Three Angry Women and a Baby

by Kerrie Noor

  Janice glared at him. “Who goes to the library these days?”

  “Well, I do,” snapped the elderly man. “Where else can you wait for the bus in the rain?”

  It was then that Henry appeared.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The Taj

  Closing the library is discrimination against those who can’t buy books.

  Henry was a man hard to ignore. In his youth, he was an alpha man, fast, aggressive and silently seething; now, after years of drinking and grimacing, he was more a grumpy man with an invisible arse, an unshaven granite-like face, and black Rasputin eyes.

  As he arrived for his Friday jalfrezi, he caught a glimpse of his ex and threw her a you’re the last thing I expected to see look, followed by a smile that stopped at his lips.

  Helen said nothing. The last thing she expected to see was her “garlic-hating, tight-arse” ex appear for a curry.

  Cocolder greeted Henry like they went shooting together or something equally sinister, while Tenzam greeted him with a handshake, along with a “your table’s ready,” like they were at the head of a large queue.

  Helen looked at me and mouthed, “Table?”

  I shrugged as Mum, seriously riled, shouted, “There is no room for democracy in literature,” stopping traffic, silencing the sisters, and causing Janice to let out a series of tuts, along with a “now what’s she on about?”

  “If you don’t sign my petition, I’m going to have to chain myself to your belt,” said Mum to Cocolder.

  Cocolder, ignoring Mum, ushered Henry inside the takeaway.

  “Did you see that?” snapped Mum to George.

  George, who was now starting to grind his teeth, silently stared.

  Henry gave a showy you first gesture to Tenzam.

  “The nerve of them,” hissed Mum.

  George, face flushed, hissed, “Let’s just go home.”

  Tenzam, spying the elderly couple hovering about the door, motioned them to go first.

  The couple filed in, followed by a “you first” and “no, you first” from both Henry and Tenzam, until Henry, after a gently push from Cocolder, followed the couple.

  Tenzam looked at Cocolder, noted his get in gesture, and headed in.

  The door closed behind Cocolder.

  “Not one friggin’ signature,” muttered Mum.

  “No wonder,” snapped Janice.

  George raised his voice. “I said we should go home.”

  “Home?” said Mum. “Hardly. That man is going to sign my petition, come hell or high . . . something.”

  “Water,” snapped George, “and why does he matter so?”

  “He just does.”

  “You are being ridiculous,” George said with fire.

  “He’s right, you are,” said Janice.

  “Me? Ridiculous? We have to stop ’em from shutting the library.”

  “And how is going inside the Taj going to do that?” said Janice.

  “Well . . . it just will . . . I know it,” said Mum, looking strangely vulnerable.

  “If you go inside, I am going home,” George huffed.

  “Now who’s being ridiculous?”

  “Don’t call me ridiculous,” said George.

  I looked at Mum’s smudged face paint; she looked small and lost. I felt for her. I wanted to wheel her into the Indian and shout, “Just sign the fucking thing.”

  But I didn’t. Instead, I touched her arm, causing her to huff with a glare.

  “Come on, let’s go,” I said.

  “Et tu, Brute?” She sniffed.

  “Baby Bea needs you,” said Steven in a soft voice.

  Mum, turning the back of her chair to us, shouted at the wall, “I’m going nowhere.”

  George made to push Mum to the car. She grabbed his arm and was about to say something when George let go . . .

  “If you’re staying, I’m going,” he said.

  “Brutus . . .” she muttered.

  “Don’t give me none of your Shakespeare shit. I have pushed you around all week in that smashed-up pumpkin get-up.”

  “Hardly all week,” said Mum, “and it’s a ghost get-up.”

  “Taken you to your friggin’ card night, let you win.”

  “You didn’t let me win.”

  “Persuaded them all to sign your stupid petition, which we all know won’t make a blind bit of difference.”

  Mum flashed her chair around to face George. “How dare you.”

  “I will dare all I like. You know why?”

  Mum pulled a go on, tell me—as if I care face.

  “Because you have no gratitude.”

