Bill and the UFO2

‘Where is Bill anyway?’

Summy was half way up the hill before Phil caught up, but he walked on blank-faced, giving him the stumm- silent treatment, as if he wasn’t there, or was some kind of bony, mop headed, red freckled freak faced apparition.

‘Dunno,’ Summy gave him a sideways smirk, and there was a hint of laughter in his voice.

‘But you said…’

‘I just said that so you would come out.’

‘I could go back down the road.’

‘But you willnae.’ Summy stopped, a triumphant smile on his face and in his voice.

Phil did the only thing he could have done under the circumstances. He pushed him sideways into Mrs Bell’s privet hedge. It was a bit overgrown which was ideal.

‘What did you do that for?’ Summy sprawled half way in and half way out, nesting and flapping up and out of the hedge, like a beaky-eyed, green and gold Bay City reject, of the broken winged Roller flock.

Mrs Bell was patrolling the rectangular bit of cut up rug that kept her good carpet from being worn out, in the border between her comfy chintz armchair and window, skulking behind the custard cream yellow curtains, on the look out for weeds to push through, dogs to crap in her garden, or kids to fall from the sky into her hedge. She reacted with a pent up fury of someone that has been kept waiting too long. Her knuckles rapped out the Morse code on the glass of the window of I’ve seen you and I know who you are. As if that was not enough her jowly jaw was working overtime, as if she was chewing on a couple of bars McCowan’s Highland Cream Toffee, but neither Summy or Phil were lip readers, but they didn’t need to be to tell she was saying, among other things: ‘I’m telling your mum’.

Phil broke away first, running up the hill onto the dirt track of the short cut, behind the covering hedge of The Old Folk’s Home. He sat on the corner of the little wall with the bit of torn fence, picking at a scab on his knee, with the concentration of a surgeon at work and flinching before going back to the same capped bit of skin and squirming and squinting as it bled and little milky red lymph ran down his bare leg. Summy’s wheezing shadow on his sun struck shoulder didn’t put him off ouch-ouching as he moved on to the last stage of the operation. He delicately separated scab from knee and flicked away the snottery load from his fingers towards his tormentor.

‘How did you get that?’ Summy’s voice couldn’t help but show a note of admiration. It was a man-sized scab.

‘Playing fitba. In the school. Slide tackling. The gravel parks are murder. And you have to scrub out all the bits that get into your leg with a hard brush.’

‘I know,’ said Summy, with a shake of his head.

But they both knew he was lying. He was rubbish at football just namby- pambied about with the ball and never-ever slide tackled.

‘Do you think Mrs Bell will go down and tell my Ma on us?’ Summy sniffed and tried to sound gallus.

‘Nah.’ Phil couldn’t meet Summy’s eyes.

‘I’m not that bothered.’ Summy kicked at a little stone and watched, his head slaloming from side to side, as it gained momentum and rolled down the hill and rested on the butt of the wall at the bottom of the path.

‘Neither am I.’ Phil wiped the blood from his leg and stood up, jiggling his leg about, as if to see if it still worked. ‘My Da’ can’t stand her anyway. And although he doesnae swear I heard him telling Ma’ that Mrs Bell was a miserable old cow that could make milk turn. And…’ He cocked his head and squinted up at the sun to help him remember, ‘… if all the happy people in the world were lined up end to end they couldn’t put a crack of a smile on Mrs Bell’s face.’

‘My Ma can’t stand her either.’ Summy kicked at another stone, but it didn’t do much, just rolled over once or twice and lay up against a Buddleia as if bored with all that rolling about that the other stone had done. ‘But she’s got to kid on she likes her because we are related. She’s my mum’s sister’s, sister’s, brother’s sister.’

‘So she’s your auntie?’ snorted Phil.

‘Nah, no really. She’s just something. We should put her in there.’ Summy nodded towards the two storey blocks of The Old Folk’s Home. ‘With all the other fossils.’

‘Yeh,’ Phil shimmied down the short cut of the dirt path and sprung cat-like onto the even slab path around the buildings. ‘We should lock everybody up when they get really old, when they’re about 40.’

‘We should kill them off.’ Summy lost a bit of traction and almost slipped, but made the last jump onto the path with aplomb. ‘Like in that film. Logan’s Run, or something.’

Summy vaulted the fence at the bottom of the home and back into the sunlight. ‘And I think you had to be beautiful in a Logan’s Run world. Which kinda rules Wendy out.’

Phil looked back at the closed windows on the hill, briefly wondering what it would be like to be sitting there, looking out into the sunlight. He made a play of catching his balls on the fence before sliding over and onto the safety of Shakespeare Avenue. ‘And you.’ He pushed Summy in the back. ‘And Bill.’ He was snorting with laughter. ‘And what about that dog of his what’s it called again? Tadger!’

‘Todger’s got to be the ugliest dog I’ve ever seen. If Wendy was a dog she’d be Todger.’ Sum pushed Phil off the pavement.

But Phil wasn’t really bothered and just sat down, his bare legs pointing up at the sun, picking at the white chips in the hot tarmac with his nail bitten fingers, studying it, as if it was a broken off branch of botany and he was an urban David Bellamy. ‘And if Bill was a girl he’d be Wendy and if Wendy was a dog-which she most definitely is, with those big buckteeth of hers- then she’d be Todger. So if Todger was a man he’d be Bill.’ Phil smiled to himself and his face bloomed into a triumphant laugh, he smacked his legs as if there was a rhythm to his thoughts.

Summy sat down beside him hugging his legs. ‘And if eh, Todger was a dog, then, eh, he could… shite for Scotland.’ He was pretty pleased with his response and nodded his head in response to the thousands of fans out there that might have been listening.

‘You’re a Mongo.’ Phil smiled and pushed Summy away from him.

‘No. You’re a Mongo.’ Summy didn’t bother pushing him back. He was basking in the warmth of having the last word and being tops.

‘What kind of dogs do you think aliens have?’ Phil asked.

A reddish Ford Cortina passed. Instinctively, they pulled their feet in off the road, even though it was nowhere near them. Summy took his time answering. He was used to Phil’s Mongo mannerisms and the way that he went suddenly serious when he was least expecting it.

‘I think aliens would have wee dogs, because you wouldnae have much room on a spaceship and, eh, you couldnae take it out for a shite that often.’ Summy’s sprinkling of swear words gave him the edge on adult authority.

Phil was getting excited with the whole idea and spoke quicker than normal, spitting out his words like a nail-gun. ‘Maybe. Maybe the inside of a spaceship is like the Tardis, bigger inside than it is out.’

‘Maybe. Maybe.’ Summy pushed himself up slowly like a deck chair. ‘And maybe...’ He bent down as if he was going to blow a raspberry in Phil’s ear. ‘…you’re a bigger Mongo than I thought’.

They ambled up towards the Morrison’s, Wendy and Rab’s back garden, without thinking about it, as if thier feet were making their decisions for them.

Phil kicked his leg up. ‘Do you think UFOs are up there and maybe we just cannae see them.’

‘Nah,’ said Summy, ‘if we couldnae see them they’d be invisible.’

‘But if they are invisible, how can you take a picture of them.’

Summy stopped, his face contorted into a new way of thinking. ‘You cannae.’ That was his final answer.

‘Well.’ Summy rushed breathlessly in. ‘How come they’ve got pictures of them then, Todger breath.’

They squared up to each other, but only in a half hearted way, because it was too hot and they were already at the Morrison’s back gate.