Swing

It was the rattling blind and the cold sprinkle of water on his arm that disturbed him. The window must've come unhooked. He smelt her warmth and rolled over to touch her but she wasn't there. Below he heard the muffled cough of the toilet flushing and as water hissed in to refill it the front door closed with a dull thud. He pulled the covers over his head but left his arm out so's the rain would soothe him.

Later as he sat up smoking the kid came in, the girl. She sat on the edge of the bed dangling her legs. The small boy sat at the top of the stairs with his head on his knees, he wore his Mother's fluffy slippers which he gently stroked.

Funny really, thought the man. Hasn't seen his Mother for months.

"What was her name?" asked the girl.

"Dunno."

"Oh, Dad."

"Sam," he said.

After a while the kids bundled downstairs to make breakfast. They bashed about, put the telly on and yelled at each other.

The rain stopped.

He gazed out the window over the jumbled orange roof tiles. Sam had been good. He thought she might be crazy. He'd first seen her through the smoke haze where she sat in a snug beside a waterfall of lights rippling down the face of a zombie pinball machine. The pub had been full of that barking tense laughter that tells the practised drinker it's time to go. He'd sat down close to her. She hadn't said much then, she didn't say anything on the way home, but later when naked she'd clung to him desperately. Now he wondered where she'd gone, he could still smell her warm belly.

Eventually he got bored and shuffled downstairs. The door of their house opened onto the pavement of a one way street and at the end of the street there was piles of junk behind a five bar gate. He wandered down and leant on the gate taking in the damp white sand and piles of rusty machinery. A battered tree rose out of a pile of old tyres. Turning he looked back up the street and noticed for the first time that the no exit signs had been turned round on themselves as if to say there was no way out.

The kids slumped about picking at their toes and scraping their names on the pavement with sticks. It was depressing, but as he watched an idea began to form, an idea that might lift the day. He turned away struggling with it; good things didn't happen easily in their street.

When he spat over the gate into the sand and idly watched it soak away, the idea nearly soaked away with it but somehow he hung on to it and resolved to do it. He was going to make the kids a swing and hang it from the big tree in the junk yard.

The only person he knew for sure had a rope was old Bastard Scorzi at number three. Bastard Scorzi could pin you down with his eyes.

He knocked on Scorzi's door which swung open immediately. "What do you want?"

"A rope to make a swing for the kids, thought you might have one, that's all."

Scorzi pinned him down so hard with his black eyes he wanted to say, ‘Do you fucking well like doing that?'

"Wait here."

The door closed and he heard the floor boards creaking up the hall; it reminded him of the day his old man got beat up by Bastard Scorzi. It happened years ago; Scorzi's wife was short and dumpy and had big tits and his old man was forever whistling at her and shouting out things like how's your bazookas and such like. One day Scorzi and his wife were having dinner in the front room when the old man came marching down the middle of the road, three parts pissed. As soon as he saw Scorzi's wife in the window he upped, without even thinking, and made a sort of rolling gesture with his hands in front of his chest and burst out laughing.

Scorzi wiped his mouth, stood up, came quietly out his front door and proceeded to smash the old man to a pulp. He knocked seven bells out of him, leaving him moaning in the gutter, then, cool as you like, without even looking back he went inside and carried on eating. The old man was never the same after that.

The floor boards started creaking again, the door opened and Scorzi handed him the rope. "Don't lose it."

"No, course not," he said, then started grinning. He started grinning because in his mind he was down the drive with the rope over his shoulder saying, really sincere and conversational like, 'Oh by the way, how's your wife's tits?'

"So what's so amusing?" barked Scorzi.

He nearly messed himself.

Scorzi's hard round face suddenly snapped into a tight grin: "Don't hang yourself."

He strung the rope up on the old tree in the empty lot and put a tyre on it. The kids all loved it and came down and made a hell of a din and since it was sunny, he sat with his back to a concrete pipe and watched. He was daydreaming when the girl came up and pointed.

"Look, Dad, she's over there by the fence."

He looked up, covering his eyes against the sun. She seemed a long way off but when she saw him looking she half turned away from him. His mouth felt dry and his pulse raced a little, but he never could figure out women so he shrugged and went back to watching the kids.

It was about that time that Pinkersley came along and sat next to him. Pinkersley had had some trouble with under-aged boys a while ago but he had two bottles of beer in a paper bag so that was all right. As they sipped the cool beer Pinkersley proudly told him that it was he who'd turned the no exit signs around.

After a while Pinkersley said, "You go, you've been here for ages. Go on, have a break."

"Sod off Pinkersley, you silly bugger," he said, "we'll watch them together." And so they did.

Twice he shielded his eyes and looked for her but she was gone.

Later that day some oink rang the police and said that Pinkersley and another bloke were down on the empty lot with a whole bunch of kids and they were drinking beer. So, the cops came down and told them the swing was dangerous and they'd have to go.

"And anyway," said a deaths-head of a constable, "you're trespassing."

One of them asked the kids if Pinkersley'd been touching them and all that.

"Course he ain't, ya wanker," shouted Billy Strickland from the other side of the gate.

Then there was this big argument and even old Bastard Scorzi was on the side of the kids but the deaths-head constable just climbed up the tree and cut the rope down. It sort of flopped to the ground like it was dead. Everyone stared at it for a while then drifted back up the one way street.

He didn't have the strength to retrieve Scorzi's rope, he just went home and lay on the bed pretending to read a newspaper, and even though sun streamed through the window he remained totally pissed off about the swing.

The kids were down making chips in the fryer when she came in; She came quietly through the door with an overnight bag, looked at the kids, walked over to them, took a hot chip, and blowing on it slowly climbed the stairs. Once in the bedroom she dumped her overnight bag and calmly stood there looking straight at him. She wore the same black dress she'd taken off the night before. She studied him in silence for some time then in a tired, sad kind of way she undid the buttons right down the front of the dress and shrugged it off her shoulders. She wore no underclothes. When she climbed onto the bed beside him, barely touching him, he let the newspaper fall over his face and lay still. The girl and the boy came and stood at the door.

"What's your name, besides Sam?" asked the girl.

"Just Sam."

The small boy climbed onto the bed by her feet and stared at her. His hair was unkempt and he still had his mother's slippers on which he stroked absentmindedly. The girl leaned against the foot of the bed and she stared too.

The room was very quiet.

"Are you going to stay?" asked the small boy.

The curtains hung limp in the sun and the young girl, not wanting to look, rested her forehead on the bed end.

"Yes."

The small boy slowly crawled up the bed and laid his smooth as down face on her soft breasts.

The man pulled the paper from his face and looked at his daughter, her chin now rested on the bed end, her eyes unreadable. At first he thought she was looking at the woman's breasts, but then he saw she was looking at her mother's worn slippers on the small boy's feet. He let the newspaper slip over his face again. The small boy closed his eyes, Sam and the girl gazed at one another.

Pinkersley took the rope home and hung himself.