Published in Williwaw Anthology
Bonnie entered the double glass doors of the water-bottling factory just as she would on any other day. But if you were to look very closely, you would have seen that she had a spring in her step. If you had noticed this spring (which was wholly out of character) you may have been curious about its origin. That may have led you to approach Bonnie and say that she looked glowing, so supremely happy. And Bonnie would have told you that yes, as a matter of fact, she was. But she would have left it at that; she was never one to embellish. So, if you did notice the spring, and were curious about its origin, and Bonnie gave nothing away, it may be of interest to know that the out-of-character spring in her step began last night when Bernard told Bonnie that he loved her.
Bernard was the assistant manager at the local supermarket, a position which informed the part of Bonnie’s brain that judged compatibility that he was an extremely suitable and dependable candidate for a relationship of the romantic nature. She liked dependability, she needed dependability, and Bernard offered dependability. It was the perfect set-up. They had met when Bernard called the water-bottling factory, located just south of Milton Keynes, in the hope of settling a disagreement he was having with a customer.
‘Are these water bottle tops made from recycled plastic?’ The customer had asked.
Bernard didn’t know. The customer demanded an answer before purchasing this bottle, and had practically marched Bernard up the stairs to a phone to call the company. Bonnie had happened to be walking past the empty reception desk as the phone rang. Call it fate, call it cosmic force, or dismiss it as fortuitous timing; it made Bonnie do something she had never done before. She answered the phone.
‘Is this the Hitting the Bottle water-bottling factory, south of Milton Keynes?’ Bernard asked.
‘This is the Hitting the Bottle water-bottling factory, south of Milton Keynes. How can I be of service to you?’
‘Oh,’ Bernard mumbled, not expecting anyone to answer so quickly, ‘I had a question about your bottle tops.’
‘Certainly,’ Bonnie said, ‘I work in the water-bottling department, so I’m in the perfect position to assist you with your enquiry.’ Her back straightened as she assumed the position of authority so often taken by the women who had sat in this seat before her.
‘You’re not a receptionist? You actually work in amongst the action?’
‘Yes, but it’s all very modern now. My favourite days are when one of the machines break down and we all have to pitch in and do it by hand!’
‘That does sound fun.’
‘Ask her about the bottle tops!’
‘It is fun!’
‘Say, your voice sounds familiar. Have we met before?’
‘I’m not sure. To whom am I speaking?’
‘I’m Bernard, I’m the assistant manager at the local supermarket. Is your name Celia? You sound like a Celia. And you sound like a young Helen Mirren.’
Bonnie blushed a shade of scarlet that she had never blushed before. This was fate, she just knew it. The stars had aligned to spell out their names, and boy, oh boy, did they look bright together.
‘My name’s Bonnie.’
‘Ask her about the bottle tops!’
Bernard batted away the potential customer.
‘That’s a beautiful name,’ Bernard smiled. ‘Much more beautiful than Celia!’
As Bernard and Bonnie made arrangements for their very first date, the potential customer slammed down the bottle of water and walked out. Bernard had failed to secure eighty-eight pence, but he had spoken to a woman he was sure would turn out to be worth so much more.
This particular morning, when Bonnie had woken up in Bernard’s loving arms and was embraced by his loving gaze, his loving words washed over her with an unfamiliarity that she relished. She wasn’t used to being happy and adored; she’d never even been in love before. For Bonnie, at the ripening age of forty-seven, it felt shameful to openly admit. But she was ever so thankful that it had happened at last.
As the other factory workers settled in to their humdrum routine, their eyes glossing over as the clock struck nine, Bonnie got to work in a chipper manner. She began to hum a rhythm in time to the machine’s production line. As it lowered the nozzle, filled the bottle with water, lifted up the nozzle, and the bottles moved one space along the conveyor belt, Bonnie hummed to them a song that sounded just like a wedding march. Almost three hours passed in the same way: the other workers staring vacantly at the sight in front of them, some mustering the energy to bite their nails, and Bonnie serenading the water-bottling machines.
The machine then thanked her for the humming by breaking down, and allowing Bonnie to work hands-on. This really was her favourite type of day. She manually used the mechanical nozzle as one would use a garden hose, filling the bottle before pushing and twisting the tops into place. Her rhythm was a little slower than the mechanical way, but her progress was admired by all who saw her. A few pairs of glassy eyes glanced at her with looks of curiosity and begrudging awe.
