Various Pets Alive and Dead (10 page)

The blonde is shouting something that sounds like ‘Iranian war!’

What the fuck’s going on?

Maroushka turns her head for a second and yells, ‘Go and piss yourself!’ over her shoulder, then she speeds up her run – but her high heels are against her – she’s wobbling all over the place, at risk of breaking an ankle.

The blonde, who is wearing flat pumps, is gaining ground.

Should he intervene? Something tells him that he should not.

All of a sudden, Maroushka stops dead in her tracks, steps out of her shoes and, leaving them standing there on the pavement, hitches her skirt halfway up her thighs (wow!) and breaks into a serious athletic sprint. In three seconds she’s round a corner and out of sight.

The other woman stops at the corner and looks around.

He stops too.

The woman turns. Their eyes meet. He picks up the shoes, and slips them into the pockets of his jacket. She bursts into tears.

‘Lady …’

‘You’re all the bloody same! Shaggy sex-crazed bloody goats!’

With a wrenching sob, she lurches back into the crowd and disappears.

He takes the shoes out of his pockets and sniffs them. They smell of fresh sweat and new leather. Already he is imagining one delicious scenario after another whereby he will return them to their owner. He strolls along Godliman Street towards the Thames, holding them close to his body, under his jacket. As he reaches the Embankment, the skies open; he lifts up his face and lets the rain pour down on him like kisses.

Although the whole of Yorkshire has simmered in a late heatwave for a week, the weather breaks on Friday night. To Clara’s dismay, it’s chucking it down on Community Day. The stalls have to be shifted into the hall and the kids dash in and out, dragging in mud and towing disgruntled parents in their wake. There’s a sickly sweet smell of damp poverty and a kind of soggy turbulence as the families swirl around barging into each other in the confined space. The windows are all steamed up; the noise is deafening.

Mr Philpott the caretaker has donned an ancient brown suit and a red bow tie, which gives him a look of faded gravitas. Mr Gorst/Alan is looking dishy in chinos and a jacket. He’s working his way around the stalls, shaking hands with parents, offering smiles of encouragement to the teachers, tousling the damp hair of kids in a way that is both earthy and godlike. Now he’s with Miss Hippo at the next stall, congratulating her on her photographic display of
Historic Greenhills,
which has attracted a noisy crowd of finger-jabbing pensioners, while she jingles her Cleopatra-style earrings and wiggles her Regency-clad bum. He hasn’t glanced in Clara’s direction yet, but he will get to her next. (Be still, oh beating heart!)

Unfortunately only one seedling from her stall has so far been adopted, by a woman from Rowan Drive, who absolutely insisted on a cherry tree. The plastic-crushing has been cancelled due to the weather, and bags of newspapers and plastic bottles brought in by the parents are accumulating under the table and around the walls; they hand them over with a satisfied smile, pleased at their own generosity – ‘There you are, duck’ – as though they’re for her personal gratification. The petition against football on Rowan Green is running at sixty signatures already. Some people have signed twice. Only two people have signed the carbon emissions petition. The dolphin petition has been folded up and wedged under the wonky leg of one of the tables.

She’s beginning to feel dejected, when there’s a ripple in the crowd and she sees Jason Taylor heading towards her. Behind him, holding on to his hand, is a stunningly pretty girl with a tumble of silky blonde curls falling across her face.

‘That’s ’er,’ he whispers, nudging the girl. ‘Miss, this is me mam.’

Mrs Taylor is not how Clara had imagined her. She’d expected someone plainer, fatter, grubbier.

‘Hello, Mrs Taylor.’ She shakes her hand, which is so heart-wrenchingly tiny and fragile it feels like crushing a snowdrop.

‘Jason says you can make carrots into rockets, miss.’

She looks about seventeen, though this must be biologically impossible, and Clara guesses she’s at least in her late twenties. She has the same intense grey eyes as Jason, and the same pale skin, but on her it looks not sickly but delicate, almost translucent.

A surge of protectiveness takes Clara by surprise. ‘Please, call me Clara. My mum’s going to do a vegetable-carving demonstration later.’

She smiles, peeping up through angel curls. ‘Is the new headmaster here, miss? Jason says he’s reyt nice.’

‘He is. I’ll point him out to you.’

Jason is watching with a look of tender anxiety. ‘All right, Mam? All right, miss?’

‘Mm. We’re not having much luck with our plants, Jason,’ she confides. ‘We can’t even give them away.’

‘Nah, miss. Yer doin’ it all wrong.’

