by George Friel
‘What’s she been up to now?’ Tommy was smooth, showing off his false teeth to match Jean’s own.
‘Calling Bobo bad names,’ Jean explained.
‘She thinks I’m one of yon you know,’ Bobo elaborated bitterly.
Tommy’s eyes glazed a little and he swayed uncertainly between a laugh and a groan.
‘Ach, be your age, don’t pay any attention to her,’ he rocked back. ‘She’s very simple. She means no harm.’
‘She’s batty,’ said Dross.
‘I wish I’d proof of that,’ Bobo muttered.
‘C’est tout à fait bon pour vous,’ said Yoyo, who had stayed at school long enough to learn some French and spent a fortnight once at Dinard with a Youth Club Holiday Camp, ‘mais pour Bobo, non!’
With shoulders shrugging and palms upturned he pretended he was a Frenchman.
‘San fairy ann,’ Tommy answered airily to show he could speak French too.
‘Was she ever married?’ Bobo asked him, coming out of her sulk. ‘Jean and Jess here say she was.’
‘Well, it’s a long story,’ Tommy shuffled behind and over them. ‘And you’re too young, Miss Bonnar.’
‘Oh ma Goad!’ Bobo fluttered ringed fingers to her throat, twittered, cast up her blue eyes to the sham oak rafters, acted overwhelmed. ‘My Sunday name on a Friday night! They call me Bobo.’
‘You oughta sing it,’ Yowyow told her. He was the music-lover of the company. ‘Si, mi chiamano Bobo.’
He sang a falsetto Mimi but nobody listened.
‘She’s had a hard life,’ Tommy defended her, one hand on the back of Jean’s chair, the other on Yoyo’s, doing a little tapdancing on the spot as he spoke. ‘You know how it is.’
‘Come on! Give, Tommy! Give!’ Bobo kept at him.
‘Tell us about her husband,’ Dross supported her.
‘It’s a long time ago,’ Tommy shuffled to a standstill.
‘We’ve got all night,’ Bobo told him. She leaned to let Dross light her cigarette with the lighter she had given him for his birthday, and he took the chance to scratch the back of her neck with his heavier hand.
‘She was awful young,’ said Tommy. ‘She didn’t know her own mind and they didn’t hit it off and she left him and that’s the he and she of it.’
‘Come on now, there was a lot more to it than that,’ Jean encouraged him.
‘What did she want to go and use her single name for, tell us that,’ Jess quizzed. ‘Sure that’s not right.’
‘She wanted to forget, I suppose,’ Tommy offered. ‘You know, start life afresh. Turn over a new grief I mean leaf. You don’t want to be too hard on her.’
‘She’s kind of hard on other folk,’ Bobo whispered, but not as if she was keeping up her grudge.
‘Aye yes, I know,’ Tommy heard her. ‘That’s true. What are you on?’
He passed on their order to a waitress and escaped. He had other duties, he had his own worries.
‘Well, what are we going to do about her?’ Yoyo picked up the topic. ‘Play clockwork on her window at midnight?’
‘Three storeys up!’ said Bobo. ‘Don’t be daft.’
‘I can just see you climbing the rone pipe,’ Jean laughed.
‘Monkeys like to be high up,’ Jess giggled.
‘And parrots like to be talking,’ Yoyo retorted sourly.
‘What about poisoning her parrot?’ Yowyow was inspired.
‘What with?’ Dross asked, staring at him with patient contempt, as if any answer would be absurd.
‘Put Parozone in its drinking water,’ Jean suggested. ‘I could easy get Parozone from the laundry.’
‘Any damfool walking the street can get Parozone.’ Yoyo treated her with even more contempt than Dross had treated Yowyow. ‘Good God, you don’t have to sign anything to buy a bottle of Parozone.’
‘That’s not the point,’ said Dross. ‘The point is how are you going to get it into the parrot’s cage.’
He turned on Jean as the Parozone proposer.
‘Are you on visiting terms with Wee Annie like?’
‘No, are you?’ Jean answered swiftly.
‘Oh, the repartee’s rare in this company, so it is but,’ said Yoyo.
‘That’s your gas in a wee peep.’ Jess, always on Jean’s side, slapped Dross’s arm.
‘Wring its flippin neck,’ said Yowyow. ‘Jean could easy pinch a wringer from the laundry.’
