What a Load of Rubbish

by Martin Etheridge

  “But Mister Bartholemew sir, mechanical superiority, how can you say that… They’re like them dalek-wosnames on ‘Doctor Who’ – always bleeping an’ buzzin’ – I point-blank refuse to be replaced by a rabble of rowdy robots. An’– an’…” Malcolm’s voice trailed off into a hoarse whisper; as he ran out of breath his voice became weaker. “You can’t get rid o’ me, Mister Bartholemew sir, I’m an artist, I am – a guru of the kerb and gutter…”

  “Yes, I agree, Malcolm, but you’re not a very quick one, are you? Not compared to our robots. And that’s the buzz-word here. We need speed, baby. Super, zippy-fast action man. The kind that will put us in line with our European counterparts. Plus – and I think I touched on this beforehand – we don’t have to pay them any money.” Mister Bartholemew gestured, if that was possible given the size of the office, towards the yard. The droids, lined up in the middle of the yard, silent and unmoving, were visible through the office window. Sunlight reflected on the plates bearing their identification numbers: RR: 1, RR: 2, RR: 3, and RR: 4.

  Malcolm glared through the window at them – he could imagine them laughing, or in any case burping at him. He turned to Mister Bartholemew. “So that’s it then, eh? I’m on the scrapheap. It’s Goodbye Charlie fer ol’ Malcy…”

  “Now, now Malcolm – nobody is trying to get rid of you,” soothed Mister Bartholemew – poor chap, he wasn’t all bad, just a snivelling coward, that’s all. And he could not bear the thought of crossing Willy Eckerslike and losing his own job; he needed the money because Missus Bartholemew had expensive tastes, you know, she did like her holidays in Majorca.

  “Have you ever considered a career in horticulture?” he suggested. “Now there’s something – um – more worthy of a man with your talents, requires skill, your kind of attention to detail. Fresh air – the smell of the earth. Good hard work. Oh – those halcyon days of summer, eh? – and you could have your pick of fresh flowers and plants. You could even start a vegetable garden. And you get your very own ‘Head Gardener’ badge. Of course…” Mr Bartholemew lowered his voice, “…you would have to retrain, attend technical college.” Then in almost a whisper, “And there is the small cut in wages to consider but you wouldn’t have to work such long hours…”

  Malcolm shook his head, “Mister Bartholemew, sir. You can’t do this to me. You just can’t I’ve been a street cleaner all me workin’ life – that’s nigh on 27 years, you know? My father was a street-cleaner, an’ his father, an’ his father an’ then o’ course there’s ’is father and ’is father’s father. ’Oo do you think piled up all them stones so neatly at Stone’enge. An’ it was one o’ my forefathers who cleared up all those bows an’ arrows an’ stuff after the battle of ’Astings. Blimey, Mister Bartholemew, sir. I ain’t no gardener, sir…”

  About then Mister Bartholemew’s temper flared, not because he was angry at Malcolm but because of the thought that he was dismissing a faithful worker. And why? Because he had been told to, that is why.

  Oh well – he’d tried the softly-softly approach; no more mister nice guy. “Now look Malcolm, I’ve tried be gentle about this. I’ve tried to lessen the shock – I’ve even offered you another – ah – position to replace your former one. And what have you done in return? Let me tell you – you’ve thrown it all back my face, that’s what. Don’t bother coming in tomorrow, or the next day or the day after that because there isn’t anything for you to do. In fact, we never want to see you again, is that clear?”

  Then Mister Bartholemew switched moods again from angry and exasperated to crisp and businesslike. His nerves would never stand-up to all these mood-swings. “Your P45 and any severance pay will be sent to you in the post…”

  Distant thunder clouds began to roll and a lightning bolt flashed round the room as Mister Bartholemew added darkly, gravely, “And may God have mercy on your soul. Close the door on your way out. Thankyop!”

  That was it. Malcolm’s world collapsed. It was as though the rug had been pulled out from under him. It was as though two rugs had been pulled out from under him.

  As he trudged through the yard he looked up at the first-floor windows; the sun’s reflection had turned them into mirrors. Behind those mirrors dark forces were at work. Forces that sought to take the efforts of hard working human beings, like Malcolm, and replace them with the precision of mindless machines, in an attempt to save money.

