Dear God (8 page)

He set off home, longing for a drink and for someone to let off steam to. He paused on the way home to buy a few food and drink essentials, cornflakes, a large pork pie, bottles of beer and so on with some of the £300 from the Social Services men, which he discovered he had with him. When he got home he was greeted enthusiastically by the cat and settled down to have a calming drink. What a day! He pondered his options. He had no idea when the Protect and Save would be open again. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe they’d gone on holiday. Who knows? He thought of the credit card company. He had to pay that money. He’d told God he would pay them. It was a Debt of Honour.

He found the envelope they had sent him. He needed to send them £4,097. Slowly, he began to put 82 £50 notes into the envelope. It was no use. It just wasn’t big enough. Once more he had been defeated by organisational incompetence. Grumbling and muttering, he thought what to do. He looked again at the large brown envelope in which the money had originally been given to him by the lorry driver. There was still money in there of course. There was no name or address on it. He could use that. So slowly, carefully, he began to sort it all out, putting 82 £50 notes into the large brown envelope. When he had done that he remembered that the credit card company had demanded £4090. There had been a sizeable fee for delivery, on top of the bill for his umbrella and so on. He looked at the money he had been left by the Social men and also whatever money he had left of his own, plus the £1,000 left over from the lorry driver. He could only assemble £4,100 but it would have to do. Feeling rather grand and rich he inserted the paperwork from the credit card company and signed it, writing ‘Keep the Change’ in big letters across the form. He signed all the bits that appeared to need a signature. He sealed the envelope, relieved at having done his duty.

At that point, he realised he had put the piece of paper with the credit card address on it inside the brown envelope. Anger welled up again but there was absolutely no-one he could blame for the incident but himself. He calmed down with relief when he found he still had the empty envelope from the credit card company. Carefully, he copied the address. He wondered if one first class stamp would cover it. Probably not, he thought, they get you for everything these days. All he had to do now was buy the stamps tomorrow and send it off.

He did wonder if they would be annoyed at getting their money in cash but the thought did not really trouble him. People were glad enough to get any money back, he reckoned; they weren’t going to say no.They should consider themselves lucky to have got it at all. With that thought still uppermost in his mind, he went to the kitchen to make himself a meal. Ginger came with him.

He had another fry up of sorts, which was quite filling and satisfactory, and fed the cat, who seemed to like cooked sausage as much as raw. Remembering the laundry he wondered if any of it would have to be ironed. The bed linen could go straight onto the bed, no question. T-shirts – no, underwear – no – trousers? His old blue trousers that he had been wearing before the arrival of the cream, red-striped ones? Yes, perhaps they could do with a bit of smartening up, he reckoned. But that was all. He gathered up the sheets, pillow cases and, with what turned out to be a duvet cover, he set off upstairs. There he discovered the irritating difficulty inherent in putting a duvet cover onto a duvet; in the end he completely lost his temper and just laid the cover on top of it. ‘That’ll have to do,’ he told Ginger, who had come upstairs with him. But the room looked a little fresher and cleaner for his efforts. He wandered into the other bedroom, which didn’t contain anything much, just a few bits and pieces of furniture and a large rug. He looked out of the window. He looked down at his garden, which seemed to consist of unidentifiable rubbish, with an old, broken-down shed at the bottom, next to the gate which led out to the alley beyond.

“Garden’s a disgrace, Ginger,” he said. “P’raps I’ll try to clear it up a bit.”

He looked at Mrs. Brenner’s garden. That
was
a garden, a proper garden, with flowers and things. Already it was beginning to look a bit overgrown.The grass needed mowing, bushes needed cutting back, the hedge needed clipping. He remembered God’s instructions – TLC for Mrs. B. and he, William, had to start to ‘do something more’. It wasn’t something he would have chosen to do, he knew. What did he know about gardening? Anyway, he hadn’t got any gardening tools. But wait, there might be something in the near-derelict tumbledown old shed at the bottom of his own garden. He didn’t think that he’d ever been in it, actually. There could be something left by the previous tenant. He’d have a look tomorrow.

With that thought he turned, went downstairs carefully, because of the cat, and set off for the pub.

