Peedo - (A story )

“Peedo”.

Mr Scott at No. 4 looked at the dripping and wobbly letters painted onto one of the peeling garage doors behind the row of terraces. He wasn’t sure if he was more offended by the appalling waste of paint or by the abysmal spelling.
“God-awful teachers they have nowadays” he muttered into his moustache. “If they’re going to write vile things, why the hell can’t they spell properly? It’s all that testing they do on their bloody little phones. Test-speak they call it. Testing and wittering each other and – and – come on, for the love of God, pee why don’t you?”

This last remark was addressed to his terrier Sparky, who had developed a decidedly rebellious attitude lately and preferred to delay his ablutions until they were safely indoors in the warmth and comfort of Mr Scott’s kitchen.

They moved on, an elderly and upright old ex-soldier and his perky and humorous looking dog, both with bright intelligent brown eyes and both rather bristly. Mr Scott – nobody ever called him by his first name and he didn’t invite intimacies either – had lived in the same modest house for almost all his adult life, had bought it for a song with his wife when the area had been what used to be called “up and coming” and was right at the end of dozens of neat well trimmed front lawns with precision cut hedges, formations of flowers in shapes never seen in nature and the occasional daring stone ornament. That was half a century ago, when people had a pride in their properties, he mused. When housewives polished their front steps every week and men polished their cars … then Madge had died. Her last words to him were seared on his memory – “Milk money” she’d said, just like it was one of her usual firm reminders. Milk money to be paid, and don’t forget. Oh, and remember to bury me.

Re: Peedo - (A story )

He’d tried hard not to let standards slip. His patch of lawn was regularly cut, he made sure the nets were washed, always had food in. He stopped having the services of the milkman because he secretly suspected the man was cheating him blind, but other than that he reckoned Madge would’ve been proud of him. Sparky had been an afterthought, something living in the house, another breath to listen to other than his own wheezy intakes of air. Madge hadn’t approved of dogs. “Nasty, smelly things” she’d sniffed, and although he disagreed, he’d smiled indulgently and considered himself lucky to have a sensible, clean living and organised wife instead. Now of course, Sparky was a part of his life. A big part, even if the bugger refused to pee on command.

Mr Scott’s one regret was that Madge had never had children. She’d developed some indefinable “womanly” problem and once their initial disappointment had waned – disappointment on his part, quiet relief on hers– they’d settled into their middle class post-war routine. Mr Scott had spent his working life in pretty much the same way he’d spent his Army life, attempting to drill some sense of work ethic, loyalty and devotion to duty into the factory workers over whom he was foreman and God. It was a thankless task, and earned him nothing but derision and covert mimicry of which he was painfully aware. “Bloody ingrates, the lot of them” he would snap to Madge; “God knows what sort of kids they’re going to produce, the lazy, feckless …” and so it continued, right up to his retirement. Just him and Madge pottering around, contemplating a week in their caravan, a trip to the museum, a winding down of a frustrating life. And then she went and died on him.

A small girl around six suddenly rushed out of the house opposite his, and without so much as a glance into the road, ran knock-kneed and as wildly as a puppy straight over towards him and Sparky. Her hair was as fine and golden as spun silk, she wore a shiny pink plastic butterfly shaped slide high in her thin parting, and tiny National Health spectacles that magnified her eyes and gave her a permanently astonished expression. She sank to her knees in front of the dog, squeezed him to her thin chest and looked up at Mr Scott hopefully. “Can me and Sparky go for a walk? Can we? Or p’raps I could come in and help you feed him?” Mr Scott’s eyes softened and a huge smile split his creased old face. He really shouldn’t encourage the child, not with people being so suspicious nowadays and her parents probably peering through the curtains. “Sorry, honey, I’ve got to be going in for my own tea now. Shouldn’t you be going home?”

The child’s face dropped, and she pushed up her spectacles absently, leaving them slightly askew on her nose. “Mummy’s at work,” she whined, “and I dunno where daddy is today.”

