A is for Angelica (11 page)

‘Well, let’s keep an eye on her. We could try and take her out tomorrow. It looks like it might brighten up.’

‘She’d like that. She hates noughts and crosses.’

‘She’s not the only one.’

‘Have we got any paper left?’

‘I think so.’

‘You’d better get your ruler out. My hair’s getting wet.’

Killing time

At four o’clock this afternoon, I’m taking Kipling to the vet. It’s now half past six in the morning and he’s asleep on the kitchen worktop. His back
leg is half-hanging off the side. I don’t know how he got there. He must have started sleep walking again. I reach past him, take the toaster from the cupboard and plug it in at the wall. It
sparks blue when I push the lever down. I sit at the table and wait. The clock above the washing machine ticks and tocks. It sounds louder than normal. I watch the red finger go round. The black
fingers stay perfectly still. I could watch them all day and never see them moving, even though I know that they are.

‘Here comes breakfast, Kipling.’

I spread jam straight onto the toast and bite the first slice before I spread the second. There’s another football in my back garden. It’s getting light outside and I can see it
through the window. I’ll put it with the others under the stairs. Kipling belches in his sleep and for a second it looks like he might be waking up, but instead he snorts, breathes deeply and
returns to his sleeping position. I finish my toast, put the plug in the sink and fill it with water and washing-up liquid. I wash my plate.

‘We should be going walkies now.’

I sit back down at the table. There’s a cobweb in the corner of the room above the door. A daddy long legs trapped and flailing around. I watch until it gives up.

‘I think I’ll go on my own, Kip. You don’t mind, do you?’

I go upstairs, hang my pyjamas in the wardrobe and get dressed into my walking clothes. Trousers over long woollen socks, a shirt, tie and an old jacket my father gave me years ago. Its pockets
are deep enough to hold a notepad. I go back downstairs, pull Kipling’s lead from the key rack and throw it over my shoulder. I check on him before I leave the house. Surprise –
he’s still on the worktop. I know I should lift him down, but I don’t want to wake him. He looks peaceful, almost healthy. So I open the front door. Step into the morning air.

I’ve lived in this town nearly all my life, since my parents moved into my grandmother’s house when she died. I was two-years-old and the town was surrounded by
enough fields to fend off the slow creep of new housing. For years, it was a farming village, enclosed by rolling hills and fertile soil. But beneath the soil they found coal, tonnes of it, and
Gutterton Half was just the start. The first in a long line of temporary scars on the landscape. Gradually, the place I grew up in has disappeared. When they’ve extracted all the coal, they
restore the land, and always improve it. But it’s never the same. Both above and below the surface.

I walk from Cressington Vale along the paths that wind through backs of houses and out to Tickle Brook, a narrow stream that circles the town and runs into a reservoir fifteen miles away. To get
there, it must go through a pub. The Wethouse. It opened last year and will be closed by Christmas. The water flows straight through the middle and under a bridge, dissecting the bar. It was
supposed to be a feature, something to attract people to the town, something to take pride in. The landlord had his picture in the paper two weeks running. The first with the ever-grinning mayor,
cutting a ribbon and declaring the pub open. The second trying to explain the sanitary towels and used condoms that were floating past the punters.

Tickle Brook has a public footpath alongside it. This is the route I take with Kipling when he’s well enough. The dog mess bin is our turning point. It’s in the corner of an
almost-full cemetery. Behind it there’s a small park. Just two swings and a seesaw covered in graffiti. Behind that is St Mary’s Junior School. Forty kids to every teacher. Georgina
worked there for twenty-five years. Until she had her first stroke. We used to walk to the dog mess bin together. Her with an armful of folders, me with my sandwich bags.

I walk quickly when Kipling’s not with me. It’s taken fewer than fifteen minutes and I’m already sat on the bench next to the bin. I take his lead from my pocket and twirl it
like a lasso. Parents, mostly mothers, are getting their children to school. They kiss them goodbye and watch them through the school doors. The children collect in the playground before
registration. The hedgerows are thin and I can see the playground swelling with bodies, hear it swelling with noise. I guess which one of them stitched the rocket into Judy’s scarf. A group
of boys are fighting beneath the weeping willows on the far side. One of them spits on the floor, pushes a girl with his elbow. I decide it was probably him.

