Robbo half-opens one eye. The world is green and blurry. And slightly damp. But there is a pleasant earthy smell and a gentle, far off murmur.
Overhead, tall dark trees sway and whisper in the breeze.
‘What did Jak say those was called? Not yews, too tall for that. What was it…’
“Wakey, wakey,” bellows Tudor, his unbuckled sandals and faded chinos wet through with dew but his candy-striped shirt gleaming bright in the morning sun, “time for brekky. I’m taking your orders now. Bit too far for a collection from Ali so I’ll need your dough for a Sainsbury’s trip, I’m afraid. Normal service can resume if you pick a more convenient churchyard.”
Lying next to Robbo, Matchbox grunts, “fuck off,” in Tudor’s general direction and pulls the peak of his baseball cap even further down across his face. Two women, sitting on a bench in airy summer dresses, summon Tudor over.
“Nothing for me, sir,” says Petra, “but here’s a tenner to cover MB’s cider and whatever it is for Robbo. I’ll get myself an energy boost later.”
“And here’s a tenner for me and Hank,” offers Maureen, “I expect himself will be rising soon.”
Hank lies in the foetal position, on the grass next to a gravestone, snoring. Tudor walks off in the direction of the murmur. Robbo sits up.
“Ah, Robbo, welcome to the land of the living… and the dead,” smiles Petra, looking round the graveyard, “also known as Littlemore. Did you sleep well?”
“Er, yeah. Did you?”
“Well,” Petra smiles again, “I just live round the corner and didn’t drink and smoke like you did last night, like a fish stuck up a chimney, so yes thank you, I did.”
“Yeah? Good. Nice place you got here, peaceful…”
“No it’s fucking not,” interrupts Matchbox grumpily.
“Matchbox, please. Have some respect,” reprimands Petra, “this is a place of rest and dignity.”
“I’m trying to rest,” complains Matchbox, “and it’s not me lacking dignity, it’s all you noisy people.”
“Sorry about that MB,” says Petra, “but the whole world can’t just wait for you to wake up.”
An ominous cranking, clanking sound comes from the church tower. Hank looks up anxiously. And the bells ring, four notes peeling over and over. Hanks puts his hands over his ears and runs to the bench to be with Maureen.
“Do you think anyone’s coming, like?” asks Maureen, more to the church than to anyone else.
“Doubt it,” chimes in Matchbox, giving up on hope of more sleep, “just a normal service? Pretty empty, those.”
“Folks these days don’t seem so bothered,” comments Maureen, “even the Blessed Dominic Barberi only sees a proper crowd for funerals.”
“Maybe if your saint guy performed a few miracles for a change. Have you got any of his relics?” suggests Matchbox.
Maureen sniffs, “John Henry Newman is a modern saint. They don’t have relics.”
Matchbox pulls a disappointed face, “or miracles.”
“Ali sometimes goes to the mosque,” points out Robbo brightly.
“Ali? No way!” Matchbox is incredulous, “He’s never religious!”
“Yeah, he is,” says Robbo defensively, “he just don’t talk to customers about it.”
“But he sells booze!” counters Matchbox.
“Only goes to mosque when shop’s shut,” explains Robbo.
“And that’s alright is it?” Matchbox remains sceptical, “from Allah’s point of view?”
“Guess so. That’s between Ali and his God, innit,” shrugs Robbo.
“And Ali gambles,” says Maureen.
“Yeah,” Robbo is on the defensive again, ”but, who don’t have a flutter from time to time?”
“Gambling is forbidden by Islam, Robbo,” responds Petra sternly.
“Well, he must make up for it in other ways…” Robbo tries to think of a way to prove that his friend is, in his own way, religious. But he can’t. If only he was clever like Petra, or even a little bit clever like Matchbox, people wouldn’t always doubt him when he says things.
Petra laughs, “he does appear to be celibate…”
“Hey, Professor Petronella, watch what you’re saying about our Ali!” objects Matchbox.
“Mohammed Ali!” exclaims Hank loudly, raising his voice above the ongoing peeling of bells.
“What you on about now?” groans Maureen.
“The boxer!” explains Hank, without explaining anything.
“He’s dead you idiot!” Maureen tries to shut Hank down.
