A Barrow Boy's Cadenza

Chapter 2

TWO

Still hopelessly bumbling on the floor, looking to see if he could push the debris somewhere, anywhere, rather than get a dustpan and brush, Mandy sashayed to Jack, a welcome distraction, and he dipped his head under her nightdress; she knew her dipstick and had positioned herself deliberately - Detective Chief Inspector Jack (Jane) Austin, a self-confessed, fully paid up member of the dirty old man brigade.

While he played ging-g**g-gooley, camping under her nightdress, she brought to mind he would be sixty in a few days and she would be fifty-four not long after, and they hadn’t discussed how to mark the occasions. The investigation had been preoccupying, but he was in denial about his age, well, about most things if she was honest, and this was how he managed to keep going, denial being his core faith; C of E, Church of Egypt; De-Nile.

She lifted her nightdress, ‘Close your mouth we are not a codfish,’ she said, accompanied with her best coquette smile, and dropped the nightdress onto his open mouth. It was a thing with Jack, he quoted films, adverts, TV programmes (especially Father Ted – Cod Irish being his specialty, or so he thought), a lot of Pride and Prejudice, of course, his nickname being Jane Austin, and all generally wrong and more often than not, inappropriately applied and out of context, but she liked it. He liked the film Mary Poppins, except for the penguins, “Nobody liked the penguins” he would say, and he anguished because he liked A jolly ‘oliday with Mary. How many men worried about Mary Poppins; were there any at all?

People thought Mandy to be as equally mad to fall in love with him, but their relationship gave her life a frisson that had been missing for a long time. That is, when she was feeling benign and loving towards the feckin’ eejit (even she quoted Father Ted). Other times it was a source of agitation, particularly at work in the police as he dug ever deeper holes for himself from which, Teflon Jack, another of his many epithets, miraculously escaped.

‘What were we talking about?’ Akela called from beneath the nightie.

‘Ninjas, not gingers. You could get the dustpan and brush,’ Mandy said, and headed to the kettle, the trim of her nightdress receiving an emergency sniff as it dragged across his face. ‘I’ll make my own tea shall I,’ she said, always pleased when managing to catch him with one of his own idioms. It was a game, and she thoroughly enjoyed it, enjoyed her relationship with Jack and shared his rejuvenation. She flicked the kettle switch and swivelled her eyes to the floor to see Jack on all fours, spare tyre over his boxer shorts, shirt riding up his back, exposing giant love handles like a spare set of buttocks; not your classic fantasy image. She often categorised him as a Jack Nicholson type, a boyish charm in an aging and not lean body, and promised herself a trip to Specsavers, just after she got her brains tested.

‘What’s a feckin’ Ninja when it’s at 'ome?’ he said, still on his knees, still resisting the dustpan and brush, still trusting the floor would clean itself.

There were frustrating times with this man, but he made her laugh, and sometimes deliberately so, ‘It’s a Chinese, or maybe Japanese, Martial Arts expert, silent and deadly, never seen a Ninja film Jack?’ Mandy saw where he was about to go and put up her hand, ‘I forgot, you only like Rom-Coms, and before you say it, it’s not a fart.’ She chuckled, starting to feel nice, despite the c*****e and mayhem of the night before, and despite the fact her kitchen floor was covered in bits of mocha pot and coffee grounds that he would not clean up properly. Liz and Carly will likely be treading on debris for days as Mandy would live with Jack in his house while her pregnant daughter Liz, and her partner Carly, stay in her flat, and look for a new home. ‘You don’t have any water at the bottom of your garden anyway,’ she said to the ungainly walrus.

‘What?’ He was getting up now and making a song and dance about that as well. She thought he’s looking for me to pitch in and help him clean up his mess. She got the dustpan and brush, I had better do this or Carly will think I’m a s**t, and Mandy thought, was this my role in life now, cleaning up after this bloke? Kate, Jack’s late wife, used to say, “He’s like a big ugly ship ploughing through the waters and we all live in his bow wave”. Kate died three years ago; he had been devastated.

Mandy, a single mum with two children, had been friends with Jack and Kate and their two kids for more than eight years, and Mandy thought Jack might never get over the loss. Still, here they were, slowly growing together, on her part, for Jack never did anything with baby steps, or grow-up for that matter. Nevertheless, she thought they had a good foundation, certainly they loved each other, but she was not so foolish, not to realise for Jack this was an energetic flush after a prolonged period of deep mourning. It was exciting for her too, but she’d been in love with this eejit for a while, waiting, to see if his one eye would ever open again, and in her direction. ‘I said you do not have any water at the bottom of your garden for any ferry, or fairy for that matter, to be dancing upon.’

‘I was using dramatic irony,’ he said with a smug-ugly grin on a face only a mother, or Mandy, would love.

