Read The Complete Talking Heads Online

Authors: Alan Bennett

The Complete Talking Heads (17 page)

Occasionally he’ll have some music on. I said once, ‘I suppose that makes this the same as aerobics.’ He said, ‘If you like.’
It’s droll but the only casualty in all this is my feet, because nowadays the actual chiropody gets pushed to one side a bit. If I want an MOT I really have to nail him down.
We’re still Mr Dunderdale and Miss Fozzard and I’ve not said anything to anybody at work. Learned my lesson there.
Anyway, people keep saying how well I look.
Pause.
I suppose there’s a word for what I’m doing but …I skirt round it.
FADE.
Wilfred:
David Haig
PRODUCED BY
MARK SHIVAS
DESIGNED BY
STUART WALKER
DIRECTED BY
UDAYAN PRASAD
MUSIC BY
GEORGE FENTON
A MIDDLE-AGED MAN IN THE BASIC UNIFORM (DONKEY JACKET, NAVY BLUE OVERALLS) OF A PARKS ATTENDANT. HE SITS AGAINST THE PLANKS OF A PARK SHELTER, PAINTED BUT WORN AND COVERED WITH GRAFFITI.
I
was in the paper shop this dinnertime getting some licorice allsorts. Man serving me said, ‘I wish I was like you.’ Shouted out to the woman, ‘I wish I was him. Always buying sweets, never gets fat.’ I said, ‘Yes, I’m lucky. Only I cycle.’ She said, ‘Yes, I’ve seen you. You work for the Parks Department.’ He said, ‘Weren’t you a lollipop man once?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘I thought I’d seen you, stood at the crossing.’ Racks and racks of magazines. Always men in there, looking.
Janet was dressmaking, doing the twins’ christening frocks. I said, ‘They put on you, Janet. Before these frocks there’s been no word for long enough.’ She said, ‘Well, whose fault is that?’ Apricot satin, little buttons down the front.
Mr Trickett nosing round this afternoon at what he calls ‘grassroots level’ ordains a blitz on the bushes behind the playground. Privet mostly, all stinking of urine and clogged up with every sort of filth …sheaths; jamrags; a shoe; some tights; sick; dog muck. They come over the wall on a night after The Woodman’s turned out, lie down drunk in all that filth and stench and do it. They do it in the playground too, laid down over one end of the slide where the kiddies slide along with their bottoms, then just chuck the evidence down anywhere.
I’m nearly finished when Mr Kumar stops with his barrow and brushes and we walk back to the yard together. He’s from Bombay so he takes all this filth in his stride. Born a street sweeper, apparently, what they call an untouchable, though he’s very neat, you’d never think it. Going on about getting his wife over from India. Got some decent digs in the Brudenells only a person from Liverpool comes and kicks the door in in the middle of the night. Thinks the English don’t like the Indians; says the only Indians the English like are the Gurkhas. The Gurkhas cut people’s heads off so that makes them the salt of the earth.
As we’re going by the office Mr Parlane calls me in and says he’s heard from Wakefield but they still can’t trace my records. Foreman, dinner supervisor, lollipop man, I must have left some trace, was I sure I’d got all the digits right? I reeled the number off again and he said, ‘Well, I’ll try Pontefract, Wilfred, but it’s been six months now.’
I went the long way round, pushing the bike. Just one kiddy by herself on the swings. Kiddy black. Mother, white, having a cig, watching.
FADE.
Against anonymous wallpaper; a bedroom, say.
I don’t like a cargo of relations; I never have. I wasn’t particular to go to the christening only Janet wanted to see what her frocks looked like on and anyway, as she said, who are Barry and Yvonne to look down their nose, their Martin’s been had up twice for drunken driving.
Slight hiccup round the font because, since Martin hasn’t actually managed to turn up they’re short of a godfather. Yvonne wants to go ahead without but the young lad who’s in charge says that though he personally is very relaxed about it, the church does tend to insist on there being a full complement of godparents.
