Write an essay (500-700 words) in which you analyse and interpret Polly Clark’s short story “Reconciliation”. Your essay must include the following points:
-

-

-

A characterization of the narrator. The narrators relationship with her husband Comment on the point of view.

Remember that when you analyse you need quotes from the text to show where you find your arguments. And these must be written in the essay like this: “jogiue oghoeih ngfoeiht” (line and page).

Side 8 af 11 sider

B
Folly Clark

Reconciliation g It’s my first day. I cycled here in my trainers and I have forgotten my shoes. It’s a buildin so I’ll like a pile of cardboard boxes. My trainers definitely will look weird with my skirt, if they don’t mind if I walk in bare feet. tell them that my feet hurt and it will be better I hurt my feet... mountaineering, I’ll say. It’s cold and raining. A thirty-foot Christmas tree draped in lights rears in front of the main entrance, but it doesn’t cheer the place up. Mountaineering? asks the fat girl in personnel doubtfully. Yes, I say, in Scotland. I don’t elaborate. [. .1 I’m posted on the third floor: credit control. It’s a bunker in hazardous beige. The soles like cars in a jam, each io of my feet toil across the industrial carpet. The desks are lined up ter keys with a driver who never looks up. There’s no sound except the clicking of compu tinsel has been wrapped around the and my feet, flailing across the carpet. Here and there, edges of desks and hung around whatever is on the wall: a fire extinguisher, a health and safety notice. I warm up a little. I’m wearing the clothes I slept in. It saved me 20 minutes this morning and meant I who could sleep a little longer. My outfit is a skirt and lycra top so there’s no creasing, so I would know? My brilliant time-saving idea of dry-washing my hair is less successful. ted sprinkled talc on my scalp and rubbed it in as I am sure I read somewhere, then attemp look as if I have been renova to brush it out, but it has clumped at the roots and I know I from bringing down the ceiling. 20 ting a house and my head has not recovered I put my chin up a little as I advance with the fat But I am here, which is pretty good. girl from personnel up to my manager’s desk. His name is Vernon. He looks like a turtle. More specifically he looks like a turtle his without its carapace which gives him a rather exposed and nervous air. When he turns in latex. I bite my lip as I reach the desk. 25 head his neck stretches and crinkles like a rhino I try to smile. His arms in his shiny blue shirt are curved protectively around his papers, as if all of us, being human, are prone to cheating. His eyes flick about the room, an alarmed chameleon. “Laura,” he says. “What are you doing here?” 30 “Do you two know each other?” Vernon sighs. “This is my wife, Laura.” “Oh,” says the fat girl. I slide one foot over the other. “Forget your shoes?” Vernon says softly. I don’t know if I reply, if I do it is in a whisper, I hope he realises how much planning, thought, how much normality it took for me to be I take him, s here today. I hope he understands what it means, the seriousness with which to and us. I increase my smile. You might say I flash him a smile. It says, “Aren’t you glad see how much I wanted to see you again?” “So... Is this okay then Mr Pringle? Laura is your temp.”
— —

.

Side9afllsider

40

Ah. Vernon nods wisely. I am triumphant. I know every line of that face. That face has watched over me, that face has known me at my best. The women lift their heads from their gridlock and stare. This is something a bit thrilling Mr Pringle’s wife.
—

