PARAGRAPH: FIVE

Silver Nemeses

The Silver Fox winked at the Grey Vixen as she got slowly out of the passenger side door. It was nearly time, and they’d synchronized things pretty much perfectly as usual. He hauled himself painfully from behind the steering wheel and, after a certain amount of juggling, shut the car door, grabbed his walking stick and pressed the button that locked the car doors, before following the vixen slowly across the car park. Twelve-thirty. Bang on time. He managed to catch up with the Vixen as she waited impatiently at the automatic sliding doors, pausing not only to give him a chance to join her so that she could let him know how annoying and incompetent he was, but also so that she could scowl pointedly at the chisel-faced woman standing there sucking on a cigarette. What made the coming moment feel all the more satisfying, of course, was that the woman was doing this whilst wearing an ill-fitting sportswear outfit which seemed totally inappropriate to her lifestyle if the rolls of flesh that they were stretched over to breaking point were anything for her to judge her by. Whether they were or not was irrelevant. She judged her anyway. Then she judged her some more because it was obvious that she was a single mother. With a self-satisfied yet ghastly smile, that spoke precisely about the fundamental untruth that young women never got themselves into that sort of situation when she was their age, whether they actually did or not, of course, being completely irrelevant, the Vixen had her sarcastic remarks about her all ready to bellow at full volume towards the Fox just as soon as he caught up. But then, sadly, a mini-cab pulled up and the chisel-faced woman was loading up her thousands of carrier bags into the boot before she got the chance to use them and humiliate her indirectly. This would annoy her all day, as would the fact that the woman hadn’t even been aware of her loud ‘tut’ as the half-smoked cigarette sailed in an imperfect arc to the pavement to remain there, smouldering. The Vixen was now thoroughly vexed and knew that heaven only could help anyone who got behind them and their trolley this lunchtime, and she was already reserving a special place in hell for whoever queued up behind them at the checkouts. She tapped cheerfully at the multitude of coins in her purse, smiled briefly at the memory of all the coupons that she had tucked in there too, and got a positive thrill as she bellowed at the Silver Fox about having not fetched the trolley yet, before letting battle commence against their ultimate foe, the office workers who didn’t have all day, like they of course did, to do their shopping. The Silver Fox, rather naturally, did exactly as he was told and, as he fumbled with the coin and tried to slot it into the perishing trolley, looked about him at the selfish young whippersnappers living their easy lives, not one of whom stopped to offer to help him. Where had they been when he’d been bayoneting Germans? Not even a bloody twinkle in the milkman’s grandfather’s eye, that’s where. He might have forgiven them a lot if just one of those lovely young ladies had responded to his pathetic smile that implied helplessness, but they’d all just ignored him and let him struggle. Oh yes, he thought, I could forgive them anything except the one thing he could never forgive: That they were still young.