Angel 66 (new pram for old)

Angel kept her head down when she came out of Naz’s shop, the girls in the unit, just called it the Paki shop on the corner. The wind blowing her backwards, but Adam in his fawn coloured woolly coat and scarf giggled. He was a bit too big for the cheap, foldaway, pram in blue striped nylon, she’d swapped for the double-buggy, his feet jammed into the footrest, the stitching for the moment unravelling, but holding, but he didn’t seem to mind. He liked being outside, a change of air, and change of scenery. Angel needed the walk too and not just to cash her book and pick up a few messages.

The wind dropped and she heard the toot of a horn up ahead of her, a bin lorry was parked on a set of double-yellow lines, engine running. She trudged on, Albion Street, respectable and quiet blocks of modest terraced houses, running parallel with the Unit, almost there, almost home. The horn tooted again and the jarring noise of the gears sticking as the bin lorry jerked forward and stopped in front of her. Pizza Face leaned forward and his sunburnt features glared down at her from the driver’s cab.

He clunked the door shut as he jumped down from the wagon and stood in front of the buggy in his working gear and boots, smelling earthy and slightly rancid. A thin smile on his lips, he looked her in the eyes and then glanced down at Adam, his eyes lingering on the child. ‘How did you no tell me?’ he asked.

Bone tired, she found it hard to answer, to make sense of the different elements. The build-up of rush-hour traffic behind the bin lorry, cars scooting out and in of thin spaces and jamming their horns and shaking their heads angrily as they past, and both of them standing there looking at each other and the lines around his eyes showed concern and love. That most of all, threw her. She tried to remember when she’d last seen him, last spoken to him. She frowned and had a question of her own. ‘Whit you daeing here in a bin lorry?’

He screwed his eyes tight and shook his head. ‘Och, borrowed it.’

‘But won’t you get into trouble?’

‘Hi-yah,’ Adam, bright eyed like his mother, with a speck of yellow in the irises, peeked up at Pizza Face shyly from his buggy.

‘Hi-ya, wee man,’ Pizza Face crouched down and took his pale hand in his and kissed his fingers.

‘Hi-yah,’ Adam giggled.

‘Hi-yah,’ Pizza Face repeated in a high voice and a smile lit his face and he stroked Adam’s fingers and wrist.

‘Hi-yah,’ said Adam.

‘Hi-yah, wee man.’

Angel started to get anxious. Traffic had come to a stop behind the bin lorry and cars going in the other direction weren’t letting them out. Horns were sounding out distressed signals.

‘Hi-yah,’ said Adam.

‘You better move your bin lorry,’ said Angel. ‘They’re started to get annoyed.’

‘Hi-yah,’ Pizza Face danced and jockeyed for position, before planning a smacker on Adam’s cheek.

‘No, you better move it,’ said Angel.

‘Fuck them,’ growled Pizza Face.

‘Hi yah,’ said Adam.

‘They’ll phone the police,’ said Angel, into the growing cacophony of wind and traffic.

Pizza Face stood up and looked back toward the bin lorry and scowled. ‘Suppose,’ he said. ‘Where’s a good place to park, around here then?’

Angel rubbed at her forehead. ‘Back at Naz’s, probably best.’

‘Hi-yah,’ said Adam.

‘Where’s that?’ he asked her, all business now.

She turned and waved her hand like a white handkerchief back at the way they’d come. ‘Just up the road, a Paki shop.’

He nodded. ‘That’s good. They’ll no gie me any bother.’

‘Stay here,’ he said, looking at her and at Adam in his pram. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

He strode back to the bin lorry and leaped up into the cab. A crunch of gears and the bin lorry passed Angel and the traffic began to move behind it.

She checked on Adam before wheeling the buggy slowly back to the Unit. Pizza Face soon caught up with her as she turned the corner.

‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘Those muppets can be a pain in the arse. Think they own the road.’

‘Will the bin lorry be alright?’ she squinted, looking at him and smiled for the first time in what seemed for ages.

‘Aye, fucking too right. Who’d steal a fucking bin lorry?’

‘Apart from you?’

‘Well, aye,’ he admitted, standing sideways trying to block the worst of the wind from them and looking across at the Unit of terraced houses, with matchbox, shrivelled front gardens and the prison hulking behind it. ‘Apart from me.’  

She squeezed his arm, though his day-glo, padded, jacket. ‘How did you no just come in your Jag, would that no have been easier?’

‘That’s whit I wanted to talk to you about.’

She wondered if he was going to have a berky. He’s that serious face on him and had a history of flying off the handle. Once he’d told her he was good at it, that’s why he got so much work. He dipped into his jacket pocket and took out oodles of notes, fifties and hundreds, balled up in his big hands and held it out to her.

Angel took a step back.

‘Sold the Jag. Take it.’

‘Whit for? she asked.

He ran his fingers through his frizzy hair. Despite the same strong jaw she’s always known since childhood, a hint of tears in his eyes. ‘I’ll no take charity. They bastards ‘ill no say they buried our wee girl. That’s the money up front for the funeral.’

Angel’s Face softened. ‘Oh, Pizza Face,’ was all she could managed to say and started crying.

A shuffle of feet and he swerved around her and stuffed the notes into the side of the buggy. And just as quickly he turned his back and was striding the other way, back towards the corner shop, but not before Angel heard him choking and saw tears streaming down his puffed out, wind-blown, cheeks.