45

5°

ss

60

65

7°

75

oo

We regard each other over months of frozen silence. Not from me I might add. I’m a talker, a communicator. It was always what was special about Vernon and me, the talk, the chatting. We began our relationship half my life ago in a bar, and those were our best times, telling each other the truth of our lives in the warm light. I might be defective in every other way, defective enough to mean that I must be divorced, defective enough to mean that silence is actually my lot, but it doesn’t mean it comes naturally to me. News and questions bubble up in my throat, but I cannot speak. He looks so like my husband, and yet... How has he managed to remain himself, to become dare I say it even more himself, with not even a scar and even a brand new blue shirt? He leans in towards me conspiratorially. I feel his breath ruffle the molecules around my face. “How are you on reconciliations, Laura?” Warmth floods me to my fingertips. A hand lifts to my hair. “I don’t know,” I grin. “Well we’d better get you a desk.” He stands, light rocketing off him. I don’t say this lightly (how can these people stand the merciless strip lights?), he really is vast in the scraps of their shadows. His thick shoulders shift like branches in a gale. I follow him. His walk, just as I remember, is heavier on the left than the right. I catch him, I hiss, “What do you think about this then? You and me, you and me in a place like this?” My voice becomes a fluttering laugh. “Well it is a turn-up, yes,” he says. We have arrived at a desk in the corner. It is com pletely bare, made of gleaming plastic. It overlooks the parking lot where thousands of cars all point the same way. I feel giddy, anything is possible now. Vernon’s shirt feels harsh and cheap in my fingers. “I’ve grown some onions in the garden, and I had an interview last week,” I say. These are both, technically, lies, but could be true. “Good,” he says, with familiar gentleness. We sit on opposite sides of the desk, as if he were my lawyer and I were about to tell him everything. I lean on my elbows smiling conspiratorially. [. .1 He nods, and I notice (who could not?) a striking weariness around his eyes. “Janny?” he calls to a smooth blonde head bobbing behind a computer terminal. A young face bends round, eyes us both innocently. “Can you pass me a yellow highlighter?” Janny is perfectly matte. The highlighter looks plain-Jane in her manicured hand. Her lipstick is arterial red. I am overcome with such fierce hatred for her that I know it’s the truth. Vernon lays two long printouts in front of me. They spill down my lap and onto the floor. There is a long column of numbers on each. “What you have to do,” he says, regarding me carefully, “is mark the figures which are his hand marks 44.61 on one page and 44.61 a few numbers the same on each sheet. So down on page two. “Oh,” I say. I take the highlighter from him. “What if I can’t find a matching number on the other sheet?” “Then it remains unreconciled.” He gets up to go. “Pass it to Janny when you’re done.”
— — — —

I.

.

—“

Side 10 af 11 sider

85

9°

95

iou

os

iio

‘is

120

125

The scent of him scatters, falling all over me unbearably. “Don’t leave me,” I say, but like almost everything I say it falters at my lips. He observes me, looks as if he too might say something. I am your wife. That is everything that I am. Help me, I nearly say. But we don’t say anything. I watch him leave and do not move. My eyes fall on the numbers. The columns are perfect, right aligned, their utter ran domness and uniformity clutches my brain. I see 418.80, I gasp at the symmetry at its heart, its left-heaviness, the roundedness of the right hand side. I scan the other column and there is an unexpected thrill when 418.80 sneakily appears somewhere around my knees. I highlight the pair. My success glows. Where is Vernon? I do not know. For a fragment of a minute I do not ask myself the question. What about 22.48 and 22.49 do they belong to each other? After all, they are so nearly the same. But then, 22.48 presents itself, collects its perfect partner and 22.49 remains unreconciled. In this way minutes pass, minutes that become over an hour. At last I can say that the figures left on my sheet have no home, no partner: spinsterish they sit in tidy superfluity until Janny appears in front of me and says, “Have you finished there? Shall I take it?” She smiles and her teeth are short and polished. I fancy I can see my reflection in them, cut in half. “Where is Vernon?” I ask. I ask the question from a point of disadvantage. My head is level with her belly. She seems perfectly able to place an immaculate hand on my head and issue a blessing. Under the desk I rub one foot over the other. “Mr Pringle has a meeting,” says Janny. “He’ll be out for most of the day. He asked me to tell you what to do next.” “Oh,” I say. “How did you find the reconciliation?” She casts a sparkling eye over my highlighting. “What happens to the numbers that don’t get matched?” “They remain unreconciled.” “But what happens?” Janny frowns slightly, “Well we find out where they have come from. We trace them back. Find an explanation.” “Oh.” “You seem to have done very well here.” The paper squeaks and fights in her hands. “Can I do the finding out? I mean I’d like to find out why 22.49 so narrowly missed being 22.48...” “It’s more complicated.., you have to look through the invoices. Go right back to the beginning.” She looks at me doubtfully. “Do you have accounting experience?” “Oh yes. I used to... I used to keep the books for my mountaineering club.” I grin again: Where is Vernon? Why can’t he see this, my robust best? “Well, if you like. We can see how you get on. All the paperwork is in the files beside Mr Pringle’s desk. You could pop yourself there while he’s out.” Does she realise what she has given me? Studying her for a second, I think she does and her eyes flicker away. “OK,” I say casually, and can hardly stop myself from skipping to my husband’s desk. I settle myself carefully, smiling proprietorially. I check the drawers, find a dusty miscel lany of pens, old labels, post-it notes. When I glance up I meet eyes that are trying not to stare. Janny, love of my love I hold back from gripping her expensive delicately perfumed
— —

