by Limmy
I didn’t get upset, though, I didn’t let it show. I kept it light, because I still wanted to say my thing about the bin. I said, ‘Excuse me.’ When I said it, Nick’s son looked at me, but Nick didn’t, even though he heard me. So I said ‘Nick’. I didn’t like doing that, saying his name, because it was like I was trying to get friendly with him, and I knew he wasn’t interested. He’s the type of person that seems to be disgusted by friendship. I remember feeling my pulse racing when I said it, and my hands were probably shaking. I remember yawning to try and make it look like none of it was a big deal, that’s the type of person I am, that’s how much this bin situation was getting to me.
Nick looked around, but kept on walking. So I said, ‘I noticed that you don’t have a bin. Do you want me to phone the council for you and order one?’
Nick said, ‘Naw, mate, you’re all right,’ and away he went.
That was that, then. That was that. I tried, and it was utterly horrible.
I went up to my flat, and I’ll tell you, I was shaking. I didn’t know what to do. I know that might seem like an overreaction over something that seems so trivial, but there was just nothing I could do about the situation I was in, he just wasn’t interested in reaching a solution.
I waited a few days and tried to just not think about it. Then I went out and bought a tin of paint, a tin of white paint, thinking that maybe the writing on the bin wasn’t clear enough. I wrote Flat 3/1 on the top, bigger than what I’d written before in ink. I wrote ‘flat’ in lower case, rather than caps, so that it didn’t look too shouty. And I wrote it on the front of the bin as well. And on the left, and the right. There was nothing else I could do. What else could I do that would say ‘Please, please don’t use my bin’?
I came home one afternoon. I opened the front door to the block and I was about to head upstairs to my flat, when I saw that the door to the back garden was open. The door is always shut, unless somebody opens it to go out into the garden, and the reason for that was usually to go out to the bins.
I walked up the stairs and saw that the door to Nick’s flat was open. So I went up the stairs two at a time to the landing between the second and third floor, to stand at the window that looked out to the back garden. And there was Nick, walking towards the bins with a bin bag.
There are seven bins. Seven. And one of them has Flat 3/1 written on it. Nick knows that he is in Flat 2/1, don’t think for a second that he doesn’t know that. I wondered once if he had got himself mixed up with what number the ground floor is. The ground floor is 0. But if he thinks that the ground floor is 1, then he’d think that two floors up ‒ where he lives ‒ is called floor 3. He would think he was in Flat 3/1 instead of 2/1. But there is no way that he thinks that. He must have Flat 2/1 written on every letter addressed to him, he must be able to see from everybody else’s nameplate on their door. None of that matters anyway, he knows that he didn’t write his address in white paint on his bin. He knows that the bin with Flat 3/1 written on it is my bin.
And yet guess what bin he put his bag in? Guess what bin he made a beeline for, without even thinking twice about it? You guessed it.
When I saw him do that, I said ‘You fucking prick’. It felt so good just to get that out. He didn’t hear me, it was nothing more than a whisper and the window was closed. But it felt so good. I said, ‘You fucking, fucking prick. Nick the prick.’
And then I heard a voice from behind me say ‘Futtin pritt’.
The fright it gave me. I turned around and it was Nick’s wee boy. He was watching me, from just outside his door. He was standing there in a onesie, and he said ‘Futting pritt’ and ‘Nit the pritt’. He didn’t know what he was saying.
For a second, I thought about saying something to the boy, something to try and convince him to say something else. But I knew it was over. I knew that was it. There was no point. I turned to look out the window towards the bin area, and before I even laid eyes on Nick I just knew that he’d be looking at me, I just knew he would. I looked down and he was looking back. I just knew that would happen.
I walked away from the window and I walked up the stairs to my door. I didn’t run. There was no point.
I got into my flat and closed the front door. I opened it again to close the storm doors outside then close the front door again, so that I was behind two sets of doors. There was no point in doing that either, so I don’t know why I did.
I sat on a cushion that I’ve got next to the kitchen window and I looked out the bin area at the back, waiting for my door to be knocked. And then it did. It went knock knock knock. Then it got a bang. Then a bang bang bang. Then he went away.
But he’ll be back. At some point, he’ll be back.
So I waited until it was dark, then I came out here, to the back garden. I opened my bin, I took out Nick’s bags, then I climbed in and shut the lid.
That’s why I’m here. There’s nowhere else to go. You can see that there’s just nowhere else for me to go.
And when he finds me, either tomorrow morning or whenever he finds me, he’ll get the message. They’ll all get the message.
This is my bin.
Mine.
The Other Side of the Counter
Hugh was sick of that lot.
There had been another attack. Another bombing, down in London. And he was fucking sick of them. Not just the ones that did the bombing, but all of them. The lot of them. Even the ones at the shops. Even the ones in Ali’s up the road.
‘After everything we’ve done for them,’ he’d tell his mates.
He’d tell his family as well. He’d tell his sons and anybody they brought around. He’d go to things, go to parties, and he’d tell anybody there. Anybody that agreed with him, he’d keep chatting to. Anybody that didn’t, well, they could fuck off, if they didn’t want to believe the facts.
