First bit by John Lennon 1971 – the last bit by John Cooper 2020.
This is Day. She is eighty two years old, she spends all day, every day selling lottery tickets. On an average day she sells about one hundred tickets from which she earns about £4.00. She has four children but has either lost contact with them or they just don’t care. Her husband was killed in the Vietnam War in 1968 when she was twenty eight. Unfortunately he fought for the losing side. If you are an old soldier who fought for ‘Uncle Ho’ and Ha Noi, you get a small pension. If you fought for President Diem and Saigon you get nothing. She lives for free in a large communal house where all the occupants are homeless ticket sellers. Most of her daily food is given but it is, of course, just rice, maybe some fish or chicken. She is working on the periphery of a very busy and successful eatery. The main dish is ‘Hu Tiue Nam Vang’ (originally a Cambodian Dish) a bowl of noodles in a boiling water broth with two largish prawns, slices of pork, slices of pigs liver, and a quail egg , to this you add various salad leaves and mung beansprouts. The secret of the places’ success is a thick brown garlicky sauce which is unique to the outlet and is a closely guarded secret recipe. It costs about VND 65,000 which is about half of what Day lives on every day. They will not let her into the restaurant but tolerate her plying the first row of tables that face the road.
A wandering minstrel doing all the coffee shops at eight in the morning- ‘Bluetooth enabled’.
OK, here we go with something new! A serial viewing of one of my shortish stories – The Gun! – not what you think! Chapter 1 below!– Let’s face it, you’ve got nothing else to do and playing monopoly is really tedious!
The Gun
A Story
John Arthur Cooper.
Chapter 1.
Reginald Moorcroft set out to work. The white aluminium double glazed frosted glass front door clunked familiarly shut. The silver Honda Civic beeped obediently as it responded to the key fob. He glanced at the two door mirrors as the car glided backwards out of his wooden gate. The gaps were OK. He’d done it a thousand and one times but he always glanced.
‘Today I’m wearing light brown leather lace up Hush Puppy shoes. Matching beige plain Marks and Spencer socks. Fawn twill trousers, thirty eight inch waist with a plain mid brown leather belt with dull brass buckle. In my left trouser pocket is my mobile phone; Nokia of course! And a white handkerchief ironed by Rosamund into a triangle. In my right pocket another hanky, a pen and an unknown amount of loose change. There’s nothing in my back pockets as it hurts my arse when I sit down. I spend a good portion of my life sitting down.’ His thoughts meandered off track. ‘My shirt is also Marks and Spencers. A tasteful light blue striped with white beige and black thin lined pattern. My wife Rosamund has just turned the collar for me as it was beginning to fray. Tie? A plain silk grey, tied in a single Windsor knot. It’s June so I’m not wearing a vest. If I do wear a vest I wear the sleeveless “Onslo” type when it’s not too cold but if it’s very cold I wear a white T shirt type with a round or sometimes a V neck. It depends what I get from my daughters at Christmas. I’ve got a thin greenish orangey pullover on today as there’s a bit of a cold wind. My coat is a tan shower-proof long jacket. I got in a sale at a shop in Birmingham. I didn’t intend to buy it. I had to go to court one day and was wandering around during a long lunch break when I spotted it in a sale down from a hundred and seventy eight to ninety. It was such good quality and reversible, the other colour is black so I tend to always go for the tan. I’ve had it three years and wear it most days for work. In the right hand inner breast pocket is my wallet. Black and folded, Thirty quid, debit card, credit card, organ donor card, work identity card, a car park entry swipe card to the Police Station front yard, two paper clips a ten euro note from last years holiday in France. A couple of business cards an old SIM card and a small piece of paper with key telephone numbers on in case I lose my phone. Sadly! No condoms! In my right hand coat pocket is a small blue and grey multi tool with a built in Pea light. I don’t know how the light works but it never seems to run out, various old car park tickets, a biro and another hanky. In my left is a folded and crumpled pamphlet for English Heritage.’
His mental meanderings were disturbed by the need to turn his car left at the ‘T’ junction.
The disturbing indicator noise self canceled allowing him to settle back into his thoughts.
