Free Dear God by Josephine Falla Page A

to pay for things. Twice he had been thrown out of the library, the last time just for asking for a bus pass. He couldn’t remember what the problem was the first time. He’d thrown the social workers out of his house at least once. Wherever he went there were always rows. Why were there always rows? Why didn’t he have friends, other than Jimmy Donovan? And he didn’t count him as a friend, you couldn’t talk to Jimmy Donovan. The man was basically an idiot. He was just there as a drinking mate. He did remember Mrs. Brenner’s reference to ‘my friend Mr. Penfold’ though and that cheered him up a little.
    When he let himself in Ginger met him in the hallway and began to demand food and fuss. “Well, it’s you and me against the world I guess, Ginger,” he said. He fed the animal and took a couple of bottles of beer back to the sitting room, with some cheese biscuits he’d forgotten he’d bought. He sat on the sofa in a cloud of grumpy self-pity.
    “Do I drink too much because I’m miserable, Ginger, or am I miserable because I drink too much?”
    The cat did not express an opinion but went to sleep next to him. Usually anger welled up inside of him, anger at everything that gone wrong, that had landed him in this kind of purposeless life, anger at everything and everybody, but tonight the fires were muted, stilled. He was afraid. Did that mean that the demons were coming, that depression was slowly creeping up on him, ready to bring him down? Was he due for another spell in the place with the red curtains? What had they done there? Had they been trying to get him to drink less? Or was it a place where you learned to stop being so angry and recall the past? He opened another bottle whilst he considered this.
    After five minutes’ earnest consideration, he said, “Load of nonsense. Well, bedtime, Ginger, where are you going to sleep?” The cat elected to go with him to the foot of the stairs and, very unsteadily in William’s case, they both climbed to the top and went into the reasonable tidy front bedroom, with the clean duvet cover spread out and William’s new pyjamas neatly folded on the pillow.
    “Tell you what, Ginger. I’ll see if there’s anything to be done about Mrs. B.’s garden tomorrow. Or mine. And we’ll buy a few more things and see if we can get a bus pass as well. After all, we have got £1,000 in ready cash, £300 from the Social men and over £3,000 in the bank, even if I can’t get at it. What do you think of that then?”
    The cat ignored his comments, jumped on the bed and curled up ready for sleep, whilst William pondered the problems involved in having disposable income. He didn’t want to spend it all on drink. Or on food. What was it God had said? ‘There’s more to life than artichokes.’ Very profound. God had told him to ‘Do More’. That non-specific directive had made him angry at first, but, come to think of it, although he could still feel a certain nagging anger that the bank had been shut, maybe it was something to do with their opening hours, he suddenly thought. He’d get a cheque book somehow. It was his human right. And he would ‘do more’. With that he too fell asleep.

CHAPTER 11
    The next day dawned sunny and bright. William woke up, for once eager to get up and get on with it. He wasn’t sure what ‘it’ was, but he knew he wanted to do something. He had a shower, got dressed and had fed the cat all before 9 o’clock, which was unprecedented for him. Breakfast was coffee, cornflakes, toast and the proper number and kind of pills as prescribed by the Social men, in their instructions left behind the toaster. Pleased with himself for this foray into normal living, he opened a bottle of beer and took it into the garden.
    He approached the tumbledown shed at the bottom of his garden with some trepidation, suspecting that all he would find would be dirt and spiders. Dirt and spiders there were in abundance, but there was also an old-fashioned