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"Whiff of a grapeshot"
(Part 1) By Perry Estelle © 2003
Bermuda Terrace Shopping Centre, Edwardston. South East England.
A woman dressed in deep mauve and wearing a matching chiffon scarf picked up a newspaper to read of the death of Edith Piaf. Paris had lost its 'little sparrow' to alcohol and morphine. Her last song summed it all up. "Je ne regretted rien". Piaf's close friend, Jean Cocteau had died on the spot from shock when told the news.
"The wages of sin is death. Anyway she had a voice like a rusty gate." The woman frowned and shook her head, neatly folding the paper and placing it back on display.
She was without make-up and hauntingly beautiful. A tensile, elegant woman with Christine keeler looks. A pointed bodice, to be envied by Miss Keeler also. She was told by her hairdresser to avoid purple. A shade usually chosen for the prematurely old. A hurrying form that clickety clacked in a straight line through Edwardston High Street. Others weaved to avoid her. She wore a hat and veil, sharp to one side. She fiddled with a bow at the back that added a touch of style. She was high-cheeked and heavy browed. Strong features with a mind to match. Exercise and hygienic living had graced her with a body of a model and an athlete. Her rigid diet of haricot beans, fruit, white fish and milk pudding had paid her physical dividends. A body. Not for the eyes of just anybody. Her husband had given up any exoticism with his wife.
Sex was occasional and then when the wind was in the right direction. He was allowed to touch his wife under laboratory conditions. He would take a week to finally seduce her and each time it was like plunging into a ripe peach. She was reluctantly responsive but could not bear him near her if he had been drinking. The marital 'jousts of Venus' were for sober men. Not to be taken with the 'Soup of Hades', as she referred to it. Tony Carvello had hidden the brandy because it was Wednesday. He had a hot date with his wife at the cinema to see 'Cleopatra' that night and so he locked up the Courvesoiur in case she was 'in the mood'.
Nellie Carvello had stopped buying a Christmas turkey from the well-scrubbed and florid Mr Charles Jackson. It was painfully apparent that she was not to be compromised for her abstention, because of her staunch religious beliefs. The time-served butcher took this as a personal insult and would bone out his gammon with the tenacity of "Crippin" when Nellie walked into his shop and start to preach the evils of the Christmas festivities.
If Francis were unfortunate enough to be riding shotgun with his Mother on these occasions, he would spend the entire time tugging at her duffle coat, hoping she was not going to reach full speed with her righteous indignation. Mr Jackson's face would almost turn purple with rage. Pounding at his temples. Nellie, would denounce his encouragement of what she regarded as a hideously heathen tradition. She would condemn the sale of 'pagan meat sacrifices', hanging at his window. This would be done usually when the sawdust on the stone floor was kicked around by a lot of customers.
It was just a matter of time before the gauntlet would be thrown down and both were berating eachother. His Mother would always get the upper hand and deal a vicious deathblow to the fuming butcher. Mr Jackson would not give up without a fight.
" I have to say Mrs Carvello while I appreciate that you do not celebrate the festive season, most of my other customers do, and, what I do not appreciate you doing, is upsetting them each Christmas Eve, during my hours of business. Kindly refrain from doing so, if you please."
The sweating shopkeeper begged and pleaded. A giant bloody fist wrapped around a hatchet with other plans than slicing a goose's gullet. From his seething expression he would be happier if it was planted between the shoulder blades of the persistently preaching woman, second from the back.
When some infidel ever made the mistake of trying to shut up Nellie, it was to have the same effect as taunting a cobra with a bare backside.
Mr Jackson was already stung by the Carvello venom. Her tongue was more deadly than a wedge-shaped viper. After the initial vindictive bite, the symptoms are as follows.
The victim is momentarily stunned. The mouth becomes dry and the larynx swollen rendering him or her, unable to speak. He or she may start to feel nauseous and unable to stand. If he or she survives the initial toxic effects of total paraylisis or collapse, the pschological ramifications can be even more damaging. Post symptomatic syndromes are familiar with the following characteristics. Salivation and hypersensitivity would ensue. Followed by high pulse, lack of self-esteem, depression and probable suicide.
"How dare you, accuse me of upsetting your customers." Nellie blasted.
The boy standing a safe distance while the blue touchpaper had been lit.
" However, a few home truths never upset anyone. Which is more than can be said for your products." She had that scary look when her eyes disappear, thought Francis.
She swung around with a host of innocent bystanders now lynched into the controversy and staring and recoiling in genuine fear.
"My whole family had the squirts for two days after eating your pork sausages, Charlie Jackson, and we did'nt know if our bums were drilled, punched or counter sunk." (The embattled butcher 'sinking' under his 'counter' also.)
She went on, now in full flight.
" Listen, I'm telling you Mrs Forrester...(a lady with a look of astonishment directly in front of Nellie had turned around with cheeks that blew up like a barrage balloon.) …"Don't buy the chipolatas either, they've been the same ones on three different occasions this week at the window".
