A contribution for Sunday Scribblings

He stood in the shadow of an ancient brick wall, right in the centre of the old city where the tourists marched past in cheerful groups of twos, threes and more, and the students strolled more leisurely, discussing philosophy and pizza. Not one of them seemed to hear his morose cries.

‘Big Ishoo! Big Ishooo!’

No-one paused. No-one even looked at him, for fear of being caught by his sales pitch, pathetic as it was, and the pile of magazines at his feet was growing no smaller as the afternoon wore on.

He sighed and leaned back against the wall, easing his foot in the heavy cast, and accidentally knocked over one of the crutches which leaned beside him. He swore.

‘You shouldn’t say that, ‘ observed a youthful voice, dispassionately. ‘It’s a bad word.’

He looked up and found himself eye to eye with a small blonde girl of about five years old. Her expression was serious, and her gaze very blue. Pink ribbons fluttered from her hair, but did little to confine the fluffy hair blowing about her face.

‘You know what? You’re right,’ he responded, with a tight smile. ‘I’m sorry about that.’ And he planted the fallen crutch, and stood up to find himself looking into identical blue eyes, this time on a level with his own. He straightened his back and gained an inch or two.

He swallowed. ‘Big Issue?’ he asked, hopefully.

She started to shake her head, then looked down at the girl and pulled out her purse.

‘What are you doing here selling this rubbish?’ she asked abruptly as she counted out the coins.

‘Trying to make a living.’ He pulled a magazine out of the plastic bag at his feet, and thrust it towards her.

‘That’s not what I mean, and you know it,’ she said sternly. She glanced at the little girl again, and back to his face.

‘Aah … I understand you now,’ his lips stretched into a smile but she could see his teeth clench as he bit down on the words and the muscles in his jaw and temple jumped. ‘A little education going down, is that what this is? Let’s go buy a magazine from the homeless man and hope he doesn’t go round the corner at the end of his shift and use the money to drown his sorrows in alcohol.’

He glared at her. ‘Or drugs. Maybe you’re thinking drugs.’

‘No … no, I wasn’t,’ she answered, softly. ‘I only wanted to know how you ended up here. Last time I saw you, you were staying with friends … ‘

‘Yeah, well … no-one wants an alkie on their couch, do they?’ He threw his head up and looked briefly at the sky, and when he looked back his eyes were damp. ‘I drank. And I got thrown out. I lost my job. I drank. I slept in doorways and drank, and I nearly bloody froze. Then I met this crackhead who picked me up and got me in here, doing this,’ he kicked at the bag of magazines. ‘And once I’d got a job, I got a place in a hostel. But that won’t last. After a while they want you to move on. You’re supposed to get your name on a housing list and move on up. Good for their statistics, you know.’

‘How did you hurt your foot?’

‘Someone dropped something on it. Accidentally.’ His eyes challenged her to question it.

The little girl had moved closer to her mother and was clutching at her coat, round eyed. The woman put her hand on her daughter’s shoulder to reassure her, and raised her eyes again.

‘You could come home,’ she said, simply.

‘Why?’

‘I didn’t want you to go in the first place,’ She tightened her fingers on the girl’s coat, the tension showing in the way her knuckles whitened. ‘We should have gone for counselling. And we still could.’

He made no reply, but gazed at the little girl, who gazed right back.

‘Please?’ The woman said softly.

He squatted down in front of the child. ‘And what do you say, my little Princess?’

A small hand crept up and pulled at a lock of the blonde hair, curling a small finger in and out of the strand, catching the end of the pink ribbon and letting it slip free again.

‘I want you to come home, too, Daddy,’ she whispered.

‘Are you sure? Both of you? He stood with difficulty, and took a breath. ‘I still drink, you know.’

‘I know. Are you ready to stop?’

‘I can try,’ he said. ‘I can try.’

She smiled.

‘Then let’s go get a coffee to celebrate,’ she said. She put her arm in his and started to pull him away, but then stopped to throw her copy of the Big Issue down on the pile, and rummaged in her bag.

‘Wait a moment … oh, here we are – ‘

She pulled out a pen and piece of paper and wrote briefly, then handed it to him with a flourish.