“Well, nevertheless, I’m not sure you should be coming in with me, best get along back inside, and I’ll see more of you some other time. Say bye bye to Sparky now.”

Re: Peedo - (A story )

She reluctantly relaxed her grip on the dog’s collar and he stumbled back a pace, shaking himself indignantly. As they turned into the side alley beside his house and round towards his gate, sidestepping several crushed cans of beer and a balled up chip wrapper, Mr Scott glanced back and saw the child sitting on his low wall and kicking her sandals rhythmically against the brickwork. “It’s a disgrace, that’s what it is,” he growled, “Letting a small girl, vulnerable and innocent, to wander the streets and talk to just about anyone. An absolute disgrace.”

Most of the homes in his road had long since succumbed to dissolution in varying degrees. Many now housed asylum seekers, immigrants who either shuffled along, eyes cast down behind their thin hooded tops or else chattered loudly and incomprehensibly to companions, high etched cheekbones, pallid faces, dark ringed eyes. One or two of them had made an effort with the frontages though, he admitted grudgingly, although he certainly didn’t agree with wind chimes or those bloody awful gnomes next door. As he turned the key, and Sparky whipped inside, desperate to relieve himself against the tumble drier, Mr Scott spotted next door’s grubby curtain move and the ruddy complexion of Reg peer out of the half open window nervously. “Morning, Reginald,” he barked. “Fine day for a stroll.”

Reg licked his fat red lips quickly and nodded rather too many times, like the insurance dog on TV. “Er, yes. Yes, indeed Mr Scott. I may venture out later.” The window closed with a bang and the red cheeks disappeared.

Mr Scott gave not a second’s more consideration to the brief exchange. As far as he was concerned he had been civil and it wasn’t his fault if his neighbour preferred to spend his life inside four walls. He followed Sparky into the small kitchen and prepared to mop up dog wee for the third time that week.

Reginald Lawrence, Reg, at No. 5 had seen and heard the brief exchange between his neighbour and the little girl from over the road. Indeed, he had spotted her on many other occasions, mostly on her own, often running up to pedestrians and initiating some childish overtures, or if they had dogs with them, insisting on petting the creature. She was known to many of the road’s residents and was regarded indulgently by most, even by the immigrants who, to give them their due, seemed to very much like children even if they mistrusted their parents. Reg’s watery eyes rested on the back of the girl’s dress for several seconds as she continued to sit on next door’s wall, the way the filmy material stretched across her narrow back, the contrast between her delicate ivory neck with its line of fine hairs and the grubby off-white strap of some sort of vest. As he watched surreptitiously, she raised a babyish arm and brushed something from her cheek. A ladybird perhaps, a tiny spider from the hedge. He shivered and moved unsteadily from the window. He found himself sweating and cold at the same time, fat oily droplets beginning to trickle from his scalp and roll their way down towards his eyes. It was starting again.

Hours later he heaved his bulk off the threadbare sofa and shuffled into his kitchen to make a cup of tea. The cups hadn’t been washed for some days and were stained a rich, ochre colour that would need scrubbing, but he wasn’t bothered. He found a ginger biscuit and brought them both back into his front room. The TV was showing some brash, barely dressed teenager squeezed into a mock fur bikini with ridiculously teetering high heels and some sort of diamante tiara on her yellow straw head. She was shrieking with laughter and peppering her shrieks with obscenities that made Reg’s colour rise even more in his pink cheeks. His eyes roved over her artificially voluptuous body distastefully. “What sort of parent lets their daughter out like that?” he enquired of the empty room. “I mean, no wonder they get attacked. It’s a sick world.” He turned the TV off with a veined and suddenly damp hand, and reached for his medication.

Re: Peedo - (A story )

By the time midnight had quietened the street there was only one light on in the whole row of houses. Mr Scott was unable to sleep and had begun to meticulously arrange the memorabilia belonging to his particular hobby. It always calmed him to re-live past memories, and helped him with his insomnia. He lined up a series of small boxes, rearranged his cardboard files on the scarred table and settled himself reverentially before the collection which covered decades. Other than Sparky, there was nothing else that gave him such pleasure nowadays.

