The Bluebird Café

by Rebecca Smith

  ‘Which bits are yours?’ he asked.

  ‘Um, my class did this.’

  Gurpal’s diagrams of ‘How To Change A Plug’ had ended up in the bin. She had confused the earth and live wires and been ridiculed by the teacher, a small Welsh rodent whose neat pink fingers itched to cut off Gurpal’s oiled plait and trim the results into a neat and practical bob. She had seen Gurpal’s filthy pink hairbrush and longed to give it a good soak in Dettox. Gurpal wasn’t one of her favourites.

  ‘Well, I certainly shan’t be asking to borrow your hairdryer, Gurpal!’ her singsong voice had chimed across the desks.

  Gurpal replied in Punjabi: ‘Wouldn’t let you, bitch.’

  The next project was entitled ‘More Safety in the Home’.

  ‘I did some of this, Dad,’ Gurpal told him. ‘I’ll show you my file.’ Gurpal’s file wasn’t one of the ones prominently displayed on Mrs Jones’s desk. Gurpal found it in a pile under a double-glazed window where a wasp and two bluebottles had met their ends.

  ‘Here it is, Dad.’ Flecks of Crunchie stuck between the pages marked the file as her own.

  ‘I didn’t know you did this stuff.’ John Vir was impressed.

  There was a project on baby equipment and one on poisons. ‘Don’t be testing either of these out.’

  ‘ “Some Common Household Poissons.”’ (He read to himself.)

  Bleech

  Some Detergens

  Cleaning Fluid

  Are all very poissonous and should be kept in a safe place. A locked cupboard is a good idea.

  Plants and Berrys such as hollyberry and missletoe, laburnam pods ect. also corse death and upset tummies. Salmonelle is a major corse of poissoning. Cook meat and eggs properly. Store food cold. Cooked food on top of raw food in the fridge too avoid contaminating with bood and germs.

  Cook Food Properly.

  Cook all eggs hard and don’t use raw ones or lick fingers or eat cake mix. Cook meat for the right anmount and don’t heat it up again too many times. Make the oven is hot enough too.

  Undercooking food kills too. Kidney beans must cook for 4 hour or more.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘What?’ said Gurpal.

  ‘Kidney beans can kill you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s what you put here.’

  ‘We copied it off leaflets.’

  ‘Must be true then.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Food for thought,’ said John Vir, and he realised that he’d made his daughter smile.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘I’ll get you some chips on the way home.’

  They left arm in arm, forgetting their 8½ minutes with Mrs Jones.

  As John Vir lay sleepless and itchy under the orange quilted polyester bedspread that had been part of his wife’s dowry, he thought about getting rid of Paul, about raw eggs and undercooked meat. But how could you make anyone eat a raw egg? Hold them down and force them to swallow it? You couldn’t put it in their tea. Undercooked meat wouldn’t do. He knew that Lucy and Paul didn’t eat meat, and tricking a vegetarian would be wrong. But then poisoning was wrong really, he told himself. He kicked off the covers and stretched out his long, strong legs. Kidney beans might work though … a dinner party … or could he make something and take it round? But what if Lucy ate it and died too? He could sell Paul a poisoned Mars bar, some sort of chocolate that Lucy didn’t like. Or give him a cup of tea with ground glass. How did you grind glass? Was there a machine you could hire? How much per day? It was no good, he’d be caught.

  Chapter 7

  Mavis liked to sit on the low breeze-block wall beside her flat. It caught the sun for most of the day. Sometimes she read her magazine, but mostly she accosted passers-by. A real local character, she had a cheery word for everybody. Sensitive souls made long detours to avoid her.

  ‘Been shopping?’ she yelled at people struggling by with bursting carriers and breaking arms. ‘You’ll never get rich that way!’ she joked each time.

  If it was raining she’d mostly stay indoors, only rushing out to yell ‘Lovely weather … for ducks!’ at anyone she knew. Or if it was icy, she skidded out to warn the postman not to slip on her short path, even though she didn’t get much post, just catalogues mostly.