He takes the sign reading ‘greenhills trees – free to good homes!’, turns it over and, using the petition-signing pen, he writes in big letters on the back.

SPESIAL OFFER MINACHURE TREES ONLY t1 GRAT VALUE !!!!!!

 

Just then, out of the corner of her eye, she spots Mr Philpott waving an agitated brown-suited arm from the far side of the room. She gestures to him to come over. He shoulders his way through the crowd.

‘’Amlet …’

Then his eyes fall on Mrs Taylor.

‘Fair nymph!’ He straightens his bow tie. ‘To be, or not to be, that is the question.’

Mrs Taylor blushes and her cheeks go all dimply. ‘I couldn’t agree more, sir. I hope Jason’s not been too much trouble. If he is, just tell me, and I’ll wallop ’im.’

‘Mr Philpott …!’ Clara whispers, but he’s far away in Elsinore.

Suddenly there’s a commotion at the back of the hall – then a single loud familiar voice. ‘Come along, Oolie! This way!’

A tall figure is shoving her way forwards, gripping a small dumpy girl by the hand, moving with a sort of swaying sidestep, as though she’s on the run from
Strictly Come Dancing
, a long silvery rain cape glittering behind her. Clara winces. What on earth’s her mother wearing? At times like this, she wishes Doro was someone else’s mum whose eccentricity she could enjoy at a distance.

Oolie is looking anxious and clinging on to Doro because she doesn’t like crowds. When she catches sight of Clara, she runs up to hug her.

‘’Allo, Clarie. We pottied them plants, din’t we, Mum?’

She pokes a finger into the compost and licks it.

‘Yes, darling. Leave them alone now,’ says Doro. ‘Sorry we’re late, Clara. I brought some vegetables for the carving demonstration, like you said.’

She flings off her silver rain cape, rolls up her sleeves and rummages in her carrier bag. Then she clambers up on to a chair and booms in a voice that carries right across the hall, ‘Parents and pupils, please can I have your attention! I’m going to demonstrate some simple carving techniques.’

Even after nearly forty years in Yorkshire, her mother’s vowels still bear the unmistakeable ring of the South. Oolie, by contrast, speaks with the accent of her Doncaster special school.

‘What’s she gooin’ off about?’

‘To grace your table with beautiful and appetising vegetable art!’

Grace your table! Clara recalls the grungy yellow table in Solidarity Hall, cluttered with unwashed plates, unemptied ashtrays overflowing with dog-ends of spliffs, and the dried-out remnants of vegetarian casseroles.

In a few deft strokes Doro cuts semicircular petals around the globe of a radish and with a flourish plops it into a jug of water, which Clara brought to water the seedlings.

‘The secret is to soak them in cold water!’

The room falls silent; all eyes are focused on the tall middle-aged madwoman standing on a chair with a radish in one hand and a paring knife in the other.

‘Soon, the petals will swell and open out!’

Clara feels herself redden as people jostle closer for a better view, while her mother repeats the whole embarrassing exercise on some more radishes. Then she brandishes a monster carrot.

‘Now I’m going to carve a rocket!’ She starts to chisel.

‘Marvellous, innit?’ murmurs Mrs Taylor.

Unobserved by Doro, Oolie is fishing the radishes out of the water with her fingers, and popping them in her mouth. Clara tries to catch her eye to warn her off, but Oolie ignores her. Jason has disappeared.

Then, she spots Mr Gorst/Alan at the next stall saying goodbye to Miss Hippo (about bloody time) and inching through the crowd towards her table, his eyes twinkling dangerously. Her heart quickens. Beside him is another man, a stranger, tall, suntanned, handsome in a greying foxy way, with gimlet eyes and steely hair.

‘Let me introduce Councillor Malcolm Loxley, our Chair of Governors.’

‘Can I interest you in a tree?’ she says.

‘You can interest me in anything, love. I’ll have the cherry.’ He hands over a pound with a rakish grin. Her eye falls on a small enamelled flag of St George pinned in his lapel. A football fan? A patriot? A Doncaster chauvinist?

‘How about a carrot rocket, Councillor?’ Doro calls, from the heights of her chair, where she’s still chiselling away.

‘Who …?’ asks Mr Gorst/Alan in a whisper.

‘My mother – she’s demonstrating vegetable carving.’

‘Oh, I see. Fascinating.’ Then he notices Mrs Taylor. ‘Who …?’

‘Mrs Taylor, Jason’s mother.’ Clara introduces them. ‘This is Councillor Loxley, the Chair of the Governors, and this is the new Head Teacher, Mr Gorst/A …’

Jason has reappeared, sitting under the table opening up the bags of plastic bottles. She gives him the Look, but he carries on regardless.

