by Moira Murphy
“Anyway, the thing is, Jan, we’ve been driven mad with this itching and…” she butted in.
“Itching! Tell me abow it. A while back righ’, after tea on a Friday and after Kev had dropped the kids off at Cubs and Brownies, Kev righ’, usually fancied a bit of the other. Well, all weekend afterwards, I was driven mad with this itching.”
She gave a furtive look behind to make sure no-one was listening, which seemed a bit odd as there was no-one else in the house, then, pushing up her not insignificant chest, Les Dawson fashion, she mouthed, “Down there. Well,” she continued, “I tried everything in the chemist shop, righ’. Nothing worked. I had to go to Dr Khan in the end, and he prescribed cream for us both to use, but Kev, righ’, said he might as well be a bloody eunuch as he couldn’t feel a thing with us both slippery as eels. Guess what the problem turned out to be?”
I shrugged and wondered if I’d ever be able to look Kev in the eye again.
“He had just started work at that fibre glass factory, righ’, and that damned stuff gets everywhere.”
“Oh, right,” I said, nodding sagely, while thinking this seemed like an awful lot of information for a Tuesday tea time on a front doorstep.
“Well, Jan, the thing is, it seems Millie could have fleas and, as I would hate Bobby to catch them while they’re messing around in the garden, I’ve been to the vet for a spray for you to use on him. Just a precautionary measure of course.”
I pushed the spray into Jan’s hand and, walking backwards down the path, I called, “The instructions are on the container, dead easy.”
And I heard her calling down the hall, “Frig-gin’ fleas! Bobby, get your arse here now, righ’.”
6
THE IMPORTANCE OF
NOT BEING ERNEST
“Why are you vacuuming the bath, Mam?”
“There’s a spider in it and I’m taking no chances. I tried flushing it down the plughole, but it ran up sides.”
“That is soh shocking! How would you like it if you were a spider and someone suddenly sucked you up in a vacuum?”
“If I were a spider, Lucy, I’d probably expect it.”
Then the phone rang and the spider was forgotten because, as there was no one else inhabiting the planet other than Lucy and her friends, it was obvious she expected the call to be for her. She bounded downstairs and grabbed the phone. I waited at the top of the stairs in the unlikely event that it was for me.
“Like-er-no Gran. I don’t know if the school bus has changed colour or has paisley patterns on it. I don’t look at it really. I just get on and sit and chat with my friends then I get off. I’ll ask Josh when he comes out of the toilet, he might know. I’ll get Mam for you. MAM,” she yelled, up the stairs, “Gran’s on the phone. Speak to you later then, Gran. Luv you, bye.”
Oops! I had forgotten to ring my mother.
“Hi, Mam.”
“I was waiting for you to ring, Joanne.”
“Yes, Mam, sorry. I had to go to the vet’s and then I forgot.”
“Well what did the doctor say about the spots?”
“He said Millie has fleas.”
“Oh! Well perhaps I won’t call round for a while. Guess what, Joanne? They’ve changed the colour of the bus that goes to the precinct.”
“Yes, Mam, you said. But what was that about a bus driver with a dodgy eye coming here?”
“Oh yes, that’s right, I knew there was something I needed to tell you. Well, when I waited for the bus to go to the precinct yesterday, along came the Number 7, but it was mauvy coloured with cats and dogs running along the sides. So I asked Ernest the driver if it still went to the precinct, and do you know what he said? He said, ‘M-r-s M-orri-son,’ slowly like that, as if I were senile, ‘you have been going to the precinct on this bus for as long as I’ve been driving it. Sometimes you wear your grey coat, sometimes you wear your navy coat and sometimes, if it’s warm enough, you just wear a cardigan, yet you still go to the precinct. Am I correct?’ I said he was and he said, ‘Well it’s the same with this bus, same destination just a different colour coat. Now are you getting on or not?’ Well,” my mother went on, “I sat down without noticing Mrs Todd was sitting behind me until she tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Take no notice of the miserable so-and-so, Mrs Morrison, his face is tripping him up because he had five numbers on Saturday’s lottery and the dog has gone and chewed his ticket.’ Oh dear, that’s terrible, I said, Poor Ernest. So when we passed St Augustine’s, I made a sign of the cross, and hoped Ernest hadn’t taken this bit of bad luck out on the dog.”