  Gilbert delivered her sacks, but as her flat was near the depot she wasn’t often up in time to see the binmen. She made sure that she remembered everybody at Christmas. She balanced some mince pies on top of her dustbin. They were lovely ones, Kipling’s, really fruity. She knew that the binmen would like those. Getting up early must make you really hungry. Gilbert was the only one to eat those mince pies. The others wanted to sling them in the cart.

  ‘How do you know they’re not rubbish? There might be something in them!’ said Jim, a kind-hearted driver who always tried to look out for Gilbert. He could see that Gilbert wasn’t all there. But Gilbert knew Kipling’s. He’d been eating them all year for years. Christmas past and present met up somewhere in July. Sell-by dates were generous, and his fellow residents at the Wayside brought the pies home by the pallet. Christmas yet to come would bring Mavis’s home-made mincies. Mavis loved mince pies, bought or made, anything with mincemeat, or anything with pastry. She could make her own pastry too. She fluted her pies by pressing the charcoal moons of her nails all around the edges.

  Chapter 8

  Mavis had a problem with her front door. It had a glass panel at the bottom, as flimsy as paper. People broke these panels. They kicked them in on the way back from the pubs. If the panel was kicked in then someone could get into the flat, and what if that happened? They’d be after her collections, she knew it.

  Councillor Bette Doon was sitting behind a yellow Formica table in the Community Drop-in, reading Woman’s Weekly and deciding to call it a day if nobody showed up in the next five minutes. Her Residents’ Surgery Mornings on the Golden Grove estate were ailing. Cllr Doon had represented her ward for eighteen years and had been Mayoress twice. She had huge, melting, pink features, springy grey hair, and the most supportive hose that money could buy.

  Mavis stomped in wearing a huge black T-shirt with seal cubs, a beige canvas skirt that no longer buttoned through and a pair of Totes slipper socks. It wasn’t really raining that heavily …

  ‘It’s about our doors,’ she announced as she plonked herself down in the chair opposite Cllr Doon. ‘These panels. They’re as flimsy as paper! It’s only a matter of time before someone is murdered in her bed. There have been three break-ins in three weeks and they kick the panels in when they’re pissed up.’

  ‘Have you talked to the housing office about this?’

  ‘I’m telling you. Want to come and see? It’s only round the corner.’

  ‘Very well, my dear.’ Bette Doon always tried to oblige. They walked around the corner to Mavis’s flat.

  Mavis was right about the panels; they were a disgrace. Cllr Doon said she’d raise the matter with the Chair of Housing. Mavis seemed satisfied for now.

  ‘Stay for a cuppa,’ she said.

  The mugs were red with BOVRIL in white block letters. Bette found it disconcerting, expecting beefy goodness and tasting tea. She pretended she’d finished and carried her mug into the kitchen and tipped the Bovril-tea down the sink.

  ‘When did this happen? It’s terrible! Did they take much?’

  A large hole had been smashed through one of the panes of the window beside the sink. Some orange knitting was wadded over the jagged edges and held in place by parcel tape.

  ‘That’s my DIY cat flap,’ Mavis grinned. ‘Took one minute and saved a tenner. Now Boots can come and go as she pleases. Before I was always getting up to let her in and out. Not any more!’

  Chapter 9

  ‘I’ve buried two. Well, burned them. Cremated, you know,’ Mavis explained as she tucked into her beef casserole with dumplings, rice, chips and sweetcorn. She had lurked in the Civic Centre foyer, and lurked, until she had seen Bette.

  ‘Nice to see y
ou!’ Bette said heartily as she came down the stairs from the Council Chamber. They were worthy of a Busby Berkeley sequence, and Bette was always slightly nervous of slipping. The strange-looking woman (or could it possibly be someone in drag?) looked familiar. Mavis had leaped up beaming.

  ‘Waiting to see someone?’

  ‘You of course. About them panels.’

  (Ah, the Bovril cat-flap woman.)

  ‘I’ll be on to the housing office again this afternoon. They should have been in touch with you by now.’ The panels had completely slipped her mind. Now, what was the name of that obliging girl in Housing? The one with the green headband. She always seemed to jump. Bette had started walking briskly towards the canteen, then realised that Mavis was loping along beside her.