‘My car is ‘X’ reg and seven years old. I should get a new one but this does everything I want with very little complaint. Tyres and that’s about it. Oh I did have to have a nearside front suspension bush changed for last year’s MOT. The kids have long gone. Rosamund uses her blue beetle so the inside of my car gets very little use or abuse. It’s black and clean. The closest it gets to litter is the odd McDonalds bag which I always bring home then I know it’s properly recycled. The driver’s footwell is the only area that shows any sign of use. I usually hoover that out once a week after I’ve put it through the car wash. Yes I know car washes are supposed to scratch your car but it’s silver and doesn’t show them up, plus I’m not inclined to use one of those East European hand car washes that sprout up on every bit of roadside space with a reachable water supply. My radio is always on Radio two. Sometimes if I’m feeling serious I switch to Radio four but mainly it’s two. I can’t stand local radio, the DJ’s, presenters, call them what you will, are so amateurish and the constant repetitive adverts drive me nuts. It’s got air conditioning but all I use it for in UK is an express demister when it’s very wet and everything mists up. We use it on holiday of course. You have to. Hours of drumming down the Route De Soleil is just intolerably noisy with the windows open so we use the air con then but you can see it on the petrol consumption. It’s automatic. I got bored and tired of changing gears years ago and my daily commute sees me crawling through Hereford’s rush hour twice a day. To be honest you can’t really do any journey of any length without running into some sort of jam or queue. So it’s a godsend! One foot and steering is about enough. It’s so mind numbingly tedious.’
Reg rolled to a slow and easy halt at the pelican crossing. A teacher shepherded about twenty five children across. They looked about six years old. She looked about forty two, no make up, unfashionable frizzy hair half grey, half black, wearing beige slacks and a navy blue nylon puffa jacket. Each compartment struggled to escape. He wondered what colour knickers a woman like that would wear. Definitely not a thong. He decided they would be white. Had a woman like that ever had oral sex? Had she ever been so passionate and out of control as to guide a man’s hard wet cock into her wet sucking mouth. He looked at her mouth. It was small and pinched. He decided it wasn’t big enough to get a decent cock in. Was that the key to a woman’s sexuality? Were all smiling happy women with broad wide mouths up for a blow job? He decided he would take note of women’s mouths and pursue the theory. The issue of blow jobs with Rosamund had never been on the agenda.
BEEP! BEEP! The insistent noise jolted him back to reality. Glancing into his rearview he could see a yellow transit inches from his bumper. He took his foot off the brake and the car cruised slowly forward under the power of the idling engine.
‘Keep your hair on! None of us are going anywhere fast’ he thought.
He’d been a ‘crime analyst’ at the Police Station for the last fifteen years. It was easy and comfortable. Algorithms did all the legwork. Automated reasoning had now replaced the filing cabinet. Intuition was now computerized. Hunches held no sway. Those years had seen his hair retreat to the sides of his head. His carefully packed lunches deposit themselves around his midriff. His hazel eyes now assisted by glasses. His sexuality diminished by complacent harmony and a peaceful home. All he did was pick out information from a screen and frame it in a way that young keen police officers could read on A4 size posters that decorated parade rooms throughout the force or compile actions for work overloaded DC’s to complete. Occasionally his local knowledge and experience led him to a different conclusion than the computer but not often. The machine was getting cleverer and better. He was getting older. His mental meanderings always took him back to the same basis. It was just maths based on one thing “people don’t change” or at least if they did it was very slowly. Given the same circumstances, the same conditions, the same opportunities, people will always make the same decisions and do the same things. Computers just ruthlessly exploited this fact. He often thought things like this through whilst supposedly beavering away in front of his green screen. He reckoned that within his lifetime society would divide. Life was so recorded and accountable that only criminals would use cash. The washed majority would sacrifice their privacy for a perceived convenience.
“Morning Reg. Bit nippy today.”
Thom Fairfax a DC half shouted to him as he waited for the barrier to open. The open window let in the brisk breeze.
“Morning Thom. Any good on the lottery this weekend?”
“No. Nothing. You can’t throw the computer out of the window and retire just yet Reg!”
Thom laughed.
“I don’t know why I bother with that bloody syndicate; all I’ve had is twenty quid in ten years!”
“Yeah! Same here but we both know that if we pull out that’s the week it’ll hit the jackpot, then you and I’ll be suicidal!”
“You don’t have to be right all the time Thom. Give me a break will you?” Reg laughed as the driver’s window slid shut.
