Bill and the UFO23

Phil didn’t go into detail, but had thought it all out. With no rucksack on his back the coat was almost down to Bill’s bare feet. That was the other part of the disguise. If Bill walked about with bare hippy feet, wearing a monster coat in the scorching heat and looked like a daftie, after the first glance and grimace nobody would look at him, because it just wasn’t the done thing, to stare at dafties. The added bonus was that all dafties look the same. So people didn’t want to look at dafties in case they appeared daft. They were ready to go.

Bill snake hipped his white boneless frame into the long Crombie coat, which hung on his adolescent shoulders like a crumbled metal coat hanger supporting a Victorian wardrobe. Summy laughed and handed him a peaked blue cap with an intricate embossed gold logo of NYC. The hat was Wendy’s, which somehow made it seem funnier. One of her long lost cousins had brought it over. Americans wore them to watch baseball. Nobody this side of the Atlantic would ever wear anything as stupid looking.

Rab crouched inside the tent. His two-tone red and blue-stripped Bay City Roller jumper had replaced his usual denim, but he’d cut the sleeves off to show Motorhead bad-assness. His greased hair brushed the canvas roof, as he was putting the finishing touches to Bill’s mega-disguise. He pulled the coat down like a storm curtain, so that it hung the right way. Bill’s eyes began to water and become red rimmed. He sneezed and brushed nascent tears with the outside of his hands.

‘I’ve got just the thing for you.’ Rab pulled an old pair of NHS black-banded prescription specs out of his back denim pocket. ‘Put them on.’ He handed the specs to Bill. ‘That will stop us seeing your eyes watering.’

Bill sneezed a few times. He sneered; ‘I’m no’ putting these things on. What? You want me to look like Joe 90; totally stupid?’

Bill propped the thick specs on his thin nose, only the slight bump keeping them on.

‘That’s brilliant,’ Summy started smaning inviting Phil to join in.

‘Am no’ wearing them.’ Bill wiped the specs off. ‘I cannae even see through them. What? Where they made for a blind person.’

‘They were my da’s specs,’ Rab whispered.

‘Sorry.’ Bill balanced the specs on his nose and kept them in place by tilting his neck back and looking at the tent roof. ‘A cannae see anything.’ He swivelled his head around so that he could see Rab out of the corner of his eyes.

Rab chewed on the corner of the nail on his index finger. He was almost down to the nail bed. ‘You don’t need to see. I know where we’re going.’ He looked at his wardrobe work on Bill. ‘If you cannae see out…then nobody can see in.’ He sounded pleased.

‘What about Todger?’ Wendy was standing outside the tent. The dog was lying in the coarse dried out tufts of grass at her feet, snoring, with its feet up in the air, like doggy Brillo pads.

Rab moved the tent flaps back to get a better look. ‘Nah. There’s nothing that we can do with him. No disguise in the world would change that.’ A look of revulsion played out on his face. ‘Maybe we should just leave him in the tent?’

‘You’re no leavin’ him in my tent.’ Wendy cleared her throat.

‘Maybe we could…’ Phil looked at Wendy.

She grogged at the entrance to the tent; green mucus, a marker that threaded like a split cobweb into what remained of the bleached white Alopecia grass.

‘Maybe we should take him with us. Here Todger.’ Phil slapped his side and in a higher than normal voice tried to encourage the dog to stop looking at him as if he were made out of Puff pastry and move.

Rab took charge and gave a little pep talk before they left. They were all standing in a loosely knit semicircle outside the tent. ‘Right.’ He looked at Bill, ‘just act normal.’

‘How do we dae that?’ Summy nodded his head and squinted out of the side of his eyes at Bill.

‘Just don’t whistle.’ Rab nodded as if to say that it was self-evident.

‘Where are we goin’? Am fuckin’ sweltering and I need a fag.’ Bill took his Joe 90 specs off.

‘Aaaaa.’ Rab shook his finger at him, as if he was an infant.

Bill balanced the specs back on his nose.

‘Give him a fag Wendy.’ Rab spoke out of the corner of his mouth.

Wendy bit at her lips and keeping her beady eyes on Rab, reached down for her fag packet as if it was a hidden six-gun. ‘This better be good.’

‘It is. It is.’ Rab rolled on the balls of his feet, trying to convince himself. ‘What we’ll do is go down to The Clydebank Post, ask to see the photographer and get the photo of the alien developed and that will be us millionaires. A million squddly-diddly.’

‘That’s brilliant,’ said Summy, ‘we can go down by the canal and that way nobody will see us. And if they do they’ll think we’re just fishing, or something.’

Todger looked up at each one of the shining, perspiring red faces. Something was up. He could smell the excitement. That could mean only one thing. They were going to feed him. He started darting from one to the other, trying to root out the hidden food and barking, barking, barking.

‘Can someone no’ put a pillow down that dog’s throat.’ Wendy was already half way up the garden path and away from the rest of the group.

‘Right. If we get split up or hassled by the police, just run and we’ll meet back here.’ Rab’s mum was banging on the kitchen window. His head dropped and he tried to ignore her, but she just banged louder and waved at him that he was to come in. She probably wanted him to go to the shops. He wanted to whine from the rooftops it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair, she never-ever asked Wendy, but he trekked towards the back door like the picture of a dutiful son.

Bill and Todger jumped the back fence into the lane. Summy and Phil crouched down, as if that made them invisible and sauntered around the side of his house. Everybody, but Rab, was leaving.