  ‘What the hell,’ she had thought. ‘What harm could standing this poor soul some lunch possibly do?’

  Mavis was wearing a pale blue T-shirt with a woodland scene and the legend ‘I Love Wildlife’ stretched across her stomach. Gilbert was drawn towards the picture, the cute squirrels, and sat down at the same table, his eyes fixed on the many soft bulges of Mavis’s chest. Gilbert thought that anyone who wore that T-shirt must be kind and good. He smiled as he spooned the day’s special, Italian meatballs, into his mouth.

  ‘What are you looking at then?’ Mavis suddenly demanded, thinking that she was being eyed up.

  ‘Who, me?’ Gilbert was shocked at being spoken at, frightened too. He came every day after his shift, but nobody ever talked to him.

  ‘You staring at me?’

  ‘I was just looking at your nice squirrels.’

  ‘This sounds too much like a Carry On. I’ve got to be in Committee in five minutes. I’ll let you know about the panels. Goodbye.’ Bette made a speedy exit.

  Gilbert saw that Mavis was smiling, not cross.

  ‘I got this one at Aldi in the Valley. £3.99. Glad you like it.’ She thrust her chest towards him provocatively.

  ‘It’s nice,’ said Gilbert. ‘I like all animals.’

  He showed Mavis where to put her tray and then where the exit was. He’d finished for the day and was heading back to the Wayside for a snooze.

  ‘Which way you going then?’ Mavis asked him.

  ‘Across the park.’

  ‘My way too,’ she said.

  ‘You want to get on the housing list,’ Mavis said when he told her that he lived at the Wayside.

  ‘Would they have anywhere for me? Isn’t it for families?’

  ‘No. For anyone. Aren’t you in a family then?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’

  Chapter 10

  Mavis was starting a new collection. She got the Southampton News every day and looked through it for pictures or just articles with any reference to Cllr Doon. She picked up extra copies of the council’s own tabloid publicity paper and snipped out the pictures, councillors’ surgery times and committee dates and pasted them into a special scrapbook. She stuck the double-page spread of the councillors’ pictures and their phone numbers (some even gave home phone numbers) on the wall beside the phone.

  ‘That’ll be handy,’ she said.

  One day there was even a photo of Bette on the front page of the News, opening the new paddling pool. She wasn’t wearing a swimsuit, but she was in bare feet, up to her knees in the pretty ripples. A community worker, just out of shot, was holding her sandals. Children who’d won prizes in a colouring competition jostled her to be among the first into the pool and at the front of the photo. Mavis ordered a blown-up copy of that photo from the News office. £2.50. She framed it in a knobbly frame that she’d crocheted herself from purple sparkly yarn.

  Cllr Doon sank down into one of the soft blue leather armchairs in the Labour Member’s Room and took out her list of Things to Do.

  – Talk to J about rat-runs.

  – Committee apologies.

  – Foundations.

  – Signpost outside Mrs De Silva’s. Movable?

  – Door panels. Replacements?

  – Reschedule governors.

  – Ring Gangwarily Youth Leaders.

  – Tallest sunflower. Delegate?

  – Health Commission Qs & As.

  – Talk to Minnie re photocopier.

  – Draft Library Users’ Charter. Ditch?

  Where to start, where to start? She wondered if it would be possible for a Councillor to do nothing at all, to just reschedule and give apologies and set up meetings and delegate and achieve nothing without anybody ever noticing. She thought that it probably would. She reached for a phone. Now, what was the name of that keen little housing girl with the green headband?

  ‘Housing Strategy. How can I help you?’

  ‘Rachel?’ she barked.

  ‘No, it’s Rebecca. There isn’t a Rachel in Housing Strategy, but people are always calling me Rachel.’

  ‘Sorry, my dear, I meant Rebecca.’

  ‘That’s OK. I usually just answer to Rachel as well.’

  ‘It’s Bette Doon here.’

  ‘How can I help you, Councillor?’

  ‘I’ve had some queries about doors and windows in Golden Grove. Apparently, they’re a soft target for vandals. Lots of break-ins too. Don’t have any statistics, but people just don’t feel safe.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Rachel-Rebecca, pushing her headband, which that day was black velvet early Hillary Clinton-style, back into position. The phone always nudged it sideways.

