Norma

[Leslie]

NORMAL FOR NORMA

There was no malice in it; he was a kind-hearted chap and a loving father with a sense of humour but a lack of judgement. He knew what he was doing at the time when he jokingly had their daughter christened Norma, he just failed to realise that the joke would be on her.

Norma is O.K. in most places and in most families, but not in Bristol (that’s Bristol, England), or at least, not amongst the true natives of Bristol. They have a peculiar habit of adding an ‘l’ to words that end in ‘a’, so you can see that ‘Norma’ might become ‘normal’. Father was called Robert Service, which was fine, in honour of the poet, but natives, mispronouncing her name, might refer to his daughter as Normal Service.

It didn’t bother her through the early years; she was a happy infant, fair haired and podgy and quite content playing alone. That is to say she was playing alone as far as her parents could see, but Norma chatted constantly with an unseen playmate, enjoyed their jokes and shared laughter. They chattered as they moved about the house or garden, played sedentary games or read a book together. Normal was what her mother thought her daughter was not.
Norma asked that a place be set at table for her friend Tim.
Mother, a tall, skinny, mousey haired woman short on humour, by way of protest asked, “Who’s Tim? I can’t see him.”
“It’s not him, it’s her. She’s Timothea,” the child answered, disgusted by the adult’s lack of observation.
Mother gave up and set an extra place. Norma insisted that food be supplied to the invisible guest and seemed not to be bothered that the food did not get eaten.

Mrs Service expressed her concern to Robert. He was not worried.
“Lots of children have these invisible friends, they talk to them and play games with them. It’s just that children’s imaginations are so much more free than adults’. It’s nothing to worry about. She’ll grow out of it when she goes to school and has other children to mix with.”

And so it seemed. Norma had many new things to think about when she started school, and many children to talk to and share experiences with, so the invisible friend retired from the scene. The unfortunate name caused annoyance at times, but most of the pupils wore the joke out within a few months.
It became a nuisance again when she moved on to Senior School and began to develop a more feminine shape; the insinuations were juvenile and crude. When she went to University, tall and willowy but shapely and blonde, the implications were made more subtle and sophisticated, but Norma too was more sophisticated and able to treat suggestive references with contempt.

She studied the intricacies of mathematics, which led her to ponder on the unreliability of certainty and the uncertainty of the rational. She found a place at the foot of a large tree in the University grounds where she could sit on the grass, lean against the tree-trunk and meditate in isolation upon concepts of infinity and limits of eternity. She enjoyed solitude, to an extent that would have worried her mother again, and it was here that Timothea returned and joined her, so that they were able to share discussion and thoughts.

After graduation Norma obtained a post with a major Insurance Company; she was mainly involved in statistical calculations and office-bound, but sometimes was called upon to travel and visit clients. Though she set out alone, driving her car, Timothea would usually appear fairly soon to occupy the front passenger seat, and they would enjoy company and conversation. If anyone noticed Norma’s lips moving as she sat apparently alone in the vehicle they might assume she was singing along to the radio, or swearing at the motoring conditions. Nothing abnormal in any driver.

Her last assignment took her through the centre of town, always a slow and frustrating drive: a busy shopping area, a no-parking zone but with delivery vans for ever causing obstructions, and bus-stops at selected inconvenient places.
The bus in question was not obstructing Norma’s progress, but stopped on the other side of the road. Like the law-abiding citizen she was, Norma was proceeding at a modest pace, observing the traffic and keeping a wary eye out for the occasional pedestrian with kamikaze inclinations. It may be that chat with Timothea was a slight distraction, but she could not have anticipated the youthful male driver, impatient and convinced of his own indestructibility, who swung his car out from behind the stationary bus at maximum acceleration to collide head-on with her.
The noise was like a bomb exploding. Smoke and steam rose from the mangled metal. Peculiar odours spread across the street. All the nearby shoppers came to a halt, people came out from shops, passers-by who had passed by returned to observe. Every carrier of a mobile phone used it to call for an ambulance or the Fire service or the Police. A man with First Aid training assessed from a distance the injuries sustained by the damaged drivers and calculated which had been lethal. An observant motor mechanic considered the effectiveness of crumple-zones. A racing enthusiast calculated the speeds of the impacted vehicles from skid marks and extent of damage. An ardent church-goer offered silent prayers for the potentially departed. Nellie Gardener watched and waited.

Norma, appearing a few paces from the wreck, cleared her eyesight and looked at her body trapped in the driver’s seat by the buckled car. “Phew!” she said, “What a bloody mess!”
“Bloody’s the right word,” Timothea agreed, appearing beside her.
Norma was surprised; she looked at Timothea and at the wreckage.
“I don’t see your body in the car,” she said.
“ ‘course not. I don’t have that sort of body,” Timothea laughed.

An angry young man emerged from the corpse in the other wrecked car. Assuming that he could not possibly have been in the wrong, he strode angrily toward Norma,
“You stupid cow,” he mouthed, not quite shouting, “why did you keep on coming? You must have been able to see me.”
His fists were clenched and waving about in menacing manner. Timothea moved to stand half in font of Norma. She raised her right arm, palm of the hand toward the aggressor, like an old-time Policeman on traffic duty and just as effective; the young man halted. A battle of wills seemed to take place as the two locked eyeball to eyeball. Motionless, they stared for a minute or two, then Timothea began to lower her arm and the young man sank into the ground as if the arm were pushing him down.
When he had sunk entirely from sight Timothea remarked, “Right! That’s put him where he belongs.”
Norma had watched the startling performance. She exclaimed, “Wow! That was really something. What are you, my bodyguard?”
Timothea laughed again, “Hardly. You haven’t really got a body to guard now.”
“Don’t tell me! You’re my guardian angel!”
“Something like that,”
“I thought angels had wings sticking out of their backs.”
“Some of us use them sometimes. Depends on the job, the impression we want to make. Sort of horses for courses as you might say.”
“Well, looking at the mess in the car, you didn’t guard that body too well.”
Timothea did not take offence, “We do our best, but even we can’t protect people from some of the daft decisions they make.”

Sirens were already sounding in the near distance. Emergency vehicles were trying to find their ways through the static traffic now clogging the town streets. Timothea looked around at the spectators and noticed Nellie Carpenter wink at her.
Norma also looked around and felt mildly surprised that no one seemed to have noticed them.
They watched as the first rescuers approached the wrecks, as men experienced in such matters studied the bodies and shook their heads. Norma and Timothea looked at each other, pouted, and shrugged. The shoulder to shoulder crowds on the pavements looked on, some in silence, eye-witnesses broadcasting accounts.
“What now?” Norma asked.
“Time to move on,” Timothea replied.
They took a last look around. Nellie Gardener, Clairvoyant and giver of Private Readings, waved good-bye to them; they waved to her. Timothea held Nora’s hand, they stepped forward and disappeared.
Only Nellie saw them go. “Quite normal,” she said to no-one.