2003 - A Jarful of Angels (9 page)

“All this sun we’ve been having is a sign from Him,” Bridgie croaked, pointing up towards the cloudless sky.

Iffy looked up. The sky was an empty blue dome, aching for clouds. No sign of Him anywhere.

“To punish all the wickedness and filthy goings on hereabouts…”

Fatty sniggered, and elbowed Iffy. Bessie told him to hush up.

Bridgie wobbled dangerously on top of the banana box.

Billy had a wooden, toy giraffe at home which stood on a round box. When you pressed the bottom of the box the giraffe bent his long neck this way and that, his head wobbled, his knees knocked, and his legs buckled beneath him. Bridgie reminded him of the giraffe as she struggled to balance on her skinny legs.

Bridgie waved her bony fist at no one in particular and called out again to the silent town.

Somewhere a window slammed shut.

A bee fizzed loudly overhead. It flew away, higher and higher until it was a small, agitated grain of black against the hot blue sky.

A drunk stumbled down the steps of the Punch and staggered away up the road.

A bow-legged old woman wearing ripped daps came out through the park gates. A rheumaticky dog followed on her grubby heels. The woman stopped in front of Bridgie and squinted up at her.

“Dirtiness and smutty carryings on, adultery and f-f-f-or-nication…”

The old woman shook her head, turned to look at them, grinned a toothless grin, shrugged her shoulders and walked on. The dog stopped, cocked a bloodshot eye at Bridgie, then cocked its crooked leg against the banana box. A stream of yellow, steaming piss splashed down over Bridgie’s hard black shoes and dried almost as it hit the ground.

The three of them giggled and elbowed each other in the ribs.

Bessie edged away from them.

“Ay, you can grin and pull your daft faces, but soon there will be plagues of locusts raining down on this town…”

“What’s a locust?” said Bessie, edging back towards the three of them.

They ignored her.

“She’s bloody cracked,” said Fatty.

Bessie sniffed again, loudly, as a warning. She didn’t like bad language. She couldn’t even say words like knickers or underpants without blushing.

“The graves will break open and the dead will walk the hillsides and come looking for those who have done them wrong.”

Iffy shivered and sweated at the same time.

“Secrets will out and the sinful keepers of those terrible secrets will blister and singe in the flames of hell. Burn and scorch until their skin peels away from their bones.”

“A bloody singed fanny might wake you up, old gel.”

They jumped in alarm. Bessie gasped and began to cough. Iffy banged her hard on the back.

While they’d been watching Bridgie, Georgie Fingers had crept up quietly behind them. Soft-shoe shuffle. Brothel creepers. Crepe soles and black suede uppers.

No one was allowed to go anywhere near him, not even Fatty. Georgie was a lunatic, a dangerous one. He pretended he was a pastor and had made his own church in a shed. He tried to get girls to go in there, but they wouldn’t unless they were half soaked.

Every day he stood on the corner and called out to the girls from the big school, “Come to me, my lovelies, and be saved, let me help you find salvation…come to terms with all those lovely wicked thoughts.”

The big girls laughed and shouted back, “Bugger off, Georgie, else I’ll tell my father. Dirty old get that you are. Save yourself you want to!” And they laughed and sang:

Georgie Fingers pudding and pie

Kissed the girls and made them cry

When the boys came out to play

He kissed them too

Cos he’s funny that way!

“Babies born out of wedlock will die of thirst at the dried-up breasts of the wicked women,” screeched Bridgie.

“Fine pair of perky tits on her, mind, when she was a girl,” said Georgie Fingers, pointing at Bridgie.

Fatty doubled up laughing and held onto Billy.

Bessie gulped and started a fit of the hiccups. She got up stiffly, folded her hankie carefully and walked away, trying to swallow the hiccups as she went. The rest of them followed her quickly. Further up the road they sat down on the scrubbed steps of Gladys’s Gowns. Gladys Baker who owned the shop never minded them sitting on her step. She was nice to kids especially Fatty. She always gave him chocolate when she saw him, sometimes a bag of cakes.

Mrs Tudge and Lally came out of the Penny Bazaar. Lally waddling behind her mam like a giant duckling. She was holding a red and yellow windmill on a stick.

She smiled at them. Her teeth were as brown and holey as sucked honeycomb. They smiled back shyly, except Bessie who looked away quickly.

Lally waved a pudgy hand at them. She puckered her thick pale lips and blew hot air through them until the sails of the windmill turned stubbornly round. She got bored with the windmill and stuffed it crossly into the pocket of her stripey skirt. Then she stuck her finger into her nostril and began to pick her nose.

They watched her, enthralled and disgusted.

Then she wiped her finger on the sleeve of her blouse.

“Once I saw her eat it,” said Fatty.

“Urgh!”

“And the men who scatter their wanton seed will shrivel and droop,” yelled Bridgie and shook her bony old finger at the Tudges. “And the swollen bellies of the bad girls will burst open and spill out dwarves!”

“Ugh!”

One dwarf. Two dwarves. Another rule, thought Fatty.

Once Iffy and Bessie had seen a dwarf. He was coming out of the toilets in the park carrying a tin bucket.