“Well what’s that got to do with me, Mam?”
“Well, when I stood up to get off and while I was waiting for the bus to pull in and to make Ernest feel better, although to be honest, Joanne, he didn’t deserve to feel better talking to people like that because I wasn’t the only one, anyway, I told him he should call on you, as you knew all about dogs chewing things.”
“Mam!”
“And do you know what he said, Joanne? he said, ‘Oh I know your daughter, Mrs Morrison, she’s the looker from Willow Grove whose husband buggered off with that skinny, ropey looking bird.’ He said George must be mad, even though the ropey looking bird drives a soft top Mercedes. Anyway, Ernest said you were just his type as he likes his women with some meat on their bones and he got a funny look in his eye, the one that doesn’t swivel about so much, although when Sadie rang the bus company to mention that that eye looked a bit suspect, they told her she had nothing to worry about, as it was fine for driving a bus with. Anyway, I didn’t like the look in that eye, so if he calls on you, Joanne, don’t let him in. Tell him you had to get rid of the dog and he might just go away.”
It was then that the doorbell rang and Millie barked her head off.
I looked through the three-inch gap which the door chain allowed. The rain had splashed his glasses, but even so he didn’t look as if he had a dodgy eye. He said he was from the Salvation Army and that he’d come to collect the envelope he’d left last week. Normally this would initiate a little surge of panic as I wondered where the envelope could be. But not today. Today I loosened the chain, smiled, opened the door wide and asked him to wait in the hall, out of the rain. He said he wished everyone who answered the door was as pleased to see him. Then my smile waned, as I hoped out of relief, I hadn’t given him mixed messages. Then came the little surge of panic. Where the hell was the envelope?
It wasn’t under the lamp on the hall table, or under the pot with the spider plant in it. Nor was it in the telephone book drawer among the takeaway leaflets and paint sample sheets and that handy holiday, needle and thread and safety pin folder, still in its cellophane wrapping. I shrugged, smiled and said, “Isn’t it just like the thing? I’m sure it was here only this morning.” It was a lie, but under his watchful gaze I felt I had to say something.
Nor was it in the other drawer among the stash of emergency greetings cards and sheets of wrapping paper and that lint roller thing and the old mobile phones and half dead batteries.
“I’m sure it’s here somewhere, perhaps if you’d like to call back?” I suggested, hopefully, but he said he’d wait. I asked him if he had any spare envelopes, he said he hadn’t.
I mentally asked help from St Anthony, Patron Saint of lost things, yet I kind of knew with his workload, he was hardly going to put himself out to find an envelope with nothing in it. I asked him anyway and wondered why, when I thought of St Anthony, a hunky, macho Roman soldier, he always came across as being a bit camp. It wasn’t as if the plume in his helmet would have been a cerise Ostrich feather or that he was likely to have a Shih Tzu named Kylie or even that he could produce a fabulous centrepiece with some wired Delphiniums and a chunk of oasis, but there we are; camp as a crystal cocktail shaker:
Joanne. Do you honestly expect me to drop everything to find an empty en
velope when the only time you think of me is when you want a favour? Oh yes there’s always plenty of promises of prayers, but do they materialise? No they do not. What about the time I showed you exactly where to look for the school hamster which went missing on the second day of the holidays when Josh was supposed to be looking after it? Poor kid was demented. You’d never have thought to look in the hem of the landing curtains, now would you? Of course not. Then, with the hamster found safe and sound, forget about St Anthony. Not a thank you prayer, kiss my saintly backside, nothing! Hamster found, good intentions lost…
I felt inside the pockets of the coats on the coat stand and shook open an umbrella. I felt inside Josh’s filthy rugby boots and got a handful of something horrible and I nearly swore, but remembered just in time I had a Salvationist in the hall. For God’s sake! Surely he must have a prayer meeting or something to go to. I said I’d need to look in the kitchen. I closed the door behind me then swore then grabbed the dog and looked in her mouth and under her gums, but all I could see were traces of something blue that looked like blotting paper. Of course she’d had a week to have eaten the envelope. I called upstairs and asked the kids if they had seen it. They called back, almost in unison.