An elderly woman comes through the gate and into the cemetery. She has a tight blue perm and a pit bull terrier. It squats casually, lifts its ribs and defecates next to a headstone. Then it
stands up, looks at her as if to say, ‘There you go, sort that out’. The words engraved on the stone read, ‘James “Lucky Jim” McHoolie, 1899-1966, a wonderful
granddad, father and son, in loving memory’. I wonder how many times it’s had a dog line up next to it, ready to soil. The old woman reaches into her coat pocket and pulls out a pair of
disposable gloves.

‘Sandwich bags are cheaper,’ I say.

‘What?’

‘I said it would be cheaper to use sandwich bags.’

‘You’ll have to speak up. I can’t hear a word you’re saying.’

‘Sandwich bags.’

‘Yes.’

‘They’re cheaper than disposable gloves.’

‘Yes.’

‘You should try them.’

‘No, I don’t think so, dear.’

‘You’ll save money in the long run.’

‘No, I only need one pair. I’ll run them under the tap when I get home.’

She puts her gloves on and picks up the pit bull faeces with two hands, cupped like she’s drinking from a fountain. Then she opens the bin with her elbow, drops the faeces inside. Her dog
comes to sit next to me on the bench. We watch her rip the gloves off her hands with her teeth. She bites them at the wrists, whips them away in one movement. Now inside out, she puts them back in
her pocket and whistles to the dog. He trots proudly after her.

Ten minutes later, Mr Bowmer strides into the playground ringing a large brass bell. It makes an incredible sound. He only stops ringing when the last child is inside. He was
assistant head for twenty-six years, during which he applied for the top job on three occasions, but never got it. On the last occasion they appointed Georgina. Fifteen years ago. We argued about
it.

‘Why aren’t you happy for me?’

‘I am happy for you.’

‘You don’t look like you are.’

‘I am. You deserve it.’

‘Work isn’t everything,’ she said. ‘You can get whatever job you like.’

‘Not really.’

‘Yes you can. You’re young enough. You should be happy for me. I’ve worked hard for this.’

‘What’s your job got to do with my job?’

‘You’re not happy.’

‘I’m fine. Congratulations. Honestly.’

Mr Bowmer’s hair is parted and plastered to his head and his trousers are two inches too short. Georgina detested him. She’d detest him even more if she knew he’d finally taken
her job. They gave her a year to get well again after her first stroke. When she didn’t make it, they said they had to look elsewhere. They said that they were sorry. It took another six
months of interviews before they eventually appointed Bowmer. He started the job a fortnight ago. It was in the paper. I watch him prowl the empty schoolyard. He takes long slow steps, pausing
every so often to look behind him. He walks past the outside toilets, a small terrapin building that’s in need of replacing. There’s a tap on one side for the children to drink from. He
puts his hand in his jacket and pulls out a pair of pliers. I take out my notepad and pen.

Note: Time taken for it to stop dripping = 19 minutes and 11 seconds. Cut finger or thumb. Swears like Angelica. Sweats too much. Note end.

The cemetery also has a tap. It’s attached to a piece of rotting wood that prevents its thin pipe from bending. People bring their jugs, beakers and empty washing up
bottles to water their wreaths and flowers. The tap is being used by two men wearing identical jogging suits. I’ve seen them before, in the surgery waiting room. They are twins, around my
age. I watch them fill their bottles with water, do a lap of the cemetery grounds then make their way out again. They both turn, hold up their hands and wave as they run past me. They take swigs
from their bottles. All in perfect unison. Georgina and I had matching waterproof coats. We got them from a hiking shop on holiday. The ‘Jacket in a Packet’. Buy one, get one free. They
were black with a yellow stripe down the left arm. Don Donald had special ‘his and hers’ handkerchiefs made for him and his wife. He still wears ‘his’ in the pocket of his
suit jacket. She took ‘hers’ with her when she left. John and Patricia Bonsall have the same florescent rubber suits. They wear them in the winter, to do the garden. I have all this on
file, of course. Pages of it, under I for ‘Identical clothing’.