They hate us.
‘They hate us, you know.’
He could tell when he went to their shops. Even in Ali’s. He could feel them bottling it up. He’d get a smile most of the time, he’d get a smile and a chat and a hello and a goodbye, oh, they’d give him all that. Ali was the nicest guy in the world.
But then Hugh would read the paper, and there it was. A picture of carnage, telling you what they really think of us.
He asked his mates: ‘What I don’t get is why? Why? What have we done?’
The night after the attack, his wife Carol took him to a charity quiz. They were put in a team with some folk that he didn’t know, and he got chatting. He pointed to Carol and said to the guy next to him, ‘She goes to the shop, and they’re the nicest people you could imagine. You’d think they were your best pals, your best friends in the whole wide world. Isn’t that right, Carol?’
Carol said, ‘They are nice, Hugh. Ali’s nice. Ali’s got nothing to do with that stuff down south. Most of them have got nothing to do with that stuff down south. D’you really think Ali wants to kill us? It’s ridiculous.’
It got him fuming when she tried all that. He never raised his voice, but he was fuming. He wasn’t fuming at her, he was fuming at how they’d tricked his wife, even though it was all there in black and white, if she only bothered to open her fucking eyes.
Then, one day, he said, ‘You know what I’m gonnae do?’ He was sitting in the pub with his mates, while Carol was back in the house. He put his drink down on the table and said to everybody around him, ‘You know what I’m gonnae do? And I mean this.’
‘What?’ said his mate Graeme. Graeme couldn’t fucking stand that lot either.
‘I’m gonnae open up a shop,’ said Hugh. ‘You know that wee cafe that shut down, the one right next to Ali’s?’
‘Aye,’ said his other mate Ross. ‘Are you serious?’
‘Aye I’m fucking serious,’ said Hugh. ‘I’m gonnae buy it, or rent it, or, I don’t know how you go about it, but I’m gonnae do it. I’m gonnae drive the cunt out of business.’
His pals laughed, but he told them he meant what he said. H
e was serious. And they realised how serious he was when they saw him inspecting the building.
‘What the fuck’s this?’ asked Graeme, when he saw Hugh inside the empty cafe with another guy. Graeme was passing by on his way to Ali’s.
‘I told you,’ said Hugh. ‘I’m serious. Will you help me? Will you help me get the word out? Tell everybody that there’s a new shop opening up. A good white shop. But don’t say white. You know what I mean.’
‘I know,’ said Graeme. ‘You’re a good man.’
‘D’you know what I mean, Graeme? I’m not saying they’re all terrorists. I’m not saying that the terrorists are terrorists because they urnae white, I’m not saying that. I’m just giving people a choice.’
‘I know,’ said Graeme. ‘You’re a good man, Hugh, I’ve been wanting this for years.’
A month or so later, Hugh was all set, ready to pull the shutters up for the very first time. He had his very own newsagent’s. It was unbelievable, when he thought about it.
He’d needed a lot of help. A lot of advice. Once he sent the word out about what he was doing and why, he couldn’t believe the support he got. Nobody could come right out and say it, though, you couldn’t just come out and say it these days. But there were a lot of good people who’d had it up to here. He’d remind them of the bombings. They’d tell him they knew, they were on his side. Good on him.
He even got help from Ali himself. How was that for two-faced?
While Hugh was renovating the place, Ali would say good morning, and Hugh would smile and say good morning back. Oh, it was all smiles and hellos and ‘All the best with your new shop, let me know if need any stock’, and you’d fall for it. You’d be taken in. You’d be taken in by the good manners, by the please and thank yous. But here’s what was also considered good manners: saying sorry. It was good manners to say sorry for something you’d done, and Hugh could never recall Ali apologising for any of the stuff down south. Not once.
But there would be no need to apologise if they didn’t do it in the first place. Hugh still didn’t understand why. Why did they do it? Why? After everything we’ve done for them. After everything he’d done for Ali. Buying his stuff, buying his food and milk, giving him business on a daily business, giving business to the lot of them. Then the lot of them want to blow you up? These customers, these people that you get to know so well, you can look them in the eyes and want to blow them up? How? Why? Well, it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t be giving him business anymore. In fact, he’d be taking it, and it would be a pleasure.
Hugh finally opened his shop.
He opened it on a Sunday. A Sunday morning, up at the crack of dawn, making sure everything was perfect, making sure there was enough rolls and milk and bread and everything else that people wanted for their breakfast.
He was worried that nobody would come, that they’d stick with what they knew and go next door instead. But he was wrong to worry. There was a queue at the door when he opened up. A queue. When had you ever heard of a queue at a newsagent’s?
He opened the door. Graeme and Ross were at the front and gave a cheer, and the folk behind cheered along.
In came the customers, into his shop. But it was more than a shop. People didn’t just buy their things and go. They’d stay for a chat. He knew he’d made something special. A community. Graeme and Ross and half a dozen more of them stood around near the till, chatting. Speaking their mind. They had to keep it down, though. They had to kick the front door shut in case the talk floated out to the street, because not everybody in the world would agree with what they had to say. You know how it is these days.