We’re all standing round looking a bit stumped when little Rosalie, who’s seven, pipes up and says, ‘Why can’t Uncle Wilfred be it, he’s my godfather.’ Barry straight off clouts her only the priest who doesn’t look much more than seventeen and new to the parish says, ‘Would Uncle Wilfred be a possible solution?’ I don’t say anything at all only Yvonne gets in quick, ‘No, Wilfred wouldn’t be a possible solution because …’ and Janet looks at her ‘ …because they’re not currently motorised.’ The priest lad looks as if he’s about to say that wheels aren’t part of the job description when Yvonne spots Grandpa Greenwood who’s just been out to spend a penny and says, ‘He’ll do’. The priest says, ‘Isn’t he a bit on the old side?’ Yvonne says, ‘No he isn’t. He still goes ballroom dancing.’ So it ends up being him. I said to Janet, ‘At least baby Lorraine won’t have any problems with the Military Twostep.’
Afterwards we adjourn to Sherwood Road where Pete and Gloria had laid something on, beer chiefly by the looks of it, one of those dos where the women end up in one room and the men in another. There are kiddies all over the place, though, and what with Pete’s alsatian plunging around, sheer bedlam. That’s irresponsible in my view, a dog that size when there are kiddies about. One snap and they’re scarred for life. A lot of larking about with the children, Barry throwing their two up in the air till they screamed then pretends to throw one to me but doesn’t. Ginger tash. Big fingers. Does a bit of decorating now and again, was in a remand home when he was young.
Then Pete starts telling his so-called jokes. ‘Now then, which would you rather have, Wilf, a thousand women with one pound or one woman with a thousand pound?’ ‘Else neither,’ says Barry and I saw him wink but I didn’t take on. I thought I’d go and help wash up only no
sooner were all the women in the kitchen when Janet has to embark on the saga of her womb, how we could have had children only the angle of it was wrong. So Yvonne chips in, ‘It’s not your angle, love, it’s his that matters.’ So there’s a lot of smutty laughter and I go out and sit on the back step.
Little Rosalie’s playing in the yard, throwing her ball against the wall, clapping her hands and lifting her leg to throw the ball under, all that. When she stops she comes and sits on the step and I say, ‘I think that deserves a sweet, Rosalie,’ and give her a licorice allsort. Suddenly there’s a banging in the window and Yvonne bursts through the door and gets hold of the kiddy ‘I told you, madam,’ starts laying into her, and clawing the sweet out of her mouth. The dog’s barking, the kiddy’s crying, the old man has an accident and they’re all shouting. So anyway we came away.
Janet doesn’t say anything. Only when we’re at the bus stop she says ‘I don’t want to have to be flitting again. If you made a decision never to buy any more licorice allsorts it would be a step in the right direction.’
So anyway, I promised.
FADE.
The edge of a bandstand, some wrought iron, but scribbled over and defaced.
Anybody that wants to make a fortune should invent something that’ll erase the stuff they write up. There’s a plaque on the wall by the fountain:
This park was opened on July 17 1936 by the
Rt. Honourable the Earl of Harewood KG.TD.
‘So eat shit’ some bright spark has sprayed across it, with the result I’m down there all morning with the Brasso and a wire brush.
‘Think of it as a labour of love, Mr Paterson,’ Parlane said. ‘The present one’s the music-lover.’ ‘Who?’ ‘The Earl of Harewood. Father married the old Princess Royal.’ He hangs about for a bit then eventually says, Had I got a minute and he hoped I wouldn’t take it amiss but had I been in prison? I said, ‘No. What would I have been in prison for?’ He said, He’d no idea, it was just that when records go walkabout as mine plainly had that was often the case.
I said, Well, it’s not the case in this case, thank you very much and was my work unsatisfactory? He said, ‘Far from it, the place has never been
so tidy. You, Mr Paterson are a textbook example of why we went performance related. But you’re also an example of somebody who has eluded all the fielders and ended up in the long grass, bureaucratically speaking. Well, don’t worry. Gordon Parlane is going to make it his personal emission to retrieve you.’
It started spitting this afternoon so I thought I’d keep out of the rain and sweep up the bandstand. Young woman there again, the kiddy; I’ve seen them once or twice now, poor-looking, eating chips out of a carton.
She says, ‘Are we all right sitting here?’ I said, ‘That’s what it’s for, visitors.’ She said, ‘We often come. The council’s put us in bed and breakfast only the hotel’s got proper people too and they don’t like us around during the day. Samantha hates it, don’t you Samantha?’ The kiddy comes over and offers me a chip. ‘You’re privileged,’ the mother says, ‘she’s frightened of men generally. Won’t go near her father. Mind you, neither will I.’
