FROM THE ARCHIVE Loot by Katie Barron

I’m giving away some of my junk and – sneakily, while he’s at school – some of Leo’s bits ‘n’ bobs.

Bye, bye, cat scratcher. The cats prefer my armchairs for that.

Goodbye finely crafted moccasins, fashioned by a Moroccan cobbler out of scarlet leather. Leo never wore them.

Then we come to the serious stuff: a tape measure that starts at 65cm and finishes at 85cm. Why? Whence?

A brassy sheriff’s badge with the word BREEZANGO emblazoned under an eagle who looks down at the word enquiringly. Below that in the embossed design, two determined-looking males in peaked caps cling onto a five-pointed star. Underneath that, the badge reads ‘Fashion Patrol’. The pin is still in place on the back. I can donate it to the Sally Ann.

A yellow slinky, a leather purse, a bendable humanoid plastic leopard, stamps for block printing, a miniature plastic rattle with a smiling face, a rhino, a purple-winged bat that makes a faint noise when you pull its tail out and push it back, a sun-catcher daisy that Leo painted at a church craft morning, a pirate, a snake.

None of this extends much beyond five centimetres, except for the snake, which stretches to eight when untwisted; plastic ice creams, plastic fruits; some plastic cubes with bird faces and holes in the back – what are the holes for? Are they ‘Angry Birds’?

Knitted egg cosies rub up against clockwork monsters. A tin with Dennis the Menace on the front promises ‘excellent card games’ but inside there isn’t even one game, just loads of suggestions for what you could do with your ordinary pack of cards. I paid good money for that, in Beano’s smart office in downtown Dundee. A painted egg, a Martian – correction: on looking more closely, a ninja turtle astronaut.

An unopened puzzle book. The picture on the front of the book includes a creature that has hedgehog prickles and the delicate pointy nose of a shrew. It is walking over a boy’s foot, under water. This melange suggests that the puzzles are supposed to inspire a love of nature and won’t be very good. They may, however, be puzzling. A pencil sharpener in the shape of a fish, a minute badminton set, a plastic pig and cow of equal size, some trucks.

Tiniest of all is a legless man wearing a high quiff and shoulder pads. He has a large nose (relatively), which protrudes over a virile moustache. Between his arms he holds a blue cylinder which is hollow and open at both ends. His left hand fingers something that might be a lever, extending below the object. It might be a trigger.

 *****

The babysitter arrived. I’ve only got three hours. I get in the car and drive. Fields, trees, sunset-fire in the sky. I nosed my car down lanes I didn’t know, leaving the city and the motorway behind, following an older plan, took a few wrong turns and then parked beside a parish hall. 1912. Sprung floor. Shy smiles. Had I signed in? White and grey and silver, the heads. And one younger woman in a pastel pink anorak. Wants to do some volunteering for them in St Ives. ‘Even just a stall, on market day.’

We were a little scattered among the chairs, set out in rows. I had to keep marking essays while I listened or it wouldn’t get done. This meeting for me was squeezed between the claims of parenthood and day job. The developers probably had all the time in the world…

The honorary Chair wore a tie and a bottle green V neck and his brogues were polished to shine. He took apologies.

That was a list of good people known to them who were absent. The millionaire developers had not apologised. President Trump had not sent his apologies. Nor Johnson, May, Cameron, Clegg, Brown, Blair, Major, nor Thatcher’s ghost –

We approved the minutes. We approved the time spent in telling the truth and the truth told about what had been said, we approved that too, telling the truth again, for record next year, record of our minutes spent.

The executive Chair stood up and gave his report. Toothbrush eyebrows. Strong, weathered face. He said the fens were subsiding because of changes in global climates. Something that had been four metres was now only one and a half. Much of the fens may soon be submerged. The fens supply a fifth of Britain’s food.

CPRE Cambridgeshire have been in dialogue with ‘the inverted commas authorities’, with the ARC, the East Cambridgeshire Housebuilding Council, the greater Cambridgeshire Partnership, with South Cambridgeshire and Cambridge City and with Peterborough. There was a plan to build an incinerator with a chimney eighty metres high. CPRE has objected. There is a public enquiry.

While we sat in that hall, the same day, my friend was attending a sustainability workshop near the Argentine-Brazilian border. The ‘inverted commas authorities’ there had sent brigade after brigade of firemen to the workshop. Instead of fighting the fires in the rainforest, the firemen were spending their time trying to convince those lefty eco liberals that the fires were so in hand they could spare all these men…

‘It’s endemic,’ the chair of CPRE Cambs was saying. ‘People don’t even recognise that they are being dishonest. We supported Alconbury Weald, as a housing development. Then they snuck in a hundred extra houses… They never told us that the A14 is refered to in the documents as “the A14M”. M – just crept in.’

Meanwhile the sky above where the eco workshop was, was totally grey, it was full of ash. People were afraid to go out, not just because of the pollution to their lungs but because of the heat.

We in the parish hall paid our respects to Julie of the committee, who died of asbestos in her lungs. ‘Our best commemoration,’ said the Chair, ‘is to continue her work.’

We reappointed the committee. We reappointed the accountants and approved the accounts. Seconding everything. The fight continues. The paid PR woman helped herself to extra biscuits.

The earthworms burrowing the fens bumped against concrete foundations. The Amazon beetles curled and charred.

 *****

Carolina’s partner died without a will. The bank took the house. I took the dishwasher.

There was no space in my kitchen for a dishwasher so I moved the saucepans into the china cupboard. Then I needed somewhere for the china. I bought a Welsh dresser at the Sally Ann. It looked awfully twee in the shop, very dolls-house; but in my living room, it beams. The yellow varnish brings the sunlight into the room. And now I don’t have to try and persuade my son to do the washing up. He likes putting the soap into the machine’s tray. Drudgery is defeated, for the nonce.

After the volunteers from the Sally Ann had installed my Welsh dresser, Rodney went off to meet his son at the station because his son had just got back from Singapore.

The other man hovered. He had a bony jaw and sailor-blue eyes.

‘The man who had it,’ he said, ‘was all into Egyptian stuff. You should have seen his place. He had gold everywhere. He had painted two pence pieces with gold paint and stuck them to the floor. This dresser was covered in coins, stuck on with bluetack, painted gold – you know how the Egyptians were into gold? I had to get them all off, scrub it down. It took me a good half day. His friends were sorting everything out for him. He’d died, you see.’

Yes, I had seen that coming.

‘I think he’d died in that room, among the gold. ‘Cos when we went in there I noticed a wet patch on the floor where they’d been cleaning up the mess. The places we go into sometimes!’

I eyed the dresser. There were still two coins, I noticed. Leo might like them.

‘People need people to check up on them,’ I said. ‘There ought to be some kind of arrangement.’

‘Nah. When I get to that point, I won’t want to be bothered. By then, I won’t want anyone. I’ll shut the door.’

He folded his sinewy arms.

‘You like your own company,’ I said.

‘I do. I go fishing. So I have to.’

‘Some fishermen bring a radio,’ I countered.

‘I bring a radio. Sometimes I listen to it. But plenty of times I don’t. I just sit there. I listen to the birds. The fish are out there, in the water. I love it. Nature is the best music there is.’

………………..

Katie Barron gave up being a financial journalist to teach EFL and write nonsense. Her stories have been short-listed for the Asham award in London and the RTE One/ Francis MacManus competition in Dublin. She stays afloat in Cambridge. 

www.katiealicebarron.wordpress.com

Twitter: @KatieStAlbans