THE FOOD BANK LADY

We know times are hard but for some the difficulties are just too much.

Avril Blythe was a weary sight as she struggled along the High Street in search of a shop that might let her have something edible in exchange for the very few coppers in her purse. But most couldn’t afford it. Even Mr Thomas the greengrocer, who often turned a blind eye to the loss of a manky apple or a wrinkled turnip couldn’t afford the losses any more. He had bills too.

So Avril eventually returned home, hungry, and looked in her cupboard. There was a tin of soup there, chicken it said on a label that was almost indecipherable through age, though she could make out the dot-matrixed sell-by date, fifteen years ago.

If she opened that and ate it, she thought, together with a crust she’d saved from the loaf of bread she’d finished last Tuesday, it might stave off the hunger pangs that dominated her life these days. Or it might do for her, poison her with some foul toxin that has bred over the years in the isolation of a rusty can, and would send her to the undertaker’s before her time.

Her pension just about paid the rent and electric bills. There was precious little left, though occasionally she did squander a small amount on a tiny bottle of gin. And those tiny bottles were a con too, she thought, she’d get a lot more for her money if she bought just one larger bottle, but that was always out of the question.

As a child, she’d seen some of the terrible second world war, Hitler’s war she called it, and had mourned with the grown ups when this or that neighbour lost a loved one fighting overseas. The pain had been so sad in their eyes and the memory never properly went away. There had been hunger back then, too, but not as bad as it was now. Her mother had told her before she passed away, “you’ll never see times like those, love,” she’d said, “you’ll never feel the hollowness in your gut like I did. But we came though it, thanks to Mr Churchill.”

Yes, Mr Churchill who hadn’t dodged a single bullet. Mr Churchill, the man who’d sent young men with guns to slaughter other young men with guns but never had to slaughter one himself But that was politics, wasn’t it? You had the Churchills or, these days, the Johnsons of this world to arrange the wars, men who never had to go themselves onto foreign soil armed to the teeth with death.

They say in the papers that Johnson sees himself as a modern sort of Churchill, but if he does he’s wrong. Churchill may have had a bunker to hide in, but he had the right kind of charisma.

Yes, she’d open the tin of soup. It was a last resort, and it seemed to her that the alternative would be death anyway. Like a game of Russian Roulette, the soup would either fester inside her, cause all sorts of mischief to her internal organs, or it would give her a breathing space until she found a penny on the pavement or a cast-off bag of half-eaten congealed chips in the bin at the end of the street.

She couldn’t immediately find the tin-opener. It was such a long time since she’d used it and it wasn’t where it usually lurked, with the sharp knives and that old tea strainer from the days when you used tea strainers. But she hadn’t used one in more years than she cared to think of.

Rat-a-tat! There was a knock on the door. Sod them all! People who should know better than knock at door of an old lady like her! There was bound to be some kind of election soon and maybe they were canvassing for her vote. That was the only time you saw them. Well stuff them. She wasn’t going to vote this time! No sirree! They never did what they said they were going to do. They told lies, and it was believing those lies that had surely been her own downfall.

What had they said last time? That things would just get better and better. That’s what they’d said. That food would be plentiful, that electric would be just about free, what with the wind and the sun giving it them for nothing. And what had happened? Things had just got harder and harder to afford until here she was, so hungry it felt as if she had a housebrick lodged in her belly.

Just a moment. She’d better sit down in her easy chair. That’s what it was for, to take the weariness from her body for a while. Better not put the light on, though, even though it is getting dark, and slip on an extra coat for the warmth.

Mum had told her about wearing layers, but mum had passed away so long ago she could barely remember what her face was like any more. Just that she’d been a precious, caring woman.

The pain inside her was intolerable. She’d have gone to the doctor’s, but appointments were never available. They said it would be better once the whole lot of health services were sold off to the Americans who wanted them, but she somehow doubted it. It was another of their empty, hollow promises.

She stood up again, and the door was knocked firmly one more time.

Right, they’d asked for it!

She hobbled to the door and flung it as hard as she could open, which wasn’t really very hard at all.

“Mrs Blythe,” said a warm voice.

Don’t they always sound friendly like that? That politician had, the one who’d promised that everything would be rosy, and he’d lied, hadn’t he? Like they all did every few years when they wanted something.

“I don’t want none of it,” she retorted, “they lied last time and they’ll lie next, and … and I’m so bloody hungry…”

“That’s why we’re here, Mrs Blythe,” said the warm voice, “to help you. I’m from the Food Bank down the road… we distribute free food to those in need…”

Avril snorted. “They promised me last time,” she said, her mind in another year, and she sighed, “they said we’d live in a land of free this and free that, and more honey than a soul could want…”

“We’ve brought you a whole bag of stuff,” the warm voice said, “it’s here for you, fruit and vegetables, and a tin or two of soup…”

“I’ve got soup,” she said, “just ain’t got a tin-opener where it should be…”

“You poor thing. We’ll put a tin opener in too, dearie.” The voice was almost reaching boiling point.

“No thanks! They lied last time and they’ll lie the next!” repeated Avril, and knowing she was right, she slammed the door shut.

“I’m so bloody hungry…” she whispered, and return to her chair.

The next day they found her when they broke in, in her chair. She’d pissed herself, probably just before she died, and there was a rusty old tin opener in her wrinkled hand, next to a tin of very out of date chicken soup.

She’d been born in one war but the present one, the war against poverty and hunger, was one too many for her old bones to bear. She’d known it: she was better off dead.

© Peter Rogerson, 02.04.22

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