The excitement of the first day came to an end. As the days rolled on, things began to settle. There was never a queue again, but there were still a fair number of people through the door in the morning, in to get their stuff for breakfast.
And you had to see the state of them. The state of them that early in the morning. He’d never seen them like that before, and he had to hold back a laugh for the first couple of weeks.
Some of them would come in wearing their pyjamas and slippers. That’s not something that Hugh had ever done himself, he’d never walked out the door wearing the stuff that was just for wearing about the house. But in they’d come, wearing their pyjamas, or stuff they wore as pyjamas, like a done-in pair of joggy bottoms, all baggy at the knees with a bit of chocolate on the leg.
He was getting to know them better, in a funny sort of way. He’d see women coming in, women he’d see at the pub who were normally dolled up with make-up, now with nothing on their face except for a drool at the side of their mouth and all that crusty yellow sleep in their eyes. It was like he was waking up with them all, the women and the men, like he lived with them, getting to see the real person before they got themselves polished.
He’d get people in who’d normally never have a hair out of place. People who’d normally have their hair done up with stuff in it, or combed or straightened or curled, but in they’d come with it sticking up at one side and flat at the other. Some of them would give their hair a wee fix at the front as they came in the door, but they forgot about the back. They’d walk past the counter and turn away down the aisle on their way towards the fridge, and Hugh would get a good look at their hair at the back. It would be flat against the back of their head, because their head had been lying on a pillow all night, and there would be this wiggly side parting that ran up the back of the head from the neck to the crown. Hugh began to notice that some of them looked like the back end of a dog. His pal Graeme was one of them. The wiggly side parting at the back looked like the space between a dog’s hind legs. The crown, where all the hair parted away to show the scalp, looked like the dog’s arsehole. It looked like these dogs with the curly-up tails that put their arseholes right on show. Once you got that picture in your head, it was hard to unsee it.
What a state they were. If only they knew. Maybe they did, and it was a sign that they were comfortable around him, that they didn’t feel the need to get done up to the nines just to nip round to his shop. They’d come over with the sleep in their eyes and with their hair a mess, wearing their joggy bottoms that were all baggy at the knees or with a bit of chocolate on them that didn’t get washed off for weeks. They felt comfortable enough to just fall out of bed and walk around to Hugh’s before bothering to make themselves decent or do their hair or brush their teeth.
And that was something that they all had in common. None of them seemed to brush their teeth. Not before coming to the shop anyway.
He used to do the same thing himself. It made sense. People went to the shops to get stuff for breakfast, and if you brushed your teeth before having breakfast then you’d go to work with your breakfast on your breath. It made sense to just brush them afterwards.
He knew they didn’t brush their teeth, because he could smell it.
Even with him being behind the counter and them on the other side, he could still smell it. The breath would drift over and reach his nose. That morning breath. They all had it. Most of them smelled roughly the same, but some of them were different from the rest. Some of them would have a sour milk smell to it. Some were more tobacco-y. There was a boy in his twenties who would come in, and Hugh thought the boy must have that halitosis. Hugh could have shut his eyes and told you when the boy walked in the door, just by the smell of his breath. He could have done it with a few of them. His pal Ross’s bird had an eggy morning breath, but it didn’t smell like she’d been eating eggs somehow, it smelled like that’s just the way it was. He got to smell hers up close once, when she couldn’t find the tins of soup. He had to come out from behind the counter to show her. He pointed at them, to show her that they were right in front of her, and she laughed in his face with that breath and said that she must be needing glasses.
He got to know them all really well, really quickly, and a lot better than he would have if he hadn’t opened his shop.
Five months later, there was another attack, down south. Ano
ther bombing. It was in the papers. The pictures. The bodies. It was the worst yet, said the front pages, in terms of numbers.
Hugh opened his shop that morning, and waited inside until he heard Ali arrive to open up next door. Hugh gave it a minute, then he walked out, checking across the street and behind him to make sure the coast was clear, before walking into Ali’s.
He saw Ali looking at the front pages. Even though the door had beeped, Ali didn’t look up right away. When he did, he pointed to the papers and shook his head. He was about to say something.
Hugh stopped him and said, ‘You don’t need to, mate. I get it. I get it, and it’s cool.’
Cupid
There was this lassie that John was seeing. He wasn’t going out with her, he was just seeing her. Seeing her around, from a distance. But he wanted to go out with her. He didn’t know her, he never spoke to her. And he wanted to change that.
He first saw her cycling down Great Western Road, free-wheeling down towards the Botanic Gardens. He stopped in his tracks to watch her go by. He stopped so quickly that a guy walked into the back of him and tutted. John remembered that she had green tights on, that first time he saw her. That wasn’t all he liked about her, but he liked that for some reason. Green tights.
Then he saw her on Great Western Road again a few days later. He didn’t notice or care what she was wearing that second time. All he thought was, ‘There’s that lassie again. Who is she?’