“Envelope? Whaa envelope?”
St Anthony was still twittering on in the background.
… Still, I shouldn’t complain. Poor old St Jude is the guy I feel sorry for. I mean who wants to be lumbered with lost causes? If it’s lost, it’s lost, accept, move on. Why beat yourself up about it? He takes the whole thing far too see-riously. Okay, back to moi. I’ll expect a rosary offered up for the repose of the souls languishing in Purgatory and a Glory Be for a good intention; mine. I won’t hold my breath of course, but one lives in hope. Now, seek and ye shall find. Was St Peter a fisherman? Did Jesus feed the five thousand with a loaf and five fishes? And the common denominator is…
The envelope was stuck to the underside of the fish tank along with a red letter from BT. I looked towards heaven and mouthed a thank you then cursed almost in the same breath as I checked my purse for change, because apart from a fiver, there was only a five pence piece. I couldn’t possibly give the man five pence, not when he’d come in all the rain and stood in the hall for twenty minutes and wasn’t Ernest. But the fiver was for Josh’s karate lesson that night. Hell and Damnation!! Did everyone’s life revolve around dilemmas or were they kept exclusively for me? There was nothing else for it, I’d bribe Josh. I’ll promise to take him to Pizza Hut on Saturday, that should do it. I stuffed the fiver into the envelope, stuck it down and gave it to the Salvation Army man who held it up to the light. As he smiled his grateful thanks, a fleeting glow of unintentional munificence shrouded me. Then I had to face Josh.
He came downstairs singing to himself and swinging his karate bag which was packed and ready. He sat on the sofa to lace up his trainers. I sat with him.
“Squashy, Joshy,” I said, ruffling his hair.
He ducked, “Cut the crap, Mam.”
“Language, Josh! I just wondered if you fancied Pizza Hut on Saturday, that’s all.”
“Yeah, great,” he stood up and put out his hand. “Can I have the money for my lesson now please?”
“Sorry, Joshy, but – there’s a problem. You know the Salvation Army man who came to the door just now? Well, as he’d come in all the rain and wasn’t the bus driver with the funny eye and as I only had your karate money in my purse – I – gave it to him.”
“Whaa! You gave him my karate money!?”
“I know, Josh, sorry. But Pizza Hut on Saturday – sound good?”
He looked down at me, incredulously. “But I’ve practised my Fudu Dachi all week to get my yellow belt!”
“I know and I’m sorry, there just didn’t seem anything else I could do.You could think of it as giving something to those less fortunate than yourself.”
“I don’t know anyone less fortunate than myself!”
“The Salvation Army do lots of good work, especially for the homeless, Josh.”
“Huh! I would shake a tambourine and sing to the homeless for a fiver!”
I’d obviously gone wrong somewhere along the line. I knew I would. I vaguely wondered if Father McCaffrey might take him on, but decided I would be in the firing line for marrying a Non-Catholic, then getting divorced, so I decided not to bother.
Then the phone rang and Josh churlishly answered it. “Uh, hullo, Gran. Yes, Gran, I know I go to karate on a Tuesday, but my mother has given the money for my lesson to a Sally Army man. I don’t want a bleedin’ plenary indulgence, Gran! I want a yellow belt. Here’s Mam… er, soz, Gran.”
I took the phone from him and he got a warning look for using that tone of voice to his grandmother.
“Joanne,” said my mother, “I got so waylaid earlier talking about Ernest that I forgot to ask if you know how I can contact Esther Ranzen, because I think Esther should know about the dangers of the Big Slipper from the ‘Home Comforts’ booklet. Poor Mrs Chisholm from number 5 had been sat watching Emmerdale with her two feet in her Big Slipper, like the lady in the booklet, when the doorbell rang. Mrs Chisholm got up to answer the door, got tangled up in the Big Slipper and ended up in casualty with a badly sprained ankle.”
