The Bluebird Café (3 page)

The following day it poured and Gilbert decided to go out and even to look for a job. He always went out when it rained because there was rarely anyone about, just deranged women carrying drenched baskets. He walked around town, then, motivated by the free tea, he crossed the city to Shirley, walked up Shirley High Street to where the job club was held. One of the only people ever to do what he was told at a Restart interview.

After eight and a half years of unemployment, Gilbert's job-hunting was suddenly successful. The job club was held in a disused church. The pews had been ripped out and sold, and Gilbert sat in a white plastic garden chair and looked at newspapers and drank cups of tea. After a few weeks he applied for two jobs, both with the City Council who claimed to pursue a policy of Equal Opportunities. It seemed that they did, because although Gilbert was short, dandruffy and had no formal qualifications, he was offered a job as a Refuse Sack Delivery Person. Perhaps the years he'd spent in a Sheltered Workshop painting miniature cottages had equipped him with the ‘transferable skills' the interviewers were looking for, perhaps it was the endless days he'd spent shuffling around Southampton; Gilbert didn't know what did it, but he was very pleased.

He rose at six each weekday morning and missed the Wayside's cooked breakfast. He walked to the depot where the dustcarts lurked beside huge sheds and a site manager gave him an allocation of bags. He rode in splendour to each of the day's areas. His job was to walk through the streets and drag the full bin bags into gangs on street corners and leave the shiny new liners for people to find in ‘easily accessible places'. He shoved them through holes in gates and wedged them in fences and letter boxes. He had to work fast to keep ahead of the dustcart and the rest of the crew. He risked their wrath if they
caught up with him. They aimed to be home and cleaned up as early as possible. His job was tiring and dirty. Despite gloves and his cap, his hands, hair, his whole self smelled permanently of garbage. The bin bags split or sometimes were left open so that nappies, cat litter, tea bags and cans with jagged edges cascaded on to his council-issue boots. The men who followed him, heaving the sacks into the truck, were brawny and matey. Sometimes they joked with him and called him Bert the Bags, but his inferior role as a bagger and dragger meant that he was never really one of the lads. His lack of height and strength made promotion unlikely.

After a while Gilbert got into the swing of the bins. It was sunny and he began to love his job. He became familiar with his rounds and knew each garden, which hedges had birds in, the friendliest cats and who put out the neatest sacks. He tried to be speedy. There was hope of leaving the Wayside (but where for?) and the daily pleasure of lunch at the council canteen, which was very cheap.

Gilbert could choose from dozens of dishes. Not everything was swamped by grease or water, there were great puddings, and exotic things like moussaka, chicken tikka in sandwiches, and pasta that wasn't macaroni cheese. Sometimes they had theme days and the canteen ladies pretended to be Spanish or French or even Mexican. He filled his pockets with sachets of sugar and little tubs of UHT cream.

Gilbert heard that people gave the binmen tips at Christmas and he hoped his job would last that long. At the Wayside he became one of the workers, and some people envied him. He wished that he, like the cake packers, could bring home spoils, but the only things he found and kept were books with mould-spotted
covers. He picked over the remains of shoes, but they were always the wrong size (few men take a six and a half) or were too blatantly women's. One day he found a Chinese paper parasol that smelled deliciously of toxic paint. It was decorated with peacocks, and although it was stiff to open and had a spoke missing, he took it back to the Wayside, intending to give it to the girl next door – she could use it to shield her baby from the sun – he just had to catch her eye first.

On Saturdays Gilbert didn't lurk in the precinct any more. He slept late and just went to the park instead. His crew had yet to ask him out for a drink, but they seemed pleased enough to see him each morning and no longer yelled at him for being slow. At night he had no trouble getting to sleep.

