the whine of t’ milk float pulling away and saw Eric bustling over, face like a pig’s arse. He sat in t’ cab, clutching the steering wheel wi’ both hands and staring flatly ahead.
‘So?’
‘So he found a body this morning.’
‘What? A dead one?’
‘Uh-huh. Thinks she wor done over last night.’
Eric picked at his teeth wi’ his forefinger, leaned over t’ round-book.
‘Number 43 wants a crate of cream soda.’
Cos of all t’ palaver over t’ body it wor late morn before I found mesen propping up the door frame of Mrs Husk’s living room, bottle of ginger beer dangling ’tween my fingers. Mrs Husk wor slower than any corpse, and only a smidgen of t’ hour from becoming one. She’d grind time to a halt if she got her way. I should have been in and out of there an age back.
‘Oeff!’ spluttered Mrs Husk. ‘My leg.’
I looked on as she doubled over in her chair, rubbing her calf, picking uselessly at the fraying edges of her bandaging. Her heavy brown wig had slipped slightly to show wisps of white hair, floating and anchored, like sheep-wool traces caught on barbed wire.
‘Oeff,’ she repeated, eyeing me beadily. ‘It don’t get no better.’
Nor would it. I prayed the old cuckoo wouldn’t ask me to rewrap it. Not again. Not today of all days. I worn’t a friggin’ nurse, fer Chrissakes, I wor here to deliver pop. Her leg wor so ulcerated and pitted, it wor like massaging cold chicken skin. Not even industrial depot soap could rid my hands of t’ stink of her ointment.
The day wor stacked against me.
The milkman had found a body.
Mrs Husk wanted her leg seeing to.
I would be too late for t’ Matterhorn Man.
Mrs Husk motioned me further in, her jaw slackening and closing wordlessly, like a ruminant chewing cud.
‘Best I stay over here, Mrs Husk, stood in some doggy-do earlier on.’
Which wor a lie. Course, I’d wanted to clap eyes on t’ corpse. Couldn’t be any worse than t’ cat I’d found in a water barrel wi’ a ligature round its neck. Just a quick gander at death, then I’d go and sell pop. People die, people are born and people buy pop.
Mrs Husk wor levering hersen out of her chair wi’ both arms.
‘Oeff!’
My nostrils flared, catching the manky whiff of her room. Such a dingy room, the floral wallpaper a discoloured shade of piss, the moth-eaten rugs scarcely hiding the bare floorboards. Two mangy armchairs wor angled toward a gas fire that hissed bleakly from t’ fireplace, the stuffing oozing from one of them. She slept in here, the old bird, slept in one of them there armchairs.
She took the new bottle of ginger beer from me and shuffled off into t’ kitchen. That’s it, under t’ sink, go on, that’s where you keep it, behind that grubby gingham cloth. Mrs Husk wor faithful to her one bottle of ginger beer.
Still, I thought, scratching my knackers through t’ hole in my pocket, she ain’t a bad old crow. Not one of them cringeing, whingeing old crones on t’ round who peer at you through t’ crack of their door chains, or clack-clack their dentures at you about young folk or darkies or t’ war.
The old littered the round, holed up in their stinking flats and decrepit houses, smelling of stale piss and imminent death. She might wear a hairnet and have a whiffy leg, but there wor summat brusque about Mrs Husk. She never apologised for being old. Not Mrs Husk.
She edged her way over to t’ table by t’ window, where she set down t’ empty.
‘Bugger the doggy-do, come in proper while I get you t’ money.’
Her dappled old hands quivered as she reached for a buff envelope from behind t’ mantel clock. The clock had an assured tock-tock and an expensive chime. An heirloom, perhaps. Even t’ most addled old girl would notice if that went walkies, and Mrs Husk’s mind wor lemon sharp. That clock wor probably the only thing of value she had. Then again, maybe she wor secretly loaded. The elderly accumulate. They hoard, they store, they stash.
Summat brushed against my feet. Lord Snooty, her unfeasibly fat tomcat, lurking under t’ table, blinking up at me like it knew what I wor thinking.
I said, ‘I can’t stay long, we’re running late.’
‘I thought maybe you worn’t coming. That you’d missed me out again.’
‘Would I do that, Mrs Husk?’
She tucked an errant lock of hair beneath her net, looked at me askance. I twitched to be gone as she painfully counted out t’ money for t’ ginger beer. She always got it wrong. Her hands hovered shakily over t’ coins; she wore a gold wedding ring, and another ring on t’ same finger set wi’ some fat dark stone. The rings seemed welded into her bony finger; anyone wanting to remove ’em would have to hack ’em off.
‘They found a body this morning,’ I said.
Mrs Husk ceased moving coins around. She examined the pile of coppers, tanners and bobs as if she wor reading t’ tea leaves.
‘A body? My, my. It’s a rum world, ain’t it lad?’
One by one she placed the coins in my hand.
‘Is that right, then?’
She wor four pence short. ‘Aye. That’s it.’
In t’ evening I lay sprawled across my bed in a sour mood, watching two flies playing tag. By t’ time we’d finished the round it wor too late for me to pay my usual visit to t’ Matterhorn Man.
I could hear Mother in t’ bathroom, swishing her hand through t’ bath water. From her room across t’ landing, sis’s tranny wor blaring out Radio 1. Mitch wor downstairs, glued to t’ footie.
To make yersen heard in our house you had to yell your lungs out.
‘Rick! Get yersen down here. Now.’
I stuck out my limbs and flayed like an upended woodlouse. Through t’ floorboards I could hear the rabid rat-tat-tat of t’ footie commentator. I banged my ribcage mechanically wi’ my fist, making a ‘vuhh-vuh-vuuh-vuuuh’ sound.
‘Rick!’
That one wor closer. Like nearing explosions. That one came from t’ foot of t’ stairs. I pinched my nostrils between my fingers and held my breath ’til I began to feel light-headed.
‘R-i-i-ck!’
I sat bolt upright, gulping in air, shaped my hand into a gun and fired through t’ floor. I mouthed each shot soundlessly. Pow! Pow! Silencer on.
I scuttled out of my room, flattened mesen against t’ landing wall and peered over t’ banisters. In t’ hallway below I could see Mitch in his flip-flops and trackie bottoms, the neat little pate on t’ crown of his head like a bare patch where a bucket had stood on a lawn. In his hand he held a bottle of brown ale, which he wor giving a good blathering to.
‘What is it, eh, my little friend? What is it wi’ folk?’ Then he emptied his lungs. ‘Ri-i-i-ick!’
He wor out of sorts again. Likely as not, his two great passions, country music and footie, had been unable to raise him from his misery pit. Back to t’ wall, I fired again: Pow! Pow! Then I heard the sloughing of his flip-flops as he went back into t’ lounge.
‘Now what!’
I knew what. The TV screen had slipped again, presenting a game of two halves. Players’ upper bodies and players’ legs, dissected by a thick black line.
‘Bugger!!’
I heard a fist thump the top of t’ telly.
‘You