The Game of Shepherd and Dawse by William Shepherd

Sour’’, said Angela. “But Charlie has enough clothes at the moment. Joe and Mrs Bottal took him on a shopping spree just last week”.
     
    They hadn’t of course, but Angela needed a polite excuse to get rid of this silly woman. Sally began stuffing the clothes back into her bag while muttering halfway under her breath, “Well, you try and help people and get no thanks for it”.
     
    Angela heard exactly what Sally had said and gave her half a smile and went back inside the house. But the more Angela thought about it, the more incensed she became.
     
    “I bet that woman would love to see my handsome little Charlie dressed up in those smelly old tats”, she said to herself. “Evil old witch”.
     
    From that day forward, Angela kept her distance from Sally Sour. Joe Sadsoul, on the other hand, would allow Sally to come into his house on occasion and do her ‘Home Help bit’. This wasn’t because Joe liked her. In fact, he’d seen right through her the day they first met when Sally was banging on about the tatty little church she had set up and how her church could really benefit from someone like Joe being there – seeing as he had done so much of God’s work during the war. This irritated Joe at the time as he knew full well that if war was the work of anyone it would be the Devil.
     
    The real reason why Joe allowed her inside his home was because he wanted Charlie to learn just how such people operated. Joe wanted to teach Charlie much about the Shepherd and Dawse theory from The Chronicles of Us and Sally Sour was a prime example of how a modern day Dawse operated. As for the Home Help bit, Sally wasn’t much good at that either, as most of the time she would come in, make herself a cup of tea, then shuffle a few things around, put some bleach down the toilet and end up making more of a mess for Joe than she pretended to clean up.
     
    Before she would leave, Sally would chide Joe, “I’ve given the place a good tidy, you mucky pup, so try not to mess it up too much for me before next week”.
     
    Being called a mucky pup was not the best way to please Joe. His house was always impeccably clean, with never a pin out of place. Being a pilot during the war and always being immaculately dressed reflected his habit of attention to detail and was something that had stayed with him throughout his life. His house reflected this habit too.
     
    On occasions when Charlie and Joe could see Sally coming up the road, they would put the telly on full blast and pretend they couldn’t hear her knocking or calling at them through the letter box. They would just sit there and silently laugh themselves silly until she gave up and went away. Because of her nature, Charlie and Joe renamed Sally Sour to Sour Sally.
     
    One hot summer’s day, Charlie and Joe were sitting in the back room as usual. Joe had left the front door slightly ajar to allow a breeze to flow through, when they heard the dreaded sound.
     
    “Cooee! Home Help here”!
     
    Charlie looked at Joe and made the kind of sound you hear in a film that lets you know something bad is about to happen.
     
    “Oh good, I’m glad you're both happy to see me”, Sally said absently, as she breezed in.
     
    “Are you here to give the place a good clean through, Sally”, Joe asked, in a slightly sarcastic voice.
     
    “Not today, Joe. I’m afraid you'll have to manage without me, if that’s at all possible. I’m collecting money this week for my church to give to less fortunate people. Would you like to donate something”? The words dripped slowly from Sally's lips like poison from a viper's fangs.
     
    Joe played his best poker face and told her, “I’m ever so sorry, Sally, but Mrs Bottal hasn’t picked up my pension yet. Once I get it, it’s all going to be quickly eaten up by my bills”.
     
    This wasn’t too far from the truth, actually, as the government pension was a miserly one and if it wasn’t for the fact that he'd paid off his house