It was just before lunchtime when Bonnie abruptly stopped working. She had never – not even once – stopped doing her work before the bell for lunch had rung. She stared at the bottle of water she had just filled, before quickly fixing the top in place. She stood still, staring at it in confusion. Bonnie didn’t quite know what to do, or who to speak to about the event that had just taken place. Her mouth gaped open and she stuck an arm into the air, waving it frantically for attention. Picking up the bottle from the conveyor belt, she made her way over to the floor supervisor.
‘Bonnie, what’s wrong? The bell hasn’t gone—’ The supervisor stopped speaking when Bonnie showed him the bottle of water. He was stunned.
‘Did you do this, Bonnie?’
She nodded with her arm still held above her head like she had lost control of her body.
‘We need to take this higher,’ he said, grabbing her elevated arm and almost dragging her up the stairs to the assistant manager’s office.
‘Sir,’ the supervisor said, bursting through the door, ‘you need to see this.’
Bonnie stepped out from behind him and produced the bottle, holding it as if she at once both revered and feared it.
‘How, in God’s name, did this happen?’ The assistant manager asked.
‘I have no idea,’ the supervisor replied.
‘Bonnie, how did this happen?’
She tried to speak but her lips moved wordlessly, and breath tumbled out like a breeze through an open window.
‘We need to take this higher,’ the assistant manager said. The three of them got in the elevator up to the fifth floor without saying a word, each one unable to take their eyes off the bottle in Bonnie’s hands. The boss wasn’t pleased to be interrupted. Bonnie kept behind her employers, waiting to be summoned forth.
‘Sir, you need to see this.’
‘I’ve just sat down to eat my sandwich.’
‘Trust me sir, this will be worth it. Bonnie, show him what you’ve done.’
She placed the bottle on the boss’s desk. No one said anything. They huddled around it like it was emitting warmth, enraptured by the sight before them.
‘Well I’ll be damned,’ the boss uttered, ‘if that’s not the clearest bottle of water I’ve ever seen.’
‘It’s like glass.’
‘Ice!’
‘Diamond.’
‘What do we do with it? We can’t sell it!’
‘You’re right, we can’t.’ The boss stood up and held the bottle of water against the light coming from the window. ‘We absolutely cannot sell this bottle. Bonnie, my dear Bonnie, you’ve done something that I never thought I’d live to see. You’ve single-handedly re-energised the water-bottling industry.’
Things changed for Bonnie, Bernard and the Hitting the Bottle factory that day. She and Bernard had never been happier (now proclaiming their love for each other at least four times a day) and Bonnie’s job felt more like being paid for being praised. Her water bottle had become a national spectacle; it was placed in a glass cabinet and put on show in the foyer. People came from all over Britain just to see it and take photos. They could even get their bottles, conveniently sold outside the building for a slightly elevated but ultimately justified price, signed by Bonnie herself. She had turned down the promotion to ‘Public Figurehead’ offered by the boss, opting to stay on the production line and earning herself valuable brownie points for doing so. Job offers flew in almost every day from water-bottling companies all around Britain, which she rejected politely. She was flattered by the attention; she had never before had so much recognition for her hard work, and as the weeks rolled by she got used to being called off from the production line to answer phone calls, sign bottles, pose for photos and talk to tour groups being led around the factory. She felt like a celebrity. She was a celebrity. The spring in her step had become part of her natural gait; she was just that happy.
In the evenings she and Bernard would talk about their days, each one having a handful of stories to relay to the other, and they laughed and kissed and snuggled on the sofa seven nights a week. He would tell her that he loved her, and hold her tight in his loving arms, and his loving words were still steady enough to flow over her whole body. It was like she was in bed with a duvet cover so warm that she never wanted to get out from under it. He adored her and was proud of her achievements; he bragged about her at work to anyone who’d listen. A photograph from their holiday to the Lake District was placed in a silver frame that Bernard had bought especially. It took pride of place on his desk, and he’d look at it with a bashful smile whenever he was doing paperwork. Bonnie’s fame had spilled out on to Bernard’s life; his regular customers would congratulate him on finding such a hardworking woman to compliment his dependable lifestyle. The manager of the store, too, had noticed Bernard’s sudden rise in fame and productivity, and mentioned it in an offhand comment to the district manager. It didn’t fall on deaf ears. Within the next week, Bernard received a phone call from him, asking if Bernard could see himself as the store manager of a bigger, newer store up in Scotland. Bernard was flabbergasted and couldn’t formulate any immediate words, but the district manager kindly gave him two days to get back to him with an answer.
‘Bonnie,’ Bernard had called when he got home that day. ‘Bonnie, my bonny lass, I have news!’
Bernard made his way into the sitting room where Bonnie was reading the local newspaper. There was an article about her on page four: they were thinking of erecting an ice statue of her in the penguin habitat at the zoo.