‘Pleased to meet you, sir … sir.’ Mrs Taylor’s gaze moves between Councillor Loxley and the Head. Somehow, as if by psychic power, the top button of her blouse pops open. ‘I thought it were ’im.’ She gestures contemptuously towards Mr Philpott.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Philpott … a misunderstanding,’ Clara whispers, seeing his face darken.

But now another crisis strikes. Oolie has disappeared.

‘Oolie! Oolie!’ Doro peers down from her chair.

Clara starts searching. Her little sister will be getting panicky – she’s so short she can easily vanish in a crowd.

Suddenly there’s a shriek. ‘Watch out!’

She looks up in time to see a rocket-shaped carrot whizzing through the air. Over on the far side of the room, Mrs Salmon yelps and staggers against the coffee stall. Scalding coffee sloshes into the tightly packed crowd. The convulsion spreads in a shock wave. Shoulders shove, bums bump, elbows and heads collide – whoops! There goes the history display! Miss Hippo lets out a genteel historical mew.

The floor is awash with coffee, rainwater, plastic bottles and darting children. Something catches Clara’s foot, she tumbles and grabs out for the nearest thing, which seems to be Mr Gorst/Alan’s upper leg. She feels … Before she can feel anything interesting, he reaches for her hand and pulls her to her feet so sharply that she knocks Doro’s chair – ‘Sorry, Mum!’ – who teeters and topples – ‘He-e-elp!’ – bringing down the
Greener Greenhills
display and the councillor, who lands on top of Mrs Taylor, who lands on Clara. It’s all getting very intimate and confusing. Mrs Taylor’s blouse pops another couple of buttons. Out of the chaos, Mr Philpott surfaces from under the table, hauling Oolie-Anna by the hand. She lets out a loud radishy burp.

‘’Ere she is. C’mon, you little clown.’

Clara tries to throw him a warning look, but it’s too late – Doro has gone berserk. ‘Don’t you ever dare call her that, you bumptious ignorant old man! She’s not funny! She’s perfect! Do you understand?’

‘Mum, for goodness’ sake!’

She’s never seen Mr Philpott look so scared.

Oolie starts to wail. ‘I
am
funny! I wanna be on TV! I wanna shag Russell Brand!’

Under the table, someone sniggers.

‘Jason!’ yells Mrs Taylor, also berserk. ‘Gerrout o’ there, you little fucker!’

Jason emerges, slyly exchanging grins with Oolie. Mrs Taylor, still half unbuttoned, snatches a plastic bottle from the floor, and whacks it down again and again and again on his skinny shoulders, until Clara intervenes.

‘It’s all right, Mrs Taylor. I’m sure he didn’t mean any harm.’

‘Like fuck ’e didn’t!’ says Mrs Taylor.

It isn’t until she’s halfway home on the motorway that she remembers she forgot to check on the hamster. And something else is bothering her. What happened to the tree seedlings? They have all disappeared without a trace.

Holding tight on to Oolie-Anna’s hand as they struggle up the stairs of the moving bus, Doro thinks, ‘I really shouldn’t have shouted at that funny old man. He probably thought he was being kind.’ She remembers now, with a flush of embarrassment, that she knows him slightly from allotment meetings. She also regrets shouting at Oolie, though her daughter’s concept of naughtiness undoubtedly includes throwing things at people. Now she’s sulking and saying she wants to go and live with Clarie, and Doro has to stop herself from saying, ‘Clarie doesn’t want you, Oolie. She’s got her own life to live.’

‘Look, Mum! Greggs! Let’s stop!’

Oolie raps on the window of the bus as it lumbers through the town past the dismal straggle of cut-price shops and karaoke bars. Greggs bakery is one of Oolie’s favourite haunts. Given her tendency to pile on plumpness, Doro has to be strict with her – especially as she’s not averse to the occasional cream puff herself. That’s another reason she feels Oolie isn’t ready to move into a place of her own. She would eat all kinds of rubbish, and who would keep an eye on her?

‘Ssh. We’ll have lunch when we get home.’

That officious social worker with his clipboard and his patronising leaflets really got up her nose, trying to tell her that she was being overprotective and that Oolie-Anna must ‘step outside her comfort zone’ and ‘connect with her personal dreams’ and ‘blossom into the fullness of her individuality’. For pity’s sake. Who does he think invented individuality and personal dreams, back in the seventies?