Tom looked a lot better and more cheerful the next Wednesday he came round here. Elsie was wary about him, as if he was gonna freak any moment, and she kept jumping up to use the bog.
“Me bladder’s back,” she said. “All inflamed. I’ve got to dash back and forth all night these days. I know you’ve just had your settee recovered.”
I was bloody horrified. Woman of her age! She’s fifty if she’s a day. Though she’s got that scraggy ginger hair of hers in bunches like a bloody schoolgirl. I reckon that’s for Tom. I reckon he must be kinky or summat.
He was brighter than he’s been for months, holding out the posters the kids had coloured in that night at his Rainbow Gang.
“That little Jeff,” he chuckled, shaking his head. “Look! Poor little thing’s gone and coloured carefully between all the lines. But he’s done the whole thing in brown!” He tutted. “By, some of the kids round here are underprivileged. They’ve not half got narrow horizons.”
Now that little Jeff he was on about is from over the way from me. He belongs to Fran, a friend of mine, but I wasn’t going to say anything.
Elsie beamed at Tom. “Tom’s bringing colour back into all their lives.” A thought struck her. “Is that why he called it the Rainbow Gang? Hee hee hee hee!” That stupid bloody laugh of hers.
I was looking at the posters. Tom the ex-draughtsman had designed them. A loaf of bread and some writing. I asked what it said.
Tom sighed. “It’s meant to say, ‘I am the People’s Bread.’ But my ‘I’ came out too elaborate, like. Now it looks like it says, ‘Jam the People’s Bread.’”
“Hee hee hee!” went Elsie again, but I could see Tom didn’t think it was funny. his eyes were hard and that was scary, I thought.
“Silly bugger!” Elsie slurped her tea.
“Elsie,” he warned.
He’d stopped her swearing, smoking, drinking. These past few years since she’s known Tom and the peace Jesus brings her she’s been a different person and very different Elsie to the one I remember. And I remember Elsie from 1976, when my first husband worked down the icing-sugar factory with her husband and she worked in the canteen. There was nowt pious about Elsie then because 90 per cent of the time she was a prossy and pissed out of her head. That’s why sometimes it gets me back up to hear about My Lord this and My Lord that and My Lord the other from Elsie. They’re not even married, the pair of them. Yet they wouldn’t hurt a soul. It’s just that sometimes I can’t face another night sitting hour after hour, listening to their same old crap. So, like tonight, I decide to put something right in their bloody path. I decide to throw me glad rags on.
These’ll do.
FIRST OFF IT’S FRAN AND JANE AND DAFT NESTA TURNING UP, ON THE dot of six o’clock. Fran wants to help with any sandwich-making or table-laying. Jane makes a beeline for our Andrew, who talks to her politely and takes the ladies’ coats, and Nesta starts helping hersel’ to the cider.
The lasses are all dead glad to be here for the night. It takes a lot of planning for them to get away from their kids. Luckily nearby we’ve got Liz’s old house. She was a neighbour who moved away, but her way-out daughter Penny has set up a kind of squat for all her weirdo friends. Penny’s good with the bairns, so odd nights like this, their squat becomes a creche. It’s ever so handy, really, and I’d had a look in—even though I‘ve got no young bairns—and I must admit, for a squat it’s immaculate inside.
Fran’s having trouble with her husband who’s drinking still and she’s telling us all about it as she looks for something to be of help with. But I’m distracted ’cause there’s banging at the back door again. I yell to Andrew to put some music on the hi-fi and then there’s more guests arriving—the Wrights. They’re a dirty, smelly family from by the garage but, as I say, it takes all sorts and this is a party and they’re friendly enough. Then it’s the Kellys from over the flats, back of us. Jane was reckoning on they were heading for divorce and she had her beady eye on the husband, Mark. He’s a skinhead, tattooed head to foot, arse to elbow, by all accounts. Jane doesn’t have a man. She went a bit doolally last summer and ended up doing a nude fan dance on her roof on Saturday morning, but she’s all right now. I dunno how she climbed up there without owt on.
Anyway, the Kellys seem happy enough tonight, coming in with her mother Peggy and some young bloke she says she lives with, across town. I’d bet money it’s her toyboy, although she cracks on he’s her houseboy. Ay, right.
Andrew’s put on Elton John in the living room and when the place is filling up nicely, ‘Don’t Go Breaking Me Heart’ comes on. It could be 1976 all over again. When I was getting me divorce and every now and then I was going proper wild. Everyone’s getting a canny bit of drink and having sausage rolls and that. That tattooed bloke even grabs me for a bit dancin’! Whey, everyone knows me round here, working in the shop, like.
Then there’s Jane’s mam and stepdad, Rose and Ethan, this old bloke with a wooden leg, coming in, and then our Joanne, back early for my do, from wherever it is she’s been. She gives us a peck on the cheek as that tattooed Mark whirls me round and then she goes over to get Andrew to