“Hello,” Bessie had called out in her best bit of posh.

“Fuck off, dirt box!” the dwarf had said.

And they had. Hell for leather, flying up through the park without looking back once.

“They will give birth to monsters and cripples, demons and goblins…”

Mrs Tudge stopped dead in her tracks. Beneath the stripey frock her body wobbled and shook dangerously.

Jelly on the plate.

Jelly on the plate.

Wibble wobble, wibble wobble.

Jelly on the plate.

She turned around slowly and stared at Bridgie. Mrs Tudge was huge, the fattest woman in Wales and probably in the whole wide world.

“You want sodding looking at!” said Mrs Tudge. “You dried-up barren old bitch! Come on, Lally. Stop dawdling and pick your bloody feet up.”

And she pulled daft Lally roughly by the arm and they waddled off together, away past the Punch, scattering a cloud of drunken flies.

“And the eyes of the keepers of secrets will drip out of their skulls and their lying tongues will frazzle…”

The children grinned and giggled, except for Bessie who looked afraid.

Bridgie stared at them long and hard with her boiled goosegog eyes. “Ay, you can laugh! But I know what you’ve been up to, Lawrence Bevan!”

“I haven’t done nuthin!” Fatty called back.

“Ay, I’ve seen you hanging about the Big House peeping into the garden, trying to look upon the statues of the filthy women.”

“No harm in looking is there! The cat can look at the queen you know!”

“Keep away from there! Mark my words. Evil deeds were done in that place!”

“Let’s go,” said Bessie. She didn’t like trouble.

“I’ve seen you talking to that heathen old woman with her cart full of mucky things. I’ve seen you up Dancing Duck Lane. Up to no good! Looking for trouble if you hang around with the likes of her, boy!”

Bridgie turned her gaze on Iffy. “Ay, and you Iffy Meredith. Remember, my girl, there are no secrets from God!”

“I’ve never been near the Big House!”

“I’ve seen you under the bridge, my girl, up to no good…defiling the Lord’s name!”

“What were you doing under the bridge, Iffy?” Bessie hissed.

“Nuthin.”

Iffy looked sideways at Fatty. He looked away quickly.

“The guilty will be punished, mark my words, and that means you two.”

But no one wanted to hear any more.

Bridgie waved her fist and they closed their ears to her ranting and ran away up through the deserted town.

Fatty looked over his shoulder and dived for the shadow of the bridge. He had an eerie feeling that someone was watching him. He peered out of the archway of the bridge. No, he was just imagining it. There was not a soul around. He was worried though. If Bridgie Thomas had seen him hanging about in Dancing Duck Lane then she must have followed him. But he’d been careful and was sure no one had followed him. Besides, he’d nearly always been to Carty Annie’s at night except for a couple of times. Bridgie would hardly be following him around in the middle of the night. He wasn’t worried about her telling Carty Annie that he’d been snooping around because they never spoke to each other. Carty Annie had nothing to do with the church and Bridgie was hardly ever out of it. But what if Bridgie had looked inside the house herself and seen what Carty Annie had hidden there? She couldn’t have though. If Bridgie knew what was inside that jar she’d have run for Father Flaherty and probably the Pope himself. He’d have to be careful now though, keep his eyes peeled next time he went. And he’d been loads of times since that first night when he’d hardly been able to believe his eyes.

For a second, he thought he saw the glow of a cigarette in the darkness, a fleeting glimpse of a shadow crossing the far end of the bridge. He pressed himself back against the wall and waited.

That night in the winter when he and Iffy had drunk the holy water, Iffy had said she thought someone was there. He’d better watch his step. He didn’t want anyone snooping on him and spoiling all his plans.

He waited for a few minutes, clambered up over the river bank and went hot-foot through the gulleys and legged it over a garden wall.

It was the last night of July. Iffy lay in her big bed thinking of what Bridgie Thomas had said that afternoon about there being secrets in the town and that God would punish people.

That afternoon, when Bridgie had stared at them with her green, mad eyes, Iffy had felt sure that Bridgie knew about what she and Fatty had done that night under the bridge.

She heard the stealthy sound of footsteps crossing the parlour outside her door.

Nan came into the room, her smiling face illuminated by the candle light.

She kissed Iffy softly and Iffy felt deeply ashamed of what she and Fatty had done. She wanted to tell Nan, to say sorry about drinking the holy water which was all she had left of her son.

“Nan…”

“Yes, my angel?”

She didn’t though. Nan would go mad if she knew what was in the bottle now.

Iffy listened to the soft shuffle and scuff of Nan’s slippers as she went back through the back parlour, back past the sideboard where the bottle of Fatty’s cold pee stood beneath the withered palm crosses and the holy pictures of miserable-looking saints. She heard the latch lifting on the kitchen door.

Whenever she had to go through the parlour she avoided Granny Gallivan’s eyes. She, like Bridgie Thomas, knew what they’d done. Iffy could tell from the way her sharp eyes followed her, scorching holes between her shoulder blades.

Iffy tossed and turned, sticky with sweat and guilt. She heard the town clock strike midnight and then she slept. And while she slept July boiled over into August and things were never the same again.