Bill and the UFO5

Phil and Summy walked down the middle of the road, with their Adidas tops tied around their bums, daring any cars to knock them down, but there were never any cars. Their swagger meant they didn’t exist. Bill and Todger zigzagged this way and that as the dog picked up scent after scent and went hairballing and raising his stumpy leg to spray his own brand, in most of the gardens at the backs of Shakespeare Avenue. On the way to Johnny Graham’s shop, dying for a smoke, Rab and Wendy forced the pace. It stood between Duntocher Road, Dumbarton Road and Second Avenue. Rows of housing ran up and down and around it, folded into a Bermuda triangle of customers. The roads were deceptively busy there. But there was no pirate flag flying for the cutthroat prices Johnny Graham’s shop sold his products.

Johnny Graham was a balding shipwreck of a man who always wore a dust jacket behind the counter. And he was always open up to 5pm, even on a Sunday, which was unheard of that side of heaven. He was sweet enough with all the old fossils that went into his shop and might even attempt a music hall chuckle and false teethed plastic smile with them, but he was gull voiced with anyone under Methuselah’s age.

‘What you doing there?’ His grizzled red turkey neck swept from side to side and his dustcoat went flapping as Bill came into the shop with Todger, and Rab following behind. Summy, Wendy and Phil filtered in the door last.

Rab was pushed to the front. ‘Ten Benson and Hedges.’

The cigarettes were stacked behind Johnny Graham, but he didn’t like turning around with so many kids in his shop. He needed have worried; his shop was virtually theft proof. Even the potatoes and turnips were hemmed in by glass. The magazines on the rack were that far away that it would have needed the Hubble telescope to see any bit of cleavage on the top shelf. There was even a china mug and commemorative plate, with faded gold leaf round the edges, featuring Princess Alexandra in the shop window. Nobody could remember what she’d done, but it was still there. Johnny Graham probably hoped for some passing busload of ardent Royal tourists would drop in on the way to Balmoral, or that some erring son would buy it as a knick-knack for his mum in The Old Folk’s Home on the hill. He consoled himself with the thought that he’d sold the very same plate, but with a chip in it, a barely noticeable imperfection, two years earlier. The only difference was that had featured the regal features of Champion the Wonder Horse and not Princess Alexandra.

‘Do you want the ciggies in singles, or in a packet?’ Johnny Graham had an open packet of twenty in his hand, waving them hypnotically about like a packet of sugar coated sweet cigarettes that was sold to even younger kids and which tasted like white chalk. His lips clicked and chewed on his ill-fitting false teeth like an abacus, working out the extra profit margin.

There were big heavy metal bars that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Barlinnie Prison, on the small window at the back of a shop, and it smelled as if slopping out had just started. There was a rumour attached that he kept a gigantic bank safe in the back, full of all the loot he had accumulated over the year. Mrs Graham appeared at the door of the back room, taking them all in, another pair of watching prison guard eyes.

Wendy looked away first. The last time they’d been there for a single Wendy that had christened her ‘The Hungry Hippo,’ because of her size, her sticky up left ear and her enormous bulk behind the counter. They could hardly hold their breath inside the shop, clutching at their sides. They’d poured out of the shop gasping for breath in front of the plate glass window. Princess Alexandra cut glass eyes looking down on them made it even worse. Rab didn’t even have time to light up, before he’d exploded with laughter. He bounced off Summy making Hippo noises. Phil careered off Wendy, but since nobody really knew what kind of noise a Hippo makes, it went to the lowest common animal denominator of their branch of the mimic tree, so they swept there arms about making chimpish- hippo noises. Wendy fell against the bin, knocking it over, sending all the empty packets of cigarettes, stubs and sweet packets flying into the flattened weeds at the side of the building.

‘Go-on, fuck off.’ It had been a surprise when Johnny Graham had appeared outside his shop, because he only seemed to exist inside it and it was more of a shock, him, an adult and respectable shopkeeper, swearing at them.

They’d scarpered across Duntocher Road hootering and hollering in mock bravado, but this was the first time they’d been back since then. Nobody was saying much, apart from Rab, who took the initiative.

‘I’ll take a full ten packet.’ Rab sounded like an adult smoker.

Todger, smelling free food, tried to get into the back of the shop but Mrs Graham blocked that route off like a meteor in a duck pond. Todger tried licking her, but she ignored him, could only see his stumpy tail wagging and hear his irritating –feed me-whine.

Phil forefinger stabbed Bill in the back. ‘If you’re going to get supplies, maybe you should get hot-dogs. You can eat them hot. You can eat them cold and if you don’t like them you can feed them to the dog, because some dogs don’t like dog food. Did you know that?’

Bill was lost in his own thoughts, his head jiggling about on a stock like a dandelion clock, before he answered. ‘Yeh, I mean No. He’ll eat pretty much anything. Dog food. Cat food. Bread. Brocolli. Dog shit, whether it’s his own, or other dogs, we’re not really sure.’