Matchbox muses over the death of Mohammed Ali, “too young. All those punches did for him.”
“Actually,” says Petra thoughtfully, “people think he died young but he was 74 when he passed. Not bad really. The blows to the head damaged him though.”
She stands up and walks over to a row of gravestones, “Arthur Lancelot… ‘Lancelot’ no way, what a name! Arthur Lancelot Beauchamp, died 18th November 1891 aged 47. John Albert Terence Dickson, died 4th February 1873 aged 19… ‘19’ that’s no age to go. Charlotte Agnes Smith, died 1886 aged 67… that’s more like it, you go girl. Anthony Marcus…”
“Stop, please,” cries Robbo, “don’t want to think about death right now. Too personal.”
Petra turns round, annoyed at the interruption but also realising she should be concerned, “why do you say that Robbie Bobs?”
“Mr Rumbelowe,” explains Robbo, “owe him a bit. For, well, you know, just a bit of blow but, you know, a few bits.”
“Can’t you just avoid him,” suggests Matchbox brightly, “I mean, he’s in a wheelchair, right…”
“Mobility scooter,” corrects Robbo.
“Yeah whatever anyway but if you run upstairs he can’t catch you.”
“Like a dalek…” says Hank excitedly.
Maureen laughs triumphantly, “ha ha, yes! Mr Rumbelowe is a dalek!”
“What kills daleks?” Petra thinks out loud, “you’ve got to strike at his weakness.”
Matchbox sniggers, “I bet he’s into kiddie porn, we could blackmail him.”
Petra rolls her eyes, “no, no, no! You don’t know that MB. You can’t just make something up and accuse him of it. That’s what gets you into trouble. No, you’ve got to find the weak point of his defence and go for that. What would actually harm him?”
“Like cryptonite…” says Hank.
“No, you idiot!” shouts Maureen, “that’s Superman!”
“Don’t think you can harm Mr Rumbelowe,” reflects Robbo glumly, “he’s untouchable, ain’t he?”
“He’s Keyser Soze,” states Hank.
“What?” Maureen looks up to the sky and closes her eyes as if in prayer.
“Kills everyone else. Survives himself,” explains Hank.
“No he’s not!” says Maureen abruptly.
“Call him ‘bums’n’blows’, he hates that,” laughs Matchbox.
“How did he react when you called him that?” teases Petra.
“Well, he would hate it…”
“Oi, MB,” Hanks’ eyes suddenly brighten as he recalls a funny memory, “remember when we sneaked into his shop…”
“When we were kids? Yeah. And he was like, ‘get out, get out you little bastards, you’ll have me shut down’,” remembers Matchbox.
Hank laughs a great belly laugh, “and you tried to make off with that big purple dildo in your school bag…”
Maureen interjects assertively, “Hank! No! I don’t want to hear about Mr Rumbelowe’s dirty shop! He’s a disgusting old man, Mr Rumbelowe… Mr Bumhole more like!”
“Here I am. Brekky is served,” announces Tudor striding across the grass with a big plastic bottle of cider and a box of 12 lagers.
A quiet hum of contentment falls on the graveyard as Robbo – his mortal anxiety ebbing away as the sweet liquid flows, Maureen, Hank and Tudor take a can each, and Matchbox swigs the cider. Petra returns to her reading of gravestones, but quietly to herself so as not to upset the happy drinkers.
“Oh,” Matchbox glares at the bottle, “there’s a fly in it.”
“That’s the one bad thing about summer,” reflects Maureen, “all the flies.”
“Not as many as there used to be,” says Robbo knowingly.
“Seems like more to me,” retorts Maureen.
“Jak said so, she knows about all that stuff. Always on about building homes for bees and creepy crawlies. Getting rarer. ‘Bug hotels’, helped her drill holes in an old crate, fixed bamboo tubes, bugs nests.”
“Your daughter is a clever girl, Robbo,” acknowledges Petra, rejoining the group for what sounds like a more interesting conversation than usual, “the decline in insect numbers could be a complete disaster for us all. Certainly for cider drinkers, you need insects to pollinate apple trees you see. Without them there’ll be no more apples.”
“Yeah, she’s clever alright,” sighs Robbo with pride and sadness, “not a girl, a young woman. She don’t need some old duffer to make insect homes anymore, she knows how to do all that herself.”
