One Day in the Life of Ivanka the Bitch, A Novel, Chapter 17

Chapter 17: Polish Sausage

10.31 am —Gingerbread Orphan I am

Join businesswoman Ivanka Tupolevka on the day she’s about to lose everything in the apocalyptic gulag of her divorce, with Brexshit to deal with, no HRT and surrounded by ‘fuckers’, will she ever escape the psycho ex and save her daughter?

At the hospital with Artur…

It’s raining, in fact it’s pouring. Mr Asda will be sooo pleased we have something to discuss.

What’s Artur doing now in the boot? Faff, faff, faff. I’m getting soaked through. I swear he does this every time it’s raining. My hair is going to get all frizzed up, so annoying, I’ll look like a fluffy sheep.

‘Come on!’

And here he goes, so annoying, watch this, I can count it down to the exact second while I wait for him, catching pneumonia… 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…

‘Poppet, are you going to lock the car?’ he says.

Fucker! Every time! What does he think I’m standing around here in the rain waiting to do?

Deep breath, he’s ill. ‘What have you got there now, my love?’

‘The Polish Easter basket we made. Thought I might hand round eggs and Polish sausage to cheer people up as we didn’t make Mass on Sunday after all, you naughty vixen…! I thought it was the least I could do. Now, don’t forget, there’s your soup I made for your lunch, still in there in the freezer bag so you don’t go off eating rubbish again. Put it in the fridge when you get back to work. There’s carrots, celeriac, spring onions and chard from the allotment. I’m sorry about the leeks they’re shop bought but I’ve planted some more, should be up in June along with the mangetout. Kept me going all last year. Oh and… plenty… of … coriander… I know what that does for you…!’

Aw, what did I do to deserve this lovely, lovely man? Never met anyone like him and I do love my breakfasts in bed. He bakes, brews and smothers everything with melting butter, I just have to lie there. Delicious. What’s not to love? He’s building a very convincing case for moving in, it’s… just difficult right now with Mum.

Aw, that’s nice, someone healthy enough to hold open the door for us.

OK, shouldn’t take long, what thirty mins and we’ll be out and back to saving the biz. Only a couple of weeks more radiotherapy left to go and at least his life should come all back to normal. We should plan a little holiday when he’s up to it. What’s he doing now at the gift shop? I thought we were running late?

‘My dear, dear ladies! Would you like to try my Polish sausage?’

OMG… Jesus! Just what exactly did I do to deserve this man?

Only another fourteen healthcare workers to embarrass and offend on the way to the radiotherapy department. That’s OK mate, not as if we’re in any kind of hurry since you dragged me out of work in a blaze of fury this morning. I’ve only got one day to save my business and fix the world but it’s much more important that you get plenty of attention.

‘Mr Viev…viev….?’ Finally! Receptionist to the rescue! ‘Could you just fill out this questionnaire for us? Thank you.’

‘Wisniewski. Vish, knee, evski… It means ‘cherry’, ma Cherie. I don’t believe we’ve met? Kate is it? Kate, my darling, would you like to taste…’

‘I’ll take the basket, thank you,’ I intervene, ‘you crack on. She’s trying to tell you to hurry up!’

Honestly! Nobody in the waiting room is going to want anything he’s handing out once they see him coming back out of the bathroom with his sample in hand. Might as well take it over to the MacMillan stand he always stops at on the way out. They’ll ravish it.

‘Aw bless, thank you very much, my love! Very much appreciated!’ says the lovely Vera, long bony fingers plunging straight in and peeling a red cabbage and onion skin dyed boiled egg. Why he couldn’t have just bought cochineal dye is beyond me, what’s it cost, a pound? No wonder he’s broke. Up all night he was and for what? It just looks like a gone off egg. But not to Vera, she’s not fussy.

She must be over a hundred years old but those gnashers are staying firmly in place, having better luck than her wig wiggling away as she goes at the kabanos in her other hand. I should probably pop back to the gift shop and see if they’ve got any gingerbread to help round off her meal or a couple of lost-looking orphans.

‘Lovely! Thank him for me darling will you?’ She’s spitting bits of yolk all over my blouse! ‘How is he doing? Poor love, such a tragedy losing his wife like that, such a lovely lady she was, a saint! And now this.’

Yes, this. This is the real nourishment. Must be the only thing that keeps her going, leering over fellow humans in their final hours, feeding on the dregs of their despair, savouring the tang of their final breath. I’ve met her type before, her fellow coven-sibs, when my step-dad got to the stage of house calls. Mum soon put paid to all that. ‘Coming in here,’ she’d say, ‘telling me I should do this and do that! Come here to gloat they do, trying to find meaning in their own poor, sad, little lives. Well, I’m not having it! Not in my own home. Standing over him, looking all sorry and sympathetic. If he’d been well enough he’d’ve told them where to go himself. It’s undignified. He doesn’t want strange women looking at him in that state, he’s got pride! He’d want his aftershave on and his hair the way he likes it, a clean shirt! I told them: Fuck off!’