He read it and a broad smile spread over his face. He bend down and tucked it under a stone next to the bag, then turned and held out his hand.

‘Come on then,’ he said. ‘There’s a Starbuck’s round the corner.’

As the little group moved awkwardly away towards a new beginning, the paper fluttered in the wind, making the words dance.

It said, ‘FREE – HELP YOURSELF’.

A contribution for Sunday Scribblings

Everyone knew Mrs Bennett .. and yet no-one seemed to know her at all.

The children knew her as the bent old lady who looked like a witch, with her long nose, her wrinkles and her damp, pink eyes. Those straight-backed, smooth skinned, bright-eyed youngsters never gave a thought to how people got like that, they merely assumed that old people were just … there. That God had randomly populated each community with its share of Very Old People.

The older kids, the ones just beginning to slouch into adolescence, figured that old people existed only to be someone’s granny or grand-dad, while the teens themselves just … well, most of them didn’t think about the old folk at all. Thoughts of old age led to thoughts of death, and death was something that happened to other people, because they themselves were quite clearly immortal. To them, Mrs Bennett was just a mad old bint who got in their way as they poured out of the school gates after school.

The kids who were introverted, or depressed and suicidal, they thought about death alright, but not about the process of ageing. They saw themselves dead now. Romantically dead. Tender young corpses, dead with their hair still dark and their lips still plump and rosy. Dead but uncorrupted.

Sarah had first met Mrs Bennett in a supermarket car park. She had just released a trolley from the line near her car and was hurrying to the store with it when she’d felt a frail hand on her arm and had turned to see an anxious, wrinkled face with faded grey eyes and wispy hair blowing loose from a bun.

‘Can I take your trolley, dear? It’ll save you takin’ it back, and I can use it to lean on,’ the old woman had said, and before Sarah could protest, she’d grasped the handle with her veined and bony hands, and made off with it, swinging one leg wide as she dot-and-carried her way toward the shop.

Sarah had had no time to react. She’d been annoyed at first, and then resigned, as she’d watched the trolley, the old lady, and her pound coin disappear between the automatic doors.

Since then, Sarah had learned a few things. Mrs Bennett had lost her husband to pneumonia ten years ago, and since then had lived alone in the end bungalow, right at the far end of Gorse Lane, where the bright, neat gardens softened into the broad fields of wheat and oilseed rape.

Mrs Bennett was seen in the little village shop from time to time collecting a pint of milk or a local newspaper, and people would always let her in at the front of the queue because they hated to see the old woman shuffling from foot to foot as she waited in the line as if her bunions were playing up.

But no-one walked with her, and as far as Sarah knew, no-one called on her, and as the weeks passed, she grew uneasy at the thought of the poor lonely soul passing her days alone and unloved, so today she was going to take Mrs Bennett a little posy of flowers and try to befriend her.

She knocked on the peeling front door, and she was soon sitting in a tiny kitchen with a cup of tea in front of her and old Mrs Bennett chattering nineteen to the dozen. She heard how lovely it was to have a visitor, and how Mrs Bennett’s children were too far away and too busy to come and see her anymore. She heard how many pills Mrs Bennett had for her arthritis and what the doctor had said last week. She heard what Mrs Bennett had had for dinner yesterday, and what she was going to have tonight, and how hard it was to get help from the council, and how she’d nearly been burgled two months ago, and as far as Sarah could tell, she had now heard Mrs Bennett’s whole life story together with a comprehensive list of the faults and shortcomings of all the local service providers.

Sarah left two hours later with her head reeling, having somehow promised to come again on Friday and bring her gardening tools to get the weeds out of the front flower beds and maybe run the hoover round. She had no idea how it had happened, but she’d also given Mrs Bennett her phone number in case she needed help at any time.

When she had gone, Mrs Bennett smiled a happy smile of great satisfaction.

Goodness, young folk were gullible these days, she thought to herself. How easy it was to get them to do exactly what she wanted, without ever having to ask outright - why, she had Lynn Scott coming tomorrow to clean the bathroom, and Gerald Rollins on Saturday to paint the front door! All she had to do was act feeble and lonely or pretend her feet hurt, and people fell over themselves to help her.