Nellie Carvello had now several young mothers struggling to leave the shop already.
" Coarse mince, oh, its coarse alright, I've seen better fishbait. Don't you ever wonder why this man spends so much time down the the "Spread Eagle" with Jim Slattery from the knackers yard, every Friday night?" She winked to the audience.
Then tossing her head back strutted out the door dragging the embroiled Francis. A bottleneck of shoppers still in shock left in haste. They left for Sainsburys' to get a better cut. It was probably a priority to examine their stools over the next week, for tapeworm.
The fellow in the striped apron with the same demeanor of a patient who was told that he had only a few hours to live, dropped to his carving stocks just as if his legs had been shot away by a fully loaded Gatlin gun, at close range. Placing his head in his hands he started to sob, as the last 'would be' customer left. The 'once upon a time butcher ' was not his rosey -cheeked self anymore. His clammy persona was a bluish grey associated with cardiovascular problems. Another casualty of a close encounter with the caustic Carvello temper.
That kind of episode was a frequent occurrence to challengers of his Mother before she got religion. With the good Lord on her side she was now as volatile as an organised land army of immense proportions that would do battle, long before the "last conflict".
Her tongue was her main artillery.
The world would never be ready for the combined strengh of the Almighty and his favourite warrior.
She had the subtlely of a steam hammer in a mosc and the compromising qualities of a deranged drunken Orangeman.
Nobody was safe.
Reducing all who crossed her into a gibbering basket case.
Francis, was proud to inherit a little of the notoriety of his Mother. He remembered on occasions how the towns' gossiper's snatched their children up in their arms giving his Mother a wide berth to the other side of the street.
His Papa though, was very much the King of his own castle. When he could get a word in sideways.
He would sometimes get his point over in between Nellie interrupting him and her displays of giantsized tantrums. Fearful, arguments, which erupted from thin air and then distilled into sheer rage. Dreadful words said by both petulant parents as irretractable as trying to get toothpaste back into a tube. Projectiles, full saucepans of pasta sauce thrown like featherlight buckets of blood, from one side of the room to the other leaving the walls like a scene from the 'Valentine's day' massacre.
Francis and his twin sister, Charlotte, would usually choose a place of safety, from either the top of the stairs or behind the larder door as their parent's waged battle.
It usually happened when it was something as innocent as an item of underwear found in his Father's jacket pocket. A discovery, before it got as far as the dry cleaners. Or, even more unassuming, a tiny packet that had a curious plumbing washer, inside tin foil.
Tony Carvello could not resist women's attention.
He was a predator of a willing 'top heavy' workforce. Women on a conveyor belt. He was a hotblooded Italian with a weakness for Anglo Saxon women, old enough to know better. Cheap perfume and peroxide inside a yellow gingham overall transferred logic and reasoning to his nether regions.
He could not, still, the beating hearts. After all, most of them spent all day on an assembly, heatsealing transistors, or soldering circuits, so when Mr Carvello came to their desk to 'inspect' their powers of reproduction, it was no wonder they would bend over backwards for him.
In a small town like Edwardston news travelled faster than fifteen pints of Abbot ale and a Vindaloo curry inside a Cambridge City football supporter.
Tony Carvello's philanderings often raised the eyebrows of gossipers of those whose insipid existences never generated the same exotic pleasure. Standing around shushing and tutting on street corners yet quite probably wet with excitement. Never figuring out how a devout evangelist could be married to a galavanting gigolo.
His Mother knew the whisperers. Tony was discreet but his harem rarely as considerate. Then the local 'jungle drums' started to rumble from shop to shop like a virus of moral poison. Each time, the greengrocer's potato scales fell quiet among the murmurings. Nellie, picked up the scent of her husbands disloyalty keener than a swimmer's piss in shark sanctuary. She only had to see the expressions of the shoppers down at her local Mace store. The way they would huddle and gasp, chirrupping away like obese budgies too fat for the perch.
The observers were about to mainline the carbolic temper of Nellie.
" I'll cut his effing balls off, God forgive me!" She hissed, through a scowl. Fighting back a tear of contempt and fury.
Sweeping up the last 'Sunblest ' reduced to a shilling, she threw a fistful of change at Vera O'Reilly. Making her dive under the kiosk counter for safety, while the rest of the store gaped. She pulled her children like sides of beef the length of protruding eyeballs and then proceeded to disqualify the distorted tales in true Nellie Carvello fashion.
" O.K you backstabbing witches, have any of you had my husband? WELL, HAVE YOU?"
Glowering to the cowering, Nellie squawked and walked like a Major at a poor parade.
Up and down the line of quivering handbags clutched to bustling chests.
" Well, if you haven't, your daughter probably has, so why not start gabbing about your own offspring? I've seen them behind the gasworks, after the pubs shut. Especially, that little trollop of yours, Mary Hawthorn. "
The charge was received with several sharp intakes of breath and a shockwave deeper than the San Francisco quake of 1906.
Nellie Carvello chewed them all, up one side and down the other, each of the shuddering baggages.
