Boracic Lint

by Martin Bryce

father said.

  I was completely taken aback. But then I began to think that there was some hope for the future if the sort of man who stood before me was enlightened enough to want to avoid the sexual stereotyping of his children. I was about to congratulate him on his breadth of vision.

  ‘Yes, he wanted one of them Action Man dolls, but I wasn’t having that, was I?’

  I shook my head in agreement. I too was concerned about the sort of toys which perpetrated, glorified violence.

  ‘No,’ the father continued, ‘it’s not natural, is it? If he’s going to take a doll to bed with him, well, it’s got to be a bit of skirt, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, admitting the logic of his remarks, ‘I hadn’t thought of it like that, actually.’ It was an almost inspirational reversal of logic and I wondered briefly if it had anything to do with being Dutch.

  ‘It’s obvious,’ the father confirmed.

  ‘I suppose it is,’ I agreed, handing Carol a mini-Roxanne.

  ‘Just a minute,’ father said gruffly, ‘what’s that?’

  ‘It’s a doll,’ I replied, confused by the sudden change in his demeanour. ‘It wets its knickers,’ I added helpfully.

  ‘Thought so,’ he snarled as he grabbed the doll and hurled it back into the box, decapitating it in the process. ‘We’ll have none of that in my house. Changing nappies and looking after babies is woman’s work. I’ll not have Carol being turned into a pansy. Give him a water pistol!’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I said hastily. ‘How silly of me not to have thought of that.’

  ‘Can I come down the gravel pits with you tomorrow, dad?’ Carol asked as they walked away. ‘I can try out the water pistol on the ducks. I’ll get Barbie to make me a cut lunch.’

  ‘Get the bitch to make me one, too,’ the father replied.

  I was left not knowing what to think anymore, so I didn’t. Male version of fine.

  The rest of the afternoon was fairly quiet so I busied myself with the mail. I was appalled at the goings-on in every sort of household up and down the country. I considered passing a number of the most revealing letters on to the appropriate authorities, but decided this would be unSantaish. After all, they were writing to me in confidence, it was a sort of doctor/patient relationship and I could not abuse the privileged position of trust which I held. Was that strength, or weakness, that priestly duty of concealing the ills of the world from itself? Perhaps the Pope could help.

  As I left the store that night I noticed Harry loading DVD players and microwave ovens onto the van for Goole.

  ‘Would you like a hand?’ I offered.

  ‘Shove off,’ said he.

  I remarked on how scruffy the van was and was told to shove it again. As I clocked-out I remarked to one of my fellow workers how well the Goole branch was doing turnoverwise. He gave me a puzzled look. I went straight to the Arts Centre, but on the way there remembered that I hadn’t fed Cloudesley. Ah well, I thought, he’ll simply have to suffer for the next few hours, just like me.

  Brian arrived as I did and I helped him unload the paint and wallpaper he’d managed to buy cheaply from a mate in the trade. He lost no time in starting to prepare the set and I introduced him to the members of the Company as they arrived. Miss Blumberg, of course, didn’t take to him, particularly when she found out that he had been a Fireman – something about the way they carry you, apparently.

  They were all claiming to have learned their lines, more or less.

  ‘Which bits exactly do you know, Mr Taylor?’ I asked. He was giggling with the props department again and I started to wonder if Miss Blumberg might not have been right about him after all.

  ‘I know the song,’ he replied, grinning broadly, obviously proud of his enormous achievement.

  ‘Pity you can’t sing,’ I said under my breath. ‘Good,’ I beamed, ‘but there are only about six words to it, aren’t there?’

  ‘And you know the bit where I have to fiddle with the next door neighbour’s frilly blouse to untangle the end of my guitar?’

  ‘Indeed I do.’ We were fortunate that Mrs Moorcock, who was playing the next door neighbour, was, like the props department, rather keen on the Stonemason’s attentions.

  ‘Well, I know that bit.’

  ‘That is action, not dialogue, Mr Taylor. Do you know any dialogue? Words?’

  He told me, in an offhand manner, not to worry, but I couldn’t help it. His first entrance went along entirely predictable lines and confirmed my worst fears. Giggling with the props girls, he missed his cue, if he’d known where it was in the first place. And it was messy as he stepped straight into a tray of puce emulsion which Brian was applying to one of the flats with a long handled roller. He flew into a pyroclastic rage, blaming Brian and myself for plotting the whole thing in order to make him look like a fool in front of everybody. I thought, you don’t need any help there, mate. And now, his best clubbing shoes were ruined.

  ‘If you’d entered where you were supposed to,’ I began, ‘that is downstage right instead of upstage left, it wouldn’t have happened.’

  ‘What the fuck does it matter where I come on?’ He demanded abusively and to the horror of the vestal virgins.

  Calmly I explained how some of the characters were meant to see him as he flitted across the stage and others were not. But it didn’t sink in. He gave me a stony stare as he went to wash the paint out of his clothes.

  ‘Actually,’ I said after he’d gone, ‘that was the funniest bit so far, perhaps we should leave it in.’ Rowena and Brian grinned quietly, but the rest were as bleak as Baskerville country on a winter’s day. We carried on with me standing in for the chiseller.