Side 11 af 11 sider

sweater lays the printouts I have just finished on the desk. “Behind you in the cabinet are the invoices, in order by company. Go through each one and see if any of the figures 130 you can’t reconcile are on them. Give me a shout when you find one.” “I will,” I say. Outside the day is darkening already. I remember the cold of my flat. I don’t want to go back there, I don’t ever want to go back there. My new life is in filing. I have afiling per sonality. Where files might make another person depressed, queasy even, I realise that in ‘so files are the answers. I turn to the filing cabinet behind me. I want to find out how 22.49 should have come into being, how it came to have that little bit of excess that made it unreconcilable. I want its story. When I know its story I can let it go. “Laura?” “Yes?” I look up from my work. I have not looked up for a very long time. For a while 140 my forehead was almost resting on the desk. My eyes are heavy. “How are you getting on?” Janny has appeared, like a sweetly evil nun. “I can’t find it. I’ve searched every invoice. I can’t find it.” “You’ve spent all afternoon on 22.49?” “Of course.” 145 I turn back to the last sheet in my current handful. And when I move my wrist, I can’t believe it, it’s there ninth figure down on an invoice for small car parts from MacGre gor’s. Six pipe caps, ex VAT and delivery: 22.49! Not lost, only mislaid! “There it is!” I screech. I feel Vernon’s hand on my shoulder, and an enormous weariness settles on me. “I ‘o found it,” I say. “Well done, Laura,” says Vernon. His hand through my top is warm. Janny is standing close to me. I can smell her careful cleanliness, and I don’t think I ever longed to be someone so much as I long to be her. “Laura has worked very hard today. I think she has done very well,” she says. is There is a long silence. I realise that people are standing and putting on their coats, though my head is bowed and my eyes are closed. The movement of someone near me dislodges some tinsel which drifts and crashes softly over my feet. “Do you want to come back tomorrow?” says Vernon. I look up. I think of my cold house. I remember my old life. It included this person, this person before me in a cheap ‘oo blue shirt. I cannot make sense of it. I need help to make sense of it. “Please,” I say. “Please.” Janny and Mr Pringle look at each other. Janny says crisply, “Excellent.” “Remember your shoes,” says Vernon, his smile rolling out slowly. I look back as I leave. There is a glass of water with a sprig of holly in it on my desk. 165 The fat girl from personnel is in the lift as I go down. “OK Laura?” “OK,” I say. It is black outside, and freezing. I am shivering in seconds as I hunt for my bike. The dark shuts me in like a lid. Looking forward, I see the road has the gawky beauty of a list of numbers unfurling. I stop and I get on my knees by the side of the road. I take my time, ‘70 though it is desperately cold. I examine the sparkling surface of the road for the explana tion, which I know now with a wonderful warm certainty is there.
—

(2006)