  Gisele watched through the window as her “liddle” Malky trudged through the gates of the council depot – a broken man. She did not like this at all. Since they had been going out stargazing and moon-watching together, she had become more and more attracted to this chap. She could feel his pain. And that hurt. Her Malky was always so slick, so forthright and proud. Her Malky was always so clean and smart – with a bit more crackle than the average live wire. That was the Malcolm who had practically marched into the office this morning. But it wasn’t the Malcolm who slouched out of the depot gates, his head down – his hands in his pockets…

  Chapter 7

  Malcolm’s Wallow/Gisele’s Despair

  So that was that then. At forty-three years of age, that’s only three years after when life begins for most people, and faced with year upon year of unemployment, Malcolm found himself on the scrapheap. Mere flotsam on the sea of life. It did not take very long at all for him to begin to feel worthless.

  Depression is a terrible thing, you know, and it went hand in hand with that feeling of worthlessness; he did not feel as though he mattered anymore and nothing else did either.

  Suburbiaville Town Council did not waste much time repossessing his unwieldy barrow but it wasn’t done openly during the day, and he was not presented with the “chitty” he signed in exchange for it all those years ago. Instead Mister Eckerslike sent a couple of heavies round to Malcolm’s shed; well, one was heavy, the other was a bit thin and scrawny but just as violent. And told them to, “Gerrit o’er t’town’s Museum of Antiquities!” Where it was displayed on a podium with a plaque which read: “Tools of the street cleaner before the great days of total mechanisation.”

  “…And if that Tilsley feller gets in t’way gi’ ’im a thick ear – yer ’ave my permission to gi’ ’im a good thumpin’, I said yer ’ave…” But Willy did not have to repeat himself; the two hoodlums were relishing a bit of breaking and entering with the added possibility of a bit of violence. Luckily Malcolm had the television volume turned up full blast watching an Australian soap opera until he felt quite ill. He did not hear the yobbos break into his shed or who knows what would have happened.

  Along with that barrow, Eckerslike’s heavies had managed to gain possession of his trusty pooperscooper, Malcolm’s prize possession. Normally the device would have been kept under lock and key in the safety of Malcolm’s flat, but following his abrupt dismissal, feeling rejected and empty of all other emotions he had left it in its quick-release compartment on the barrow, left the shed door unlocked and gone to watch the Aussie soap opera on television. This made him even more depressed so when the credits came up, he sat there transfixed and sulked for days.

  As well as the idyllic Willowy Lane, the surrounding area and Suburbiaville’s less desirable areas there was, too, the totally undesirable area. This area was a huge, so far undeveloped piece of land on the far reaches of the town. It was the home of undesirables, down-and-outs and those who were down on their luck or those who had, somehow, fallen foul of society. It was the sort of place that parents of Willowy Lane told their children to avoid. And the sort of place that children went to for “a dare”.

  This was the place where local factories, small time businesses and a couple of larger concerns could come and “fly-tip” their rubbish, ditch their dangerous chemicals, without fear of being caught and prosecuted. The police would occasionally send a squad car to the area just to maintain a “police presence” but it never hung around for very long. Come on, we all know these places exist. It was to this place that Malcolm was, in his depressed state, drawn.
Here he felt safe. Here nobody knew him. Here he was nobody – just another of life’s failures who nobody wanted.

  And it was here he started drinking and not just a couple of celebratory pints of beer on pay day either. Malcolm never did receive any severance pay from the council, because he had quit his flat the postman could not obtain a signature for the recorded delivery and so had return the package unopened to the sender. Eventually it came into the possession of Mister Willy Eckerslike who took it upstairs to his office, put it in a bottom drawer and locked it. He was not about to be accused of withholding a man’s pay, not him. Not the future Mayor of Suburbiaville.

  Having received no pay Malcolm had no money and so could not afford buy alcohol, so when he finished the bottle of Cinzano from the drinks cabinet in his flat, which he had originally bought for when Gisele visited on Christmas day, he started to drink the kind of drink that wasn’t supposed to be drank – metal polish, shoe conditioner, methylated spirits. Anything he could find that had been dumped on that wasteland. It did not taste very nice and you had to dilute it with rain water because if you drank it straight down and unmixed, it made your vision go all zig-zaggy and in the end you could not see a thing.

