People’s moral values seem to have plummeted.’
‘You must have seen a lot of changes,’ I say. This remark is always guaranteed to give any boring old fart over the age of thirty-five enough to talk about for the rest of his life and Fred Glossop is no exception.
‘There’s no comparison,’ he says. ‘There’s not many of the old ones left. All these people coming in from outside have changed the whole character of the community. Look at that. Wire baskets of flowers hanging in the porch. I ask you! Of course, the kids from the Alderman Wickham Estate come and nick them.’ A certain grim satisfaction enters his voice and then fades quickly. ‘Still, they’re horrible little baskets themselves. Where are you from?’
I am not quite certain I care for the way he moves smoothly from talk of ‘horrible little baskets’ to an enquiry after my place of residence but I let the matter pass. ‘Scraggs Lane,’ I say.
‘Oh.’ Glossop sounds surprised. ‘You’re local then.’ His tone warms on learning that I am not a light-skinned Jamaican. ‘That hasn’t changed much, has it? Apart from the bits they’ve pulled down. The wife’s mother used to live there until they put her in a flat.’ He makes it sound like a cage – quite accurate really. Most of the flats do look like nesting boxes for mice. ‘Mrs Summers?’
I shake my head. ‘I expect my Mum knows her. Are you going to live round here when you retire?’
Glossop screws up his face like I have slipped a spoonful of cough mixture into his cakehole. ‘Worthing,’ he says. ‘Nice little bungalow. Near enough the front but not so you get the weather and the people. Know what I mean?’
I give him a ‘sort of’ kind of nod and wrap my arms round my body so that I can tuck my hands under my armpits. Gawd but it is taters. I can see why Fred Glossop wears mittens round his blue, bony fingers.
‘Cold, lad?’ he says glancing at me disparagingly. ‘This isn’t cold. Not compared with what it can be. If you find this cold —’
‘I’d better forget about the job. Yeah, I know,’ I say, finishing his sentence for him and wondering if I am going to be able to stand two weeks with such a miserable old sod. ‘How much longer before we get where we’re going.’
Glossop looks at me coldly and mutters something under his breath. ‘Just round the corner. Up Clyde Avenue, along Barton Way, The Estate, Clark Street, Thurleigh Avenue, south side of the common and back down Nightingale Road.’
‘Blimey,’ I say. ‘All human life is here.’
Glossop gives me a second helping of the freezing glances laced with a deep sigh and slams on the anchors. Our glorious progress is arrested and the crates of milk in the back make ‘tut, tut’ noises. ‘After a while you know what everybody has,’ he says. ‘It comes automatic. You’ll have to look in the book at first. When I collect the divis, that’s when I indulge in the sales chat. If a lady’s in a delicate condition for instance.’
‘You mean if she’s broken something?’ I say.
The red veins that run across Glossop’s face like a map of the world’s airlines leak some colour into his hollow cheeks ‘I mean, if she’s with child.’
‘Oh, I get it,’ I say. ‘When they’re in the pudding club you wack in with an extra pint?’
Glossop closes his eyes and nearly drops a couple of pints of homogenised. ‘Don’t be disgusting!’ he says. ‘You’ll never get anywhere if you talk like that. You have to present yourself to the public as a fount of practical knowledge and guidance on all matters relating to the beneficial properties of milk and its allied products. They have to respect you.’
‘Of course,’ I say. ‘I quite see that.’
What I am really clocking is the little darling leaning out of the bay window of what must be the sitting room. She is wearing a black, halter neck nightie and although her hair has been piled up on top of her head it is starting to tumble down temptingly.
‘Sweet little tits,’ says Glossop.
‘Not so little, either,’ I say.
Glossop switches his gaze from the bird table and I realize that there has been a misunderstanding, the judy tosses her head sulkily and closes the window. ‘You’ll have to watch your step,’ says Glossop. ‘I can’t see you lasting long at this rate.’
By eleven o’clock I am prepared to agree with him. My fingers feel as if they are going to drop off with the cold and I am knackered after struggling up and down hundreds of flights of stairs. I never knew there were so many flat developments. The biggest of them all is the Alderman Wickham Estate and that is where Fred Glossop looks at his watch and strokes his chin thoughtfully. ‘Um,’ he says. ‘I’m going to leave you here for a bit. I want to get something for the wife.’
‘How much do you think she’s worth?’ I ask.
Fred ignores my merry quip and makes off in the direction of the The Nightingale. It occurs to me that his ruddy conk may well be the result of drinking something a good deal stronger than milk. Boozers are often miserable old sods.
The Alderman Wickham Estate is a series of grey skyscrapers and concrete corridors which have very nasty niffs in them. Most of the lifts and rubbish chutes are out of order and the walls exist to show that there are some people who can’t even spell four-letter words. Cardboard boxes full of rubbish fall apart in every corner and I can see why Fred Glossop decided to take a powder.
I grab a crate of milk and the order book and head for the lift in Block F. It is out of order. That is no great surprise and I am heading for the stairs when I happen to glance back towards the float. A teeny tea leaf is in the process of half inching a couple of pints of ivory nectar. ‘Hey you!’ I bellow. I expect the little sod to put the stuff back but he darts across the tarmac still clinging to his swag. I do not hang about because Fred has explained that you get lumbered for any stocks that are lost or mislaid.
‘Come back here!’ I drop the crate and set off in pursuit like my whole future depends on it – which it might well do. I can’t see Fred taking kindly to any deductions from his last pay packet. The kid flashes up a flight of stairs and I am gaining fast when a plastic dustbin bounces down towards me and catches me just below the knees. The little perisher obviously fancies himself as James Bond. I pick myself up and come round the bend in the stairs just fast enough to see him taking off down a corridor. He stops outside the third door, and tries to open it. The door is locked. I allow myself a satisfied smile and begin to saunter down the corridor. A quick clip round the earholes and justice will be done. The kid tucks one of the bottles under his arm and reaches up to ring the doorbell. He is looking dead worried and his finger is pressed against the bell like it has become stuck to it.
‘All right, short arse,’ I say. ‘Hand them over.’ I step forward purposefully just as the door opens. A naked woman with dripping glistening boobs cops a pint in each hand. It would make a good advertisement really. The naked knockers and the milk. All together in the all together so to speak. It makes me wish I had drunk more of the stuff when I was a kid. About the age of the little bastard who is now scarpering back down the balcony.
‘What do you want?’ says the bint, retiring behind the door. ‘Haven’t you ever seen a woman before?’
‘I’m not certain,’ I say. ‘I thought I had but you make me have second thoughts. I reckon some
