Bill and the UFO10

Summy appeared at the entrance to Dalmuir Café just when Phil was leaving. Bill was heading off towards the golf course, following Todger’s wayward path. Wendy and Rab where drifting towards Mark’s Ice Cream van that was parked just outside the gates of the Park. Its megaphone ‘Jack and Jill went up the hill,’ nursery chimes, drew small kids from slides and swings, like a four wheeled metallic Pied Piper. Mallards cruised the Duck Pond, their flippers barely moving as if standing on a curtain of water, waiting for bread to fall like Manna; whist Red Crested and Ring Teal were snowed under, almost sunk by carelessly flung outsiders skimming and falling into the water with mismatched white Plan Loaf slices. The smaller kids stood open mouthed, crying for the sake of crying, and wondering what all the fuss was about. Mums rushed and fussed looking in their bags for change.

‘What happened to your Da’? Phil walked quickly following Wendy and Rab down the straight tarmac path beside the Bowling Green.

‘Don’t ask,’ said Summy grinning. ‘He was almost up the road. Then he decided that as the pubs were shut he’d need to go to The Pinetrees Hotel for a drink. So he started trying to flag down a taxi, but he was blind drunk and thought every passing car was a taxi. Eventually, a car stopped. He must have been feeling sorry for him, or something.’

Rab and Wendy were holding their double nougats up, trying to defy gravity, and stop the raspberry overload with their heads tilted and tongues snaking out to prevent ice cream dripping and splashing onto the ground, or worse, onto their precious grubby denims. A queue was forming round them and the open window of Mark’s Ice Cream Van. Young mothers hauled at their kid’s arms, pulling them back and forth in screaming sugar-free skirmishes as they jostled for position with other kids who wanted a cone to cool their petted lips.

‘Get me a Popsickle,’ said Summy.

‘Get your own.’ Phil pushed him away, but felt guilty because it had been Summy’s dad’s money. He joined the back of the queue.

Summy nipped at the thin skin of Phil’s elbows because he was bored and he knew that it annoyed him. An infant passed him in cute little sunbonnet, red shorts with a blue anchor and a little sailor’s top, his feet clomping along in his flat shiny black shoes like a clockwork toy. His mother ran behind holding onto the hand of another little girl, about a year older, with red hair, sunburned snot nose and ice cream face that looked like a hyena had thrown up. Summy was lost for words. Not because of the little girl, or boy, but because of their mother.

Phil noticed him looking. Even after they’d been served and were slurping on their ice creams their eyes followed the young mother and their feet began to follow.

‘Where do you think you two are going?’ said Rab.

‘Naewhere.’ Phil almost barged into Summy who had stopped walking, but his eyes still following her back to the infant zone of swings and roundabout.

‘I’ll say this she’d some pair on her. Two little double nuggets with a single Flake poking out that dress. She’s practically naked underneath it.’ Rab mimed feeling a pair of tits. ‘And she’s no’ bad looking.’

‘She’s no’ that nice.’ Wendy sounded angry.

‘Nice?’ Phil shook his head.

‘She’s beautiful,’ said Summy, ‘the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life.’

‘Aye. I’d shag her.’ Rab searched in his pockets for his fags.

‘Well, I don’t like her.’ Wendy tried to outstare Phil then Summy, but they were in a trance like state and too far gone.

‘You don’t like anybody,’ Phil was the first to come back to something like normality.

‘I like David Cassidy.’

‘No. I mean a real person.’

‘He is real; ya wee spazball.’ Wendy was getting red in the face agitated.

‘Aye, but he’s no’ real, like her.’ Summy didn’t even look at Wendy, his eyes remained focused on the woman pushing her two kids on the swings. They both looked cute with their little sunhats from that distance; screaming out their fears and dropping down to joy; one after the other, into the rough metal handles of chain link air and their mum wordlessly waiting to catch them.

‘She’s just a woman.’ Wendy took the fag end of Rab, nursed it in her cupped hand and smoked it right down to the tip.

‘What are you two like? They’re all the same with their clothes aff.’ Rab’s hand fiddled in and out of his side denim trouser pocket, playing with his change and Bluebell matches, like ill-matched castanets.

‘She’s a respectable married woman.’ Phil said.

‘She wouldn’t be respectable unless she was married. And she wouldn’t be married unless she liked a bit of hanky-panky.’ Wendy started walking quickly towards the swings and play-park as if she was going to have it out with her, but they knew it was just because she was getting another reddy face.

‘Hanky-panky,’ laughed Rab, ‘I think she thinks she’s turning into Sherlock Holmes. Next thing she’ll be smoking a clay pipe.’

It was pretty lame, but Phil and Summy were glad to laugh along with Rab.

‘You’re safe anyway,’ Summy skelped Phil on the back. ‘She’s probably no’ even a Catholic.’

‘I cannae help my upbringing.’ Phil was standing close to him pushed him from the grass verge onto the tarmac.

Rab shook his head. ‘I’m going for a walk.’

‘You’re lucky anyway. God made you that ugly for a good reason. Obviously, He wants you to be a ball faced priest.’ Summy looked over at the woman again. Her kids were balanced unevenly on the seesaw.

‘What about you? You’ll…You’ll…probably end up with somebody like Wendy.’ Phil looked away as if he’d been hit between the eyes, or caught out, when Wendy looked back towards them.

Todger bounced past both of them and towards the play park. He arrowed into the No Dog’s Allowed section of the swings and roundabouts, zeroing in on a stray child and picking off the dripping orange ice-lolly that was waved in his face. He circled back, his tongue hanging out, with kids squealing in a mixture of delight and terror, and running to their mothers, to get away from his barking bumptious presence.

‘Todger. Todger.’ Bill was at the Ice Cream Van, waving an ice cream cone like a semaphore.

Bill took such a giant lick out of his cone that it could almost be heard above the free- for- all of excited children’s voices. Todger charged him down, jumping up and licking the cone held between Bill’s lips.

Phil was almost sick. It was the most disgusting thing he had seen since Noel Began sitting in the desk in front of him, at the first day of school, shat himself. But it was worse. Noel Began only shat himself once. Todger jumped up and licked Bill’s lips several time and it wasn’t clear if the dog, or Bill was enjoying it more.

‘What made you come back?’ asked Summy.

‘It wasnae me. It was him.’ Todger gave Bill another big lick. ‘He doesnae like being by himself.’

‘But he wisnae by himself. He was with you.’

‘You may think that. But he doesnae know that.’ Bill pushed Todger and tried shouting ‘Down, Down;’ it didn’t work. Todger was enjoying his day out too much.