Reg grabbed his black leather briefcase from off the back seat and launched himself out of his car. He couldn’t remember when it had started to take conscious effort to get out of his car but it did now. A brief walk under the tunnel and a right turn took him to the rear door of the police station. The thirty second trek took him past the steel encased ramp that led to the charge room. A scruffy unkempt dirty youth was bouncing down the ramp having just been ejected from the charge room. A pink paper in one hand and a fag in the other. His alcohol induced actions from the previous night hiding behind his cocky noisy exit. Reg punched in the ever changing code to the back door. Turned the handle to the left and pulled gently. He didn’t pull confidently as he hadn’t heard the usual mechanical click that indicated the code’s acceptance. Sure enough the door remained locked and closed. Reg reached for his mobile phone but before he started to call up his office a young fresh faced probationary Constable walked up. Reg didn’t know him so he stood to one side as the boy in a uniform gave him access.
‘Lift or stairs?’ He thought. He caught sight of himself in the mirror-like metal finish of the lift doors. Stairs!
By the time he’d made the third floor several young fit PC’s had passed him. Either flying down clutching a file of papers. Their functional jackets, handcuffs, batons, radios, mobile, phones, CS spray pouches all jangling in unison. Or galloping upwards two steps at a time. Serious young men. Smart and polished with short hair and sharp features. The last two flights of stairs caused Reg to assist himself by pulling on the handrail with his right hand.
“Morning Reg, good weekend?” Corrallee chirped at him. Corrallee was the office manager. Crisp, quick and intelligent, she was married to Dereck, an old fashioned CID officer who had now retired and had, in effect, stayed in the same job as a civilian statement taker.
“Oh you know! The usual! Endless demanding sex on the Oriental Express as it sped across the Russian Steppes towards China then a spot of wild goat hunting to extract musk and sell it at a huge profit in Hong Kong.”
“You cut the lawn and washed the car then.”
“Yes!”
The large office was crowded with desks adorned by women. Not pretty sexy women but functional practical Hereford women. Things got done efficiently and mainly on time.
His journey through the grey tough tiled carpeted office was just a series of hello’s, mornings, and good morning’s depending on how well he knew each person. They were always changing. He surmised that was one of the two things you could rely on in life, that nothing would stay the same for long. The other was death.
He unlocked his office and entered. Took off his coat and hung it on the rack of four pegs affixed to the wall behind the door. He put his briefcase down to the left of his chair. The walls were painted magnolia, the grey aluminium inoperable windows viewed out onto Blue School Street. The ceiling was mottled with whitish polystyrene panels, held and constrained by grey aluminium strips, only interrupted by double barreled white bright light fluorescents. He sat down at his desk and looked at his blank lifeless computer.
It was a grey day outside; his computer was sort of light beige grey. The carpet tiles were light grey. For fucks sake! His hair was grey, that is what little hair he had was grey. He glanced at his tan coat hanging on the hook. He decided he needed some colour in his office. Some reds and yellows.
Glennys entered his office without knocking and placed a plain white mug of hot dark instant coffee onto the West Mercia Constabulary coaster on his desk.
“Morning Reg. Good Weekend?”
‘Well if you consider that I didn’t die in a terrible car crash or was not maimed for life by a drug crazed terrorist trying to assassinate my pet hamster. Yes.”
“I never had you down for a hamster man.” Said Glennys.
“Ahhh. There’s an awful lot you don’t know about me, Glennys.”
“How about you? Do anything Exciting?”
“Yep? Went for a long walk with my husband and the two dogs on windswept Garway Hill. Really enjoyed it.”
“Can you tell the difference between them?”
“Oh yes, Betty has a white patch on the side of her head and Irene hasn’t.”
“No, I mean between your husband and the dogs?”
Glennys glared down her nose at Reg then flounced out in mock anger.
‘She’s beginning to look like an Old English sheepdog herself.’ Thought Reg. He thought again then got up and followed her out to her desk in the main office. Taking a ten pound note out of his wallet he gave it to her.
“When you go out at break time will you get me some flowers? I fancy something yellow and red in my office.”
Glennys looked up at him in a pained strange questioning way but by now Reg had turned and was on his way back.
His desk was tidy. He had nothing to put on it. All he did was direct electronic traffic, sometimes he added to it but mostly he just re-directed it.
‘Oh well, here we go.’ The green screen burst into life with awkward stilted text.
