Nicola Barker - Darkmans

As she talked, her hands neatly and rapidly dissected her third consecutive clementine, clambering over the individual segments like a pair of frantic but purposeful albino spiders.

She suddenly glanced up. ‘Oi! Oi! Dumbo! D’you understand a single, bloody word I’m sayin’ here?’

Gaffar smiled, broadly. He thought she looked just beautiful. A princess, no less. Especially in the nightdress which he’d carefully chosen for her (and bought, with Kane’s money) at the McArthurGlen Designer Outlet the day before–

Wednesday?

— Yes. Wednesday. When she’d suffered a severe reaction to the painkillers they’d prescribed her.

She glared at him, suspiciously, then carefully readjusted her décolleté. ‘You don’t have a fuckin’ clue , do ya? I’m tellin’ you about Kane, mate. Kane .’

‘ Of course, yes. Kane .’

Gaffar mock-spat on to the floor (believing this would please her. He was right. She was delighted). The patient in the next bed ( not so delighted) expostulated sharply, then haughtily readjusted her bedspread.

‘She thinks you’re filth,’ Kelly confided, with a dirty chuckle, ‘foreign muck , yeah?’

‘He is filth,’ the woman interjected sharply, ‘but then like does attract like, so they say.’

‘ Oooh! Get her ,’ Kelly squealed, palpably excited (this was obviously a fight she’d been itching for). ‘I saw your hubby at visitin’, love,’ she trilled, ‘and he ain’t no fuckin’ oil paintin’, neither.’

‘Didn’t stop you from givin’ him the glad-eye, though, did it?’ the woman sniped.

‘ Him? ’ Kelly gasped. ‘D’you think I need a trip to Specsavers or what ?!’ ‘Baps hangin’ out everywhere…’

Kelly shimmied her two shoulders, saucily. ‘Well if you got it, why not flaunt it, huh ?’

‘An’ if you ain’t got it,’ the woman hissed, ‘then just do your best with the poor crumbs God gave ya.’

Kelly turned back towards Gaffar, with an air of great deliberation. ‘Apparently,’ she informed him gravely, ‘her flaps got so loose after her fifteenth sprog that all her bits started fallin’ out. The doctor was meant to shove ’em back up…’

Gaffar looked bemused.

‘But he was far too busy ,’ Kelly continued loudly, ‘so they got in the veterinary instead. He’s that much more accustomed to gettin’ his arm slimey…’

Kelly demonstrated the requisite technique (as Gaffar looked on), applying an imaginary coating of petroleum jelly (smearing it, thickly, right up to her armpit), then inserting her hand, screwing up her face, and groping around, wildly.

The woman turned away, disgusted.

Kelly still persisted.

‘Good Lord !’ she exclaimed (effortlessly adopting a top-drawer accent). ‘So that’s where Brian’s been parking the Audi!’

Gaffar licked his lips, nervously, and shifted in his chair.

‘How long till I get my own phone back?’ Kelly asked, grabbing her replacement from the bedside table and inspecting it, irritably. Gaffar shrugged.

‘It’s such bastard bad luck,’ Kelly grumbled. ‘I got all my important numbers on there…’

She threw the phone down again.

‘Did you get all that stuff for my mum like I asked ya?’

Gaffar nodded. He pointed to a bag at his feet.

‘An’ the stuff for me?’

He pointed to a second, slightly smaller bag, next to it.

‘Lemme take a quick butcher’s…’

Kelly put out her hand, her eyes slitting, suspiciously. Gaffar lifted up the bag and placed it, gently, on to the bed. Kelly sorted her way through it, at her leisure, with a combination of nods and clucks (‘Good…good… Man! I told you Low Fat yoghurts, didn’t I? You stupid goof …’).

She glanced up. ‘Where’s my salads?’

Gaffar looked blank.

‘ Salads , mate. Tomatoes. Cucumber. Lettuce . Where they at?’

Gaffar pointed, somewhat lamely, towards a bag of apples.

‘ Apples , you bugger. Full of bloody sugar . I need salads. Salads in a bag. Salads in a plastic fuckin’ container . I don’t bloomin’ care . So long as they’re salads. Salads, yeah? So long as they’re green , with no fuckin’ calories in ’em…’

‘Ah! Salad!’ Gaffar suddenly pretended to catch on. He shook his head. ‘ No salad. They no salad in these shop.’ He waved his hand, dismissively.

‘No salad?! ’ Kelly’s jaw dropped (no salad?! I mean where’d he think this was ? Fucking Ethiopia ?). ‘Pull the other one, mate, it’s got bells on!’

Gaffar rubbed his chin. ‘ Tomorrow . Tomorrow I bring you this salads…’

Kelly merely sucked on her tongue.

’You’re too, damn skinny already,’ Gaffar protested. ’What do you want salad for? You need some good protein. Chicken. Steak. Lamb. Not salad. Salad’s shit . Just water with a dash of colour…’

Kelly rolled her eyes, boredly, as Gaffar ranted.

‘So you got the proper address for my mum an’ everythin’?’ she interrupted him. ‘Please tell me you ain’t gone an’ forgotten that on top.’

Gaffar reached into his pocket and withdrew a couple of spent scratchcards.

‘Don’t let Kane see you usin’ those,’ she warned him, ‘or he’ll give you the world’s worst fuckin’ lecture. He hates the bloody lottery.’ Gaffar shoved the cards away again, felt around some more, and this time withdrew an address — in Kane’s eccentric hand — on a scruffy piece of paper.

‘Right. Good ,’ Kelly was satisfied, ‘so Kane’s lendin’ you his car again, yeah?’

Gaffar shook his head. ‘No car. Taxi.’

‘He’s payin’ for your cabs now, is he?’

Gaffar nodded.

‘ Wow …’

She eyed him, jealously. ‘He’s never paid for my cabs…’ she paused, ruminatively ‘…But then he did buy me a scooter for my eighteenth birthday…’ She cocked her chin, smugly. ‘Did he buy you a scooter yet?’

Gaffar simply smiled at her. She gave him a straight look. ‘He got you dealin’ for him already?’

Gaffar gazed at her, blankly.

‘I fuckin’ know he has. How’d you get a hold of all that smart clobber otherways?’

Gaffar shoved his hand into his pocket and took out his dice, a tiny blue pen (the kind you got free, in a bookmaker’s) and a pad.

‘Beede,’ he said.

‘Howzat?’ Kelly scowled.

‘Beede give suit. We play dice.’

‘ What? ’

‘You wanna play dice?’

Gaffar stood up, lifted the shopping bag back down on to the floor, then carefully adjusted Kelly’s fold-out table.

‘Mind my fuckin’ leg !’

(The leg was partially suspended, above the bed.)

‘Jesus Christ !’

Kelly pulled up her blanket, harrumphing.

Gaffar pointed at the grim, metal joists emerging from the plaster. ‘ Terminator! ’ he pronounced.

She rolled her eyes.

He rested his hands on his hips. ‘ I vill be back! ’ he intoned.

‘Not if I have any say in the matter,’ the woman in the next bed murmured (into the well-thumbed pages of a Sunday Mirror colour supplement).

‘Well I never !’ Kelly exclaimed, casually reinserting her well-greased arm again. ‘So that’s where Grandma stashed poor Rover!’