  The Archbishop really should have been standing further away, where I had positioned him. To be fair, though, Miss Neave had been wildly overenthusiastic and how she managed to swing the heavy roll of wallpaper, which was substituting for a truncheon, the way she did, I’ll never know. She must have the strength of a gorilla. Up went the wallpaper, down went the Archbishop, screaming, then moaning, clutching his groin, his eyes bulging. He lay there writhing for a few seconds until Brian helped him from the stage. He didn’t use the Fireman’s lift which was typical of his considerate nature.

  ‘Miss Neave,’ I began cautiously, ‘you are a British policewoman in a quiet, British, country Vicarage, not a guard at Guantanamo Bay.’

  ‘It was an accident,’ she said with an air of sniffy indifference.

  ‘I realise it wasn’t entirely your fault,’ I agreed diplomatically, ‘but perhaps a little more nonchalance with the truncheon?’

  ‘Can’t see what all the fuss is about,’ she remarked as she examined the roll of wallpaper for damage.

  ‘No, and you never will,’ I replied quietly.

  ‘You’d have thought that men would have found a way of protecting their bits by now, wouldn’t you?’ she said to Miss Pickering. The mere mention of men’s bits was too much for Miss P and she took herself away for a quiet sit down. I pointed out that this was a play, not a cricket match at which point Miss Blumberg asked what cricket had to do with it.

  ‘Never mind, Miss Blumberg,’ I said, putting a comforting arm around her shoulder. It was a mistake. She leaped away from me as if she’d been tasered.

  ‘Did you see that?’ she whimpered gutturally to the other lay-sisters. I called for silence so that Rowena and I could play the final scene.

  Rowena acted with beautiful poignancy. It was a performance that would have brought any audience to the point of tears had it not been for the sound of the Archbishop retching in the toilet. Our final embrace was met with snorts of disapproval.

  ‘What’s the matter with you people?’ I asked angrily. ‘They even did that in The Sound of Music.

  We took Brian to the so-called Green Room. He very kindly bought drinks for Rowena and myself and offered to do the same for the rest of the Company. But as he was obviously in cahoots with the t
wo of us, his kindness was rejected. I might have felt uncomfortable at the furtive glances from the others, but in fact, I didn’t care any more. Particularly not for the reptilian oaf who was making a great show of discomfort in his wet clothes.

  Rowena drove me home again. I kissed her lightly on the cheek and climbed out of the car. I stood for a moment on the front step steeling myself to enter Higginbottom World. I managed to get through the front door and was lighting a cigarette as H shot out of the front room with a face like thunder.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ He demanded.

  ‘Out,’ I replied gruffly.

  ‘Didn’t know you smoked.’

  ‘I didn’t, but I’ve been under a lot of stress lately,’ I explained.

  ‘Oh? he said stiffly.

  ‘’Yes, robberies, that sort of thing,’ I elaborated. ‘They take their toll on the nerves.’

  ‘Robberies!?’

  ‘Yes, robberies, raids, armed holdups!’ I snapped back. The last thing I wanted was another inane conversation with him. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  He handed me a folded slip of paper.

  ‘What’s this?’ I asked wearily.

  ‘It’s a bill,’ he replied righteously.

  ‘A bill! What for? I’ve paid my rent.’ I unfolded the paper and found that I was being charged one pound fifty pee for dog food.

  ‘Your cat,’ H began, ’ate our whippet’s dinner because you neglected to feed it again.’ I looked at the dejected creature which was cowering and shivering nervously behind his legs. You could see every bone in its body.

  ‘I didn’t know you fed it,’ I responded cattily.

  ‘What d’you mean by that?’ He snapped back.

  ‘Well look at it.’

  ‘That’s normal for a whippet. It’s a racing dog.’

  ‘But you don’t race it,’ I told him.

  ‘That’s beside t’point. I might one day,’ he informed me. ‘Now, are you going to give me t’money, or do I call t’RSPCA?’ I gave him the money. ‘And another thing,’ he said, ‘we’re getting very fed-up with these late nights of yours.

  ‘You don’t have to stay up for me,’ I yawned.

  I was told that H would do precisely what H wanted in H’s house. H wanted H’s house locked-up by ten-thirty each night from now on and if I wasn’t in by then I could sleep in the coalshed. I wondered if that might be an improvement on my room.

  ‘If that’s the case,’ I said, leaning over him, ‘I’ll shin up the drainpipe next to my bedroom window, you know, like a cat burglar and get in that way. GOODNIGHT!’

  ‘You forgot your Santa stuff,’ he reminded me as I neared the top of the stairs. H locked, bolted and chained the front door and eyed me malevolently as I picked up my carrier bag. I could hear the two of them in the front room whispering conspiratorially as I wearily climbed the stairs again.

  SCENE 11

  Every mile is two in winter.

  Snow! Gallons of the stuff everywhere when I woke up. I could see the chalked notices at tube stations throughout London now – Due to exceptional weather conditions all services are subject to delays and cancellation.

  Winter, it’s the last thing the British expect and yet, unlike summer, it’s the one thing that’s guaranteed. Does that make us a nation of optimists, or is it a measure of our stupidity?

  The sky was still leaden and there was obviously more of the stuff on the way. A milk float slithered sideways like a crab out of control down Mafeking Avenue. Children were out merrily throwing loaded snowballs at the paper-boy whose purple turban was the only colourful thing to be seen. A brother and sister fought over a sledge. A postman slipped and could only maintain his balance by hurling a bundle of letters high into the air. They fell like ungainly snowflakes and from where I was watching only the official-looking brown envelopes were visible against the snow. Bureaucracy remains hidden until the world in which it lives