  “Pfff,” huffed Mum.

  “No sense of . . . of . . . how I help.”

  “I didn’t ask you.”

  “Mum, stop it,” I said.

  George shook his head and, with an “I’ve had enough,” stomped to the car.

  “George . . .” I shouted.

  “Come on, George,” said Steven, who was now jostling a hungry-looking Baby Bea.

  “Leave him,” huffed Mum.

  George slid into the car and turned the ignition on. We watched as he pulled away, his jaw clenched, staring ahead . . . except for Mum. She turned her wheelchair towards the takeaway and headed for the Taj door.

  No one saw her push in until she was stuck halfway.

  “Can someone give me a push?” she shouted, just as Amy and her partner appeared from the corner with a couple of wine bottles clinking in a co-op bag.

  Helen’s face fell.

  “Mum,” said Amy, looking uncomfortable, “what are you doing here?”

  “What are you doing here?” she said.

  “We’re having an Indian with Dad.”

  Helen looked like she could smash a window, and then when she heard that Henry had been shouting them to a “sit-in Indian” the last few Fridays—to discuss the wedding—she looked like she could smash a greenhouse.

  “He thinks he’s helping,” said Amy.

  “Helping? As fucking if,” she said.

  “Since he gave up the drink, that’s all he wants to do. He even gives us a lift home after.”

  “You’ve got to admire the guy,” added Gary, Amy’s partner.

  “Giving up the drink,” said Janice, “is not easy.”

  “Admire fucking him?” hissed Helen.

  Jesus, I thought, World War Three on all fronts . . .

  “Can someone give me a push here?” said Mum.

  The two sisters, with a few giggles, pushed Mum in . . .

  The door closed behind, followed by a crash, and pretty soon after, the fire alarm . . .

  The next morning, Mum was in the hospital and George was nowhere to be seen.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The Breaking of a Wheelchair

  How can the community carry on with services cut like an umbilical cord?

  Helen was the first to go in.

  Steven, clutching Baby Bea, and I followed . . .

  Mum had skidded, swirled, and toppled—crashing into a tandoori mixed grill—and there was chicken shashlik everywhere . . .

  Crunching on a sea of poppadums, we entered . . .

  Mum, small and frail with a suspicious-looking twisted leg, was staring at the ceiling beside her upended wheelchair, wheels spinning maniacally.

  The elderly woman, refusing Tenzam’s “let me,” was perched precariously on a chair and flapping her paper napkin at the smoke alarm.

  And Helen and Henry, in sync, were silently wrapping towels about Mum like they knew what they were doing.

  The cook entered, wiping his hand on his apron, pulled a broom from the corner, and knocked the alarm from the ceiling, sending it flying across the room.

  “Jesus,” muttered Steven.

  “Any more towels?” said Helen, without looking up.

  “Here,” whispered Henry.

  She slid one under Mum’s head, tenderly picking fried rice from her forehead. “Comfortable?” She smiled.
<
br />   Mum moaned in pain.

  Tenzam bent into her face. “The ambulance is coming.”

  Mum, dazed, looked up. “George?”

  “He’s gone, Mum,” I said. “But I’m here.”

  “Bugger,” she muttered.

  Mum spent the night in the hospital. Her wheelchair, thanks to a tray of dips, several Cokes, and a pint of Indian beer, was out of action.

  The ambulance had taken several hours to arrive, in which time Mum flitted in and out of painful consciousness, talking about the “war on Libraries,” “where would we be without books.”

  Then, when her head began to “bang like a drum,” “newspapers read by headless chickens” at which point Cocolder headed into the kitchen, shouting for an ambulance on his radio.

  “It’s five minutes from here—what are they doing, pumping up the tyres?” he shouted, then returned shamefaced, explaining that there was “a road accident requiring more than one ambulance.”

  Steven took Baby Bea home, while I waited for the ambulance and Amy explained what she saw . . .

  The tombstone, having been pushed into a smaller shape by the sisters to fit through the doorway, had toppled about Mum like falling bricks as she burst in.