“Perhaps they should have called it the Big Tripper,” I said.
My mother laughed. “Oh Joanne, I’ll have to tell that to Sadie. But I shouldn’t be laughing not when poor Mrs Chisholm is on crutches and is a member of the Catholic Women’s Guild. The Catholic Women’s Guild members are thin on the ground as it is, so it’s not good news for the funeral teas.”
I told my mother she could try sending a letter to the BBC for Esther’s attention. She said that was a good idea and that’s what she’d do. She said to tell Josh not to be too upset about the yellow belt as she had one he could borrow until he got a proper one.
Intuition told me I’d be better off not mentioning that to Josh.
7
AT LAST, THE SHIP’S CAT
The next day, armed with the flea treatment and the instruction leaflet and with the dog tied to the kitchen table, the phone rang. I nearly ignored it, and wished I had. It was my mother wondering if I’d heard of lion’s poo. I tried to sound interested, but it wasn’t easy.
“Lion’s poo, Mam?”
“Yes, it’s for keeping cats from using your bark chippings as a litter tray. Or so Percy, from two doors down tells me.”
“I don’t have any bark chippings.”
“I know, Joanne, but I have some around my Azaleas and Percy says his son swears by lion’s poo for keeping the cats off. I don’t think Percy would be kidding me, he seemed perfectly serious although the second time he mentioned it, instead of poo he did say the ‘s’ word. I didn’t mind really, because poor Percy was in the Jarrow March when he was only ten years old and all he had on his feet were his brother’s hob-nailed boots. He’s marvellous for his age, Joanne, does his own garden, clips his own hedge and cleans his bottom windows even though they say he caught a bit of shrapnel in the Pacifics. He has a beautiful topiary cockerel in a terracotta pot which he says started out as a hedge clipping. He says he likes nothing better than sitting on the front doorstep on a sunny morning, with his cockerel between his legs giving it a once over. What’s that noise, Joanne?”
“It’s the dog dragging the table across the kitchen floor and the chairs clattering off the tiles.”
“Oh! It’s that sort of thing that makes me glad I haven’t got a dog. Well I might ask at the garden centre for lion’s poo. What do you think?”
I said it was possible Percy could be having her on and that she should ask for it discreetly.
“Yes dear you could be right. Sadie and I will go tomorrow and I’ll let you know how I get on.”
Could I stand the suspense? Now where was I? Flea treatment. I read the information on the pa
ck, Millie would be relatively easy to treat, I was sure of that. According to the instructions, all I had to do, was find a spot between her shoulder blades and the base of her neck and squeeze the contents of the phial onto her skin. Could that be any simpler? It became a major operation.
Millie, determined to see what was going on behind her back, spun round like a skater on ice to find out. She didn’t trust whatever it was that was going on behind her back. In fact, whatever it was that was going on behind her back, she was going to eat it.
I needed help. Josh couldn’t help, he had got to level six on Doom and couldn’t leave it. Lucy couldn’t help she was just about to go to Chloe’s.
Okay. They were grounded – and the weekend was included.
They stampeded into the kitchen falling over one and another. Then, following my instructions, Josh held Millie’s front paws to the floor while Lucy held a piece of cheese just above the dog’s nose and, hey presto, in seconds it was mission accomplished.
It became apparent though, that treating the house was going to be a whole different ball game. Did mattresses really have piping? I was due in work at 12pm. I decided to ring in sick, take the day off and get the whole thing out of the way once and for all but, I hated having to lie to Ian. Not that it was a principle thing, it was just that he was so damned obnoxious. I was only thankful I didn’t have to face him every day, three days a week was just about bearable. I decided on a kidney infection. Knowing Ian, I would just have to take a chance that he wouldn’t expect a urine sample for analysing.
“Ian, it’s Jo, I’m really sorry but I can’t come in to work today, I’ve got this horrible kidney infection and I’m going to need some time off, possibly even the rest of the week.” Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. I held my breath.
“Oh, poor you. That’s okay, Jo, you take as long as you need, I’m sure we’ll cope.”
Huh! He was on holiday last week. Had he had a personality transplant?
