Grimms67

Bob rolls up the sleeves of his frayed, green, checked shirt, and uses the side window of the dining room as a temporary seat. No wind, slow moving clouds and sunshine slanting through offers a pleasant morning before lunch, fixing the puncture on the bone-shaker bike. He fouters with the wheel when any of the kids come close and the flatness of his stare through rimless glasses, more than anything he says, lets them know he wants to be alone. A cup of cold and congealing tea lies on the sill beside him. Five or six douts at his feet, speckle green grass. He uses soup spoons from the kitchen to lever the tyre off the frame of the wheel, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, yellow and brown, tobacco stained fingers, stretching and pulling. A plastic basin of water. It doesn’t take him long to mark the punctures with yellow crayon. He’s safe from the chatter of kids at the front door and in the street. Patching takes as long as it takes and eats into the working day. After lunch he’s almost home.   Job done.

Angela appears at lunch time, as she often does at weekends. Her hair is dirty as her moods, but she wears a new thick, brown, cardigan under her duffle and kicks new black shoes off, under the chair.  Bruno has given up his usual seat beside Tony to her. Shifted one seat along.

Bob sits at the head of the table. ‘It’s like dining in an offsite caravan,’ he mutters. Smash potatoes start lukewarm and grow cold in a bowl, left untouched, beside a plastic dish of HP baked beans. Sandwiches are a sliver of cheap orange cheese on Sunbrest bread. A plateful of look-warm sausage rolls on each table are quickly scoffed. ‘Any chance of getting some more?’ he asks, with forced jocularity, when the cook appears to clear the tables.

Carrot and Drew stop bickering with their mouths open, chewing on white bread and beans and gaze up at her. The girls at the other table look on with interest.

The cook’s hair is wrapped in a cloth turban and her uniform of wraparound floral crackles with static. She points a ladle in the general direction of Angela. ‘There would be enough for everybody, but I cannae be expected to feed every waif and stray that wanders in aff the street. That’s no’ in my job description.’ She picks up the bowl of Smash. ‘Besides,’ she adds, ‘I cannae cater for everybody’s taste.’

‘Oh, for goodness sake,’ says Bob. ‘I’ll need to start bringing in sandwiches of my own.’

She sniffs and shrugs. A tendril of grey hair falls over her left ear, tilts her chin level in an even gaze, looks through him, wanders back to the kitchen, but sidesteps, makes a detour to the office. 

‘I’ve fixed that bike you were playing on the other week,’ Bob says. He’s carful of damp elbows, bean splash, on the wipe-clean tablecloth, addressing Tony and Angela, smiling like a man that has invented the wheel.      

‘We could go play on it,’ chirps Angela, who hasn’t spoken much since she’s arrived and not ate much, a slice of cheese from between half-slices of white bread.

Bob sits back, tall in his chair, and reaches for his cigarettes.

‘You could get a shot,’ Norma, says to her wee sister sitting next to her. ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t yeh.’ It’s more statement than question.

Carla is dressed in pink frills and a ribbon separates her brown hair into two part hair bobbed like a picture around a pudgy face . Youngest in the Home and fawned upon, she is given to getting her own way. ‘No,’ she says. ‘I want to play with my dolls.’

‘Well,’ says Norma, ‘maybe you’d like Angela to come up to the room and play with you?’

‘No. I hate Angela. She’s poo-y.’ Carla holds her nostrils shut, to emphasise the point.  

Carrot sniggers, ‘she’s a wee cunt,’ he whispers to Drew, in a note of admiration.

Drew sneaks a look at Norma before he’s ready to agree. He’s gangly. bony faced with freckles and pimply forehead, and doesn’t want her to see him looking over, his face flushing shades of pink as he nods in agreement and feels the prickly burr, a hot wire in his head, the thought of everyone watching him.  

Bruno stays close to Tony, when Angela puts on her shoes and when they push their chair back and get up to leave.

‘Look at the wee bum boy go,’ Carrot says, sniggering.

Bruno looks back at him and bites his lips.

‘Whit’s a bum boy?’ Angela asks Tony.

She slows before the front door. Older children hurry up the stairs to their rooms or cross to get the best seats beside the telly in the lounge.

‘Dunno,’ Tony says. He knows from her tone, she’s likely to go on and on until she gets an answer. ‘Maybe you should ask him.’   

‘Whit’s a bum boy?’ Angela turns and asks Bruno, who is at their back listening.

He grins his Bruno, maniac, grin, too many sharp and discoloured teeth in his mouth. ‘I guess it’s cause I like boys.’

‘Whit’s wrong with that?’ she says. ‘I like boys too. I’d much rather be a boy than a girl. You don’t get people touching you all the time.’

‘I want to be a vampire when I grow up,’ says Bruno. He shapes his hands into claws and advances on them. ‘Aw you have to dae is sleep in a coffin durin’ the day and bite people. I’d be good at that.’

‘Jaz sleep all day,’ Angela pipes up. ‘And goes oot all night.’

Before they can escape outside Alice appears in the doorway of the office. ‘Can I get a word, with you Tony.’ His head droops. ‘You too, Angela,’ she adds.

‘Whit about me?’ shouts Bruno.

Alice shakes her head at him and smiles. ‘No, your presence won’t be required, Bruno.’

There’s a cigarette burning in the ashtray on the desk inside the office. Alice sits on the swivel chair behind the desk, smoke rising between them. Angela sits on the chair nearest the door, her new shoes dangling above the floor tiles. Tony sprawls in the polyester seat next to her, a bored look on his face.

‘I don’t know how to tell you this…’ Alice sighs. ‘I’ve had a complaint that food has been wasted because we’re feeding non-residents.’ She leans across the desk.

‘That means you,’ says Tony to Angela.

‘The thing is…’ Alice knits knuckles and fingers in a position of prayer as she broods over how to phrase what she’s going to say. She sighs, again. ‘The thing is, the said person, has got a point. And even though it’s stupid and petty and absurd, there’s nothing I can do about it…Angela, I’m sorry to say, you can no longer eat here.’

Angela’s eyes fill with tears. ‘Does that mean I cannae come here again,’ she sobs.

For such a big woman Alice moves quickly from behind the desk, bends down her arm over Angela’s neck, drawing her into the soft pillows of her body and lifting her onto her knee. ‘Oh, no, dahrling. You can come anytime to visit. It’s just…Sshh,’ she whispers. ‘It’s all right, dahrling.’

‘I hate that cook,’ says Tony. ‘She cannae cook for toffee. How come we don’t get the other one back?’

‘It’s not as simple as that…short of poisoning the lot of us. She’ll be here for a while.’