Ten thirty saw Glennys and his second cup of coffee. He used to go up to the canteen for the morning break but found it too stressful. He knew most people but all in different ways and to different degrees. He found having to grade responses tiresome. Then there were the slot machines. Totally unfathomable to him. The myriad flashing fluttering lights that leapt around a confusing display just seemed so pointless. The accomplished, pressed, nudged, looked and sometimes collected from them. It always seemed that the super confident, the larger than life egos, the really popular people were the ones that stood forever in front of the beeping cascading monsters. He was worried that if he sat on his own, which he preferred, he would be cast as a lone weirdo; he had to sit at a table with someone or some people. This necessitated some sort of meaningless random conversation. Other people just did it, they didn’t seem to have a problem with it but he had to actively think of things to say. It was hard work. He had become a semi recluse in his magnolia office.
Glennys plonked the bunch of pink carnations and yellow roses on his desk along with seventy five pence change.
“What do I put them in Glennys?” Asked Reg.
“I’ve no idea. All you asked for was yellow and red flowers.”
“Is there anything in the main office?”
“No! It’s not a hospital. It’s an office in the Police Station. Use the waste paper bin.”
Reg looked at the rarely used clean grey new bin.
“It’s grey. I can’t use that.”
“I’ve got a Glen Fiddich whisky bottle tin case in the bottom draw of my desk. Someone gave me and George a bottle for Christmas.”
“What colour is it?”
Glennys looked disparagingly at him.
“Dark red.”
“That’ll do. Be a pal, pop some water in it for me will you?”
Glennys glowered and flounced out again. Five minutes later she returned and deposited the wet tall red can on his desk. Without speaking she left. He knew she suspected he was getting strange in his dotage.
Reg released the flowers from their elastic band and placed them into the tin. He didn’t even try to arrange them. A simple flourish and they were on his plain window sill. They were yellow and red amongst the magnolia and grey. He turned back to his screen.
Eleven Thirty time for the toilet. Leaving his office he locked the door and turned right heading for the mahogany coloured wooden door at the end of the long outer office. None of the office women spoke to him but he could imagine them thinking ‘There goes Reg for his eleven thirty piss’.
Out in the corridor the walls changed from smooth magnolia to rough textured cream. The entrance to the toilet was simply a gap in the wall. You entered and turned right to be faced with a simple push sprung wooden door with a light grey aluminium push plate. There was no knob or handle to operate. Reg pushed the door open with his right shoulder. After all these years, all this familiarity, toilets were still stressful places. Once again it was the conversation that was the problem. What do you say to someone standing next to you with your dick out? ‘What do you think of the current crisis in Ethiopia?’ seems a bit on the heavy side. Whereas ‘I see you’ve got some new tyres on the old Astra’ seems too domestic by half. No it had to be thought out and prepared for a whole range of people, ego’s and circumstances. Where do you stand? If it’s crowded and there’s only one pistol left that’s OK but if there’s only three people in and they’ve occupied pistols one, three and five, where do you go? Which ‘couple’ do you join? He considered always going into a cubicle but that was suspicious. People would wonder? Has he got a tiddler? Has he got a python? No it had to be the pistols.
As he entered he could see the only person in the smelly room was Bert McCafferty. Bert was a comfortable pleasant PC about to retire and move back to Ireland to take over the family farm.
“Hello Bert how’s it going?” Reg asked. Bert was just at the end of his urinating, just starting to shake his dick quite violently prior to zipping up.
“Hi Reg OK thanks. Be a lot better at two o’clock though. God I hate early’s. Getting up at four thirty on a cold dark morning has somehow lost its attraction after twenty nine years.”
“You should have gone for promotion like the rest of the nine to fivers.”
“I should have done a lot of things Reg but here I am about to collect a PC’s Pension.”
Bert had now moved over to the row of sinks and was half heartedly washing his hands.
“What about you? You can’t have long to do?”
“I’m here for the duration. I think I’ll die in my magnolia office. The only thing that worries me is that no one will notice that I’m dead.”
“Oh they will. Glennys will notice your coffees gone cold.” Reg and Bert chuckled as Bert left the toilet.
Reg washed his hands and looked at himself in the mirror. ‘Mr. Mundane that’s who you are. Mr. Average. Mr. Boring. Mr. Safe. Mr Mondeo Man except I’ve got a Honda civic. But! He thought further. I even find extreme sports boring. The thought of whizzing around doing things where the probability of getting seriously hurt was high, just seemed ridiculous. And for what. There’s always somebody faster tomorrow. Football, Cricket, Rugby, even the Olympic Games were tedious. Fame for an instant! No thanks he thought.’ His aversion to any sport put him well outside the usual blokes clubs of ‘did you see the match? Did you see the game? That was a good result on Saturday.’