The young ‘uns thought they knew it all, and yet they ran themselves ragged looking after homes and children, and worked all hours in some dingy office, and forgot to enjoy themselves. She was practically doing them a favour letting them come here for an hour or two away from all that.

Although, heaven knew, if she were a pretty young girl like Sarah Woods with her husband away from home for weeks on end, she wouldn’t be wasting time on old ladies and gardening - she’d be kicking up her heels, stirring up all the local lads and picking up a few grass stains … but there. She wasn’t young and pretty anymore.

What she was, however, was old and crafty. She glanced fondly at the posy of spring flowers which Sarah had brought.

See? With the cultivation of a suitably guileless expression, you could steal shopping trolleys and jump queues with impunity!

And you only had to be sufficiently aged.

A contribution for Sunday Scribblings.

I surreptitiously looked at my watch and sighed. My date was boring me, and I wondered how long it would be before I could decently leave without seeming rude.

I would see him again at the next meeting of the Genealogy Society so it would be awkward if we parted on bad terms, and really, I’d always liked him. George was extremely attractive, and a very charming man … but it seemed that when he he’d got a few drinks inside him he became talkative. We were on our third round, and George was very, very talkative. In fact, I hadn’t been able to get a word in edgewise for about twenty minutes.

And it was only half past nine.

I shifted in my seat, and took a sip of my coke. Perhaps that was the trouble? Perhaps I’d be having a marvellous time too, chatting away right along with George and laughing merrily, if only I wasn’t on antibiotics for a tooth abscess and off alcohol for the duration?

I tried to focus my attention.

‘ … so I went back to the LDS library, as you do, and I sat there for two hours, going through the microfiche. I looked at the 1841 Census records, and then I tried the Trade Directories. I even went through all the Land Returns, right back as far as the records went .. and nothing. Nothing! So I thought perhaps I should try the Passenger Lists for the ships coming into Liverpool … ‘

I watched his lips moving as he continued on with his tale of tracing Great-great-great Grandfather Whitbread, whose origins appeared to be truly lost. He had beautiful lips. They curved into the kind of cupid’s bow which looked really good on a man: firm, shapely, yet soft. I think it was his mouth which had made me agree to come out with him - I’d wanted to kiss him and find out if it felt as good as it looked. Watching him take his turn to speak at the meetings, I had thought that I could be mesmerised by those lips for hours. However, now that I had the chance, I realised that the pleasure of seeing those lips in motion simply wasn’t enough to make up for the sheer tedium of his conversation.

‘ … even the name is a clue,’ he was saying. ‘You know, the name Whitbread was only given to men of the upper classes because they were the only ones who could afford to eat white bread. Everyone else ate dark, roughly-milled stuff. It must have been horrible, but I suppose the peasants didn’t know any better … Anyway, my Great-great-great Grandfather wasn’t … ‘

I swallowed some more coke, wishing it had a slug or two of rum in it.

‘Do you think … ‘ I began. But George took no notice. The tide of his words carried him along and rolled over me. I felt a bit like a surfer caught in an undertow.

‘ … and do you know what? Eventually, I got hold of the key to the parish chest in Little Bardock - the vicar was with me, of course - they don’t let you go through those things alone - and I found some papers … ‘

‘That’s quite an achieve - … ‘

‘ … so apparently, my ancestors were quite well-born, and I thought I’d just check out the listings in the … ‘

I gazed at him over my glass, gritting my teeth, which was a mistake, so I made a conscious effort to unclench my jaw and relax. A lock of George’s dark hair had fallen loose as he talked, and a tiny crease of concentration marred the perfection of his brow. With detached interest I studied the lovely straight nose, and the classically beautiful bone structure of his jawline. His eyes … I remembered that I’d thought his eyes were very sexy. Full of sparkle and the promise of certain, very private, pleasures. But now I saw that they would never be totally lost in admiration of anyone but his own self in the mirror. And there was nothing attractive about that.

