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tomcat

This is another one of Vince's stories, ghoulish, savage, a bitter comedy.

It's a familiar chant, Vince's favourite bromides.

'Two sheets to the wind?' says Vince. 'Tommy's three, maybe four.'

'Hard day at the races.'

'Carlo's in the cart.'

'Joan's spitting tacks.'

'Mama's dead to the world.'

'Black as the Ace of Spades.'

'Face smack in the lettuces.'

'Hell breaks loose in the shed.'

It's the ginger tom, nameless stray, scattering Poppa's stack of lovingly saved bottles, beer, wine, ginger-ale, orangeade (thruppence each, beer-a- penny), sending the five-foot stack crashing to the floor, where the glass shatters on contact with the concrete, a sudden carpet of weirdly shaped shards and splinters.

Tommy and Vince stand at the shed door, gaping. Reen sees them always in her mind's eye, swaying gently, briefly quiet, the sea breeze cooling their sweaty backs.

Then.

'Tommy he goes crazy.'

'He screams like a banshee.'

'He grabs the tomahawk.'

'He's off his bloody head.'

'He goes after that tom.'

'Not to put too fine a point on it,' Vince always says, his eyes glazing slightly, 'he hacked that poor mangy bastard to death in less than a minute.'

'Sobered me up good and proper,' says Vince.

'He cried afterwards, standing over that cat, sobbed like a baby.'

Vince shakes his head here, inviting his audience to ponder the complexities of human behaviour, the humanity in spite of everything, the softness of a drunken Tommy.

'I saw it.'

'Saw it with m'own eyes,' says Vince.

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'It was a funny thing,' Teresa says, her hand resting on the cloth, needle slack. 'She was an Italian girl, you know, a nice girl, we all liked her.' She pokes with the needle, an idle absent beat.

'A funny thing, though, her name was Rose, too. Well, Rosina, the Italian, you know.

'It was so strange when Tommy came home, all that time later, with another Rose.'