The Game of Shepherd and Dawse (24 page)

Betty sat on the end of the bed and cried a little. As each tear fell gently down her face, she enjoyed the moment and hoped that Sour Sally would give up knocking and go away. But Sally persisted. Once Betty had finished her cry, her mood changed to her usual no nonsense approach but with a bit a fire added too, due mainly to the pathetic little creature trying to wear her front door out with her relentless knocking. Betty opened the door and stood there with her arms folded and just glared at sour Sally.

“What”!? Said Betty in an uncompromising way.

“Oh Mrs Bottal, Mrs Bottal, Mrs Bottal. Ooooh, Mrs Bottal”! Cried Sally, in a newly found drama queen voice. She would have kept it up for ages if Betty hadn’t told her to stop being such a stupid cow and to spit it out.

“Something awful has happened”, Sally cried in her newly found voice. “It’s Joe, next door, and I don’t think he’s alive”!

With that, Betty stood there as calm as the night, rolled up her right sleeve and gave Sally Sour the biggest wallop around the face she could muster. Sally looked at her in shock and disbelief.

“It’s quite all right dear”, Mrs Bottal told her. “We used to do that to people during the war when they got hysterical. You were freaking out. Do you think you need another one”?

Betty was rolling up her left sleeve in anticipation. Sally took a big step back. She could still feel the outline of Mrs Bottal’s hand on her face.

“No. Actually, I feel much better now. Thank you, Mrs Bottal”, Sally replied in a much calmer voice. She decided to ditch her new way of speaking, as it didn’t seem to be having the desired effect she had hoped for.

“Well, I guess you'd better come in for a cup of tea then”, Betty said in a slightly more sympathetic manner. ‘Don’t be thinking you’ll be getting any cake, though’, Betty thought to herself.

Joe had shown Betty the letter from the council, and Betty would have bet good money that sour Sally had something to do with it. The only reason why Betty invited Sally in was because she wanted to see if she could preen any new information from unwitting Sally about her little exploits.

Betty made Sally a cup of tea, then fished out her best blanket from the Welsh dresser in the next room. She then took the black Panama hat that used to belong to her husband, Frank, off the peg hanging on the wall and made her way for the back door.

“Oh, no! You mustn’t, Mrs Bottal. It’s a horribly dreadful si...”

Betty interrupted her saying, “Don’t be so ridiculous, child. I’ve seen things in my life you couldn’t possibly imagine. Now sit there and drink your tea. I’ll be back in a jiffy”.

Betty respectfully made her way into Joe's garden and walked toward where he had propped himself up behind the coal bunker. She placed the blanket around Joe's shoulders and fastened it securely with a safety pin from her apron. She kissed Joe on the top of his head and placed the Panama on his head. If you were looking directly down on Joe, you would have thought he was asleep. Betty didn’t need to do this for him, but out of respect she wanted him looking nice when they came to take him away.

As Betty started to leave the garden, she noticed the pieces of paper scattered about and stooped to pick them up. It was then she saw what Sally Sour had been up to. One paper was an application for a nursing home called Nazareth House and another was an application for Power of Attorney. Betty was fuming, and if Joe hadn’t just died she probably would have belted Sally Sour around the face more than the once.

Betty folded up the pieces of paper and put them in her apron, reasoning with herself that there wasn’t much point getting too worked up about it seeing that it didn’t matter anymore.

As Betty walked back into the house, Sally stupidly asked in a fake voice of concern, “How is he”?

Betty sat down across the kitchen table from Sally. “How do you think he is, you stupid woman. He’s dead”!

It was going to take a fair bit of work to worm her way into the affections of Mrs Bottal, but this didn’t stop Sally Sour from saying what she said next, as one of Sally’s favourite things to do was to exaggerate her own importance.

“I suppose that since I’m the home help, it will end up being me sorting out the probate side of things”, Sally sighed, her face expressing an ‘Oh, the burden of it all’ emotion. It was the stupidest of things to say and was totally the wrong person to say it to, but Sally Sour just couldn’t help herself.

“Oh, it’s all right, Sally”, Betty countered while gently patting the back of Sally's hand. “Everything's already been taken care of, dear. You needn’t worry yourself about it another minute”.

Betty went to the kitchen drawer and pulled out an envelope.

A somewhat unnerved Sally stammered, “B-b-but I didn’t think Joe had any family left, Mrs B”.

“It’s Mrs Bottal, if you don’t mind”, replied Betty in a way that said ‘don’t even think about trying to worm your way into my affections after what you’ve been up to, missy.’ “And yes, you’re quite right. Joe didn’t have anyone left, which is why he asked me to be the executor of his will”.

Mrs Bottal tapped her finger on the envelope and watched Sally almost frothing at the mouth with her desire to see what was inside.

“It’s okay”, Mrs Bottal said, knowing full well what Sally was thinking. “You needn’t concern yourself. There’s only one beneficiary”. She was becoming more irritated with Sally by the minute so Betty decided to get her out of the house pronto - telling her she had work to do, phone calls to make and that she should just go, though she stopped short of actually throwing the rotten woman out.

Sally Sour put Betty’s tone down to the fact that Sally herself must be the beneficiary and that Betty must be jealous. She told herself this as she walked down to the road, getting more excited by the minute thinking of all the money she was about to inherit.