‘A coupla wee coamics, you and your pal,’ said Jean. ‘Where are you next week?’
‘Tell you what we could do,’ said Yoyo. ‘What they used to do when there was witches. You make a wee statue you know outa clay or something like the person you’re after and you stick pins in it and the person feels the pain and if you put a pin through its heart he’ll die. Simple, i’n’t it? It’s a better idea than the bomb any time.’
‘That was before modern science,’ said Jess. ‘You’re away back in ancient times.’
‘And dipped his feet in ancient times,’ Yowyow hymned to her.
‘Aw, cut the comedy, yous!’ Dross called masterfully.
‘I’m no having it,’ Bobo insisted mistressfully, mistrustfully, distressfully. ‘I want no part in killing a poor defenceless fowl that never done nobody any harm. Anyway, how do you think you’d ever get in to wring its neck? Wee Annie wouldn’t let one of yous across the door.’
‘She calls it Shelley,’ said Dross.
‘What does she call it that for?’ Yoyo asked, but not particularly wanting an answer.
‘How should I know?’ said Dross. ‘It was Bobo told me. She says there was a poet called Shelley or something.’
There was a moment’s silence at Bobo’s erudition.
‘Oh, you’re a right shower, so yous are,’ Bobo complained. ‘Not a bright idea among the lot of you. I’ll away and see Mr Shanks.’
She teetered out and went round to the ladies, and on her way back along the corridor she stopped at the side- door to the bar. In a spasm of girlish curiosity she pushed it open a few inches and peeped in. Her heart, for after all she had a heart, fluttered like a sparrow pinioned in a boy’s palms when she saw Main at the far end with a pint started in front of him. She strolled in elegantly, aware she had a good carriage even if she hadn’t a fairy godmother, proud of her smart shoes and her new stockings.
‘Hello, hello, hello!’ she made a good entrance. ‘Well, well, well! If it’s not you, Hugh!’
‘What hue?’ he asked, a hand held out to hold hers.
‘Bright pink,’ she said, smacking it down. ‘Do I do that to you?’
‘Me blushing? Nonsense! I haven’t been red in the face since the night I wept with rage to be born.’
‘Now, now,’ she scolded him. ‘Don’t be like that. It’s gorgeous to be alive, to dance and drink and sing and kiss and make love. Water you buying me?’
‘Water?’ he smiled not to offend.
‘What are,’ she tried again carefully.
‘What would you like?’
‘You,’ she whispered in his ear, so close he felt her lips touch it. Then she laughed and he laughed and he bought her a drink and took his pint over to sit beside her across from the bar. She was happy, the Friday night euphoria working on her with the week’s work behind her and pleasure earned.
‘Water what are,’ she went back over it. ‘What was the other ones you learned me? I remember! The valiant Italians buried their valuables in a canal in the valley. And oh yes, my father sat with his palms on the grass. Boysaboys! I’m the Duchess of Mulguy and you’re Lord Muck of Glauber Castle. We’d make a hansom pair. Come on and we’ll elope to Gretna Green.’
‘My father took off his hat,’ he reminded her.
She tried it with spirit and tittered at the result.
‘Ach naw,’ she calmed down. ‘Ma faither tuik his haaa aff. That’s the real me. I’ll never be fit for high society. I’ll just have to marry Dross and have a lotta wee squealers that don’t talk good.’
�
�I was talking to one of your admirers the other day,’ Main plunged into it.
‘There’s a place for folk that talk to theirselves,’ she wagged at him.
‘No, not me, you’ve got more than me, you know,’ he wouldn’t be laughed off.
He told her about Donald, straight and brief. As he expected, she wasn’t shocked, only giggly.
‘Yon big drip! And to think I thought he was a gentleman. Somebody you could trust. Ma Goad, ye couldny trust him wi’ your granny. And him wi’ that mollicolly face like a Saint Bernard that’s loast its wee thingummy o’ brandy.’
‘It all goes to show you there’s no art,’ said Main, ‘to find the mind’s construction in the face.’
‘You can say that again,’ Bobo agreed. ‘Just because I use a wee bit makeup some folk get ideas. I bet Wee Annie’s been talking to him. Her heid’s fu’ o’ chowed breid. If I find out she’s been spreading rumours about me I’ll sue her; so help ma Holy Willy, I’ll sue her so I will.’
