Ugly Puggly 64

We walked over to Molly’s. It had been warm that day and I wanted to stretch my legs. Ugly Puggly gave us a couple of slices of blue-moulded bread to fling to the ducks on the canal. He treated us like kids going on an outing and it wouldn’t have surprised me if he issued us with satchels and play-pieces. And also instructed Dave to hold my hand when we crossed busy roads.

The back wheel of the Bongo was flat. I kicked it, because that was what everybody does with a flat tyre. I’d established I’d need to get it fixed. I made one of those growling noises when I noticed bird shit on the bonnet. Unfed birds had got their retribution in early. I blamed seagulls.

Dave said they weren’t actually seagulls. I took my finger from the buzzer to check if he was being stupid or trying to antagonise me, on purpose.

‘Who is it?’ Molly’s voice sounded shrewish.

‘It’s me,’ I replied.

‘Well, press the button.’

‘Whit dae yeh think I’m daeing, knitin a jumper?’

One of her noisy neighbours, Helen or Ellen, I couldn’t remember her name, was coming out. I stuck a foot in the door, or it may have been to trip her up as we clambered inside the lobby.  She skipped past us, glowering. The house smelt so strongly of disinfectant and air freshner my eyes smarted. We went through to the kitchen.

I introduced Dave to Molly. She had always been house proud, energetic. Cleaned when she was nervous. ‘How you gettin on? I asked as she bustled, making teas.

‘Fine,’ she replied, but I’d lived with her long enough to recognise the tremor in her voice. ‘That thing didnae work oot,’ she admitted while spilling the good biscuits onto a plate. Rockies to the top. My favourites. ‘I’ve a few cans of lager in the fridge, if you want somethin a bit stronger.’

Dave stood with his back against the wall, near the table. ‘He cannae drink,’ he said.

Molly had a perplexed look on her face. ‘Can he no? How, huv you sewed his lips the gether?’ She swept past him with a swish of her hips and plonked down the biscuits and a two of her good cups on the coasters. ‘Whit dae yeh take in yer tea? she asked him, pointing to the back of a wooden chair to sit in.

‘Milk and two sugars.’ Dave kept his head lowered in his seat, like a kid caught in detention. If it had been anybody else he would have perhaps merited sympathy. Caught in a maze of knowing too little and too much, he had the knack of always saying the wrong thing. The school of hard knocks hadn’t knocked him about enough for my liking.

‘He’s jist came tae use the computer,’ I squeezed into my usual seat with the window behind me and my feet under the table. ‘We’re gonane order a new phone, if that’s alright?’

She busied herself with milk and sugar and a moody silence. ‘Why wouldn’t it? I’m jist the bill payer.’

Dave picked up one of my Rockies. And I felt like slapping his wrist and tell him to learn manners and stick to Digestives, until he was part of the family. ‘We can pay. But we’ll no be  here that long anyway. We’re going to Paris, in France.’ He smacked his lips together and settled into a self-satisfied smile at his own Napoleonic command of the continents.

‘Oh, ur yeh?’ Molly’s pale face twisted as if in pain, but she quickly covered it with a smile. And her breath came hard. She clutched the wall and gasped ‘That’s awful nice. I always wanted tae see Paris, but aw I got was Helensburgh, instead.’

I sipped at my tea, but couldn’t meet her eyes. ‘That’s whit I came to tell yeh,’ I said.

She went over to the sink, which shone. Head and back bent, tapping the drainer into the sink and running a sponge around in circles the grooves. ‘I thought yeh were takin me up North, in the van? For a wee holiday. Jist you and me?’

‘I wiz,’ I said. She knew me so well, I didn’t need to say any more, but we had to go through the motions. ‘But somethin came up.’ I rattled on. ‘I need tae take Dave.’ I was going to say Ugly Puggly, but swallowed the words at the last moment, ‘And Howard tae Paris.’ In the usual honeyed tones, I added, ‘We’re jist gettin organised. And we’ll no be away that long.’

Dave stared stonily past me and out the window, but roused himself. ‘I thought we werenae comin back!’

‘Will you fuckin shut up!’ I told him through clenched teeth.

I picked up my mug and stood at her back and watched her bleach and clean. ‘Babe,’ I whispered. ‘It’ll be alright. We’ll be alright. I’m daeing it for you.’

She twisted her head and hissed. ‘You’ll be alright. You always ur. It’s other folk that’s always got tae pick up the pieces.' She sniffed and might have cried, but wouldn’t allow herself that shame with Dave watching and listening.

I might have held her and we could have worked something out. ‘I promise yeh, I’ll be back,’ I blurted out. ‘I promise.’

She turned away from me and it was in her eyes, what my promises were worth. ‘Great,’ she eventually managed to say and made it sound like a blow.

‘Babes.’

Her face was blank as if I’d already left. ‘Don’t call me that.’

Her anger and fear were contagious and it flooded through my body. I went over and pulled the fridge door open. Light spilling out, showing the cold meats and cheeses, the orange juice and milk, and a carton off eggs. I pulled out the cans of lager and put them on the work surface. I pulled the tab on a can of Tennent’s and sucked it down greedily.