Page 83 of The Flowers of Bay C
‘You can’t,’ I say.
‘Yes, I can. Get out of my way.’
‘No,’ Kat says.
He stares her down and she stares back until his eyes drift off to the side, widening and then creasing up into even deeper crevices. ‘Wait, is she okay?’
He’s looking at Barbara, whose face is almost buried between her Bristol Rovers bobble hat and her blanket shroud. She has her hands stuffed inside her dressing gown and she is slumped down as if all of a sudden everything has become too much for her.
‘No,’ Jodie says, ‘she is not okay. We have to get her to the hospital.Youhave to get her – all of us – to the hospital.’
He has long, ratty, mousy-brown hair tied back in a messy ponytail, thinning on top, and bulbous eyes like a dead fish. He grimaces at us, revealing protruding teeth and a gold incisor.
‘I bleedin’ don’t,’ he says, and starts sliding his window up. It sticks and shudders and he curses.
‘It’s the rat,’ Barbara says, her quivering finger pointing straight at him.
‘I’m out of here,’ he says.
Jodie drags herself out in front of his car and bangs on the windscreen. ‘You. Have. To. Help. Us.’ It’s like she is dredging up some pocket of energy she didn’t know she had and spilling it all out in one great big splurge.
‘No. I. Do. Not.’
Kat steps nearer to him and lowers her face so she’s on a level with him. She flinches a little and I wonder if he has bad breath. ‘Could you at least phone the police for us? Or at least a taxi, or something – anything? Our phones aren’t working.’
He shakes his head. ‘I’m not calling the pigs, or no one else. Get out of my way, you freak.’
‘Can you not take us into town at least, or even the nearest village, if you can’t get us to the hospital? Then we can get help, and you can get on with your important business.’ Kat spits the last two words out and his eyes narrow into slits at her. If slits could still bulge out, that’s his eyes right now.
‘No,’ he shouts. ‘If you don’t get out my way I’m gonna run you over.’ He’s looking at Jodie now, who is still leaning on the centre of his bonnet.
Kat puffs her cheeks out. ‘Listen. Do you want a sick old lady dying on your conscience? Do you? Because that is what is going to happen if you don’t help us.’
His eyes shift sideways.
‘You can fit us all in this thing,’ Kat says. ‘Just drop us somewhere, anywhere that’s not out in the wild like here. By a house or something.’
He chews on his lip and his incisor glints.
He looks at Barbara again. ‘Where am I supposed to put that great big chair thing?’ And then he turns his gaze to Violet, with a slight sneer twisting his mouth, probably at the Dressing Gown of Doom/Spaceman combo. He points to her walking frame. ‘And that piece of crap there?’
‘Well,’ Violet says, her hand skittering to her throat, ‘I never heard such rudeness.’
Kat points to the caravan he’s trailing. ‘Well, you’ve got that great big piece of crap there, haven’t you? I think we can probably get a chair and walker in that thing between us.’
He shakes his head, his lips pulled back from his teeth in a pouty kind of snarl. ‘I’ll do that. Don’t need you lot interfering in my caravan.’ He crashes his door open and wrenches his bulk out of his beat-up seat, the old fabric torn and faded. ‘I am only doing this for her,’ he says, nodding at Barbara. ‘But I can only take you to the next village. No further. I’m on holiday, and I’m late.’
‘Holiday?’ Kat mouths at me. I can’t imagine anything much worse than a holiday in a bashed-up old caravan in late November.
‘I’ll have to put the seats down in the back,’ he grumbles, slamming his door closed against the snow and stomping round to the boot. He yanks the seats into place, all the time letting out a stream of obscenities even Kane would pale at.
‘An’ you expect me to just lift that thing into my van?’ He nods at Barbara’s chair again, his eyes popping even further out. Maybe they will fall out altogether and lie on his mottled red cheeks, continuing to give out their glares of incredulity and creep around me with that slight lascivious look I’m picking up.
‘We said we’d help,’ Kat says, hopping from one foot to the other. ‘But can we get a move on, please? You need to go on holiday, after all, don’t you?’
I don’t know where she is getting the energy to argue with his level of obnoxious, but inside I’m applauding her and wishing a little bit that I was her.
He huffs like a great whale expelling air through its blowhole. ‘Well, you lot get her sat in the car, then, and I’ll sort this thing out. And give us that.’ He whips the walker away from Violet who wobbles and teeters and falls against Amina, and drags it over to his caravan, shoving a key into the door and slamming it open.
