A Deliberate Kindness 2

Walking along the road with his old shopping bag Gerald laughed to himself. He’d won another battle of wills and that was what really mattered in his scant little life.

He’d purchased a perfectly good pair of trousers that would have set him back at least fifty pounds in a real shop, not that he’d have ever allowed himself to buy them from anywhere outside of a charity shop. If dead men’s clothes were good enough for other men they were good enough for him, as long as the price was right.

When he remembered the look of horror on Beryl’s face at the moment she realized there was no price attached to the tag he laughed again. The battle had certainly been won.

Sauntering outside the library Gerald stopped to eye the selection of books on display but found none worth buying, even when they were marked down to fifty pence. Drivel, he thought, nothing but local authors and zealots on the make. Tut tut, you pale hounds.

Seeing the time as it was, he started to make his way briskly to the supermarket, where at this moment in time he knew the reduced section would be set out for him to take first dibs. There was no point buying foodstuffs at full price. It just didn’t make sense when he had all the time in the world while families rushed and harried and argued over spilt milk and suchlike, but just as he was about to enter the supermarket he noticed that a man, probably one of those very fathers, making a hasty exit from his car. This one, he saw, had just dropped his wallet as he tugged at his jacket.

There it was, lying on the ground, the man departed and almost at the supermarket’s door.

Sensing unwanted attention Gerald turned his head ever so slightly and saw that a young woman was watching the very same spot as he. The bitch has spotted it too, he thought.

‘Hello?!’ he shouted. ‘You’ve dropped your wallet!’

The man was still just in earshot to hear his plea. He turned around momentarily and at that precise time Gerald pointed to his car, where the man could just make out a small black object on the tarmac next to one of his front tyres.

Racing back to retrieve it, he picked it up and went directly to Gerald, who he saw as a kindly old man doing his good deed for the day.

‘Here,’ said the man, opening the wallet and taking out a twenty pound note. ‘Have a drink on me.’

‘Why, thank you, young man,’ said Gerald, cursing the woman for being behind him.

There must have been two hundred quid in that wallet, he thought, as he looked at the comparatively paltry note in the man’s hand, smiling the only grimace he could ever muster throughout his entire life.

‘Not everyone would have done that,’ said the man. ‘Go on, I want you to have it.’

The woman took a few petty little steps forward and came into view, and as she did so Gerald immediately chuckled to himself, feigning nonchalance while delaying the moment to take the note to revel in her loss all the more.

‘Okay, just this once, why not?’ he said, unable to dislodge from the corner of his eye the gaunt, temperedly seething expression on the woman’s face. Rather than honour the compassion shown by the man the moment was too good to forego.

Obviously, if it hadn’t been for her he’d have been far better off and might have even taken the thing to the police station that evening, having obligingly relieved it of its banknotes, but beggars couldn’t be choosers, he supposed, and as the man disappeared into the shop the woman waddled off behind him with false intent.

That’s two wins in less than an hour, he muttered to himself, and it was then that he started to deliberate something novel that had just started to try and sit in his head.

Unfortunately it was such a strange and novel idea that it left him as quickly as it came.

Replaced in that very instant by the thought that items were being swiped from the reduced section as he stood there like a fool, he stomped into the supermarket and made a beeline for aisle six.

At the end of aisle four Gerald winced with horror when he saw a man carrying a basket and walking away from aisle six. In it were two pork pies, both with reduced labels attached to them.

Bloody Poles, he thought, picking up speed to get to aisle six (Gerald once encountered a Polish family at the reduced section and the sight of the father stealing away from him all six packs of reduced croissants had so made his blood boil that he vowed never to speak to or aid a Pole ever again, even if he was desperate need).

Once installed at reduced it was evident that his very recent gain had been quickly and deftly lightened by his appalling lateness.

A pretty young woman carrying a baby in a sling was there quietly plucking out items. Her trolley was positioned in such a way that he could not for the life of him get to that ever smaller section dedicated to reduced items. Only last week the section had been shortened by about a half a metre and the month before a whole shelf had been replaced by coconut water, which he knew to be a new craze and thus forgave as a trifling measure that must hence be lived with.

The worker who had just filled the shelves of the reduced was, as Gerald could see, over by ready made meals, searching for more crap to slap with marked down stickers in order to replenish the reduced section, but the pretty young woman with the baby in the sling just wouldn’t leave so Gerald took action with the trolley, trickling it slightly with a hip to get in at the items.

‘Sorry, I was miles away,’ said the woman. ‘I should have moved it.’

Gerald could only manage a vacant, momentary scowl as he saw what was in her trolley; three chicken jalfrezis and four, yes, four large Charlie Bingham, yes, Charlie Bingham (!) macaroni cheeses. When he looked on the reduced shelf he saw that she’d taken the lot.

‘Would you like one?’ said the pretty woman, bending down with effort to take a jalfrezi from her trolley. ‘I don’t want to be greedy.’

Not only was he confronted by one of the most beautiful women he’d ever clapped eyes on, her baby, a thing of utter wonderment, had instantly understood her mother’s wish and looked up at him with round, bulbous eyes, imploring Gerald to take the jalfrezi as if it was the last ready made meal on earth.

Gerald was at a loss. One side of him wanted to knee the woman in the groin and laugh like a madman but there were other sides developing, of which he had never experienced, as he held the gaze of both woman and child.

What entire nation is happening to me (?!), he thought, almost out loud. He only ever said that phrase because he knew not what it meant and made him laugh, but he was far from laughter at this point in time. In fact he was transfixed.

Such was his feeling of ‘love’ that he thought about toilets, about peeing his pants, about his mother and the dog he once had.

‘Go on,’ said the pretty woman, ‘I’ve got plenty.’

Again, Gerald’s first instinct was to hit her. How can she be so nice? How can she be so kind when she’s got a baby in a sling, even if the thing wasn’t screaming and being babyish?

It was at this time that he remembered the thought that he’d had outside in the car park area after he’d pocketed the twenty from the bloke with the wallet.

The thought was, and it screamed at him like his mum, ‘be kind’.

That was it. Be kind. See what happens. You never know.

He wrestled with it but it wouldn’t budge. The woman’s voice he couldn’t hear by now.

His eyes set to those of the toothless baby, he said something but it didn’t register. So unlike anything he’d ever thought his current state was that of a dream.

What he had actually said was ‘thank you’, but with genuine gratitude.

The woman placed the jalfrezi in his basket and as she left Gerald started to cry.