I decide to walk the long way home and leave the cemetery via the south exit, which backs onto one of the new housing estates. Not that it’s new anymore – they built it twenty years
ago. Each street named after a type of tree or shrub. Oak Drive, Azalea Avenue, Chestnut Way. I walk for half a mile before the estate comes to an abrupt end, where the houses stop and the latest
opencast coal site begins, a steep bank separating the two. It’s only been here eighteen months. I stop and listen for the machines on the other side of the hill, deep in the ground. But I
hear nothing, complete silence. Like there’s nobody there.

It never used to be like this. There were no barriers around the site to stop you getting in, no noise monitors or acoustic fencing. Just a great, dirty hole in the ground, with even dirtier
machines to make it wider and deeper. These days, the council agree specific sound levels with the environmental agency. There are rules and regulations in place. Back then we had a permanent growl
that petered to a hum the further away you were from the nearest cut. These days, I may not hear the machines, but I can smell them. A faint whiff of dust and oil. It hangs in the air and scratches
my throat. Most people don’t notice, but I’ve lived here too long. I’m sensitised and cynical. I continue towards the centre of town, away from the site and nearer home. The smell
disappears. It’s replaced by car fumes and freshly-lit cigarettes. A queue outside Tesco. The building that transformed us from a village into a town. Like a cathedral in a city.

I turn into Cressington Vale. Benny is walking towards me. His limp looks worse than usual. It’s quarter past nine in the morning. I had no idea. I’m usually home
by now. Georgina will be waking up. I might have missed Angelica. I should have missed Benny, but he must be late for school. I want to stop him, talk to him. I want to tell him I’ve seen him
painting with his eyes closed, that I know his secret. If he doesn’t answer my questions, I’ll tell everyone he’s a fraud. I want to grab him by the scruff of the neck, hold him
up against a tree and shout, ‘Who do you think you are? You’re just a boy.’

‘Morning, Mr Kingdom,’ he says, striding past in his stupid jacket with the childish badges attached to the lapel. They are all black. I can’t read the writing.

‘You’re just a boy,’ I reply, once he’s out of earshot. He gets to the end of the street, turns around and looks at me. For a second, I think he’s going to say
something, but he just smiles, turns again and walks away. I look towards Angelica’s house. The postman is knocking on her front door. I walk slowly down the street and into my garden. I face
the house, look up at Georgina’s window and pretend to search for my keys in my coat pocket. If Angelica opens her door, I can wander over and ask the postman if he has any mail for me. The
three of us can have a conversation. But he’ll have to leave. He’s got a job to do. I sneak a look over my shoulder. He’s already left Angelica. He’s moved next door and is
shoving letters through the Martin’s letterbox. He has no patience.

I step into the house and take off my coat. Georgina needs her tablets. She’ll be wondering where I’ve been. There’s a peculiar smell. Pork scratchings, burnt toast and
diarrhoea. It’s coming from the kitchen. I push the door open. The stench knocks me back. I have to hold my sleeve across my mouth and nose to stop me from gagging. There’s a pile of
dog mess on the floor beneath the worktop. It’s splashed across the floor tiles and up the front of the cupboards. There is vomit on the draining board. I look at the wall, follow the lead
from the plug in its socket to the toaster bobbing up and down in the sink. And then Kipling, with his head submerged and his eyes still open. Water and washing-up liquid. The tap dripping, like
tears into an oil slick.

Kipling

‘Hello? Yes, hello. I’d like to cancel an appointment. Yes. Yes. This afternoon. No, Kipling Kingdom. No. Well, I’m afraid it’s rather too late for
that. Yes. I’m absolutely positive. Thank you. Goodbye.’

‘Sorted?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

I give Don his phone back. Mine is still unplugged and Don thinks it’s broken. He only bought his yesterday. It’s cordless, which means he can stand twenty-five metres from the
receiver and it’ll still work. He’s very pleased with it. We’re about to bury Kipling. It’s been two hours since I found him. I spent the first hour clearing up the mess in
the kitchen and the second digging a hole in the front lawn. Don’s wearing the suit he got married in. It’s black velvet. For special occasions. I told him he didn’t need to
change, but he insisted. I’m still in my walking clothes. I’ve taped the hole in Kipling’s box so his head won’t hang out. I roll my shoulders and take a deep breath.
Georgina is sleeping inside. Don thinks she’s staying with my parents. He looked surprised when I told him. The morning clouds are beginning to separate. Blue sky is appearing in patches. It
looks like the sun might come out.