Free Wendy Perriam by Wendy Perriam Page B

disturbed the mice. And she was literally shaking. The poisoned arrows had gone much deeper now, skewering her heart and lungs.
    Too agitated to rest, she paced up and down the room, trying to work out what to do. If she decided to fight the Council, she’d need a proper action plan, and she’d have to clear the whole place up, as part of her general strategy. These people were so blinkered, they judged everything in terms of tidiness. In fact, while the mice were lying low, she could get rid of all the crates and boxes left over from the flat-swap. Then, if some officious type called, at least his first impression would be favourable.
    She stacked half a dozen boxes together and carried them down to the wheely-bin in the back-yard of the flats. With difficulty, and using her left arm, she prised open the lid and stood peering at the contents: broken toys, old newspapers, empty cans and bottles - all classed as trash, discarded. How could she leave her own stuff here? Battered cardboard boxes probably suffered from feelings of rejection as much as did bruised fruit and mouldy cheese.
    Plunging her arm inside the container, she retrieved a balding teddy bear. How miserable it looked, with its one remaining eye; its tattered, scruffy fur. And even the newspaper it was lying on aroused her sympathy - the once high-status Sunday Times now considered unworthy even of wrapping fish and chips. Her hand closed round a ketchup bottle weeping thick red tears. Easy to call it “empty”, consign it to oblivion, but if plants could suffer - and there was now scientific proof of that - then why not glass or paper? Most people refused to countenance the prospect that what they regarded as brute matter might actually be sensitive, and capable of feeling. Yet, at this very moment, she herself was actually tuning in to the low but keen lament of these unloved, unwanted objects: the heartache of a fishbone, too spiky to be swallowed; the humiliation of teabags, left damp and soggy on top of potato peelings still trembling from the insult of the knife; the pathos of a broken eggcup, regarded as too trivial to mend.
    She sank down on to the concrete floor, knowing she must stay - all night, if necessary - hold a solemn vigil in honour of these things, share their pain, their sense of failure. The mice could manage on their own - they had plenty of supplies. Her first duty was down here.
    Yet, after only half an hour, her bottom was so sore, she had to change position and, even then, the same problem of her thinning skin arose. If she tried to kneel, her knees bled; if she leant on her elbows, they, too, began to fray. Sighing, she got up again, to see what else might be retrieved. The clutter people tossed away contained their personal history, their past in tangible form. The shirt or dress, for instance, they were wearing at the time of their first kiss, or the books that traced their reading-arc from Peter Rabbit to Dostoyevsky.
    Having salvaged a volume of poetry, badly torn and stained, she was further shocked to come across some old photos in gilt frames. These were someone’s relatives - mothers, fathers, spouses, siblings - real people who’d once lived and loved. Yet they’d been jettisoned with no concern for the soul or vital essence that might still live on in these likenesses.
    If only dustbins worked like compost-heaps: garden waste and kitchen waste going down into the dark, in order to spring up again in new green fertile growth. A similar thing had happened in her own life - her bitter youth and wasted years composting into the deep mulch of compassion. Yet no such resurrection here; only snuff-out in a landfill-site. Indeed, she was appalled at her own callousness in not considering the plight of dustbins earlier in her life. There was no excuse at all, given the scale of the problem. Tons and tons of so-called waste must be thrown out every day, and that in just the British Isles alone.
    In fact, why was she keeping vigil