He was doing her tea whilst she returned the floor to a semblance of a shine. She liked this about him, he did her tea, cooked, cleaned, a little, except she was always first to see the dirt before it ever came onto his radar. He never saw dust at all and claimed he was hypoallergenic, meaning allergic, but in a manic way. However, he did so many things that came from his heart and it made her feel cared for, loved. ‘Dramatic irony? You t**t, what’s that got to do with the price of fish?’

‘Be nice to have fish this evening, eh?’

She shook her head, his ability to change direction never failed to amaze her, as did his love of fish and seafood. ‘We always have fish,’ she would not let him off, ‘Jack, dramatic irony?’

‘We don’t always have fish, the other day you said you had chicken breasts?’ Mandy recalled speaking this into the fridge whilst hunting for something for dinner. She decided it might be prudent to let him off, he was after all, a modern-day Mrs Malapropism, known in the police station as Mr Malacopperism. He brought her tea over and kissed her neck; the toast was in, she could smell it burning.

‘I like mine lightly toasted?’ she shouted into his ear.

‘Shite…’ and Jack reached the toaster, not in the nick of time. He inserted more bread as the jerry-rigged mocha pot began bubbling, increasing Jack’s sense of panic. Mandy relaxed and sipped her tea, alert to Jack’s ooooh’s, fecks, and shites, as he dispensed his robust coffee with just a bundle of tea-towels to grip the pot. He succeeded with only two or three tea-towels becoming doused in black tar that masqueraded as coffee; he hid them behind the bread bin.

‘Not having muesli, Jack?’ she teased. Kate had introduced Jack to muesli, and after some time of whistling, which he did all the time anyway, and sitting like a bird with its legs hanging out of a nest, he began to like his bird seed. In fact, his muesli had become an art form, making it himself with his own gathered ingredients and a formula people ran miles from if he threatened to tell them about it, which happened often.

‘I’m having toast today sweet'art, I need to soak the oats and then put the coconut in…’

She flagged him with her eyebrows, ‘Stop, or we can talk about dramatic irony.’

He knew when to stop, in fact Jack knew women, leastways this is what he told himself, whereas the whole of womankind knew different. Mandy sat, sublimely relaxed with her tea and now lightly toasted toast, looking at her eejit of a bloke sitting opposite her, agitated, burnt toast breaking as he buttered it and squashed it into his mouth. She had swapped her burnt stuff, which he’d nonchalantly tried to pass to her, with his immaculately toasted bread. Still, he was happy with his demitasse of bitter-black coffee; all he really needed.

‘You could have made more toast.’ He ignored her, committed to the black bread and black tar and she saw the patent relaxing of his ugly face as he took his first sips. Jack erroneously considered his face handsome, with character. Mandy thought it was more like a cross between Geoffrey Rush, the actor, and a slapped arse; she giggled.

‘What you laughing at, babes?’

‘Nothing, just thinking,’ she replied, taking pleasure in a warm glow as he looked at her with a loving, though dodgy, eye. Approaching fifty-four, she did not think herself a beauty, but Jack did. He considered her a real woman, and said it all the time, and she liked it. He would say she was his Sophia Loren of Portsea Island, which was the Naval and Commercial port of Portsmouth. Nice, but not Capri.

‘Okay, lover?’

‘Fine, I’m thinking about the nice things you say about me.’

He stopped crunching, slurping, and mmmming, and moved his chair to hers and sat so their legs squashed together; he tried to do this wherever they were. The intensity of his coffee and charcoal breath grew as he leaned in and his hand stroked her cheek, ‘I love your face Amanda. You have hazel eyes that flare to green when you are energised.’ This could mean when she was angry or sexually aroused. It was one of his favourite Pride and Prejudice rejoinders, all completely out of context, but it made her feel good, so who gave a toss.

‘You have perfect Olive Oil skin, (he liked Popeye) and I love your thick, black, arching eyebrows,’ and she shuddered as his index finger traced the eyebrows and brushed her closing eyelids, ‘and your raving hair, how it shines, blue and green in the sunlight as it swings and touches your shoulders,’ he was touching her shoulders now and she mmm’d. ‘I love to kiss your full and lush lips, but most of all Amanda, I love your nose.’ He kissed it, blowing the essence of toast and coffee up her nostrils. Always his final sentiment. Mandy had a large roman nose that had been the bane of her life, but he loved it.

Jack’s hand dropped from her shoulder, caressing her breasts en-route to encircle her waist. Mandy rose from the chair and sat facing him on his lap. They kissed and he held her tight. Her breath was lost. Father Mike will have to forgo their hospital visit she thought, as he fumbled lifting her up, tripped, felt his back for an injury, but eventually guided her to the bedroom. Fortunately, she knew the way.