‘ … and at last, I managed to confirm what I suspected! I am descended from a line of noblemen! There may even be a connection to royalty if I go back far enough, so what I’m going to do next is .. ‘

Oh, to hell with the genealogy society. I got to my feet. It’s funny what a few days of constant niggling pain will do to a normally tolerant person.

Going around to his side of the table, I picked up his pint - which he’d hardly had time to touch, what with all the talking he’d been doing - and with one rather elegant movement, I emptied it gently over his head. I took my time, making sure that I covered the beautiful dark hair completely, and I made a particular effort to see if I couldn’t trickle a little into his ear. It proved impossible, so I contented myself with aiming it right down his neck, noting that the froth made an interesting pattern on his dark shirt, bubbling randomly over the geometric pattern in a very satisfying way. I swear he didn’t actually stop talking until it was completely empty, and I had placed the empty tankard quietly on the table in front of him.

I looked him straight in the eye, and spoke in my most dulcet tones. ‘Really, George, that’s all very interesting. Now, me, I come from a long line of peasant farmers and shopkeepers, with the odd publican thrown in for good measure, and you know what riff-raff they are.’

I turned and picked up my coat. When I looked around, he was staring at me, wide eyed, and speechless at last.

‘I’m so sorry about that’, I said. ‘Old habits die hard.’

And peering over the edge of the table to where the dark, wet, yeasty stain was spreading over the crotch of his denims, I whispered -

‘It’s in the genes.’

A contribution for Sunday Scribblings

Dear Past Me.

Now listen up, Past Me, because I have some valuable advice for you which will change your whole future. You really don’t want to end up homeless at fifty-six years old, and with a whole truckload of money stashed away that you can’t touch, do you? But that’s exactly what’s going to happen unless you take note.

I know you’re only sixteen, and girls of your age never do take much notice of anything they haven’t read in a magazine and checked out with one of their oh-so-worldy-wise friends, but I’m going to try.

Alright, are you ready? Listen carefully.

I’m you. I’m from the future - and yes, I know that sounds cheesy, but it’s true.

You probably think I’m the result of that bottle and a half of rough vodka you and Stella got through this evening, but I’m not. Just try to open that narrow little mind of yours, because I have this one opportunity to put something straight and save my sorry self from the gutter, and I’m going to make you listen if I have to keep you awake all night, and I know you don’t want that. You’ve arranged to meet Will Brodie tomorrow, haven’t you? And you won’t want to be doing that with dark circles under your eyes and a head full of soggy cotton wool.

But you’re still not convinced?

OK, remember that party you went to last year? You had no idea where it was, because you were taken there by some friends on the spur of the moment. Marilyn said she’d heard that Lou’s parents were away, and suddenly everyone piled into cars and off you all went. You had no idea where you were going, how you were going to get back, or even who was driving. You didn’t even know Lou. You just went.

Oh, yes, you remember it well.

When you got there, Pink Floyd were playing on an old Dansette and you arrived just in time to hear someone say ‘Careful with that axe, Eugene’ followed by a scream. That made quite an impression, didn’t it? And not altogether pleasant - oh, I know. Coming out of the dark like that, it made you quite uneasy. Later, you were all sitting in a big circle on the floor wreathed in pot fumes, which was another first for you. You refused to smoke it, but you didn’t realise until much later that there was so much in the air of that stuffy little room that you were inhaling it anyway. And when a knock came at the door and someone peeked out and hissed ‘It’s the police!!’ you all tried to get up and fell over each other and giggled.

Oh, how naive you were. See, I know you were scared inside, but you didn’t want to show it. It was quite touching how relieved you were when all they said was that they’d had some complaints from the neighbours and could you please turn the noise down. You’d had a glimpse into a possible future, and it frightened you. You could have ended up in court, got into that ‘bad crowd’ they were always warning you about, failed your ‘A’ levels. You see where I’m going with this?

Here’s the thing. At the end of this summer term, you must decide whether to go back to school in September, or leave and move on. You’ll have seven good ‘O’ levels, but you’ll want to go for those all-important ‘A’s. You don’t know it now, of course, but they’re about to change the whole exam system and in a decade or so, employers will start to mistrust the whole thing. It’s all just bits of paper anyway, and no-one will ever look at them once you’ve left school.

