Page 22 of Lost Souls

“Well, how about…?” She appears lost in thought but then notices the freshly deposited horse manure on the road just ahead of her. “Ooh, look!” she says, in some excitement.

“You gonna wipe its ass?”

Noreen ignores him and rattles off to pick up the recent droppings with her large-mittened hands. She then distributes it all with a brisk flourish into a nearby window box.

“Wonderful for geraniums! Mrs Godber will be thrilled.” She smiles, smacking her woolly palms together.

“Good for Mrs Godber,” says Arnie, dodging the fallout. “But where does that leave you, Lady Shit-For-Free? Pair of ruined, not very nice gloves. Stinky fingers. Charity is for suckers!”

Arnie Garth can tell by the horrified look on the woman’s rosy-cheeked, cosmetic-free face that he might perhaps have said the wrong thing. Again. Especially if he wants Noreen Millburn to warm to him pretty fast – Sunday at the latest – which even he recognises isn’t looking hugely probable right now. He stares into her open mouth, trying to ignore the jagged teeth that he puts down to English dentistry and too many raw vegetables.

“Hey, joking. I’m joking, Noreen! Youknowme, lady. Well, you will. I am such a loveable kidder. Here…”

He reaches into his pocket, produces a nickel and drops it into her tin. She just stares at him in disgust. He finally takes the message on board and laughs.

“What did I tell you? Such a tease! Ask anyone in the porn— Portland, Oregon area.”

He reaches into his pocket again, produces a roll of bills and shoves them into a random tin so that half of them are still proudly sticking out.

“Buy an orphanage or something.”

Noreen Millburn’s mouth remains open, this time not from horror but in awe.

“Mr Garth… Arnie… that’s really generous! No one has ever… if I’m lucky, I get 50p. Usually it’s buttons or tiddlywinks. I’m, well, I’m overwhelmed.”

“Youare?” Arnie smiles in some relief. “Well, that’swhat I came here to tell you, kiddo. The reason I’m so friggin’ attracted to you is thatI’m a philanthropist too!I – help the lonely and unattractive.”

“That’s… interesting.”

“I give back. Okay, our styles are different – maybe I’m just a tiny bit too brash, too American. You, you’re seriously weird and dress like a bag lady. But deep down, where it counts, in the kishkes, we’re kindred spirits, Noreen! With an emphasis on the kin. Hey, enough of the foreplay. You wanna eat dinner tonight?”

“I eat dinner every night,” she says in confusion.

In a cage, hanging outside a pretty little cottage, is a solitary budgie. Casually, Noreen undoes the metal latch and sets the little bird free.

“I meant with me,you dumb… I mean, I’d like to takeyoufor dinner. Like you was a normal person. Pick you up at seven.”

“Oh! Well… alright, Arnie. Thank you. But I’m normally in bed by eight.”

“From your lips to God’s ears,” says a hopeful Arnie Garth, sauntering back towards the Wordsworth Arms for a well-earned breakfast. He doesn’t notice Rosie watching him grumpily from an upstairs window, feather duster in her hand, illusions of stardom slowly draining from her heart.

At the little home with the now reeking window box, a door opens. Into the damp morning air wafts a plaintive but all-too-familiar lament.

“The bugger’s done it again!”

Chapter Twelve

He that feeds upon charity has a cold dinner and no supper.

(Turkish proverb)

A bright-red Ferrari200 is whispering along the narrow country road through the persistent evening rain. From the state-of-the-art stereo system, Tony Bennett sings his crooning heart out, never realising that he is part of some soulless pornographer’s increasingly desperate seduction plan.

In the distance, a respectable arrangement of lights gives the hint that here at least could be one building worth stopping for and not just another crumbling farmhouse or hairy-roofed cottage. A flash of oncoming headlights and the angry hoots of some very insistent horns suggest to the arrogant dickhead with the show-offy car that he might be safer sticking to the British side of the road.

When they finally arrive at the exclusive country house hotel, an establishment which a kindly lady at the Rough Fell Post Office has recommended to Arnie as the finest in the Lakes (the landlord at The Wordsworthhaving insisted that no grub in the area could possibly match his own), the harassed and exhausted driver pulls up with some relief outside the front entrance.

The car is already attracting some admiring looks. And rightly so. It is a vehicle which Arnie has hired at huge expense, with serious hints of future location filming, from a swish dealership in the nearest major centre. Arnie reckons that it makes him look so hot that he could happily even screw himself (an option that has been suggested to him quite often in the past).