But even there she was laughing, happy to be chattering to Main. She told him what Miss Partridge had called her.
‘We was just discussing it in the lounge. Plotting revenge like, you know. Some of them was for poisoning her parrot but I wouldn’t hear tell of it. Now if we could put the evil eye on her! You don’t know any good Highland curses, do you? Guaranteed to kill by remote control. Her, not her parrot. So that nobody could never prove nothing. I wouldn’t harm a feather of her bloody old bird, but her the old bitch I would.’
‘Don’t be vindictive,’ Main cautioned her soberly. ‘That’s not like you. And she’s a sick woman.’
‘Oh here, it’s time I was away,’ Bobo panicked. ‘Ta for the natter. But if Dross comes looking for me and finds me canoodling wi’ you I’ll get my head in my hands to play wi’.’
‘But you’ll give poor Donald a chance?’ he detained her.
‘A chance for what?’ she nudged him. ‘He’s big and ugly enough to ask for himself. He’s just a nutter.’
She sighed.
‘An utter what?’ Main asked, puzzled when she stopped. He didn’t understand her, and she didn’t always understand him, and yet they understood each other.
‘Just a nutter,’ she explained, baffled with him because he was by her. ‘Can’t he speak up for himself?’
‘I’ll get him to do that much I hope,’ said Main. ‘But I want you to say yes. Let him take you out, even just once. He’s dying to—’ he paused, thought, and added politely, ‘to kiss you.’
‘Aye, I know fine what you mean,’ she answered grimly. ‘And he’d probably make a proper muckup of it too if he ever tried.’
‘I’m sure he would,’ he agreed. ‘But you could be an education for him. That’s what he needs. He’ll have to learn he can’t go about the world’s business that way. You could do him a power of good. Civilise him.’
‘All right, leave him to me, I’ll learn him,’ she promised.
Dross huffed at her for being so long away.
‘Who were you with at the bar?’ he demanded, shrewd with the inspiration of jealousy. ‘I can’t trust you out of my sight for a minute. Even on your way back from the toilet you get a pickup.’
‘You’re a right gawk, you,’ she edged past him, letting him feel her thigh hard against his. ‘You’re getting as bad-minded as Wee Annie. I met my doctor. That was all.’
He was eased of the gripe of jealousy, though still a bit sour. He didn’t mind the fellow she called her doctor. He knew there was no serious competition there.
‘So that’s what kept you? He’s your main interest in life eh?’
He was so pleased with his little joke he tried it another way.
‘You’ve aye got your eye on the main chance.’
He laughed to be so witty and lost his ill humour.
‘We’ve got a rare idea for Wee Annie,’ Yoyo welcomed her.
‘What? Shove her in the Canal?’ she asked, uninterested, still with Main.
‘Ach, don’t act the budgie,’ Yoyo grinned at her. ‘We sit here and rack our brains to avenge your good name and you sugar off and when you condescend to come back you make bloody frivolous suggestions.’
‘I can’t wait,’ Bobo settled against Dross. ‘What brilliant idea has dazzled your puny brain? Are you going to put the evil eye on her or just send her a time-bomb through the post?’
‘It’s a very simple idea,’ Yoyo answered. ‘Something even you could understand if you’d just stop talking and listen for a minute.’
‘Yowyow thought of it,’ Dross intervened, peacemaking. ‘It was something Jess and Jean said.’
‘You know how she goes for the wages every Friday morning,’ said Jess.
‘And she’s got to go through that big long pend,’ said Yoyo.
‘And it’s got two halfturns in it,’ said Jean.
‘So halfway in,’ said Dross, ‘you can’t be seen from the street and you can’t be seen from the laundry.’
‘So we’re gonna getter rolled,’ said Yowyow.
‘Oh no,’ Bobo cut him off sharp. ‘None of that, thank you. The cops would be at Dross’s door in five minutes flat. What with Wee Annie knowing me and me knowing Dross and them knowing his record. You can stuff it. Dross has been in enough trouble already and he’s promised me that’s all over and done with.’
‘Dross doesn’t come into it,’ said Yowyow.
‘It’s only a joke we mean,’ said Yoyo.
‘Some joke!’ Bobo didn’t laugh. ‘Stealing the wages for the laundry a joke? I fail to see it.’