Reg fumbled in his right pocket for his car keys and opened his office. Sat down, finished his now lukewarm coffee in one gulp and tapped in his password. The green lines of text sprang to life forcing him to scan and redirect the electronic traffic. He glanced over at the flowers. They looked alien and lovely. The warmth of the office already causing them to relax and open. ‘They’ll be dead and brown in four days’ time then you’ll have wasted a tenner.’ His pragmatic gremlin bit him on the ankle.
Glennys popped her head around the door at precisely one o’clock.
“I’m off now Reg. If you remember I’ve got this afternoon off to go and see my mum at the hospice.”
Reg turned away from the screen and looked over his glasses.
“Who’s getting my afternoon coffee?”
Glennys huffed indignantly down her nose.
“Karen.”
“OK See you tomorrow.”
Glennys slammed the door.
Reg reached down for his briefcase and clicked it open inside was the Guardian Newspaper and his Tupperware lunch box. Prizing the lid from the base revealed two ham, tomato and lettuce sandwiches cut triangularly and made with wholemeal bread. He insisted on Lurpak butter even though Rosamund was constantly trying to wean him onto some low cholesterol spread. The ham was Duchy of Cornwall organic from Waitrose; a thin smear of Colman’s mustard finished it off. Today it was an apple for afters. Tomorrow it would be a plain yoghurt. He needed a long drink after the dryness of the whole meal bread. A bottle of elderflower cordial from Marks did the trick. It cost him four pounds twenty five for a week. Glennys always got one of the young office girls to pick them up on a Monday. By one fifteen he was finished. The Tupperware back in his briefcase. He would lock his door, take his shoes off and read the paper. It was a little left wing but at least it wasn’t a comic. Thursdays was best. It was near the end of the week and the social supplement was always quite interesting. Sometimes he would nod off for ten minutes.
It was five past two Karen clicked open the door and entered with his coffee. Karen was about twenty five or six, engaged to be married to one of the PC’s and hopelessly in love.
No matter from what remote angle a conversation started it would always end up with ‘Adrian thinks! Adrian says! Adrian always! Adrian did! Adrian didn’t!’ She considered the Guardian as some insidious academic left wing rag. She called it ‘Reg’s Taliban Times’
“Put your ‘Taliban Times’ away Reg, here’s your coffee, now get some work done!”
“Yes Miss! Very nice blouse today!” He really thought ‘lovely tits’ he imagined them constrained within a cream lacey bra, spilling out at the side. Heavy and fluid.
She knew his lewd connotations and left his office knowing and quite pleased he was looking at her bottom.
The cream and green machine dragged him back. He was important. Many criminals were in prison because of him and his tame algorithms. Many people had not been frightened or attacked because of him. No one noticed prevention. Not many people noticed him!
At three thirty he stood up and stretched. He’d had four phone calls that afternoon. An inquiry about a gang from Cardiff. One about a series of bizarre sexual murders in Gloucestershire. A strange one from Ross-on-Wye about a man who may have killed and disposed of his daughter many years ago and an enquiry from Birmingham about some ram raiders who always stole and used Subaru Imprezas. He looked out at the silently moving traffic as it paraded past his flowers.
Karen brought in his coffee, said nothing and left.
At five past five he put on his coat, locked his office and headed down the wide dappled stairs. Most people seemed to naturally gravitate towards ‘on the right for down’ and ‘on the right for up’. Very few people walked up the middle that is unless they were walking together and even then the stronger personality usually took a lead position. There were no notices telling you to do it. It just happened.
The lift doors hissed and pinged open just as he got to the ground floor. Karen and Brenda spilled out into the lobby. Brenda was as wide as she was tall. Her tits were in competition with her stomach as to which stuck out the most.
“Eight minutes past five. Bit early for you Reg isn’t it? It’s usually nine minutes past!”
“Light traffic on the stairs so I thought I’d live dangerously. You know, move into the fast lane for a while.”
“Does Rosamund know?”
“No! I move so fast she can’t see me. Faster than a speeding bullet!”
“Show us your red underpants then Reg?” Karen giggled.
“Can’t. I usually do it spinning round in a phone box.”
