‘This is the important thing. Education.’ The woman was nodding and jogging the bairn on her knee. God, she can’t have had more than ten hairs on her head. ‘And it’s good for you to have something to occupy you, too, isn’t it?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Kerry said.
‘I remember. Having bairns and being in all day. You need something. I never had the brains.’
‘What’s she on about?’ Ray asked Simon. ‘Scruffy old bitch!’
‘Ay, Kerry’s let her have our bairn on her knee, an’ all! Ah, she’s telling her all about that course of hers.’
‘What for?’ Without realising it, Ray was tapping his foot to the buskers’ playing.
‘And it’s an English course, you say?’
Kerry nodded.
‘I’ve got a grandbairn gonna do her GCSE English this year. She’s very good at English. Spell anything you like. I can’t put two words together so it can’t be my side of the family she gets it from.’
‘I want to go on and do it at university.’
‘Well, I wish you luck, pet. There should be more women going off to places like that. College educations. They reckon it’s happening, though, don’t they?’
‘I’ll do it from home. Part time, like.’
‘That’s good. English. It’s like I told Lisa—that’s my grandbairn, the eldest one—when she was choosing which exams to take in her GCSEs. I said, your maths and your English are the most important ones, pet. That’s what they always ask for. Your writing and your numbers. That’s what you’re gonna need. The teacher agreed with me, like. Lisa took my advice. Will you be doing maths?’
Kerry smiled and reached over to take the bairn, who was getting bored now, sucking on a pulped handful of Flying Saucers. ‘Just the English,’ she said. ‘It’s enough for me.’
Buckling the bairn into her chair, she added, without knowing why, ‘I’m reading The Tempest at the moment. For my course.’
‘Are you?’ The woman was tapping her feet to the buskers now and she looked vague, as if she’d forgotten what they’d been on about.
‘By Shakespeare.’
‘Shakespeare, eh? Well, then.’
‘It’s about a fairy called Ariel.’ Kerry looked about, getting ready to go into Boyes. ‘Well, I’ve only read the first scene or so.’
‘My attention goes,’ said the woman and with her fingers combed her hair which had flapped loose in the breeze. ‘I read a few lines of something and honestly, if you were to ask me what it was about, I’d not have the first idea. It’s just me, man. I’m daft.’
Kerry stood with the pushchair in the hardware aisle and as she stared at the display of little packets of tacks and nails she had tears bursting up in her eyes. Boyes was empty and musicless and so she could hear her husband and Ray, over in the cheap records and ornaments, laughing.
‘It’s about a fairy called Ariel. She bloody lives in books.’ That laughing in Ray’s voice she remembered from school, his accent thicker than ever in mockery.
‘Fucking Ariel the fairy!’ She could almost hear Simon shaking his head. It was as if the bairn were listening in too, she was so still and quiet.
Kerry hardly knew what she was looking at. Screws and pins and needles and that. All different sizes, lengths, types. A short man with a dark tache and a striped shirt came over to her, his nylon trousers whishing up the aisle. His badge said ‘Derek’. ‘Can I help?’
Simon was shaking his head ruefully, his voice taunting. ‘Ariel the fucking fairy!’
‘Sixty-nine pee a pound!’ Ray laughed. ‘Ariel the fucking fairy—69p a pound!’ They both laughed.
‘Washes fucking whiter an’ all!’ Simon said, too loud. Derek kept his eyes on Kerry and waited for her reply, determined not to hear the laughter a few aisles away.
Kerry said, ‘I want to put up a whole wallful of shelves as cheaply as possible.’
‘Listen, listen, man…’ Ray was giggling like a kid, almost painfully, as if he was about to wet himself. They were both in a silly mood, poking through Boyes’ cheap goods. Simon held up two flower-fairy fridge magnets.
‘Look at this fucking rubbish!’
Ray laughed a laugh like a snort either side of his mouth. Simon made the fridge magnets do a dance.
‘Listen, man,’ Ray said, still laughing.
‘Paul bloody Newman’s salad dressing! Looks like his spunk in a bloody bottle.’
‘Ugh, shurrup, man! Listen—Ariel’s tasty dog!’
There was a pause. ‘What?’
They both remembered, at school, when someone would come out with a new word or phrase that would take off. They could become brilliant insults if used right and had to be coined with love. Ray had excelled at buzz words. He laid claim to classics: ‘foy dog’, ‘fester cat’, ‘dipshit’, all had been his once upon a time. He’d hear people all over school, saying his words, laughing. Neither he nor Simon had heard a good one in years. But this had the feel of something good.
‘Say it again,’ said Simon, starting to giggle.
‘Ariel’s “tasty” dog. Like on the poster in Weigh Your fuckin’ Own.’
‘Ariel’s tasty “dog”.’
‘“Ariel’s” tasty dog.’
‘Ariel’s “tasty” dog.’
They laughed again.
Blushing, Kerry listened to Derek telling her how chipboard was her best bet, but she’d have to buy it down Homeplan and cover it with something. Sticky-backed plastic. Thirty-eight pence a square foot it used to be… He rushed for his calculator and slid it out of its smart plastic wallet. ‘I’ve not done these kinds of sums in ages. Hope I can still do them. Now, what lengths do you want?’
‘Ariel’s tasty dog.’
‘The wall’s about twelve feet long. And I want shelves down to the floor… from the ceiling. About five… shelves down.’
‘Have you got a lot of plants and ornaments then, pet?’
‘Books. I’ve got a lot of books everywhere round the house. Thousands of them in boxes. Cluttering up. I want them putting right.’
‘Thing is, the chipboard only comes in eight-foot lengths.’
‘Oh.’
‘“Ariel’s” tasty dog.’
‘So I reckon… do three sets of five, four foot long each.’
‘What? Oh… yeah.’
‘But don’t do them right across, like one long shelf. To make it good, like, urn…’
‘Stagger them?’
‘Do one set, then set the
