Going Down

Tell you about the last day my job, your honour? Well, I suppose you’d say I resigned with attitude. Yeah, you might call it dismissed, but I like to look on the positive side, y’know? ‘Always look on the bright side of life’? Eric Idle that was. Anyhow, I was working as a lift attendant at Bracegirdle’s, the department store? Been there ‘bout 18 months. It was a rubbish job. I’d gone past the ‘it has its ups and downs’ jokes long ago. I was really pissed off – oh, sorry, I mean fed up. And the thing that made me so fed up was the people. They were so toffee nosed.

So the day I handed my notice in was just like any other. I was humming ‘I will survive’ by Gloria Gaynor along with the lift musak and wondering how I could spend 40 million quid if I won the rollover, which I wouldn’t anyway ‘cos I don’t do the lottery. I was thinkin’ ‘bout these toffee noses and how I would be able to put them in their place, like. The musak changed to Nick Lowe, ‘You’ve got to be cruel to be kind’ and I was there with this lord something or other about to torture him into agreeing that people from our estate were every bit as good as his kind. And then these two rich bitches got in. The older one had a camel coat, buttoned up to her throat. It didn’t suit her. Wrong colour for her complexion and wrong shape for her figure.

‘Well, you can’t expect anything else from these types, can you, Bridie? Rape and murder is just par for the course for them,’ said the older one.
‘Yes, Lucinda, but that poor little girl! They’re just animals!’ Bridie replied. She was wearin’ a charcoal skirt, knee length with a gold buckled belt. Her triple buttoned black astrakhan coat was open and under it she had a charcoal twinset that matched the skirt. Almost. Charcoal is so difficult! She looked quite sexy in a way.
‘Poor baby nothing. It would only have grown up into another of the animals. Probably better off dead. I think some of these people shouldn’t be allowed to have families. They ought to sterilise them,’ said Lucinda.

I knew what they were discussing. It had been in the paper that mornin’ about the murder in the next street to where I live. It was a nasty business, but the people in the neighbourhood were really supportin’ one another, tryin’ to get through it, y’know? It’s summat we do well, lookin’ after our own. And they are my own. They’re my people. So, I was seethin’. Can’t let it show though. Got to be polite and pleasant to them even if they do tell one another sort of to my face that I don’t count for nothin’. Animals?! The musak had changed to ‘Gypsies, tramps and thieves’ by Cher. It didn’t help, I can tell ya. I got it into my head then and there that if they were gonna get in my lift on the way down I’d have to teach ‘em a lesson. But what? It really gets on my tits when these people come into my lift and behave as if I wasn’t there talking ‘bout my people. The musak was playin’ ‘Just you wait’ from My Fair Lady.

The women got out on the top floor. We don’t call out the floors normally at Bracegirdle’s. Management says our ‘clientele’ – snob word for the customers – know what they want without being disturbed by the lift boys. What they mean is that we talk coarse and it’d be bad for business for us to be heard. I closed the gate and left the floor to go down.

I was on my way back up about half an hour later when I knew what I would do. The musak was playin’ ‘My way’, the Frank Sinatra version, not the Sex Pistols. I think I prefer Paul Anka’s version but you never hear that even though he wrote the English version of it. There’s no justice. I got to the fifth floor and there they were. Bridie was wearin’ the new coat she’d just bought. It was a Vivienne Westwood three quarter length black coat. Eleven hundred quid. Her old one was in a carrier.

‘It looks really nice on you, Bridie, my dear.’ Lucinda was gushing. It was a lie. The coat was entirely wrong. She needed a straighter line to suit her figure and the colour was just too … black. She’d have looked great in light blue.
‘Oh, you are sweet, Lucinda.’ Sweet my arse. She was a toffee nosed, fascist bitch from hell, but I wouldn’t be saying anything like that to her. Bridie looked tasty though. The music played the Beatles ‘I’ll get you in the end’ as the lift began its descent.

‘Floor four,’ I said. ‘Ladies’ underwear.’ They both looked at me. They looked like overdressed gormless tarts. Just like the birds down the pub but with posh clothes. They both looked at me as if they’d just trodden in poodle poop. Lift boys didn’t talk!

