Doreen saw the old man smiling and turned to Andy.
‘A' right, Andy,’ she said. Then started to rub soapsuds all over the old fellow.
‘Doreen?’ Andy said, tentatively.
‘Yes,’ Doreen answered without stopping in her task.
‘Is there … an old man in that sink?’ Andy felt foolish for asking but, in light of his fancying a whole washhouse of steamie women had vanished and his brush with the emergency help section who advised prayers to the Almighty for forgiveness, this was maybe the final signal that God was telling him to cut back on the bevvy.
‘Naw,’ Doreen replied. ‘Why? … Should there be?’
It seemed to Andy as if she then helped Dolly to pour another bucket of water over the old man. The world, as Andy had known it, crumbled as he watched the soapsuds drain down from the old man's head and vanish down the drain.
‘Naw – I was just jokin',’ he lied. Then, realising that he had indeed transgressed in the washhouse, just as the emergency help section had said, he made his excuses and went back up to his office where he could pray for forgiveness – again.
Doreen was laughing her head off as she watched Andy stagger off in his agony of uncertainty. ‘What a laugh, Dolly, eh?’ she enthused to Dolly, who was drying off Harry Culfeathers with a freshly laundered clean crisp Glasgow Corporation Public Baths towel. ‘I cannae wait tae tell my ma aboot this.’
‘Aye,’ Dolly agreed as she gave the few hairs left on old Harry's head a good towelling.
‘You'd never get a night like this in a launderette, eh?’
FORTY-SEVEN
An ambulance pulled up at the door of the accident and emergency section of the Western Hospital. The driver and his mate got out the front and went round to the back doors of the ambulance. They opened the doors and very carefully helped a figure with a coat draped over its head to preserve anonymity out of the back doors. As the figure stepped gingerly down on to the roadside, a barber's pole, protruding from the rear end, hit off the road, causing the figure to roar out loud.
As it was led away by a nurse, one of the ambulance men remarked to his pal, ‘I'll bet he gives his barber a bigger tip the next time he goes for a haircut.’
THE END
IN NINETEEN SIXTY-THREE, AFTER MASSIVE PROTESTS FROM THE WOMEN WHO USED THEM, THE LAST STEAMIE WAS CLOSED DOWN.
Also by Tony Roper
THE REV. I.M. JOLLY – BOOK 1
HOW I FOUND GOD AND WHY HE WAS HIDING FROM ME
ONE DEITY AT A TIME, SWEET JESUS
COPYRIGHT
First published 2004
by Black & White Publishing Ltd
29 Ocean Drive, Edinburgh EH6 6JL
www.blackandwhitepublishing.com
This electronic edition published in 2014
ISBN: 978 1 84502 830 5 in EPub format
ISBN: 978 1 84502 015 6 in paperback format
Copyright © Tony Roper 2004
The right of Tony Roper to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission in writing from the publisher.
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