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Granddad's brown, hairy jacket smelled of cigars. You could smell him outdoors twenty feet away. Before he came in the house you could already hear the squeaks he made when he breathed. He had to breathe quite a lot before he talked. After he sat down he squeaked some more. His fingers were brown at the ends: because of the tobacco, he said. When his hands shook he had to have another cigar. If he stopped having cigars his hands shook.
“That's what happens when you're a naughty boy,” said May.
Mr Robins next door smelled of petrol but Mum said it was the whisky. His clothes wee old and torn because, he said, whisky cost a lot of money. He was not allowed to drive a car any more because his eyes wobbled. His feet walked this way and that when he could walk. Once he tried to chase some boys out of the garden gate but he ended up in his roses.
“That's what happens when you're a naughty boy,” said May.
On May's windowsill was a great vase of pink and white roses. You could smell them next door. Mr Robins wobbled and sat down in the street, looking at them for a long time. He looked at his garden, and then he looked at May's window. May sat on her bed and watched. Her bedroom door banged open, and Granddad's best tartan slipper was swinging in his hand, while his breath squeaked.
“This is what happens when you're a naughty girl,” he said.Copyright 1991 © LS
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