Faith Dope and Charity

The informal arrangement that I had with BIDNOWTV was as follows: Mrs. Williams would sit there for the best part of the morning and pay for what she saw on the television with a credit card number that was non-existent. She wasn’t interested in the goods actually being delivered; Mrs. Williams derived her thrill from the act of purchase. The television company literally played along. Her details would be taken by a random call centre monkey who would read her customer notes, humor her and tell her that her transaction had gone through perfectly. Mrs. Williams would gently put down the phone, close her eyes, clasp her hands together in delight and go off to work.

Geoff, her late husband, had never bought her as much as a new summer dress; she made her own out of old pairs of curtains. Over the years, she had worked in the multiplicity of charity shops in the Underbelly along with an entire battalion of women with similar wardrobes. These women were between fifty and their early sixties and had once done most of their clothes shopping at regional boutiques. The regional boutiques had been replaced with video shops and mobile phone resellers so the ladies had been reluctantly forced into retrieving hand-me-downs from the dead.

Mrs. Williams soon discovered the reason for working in charity shops had less to do with charity and everything to do with acquiring a Louis Vitton handbag or a virtually new pair of Bruno Magli shoes. The competition for such items, she discovered, was intense and cutthroat. Barbara Fortune, an old but unwrinkled hand at the charity racket explained.

“Most people don’t probably realise that the clothes of the dead are in most cases shipped to other towns and cities where they remain anonymous. You wouldn’t want to see your new boyfriend in your dead husband’s best suit would you my dear? It is a little known fact, that the charity shops in this town are the unlikely, but gracious benefactors of the shops in the West End.”

“West End of where?” Mrs. Williams had left the Underbelly twice in her life, once for her honeymoon, and the second time by accident. Barbara looked at her with mild disbelief.

“London. We get the remnants of the rich and famous, the wear it once brigades of Chelsea and the Kings Road. Only last week I managed to reclaim a beautiful silk scarf from Liberty.”

“How much did you pay for it?”

“Pay for it?”

“Yes surely you must have made some donation?”

“Donation?” Barbara’s voice tightened.

“To the charity.”

“The charity, ah yes, of course the charity. I wondered what you were getting at then Glenys.”

The second time that Glenys had left the Underbelly, it was by accident. When you have never left your hometown and then one day someone takes you from it and leaves you in the middle of nowhere in nothing but your dressing gown; that can be quite traumatic, especially when you don’t drive or have a basic sense of geography.

Before Geoff and Glenys moved up to Bungaville, they lived in a reasonable 3 bedroom, red brick square house at the heart of the Underbelly. At first it was pleasant and for many years they even enjoyed the occasional wild singing hummed from the pubs at Christmas and on St.Patrick’s Day in the nearby Dog and Frog. The house provided them with the comfort and tenure that suited their meager style. Over the years, whether the Underbelly became a worse place to live or whether the Williams began to feel their age, they were not sure but they had felt a move coming for a while. The move was hastened after a seemingly innocuous incident as Glenys picked apples from their small roadside garden one September evening. As she placed the apples in her basket a large coach pulled up at the lights right outside the William’s house. The door hissed and opened, presumably so the driver could get some air. Glenys looked up to see a young smiling man asking if he could beg one of her apples. Naturally Glenys agreed and before long she found herself wandering the aisle of the busy coach passing out her apples to a cheerful crowd of rugby players. They made her laugh and pinched her bum. They told crude jokes and she bounced up and down on their muscular laps. She looked down and nearly all her apples had gone but she didn’t mind, Geoff would be disappointed but it was worth it to be amongst such liveliness. She reached down and grabbed the last apple. She would keep that one for herself and remember the fun that she’d had between the stiff, carpeted seats of the coach. It was only then that Glenys realized that they were moving. She recognized nothing; it was all a blur. She staggered down the aisle towards the driver and had to shout to make herself heard.

“Where have you taken me? Stop the bus.”

“I can’t stop the bus love, we’re on the motorway.”

“Turn around take me back.”

“Sorry love, I can’t do that, not just yet anyway.” The driver explained that the contents of the coach were on their way to play rugby and that after the game he would be bringing them back. Glenys couldn’t believe it, she’d be kidnapped, accidentally.

“Don’t worry, we can watch the game. I’ve got a flask of tea and a spare coat if you like. Don’t worry we’ll look after you.”

The sky was dark and bruised like the contents of the coach as they drove back in the dusk. Their spirits had been roused by a win and the boys bounced Glenys from one knee to the next and gave her beer. She had never had so much fun in her life. The coach dropped her off outside her beautiful red house. She could see that Geoff was still up. She said her goodbye’s to the boys and winked at the driver before stepping down onto the pavement.

Geoff had looked distinctly displeased with her when she came in fusing her resolve not to tell him of her little adventure. He had asked her about the apples, but she said that they were all full of maggots. That tree was no good. She lay in bed quietly giggling to herself as the beer wore off. Her mouth tasted funny and so she reached into her nightgown pocket for the shiny green apple that she had kept for herself and took a plunging bite. Geoff sat bolt up in bed and peered at his wife through the dark. Glenys just smiled.