The Curtain Twitchers
Magnificent Maud, Marvellous Mavis, and Merry Maureen were standing each in
their own front rooms, looking out from behind their respective net curtains. The three
elderly ladies lived on a sheltered housing estate in old people’s bungalows. It was
Wednesday morning. Pension day. They would all come out in a minute or two and
catch the bus to the post office together. But first they waited. They were waiting for
Grumpy Graham to hobble past with his furrowed brow, heavily down turned lips,
and accompanying Zimmer frame. They didn’t want to get caught in his path and
have him ruin their morning with his misery and woe.
Like clockwork, at five to nine, along came Grumpy Graham looking sadder than a
Blackpool Donkey. A used Netto carrier bag hung slovenly over the front of his NHS
Zimmer frame. It was almost empty so it blew about in the breeze. Graham reached
the corner of Mitford Avenue as the number 43 pulled to a halt at the bus stop. The
driver opened the doors and Graham clambered ungainly onto the bus, exchanging a
grumpy something or other at the driver as he flashed his bus pass at him. Grumpy
Graham sat down, the bus pulled away, and the ladies came out of their front doors,
buttoning up their rain Macs and checking their handbags for purses and their own
bus passes.
“Morning Mavis, Morning Maureen!” said Maud with a beaming smile and a
mischievous glint in her eye.
“Morning!” they each replied and said to each other as they ambled happily along the
avenue to the same bus stop that had served as a weekly landmark for their jovial
jaunts for the past six years since they had met.
Once on the next 43 they settled themselves down for a five minute gossip.
Maud mouthed a question to Mavis, trying to be discreet.
“What did the doctor say? Will it be surgery?”
Mavis leaned in to Maud and Maureen and semi-whispered that her prolapse got
looked at by three student doctors and that they couldn’t decide whether surgery was
needed or not.
Maureen pursed her lips and tutted in dismay, shaking her head. She wagged her
finger with one hand, and pulled her handbag in closer under her bust while shrugging
her shoulder with the other.
“I’ll tell you now, if they don’t see to these things quickly they end up needing to do
much more than if they’d caught it earlier on! But they don’t care! They don’t!”
Maureen looked away defiantly in her fuming indignation with the NHS. She’d had a
hysterectomy two years previously and swore that the pain she now got was a leftover
sponge or some other piece of medical equipment inside her.
Suddenly, a hooded youth with cold sores all around his mouth ran past them, nearly
knocking Maud out of her bus seat and into the aisle.
“Well! An excuse me, a beg your pardon or a sorry wouldn’t go a miss young man!”
fired Maureen in his wake.
He ignored them, gathered phlegm up from his chest and spit strong and hard as he
lumbered a jump through the bus doors as it jerked to a stop.
Maureen and Mavis fussed over their shaken friend and commiserated about the sad
condition of the youth of today.
At their stop they rang the bell and helped each other off the bus. It had halted outside
the butchers, where the Hazlet was on special offer and where there were pork pies
with cranberries on top next to a fake rubber pig with an apple in its mouth in the
window display.
Three shops down, they saw Grumpy Graham coming out of the post office, putting
some £5 notes into his brown leather wallet, fighting with his frustration at the
wallet’s zipped compartment, and struggling with his Zimmer frame, which was half
way out of the doorway and half way on to the pavement full of passers by.
Then, out of nowhere, the rude hooded youth from the bus with all the cold sores
round his mouth hurled himself with full force into Graham, pushing him over,
grabbing his leather wallet and its recently added £5 notes from him, and then ran like
a bullet, off the pavement, over the road, between traffic, and disappeared through the
passage way between some buildings over the other side of the road.
Hurt, and in distress, Graham cried out for help from the pavement, where a number
of passers by had already gathered to try and provide assistance.
Maureen, Mavis and Maud were among them.
“Oh Graham, are you hurt?” asked Mavis, concerned.
“My hip! It’s my hip! I think it’s come out!” shouted Graham in agony.
“Somebody call an ambulance!” bellowed Maureen, decisively.
“They are on their way – I called as soon as I saw your friend hit the floor” responded
a girl of about 19 with a baby in a pram. The girl had tattoos around the back of her
neck and several facial piercings. She leaned in to where Graham lay on the floor.
“How you feeling, Mister? Don’t worry, they’ll soon be here” said the girl,
comfortingly.
As soon as she closed her mouth an ambulance pulled up and two paramedics jumped
out. One looked barely 21 and the other one nearer to 30. They were very debonair
looking young men, with an instant way of warmth, kindness and ability about them.
In complete and immediate trust the crowd of people that had formed around Graham
parted, a bit like the Red Sea. But without Moses.
They were gentle but fast acting with Graham and got him onto the ambulance and
away to the hospital in a matter of minutes. By the time they were driving off with the
siren on the police had arrived and were taking statements.
Maureen was the first to give her account. She emphasised how rude the cold sore
ridden lad had been on the bus.
Once the commotion had died down and the police had left and the crowd had
dispersed, the three ladies agreed that a cup of tea and a bun would be in order at their
favourite café just two buildings down from the post office.
Sitting in the bay window of the café, adding sugar and stirring her tea, Maureen
addressed Mavis and Maud, “Well, I do think that if the girl with the pram hadn’t
been there then things could have been worse for Graham. And the speed with which
those charming young paramedics came ably to his assistance! Well! It was
marvellous!”
Maud and Mavis smiled. Their faith in the youth of today and the NHS was
temporarily restored.
Eight months later the cold sore mouthed robber had done a short sentence in a young
people’s remand centre as well as some community service locally. He had also been
able to reimburse the stolen money, which he had taken for a drug habit that had got
out of hand after his mother had died. He then got a job with a team of gardeners for
the council and even mowed the grass verges of Mitford Avenue. His cold sores
cleared up once he got clean of drugs.
Graham’s hip bone had popped out in the mugging, but it was easily popped back in
again. He continues to be grumpy.
Your task: Now write a short story from the perspective of the robber…