  Mum couldn’t see a thing.

  She collided into the counter as the skeletons, flapping like scarecrows, sent a tray of drinks flying.

  “Beer spewed everywhere,” said Gary with dramatic animation. “Over your Mum and her wheelchair.”

  “Fizzing,” as Amy put it, “the controls . . .”

  The restaurant was a tiny place, with several tables placed as best as possible, making movement between tables limited to stomach-held-in sashay-walking.

  A movement which Neff, Tenzam, and the regulars were expert at.

  Mum, having never been in the restaurant, was no expert; she had no idea that a table was spitting distance from the door, and as she tried to control her chair, she, catching the tablecloth, set off a collision of movements that in the end was the demise of two deluxe mixed tandoori grills, a tray of dips, and a korma-splattered lap of the elderly gentleman.

  “I guess those wheels aren’t slip proof after all,” muttered Amy.

  “Nothing is,” said Gary, “when spinning like a Catherine wheel, which apparently is the effect of beer and Diet Coke on the electrics of an old-fashioned motorized wheelchair.”

  Before Mum could stop the spinning, the drinks cooler was hit, toppling dips onto Tenzam’s path, who, entering with two smoking plates of tandoori mixed grill held high above his head, skidded with the precision of a goat on ice—sending the tandoori and Mum flying.

  As smoke filled the room, the wheelchair zoomed towards the kitchen. Mum, who, according to Gary, “looked like a startled chicken,” grabbed the nearest thing: the tablecloth underneath the elderly gentleman. Before the gentleman could grab his Zimmer, korma, like melted play dough, had plopped onto his lap.

  Mum crashed into the plate warmer and ricocheted into the toilet door, which then propelled the wheelchair backwards and Mum onto the floor between two steps.

  And the older sister filmed it all on her mobile, until her mother clipped her over the ear with a “now look what you’ve done.”

  “Jesus,” I muttered, peering into Mum’s sweaty brow.

  The next day, the sisters, clutching flowers, visited Mum. Mum was snoozing at the time, but Janice was adamant they were to do what they came to do.

  “Go on,” she said.

  The sisters gingerly slid the flowers onto her bed and made to run, when Mum, with a snort, woke up.

  “A daisy from a daisy.” She smiled, high on painkillers.

  “Say sorry,” snapped Janice.

  Mum held up a wobbly hand. “All in a day’s work.”

  “Tell her you’re sorry,” said Janice.

  “Sorry,” muttered the sisters in unison.

  Mum’s eyes fluttered shut; she snored.

  “She keeps doing that,” I said.

  Mum’s eyes flashed open. “George,” she shouted.

  “He’s not here,” I said.

  “George? Is that you?”

  “Mum, it’s me.”

  She grabbed my hand and nearly broke it. “We have libraries to save—put it away.”

  “Mum, it’s me,” I said.

  “Go on, tell her,” Janice said to her girls.

  “I think she’s gone back to sleep,” I said, feeling for the sisters.

  The elder sister shifted uncomfortably.

  “I can’t think with that thing dangling . . .” Mum laughed manically.

  “She’s hallucinating,” said the patient in the next bed, “been doing it all night.”

  The patient who went by the name of Madge was a middle-aged woman with unruly straw-blonde hair and a white hospital nightdress that gaped at the back. She looked like the sort who drank vodka without any tonic and couldn’t stop at one.

  Madge rang the bell. “She’s doing it again,” she shouted.

  Janice pushed her daughter forward. “Go on.”

  “Yes, go on,” said the youngest.

  Janice threw her look. “And you can keep quiet.”

  The nurse appeared at the door with a huff. “It’s the painkillers,” she shouted from the doorway, “it’ll wear off soon.”

  The nurse looked at me. “Then she can go home.”

  “Finally,” snapped Madge with a dramatic collapse onto her back. “I am exhausted.”

  “I said put it away, George . . .” Mum laughed and began to snore again.

