31.10.04
"Yeah," she said. "I lie all the time. The other day I told someone I was Margaret Atwood."
Everyone laughed and gasped and listened as she told them how she had wangled a free lunch. I wondered why they believed her. Karen is nervous. I see it sometimes when we talk and she runs out of words, and the silence in the conversation unnerves her. She feels guilty. She has no story to tell.
She did not tell anyone she was Margaret Atwood. She may have to hook her computer up to her petrol-powered lawnmower in order to get power when her generator gives out, but I'm reasonably sure doing so is impossible. However, she definitely lives on a boat. She rented rooms in her house out to students, and when they got too loud and noisy and messy, she moved out.
"I hate Waterways Bob," she said. "He has this walkie talkie that never has any batteries in it. I think he carries it around to feel important like. He keeps trying to put his leg up on the edge of my boat, but he's too short and his leg don't quite make it and he keeps having to put it back down again. Up, down, up down, I wish he didn't have any batteries, he's like a bloody see-saw."
Waterways Bob is, we are led to believe, the Waterways official that gives her shit because she doesn't have a license for her boat.
"The guy that sold me it, " the boat, "said, you can be on the canals for a year before anyone comes to check, so when Waterways Bob shows up it's a bit of a shock to me. He asks if it's my boat, and he's caught me as I'm trying to leave - cos I have to ride my bike to my car which I left at my last mooring so I'm not late for my lecture - so I just said no, it wasn't, and it was my mate's but he was in North Wales at the time and wouldn't be back for a month."
Karen likes to lie. She says she likes to see if she can bullshit people and make it believable. I think she likes to entertain. No one knows who Karen is. She has a partner named Pete who disappears and reappears on a whim. Perhaps he is an unreliable man. Perhaps he does not exist.
"So after a month, Bob is back with his walkie talkie asking where my friend is and how come he's not back from North Wales. So I panic a bit and tell him he's gone to Iraq as a contractor and I ain't sure when he's coming home again. And each week the story kept getting more ridiculous. He's missing now, and they're hoping he hasn't been taken hostage."
It's the way she admits the lie before she tells it and still fools people that I love to watch.
"In the mean time, I've gotten pretty pissed at the guy who sold me the boat. So I tell him about Waterways Bob, and he says, love, don't worry about it, I'll sort it out for you. And the next week, Waterways Bob is back, but he don't say nothing to me. Just walks past and sort of smiles. So I go back to the guy and I ask him what he did. And he says, love, I told him you were dying, and he should leave a poor woman like you alone in her last attempt at peace."
Afterwards, when the rest of the audience is gone and fooled, I ask Karen to please, please, never tell me exactly when she's telling the truth.