Oh no her bony hand has grasped my arm, she’s assessing the quality of my meat.

‘Yes, it’s been very hard on him. But he’s a trooper, he’ll get through it.’

‘Yes, your dad told us all about his time in the Falklands. Volunteered he said! So brave.’

Really…? Ah, whatever. Tempted as I am to explain our relationship and that the Falklands was more like a holiday for him really, a jolly, just Met briefing the forces as a meteorologist, who am I to dispel the myth that’s growing up around here? I mean, it took me years to work out that for all his talk of military tactics going into court, all he was ever actually qualified to comment on was the weather outside.

Just as well I maintain a healthy disdain for everyone and any and all advice nowadays however well-intentioned. It’s not that I don’t trust anyone anymore, that wouldn’t be a life worth living. I just don’t trust them very much. Yes, you do have to take some risks and learn from them, granted. It’s well, after all the years I trusted that bastard, I’ve come away knowing that it’s best to question everything you’ve been led or are being led to believe. Through all this menopausal fog, it’s easier said than done.

Ah, who can keep paying attention to everything? Things are always going to slide, that’s life. I forgive people their peccadillos, so people should forgive me! Who’s perfect? Tit keeps clicking her fingers reminding me to be ‘present’. ‘Back in the room mum! Back in the room! And she’s back folks!’ Like I’m a big joke. Little Madam, like she has all the answers at twenty-three! So frustrating when you’re trying to work things out. I mean how many trillions of bits of information are hitting all our senses every millisecond? We can’t assess them all, we have to filter out most of it or we wouldn’t be able to put one foot in front of the other, would we?

With what limited energy I have left after everything he put me through, what am I bound to base danger identification on? Recognisable patterns of fuckdom, that’s what. Who has the time to learn all the new-fangled dangers? New technologies, new business models, new neigbours. But even when he was doing all his abuse patterns all those years, I didn’t see them because I hadn’t learnt to see them, I was being shown his behaviour through his filters, his narrative. It was all normal and explainable, especially when backed up by my family and their filters.

Only by purposefully digging after ‘the light went on’ that night, did I find the truth that had been staring me straight there slap bang in the bloody face the whole time. Like when the Spanish arrived in South America the first time. The natives didn’t see the boats, just didn’t see them at all. Not a recognisable pattern, so therefore, invisible. Sailed right upon them and destroyed them in plain view. It took their witch doctors to learn to point them out and only then did it become obvious. Like the six f’s in ‘finished files are the result of years of scientific study combined with the experience of years’. Easy to spot once you’re told! But new patterns well, they get past you.

And how was I supposed to see Brexit coming and all the rest? I wasn’t even able to watch the news for at least three years after he left. I couldn’t, it was a real aversion. I’d watched him sit on that sofa for so long, sinking into the same spot, spreading out his laptop, his files, all the newspapers, devices, bottles and cans all around him like a game of toy soldiers and he just festered. Day and night he had Sky fucking News on and it just repeated every fifteen minutes or whatever. Over and over again. He was glued to all those screens day and night, no change, just getting angrier and angrier, more afraid and more violent. That theme tune, it still goes through me.

It was a big moment when I finally agreed to put on the news over breakfast in bed. It took three years. People should try that, a news ban, then they’d have different conversations maybe, maybe they’d learn to analyse their own observations instead of blindly sucking in who knows what poison served up that day and for what purpose? We’re just gerbils otherwise. But you know, was that even correct? Maybe that scene in my head isn’t correct even now that I do know what he was up to. Was he really just addicted to news? Maybe it was a front… He knew I hated that tune. Maybe it was a tactic to put me off coming in. So I’d leave him all his other sick obsessions uninterrupted! Fucking men and their indiscriminate dicks!

‘Yes Vera, Dad often talks about you. Got a bit of a soft spot for you! Do you like James Mason and Betty Grable? He’s got a whole collection of DVDs he’d love to watch with you. Why don’t you suggest it? He gets so lonely, you know…’

Oh come on don’t keep overreacting, it’s childish. You know you’re doing it, you cow. You know it’s your hormones, you’re just looking for something to get annoyed about to let all the anger out at whoever, just like Mum does to you and you don’t want to end up like her.

Poor Artur, eight years sat in his flat on his own, grieving, no one to talk to, it’s probably all built up, this constant need to communicate everything, no filters. Who cares? Just let him get it out of his system. Laugh it off! My father was the same and he had no excuse and everybody loved him.

All Artur’s ever really done is try to help, in any way, and anyone, and who knows, it may not be for much longer. We really should just be and let be, just enjoying savouring every last moment. The morgue is quite literally just a few feet away.

Was I was supposed to be looking at something?

Next Chapter… 10.36 am Dangley Porn

To start from the beginning…

Copyright Alexis Behrend June 2021.