Various Pets Alive and Dead by Marina Lewycka Page B

sudden, Maroushka stops dead in her tracks, steps out of her shoes and, leaving them standing there on the pavement, hitches her skirt halfway up her thighs (wow!) and breaks into a serious athletic sprint. In three seconds she’s round a corner and out of sight.
    The other woman stops at the corner and looks around.
    He stops too.
    The woman turns. Their eyes meet. He picks up the shoes, and slips them into the pockets of his jacket. She bursts into tears.
    ‘Lady …’
    ‘You’re all the bloody same! Shaggy sex-crazed bloody goats!’
    With a wrenching sob, she lurches back into the crowd and disappears.
    He takes the shoes out of his pockets and sniffs them. They smell of fresh sweat and new leather. Already he is imagining one delicious scenario after another whereby he will return them to their owner. He strolls along Godliman Street towards the Thames, holding them close to his body, under his jacket. As he reaches the Embankment, the skies open; he lifts up his face and lets the rain pour down on him like kisses.

CLARA: The carrot rocket
     
    Although the whole of Yorkshire has simmered in a late heatwave for a week, the weather breaks on Friday night. To Clara’s dismay, it’s chucking it down on Community Day. The stalls have to be shifted into the hall and the kids dash in and out, dragging in mud and towing disgruntled parents in their wake. There’s a sickly sweet smell of damp poverty and a kind of soggy turbulence as the families swirl around barging into each other in the confined space. The windows are all steamed up; the noise is deafening.
    Mr Philpott the caretaker has donned an ancient brown suit and a red bow tie, which gives him a look of faded gravitas. Mr Gorst/Alan is looking dishy in chinos and a jacket. He’s working his way around the stalls, shaking hands with parents, offering smiles of encouragement to the teachers, tousling the damp hair of kids in a way that is both earthy and godlike. Now he’s with Miss Hippo at the next stall, congratulating her on her photographic display of
Historic Greenhills,
which has attracted a noisy crowd of finger-jabbing pensioners, while she jingles her Cleopatra-style earrings and wiggles her Regency-clad bum. He hasn’t glanced in Clara’s direction yet, but he will get to her next. (Be still, oh beating heart!)
    Unfortunately only one seedling from her stall has so far been adopted, by a woman from Rowan Drive, who absolutely insisted on a cherry tree. The plastic-crushing has been cancelled due to the weather, and bags of newspapers and plastic bottles brought in by the parents are accumulating under the table and around the walls; they hand them over with a satisfied smile, pleased at their own generosity – ‘There you are, duck’ – as though they’re for her personal gratification. The petition against football on Rowan Green is running at sixty signatures already. Some people have signed twice. Only two people have signed the carbon emissions petition. The dolphin petition has been folded up and wedged under the wonky leg of one of the tables.
    She’s beginning to feel dejected, when there’s a ripple in the crowd and she sees Jason Taylor heading towards her. Behind him, holding on to his hand, is a stunningly pretty girl with a tumble of silky blonde curls falling across her face.
    ‘That’s ’er,’ he whispers, nudging the girl. ‘Miss, this is me mam.’
    Mrs Taylor is not how Clara had imagined her. She’d expected someone plainer, fatter, grubbier.
    ‘Hello, Mrs Taylor.’ She shakes her hand, which is so heart-wrenchingly tiny and fragile it feels like crushing a snowdrop.
    ‘Jason says you can make carrots into rockets, miss.’
    She looks about seventeen, though this must be biologically impossible, and Clara guesses she’s at least in her late twenties. She has the same intense grey eyes as Jason, and the same pale skin, but on her it looks not sickly but delicate, almost translucent.
    A surge of protectiveness takes