Bonny little thing, only her mother’s put her some earrings in, stud things. And one in her little nose and she can’t be more than seven.
I wonder the law lets them do it, because that’s interference in my view, ornamenting your kiddies, hanging stuff on them as if they were Christmas trees.
I’m sweeping up the rubbish and pretend to sweep up the kiddy too so she starts screaming with laughter. ‘Oh,’ her mother says, ‘I think you’ve clicked. What is this place?’ I said, ‘What place?’ ‘This. This shelter thing.’ I said, ‘It’s a bandstand. The band used to play here once upon a time.’ She said, ‘What band? You mean like a group?’
The kiddy came and stood by my knee. ‘Yes,’ I said. She said, ‘Where did the fans go then? In the bushes?’ She laughed and the kiddy laughed and put her hand on my leg. I said, ‘It’s stopped raining, I’d better get on.’ She threw the chip carton down. She said, ‘We’ll see you. Wave to the man, Samantha. Wave.’
As I’m pushing the barrow back there’s a policeman hanging about the fountain. Said he was just showing the flag and he’d be obliged if I’d keep my eye open for any undesirable elements. I said, ‘Drugs, you mean?’
He said, ‘Drugs or whatever. Men sitting too long on the benches type thing. Parks make for crime. This beat’s a bugger.’ As he was going he said, ‘Pardon my asking but didn’t you use to work at the Derby Baths?’ I said, ‘No, why?’ He said, ‘Nothing, the face is familiar. My two both got their bronze medal there. Well, I won’t detain you, particularly since our Asian friend appears to be waiting.’
Pushing his barrow back Mr Kumar’s all smiles because his wife has arrived. ‘They took all her clothes off at the airport but otherwise,’ he says, ‘it was all as easy as falling off a log. I am a very happy man.’
‘They’re sly,’ Janet said. ‘Probably wants your job.’ I said, ‘What for?’ ‘His brother, his uncle, his nephew. They’re all the same. Anyway I got my promotion. Same grade now as I was before. Keep this up a bit longer, Wilfred, and we might be able to run to a car again soon.’
FADE.
Planks again or municipal bricks. An outside wall, say.
Bit of excitement this morning. Body in the bushes. Little lad found it looking for his ball. Old man, one of the winos probably. Two police cars, an ambulance and more fuss made of him dead than there ever was alive. The child not worried at all, the mother hysterical. All over by half past ten and we were soon back in go mode, drizzle included.
I was heading for the tennis courts, trying to steer clear of the
bandstand only Trickett shouts after me, ‘Paterson. I don’t want you skulking back there. The bandstand’s in a disgusting state.’
Somebody’d thrown up all over the seat and I’d just about got it cleared up when the girl’s calling out and the kiddy comes running in waving her little pink plastic handbag thing. ‘Samantha’s got you a present, haven’t you Samantha. Give it to Mr … what’s your name?’ The child was putting her arms out to be lifted up.
‘Hargreaves,’ I said. ‘My name’s Hargreaves.’ ‘Give it to him Samantha,’ and she takes out a daffodil from her little handbag and we put it in my buttonhole. ‘She picked it herself,’ the mother said. ‘My name’s Debbie.’
They sit watching while I go on cleaning up. She said, ‘You’re a bit too nice for this job aren’t you? You look as if you should be doing something more up-market, a traffic warden or something.’
I said I liked being outside. The kiddy was pretending to help me sweep up again. ‘It didn’t used to be like this,’ I said, ‘all scribbled over and stuff written up.’ ‘Oh,’ she says, ‘I like the lived in look. Cans and litter and all that. You don’t want it too clinical. Anyway it’s all litter basically isn’t it …Leaves is litter. Soil. We like it, don’t we Samantha?’
I said, ‘Why did you put them earring things in?’ She said ‘Her studs? Well, I don’t see why she shouldn’t have all the advantages other kids have. She’s as good as anybody else. Don’t you like them?’ I said, ‘No, Debbie. I do like them.’
After a bit the mother says Did I like her. I said Why? She said, ‘Well we keep running into one another.’ I said, ‘You won’t have Samantha tattooed, will you?’ ‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘not until she’s old enough to make her own decisions. It’s part of her life choices isn’t it? Did the fountain used to go?’ I said, ‘Yes. When I was a boy. The fountain went. The band played. People kept off the grass. It was lovely.’

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