Meanwhile, Betty made her way over to Angela and Charlie's house to tell them the bad news, and the good news. When they’d gotten over the initial shock and upset, and all had a good cry, Betty handed them the envelope.

“Joe wanted you both to have this”, Betty said calmly.

The hand writing was beautiful and so was the letter. It read:

“
To Angela, my Angel with an ‘A’,

“
I am leaving you and Charlie my house with the only stipulation being that you don’t sell it and spend the money on other things, as this way you will always have a roof over your heads, no matter what. I hope you enjoy as many fond memories as I’ve had while living here. Take good care of yourself and Charlie, as the world’s a much more beautiful place with you both in it”.

He signed it, “All my love Joe”.

A second page read:

“
My dearest Charlie boy,

It has been a pleasure and an honour spending so much time with you. I hope you have learned as much from me as I have from you. Please don’t be sad about me not being here anymore. Life is a one big wheel and people get on and off at different times. This was simply my time to get off.

“
On the top shelf of the wardrobe in my bedroom, there is a small wooden cigar box with some medals in it. I want you to keep the shiny ones and I want you to sell the dull looking one, but make sure you sell it to a medal enthusiast.

“
Take good care of your Mum, little man”.

He signed the second page, “All my love, Bampy Joe”

The dull looking medal turned out to be a Victoria Cross, and it was worth a fortune.

Both Angela and Charlie had started crying again but Angela then said, “You know what, Betty? He really couldn’t have timed it any better”.

Angela softly blew her nose before handing Betty a letter she’d received from her landlord just the day before.

“Dear Mrs Clark
,

“
I regret to inform you that I will not be able to renew your tenancy due to economic reasons. However, because you have made the place look so nice and have spent so much money on it, I will give an extra week’s notice to the usual four weeks – but you still need to be out by the fifteenth of next month”.

Angela’s landlord had always said that he would never kick her out because she was such a good tenant. She had put her heart and soul into that little flat, as well as a fair bit of money. Now that she'd got it looking so lovely, the landlord had decided to capitalise on the situation. As it happens, after Angela and Charlie moved out, the landlord filled the place with foreign immigrants, who ended up trashing the place and refusing to pay any rent.

CHAPTER EIGHTTEEN

MICHAEL STAINS

“
Karma may be a bitch but she never suffers a case of mistaken identity”. ~ Angela Clark

Michael Stains was an unsavoury character. He’d been in and out of the juvenile courts more often than the judges. He’d gotten quite used to the leniency of modern times and come to the conclusion that he was untouchable. Just now, he was revving up his new Yamaha 250 motorcycle – much to his neighbours’ lack of delight.

“Don’t you get killed on that blooming thing”! his mother yelled through the window. “They’ll stop my benefits and then where will I be”? His mother almost bit through the cigarette that was hanging out of her mouth while screeching on, “and don’t get caught on it either. I’ve been up to the courts enough this month”.

“Sod ’em”, came the arrogant reply. “They can’t touch me, bunch of gutless idiots”.

As his mother closed the window and went back to her favorite morning chat show on the television, Michael muttered, “Stupid, fat cow”, under his breath. He then put on his helmet and roared off down the road.

It was either the letter from the council telling Sally Sour that her services were no longer required, or the discovery that she had in fact not inherited anything from Joe that had taken over Sally’s brain. Sally was lost in a world of her own, as she thought about what she would say to the solicitor when she asked about her chance of contesting Joe’s will.

Michael was about to mistakenly ride the wrong way down a one-way street, so he avoided the road by riding along the pavement. Unfortunately, that was the precise moment that Sally Sour chose to step out from behind the overgrown privet hedge that grew in her front garden. There was a sickening thud as the handlebars of the bike whacked poor Sally in the back and threw her toward a parked car. The wing-mirror broke the fall for her neck, and the mirror itself sliced clean off in the process. Sally Sour lay unconscious on the pavement.

Michael was all right apart from the fact that Sally’s accident had bent the handlebars on his bike. But, in due course, he fixed the bike and ended up selling it back to his best mate, lanky Larry, at a considerable loss. Lanky Larry was happy about this until the police came knocking on his door and arrested him for a multitude of traffic offences. The presiding judge at the court hearing gave Larry an extra year in prison for trying to worm out of the charges with his story about it being someone else who was riding the bike that day. He got seven year’s prison in total.

The doctors and surgeons pulled out every stop to save Sally Sour. They had only recently lost a young mother and son who had been in a car accident, and so were determined to save this one. When Sally finally came to, she was buzzing from all the morphine that had been pumped into her, and now the doctor was matter-of-factly telling her what had happened to her.

“The reason why you can’t feel your legs, Ms Sour, is because your spine has been broken and you are paralyzed from the waist down. Your right hand needed metal pins in it and you should regain the use of it, over time. Oh, your voice box was also damaged in the accident and we don’t know yet whether you will get the full use of it back”.

“The main thing though is that you are alive”, the then doctor said in an overly cheerful voice, as if that information made it all better. “You really must have someone looking after you”. The doctor said this while pointing up toward where everyone thinks God resides.

“Meanwhile, the nurses will be round every day to clean you up while we look for somewhere suitable for you to be placed when you leave the hospital. Yes, you’re a very lucky woman, indeed”, he said giving Sally a pearly smile and patting her on her hand with the IV in it.