  ‘Oh dear is right, my dear. Now, isn’t there some scheme or other about replacing them?’ Cllr Doon asked.

  ‘Yes, we’re replacing them all over the next year. All windows and doors in Golden Grove and Albion Towers will be UPVC by the millennium. That’s our target. Should solve some condensation problems too, and maybe reduce the incidence of asthma, according to the Tenants’ Association.’

  ‘When exactly does it start then?’

  ‘Albion Towers in two months. Then Golden Grove in numerical order. Odds first.’

  ‘So when would 167 West Walk be done?’ Cllr Doon asked.

  ‘I can look it up. Do you want me to call you back?’

  ‘No, look it up now please, Rachel, I’m in a hurry with this one.’

  ‘OK, won’t be long.’ Then silence, then a sound of something heavy being dumped down, rustling, rustling. What was the girl doing? Eating crisps? Then: ‘Here it is. West Walk is after Josian Walk, after Albion Towers.’

  ‘OK. So when would number 167 be done?’

  ‘About four months from now?’

  ‘Good girl. Well done. When will you be telling the tenants?’

  ‘They should already know from posters on the wardens’ boards and an article in Tenants Together, but they’ll get their own letters too, four weeks before the scheduled start.’

  ‘Jolly good. Send me a copy of the works schedule when it’s out, won’t you? Goodbye.’

  ‘Mavis? Councillor Doon here.’

  Mavis made a little noise like a balloon being let off. Bette was unable to tell from where it had emitted.

  ‘I’ve sorted out your door and windows, my dear. They’ll be done within the next four months. You’ll get a letter about the exact date, and nice new white UPVC replacements. They’ll solve any condensation troubles too, for you and all of your neighbours. I hope you’re pleased with that. Now, no more home-made cat flaps! Let me know if I can help with anything else.’

  Mavis was stunned.

  ‘Thank you, Councillor,’ she said. She hadn’t expected Cllr Doon to ring her up herself like a real friend, much too busy with the councilling. And arranging all that for her.

  ‘Shows it’s not what you know, it’s who you know,’ Mavis told Boots, as she tucked into her meaty chunks.

  A week later Bette was sitting on one of the pretty 1930s benches outside the Council Chamber, checking through some papers before what might be a crucial committee meeting.

  ‘I’ve took you as good as your word.’ A shadow fell over her papers, her light was blocked
.

  ‘Hmm?’ Cllr Doon raised her eyes from the copy of ‘Southampton On Thin Ice’, a residents’ group manifesto. They wanted an ice rink but wouldn’t accept that in this day and age it was up to the private sector to take the lead. Perhaps the new bowling alley would shut them up. She didn’t really expect so. Cllr Doon sometimes wished that young people could be allowed to hang around on street corners. They always used to, but now people thought that there was something wrong with it, that they should be quietly or noisily occupied somewhere else, or at least in somebody else’s neighbourhood. And even the ones who were allowed to hang around on the streets were allocated Detached Youth Workers, whatever they were. Brightly coloured structures called Hangabouts had even been installed on some of the city’s estates so that the young people could have some official focus for their hanging about. Perhaps she was getting old … and now here was that window-woman come to bother her. Some people were never satisfied.

  ‘Yes?’ She managed a smile, but pointedly, she hoped, didn’t put down her papers or offer a seat. There wouldn’t have been room for their two amply spreading behinds on the elegant little bench anyway.

  ‘You said that if I needed help with anything …’ Mavis began.

  ‘Did I?’ Bette asked (surely not!). ‘And how can I help?’

  ‘Look at this. It’s laughing at you. Ha ha! I just came in to pay the poll tax and I caught my foot on the steps there, and now it’s split, innit. Got any glue here?’

  Mavis plonked her foot up on the bench next to the bag which contained Bette’s Marks and Spencer’s food shopping. At least it was all pre-packaged. The ancient pink-and-grey trainer had split, the sole flapped hideously, revealing the knob of a big toe in a whitish towelling sock of the sort that Bette imagined some men might wear to play sports.