  For just over a fortnight this was Malcolm’s daily routine: he’d awake after flaking out after an evening of binging on whatever solvent he could find. You name it: shoe conditioner, adhesive, metal polish – anything with a kick in it, and he’d just stare blankly into space until a black, unconscious state overcame him. Then, hours later, daylight would filter into his head, and off he would go on a tour of skips and dustbins to stock up for the next evening. Malcolm was on the road to ruin and he knew it. How many other famous artists have taken this path and were unable to return?

  But it had the effect of making you forget, it dulled the awful memory of his dismissal. And forgetting is exactly what Malcolm wanted to do. He wanted to forget that he could have once had a career in medicine. Wanted to forget his smart and dapper appearance, wanted to forget his skill and dexterity with the pooperscooper. The elderly ladies he had helped in their hour of need and his special relationship with mothers and their children. And it hurt him badly to think about Gisele and the close relationship he thought they were forming – she would not want to know him now.

  Even the local pooches that, out of respect for Malcolm’s hard work, did their business in the gutter, would now leave their “calling cards” heaped in unsightly steaming mounds on the pavement. And there they remained, waiting to engulf the shoe of any unaware pedestrian or to ruin the businessman’s shiny new footwear. For the “All-in-One-Der” did not begin its daily round until eleven o’clock and residents of Suburbiaville Newtown, especially the rich and famous folk of Willowy Lane, were up and at work long before that doing what rich people do best – making money.

  During the next couple of weeks “doggy doos” became such a problem that many a well-shod city gent had taken to wearing trainers to work and carrying their more expensive footwear to work. One of questions raised in Prime Minister’s Question Time in the House of Commons and aired on BBC TV was: “What is to be done about the doggy-doos in Suburbiaville?”

  Sometimes Malcolm would go to the town centre and sit by the fountain, near the duck pond, and have breakfast with the ducks. But when the ducks began to realise that Malcolm was really only interested in the stale crusts of bread people would scatter for them, they took those crusts over to the island in the middle of the pond where they could enjoy them in peace. He would sit on a bench at the water’s edge, trying to remember how it had been in the “good old days” but he couldn’t, his brain had become addled, befuddled by too many chemicals. On one of these occasions he bumped, or rather stumbled, into a young mother taking her two young children to school.

  “Oof – oh – er sorry me darling!” But to himself he was thinking, Perishin’ mothers, bloomin’ kids – why don’t yer watch where yer going?

  “Pardon me!” The young mum excused herself. “Jack! Rosie! Hurry up now, we don’t want to be late for school!”

  “Who was that nasty man, Mummy?” asked Rosie.

  “I don’t know, darling, but I never want you to speak to people like that – and don’t let them breathe on you.”

  “Yeah, Mum, who was ’e? And where’s Malcolm? He was a nice, clean man wasn’t he mum?” Jack wanted to know where his friend with the twinkle in his eye had gone. And more importantly, he wanted to know what had happened to his early morning sherbet lemon.

  The young mother stopped dead in her tracks, crossed her fingers and told a white lie. “Children, Malcolm has gone away – a long way away.”

  “Yeah but Mum,” Jack would not let the subject drop, “he is coming back – isn’t he, Mum?” And tears began to well in Rosie’s eyes.

  Crossing her fingers even tighter, Mum said, “Darling children, I honestly couldn’t tell you – now come along or we’ll be late for school.” And she hurried the kids off to school, but she had an idea of the fate that had befallen Malcolm – that tramp who had just bumped into her looked rather familiar. She hoped she was wrong, but mums are not wrong very often, are they?

  Without Malcolm’s barrow, there was no longer an unofficial transport route to the town; one or two elderly ladies felt threatened by the thought of going into an old peoples’ home because they could not provide their hard-working sons with an evening meal. This was a hot topic at the local O.A.P. day-centre and many clients felt they had nowhere to turn.

  But in his bleary drunken state Malcolm had forgotten this. He had forgotten that because of him people could walk to work in safety. He had forgotten that he had once been the scourge of many a pooch, had forgotten his special relationship with mothers and their young children. Had forgotten about his smart turn-out and his reputation for public service above and beyond the call of duty. And worse than that he had forgotten about Gisele.