Petra puts a gentle hand on Robbo’s shoulder. He shakes it off and, chucking his empty can into a bush, walks off towards the tall trees. The others watch but leave him be.
Robbo finds an old, worn and unreadable gravestone to lean against, and stares into the empty sky.
“Ah,” sighs Petra to herself and quietly recites a poem, “He leant upon a stile, noble, unkempt, old and so weary, in a coat shabby and black-green, he leant and wept, and I think he dreamt of what had been at Littlemore.”
—
Philip Rumbelowe, black wrap-around sunglasses, billowy white shirt and faded yellow ‘Milk Cup Winners 1986’ baseball cap, carefully steers his mobility scooter past a woman pushing a twin-buggy laden with shopping bags.
“Mind how you go young lady, there are thieves about,” and he lowers his sunglasses to wink at her as they pass each other. She hurries on, avoiding eye contact.
‘Welcome to Templars Square Shopping Centre, the shopping destination for our whole community.’ declares a light, London-accented voice as the doors swing slowly open. Philip Rumbelowe drives in. Out of the morning sunshine, through a curtain of refrigerated air, and into the doughnut and bubblegum scented interior.
The Shopping Centre is L-shaped, long and short aisles of shops converging, beneath a square glass dome, at a collection of catering stalls with chairs and tables. Sunshine illuminates the cafes but the aisles are lit by yellow panels on pale blue ceilings with pictures of white, fluffy clouds. The dryness of the conditioned air catches in Philip Rumbelowe’s throat like sugar granules. He coughs up a globule of phlegm that hangs from his lower lip until he wipes it away with his sleeve.
“Morning Mr Rumbelowe,” says a young man wearing a brown ‘Tea4Thee’ apron, “breakfast special?”
Mr Rumbelowe coughs again and nods. He manoeuvres his scooter next to a small, rectangular, off-white table and using one arm, leaning heavily on the hard surface, levers himself up, turns through 90 degrees and lowers himself into an orange plastic chair.
“I remember when cafes had comfortable chairs,” he grumbles to himself and wipes some crumbs from the hard surface, “and tables had tablecloths”.
He takes off his sunglasses and tucks into a plateful of sausages, bacon and beans. No eggs. Mr Rumbelowe is very definite about no eggs.
The chairs nearest the Tea4Thee stand fill up with women comparing prices, photos of grandchildren and great grandchildren, and memories of things they used to be able to buy.
At either side of the cafes are rides and games for children. A miniature bus, with two little seats, rocks back and forth issuing the proclamation, “all aboard, all aboard” on an endless loop. A digital screen, designed to look like a fruit machine, calls out “peaches, pears, whistles, bells” over and over. A robotic rabbit manically pops in and out of a hole, mocking passers by with a chuckling, “catch me if you can, ha, ha, ha-ha!”, and, quietly and more sedately, robotic fish swim around a tank of water while mechanical sticks, with hooks on the end, wait to be activated.
One man leaves a child by the toy bus and tells him to wait while he goes into Superdrug. Another man in black jogging bottoms and a grey sweatshirt walks past three times all the while looking at his phone. Two young women discuss a newly acquired pair of sparkly leggings.
Mr Rumbelowe watches, eyes scanning the scene, peering from under his cap as he chews slowly on bacon fat. He wipes some sauce from the side of his mouth and sips his tea. Not sweet enough. He stirs in more sugar and waits.
—
Matchbox and Petra walk with Robbo through the Rose Hill subway, beneath the ring road, and back to his flat.
“Just to see you’re alright, Robbie Bobs,” explains Matchbox, “have you asked Tudes about helping with Rumbelowe.”
“No. What do you mean? How can he help?”
“Oh, I’m sure he can do something if you ask nicely. But you’d have to swallow your pride,” reflects Petra, “and, you know MB made some money volunteering for tests at the JR. That could do the trick.”
“Yeah,” confirms Matchbox enthusiastically, “good money. Just one appointment a week.”
“Needles?” mutters Robbo.
“Yeah, but you know, you don’t feel a thing. Just imagine the nurses are naked and you don’t even notice, that’s what I do.”
“Matchbox!” half scolds Petra, trying to keep a straight face, “what on earth did I ever see in you?”