The pub was not a success that night. They were holding a quiz and he and Jimmy hadn’t got a team and no-one seemed to want them to help make up theirs.They shouted out whatever they thought was the correct answer whenever they could but it never was and they gave up after a while. ‘Quizzes,’ said Jimmy, “get in the way of intelligent conversation.’

“Yes,” said William, mournfully. “They’re not interested in the right answers, anyway.”

“No,” said Jimmy. “They just make ’em up.”

As he made his unsteady way home that night, he began to be beset by unwanted thoughts. Why had he been thrown out of so many places? Twice he had been ejected from the big supermarket, once when he was, wrongfully and embarrassingly, accused of shoplifting and once again, when he was on his mobility scooter and had actual money to pay for things. Twice he had been thrown out of the library, the last time just for asking for a bus pass. He couldn’t remember what the problem was the first time. He’d thrown the social workers out of his house at least once. Wherever he went there were always rows. Why were there always rows? Why didn’t he have friends, other than Jimmy Donovan? And he didn’t count him as a friend, you couldn’t talk to Jimmy Donovan. The man was basically an idiot. He was just there as a drinking mate. He did remember Mrs. Brenner’s reference to ‘my friend Mr. Penfold’ though and that cheered him up a little.

When he let himself in Ginger met him in the hallway and began to demand food and fuss. “Well, it’s you and me against the world I guess, Ginger,” he said. He fed the animal and took a couple of bottles of beer back to the sitting room, with some cheese biscuits he’d forgotten he’d bought. He sat on the sofa in a cloud of grumpy self-pity.

“Do I drink too much because I’m miserable, Ginger, or am I miserable because I drink too much?”

The cat did not express an opinion but went to sleep next to him. Usually anger welled up inside of him, anger at everything that gone wrong, that had landed him in this kind of purposeless life, anger at everything and everybody, but tonight the fires were muted, stilled. He was afraid. Did that mean that the demons were coming, that depression was slowly creeping up on him, ready to bring him down? Was he due for another spell in the place with the red curtains? What had they done there? Had they been trying to get him to drink less? Or was it a place where you learned to stop being so angry and recall the past? He opened another bottle whilst he considered this.

After five minutes’ earnest consideration, he said, “Load of nonsense. Well, bedtime, Ginger, where are you going to sleep?” The cat elected to go with him to the foot of the stairs and, very unsteadily in William’s case, they both climbed to the top and went into the reasonable tidy front bedroom, with the clean duvet cover spread out and William’s new pyjamas neatly folded on the pillow.

“Tell you what, Ginger. I’ll see if there’s anything to be done about Mrs. B.’s garden tomorrow. Or mine. And we’ll buy a few more things and see if we can get a bus pass as well. After all, we have got £1,000 in ready cash, £300 from the Social men and over £3,000 in the bank, even if I can’t get at it. What do you think of that then?”

The cat ignored his comments, jumped on the bed and curled up ready for sleep, whilst William pondered the problems involved in having disposable income. He didn’t want to spend it all on drink. Or on food. What was it God had said? ‘There’s more to life than artichokes.’ Very profound. God had told him to ‘Do More’. That non-specific directive had made him angry at first, but, come to think of it, although he could still feel a certain nagging anger that the bank had been shut, maybe it was something to do with their opening hours, he suddenly thought. He’d get a cheque book somehow. It was his human right. And he would ‘do more’. With that he too fell asleep.

CHAPTER 11

The next day dawned sunny and bright. William woke up, for once eager to get up and get on with it. He wasn’t sure what ‘it’ was, but he knew he wanted to do something. He had a shower, got dressed and had fed the cat all before 9 o’clock, which was unprecedented for him. Breakfast was coffee, cornflakes, toast and the proper number and kind of pills as prescribed by the Social men, in their instructions left behind the toaster. Pleased with himself for this foray into normal living, he opened a bottle of beer and took it into the garden.

He approached the tumbledown shed at the bottom of his garden with some trepidation, suspecting that all he would find would be dirt and spiders. Dirt and spiders there were in abundance, but there was also an old-fashioned lawnmower, covered with a protective sheeting, a spade, a garden fork and a pair of rather rusty old shears, together with an assortment of gardening equipment, bundles of string, gardening gloves, baskets, plastic bins, bags and various bottles and packages containing stuff to make things grow and stuff to kill off things that are already growing.