  But Gisele hadn’t forgotten about him and how special she felt when in his company, be it in the works depot yard, or when they sat together having a couple of drinks after an evening “Vatching der moon”, Malcolm was always such a gentleman. Always smart, always polite, a cut above the rest, he did not swear or smoke and never lost his temper. He always listened to her, was interested in what she had to say and would help her pronounce things when she found them hard to say.

  She was proud to be Malcolm’s girlfriend, although as an ex-asylum seeker did not expect to become his wife; that was hoping for too much.

  It was as though Malcolm had just disappeared and Gisele determined to find out what had happened to her man. During that fortnight she would spend every evening after work searching everywhere for her man. But Malcolm was nowhere to be found. She went to his flat and knocked. No answer. Then she bent down, lifted the letter-box and bellowed softly, sweetly.

  “KOO-EE – MALKY LEIBSHON! ZHERE IST EIN FULL MOON TONIGHT. ARE YOU KOMINK OUT TO VATCH IT MIT ME?”

  Still no answer. Her invitation was met by the low howl of a prairie wind, as the door swung into an empty hallway. There was nobody at home. A worried Gisele searched around the flat but found nothing, no note. Malcolm’s shirts were still on their hangers, his ties still on the rack. Gisele exclaimed, “MEIN GOTT IN HIMMEL!” Frowned, deep in thought. Then stroked an imaginary beard, put her best foot forward and went in search of her man, calling as she went, “MALKY DARLINK! KOMMEN SIE BITTE!” And, “VHERE ARE YOU. DO NOT BE RUNNINK AVAY – I LUFF YOU UND NEED YOU. YOU IST MAKINK ME BE KRYINK – BOO-HOO (sniff) BOO-HOO (sniff)!” And things like that, but all to no avail. She could not find Malcolm. She visited again and made another last-ditch appeal, “OH MALKY LIEBE SHON – VHERE IST YOU UND VAS IST HAPPENINK TO OUR STEADILY GROWINK RELATIONSHIP!” But things had not changed except that she found a couple of families of rats had moved into the flat, attracted by the stale food in the larder.

  In the end, loneliness, despair or desperation – maybe all three – drove Gisele into the arms of a lollipop-man. One morni
ng she was trudging wearily to work, after yet another fruitless night searching when she passed the man leaning on his pole on the other side of the school-crossing. The man nodded and smiled. She just stared at him blankly and… “BOO HOO! (sniff) BOO-HOO! (sniff)…” started crying.

  “Whatever’s wrong, my old darling?” The man walked across to her – when the road was clear.

  Then the flood gates opened. Gisele told him, in between sniffs and gasps. “URRHURR (sniffle) IT IST MEINE KLEINE MALKY (gasp) HE IST EIN – NEIN – HE IST “DER” STREET CLEANER UND DER KOUNCIL IST DISMISSINK HIM BECAUSE ZHEY HAFF ZHIS NEW KONTRAPTION CALLED DER ‘ALL-IN-VUN-DER’ UND SAY HE IST NOT KLEANINK DER STRASSE FAST ENOUGH!” Gisele was panicking now, working herself into a right old state, choking and coughing as she tried to get her breath. “UND SO – ALL DER TIME – MEINE KLEINE MALKY IST BEKOMMINK VER’ VER’ DEPRESSED UND HE HAS DESERTED ME – UND ZHERE IST EIN FULL MOON TONIGHT – UND I HAFF NOVUN TO VATCH IT WITH – BOO-HOO – URR!”

  “That’s alright darlin’, I’ll watch ‘der moon’ wiv yer!” The lollipop-man leant his pole against the school fence and put his arm around Gisele.

  “Okay!” Gisele dried her eyes and blew her nose. “But be keepink your handz to yourself – ya?”

  Oh no! Had Gisele found somebody else? Did this mark the end for Malcolm and Gisele’s strengthening relationship? Was this rosebud of togetherness about to whither and die before it had flowered? But let’s not get ahead of ourselves; there may yet be a happy ending in these pages.

  Suburbiaville was, in reality, only a small town. It was more or less like a village with a great big main road running through. Alongside that road ran the village grapevine. In these small towns, news travels fast. Gossip travels even faster. It did not take very long for news of Gisele’s new boyfriend to reach Malcolm’s ears through gossip.