Telephone Exchanges.
“Are you still there? I can hear you breathing. I can hear your breath on the line. Why don’t you hang up? What do you want me to say? If you won’t hang up, then I will. I can’t spend time listening to you saying nothing. We’ll just sit here, listening to nothing.”
“I told him, I said, I’m not having it. No reason I should, not at my age. What does he think I am? Bloody cheek, out all hours of the night, only see him for his tea, and do I get a thank you, I should say not.”
“I don’t see how you’ve put up with him as long as you have. He’s a liability, by all accounts. Lesser women than you would have told him to sling his hook.”
“Lesser women than me would have bloody murdered him.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“Still, don’t listen to me harp on – how’s your Johnny doing at university?”
“Not tonight I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Well, it’s late notice, for starters. I can’t just waltz out without a babysitter, can I?”
“So get a babysitter.”
“’Get a babysitter’? It’s not like phoning up for a pizza, Mary. They don’t turn up in twenty minutes at the door. There aren’t fleets of babysitters whizzing about the place on mopeds waiting for the call to come. I have to plan. That’s what it’s like now.”
“Christ, excuse me, I only asked if you fancied coming down the pub.”
“I do fancy it. ‘Course I do. But I can’t take a fucking baby in with me, can I?”
“No need to get all tight about it.”
“Tight? I’m not the one without thought enough to give notice so I can go out, am I? I’ve got a kid, Mary. Like a fucking grown up.”
“Forget I asked. I’ll ask Janice if she wants to go out.”
“I don’t understand what your problem is.”
“What don’t you understand?”
“You, mate. It’s just a TV show. It’s not a comic book.”
“It’s still Superman.”
“But it’s not. They don’t give a monkey’s about the comics. Why should they? It’s not their job.”
“Well, they should. It’s just that, look, if he’s got powers, then he’s Superboy, isn’t he? So where’s his costume? And why’s he friends with Lex Luthor and who the hell is the blonde bird?”
“It’s a TV show. I think they probably explained all that stuff early on.”
“They did. But it’s not in the comics. They should follow on, like Superman Returns.”
“Yeah, that wasn’t a sequel, that was a remake.”
“It’s not a bloody remake; it obviously follows on from Superman 2.”
“Superman 3 follows on from Superman 2. That crap last year was a remake of the first one.”
“How do you figure that then?”
“There’s no Superman, Lex Luthor hatches a plan, Superman arrives, falls for Lois Lane, can’t have Lois Lane, Lex Luthor tries to create his own continent, Superman stops him, flies up into orbit and winks at the audience, the end.”
“Hang on – which film are you talking about?”
“Precisely.”
“…What?”
“I can’t get away, love, I just can’t. It’s madness here.”
“The kids haven’t seen you since yesterday morning. And that’s only because the car wouldn’t start.”
“I’ll see them at the weekend. We’ll do something.”
“You said that last time. Then you spent the weekend watching motor racing.”
“I watched it with Ryan.”
“He’s three, Dave. He still watches the telly after it’s turned off.”
“I thought he was enjoying it.”
“It’s brightly coloured race cars going round in circles; it’s practically invented to amuse small boys.”
“I like it.”
“Yes, you do.”
“She never!”
“She did.”
“She did not!”
“I saw her. She did it right there. I nearly got it on my mobile.”
“Oh, you should have. That would have been hilarious.”
“She’d have died.”
“Serve her right.”
“Yeah. It would serve her right.”
“Who else saw?”
“Just me. I nearly got it on my mobile.”
“I’d have loved to have seen it. You should have filmed it. I’d have loved to see it.”
“Yeah. But it was in the bottom of my bag. And I wouldn’t have seen it myself if I’d looked for my phone.”
“No. But it would have been good.”
“Yeah, it would have.”
“We could have put it on Youtube!”
“Aahh, we could! Shit, I should have filmed it, shouldn’t I?”
“Did I tell you about Valerie?”
“I think so, mum. I think you did.”
“About her fall?”
“Yes. You told me last time.”
“She’s scratched her leg all up. Had to see the doctor.”
“Yeah.”
“So she’s had to get on the bus. She hates the bus because of all the people. And her leg hurts her where she scratched it. It’s awful. The doctor just wrapped it in a bandage. Could have done that at home, done it herself. I told her the same. She asked me to go with here but I can’t get on the bus. I’d be scared of falling. Or someone might blow the bus up like on the news.”
“No one’s going to blow the bus up, mum.”
“It was on the news. Icelandic fundaments they were, or some such. Blowing everything up for Allah. I should think if Allah wanted to blow buses up he could manage it perfectly well himself. I saw it on the news. Terrible mess they made of those buses.”
“I think you’re safe in Wimborne, mum.”
“You say that, Justin, but you don’t know. They want to destroy our way of life.”
“You get that off the news?”
“It was on the news. The Icelandics want to destroy our capitals and state. They’re all bloody foreigners, aren’t they?”
“You can’t call them that, mum.”
“I can. I can and I will. They say the same about us.”
“Well, yeah, maybe they do.”
“Well, then.”
“Hush now. Go to sleep. Good girl. I’ll see you in the morning. Be a good girl for daddy. Night night, precious. Night night.”