Gilbert was fascinated by the homes where he left his sacks. He loved going into other people's gardens; he'd rarely got beyond the gates before. On Wednesdays his round was on home turf, the inner city, the poorest part, the former red-light district, which was now populated by students, Asian families, and a few drug dealers and prostitutes. The houses were crumbling Victorian and Edwardian, homes built for dockers. In one window a Barbie in a cut-off wedding dress stared sadly into the road. Gilbert didn't know that she was inviting people into a brothel. There were mango stones – huge, hairy, sucked lozenges in the gutters – and students' bikes with detached wheels chained up in the yards. Gilbert was thankful that the Wayside had huge industrial-size bins – he didn't have to drag that rubbish on to the pavement. He'd lived in the area for years, but he was only now up early enough to see its secret early-morning world. At a quarter to nine (early by local time) a trickle of children started on their way to school. It soon became
a flutter, a flurry. The girls wore silky suits in vivid and pastel colours. Gilbert would stop to watch them, a flock of butterflies, of magic hummingbirds, nourished on coriander, pistachios, jalabis and 10p mix-up, while lollipop ladies directed them safely across the paths of juggernauts. The girls ran through the dust in their patent-leather shoes, their glossy black plaits beat against their sugared-almond backs. Who were these beautiful creatures of the morning, Gilbert wondered, and why were they always wearing party dresses?

As Gilbert grew used to his job he became more and more familiar with individual houses. He could tell who had cats or children, who was neat. Each house was meant to get two bags, businesses got more, but Gilbert started to award extra bags to houses with nice gardens or children or cats. He penalised houses whose bags were split or filled with empty Skona lager cans and bottles. Points were lost if an expensive car or, even worse, a windsurfer was outside, or if the front garden looked newly concreted over. Children's bicycles were worth an extra sack, hedges with birds' nests scored the highest. After a while some houses were getting four or five bags a week, others none. Gilbert was annoyed by tardiness, so the Bluebird Café lost out.

Gilbert liked the exterior of the Bluebird, the pretty painted sign and the bright colours. He wanted to go in, but it never, ever seemed to be open. It claimed to open at eleven o'clock, but Gilbert was beginning to have his doubts. It was closed on Sundays, and closed at 9 p.m. each night.

‘What about breakfast?' he railed against its bolted door whenever he passed. What sort of café didn't bother to open? If Gilbert had a café like that he'd open at seven sharp every
morning, come rain or shine. There would be tea and toast and Full English Breakfast all day. He got angrier with it as the weeks passed, leaving them four, then three, then two and then no bags at all.

Lucy, can I ask you, what's this about?' John Vir handed her a crumpled bit of computer printout. SOUTHAMPTON CENTRAL COLLEGE STUDENT'S INTERIM REPORT. The creases had turned grey.

‘Are you sure you want me to see this? Gurpal might mind.'

‘I'd like to know what you think,' he told her. Gurpal was at the back of the shop, within yelling distance as usual.

‘It might be personal,' Lucy said.

‘But what do you think?'

Lucy read on, but silently. Then looked up, embarrassed. She was aware of John Vir peering intently at her.

‘Well, she is doing well with Keyboard Skills and Childcare, isn't she? Cs are good.'

‘And the rest?'

‘D for Domestic Science. That's not too bad, is it? But maybe you should ask her about the Media Studies, Computing and Business Administration. Perhaps they aren't her best subjects. There might be something she'd enjoy doing more.'

‘What was it she got again?'

Lucy wondered if he found it hard to read the report, or perhaps the tatty computer printout was confusing, or perhaps he just wanted her opinion.

‘Oh, um, well, Fs,' she said.

‘Her mother has written wanting news. What do I tell her?
And what's this?' He handed her another crumpled slip, like an old-style credit-card voucher.

‘Well, I wouldn't give the college a very high grade for presentation,' Lucy said, but he didn't seem to think that was funny.

Dear Mr and Mrs Vir,

Appointment with GURPAL VIR'S personal tutor. Please attend on 27/3 at 18.40 p.m. to discuss your child's progress with his/her personal tutor. Meetings will last approximately 8½ minutes and will take place in the students homebase room. The student is encouraged to attend with you.

Yours sincerely,

Trisha Copperplate (Mrs)

College Liaison Secretary

‘Well, that's tonight, isn't it? I think you and Gurpal should go. Then you could write and tell Mrs Vir what they say. Perhaps Gurpal's missing her. You could tell her that.'

‘Hmm.' John Vir looked as though it hadn't occurred to him that his daughter might miss her mother whom she hadn't seen for almost five years.

‘Perhaps I should send her to join her.'

‘Mightn't Mrs Vir come back?' Lucy asked.

‘I don't think so.'

‘Perhaps if she knew how Gurpal was feeling.'

‘She bought a one-way ticket.'

‘Oh.'

