“What’s the point of helping out if ya’s got nothing worth saying? People who wants ta help should read a bit so as they ave summut ta say. I mean it’s alright ta sit in silence with some one ya knows but ya do have ta work ta get there. Georgie ain’t read a book that’s her thing. Reckon she goes home and cooks up a meal for her an her kids and they run riot, an her ole man carries his belly like a liquor pouch, an they have oven chips most nights, cause that’s what they got used to, an “meaning well” ain’t nothing no more cause they don’t pay well enough for her time, an who can blame her? Yep who can blame her?

He looks at Agnes who is a sleep and breathing weakly.

“Good night mum”.

He leans over her and gives her a kiss.

Bim comes out of Agnes’ room. He looks up the staircase.

22

A young Bim is lying on his bed. He’s upset. A middle aged Agnes is sitting next to him.

“Listen, he loves you, I know as sure as the day is the day, it’s hard for him that’s all, he works all he can an he gets tired. He’s got more love in him than you can imagine, and sometimes love makes ya hurt. And the more a person’s got the more it hurts an that just means we got more ta put up with, a little more than others, but they don’t have someone who loves them quite like he does.”

“Try not annoy him, love. Remember it hurts him.”

23

Bim is woken suddenly by an argument next door. He looks at his clock. It says midnight. He gets up. He sees his small children’s microscope standing on a chest of drawers. He takes it and starts banging it against the wall. For a moment the banging stops. Bim pauses for a moment, his hand still raised.

There is a steady thumping on the wall.

Bim backs away from the wall.

After a while the banging stops.

24

Bim turns on Agnes’ bedside lamp. She is asleep and lying on her back. She looks like she has two black eyes.

25

Bim is sitting in the darkness. His face is close to Agnes’. She is fast asleep.

He is listening to her breath. “Don’t you worry, mum, don’t you worry”.

26

Bim is holding his mother’s hand as she wakes up. There is a terrible storm out side. Her eyes open slowly. She looks over at him. There is the hint of a smile.

“Ya know what Mum? When they gone took that blood test they took enough, just to gone make another one of ya, an what I’ve told them to do is pickle ya brain, well freeze it really, and then when they’ve grown a new you, they’ll transplant your brain into your new body, and they’ll like have enough of ya, you know from your blood, that they can make like loads of copies of you, so that they can get the process right, cause a brain transplant, it’s a bit complicated.”

“Hey? No they don’t need ya whole head just ya brain, well think about it, your head, your old head stapled on a new body, be silly.”
“No, they’d be no scars.”

“No, it won’t be like key hole surgery, cause that would involve putting a Dyson in ya head so that they can suck ya brain in, and then there wouldn’t be no room cause the Dyson would be there. No what they will do is like cut ya here, around the scalp, an pull the skin down over ya face, cept it wouldn’t be your face yet, and then they would saw the skull and plop the brain in, though it won’t be as simple as that, as they’ll have ta tie all the nerves, like, together, and that be a bit of a job cause there’s quite a few.”

“Of course I’d feel a bit sorry about your spare brain, ya know the one they throw away, cause the poor thing would have spent its life, like, working on its own things and stuff and then ya know, you’d have the right to it’s body, cause the government would have set it all up like, yeah, that’s right, this service would like be available on the National and it wouldn’t matter how much tax you might have paid, you’d have a right to it and that’s that.”

“I’ve bin thinking about offering my blood like so that they can put me a body that’s works, you know cause they can sort it out when you’re a foetus. Amazing ain’t it. Yeah, Jesus, amazing”.

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