piece of folded paper.
It seems impossible that a piece of paper should weigh her down so heavily. When she holds it between her thumb and forefinger it almost flutters away. Yet she is carrying nothing else.
Out of the corner of her eye, she spots the troglodyte.
His jacket is smoking, his face brushed with soot. Whether he has just been saved from the flames, or has been saving others, she cannot tell.
He is the one person in this town for whom she bears any concern. She approaches him and says:
“I have a present for you.”
Before he can answer she has pressed the folded cheque into his hand. At the same moment a knot of astounding panic tightens in her throat.
But she has given and is gone before he can say a word. As she pushes her way blindly through the crowd she thinks: I have just given my mother to a stranger.
Our Greta has left the town behind. It is glowing in the valley beneath her. Slightly breathless, she is making the last ascent up a bank of brittle heath, without even a piece of folded paper to weigh her down.
At the top of the slope she halts, plucks the debris from her light summer dress and looks up. She has reached the reservoir.
On every side of it the moors open out, low, dark and treeless, edged with the steely light of dawn. The once dripping wilderness, slashed by becks and noisy with waterfalls, has become an arid desert hovering on the edge of ignition.
The deep crater that was the reservoir oozes mud and sticky pools. The retaining walls, once hidden beneath the water, stare like the hull of a beached ship. A vast puddle lurks in the centre of the basin, draining slowly away.
Here, once and for all, is the truth of the matter.
All along she has known that she would come to this place in the end. Here there is no escape, no shelter. Merciless dawn is rising. Evaporation will be almost immediate.
Deep in the heather she turns onto her back, her face to the sky. Somewhere in the distance she can hear thunder. But the sky is bright, hard, brilliantly blue, and holds no promise of rain.
“Waiting for Rain” first appeared in Writing Women.
Copyright © 2003 by Tamar Yellin.