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| Carol King , Old Woman in Window, Istria, |
He looked at her for several
heartbeats, his face serious.
“Ya do deserve better. But maybe—‘strue, Ezz--maybe ya naid better’n
me. I’m pretty damaged. Oi lived on the straits. Oi whored to pay for everything. Oi caught the big H. Oi took drugs an’ stuff.” There were some things he was never going to
tell. Never. To anybody. Tom knew, because Tom had seen him that
night, huddled in the doorway, an icy southerly scouring his bones. Tom knew all right. He’d been in bad places
himself. Tom didn’t need to be
told. “Y’re a noice middle class
girl. Ya knaow, proper accent, educated,
noice home …”
“… where my father raped me
several times a week. And beat me
up. A nice middle class home where the
grounds were big enough to mean the neighbours couldn’t hear the screams …”
“Yep. That’s it, exac’ly. You naid someone who has no baggage, someone
noice and normal and straight.”
It came to her in an epiphany that
that was precisely what she didn’t need. “No!” she wailed. “What I need is someone like you! ‘Cos you understand!”
A voice came from the window in the three-storey
Victorian brick house which backed onto their building.
“Can youse two get on with
it? I main, ther’re paiple tryin’ to
slaip here. Take him home, darl, an’
fuck him silly.”
As far as they could see, the
speaker was a very old old lady wearing a shapeless grey dressing gown, her
hair in curlers covered with a net.
“Not thet Oi daon’t moind a bit of
a soap drama, ya knaow. But Jaysus, a
lady’s got ta slaip. Moi beauty slaip,
ya knaow.”
Keith stood up and bowed to her,
and shouted back, “Ma’am, I apologise for disturbin’ your repose. We will take
your advoice at once.”
Esmé giggled, suddenly and
inexplicably happy. She stuck her arm
through his and said, “C’mon. Let’s go
to your flat.”
As they left the little courtyard,
Keith turned and waved, but the old lady had gone.
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