“Bingo, Ginger,” he said. Ginger was interested in the shed and emerged from beneath a pile of old rags covered in a layer of cobwebs and unidentifiable mess that changed him from a ginger to a tabby feline!

With some difficulty, William managed to pull the lawnmower out of the shed, covering himself in hanging cobwebs as he did so, and out into the open space of his garden, where he could inspect it properly. It was an ancient one of a very simple design and there didn’t seem to be anything obviously wrong with it. He could not, however, try it out on his own garden, there being little grass of any description there, only dirt and stones and rubbish, interspersed with the occasional struggling patch of green.

The next problem then presented itself. How could he get into Mrs. Brenner’s property, together with the riches of his shed, in order to carry out his plan of garden maintenance? He pushed the lawnmower up to the dividing hedge, which was rather wild and unkempt on his side, and viewed the situation. He tried to lift the mower, but it was far too heavy for him, the hedge was far too high and he had to admit defeat. He felt a little shoot of anger growing inside him but before it could turn into one of his rages he saw a possible solution. Mrs. Brenner, like himself, had a door at the bottom of her garden which opened on to the alley. Quickly, he went through his own door, into the alleyway, and pushed on her door. It was locked!

Furious and disappointed he returned to his own area, and felt the need for a drink coming upon him. Still angry and muttering to himself, he turned to go into his kitchen to fetch another beer, if there was one. Coming out, bottle in hand, he looked across the hedge which divided her property from his. He had a good vantage point from where he was standing as the hedge was a little lower near the kitchen; there was even a bit of a gap through which he could look straight down over her lawn. He looked long and hard down her garden at the alleyway door. There seemed to be no sign of a padlock on it. Could he just make out a couple of bolts? He could. He was sure he could. So all he had to do was hop over the hedge himself and undo the bolts, then wheel the lawnmower in. Problem solved!

To ‘hop over the hedge’, as he put it to himself, was not the easiest thing in the world for a man of his age (whatever that was) and in his condition. With the aid of a chair from the kitchen, on which he climbed rather perilously, and by dint of hanging onto the branch of a small tree in his neighbour’s hedge, which unfortunately split in two as it took his weight, he did manage to propel himself into the desired area, although he did arrive flat on his back, bedecked with branches and bits of greenery, with his feet in the air. Scrambling, with difficulty, to his feet, he went straight to the door and found, to his delight, that indeed it was secured by two bolts, top and bottom. These he undid, went round to his own home and duly wheeled in the lawnmower. Now for the real business of tidying up Mrs. Brenner’s garden. God had said ‘Do More’ and he was going to Do More.

First he needed that drink, which he had left on the ground near his kitchen. He could see that gardening was going to be hard work, so he brought yet another bottle of beer from the kitchen with him. On the way back, he picked up several bits, useful things, from his shed. He didn’t think he would need a spade, but he took the shears and a plastic bin to put rubbish in, also a contraption to fix on to the front of the lawnmower to catch the grass cuttings. All these things he put in the plastic bin. Thus equipped, he sat down on Mrs. Brenner’s lawn, emptied the bin and studied the situation. The beer was most refreshing. Eventually, he stirred himself and began to mow the lawn.

It was not a big lawn and he began mowing from the kitchen end down to the alleyway door end and back. The lines were a little wobbly, it was true, especially where he came up against the pile of things he had taken from his shed, the bin, the shears and, he realised, the grass cuttings container. He paused to fix this on to the lawnmower, which he did after something of a struggle. He continued mowing a little erratically for a while before feeling that he needed a bit of a rest. He was aching and a little sore from where he had tumbled over the hedge. It was a hot day and he had, it is true, exerted himself rather more than usual. He sat down on the grass and opened the second bottle of beer. Ginger, still covered in cobwebs, joined him, carrying something that he had filched from the kitchen, possibly half a pork pie. Filled with a sense of having done something ‘More’, as God had suggested, something worthwhile, William, also bestrewn with cobwebs and with foliage from his adventurous arrival into the garden, dozed off and Ginger curled up beside him.