Another floor went by. ‘Floor three, women’s underwear’, said I.
‘Bridie, what on earth has got into this young man?’
Bridie didn’t respond. I got in there first.
‘Floor two, women’s underwear’.
They looked at one another. ‘Underwear’s on the ground floor, isn’t it?’ Bridie asked Lucinda.
‘It’s on every floor’, I said. My God – I’d spoken without being spoken to! Such poor etiquette.
‘What do you mean?’ asked the older woman.
‘Well, missus,’ says I – and I punched the stop button. The lift was stranded between the first and ground floors. ‘It’s like this,’ I said. ‘If most shoppers here and most shop assistants here are women then you’ve got ladies’ underwear on all the floors, ain’t ya? You just need to know where to look!’

With that I suddenly took Bridie’s skirt and lifted it. Elle Macpherson culottes in white. It wasn’t a sex attack or nothin’ – just a game. Just to bring them both down from their fuckin’ pedestal a bit. Humiliate ‘em both

They got the lift down to the ground floor pretty quickly when they heard the screamin’.

When the police took me away I remember the lift musak was playin’ ‘I’m a loser’ by the Beatles.

Going Up

‘I feel funny. I’m not used to travelling in a vertical plane,’ said Alfie.
‘It’s not a ‘plane,’ said the Angel. ‘It’s a lift or elevator’.

The Angel and the hedgehog were both called Alfie and when Alfie (the hedgehog, that is) discovered this he decided to keep referring to his new acquaintance as the Angel. Then people wouldn’t think he was talking to himself. Except there weren’t any people in the lift thingy, just a hedgehog and an Angel – or so Alfie thought.

‘How did I get here?’
‘What’s the last thing you can remember, Alfie?’
‘I was on the verge, I think – yes, that’s it – I was on the verge of crossing the A14.’
‘And was the traffic heavy?’
‘It was very busy, and yes, I remember now, it was heavy too when it went over me’
‘Precisely,’ said the Angel. ‘You were squished!’
‘Goodness!’ The hedgehog replied. ‘That’s never happened before.’
‘Well obviously, dunderhead!’

Careful, Angel. That name calling is out of character!

‘Who said that?’ Asked Alfie.
‘Ah. That would be the Storyteller, Alfie. You can’t see him, but he’s here in the lift with us and all around us as well.’
Alfie was curious. ‘You mean like God?’
‘I wouldn’t say that’, the Angel replied, ‘but then I work for God and I don’t work for the storyteller even though he made me.’
‘Did the storyteller know I would be in the lift?’ Alfie asked.

Of course I did. I put you in there. I put you under the wheels of that truck too, if you must know.

‘You bastard!’
‘I wish I was allowed to say things like that,’ the Angel interjected. ‘I get told off for calling a hedgehog ‘dunderhead’. It’s all so unfair.’
Alfie ignored this and continued to interrogate the Storyteller. ‘So where’s the lift going?’

I’m not telling you until you apologise for calling me a bastard.

‘And if I don’t …?’
‘Don’t wind him up, Alfie or he’ll just leave us here and no one will know what happened to us.’
‘Has this happened to you before?’ Alfie asked his companion.
‘If you mean taking the dead up in a lift, yes, all the time. If you mean conversing with the Storyteller – no, only with God.’
‘I wish I wasn’t dead. This is so confusing. A voice from nowhere and an Angel – too many new things all at once. Not to mention my mates back by the A14.’
‘Those would be your flat mates – they got squished trying to rescue you’.
‘Oh no!! If only I’d been more careful. I’m usually so careful when there’s danger, roll up and try to blend in with my environment’.
You blended into the A14 pretty well when the truck squished you

‘That’s not very nice,’ Alfie said.

Nor is being called a bastard.

‘Ok, I’m sorry’.

Hmm. In that case I think I’ll finish by letting Angel here take you …
‘See those pearly gates, Alfie. We’ve arrived’

Number One Gerbil Carer

George had escaped. Ricky knew that he would get in trouble and inside him he sensed the beginning of the terror he always felt when the whole class looked at him. They would jeer and sneer at him if Miss Lesslie wasn’t there. Ricky’s saviour wasn’t going to be in the playground, though, was she? He looked up at the wall clock. It nearly looked like it usually looked when the dinner bell went. He could already smell the stench of the over-boiled vegetables. Just a few minutes then, to try to get George and put him back in his cage. Then he would need to brace himself for the torment of the playground.