“Better tell the Police! We’ve finally found who keeps leaving sticky messes in phone boxes.” Brenda piped up.
“Goodbye Ladies!” Reg moved out of the clunky door and into the yard leaving the giggling pair behind.
He inched the Civic slowly forward behind Stuart Williams in his beige cavalier and Sally Richards in her white mini metro. The yellow and black bar swinging mesmerizingly up and down as the cars made a break for freedom. Go! Go! Go! The radio two drive-time sports slot came on so he hit the radio four button. The whole of Hereford was inch crunchingly grid locked as bizarre individual thoughts, worries, dreams and aspirations bounced around inside each tin car. Unable to get out. Thank goodness. He couldn’t think of anything more tedious than to have to communicate whilst commuting.
The grey evening made red rear brake lights seem glaring and aggressive. The city limits were reached barely touching the throttle, just inching forward with the engine idling. Then it was there. The open road. The civic leapt forward to forty miles per hour and tucked in behind a green and red Eddie Stobart Lorry. ‘Was the driver wearing a tie?’ He wondered.
A discussion about global warming emerged self consciously from his radio. It sort of crept meekly out of the speakers because the human speakers themselves would leave whatever studio and climb into their Volkswagen blue polo and carry on polluting. Yes it would be a smidgeon less than a non blue polo but only a smidgeon he thought. And anyway the speaker had to get home quickly because he didn’t want to miss his daughter’s birthday treat at McDonalds. So he did drive at seventy five along the motorway.
Reg flicked back to Radio Two. The sport had finished. The beach Boys were half way through ‘Good Vibrations’. Should he overtake going up the Callow. No he couldn’t be bothered. The lorry was doing fifty any way. Plenty fast enough!
He turned into his drive. Rosamund was home before him. Her blue beetle abandoned with the boot lid not properly shut. Reg sat in his car listening to Roy Orbison finishing ‘Pretty Woman’. ‘Rosamund had never been pretty’, he thought. But she was kind, easy to be and live with; a wonderful ‘Mum’ and she ironed his shirts and cooked a good roast. What more could a man ask for? Beautiful women were high maintenance and trouble. Besides which he wasn’t exactly Charlton Heston himself. No, they made a good couple.
He leant over into the back and grabbed his briefcase. Forcing open the driver’s door against the slight incline he clambered out and let gravity close the door.
“Is that you dear?” Rosamund wearing long yellow primrose rubber gloves was standing at the sink peeling potatoes.
“No.” Replied Reg in a deep voice. “It’s a sex crazed killer who’s escaped from Wales with the sole intention of defiling and murdering English women who wear rubber gloves.”
“Oh that’s nice! Stick the kettle on love. Let’s have a cuppa.”
Reg put down his briefcase next to the telephone table in the hall. Took off his car coat and hung it on a stout wooden hanger in the hall cupboard, went through into the brightly lit kitchen checked the water level in the kettle and flicked it on.
“You making or am I?” Reg inquired.
“Can you love? I’ll finish the dinner.”
Reg reached into the cupboard for two PG Tips pyramid tea bags. The kettle clicked off as he entered the left hand cupboard for two white IKEA mugs.
“Shall I take yours through, or do you want it here?” Triggered by his phraseology a vision of Rosamund jumping backwards onto the work surface hoisting up her pencil slim grey skirt to reveal no knickers purring ‘I want it here and now and I want it hard,’ flashed through his mind.
“In the lounge if you don’t mind love. The news ‘ll be on the telly in a moment.”
Reg took the two mugs through and put Rosamund’s on a magazine resting on the arm of the settee. He set down his mug on the carpet in front of the other arm. Before he settled down he went back into the hall to get his newspaper from his briefcase. Seeing his lunch box he took it out, walked over and placed it on the draining board beside the dishwasher.
“Was your lunch OK dear?” Rosamund asked.
“No it was rubbish. I fed the sandwiches to the swans in the lake in Hyde Park when I flew down on a secret SAS training exercise to vet the company that makes and supplies Prince Williams condom’s. There was a secret plot to blow off his dick and thus bring about the fall of the house of Windsor.”
“Cheese and pickle tomorrow. I got the cheese you like from the Post office.”
“Can you make sure it’s Branston? The others are just cheap imitations.”
Rosamund peeled off her gloves with an elastic ‘thwack’ Reg purposely stopped dead any lewd connotations with the noise by walking back into the lounge and switching on the TV.