“Hey,” protests Matchbox, “I still got it, baby. Anytime you want it, I got it.”
Petra glares at him. They walk the rest of the way in silence. Robbo is relieved. He presses the four digit code to open the street door, mumbles goodbye and trudges up to his bedsit apartment.
The fridge has two cans of lager, both of them open but nearly full. Robbo gulps them down. They’re flat and stale. And looks in the cupboard, behind the biscuits and crisps and jam, for his emergency half-bottle of Vodka.
—
A young man orders a fried egg roll. He looks out of place – with his slicked back hair, a freshly pressed white shirt buttoned nearly all the way up to the collar and a black jacket draped over his arm – but entirely unconcerned.
Rumbelowe glares at him from beneath his baseball cap. And doesn’t take his eyes off him, not for a second.
After finishing his snack, the young man takes a silk handkerchief from his shirt pocket and wipes the yolk from his chin. He strolls towards the exit and, with a brief backward wave of his hand, heads back into the sunshine.
—
Robbo leans over the urinal and tries to piss. Just a dribble comes out. He puts both hands against the damp, slimy wall and tries again.
It’s no good. His stomach is churning so much that nothing, not even the quickly gulped equivalent of fourteen measures of vodka, can find its way out of his bladder. The smell of the not-cleaned-for-days public toilet on a hot summer’s afternoon makes him wretch. Another dribble comes out.
He runs out of the toilet, half falls down a short flight of concrete steps, and squeezes between a couple of vans parked outside the back entrance to Templars Square. The stark brightness of the artificial light and the sweet smell of the air conditioning catches him by surprise.
Robbo doubles up and vomits on the floor.
He runs, stumbles, runs again, until he is sure he is far enough away from the vomit that the security guards won’t lift him for it. Robbo has been fined before for being sick in shopping centres and supermarkets. Sweat pours down his face.
“Peaches, pears, whistles, bells. Peaches, pears, whistles, bells. Peaches, pears, whistles, bells…”
The fruit machine voice, rising and falling and going round and round, disorientates Robbo. Makes him dizzy. He thinks he’s going to fall. So he sits down, cross legged, and stares at a line of dirt on the shiny floor. It goes up and down, like the voice, but more slowly. More like a wave on the sea.
“Oi, Robertson!” barks Mr Rumbelowe across the aisle, “where you been, uh? What the fuck you think you’re doing?”
Robbo staggers to his feet, tries to walk straight but bumps off shoppers like a slow-motion pinball chiming “sorry, sorry” with every collision.
“I had a nice cuppa tea. And then another nice cuppa tea,” snarls Mr Rumbelowe, “and then another. But that one got cold, see, and that put me in a bad mood.”
“Sorry, Mr Rumbelowe…”
“…and I thought to myself, ‘it’s nice here’,” he waves his arms expansively, “‘I’m having a nice day, with my cupsa tea, and I don’t really want anything to spoil it.’ But see trouble is, I have to meet a man – if that’s what the fuck you are – a man who is guaranteed to spoil any day and don’t even have the decency to be on time to do so.”
“Had to…”
“So that spoilt my day. And now here you are. And, naively optimistic as I am, I would like you to unspoil my day and make everything alright. By giving me what I’m rightfully owed. In full. In cash. Ta very much. Nice one.”
“So,” Robbo hesitates, wipes his face on his already sweat-soaked t-shirt, “so then…”
“…you were handing over the cash to a very nice man?” suggests Mr Rumbelowe and holds his hands out to the side, moving them up and down like a set of scales.
“Got some of it…”
“I don’t want some of it! I want all of it. Now, as you may know I am no longer in a personal situation whereby I can, easily and efficiently and with satisfaction of a job well done, break your fucking arms. But sadly accidents can still happen. So just to be on the safe side, if I were you, I’d make full payment.
“Fortunately for you, I have more important matters to attend to over the next few days. So Friday. 4 pm. Not late. Not some. All. It’s so simple my goldfish would get it and then not forget it.
“And as a passionate believer in workers’ rights, I do not approve of out-of-hours working without significant recompence so I strongly recommend that you do not allow yourself to affect my weekend plans.
“And I’ll take what you got now to cover my tea bill. They were very nice cupsa tea. Well worth your money. Ta.”