Episode 84 Sandy Goes All Out for Mary

By ‘Shoe

“Spitting chips,” the Bish said. The door of the manse was flung wide open in a classic Big Bish grand entrance.

All Sandy could do to earn his keep in the instant was pray the Bish stand back away from a clutter of plaster of paris statuettes on the hallway table, freshly painted in especially the sparkly gold and pink of the official Pigs Arms you-all-barrack-for-uniform, each a quick throw, quick turnover statuette ready to refill the cabinet in the Sports Bar. Any left over could go into the glass display case at the the clan tartans Emporium, Gawdy Geordie, the Pigs Arms Group invested in as a back up in case the pub didn’t pay.

Scotland! Home of the Brave!

With the Bish coming in, light had poured through the open manse door in what seemed a blinding explosion of it.

Gordon aka Gordy, near, sang in Sandy’s ear, “She’ll be apples. How y’goin’.”. Sandy noticed always as if it was the first time every time the same depth of fine voice as Charlton Heston’s when Sandy saw Charlton in the matinee of his flick all those years ago and was inspired. Except Gordy’s accent was as Aussie as an, well, Aussie. The Irish came out in him when he was drunk and there was a telephone directory in him if not a book, for sure.

“Come through, Bish.” Sandy beckoned his boss. He extended an arm and a hand

forward to take the Bish’s wide brimmed hat, the other to wrest statuettes off his boss needs be. The Bish was known to be light fingered if he thought something belonged to Gordon and thus by definition to the Bish.

“You’re the best, Bish. Let’s slip through the back door and go to the pub.You won’t need the hat. No sun today. I’ll put these statuettes of Nurse Barbara back with the other Pigs Arms merchandise.”

Sandy did not want the Bish to see Mary Xmas and her partner, Ginger Pumpkins,

were sprawled asleep in the living room in not much. He hurried the Bish down the corridor and across the back laneway to the pub carpark. The Bish seemed keen, a little bleary maybe. Gordon needed no invitation to tag along. The three of them arrived in the Sports Bar worse only for wear from the rain, shadowed by an accompanying trinity of Hells Angles in tow.

“Three’s our lucky number,” slurred the Bish who truth to tell started work early in the morning by hosting a Boxing Day Sales mass for the terribly poor. It is not hard to rope a homeless crowd into a cathedral with the incentive of a Maker’s Delight Breakfast with old doughnuts and stale

white bread after the mass served with a choice of orange or green cordial, weak tea, weak instant coffee or watery Milo, and then everybody got handed an envelope with a hundred dollars in it to spend at the sales. “Score,” the congregation mouthed each to their neighbor.

The Bish would not be drawn at the bar. He was allowed to fall asleep special concession and snore with his head on the bar and as if he didn’t often when he was in town. Sandy as Father O’Way readers will appreciate had time to go back to the manse and get Mary and Ginger up and dressed out of the St Generic Brand props box in some table cloths and singlets marked St Michael Quality Promise.

“Mary Xmas,” murmured Sandy in Mary’s ear. Gordon’s in Sandy’s ear all the way egging him on to an expanded consciousness. Sandy was pursuing a simple goal,

keen to return to the bar before the Bish woke himself up with a snore or Manne called on Merv to help him throw the Bish out of the bar.

Sergeant Legless (pronounced to rhyme with Steggles, please) was on sole charge duty at the station with a bicycle for transport so, that known, unlikely to come for the Bish no word of a lie and no disrespect intended but some of you could lose some avwadupwa.

“Mary Xmas,” Sandy repeated, “Mary Xmas,” when he thought Mary did not hear him and was sleep walking to where he led Mary and Ginger. Father Sandy was returning the two women to their lodgings at the Pigs Arms and gracious with it.

“Where are you?” he huffed and puffed and asked as he bundled the two of them up the stairs after a fashion.

“The Wedding Suite,” yawned Mary. “Thanks, Sandy, for letting me crash with Ginger at the manse, all the cheap wine we drank. We would never have made it

back to the pub. I won some more scratchie money too, but I gave it to the Bish to give to the poor. I heard him knocking on the door last night and got up and let him in. He brought round three bottles of altar wine. More cheap wine like vinegar. We drank the lot between the three of us and finished with a cheap night cap of granny’s brew over at the pub. We came back here with the Bish and a cellar door bottle of a vintage drop of the first brew Granny put down.”

Sandy had to wait for Mary to find the key to the Suite. Where she did find it he didn’t know. He levered and pushed Mary and Ginger through the door of their accommodation and said his goodbyes.

“Seasons Greetings,” Sandy called after them in a tone of great tenderness, “Mary Xmas.”