‘Naebody’s gaun to steal any wages,’ Yoyo pitied her for being so dim and so grim. ‘We roll her, that’s all. Snatch the bag and toss it to the far end of the pend so that she just thinks she’s been robbed at first. Kid her on and give her a good fright.’
‘Who’s doing it then?’ Bobo asked, her eyes panning them all with impartial suspicion. ‘I’m at work, and you and Yowyow are in the garage, and Jess and Jean are in the laundry when Wee Annie’s outside. The only one not working is Dross, and you say he doesn’t come into it.’
‘There’s none of us in it,’ said Jean.
‘What would we be doing in it?’ said Jess. ‘Wee Annie would know us a mile away.’
‘And Yowyow and me’s no asking for the morning off,’ said Yoyo. ‘But we’re gonna get a big card ready and it’ll be shoved up her jumper and on it it’ll have—’
He pointed the words in midair with a travelling finger as he read them off in capitals.
‘THE SCARLET WHORE WILL GET YOU IF YOU DON’T WATCH OUT.’
‘But who?’ Bobo kept on asking. ‘I don’t get it. Who’s going to do it?’
‘Friends of mine,’ said Dross. ‘Pals that was with me in my old school. And a good school it was too. At least it was approved. They’ll do it for us.’
‘You don’t mean Tiger?’ Bobo moved his hand from behind her knee. ‘You’re a nutter so you are!’
She muttered in sorrow, her word reminding her of Main and his tale of Donald.
‘Aye-a-day,’ Dross answered, cross with her. ‘And Hardnut.’
‘And Chocolate,’ Yoyo gloated.
‘They’ll giver the scampers all right,’ Yowyow yawned.
Bobo sighed, her elbow on the table, her fingers lightly splayed on her young cheek so that she showed off her long varnished nails and all her rings.
‘If that’s all they do,’ she said.
CHAPTER FOUR
I don’t think any of them did anything to the parrot. As Bobo pointed out, Wee Annie would never have let one of them across the door. So they had no chance to put a finger on him, and it’s going too far to suppose they found an operative curse or stuck lethal pins into a wax model. Yet something happened to him that winter. The night she managed to get Grace Christie to come in for tea and cakes Miss Partridge found her pleasure in the event completely spoiled by the way Shelley moped and wheezed. She had meant him to entertain the child with a first-class performance
, and she took him through a full rehearsal the night before. His wit and liveliness then delighted her, but now when she wanted him to show off and perhaps gain for her the favour of Grace by his charming talents the poor bird hadn’t a word to say for himself, good, bad or middling.
She had been looking forward all week to having Grace to herself, and the pointless love she could never tell anyone was with her sleeping and waking, longing to be told. After the turning point when her vague affection was clarified into an obsessive love just because Grace walked past her on the stairs, she tried once or twice to tell her brother Tommy, her only visitor. But he was so busy talking trivia nonstop in his eagerness to keep her spirits up he never let her get a word in edgeways. If she could only have got him to listen, a confession of her love would have done her a lot more good than listening to him. For all his anxiety to help, Tommy was no use to her. She carried her absurd secret as a burden God had put on her for her salvation and found strength in silence. Yet still she longed to tell her love, love that never should be told. And to whom better than her beloved?
‘Aye, it will maybe be a hard thing for the wee one to understand,’ she admitted in her single-end, where she always spoke her thoughts aloud, arguing with herself in a private debate. ‘I don’t deny it.’
‘And it isn’t very fair either, not to a wee girl.’
‘I admit that as well.’
‘You’re not in the grocer’s asking for a pound of sugar, you know. You’re asking a wee girl for something beyond her.’
‘Och aye, I know. It’s beyond me too. But I’ll feel better once I’ve told her.’
‘And what good will that do the wee one? Tell me that.’
‘Well, if she doesn’t understand now she’ll understand later on in life, and she’ll remember me for it. She’ll remember all her life whatever happens to her there was somebody loved her.’
‘That’s what you think. But are you right there? Will she remember? Will she even listen in the first place, will she take in what you’re telling her?’
‘I don’t know, I just don’t know. Stop nagging me. I’m going to tell her no matter what you say.’
She rinsed her cup and saucer at the sink beside the window overlooking the main road and saw not the water running from the swan neck tap but the big blue eyes and solemn face and then the light body and skipping steps of the little girl who was innocently torturing her.