Miss Lesslie had seen the class gerbil fall to the floor. It was strange because Ricky was always so gentle and caring, yet it looked almost as if he had thrown the animal down on purpose. She had made Ricky the Number One Gerbil Carer to help keep him out of the reach of bullies as much as to develop responsibility in him. It gave him an excuse to use the classroom when the others were out in at play. She held the lid on the reactions of everybody, but already some of the class were staring at Ricky or nudging one another, preparing for their so-called ‘fun’ at dinner time. One or two took sidelong glances towards their teacher, and if they thought she wasn’t looking they gestured or pulled faces at Ricky. Anything to remind him how pathetic they thought he was. Simon held his nose at the supposed stink of his scruffy classmate. Miss Lesslie didn’t see, but Ricky did and his heart sank.

Ricky was pathetic, but not in the sense that his class meant it. He was a ‘child at risk’ according to the school records. Miss Lesslie knew he was clever, though he didn’t like to show it, but he hadn’t had the home background advantages that others enjoyed or took for granted. Sam always went abroad for his holidays. Both Emily’s parents were lawyers of some sort. Two thirds of the parents of the class had degrees and some of the others owned their own small businesses.

Ricky’s home didn’t even have newspapers except for the Thursday freebie which often found itself thrown back at the papergirl with a snarling, powerful oath. Ricky’s stepdad was a builder’s labourer. Always cash in hand when he was paid and a fair proportion of that money went on cigarettes and beer. His stepsister was nine years older than Ricky and would leave school soon. Unofficially it seemed like she already had. Ricky didn’t like her. She was always loud and smelt of stale smoke and cheap scent, and her friends treated him like a no longer wanted doll.

The bell went. Miss Lesslie put down her reading glasses and instructed her class to sit quietly. Ricky had already established that George was under the bookcase, news that was met with rapidly silenced surreptitious sniggers. He was on his grubby hands and knees seeing if George was going to come out. Two at a time the teacher dismissed the class, standing on guard by the door to prevent a further dash for freedom by the gerbil. Finally there were just two people left in the classroom. And George.

Miss Lesslie told Ricky that George might be frightened and hiding. She suggested that Ricky back off a little to see if George would come out by himself. Ricky liked Miss Lesslie. She was really kind, always spoke calmly and kindly to him and she did what she could to stop the others picking on him. Friends are people we play with and share our sweets with so Miss Lesslie wasn’t a friend exactly but she was nearly as good. George was Ricky’s best friend. He often stayed in the classroom with George at break times and told him stories about what he wanted to be when he grew up or where he was going to visit, or maybe just some news about the others or his family. Ricky wasn’t aware of his loneliness and isolation when he was with George.

The door shut behind Miss Lesslie. She’d told Ricky that she’d be back in ten minutes and hoped that George would be back in his cage by then. Ricky could look after the classroom and George while she was gone, she told him. She often left him on his own like this. She knew he was reliable – and anyway, there was too little trust these days. Sometimes he used the time to read the more difficult books that the other children shunned. They didn’t know he read these avidly on his own. He liked the explorers best, astronauts and Columbus, and that Norwegian with the difficult last name. But today he wouldn’t be reading. He was watching George explore the shadowy place under the bookcase.

‘Sorry I dropped you, George,’ said the boy. ‘You can come out now – it’s safe and I’ll look after you properly.’

The gerbil’s eyes glinted as he looked back at the boy. It took a tentative couple of steps forward and stopped to investigate a long lost crisp that had been swept under the bookcase by the cleaners.

‘C’mon, George. I’ve put some nice fresh bedding in your cage and some water and food.’

Again the Gerbil looked up. He scuttled forward and then stood still as Ricky’s familiar small hand reached over to pick him up. Ricky had never dropped George before in all the time he’d been Number One Gerbil Carer. He felt so guilty. He knew the feeling from home because he got blamed for everything. This time was different because he really was responsible for dropping George.

‘Sorry, George. I didn’t mean to drop you when I took you out of the cage.’

‘And I’m sorry that I nipped your finger,’ Ricky thought he heard George reply.

In the beginning were the words

I began a creative writing course in October and have been persuaded that a blog would be a good way of getting feedback on the stuff I produce. So here it is. Please respond with comments and advice if you wish, but make it CONSTRUCTIVE.