…………..

Detective Inspector John Grainger placed the receiver down carefully, put his head in his hands and told the assembled room that another kid had gone missing. Same area, similar age of six, another girl, another blonde haired and probably terrified girl. There had been no trace whatsoever of the other two children so far, and their frantic families were no doubt living in their own hellish no-man’s-land, glued to their phones, dreading a knock on the door to tell them their worst nightmare had been realised. They had been searching for weeks now, canals and rivers had been dredged, house to house enquiries made, and photos distributed in shopping malls, schools, playgrounds and through letterboxes. Grainger had made an appeal on TV last week, much against his better judgement, asking for help from the public. He was a shy man and also very much doubted that these publicity appearances made the slightest difference. After all, if some nutter had done away with the kids, he would hardly be likely to give himself up, was he? As for neighbours spotting some strange child’s face at a window yelling for help, who wanted to get involved nowadays?

At No. 5, behind his grey net curtains Reginald Lawrence sat upright and tense on his hard dining room chair, his sweating palms clasped tightly in his lap as if preparing to pray. He had been in this position for some time now. His eyes were closed, but his yellow tongue couldn’t resist curling its wet way round his lips as if it searched for remnants of biscuit crumbs. On the wobbly table in front of him were piles of Reg’s most precious and dangerous possessions which he was desperately attempting not to look at or touch. Glossy catalogues of children’s clothes, photos of toddlers in frozen poses of play, holding balloons, toys, showing off their frilly dresses, their garish pyjamas. Mounds of blurry snapshots, taken covertly in the parks and nearby schools of small girls caught at play, shouting gleefully, white knobbly little knees, glimpses of vests, a tease of pants, wide laughing mouths flashing tiny gleaming baby teeth.

Reginald suffered the torments of hell on a daily basis, but knew at some deep and dark level that as long as he had his precious collection to help him control his obsession he could perhaps – just maybe – survive the terrors of the outside world and its temptations. God knows, he had no desire to go inside. He knew well enough what would happen to him inside. The evening wore on and Reg didn’t move apart from a soft mumble of a prayer that trembled on his fleshy lips.

……

At No, 4 Mr Scott opened the latest of his small boxes reverentially and, watched by his little friendly dog Sparky, carefully arranged the cotton wool which lined the base. “A place for everything and everything in its place” he murmured with a smile. He opened his gnarled fist and looked down at the shiny pink butterfly slide. “Such a pretty little trinket” he told Sparky, “don’t you think?”

Re: Peedo - (A story )

I don't know what to say ... I'm no critic or professional person.
But I enjoyed reading that. It kept me interested to the end and I had grown rather fond of Mr Scott and Sparky, the former seemed a nice respectable guy with his concern for siding standards and safety of modern day life.
As a theme about what goes on behind closed doors and twitching curtains it was a clever insight into the loner... and how wrong you can be.

It was well done .. thanks for posting and letting me read it.

Re: Peedo - (A story )

Yes same here, after reading the first paragraph it kept me interested and I had to see where it was going. It read just like something off the shelves of WH Smith Eccles. It had a feel of 'The Unlikely Journey of Reginald Fry' by Rebecca Joyce.
Are you going to keep it going Eccles.....By the way, Love your signature....

Re: Peedo - (A story )

Thanks for the input folks. Keep it going? No, it's a complete story in itself. Adding to it would diminish the impact of the last sentence, don't you think? Or perhaps I didn't convey the meaning adequately. I've got loads of short stories and I've probably posted most of them on here, so I'm reluctant to put any more on in case I'm repeating myself. I love writing.

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I loved it. The story line was captivating and the characters were believable. I leave wanting more.

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Well written, Eccles. You should do that professionally.

BTW, did you know that you have the same name as the dog on Coronation Street?

Re: Peedo - (A story )

Oh .. I must have missed them. Time for a good rummage as I really enjoyed reading that one and would love to read more.