Do you see what I’m saying? There is no need to go back for your ‘A’ levels! You’re not planning to go to University, so why does it matter?

Marilyn has plans, but you’re a bit leery, aren’t you? You think she’s a ‘bad influence’, because that’s what Mum has been telling you, and after that party you have a sneaking suspicion she’s right. But she’s not. She’s not! Marilyn is vibrant and adventurous and she’s just what you need. She’s going to go to Europe and get a job teaching English as a second language and she’s going to use that as a springboard and do really, really well. And, my dear Past Me, she’s going to ask you to go with her. And if do, you can get in on the ground floor of a very lucrative project indeed, and you’ll be made for life.

But I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that I’m doing OK anyway, right? I did get those ‘A’ levels and do it all properly, and surely there must be a way to get my hands on that money and get myself off the streets, but trust me, I’m not ‘doing OK’, and no, there’s nothing I can do about getting that money.

Yes, I stayed at school, and Marilyn went to France on her own, but she and I kept in touch and grew quite close over the years. I’m not going to tell you exactly what I did or didn’t do, but I can tell you this: I missed a hundred and one great opportunities through being over-cautious. Through behaving exactly as Mum and Dad taught me to behave, and being ‘good’. Through not taking risks as Marilyn did, and through never gambling on a venture. And in the end, all my qualifications helped me not at all, and I didn’t even find a good man, because Mum taught us not to settle for second best, didn’t she? And Mr Perfect just never seemed to turn up.

Sure, I got myself a good, steady job, but now, after the collapse of the insurance company that held my pension fund, I’m approaching retirement with absolutely nothing to look forward to but the pittance the state will hand out. All of my savings went into that pension - and the rest of my cash went on holidays and good living. I wasted a lot of it, to be honest. And now, I’m probably going to end my days in a crappy, down-at-heel retirement home which smells of urine and cabbage and I’ll be lucky if the staff remember to give me the right pills or change my sheets once a month.

So, what about that money, and why am I homeless? Well, I’m not actually homeless just yet, but it’s around the corner, trust me, because my half a million is tied up in probate and it’s likely to take years before it’s released. Marilyn left her entire estate to me, you see, but her family is contesting the will and they have a damn good case. So much money .. and Marilyn wanted me to have it … but I doubt I’ll see a penny of it.

However, if you go to Europe with Marilyn now, you’ll become her business partner and there’ll be joint cheque books and no problem. No problem at all.

Dear Future Me.

So. I went back to try to sort things out with that daft girl I used to be back in the sixties, and either she didn’t do what I asked her to do, or she did it all wrong. I thought that once I’d got her to leave school and put her on the right track, things would work out just as I wanted them to, but apparently it doesn’t work like that.

I didn’t expect all my family to be dead in this version of my present, or to find myself living with fifteen cats. I didn’t consider that I myself might be different, either, and it’s going to take quite some time to come to terms with being so thin! I always thought I’d love to be built like a supermodel, but the bones sticking out all over just remind me of my own mortality and I barely have the strength to lift a jug of milk. What’s more, my diamond earrings are gone and I can’t find that early Beryl Cook painting that I loved so much. I thought I was pretty badly off before, but now I have no possessions worth selling at all, and I don’t even live in a half-decent house - it’s falling to pieces and it stinks of cat’s pee.

So what I’d like to say to you is this: Please, whatever you do, don’t be tempted to come back into the past to sort things out. You might make things even worse than they are already, and they’re pretty darned bad. Well, you’ll know that, of course. Yeah, you’ll know that.

So, no meddling, Future Me. Just leave well alone. Really, it’s for the best.

Unless …

Unless, of course, you could perhaps go back to Friday 19th June, 1968 and tell sixteen-year-old Past Me not to listen to a single word that fifty-six-year-old Past Me says to her? Tell her it’s all a horrible hallucination brought on by acute alcohol poisoning from that cheap vodka. She’ll probably believe you. We were very gullible at that age.

We thought we could fix everything, then, too …