‘Bonnie, something remarkably strange and wonderful happened today. I’ve been offered a promotion.’
Bonnie smiled an adoring smile, glad that her brain had correctly labelled Bernard such a dependable man.
‘That’s wonderful, Bernie. Let’s celebrate!’
‘But there’s more,’ he said, sitting next to her on the sofa and taking her hands in his, ‘I’ve been offered the job of manager. They’re opening a new store, and I’ll be overseeing it all! I’ll be hiring, organising, doing paperwork, and managing more stock than my current manager does now!’
‘They’re opening a new store here?’ Bonnie asked. ‘Why? Your one is large enough, surely?’
‘Ah,’ Bernard cleared his throat, ‘this is in a different place. It’s a bit further away.’
‘Will you have to drive there?’
‘Further than that.’
‘Will you commute on the train?’
‘Even further than that.’
‘Oh Bernard,’ Bonnie squeezed his hands with a look of dread on her face. ‘What are you trying to tell me?’
‘The new store is in Scotland.’
Bonnie pursed her lips. Minuscule beads of sweat formed on Bernard’s forehead. The clock ticked in the background.
‘And you said yes?’ Bonnie asked the question without really wanting to know the answer.
‘I haven’t said yes,’ Bonnie’s chest lifted with relief, ‘but I haven’t said no.’ It sank again. Bernard gripped her hands tighter and brought them to his lips.
‘They’re depending on me, Bonnie.’
Bonnie didn’t want to tell him that she was, too. Bernard had always fantasised about being the manager of his very own store, ever since he was a little boy, and she could only imagine how excited he must feel at being offered his dream job. But, her loyalty to the Hitting the Bottle water-bottling factory, the company that had provided her with her very first job and had treated her well for nearly 30 years, meant that she couldn’t leave her life in Milton Keynes. Bonnie had pretended to be asleep when Bernard came to bed that night, and they both fell asleep uneasily.
The next morning Bonnie entered the double glass doors of the water-bottling factory just as she had on every other day. But, if you looked very closely, you would notice that the spring in her step had disappeared. No-one wanted to ask her about it, but all of her co-workers couldn’t help but notice the heavy thud in her walk and the frown on her face, like her lips were being pulled down by magnets. Before Bonnie could even turn her beloved water-bottling machine on, there came a bellow from the floor supervisor’s office.
‘Bonnie! A word, please!’
She tore herself away from the machine like they had been stuck together with Velcro. The machine held the promise of distraction from thoughts of Bernard, and his fluffy moustache, moving to Scotland without her.
‘Bonnie, take a look at this.’
Assuming he was asking her to approve the photos from the international water-bottling press conference they had taken last week, she looked in the direction that his trembling finger was pointing. There weren’t any photos on the desk.
In front of her was her own crystal-clear, diamond-cut, pure as heaven water bottle, only now the water inside it was opaque and grey.
‘The seal hasn’t been broken,’ he informed her, ‘and we checked the CCTV footage three times over. There was no one, not a single soul, in sight. It’s not been tampered with. The glass case was untouched, and none of the laser alarms were triggered.’
Bonnie knew what he was going to say before he said it. Call it fate, call it cosmic force, or dismiss it as a coincidence, Bonnie knew that in this precise moment two lives were changing. The tingling in her heels was her body’s way of telling her that Bernard had made his decision, and that the words soon to fall from the floor supervisor’s mouth would in no way inspire hope.
‘We’re going to test the water later, but I suspect it was contaminated by your machine breaking down the day you made it. Possibly oil, possibly zinc, we won’t know until the results come back.’
Bonnie said nothing, and stared at the bottle of water in front of her. It looked like cloudy lemonade, not water at all.
‘The boss isn’t happy but I’ve calmed him down. You’ll have to make a statement, and an apology, and announce that everyone who has bought a bottle of water from the Hitting the Bottle water bottling factory is entitled to a refund.’ He gave her a sympathetic, but ultimately patronising, pat on the shoulder.
‘Can I keep my job?’
‘If it weren’t for your intense loyalty to the company, Bonnie, I would be saying no. But thirty years of hard work doesn’t count for nothing. You’ll still work here, just stay out of the boss’s way for a while.’
Bonnie walked downstairs to the factory floor, feeling wholeheartedly disheartened. That afternoon, as she watched the engineers dismantle her beloved machine, Bernard told the district manager of his decision to take the job in Scotland. He was gone by the end of the week, and Bonnie returned to the life she’d had before this dependable man had called her on the phone and made her fall in love
rosiegailor 