She continued the barrage of denunciation.
"As for that little scrubber with a plum in her mouth, that you dropped sixteen summers ago, Mrs Ferguson, you want to sellotape her knees together…it's the second time I've seen her at the clinic this week. She'll die in Y - shaped coffin, the little, mucky madam. All fur coat and no - knickers she is, make no mistake, and look at her hoity toity Mother all dolled up to do the ironing. Poncing around this shop with a 'Harrod's' carrier bag you got from the 'bring and buy'. Who do you think you are? 'mutton dressed up as lamb', that's what you are. You old tart."
Mrs Ferguson braced herself against the canned goods behind her, as she conducted a series of mini-strokes and slithered earthward grabbing a catering size can of "Jolly green giant" on the way down.
The stunned group squirmed and wriggled like they were outside a locked lavatory.
Nellie, drew herself up like she had just performed Spohr's "Last judgement".
" Now you twisted bunch of sex-starved vixens, my Tony…."
She paused and swallowed hard, guarding her dignity. Daring any to even breathe. Her eyes. Burning into the frightened faces.
"... might… be a toad, and his life not worth living, but I'll tell you this. He may be weak and weighed down with sin and temptation, but,…for all his stupidity he still comes home to ME, do you hear?"
She yelled biting her lip, her voice breaking with emotion.
"He's still mine, and all your good for nothing daughters, who follow him around like dogs on a council estate, aren't fit to breath the same air as me. The same who lie to you, their own Mother's……
Nellie came up for air and stared a hollow stare. The shock registered. Her voice changed from fury to a trembling, choked whisper.
"You lot, want to get your own house in order and as the good book says 'let any of you, who is without sin, cast the first stone'….. Eh? Go on. Crawl back to your own husbands and tell them what you heard from Nellie Carvello, and see if it gives 'em as much of a hard-on, as you frustrated old bints."
" I said leave. NOW…"
Nellie poked each sourpuss with the sharp end of her umbrella like she was goading a herd of harrassed heffers, in frocks.
Amongst a chorus of "well I never's" and "how dare you's" Nellie pummelled the heckling brood. Hounding them out of the premises and with all the grace of a bad turn at a working mens club on a Friday night.
Slamming the shop door shut with such force as to send the brass bell with a loud 'brring' to the curling and tattered linoleum floor. Flush cheeked, Mrs Carvello dusted her hands and turned to face Mr Clegg the shop proprietor.
Mr Clegg's mouth hung open with a cigarette stuck to his bottom lip, as if by magic, and an expression of watching a horse he had bet his whole shop on, fall in the paddock.
His wife too, looked like she was trying get into the Guinness book of records for 'motionlessness', or 'catching flies'. A truly, valiant attempt, had the top set of her false teeth not dropped with a 'click' to her bottom set, disqualifying her.
" I see your cauli's are a bit nicer than last week, must of been that cold snap, don't you think Mr Clegg? Will, you sort me out a couple for me, by Wednesday? I'll not want any 'green' on my tater's either, mind you. Bye."
Seemingly, oblivious to what had preceded her, Nellie and the twins made their exit as Francis shrugged and reached across to the fake grass display for a 'golden delicious', as the door sprang.
It was business as usual for Nellie Carvello, but perhaps not so, for Mr Clegg.
She strode home with summer rain hitting her brow that contorted with anger and pain. The news of her husband's adultery was no revelation, but each knowledge scarred her deeper than before. Her, pinching face showed her sorrow and hurt. As the mascara ran, so did she. Until she broke down and fell to the ground of some patchy grass by a deserted battery of tumble down allotments and huddled in the downpour with her children comforting her.
Francis, once again felt let down by his Father. Not just for his Mothers sake on this occasion. More than the fact his old man could not control his testerone levels and wanted sex with every cheap factory girl in Edwardston.
It came down to, how he had threatened the whole family.
Mama, no longer trusted him. How, could Francis trust him?
His loose conduct could cost the family it's future. It would mean untold unhappiness, in exchange for twenty minutes of his Father's selfish pleasure. What about if he caught a disease and gave it to his Mother? He had gleaned a lot of carnal knowledge from the other boy's at school. If Mama got sick with 'a dose' or 'crabs', the air would be thick and cause more than a stir down at the Saturday market.
Francis stroked his Mama's rain matted hair, as she sobbed helplessly. Surely, a longsuffering wife deserved at least 'monogamy'? (Something, he discovered from his source, was not a piece of red coloured wood used for coffee tables and wardrobes)
Francis had to stop his Father wrecking his own marriage.
A powerful statement was needed. It would need a physical protest, for the sake of his Mother's honour. A campaign of wanton destruction of everything his Father treasured. Francis knew how to hurt his Father, where it really counted.
After weeks of inertia and self-doubt, Francis decided to make history. It was a warm day as he walked home from school. Like, a Nomad in a wilderness of some trepidation, he planned the most pernicious and vile revenge.
to be continued (bookmark [CTRL+D] this page)
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