Monday 14th June 2011, and onwards. Unfinished and incomplete.
Mary Maloney to the Slaughter
1992.
The vinyl spun through the tune of 'Roll Over Beethoven'.
Berry's lyrics echoed around the room, as Mary Maloney sat and listened,
remembering the time this was new in that wonder world of a secondary husband,
a young daughter, girls running around if with no panties, and Armchair
Theatre on the BBC. Il Mary Maloney was now old and frail, with dyed red
hair mixed in with shards of grey, deep indented wrinkles spread across her
skin, several dimples now forming across her skin, and a figure which was
certianlly no longer hourglass. Sam's had been shut since the dawn of the
nineteen-seventies, as he retired to his family, and the dawn of supermarkets
began to spread across the land. The counter of Sainsbury's now inhabited the
counter of Sam's.
Newsstands of magazines now inhabited where the vegetables
and meat were. Mary Maloney now inhabited where Sam stood. Rest. In. Peace.
Mary Maloney removed the spool and shelved the record away as she put on her
uniform. It would be another long day. She picked up her keys, and locked the
bedroom, locked the kitchen, locked the front room, locked the cellar, locked
the back door, opened the front door, went out of the front door, locked the
front door, ran over to the garage and locked the garage. Nobody could find
out. She unlocked her rectangular brown car, got into the driver's seat,
started the engine, locked the car, and began her short drive to over to
her workplace. As she drove, people stood and stared. What did this damned
youth culture think was so wrong with a sixty-something year old woman using
hair dye, with touched up hair lips and face driving a car produced in
1987, to go over to Sainsbury's and blandly answer each consumer's needs? Oh
yes, you're too busy glammed up with your umbrella haircuts, dressed in your
hoodies cuddled together in gangs, thinking punk-phase music is cool, piercing
your bodies with earings and masturbating if you had a home computer. As she
drove into the car park and over to the staff-reserved spaces, the thought
stuck with her. What impression did this society think of her? They didn't know
about what happened really with Patrick in '52. She sighed, parked in the last
remaining space which she could 'legally' park in, put the handbrake on,
flipped the switch to unlock the doors, turned off the ignition with her keys,
removed the keys and slipped them into her trouser pocket, and exited the car,
locking it as she did so. She walked past the bollards up to the front of the
store, and entered ready for her work. Mr Wilson directed her over to the area
she would be working at. Oh boy she
thought, four hours at the tills and then lunch at the crappy café. Soon afterwards,
customers would begin to approach. Trolley fulls of tins of peas, bags of Idaho
potatoes, shrink wrapped legs of lamb and boxes of cheescake. Oh, the irony. Even more ironic that Mr. JD
always kept them on sale. Is it a regional thing? Or is it country wide? She
stared out of the window as she waited for customers to approach. Twenty
minutes after she had started her shift, she saw a Ford Quattro pulling up in
the car park. Shit! she cursed
internally in her head. Fuck, please
don't be her... She stared at the door being open and she soon realised it
was what she feared. Her fat, drunk from birth, conditioned with ADHD daughter,
going out for some shopping with her girlfriend.
It would be 3 months until Miss Maloney turned 40. Mary
Maloney didn't care. "Go get yourself a husband!" a she'd said
as she was growing up in the 60's. Now, the Maloney family line is doomed. Mary
Maloney didn't care much about that either. The family line was screwed up
enough already. The shop was bec starting to become alive. With a flick
of a switch, Heath turned on the speakers, and inserted a compact disk into the
machine. Hold on, thought Mary
Maloney. Is that Ringo Starr? As the
lyrics of the song began, she was proved correct. At least they were taking a stepback, and not going into those modern
boybands, girls in bras singing lightly, and the punk leftovers from the
previous decade."In the town where I was born, lived a man who sailed to
sea, and he told us of his life, in the land of submarines..." sang
Ringo, as the disc continued to spin round whilst being hit by a laser. When it
hit "We all live in a yellow
submarine...", Ms. Maloney had reached the door, and with a kiss the
automated doors opened. Mary was so much dreading this. As her eyes glanced,
she was relieved to see she was not approaching the tills to say hi. And soon,
more people began to spread inside. She and her partner glanced through the
magazines. She picked up a copy of The Times... and her girlfriend picked up a
copy of the Gay Times. As the song reached Ringo's sound effect of bubbles,
Maureen Maloney had spotted her mother, and began to walk up to the tills. THE
till Mary had her shift at. Bugger. Soon
began a series of hellos. Mary didn't give it much effort, replying to her
blandly with a "Hullo", very reminiscent of Patrick's responses to
her on that tired night. "How's it going mummy?" asked Maureen. With
another bland response, Mary replied "Alright," gave it a pause and
added "Thanks." "I love you so much!" she said in a cutesy
voice. "You love HER too," was Mary's drab response. "Yes, I do,
very much so," replied Maureen, and let out another kiss, as Mary felt
disgusted by it. By now, the song had faded out. Please don't let it be 90's... Mary wished. Phew. Thank god. It faded into The Final Countdown. "So, what
have you got there?" asked Mary, as she scanned the barcodes of the
magazines through tills, and Maureen packed them into a plastic bag. "GT
and The Times," replied Maureen's girlfriend. Mary couldn't be arsed to
give a response and they left. Bitches,
thought Mary. She stared at the window again as she watched them approach their
car and leave. It did not take very long for another customer to approach her
till. Other people's shifts were getting started too. The person's trolley
contained, strangely, peas, Idaho potatoes, leg of lamb, Glocuester cheese, and
cheescake. Coincidence? As the man
placed the items onto the till, Mary commented on how this reminded her of what
Sam's stocked, and what she bought back in the day. Being in his thirties, the
man had recollections of Sam's too, and made replied talking about going
their during his childhood to help out mother. The next four hours of her shift
would become boring. At the end of it, she ran right over to the alcohol
section, and purchased herself a bottle of whiskey. Downing it outside the
store in the car park, she then returned, drunk, and went up the café.
To be continued in computer Word document
© 2011 Peter Webb
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