  “It’s all away,” the nurse shouted at mum, still by the doorway. She smiled at me, her face softening. “Wouldn’t worry, happens all the time.”

  “Well, that’s a big help,” huffed Madge, now staring at the ceiling.

  Janice nudged her daughter. “Tell her!”

  The oldest sister stepped forward.

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done it . . . didn’t mean to, won’t do it again . . . I just . . .”

  She looked at her mum; her mum nodded for her to go on. With a deep breath, she raced through her words . . .

  “I put it on Facebook—but I was going to take it off again . . . meant to . . . but . . .” A tear rolled down her cheek. “Too late now.”

  Silence . . .

  “George?” Mum peered at the ceiling.

  Neff rustled in, dumped a box of after-dinner mints by Mum’s bed with a “from Tenzam,” pulled up a seat, and looked at me.

  “Everyone’s seen it,” she said.

  “What?” I said.

  “Facebook! It’s on Facebook.”

  The two sisters disappeared behind their mum’s back. This time Janice shielded them.

  “Your Mum on that wheelchair, Tenzam’s skid, the fire alarm flying across the room . . .”

  She sat back and looked at her audience; even the nurse was listening.

  “I’m not in it, of course.” She huffed. “I had a korma, two jalfrezis, and a madras to deliver; by the time I was back, it was all over, bar the moping.”

  She stopped.

  Janice was in full blush.

  “But I must say,” said Neff, “whoever filmed it did an excellent job. First-rate comedy.”

  “Right, girls, let’s go,” said Janice.

  “Facebook?” murmured Mum in her sleep.

  “It’s okay, Mum, go back to sleep,” I said.

  “There’s a video on Facebook?” said the nurse.

  “George! George! George!” shouted Mum.

  Madge let out a loud tut, then tossed a paper cup at Mum; it bounced off her shoulder.

  Mum’s eyes flashed open. “The codpiece. I dreamt it was on Facebook.”

  “Codpiece?” said Neff. “I thought we got rid of that thing.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Another Bonfire

  When it comes to a codpiece, age is no barrier.

  Neff’s codpiece was a fine piece of equipment: the sort of equipment that inspired so
ngs and poems, that spun legends and jokes and the sort of equipment Neff had tossed aside like an old bra.

  It was ten years ago when I first saw it. Mum and I were at a wrestling match, and Neff was set to perform. Neff had fallen out with her then-partner Rodger, and he was determined to win her back by abseiling in the middle of a wrestling match wearing the codpiece over a panda suit . . .

  Why Mum was hallucinating about that, I had no idea.

  As I arrived at Mum’s house pondering Neff’s exaggerated codpiece stories (usually told after way too many home brews), I caught sight of Helen peering from the kitchen window.

  She waved me up. She seemed anxious and wanted to know how Mum was, and when I told her about the codpiece, she feigned a laugh.

  “Oh, that?” she muttered.

  I told her about the wrestling match as she, deep in thought, prepared coffee. She wasn’t really listening. She was in a thoughtful mood that only performing first aid with someone who abused you could do. It can be very confusing when someone who has treated you badly for years acts like a decent human being. It can shake your defenses harder than a car crash.

  I watched her pull coffee from the cupboard. Beside it was a bottle of wine.

  She stared at the wine . . .

  “Henry was visiting your Mum when I walked in,” she muttered. “He was holding her hand like they were bosom buddies.”

  “That’ll be the painkillers,” I said.

  “He looked so . . . human,” muttered Helen. “He even smiled at me.”

  “It’s only natural after, you know . . .”

  “Like he meant it,” said Helen, “and I hate to say it, but I smiled back.”

  I was about to say “It’s only natural” again and stopped. She looked confused and, it seemed, disappointed in herself. I had no idea how to help, so I poured us both a glass of wine, pulled a box of chocolates from Mum’s secret stash, and began to talk about the first time I saw the codpiece.

  I described with as much exaggeration as possible how Rodger, a man Helen knew as the mildly camp artist, abseiled into a hall full of children young enough to think an expanding codpiece was a jack-in-the-box in the wrong place.