my life, who does she think she’s taking in?
Good deed indeed, she must make something out
of all this, though it’s not sweated labour by
any manner of means, I will say that for her, it’s
not arduous, and she can’t get much for these
Christmas crackers they make, wonder who does
the fillings, the mottoes, we used to enjoy
crackers that Christmas before he went, there was
an old-fashioned Christmas if you like, it snowed
that year it did, very unusual for London to snow
on Christmas Day, don’t remember any other years
it happened, in fact, and how it changed the look
of everything, people started acting differently,
too, people you knew only to nod at suddenly
joined in snowballing in the street outside as
though you’d all been kids together, had grown up
in the same street. And we had some money for
a change, had a bird instead of a joint, a capon,
the baby had some giblet gravy with roast potato
mashed up in it, very nourishing for him it was.
Knowing he was for the Front made him
depressed, then suddenly he’d be so cheerful, such good
company, he made it a wonderful Christmas for all of
us, him and his brother, they did a sort of act for
us, Jim got up as a woman, makeup and all, we ached
from laughing, they were so comical, the pair of them,
ached from eating too much, as well, I never — Me?
Me and Charlie? Trusties, she talks to us
as though we were doing bird, indeed, one of these
days I’ll show her how trusty I am!
What’s Charlie got in them bottles, then?
Looks like gin, smells like spirits, too — she
must be at it again, the crafty old chiseller!
Still, what’s it got to do with me?
Glad I haven’t got the job, anyway, never could
stomach the smell of spirits, I told him that before
we were married, stick to your pint, I said,
don’t you come home here reeking to high heaven of
spirits, I won’t have it in my home.
Yes?
Little bottles, what are they?
Soak the labels off, I bet. Use the bowl from
the sink, I’ll stand them in that, in water, would
some soap help? Do you want me to keep the labels?
My nails are broken, have been for years,
but give the bottles a good old soak and they’ll come off.
Shall I use a knife?
Good, this is an
easy job, I can get on with that, it helps to pass the
time, I don’t mind, get the bowl, fill it with water.
What’s in these little bottles? Chloro-benzo….
Can’t read it properly, whatever it is. No matter, none
of my business anyway. Charlie, have you got a fag?
Mean old sod. And
I know he smokes. Like my Ronnie, always telling
lies, I’d catch him with the fag in his hand
and he’d put it behind his back and drop it and
breathe out the smoke all over the kitchen and
swear he wasn’t smoking at all.
And he married a like one, his kind, oh I hated
that creature, bad as my Ronnie was he didn’t
deserve her, no, never. Lie, she would
lie her way black and blue out of anything, you
could catch her out any number of times and she
would still deny it. I gave up in the end, you
just couldn’t rely on anything she said, anything
at all, anything even as simple as just meeting
you for shopping, she’d lie about who she’d just
seen and what she’d just bought and how much
money she’d won on the bleeding dogs. I’d no time
for her, it must be twenty years since I saw her,
fifteen since I last saw my Ronnie, too. He came
into the pub we had in Strutton Ground then, I
was so surprised to see him walk in, he had a
Guinness and no more than a dozen words to say to
me, a dozen words, and most of them he could
hardly get out, he was that ashamed, I think,
ashamed of not going to see his old Mum for all
that length of time, months it was, perhaps a year.
Not like Laura’s son, twice a week he used to
visit her regularly, once for a cup of coffee at
lunchtime early in the week, and later — There,
that’s enough soaking, let’s see if these little
labels will come off now.
No, tough little customers they are, it’s not
waterproof paper, is it, can’t be?
Perhaps it would help if I scratched them a bit,
to let the water soak in better. A fork would
do it.
Yes, that’s easier, let’s try doing that
to all of them.
I wonder if
Ronnie knows I’m here? Not that he’d want
to visit me, no one gets any visitors here,
anyway, but I’d like to see him just the once more
before I pass over, just the once. He
wouldn’t have to see me if he didn’t want to, no,
as long as I could see him, out of a window,
perhaps, going along the road, just the once.
As long as she wasn’t
with him, the barren sow, she could never give him
any kids, and I know he always wanted kids, my
Ronnie, he was ever so good with them, look how
he used to go and play football with them until
he was quite a grown man, used to run a team for
them as well, he used to get me to wash the team
shirts each week in the winter, it was a trial
getting them dry, it was, she wouldn’t wash them,
I doubt if she washed Ronnie’s own things properly,
let alone the team’s, she was that lazy, Doris
was her name, yes, Doris, I wouldn’t want to see
her again, no, just my Ronnie, once.
Does he think I’m dead? How could
he know I’m here? Could I find him? How?
Could ask House Mother. She’d laugh at the
idea, brush it aside, take no notice, I’m
afraid of her
Not her!
Now let’s see if they’ll come off Yes,
nearly there, if I have a good scrape at this one
then by the time it’s off the others will be even
more soaked, all ready.
What does she want with them?
Yellowy sort of stuff inside, yellowy, runny.
Nasty-looking stuff.
In summer there everyone seemed to take life
easily, so easily, it was as though there were
no pain, no work either, everyone had time to
just walk about, go swimming, sunbathing, get
up boat races, and go dancing. They danced a
new dance called the gavotte, or it was new to
me, anyway, being a foreigner. And they danced
in the streets, too, that was new, the streets
lit by paper lanterns in their fashion. And the
sun so hot at midday that the market-women
put up their red umbrellas for shade, and the
men went into these sort of cellar pubs that sold
wine, I never went into one, could only see down
into them that they were cool and shaded, and there
was a lot of laughing and the tables had zinc
tops and so did the bar, a long bar, the bottles
kept in holes, no labels, I was so thirsty I
went to a café down on the promenade with the
children, little Ronnie was all right but that Clarissa
was a little bastard to me, she knew she could
play me up with safety and she took advantage
of it. I could have been so happy
there, there was so much sun and the life was easy