“What’s for dinner?” Reg inquired from the right hand corner of the long blue settee.
“Lemon sole, mashed potatoes peas and parsley sauce.”
“Anything for after?”
“Yoghurt.”
“Hope it’s not that horrible fat free jelly muck?”
“No Waitrose Greek style honey yoghurt guaranteed to clog up your arteries in two spoonfuls.”
“My life assurance is in the bottom drawer under my hated unused shirts.”
“You only hate them ‘cause you can’t fit into them!” Rosamund smirked.
“Have a good day at work love?” Rosamund asked on autopilot as she viewed the evening BBC News.
“I bought some flowers. Cost me the best part of a tenner.”
“Who for?”
“Me!”
Rosamund looked over towards her husband of thirty two years but he was engrossed behind the Guardian.
The phone rang in the hall.
“You or me?” Reg muttered. Rosamund didn’t bother to answer. She got up, walked to the hall and answered.
Within ten seconds she was back with the handset.
“It’s Pete for you.” Reg took the handset.
“Pete, how goes it? What you up to?”
“Oh so so, you know how it is. Still living with the bitch from hell but too lazy and cowardly to do anything about it. Other than that no money and I’ve got a cold.”
“Pretty good then.” Reg replied.
“Yes OK! Listen, what are you doing Saturday afternoon?”
“Let me check my diary. Ummmm! Private jet. Two p.m. Bristol airport with Richard (Branson) to Montecarlo to watch the GP followed by a private party on a yacht with the winner. Probably Schumacher. Yes, I know he’s German but there are some things you just have to put up with.”
“You’re free then?”
“Yes!”
“Good will you give me a hand? My aunt’s recently died over at Worcester. She was eighty eight God Bless her, so she’s had a good innings. Anyway, we’ve got to clear the house. My brothers hired a van to clear the furniture next Monday but he wants me to go and clear all the personal stuff, clothes, knick knacks, pictures, that sort of thing. He can’t do it as they were pretty close. Do you fancy giving me a hand?”
“What time?”
“How about I pick you up at two?”
“That’s fine. How much you going to pay me? My hourly rate is currently five hundred pounds an hour plus VAT.”
“Two pints of Marston’s Pedigree.”
“Done. It’s a deal; see you at two on Saturday.”
“Pete OK?” Rosamund inquired engrossed in the news.
“No he’s dead.”
“Don’t be ridiculous you’ve just spoken to him.”
“I said. No, his aunt’s dead. You’re going deaf!”
Rosamund scowled at him and turned the volume down a notch to spite him. She knew he would struggle to hear and that he would say nothing.
“In the dining room or on your lap love?” Rosamund was blissfully unaware of the scenarios racing around his mind.
“Let’s eat here. It’s too cold in the dining room.”
The lemon sole had been perfect. Reg cleared away the dishes into the kitchen simply so that he could raid the fridge and have some secret spoonfuls of honey yoghurt. So thick, creamy and delicious. He fluctuated between whatever TV programme she was watching, the Guardian and dozy sleep interrupted only by a cup of tea or visit to the toilet.
The weather at the end of the ten thirty news signaled bedtime. Rosamund always cleaned her teeth religiously before bed. Reg knew he should but couldn’t be bothered. Once a day was enough. He would wear his boxers; she always wore pyjamas or a nighty. At the moment she was on the left he was on the right but that was only because she could get a better view of the wall mounted TV. The age of passion and tenderness had long since past. Now it was comfort and convenience. Reg always fell asleep before her.
“What you doing with Pete on Saturday?”
“Don’t tell me you missed some of my telephone conversation?”
“Yes there was a good bit on the telly.”
“Going to help clear out his aunt’s house in Worcester?”
“Is that the one that’s dead?”
“No! She’s still alive. We’re just stealing all her stuff to sell before we jet off to Las Vegas and put all the dosh on red. Of course she’s dead!”
“Oh! Goodnight.” Rosamund turned and disappeared into her own mind.
Turning quickly back she inquired “What time?”
“Two. Why?”
“Thought I might go down to Sarah’s and visit the kids. If you’re out I’ll have tea down there.”
“OK I’ll probably have something to eat in a pub with Pete.”
Rosamund flicked off the TV with the remote. The room went dark.
And!
“Somewhere in Saigon”
Tree number 29!
And what have you done? – I gave her some money.
Love, peace and a Happy Christmas Day – John
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