Lucy remembered to pay for her shopping (eggs, five tins of
chickpeas, three bunches of coriander, a veggie samosa as a surprise for Paul) and left.

‘Gurpal, come here!'

Gurpal shuffled towards him, her mouth full of Monster Munch.

‘Gurpal, we're going to your college tonight to talk to personal tutor at 18.40 p.m.'

‘Aw, Dad, why? We never went before.'

‘You never told me about it before. This came in the post.' He fluttered the printouts at her.

‘None of the other dads will go.'

‘Your mother has written for news on you.'

‘What does she care? She never sends us anything.'

‘Why do they have sawdust in buckets? That's not going to put out a fire,' John Vir asked. He was one of the only dads there.

‘For when people are sick in the corridor,' Gurpal explained.

‘Does that happen often?'

‘Yeah.'

It wasn't that surprising. The place stank of Impulse, school disinfectant, photocopying, mud and sick. There were displays of trophies and photos of what looked like the dreariest field trips ever to some flat beaches. In Gurpal's Homebase room, which was also the Domestic Science room, were some more interesting displays on Home Technology.

‘Which bits are yours?' he asked.

‘Um, my class did this.'

Gurpal's diagrams of ‘How To Change A Plug' had ended up in the bin. She had confused the earth and live wires and been ridiculed by the teacher, a small Welsh rodent whose neat
pink fingers itched to cut off Gurpal's oiled plait and trim the results into a neat and practical bob. She had seen Gurpal's filthy pink hairbrush and longed to give it a good soak in Dettox. Gurpal wasn't one of her favourites.

‘Well, I certainly shan't be asking to borrow your hairdryer, Gurpal!' her singsong voice had chimed across the desks.

Gurpal replied in Punjabi: ‘Wouldn't let you, bitch.'

The next project was entitled ‘More Safety in the Home'.

‘I did some of this, Dad,' Gurpal told him. ‘I'll show you my file.' Gurpal's file wasn't one of the ones prominently displayed on Mrs Jones's desk. Gurpal found it in a pile under a double-glazed window where a wasp and two bluebottles had met their ends.

‘Here it is, Dad.' Flecks of Crunchie stuck between the pages marked the file as her own.

‘I didn't know you did this stuff.' John Vir was impressed.

There was a project on baby equipment and one on poisons. ‘Don't be testing either of these out.'

‘ “
Some Common Household Poissons
.”' (He read to himself.)

Bleech

Some Detergens

Cleaning Fluid

Are all very poissonous and should be kept in a safe place. A locked cupboard is a good idea.

Plants and Berrys such as hollyberry and missletoe, laburnam pods ect. also corse death and upset tummies. Salmonelle is a major corse of poissoning. Cook meat and eggs properly. Store food cold. Cooked food on top of raw
food in the fridge too avoid contaminating with bood and germs.

Cook Food Properly
.

Cook all eggs hard and don't use raw ones or lick fingers or eat cake mix. Cook meat for the right anmount and don't heat it up again too many times. Make the oven is hot enough too.

Undercooking food kills too. Kidney beans must cook for 4 hour or more.'

‘Is that right?'

‘What?' said Gurpal.

‘Kidney beans can kill you.'

‘What?'

‘That's what you put here.'

‘We copied it off leaflets.'

‘Must be true then.'

‘Yeah.'

‘Food for thought,' said John Vir, and he realised that he'd made his daughter smile.

‘Come on,' he said, ‘I'll get you some chips on the way home.'

They left arm in arm, forgetting their 8½ minutes with Mrs Jones.

As John Vir lay sleepless and itchy under the orange quilted polyester bedspread that had been part of his wife's dowry, he thought about getting rid of Paul, about raw eggs and undercooked meat. But how could you make anyone eat a raw egg? Hold them down and force them to swallow it? You couldn't put it in their tea. Undercooked meat wouldn't do. He knew
that Lucy and Paul didn't eat meat, and tricking a vegetarian would be wrong. But then poisoning was wrong really, he told himself. He kicked off the covers and stretched out his long, strong legs. Kidney beans might work though … a dinner party … or could he make something and take it round? But what if Lucy ate it and died too? He could sell Paul a poisoned Mars bar, some sort of chocolate that Lucy didn't like. Or give him a cup of tea with ground glass. How did you grind glass? Was there a machine you could hire? How much per day? It was no good, he'd be caught.