The Good Mayor by Andrew Nicoll

point of a stick? I wonder how the cat is. What if he’s peed in the bed—or worse? That would be a nice surprise for Stopak.”

    And then she thought, “First damp patch in that bed for a long while,” but pretended that she hadn’t because that would be a coarse and disgusting thing to say.

    Palazz Kinema. New programme every Thursday.

    Double Feature and Weekly Newsreel.

    Telephone: Dot 2727

    “Well, that’s businesslike enough at any rate. Tells you all you need to know. I haven’t been to the pictures for ages. Maybe …”

    Use

    POLISH

    AND YOUR SHOES WILL GLEAM LIKE AN ETHIOPIAN!

    “I don’t think that’s very nice. I wouldn’t want some nice African woman, sitting on a tram in Ethiopia, wondering if ‘Dot bleach’ could get her toilet as white as me. I wouldn’t like that one bit. Do they have trams in Ethiopia? Do they have toilets? Oh, dear.”

    The conductor was swinging on his pole like an acrobat, dashing the length of the back platform and leaping and catching the pole and swinging round it back on to the platform. Agathe ignored him as violently and aggressively as it was possible to ignore anybody. “Of course,” she thought, “the chirpy chatter failed so now behaving like a monkey is supposed to inflame me.”

    BORA-BORA COLA

    THE TASTE SENSATION

    THAT’S AS FRESH AS THE OCEAN

    “Too sweet. I remember I tried it once on the ferry. I felt sick. Might have been the ferry but I don’t think I could do it again. In fact, just looking at that sign is making me feel ill.” She glanced away quickly.

    The last sign in the row was printed in white letters on a red background. Very straightforward. No slogans. No gimmicks. It said:

    ST. WALPURNIA’S HOME FOR CHILDREN.

    HAVE YOU CONSIDERED ADOPTION?

    “No!” thought Agathe. “Yes. No. No!”

    The conductor rang his bell. “This is Castle Street. Castle Street next stop.”

    Agathe jumped off the tram and ran down the street, just as she had that morning, clipping over the pavement while the cathedral clock tower whirred and spun above her. The first bell of ten o’clock was already chiming when she reached The Golden Angel and the place was almost in darkness. Heavy vellum blinds had been drawn over the windows and the last of them was rolling down over the front door, tugged into place by a dark artichoke of a fist. Agathe rapped on the glass with a gloved knuckle. The blind halted. The artichoke fist uncurled a single finger that jabbed insistently to the left, back up Castle Street. Then the blind continued rolling down and the lights behind it clicked off.

    Agathe was at a loss. She knocked again on the glazed door. Nothing happened. She waited. Nothing happened.

    “Oh, come on,” she said, “I wasn’t late! Well, hardly late. Not late at all. I wasn’t. I was right on time.” She rapped on the glass again. Nothing happened. “Oh, for goodness’ sake!” Agathe pouted deliciously. She gave up. She turned and began to walk away home but, just two shop fronts up the street, there was Mamma Cesare, standing in an open doorway.

    She said, “You took your time. We said ten o’clock.”

    Agathe could only gape at her like a flounder and say, “But … but … I’ve been waiting down the street for the past ten minutes.”

    “Well, that was very foolish, wasn’t it? Didn’t you see me pointing?”

    “But I had no idea what you were pointing at.”

    “You do now,” said Mamma Cesare. “Come in quick.”

    She bent to pull Agathe up the step and urge her through the open half of a split front door and into a square vestibule, floored with tiny black and white chequerboard tiles.

    The door closed with a forbidding click. Mamma Cesare spun an iron bar into place to secure it. “Now we are all nice and private,” she said. With the two women in it, Mamma Cesare, tiny, brown and hunched, and Agathe, tall, buxom and ample, the little room was full to bursting. “On, out, come on,” Mamma Cesare said,