The Lady in the Van Page #4

I know a boa constrictor when I see one.

You all right, my love? Looking

especially lovely today, sweetheart.

Don't "sweetheart" me.

I'm a sick woman! Dying, possibly.

Well, chin up, love, we

all gotta go sometime.

Smells like you already have.

I do not believe

in the snake, still

less that it was en

route for the van.

Only next day, I find there has been

a break-in at the local pet shop.

So, there may have been a snake on the run.

Good God.

So, of course, I feel guilty.

Giles! Giles! Giles!

A real writer would have asked her

about her close shaves with snakes,

only she seems to have cleared off.

Quick as you can, love.

I'm getting off.

Don't rush me! Don't rush me.

Nightie?

This is not a nightdress.

This style can't have

got to Broadstairs yet.

And I know the law. You can't be

arrested for wearing a nightie.

What're you doing in Broadstairs?

I am minding my own business!

Alan! Come out here!

What for?

There's some massive birds on the wall.

There never are.

There's nothing on the wall.

You're imagining things.

There are.

And there were,

lined up on the garden wall,

four peacocks from the Hall.

So, boa constrictors in the street,

peacocks on the wall.

It seems that both at the northern

and southern gates of my life

stands a deluded woman.

- Except you just said they aren't.

- Aren't what?

- Deluded.

- Well, not in this particular instance.

And they're not the same, Alan.

Mam and Miss Shepherd.

No, Alan, they are not.

But they are both old ladies.

That appears to be my niche apparently.

Whereas my contemporaries

lovingly chronicle

their first tentative investigations

of the opposite sex,

or their adventures

in the world of journalism,

I'm stuck with old ladies.

All right. I'm keeping a sodding notebook.

But only on the off chance.

She's not a project. She's

not in the pipeline.

I don't want to write about her. She's...

She's just something that's happening.

So, what do you want to write about?

I want to write about spies.

Spies?

Yeah, you see?

You think that's barmy. Spies, Russia.

I can't always be writing about the North.

"I was born and brought up in Leeds,

where my father was a butcher."

"And as a boy, I would often go out

on the bike with the orders."

It's not Proust. It's not even J.B.

Priestley.

The houses in the Crescent

were built as villas

for the Victorian middle class.

And their basements are now being enlarged

by couples who are liberal in outlook,

but not easy with their

newfound prosperity.

Guilt, in a word.

Which means that in varying degrees,

they tolerate Miss Shepherd.

Their consciences absolved by her presence.

Merry Christmas!

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