‘Euuugh, you’re, you’re,’ Wendy shook her head and just gave up.

Phil pulled a pound note out of his sock and started buying the whole shop. He swaggered to the counter and paid for the fags. Then he started just buying: a bottle of Iron Bru, American Cream Soda, Limeade, Ginger Beer, a packet of wine gums, a quarter of midget gems, a quarter of Cola Cubes, two bars of Highland Cream toffee and two tins of hotdogs.’ When the £1 note was almost finished he started on the penny tray, ‘Blackjacks, chewing gum, flying saucers…’ The Hungry Hippo packed it in a bag for him, with Johnny Graham ringing it up on the till.

They stood at the back of Johnny Graham’s, curtained off from the main streets by a hanging privet hedge and a safari park of high weeds.

‘It feels like a Sunday.’ Summy was chewing on wine gum and swigging at his bottle of American Cream Soda. It took a few second for their eyes to adjust to being in the sun outside.

‘Yeh, a know what you mean. I’m usually sent to the shop on a Sunday.’ Phil’s head sagged with the injustice of it all. ‘I like the black midget gems.’ He picked through the packet, pulling them out and popping them in his mouth in triumph. ‘Every day of the summer holiday is a Sunday.’ He started picking out the red midget gems. Even a Saturday’s a Sunday.’

‘Shite.’ Wendy had half turned away from them, a hoarder, fending off Todger, taking little nips from her Limeade, chewing on toffee and smoking a fag. ‘Monday’s always double Maths.’ She chewed her way through the toffee smoked and spat out a supplementary: ‘even if you’re not at school, it hangs about, waiting for you.’ She swallowed the bitterness of double Maths down with her Highland Cream Toffee.

Todger was in a feeding frenzy whooping from one to another and snarfling down the sweets they flung up in the air for him like there was no panting, out of doggy breath, tomorrow.

‘I just dog it.’ Rab blew two double helix O-O smoke rings, up in the air and watched them dissolve.

‘Don’t you need a note, or something?’ There was an edge of anxiety in Phil’s voice, one that even pale green midget gem couldn’t cure, because he was going to the big high school at Kilbowie Road that year and he’d heard lots about it.

Todger chased the spiral flight of a dragonfly in case it was a midget gem taken flight. Then he flopped down at Bill’s feet.

‘You just write a note from your mum, saying you had sickness and diarrhoea. They don’t want to look into that too much.’ Bill sniffed the air as if it was more than an impending announcement. ‘Mr Greer our Guidance teacher doesn’t bother. He never pulls you up, but he’s not a real teacher. He teaches Art and it’s all trying to draw stupid sannies, scratching himself and looking out the windows at Mrs Bridges’s tits.

‘Ah wouldn’t know how to spell diarrhoea.’ Phil chewed on the last of his gums and dropped the bag to the ground. Todger nosed his way into it and looked up at him hoping he could do something about it being empty.

‘It’s just the same way you spell flu; only longer.’ Rab flicked his fag doubt away into the dry grass. ‘See that over there.’ He nodded proudly in the general direction of the graffiti at the back of Johnny Graham’s, spray painted logos of:

‘Fuck you.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘YOUng BuNdy.’

‘Cellltic.’

‘Gers ar the champs’

‘Fuck you too.’

‘Rab loves Sussie.’

‘That was me,’ Rab said, ‘lovely wee bird, with lovely little…’ he looked at Wendy and glanced away. ‘She was Polish you know?’

A burning smell wafted up from the ditch at the bottom of the wall at Johnny Graham’s.

Phil was sitting with his back to Johnny Graham’s with Summy beside him. They looked at each other and a little snort escaped from the back of Summy’s throat, as if he was trying to hold it in. His eyebrows shot up and Phil immediately caught what he meant. He was playing out their game of what would Colombo have said? And Phil could see it right in front of him.

‘Just one more thing Rab,’ a trench coated Columbo would have said, ‘There are lots of Rabs in this world. And lots of Sussies. But there’s not a lot of Polish Sussies hereabouts. What makes you think…’.

Summy started giggling; infecting Phil. They were trying not to get caught, red faced, looking the other way, daring each other to look at Rab and show that nobody would ever believe that kind of crap.

Bill couldn’t quite get his head round ‘Rab loves Sussie’. ‘What part of Poland did she come from?’

Rab gave Bill the eye. He might have bought all that stuff, but there were limits. ‘The Polish part.’ He stared at him again to see if he got the message, squinting out of the side of his eyes at Summy and Phil.

The edge of the hill started to crackle and burn.

‘Fuck sake! Run.’ Wendy cut through the gap in the hedge between Johnny Grahams onto Overtoun Road and through the lane onto Second Avenue. By the time the others had caught up with her she was half way up Second Avenue on the way to Dalmuir Park.