Grimms54

The social-work meeting takes place after lunch.  Tony lies on top of his bed, with belly ache, paging through a stained Readers Digest he’d found on the bathroom windowsill when Alice comes to get him. ‘Nothing will be decided today,’ she warns him. ‘But I think it would be in your best interest to attend. It’ll let folk that don’t know you see what you’re like.’ She finishes on an upbeat note, leaning over and ruffling his hair.  ‘And they’ll see you’re no ogre.’

Tony sticks the mouldy paperback under his bed and follows her downstairs and into the sitting room. Alice squeezes in beside Marie in one of the bigger settees. He look around, can’t find a place to sit. Ashtrays smoulder each end of the mantelpiece and in the shadow of each seat. A mahogany table has been loaded, Silver Service, china cups  coffee stained, and plates of pastries and tarts and half-nibbled tablet have taking a beating.  There’s a few faces he doesn’t know. A woman glances across at Tony.  She sits side-saddle on the same couch as Alice, knees and feet pointing at him, dark hair in a middle-parting, opening like curtains showing a long narrow face and prominent chin, wearing a bright blouse but mannish grey jacket. She’s consulting her diary, as are the others but has wangled a space for folders and files in the seat beside her. Tony sits self-consciously, higher up than everybody else, on the arm of the chair next to Alice. He is grateful, although his leg brushes her thigh, when she shoves along and he can slip down beside her and hide behind her bulk.

‘I’ve not got a space for another two weeks.’ The mannish woman flicks back and forth through her diary. ‘Possibly three.’  

‘What about next Monday, around 2pm,’ asks Marie. She taps a pen against her diary entry, ‘because I’m going on holiday in three weeks.’

‘Lucky old you,’ says a woman with bright red lipstick, who briefly looks up from her diary and picks at the corner of a jam tart with long fingers and pink nail varnish and flicks it in her mouth and glows with a guilty smile. ‘Going anywhere nice?’

‘My fiancée’s taking me to Los Angeles.’ Marie’s face flushes and she looks even prettier. ‘But I’d loved to have went to Cuba.’

Bob has commandeered one of the better chairs near the door, where he can stick his long legs out. He sits up a little straighter and cups the cigarette in his hand to speak. ‘Aye, I love Cuba. The thing they’ve done there for the working classes. Needs to be seen to be believed.’

He’s got everybody’s attention. A young cop with a short-back-and-sides stops stirring and gazing into his coffee cup looks across at him. ‘You been there?’

‘Not exactly. But what you’ve got to remember is in the Batista era, there was a lot of things like TB among the poor, but afterwards when everybody was smoking cigars, it disinfected their lungs, and they’d one on lowest rates of TB anywhere in the world.’ He takes a drag on his fag, clears his throat and stares down at his desert boots.

‘What about lung cancer?’ The woman with bright lipstick has forgotten the diary in her lap, she shakes her head, her elbows tucked in and hands out entreaty.

‘Aye, but you’ve got to die of something,’ Bob mumbles.

The mannish woman takes a deep breath and sighs and it’s the loudest sound in the room. ‘OK,’ she says. ‘Let’s get back on track.’ Her head tilts and she holds her left hand up, a call for order. ‘But that reminds me of a social work report I once scanned. I’d read this same line about four or five times and I just didn’t get it. So I picked up the phone and phoned him—and it was a male—and I said to him, “you’ve put down here that”. She pauses, flaps her fingers. ‘Let’s call it child X. “You’ve put down here that child X has Alzheimer’s”. ‘I could hear him coughing on the other end of the phone. “Yes,” he said. “Well, child X is only eight-years-old it must be a very rare and malignant variant of the disease.” ‘He paused and said, “Aye, he’s got real problems with his breathing.” “You mean asthma?” ‘I asked him. “That’s what I said,” he replied.’ “And that’s what I put in the report and I categorically stand by that” and he put the phone down on me.'

Laughter boils up and flows around the room in guffaws, tinkling of cups and shifting of feet. And the women exchange secret nods of recognition and smiles.  Even Tony’s grinning, although he’s not really sure why.

The mannish woman waits for it to subside then questions Bob. ‘You’re Norman Hunter’s Key Worker and you were there on the day of the incident. Can you tell us a bit about what happened?’

‘Aye, simple, he stabbed him in the eye for nae reason.’   

‘So you can’t think of anything at all that could have contributed to the incident.’

‘Well, I don’t know.’ Bob scratches the back of his head, aware of the smirks and head shaking. ‘Well, there might have been something. Yon boy’s been pretty pally with Bruno.’

‘Who’s Bruno?’

Alice cuts in. ‘He shares a room with Tony.’

‘Aye, well,’ Bob taps the side of his nose. ‘Well, Bruno follows Tony about like a wee dog. And the thing is I once caught Norman and wee Bruno in a compromising position.’

‘What kind of compromising position?’ the mannish woman asks.

‘Well, basically, he had the wee guy by the hair,’ he stops, aware of the silence and tries to phrase it delicately, but it sounds more stilted, ‘and was being orally masturbated.’ He presses his lips together. ‘And that’s why I think Tony attacked him, because they probably planned it together.’

‘I don’t believe what I’ve just heard.’ Alice has pushed herself to the edge of the seat. ‘You didn’t think to tell your fellow workers of this incident, or log it in a report, or discuss it with a senior?’ Her eyes glitter and words and phrases are bitten with contempt.

 She turns her attention to the policeman. ‘That’s a crime. Isn’t it?’

‘Aye,’ the cop says. ‘Sound like it to me. But we’d need to know a bit more.’

‘But I did ask Hunter about it,’ says Bob, flapping. ‘And he denied it. Said I’d been seeing things. He wasnae a poof. And I asked wee Bruno about it and he said the same thing.’ He shrugs, ‘So whit was I to dae? I wisnae that sure myself’.

‘You’re a blethering idiot,’ Alice says. ‘I can’t even bear to look at you.’  She pats Tony on the leg. ‘But I guess that makes things easier. Tony stays.  Under no circumstances can Hunter come back here. And I don't imagine there'll be many tears about that among the staff or residents. And listen,’ she looks Bob in the eye. ‘Perhaps it isn’t my place, but I don’t think you should be here either.’

The mannish woman nods in agreement.