Free Rebuilding Coventry by Sue Townsend Page A

of the unfortunate chicken were spitting on the
barbecue and cutlery had been brought to the table. A bottle of delicately
green wine dripping with condensation was put before them. The small child
emerged from the sea, went into the kitchen and brought them a large, crisp
salad. The crone laid down a dish of small, steaming potatoes still in their
skins. Salt and pepper appeared, then curls of melting butter, and finally the
chicken, succulent and crisp-edged and smelling of lemons and garlic.
    They
started to eat and were at least halfway through their meal before a bucket of
ice-cold water washed the food off their plates.

 
     
     
     
     
    13
Calcutta
     
    To be hungry is to feel an
emptiness in the belly, but the worst thing about hunger is the feeling of
panic inside the head. I am getting desperate, the idea of stealing food is no
longer unthinkable. I am growing cunning … I am a fox; my eyes are narrowing
and are fixed on a bunch of bananas which are just inside the door of a twenty-four-hour
supermarket. The grocer, a beautiful Asian boy, is reading an Indian-language
newspaper. He looks a kind boy; I don’t want to steal from him. I go into the
shop and ask him for a banana.
    The
fluorescent lights expose my sooty face and hands. The boy looks up; he is
alarmed.
    ‘Bananas
are twenty-five pence each,’ he says and adds, ‘regardless of size.’
    I
select a banana, the largest of the bunch. I take it to the checkout. He rings
up twenty-five pence on the till and holds his hand out. I give him two and a
half pence.
    ‘I’ve
got no more money, I’m very hungry.’
    ‘Sorry,’
he says, shaking his glossy head. ‘You are the third tonight to ask.’
    ‘I’ll
pay you back,’ I plead.
    ‘No.’
    ‘I beg
you.’
    ‘No. Go
away.’
    I peel
the skin from the banana.
    Before
I can get it to my mouth he snatches it from me. I snatch it back. The banana
slips and slithers between us and eventually disintegrates and falls onto
discarded till rolls on the floor. He wipes his sticky hands on his short
overall with small cries of disgust.
    ‘You
are a dirty cow,’ he says. ‘And a thief.’
    ‘I’m
hungry,’ I say. ‘I’ve never been so hungry before.’
    ‘Good,
so now you know,’ he shouts. ‘I am from Calcutta. There everybody is
hungry.’
    A
white-haired Indian man comes out of the back of the shop. He wears the
expression of someone at the end of his tether. The boy gathers the wasted
banana together and throws it into a bin underneath the counter.
    He
could have given it to me after all.

 
     
     
     
     
    14
Heartbreak House
     
    Derek Dakin sat on the
marital bed and removed his trousers, socks and shoes. He had some trouble
untying his shoe laces because his hands were trembling. He got up and opened
the wardrobe door and hung his folded trousers carefully over a wooden
coat-hanger on the right side of the hanging rail.
    Coventry’s
clothes, careful and respectable, hung on the left side. Derek touched each
article of Coventry’s clothing. He then buried his face in the brown sleeve of
her eleven-year-old winter coat. He sniffed hard and smelt a vague smell of
Tramp (the perfume he’d bought her for Christmas). Its sweetness was
intermingled with the rancid smell of the cigarettes she smoked.
    He had
always known that one day his wife would leave him, though he had not expected
murder to be the motivating factor in her decision.
    He
thought, she was so beautiful and good. Whereas he was very
plain-looking (even before he lost most of his hair) and he was not good.
He was riddled with faults. He harboured grudges and spent too much time with
his tortoises.
    Derek
took Coventry’s winter coat off the hanger and put it on. It fitted him
perfectly. He looked into the full-length wardrobe mirror and watched himself
as he fastened the knobbly little buttons up to the neck. Derek then squeezed
his bare feet into Coventry’s brown, high-heeled court shoes. He wobbled over
to the chest of