The meanest Flood

know where he’d heard about it. He knew there was something Jamokes did, arching their backs and going under a stick. And that was Limbo as well.
    The woman from thirty-five knocked on the side window of the van and stuck her big face up against the window. ‘D’you know what time it is?’ she shouted.
    Ruben didn’t move.
    She knocked again. ‘What’s wrong with you? I want my milk.’
    Ruben moved. Slowly. He got out of the van and went around the back. He got a pint of each and handed them to the woman.
    ‘Don’t bother apologizing,’ she said. ‘He’s only been waiting for his breakfast half an hour.’
    It was 7.30. Ruben was usually back at the depot by this time, unloading empties. He got into the van and parked outside number thirty-nine. He went through the actions. He delivered milk, collected empty bottles. But his limbs were heavy, his body slow and his mind numb. He stopped again in the next street, spent another hour sitting behind the steering wheel.
    It was 2.20 in the afternoon when he pulled into the last street on the estate. Two women were standing together, their arms folded. They watched him roll the van up to the kerb. Ruben got out of the driving seat and went around the back to load up his hand carrier, and he froze there. He dropped a bottle of skimmed and watched it land on the floor of the van and roll out of reach. Didn’t break.
    Some time later the two women came and got him. Ruben didn’t know how long he’d been standing there with the door of the van open.
    ‘He’s crying, Shaz,’ one of them said.
    ‘Jesus. Whatever next? Help me get him in the house.’
    ‘Big bloke like this, crying.’
    They took him by the hands, one hand for each of them, and led him away from the van, through the gate and along the cracked concrete path to the front door. There was a rectangular lawn with a kid’s bike on it. A blue plastic dumper truck with three wheels.
    These women were the smallest things in the world. Tiny hands, faces like fairies.
    ‘Mind the step,’ the one called Shaz said. ‘Jesus, look at the curtains going. They think we’ve got a feller. Give ’em a wave, Stell.’
    They ushered him into the house and sat him on a red leatherette sofa with imitation zebra-skin cushions. There was a TV with the sound turned up to maximum less than a metre away from his face and a log-effect gas fire blazing in a pale-blue tiled fireplace.
    ‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ Shaz said. ‘Watch him.’
    ‘Are you all right, darlin’?’ Stell said. ‘D’you want some tissues?’
    Her shins were scorched and mottled by long hours of sitting too close to the fire. Ruben took the tissues she offered and held them in his hand while the tears rolled down his face and dripped from his chin.
    ‘What happened to you?’ Stell said. ‘You’re six hours late. I went round the shop and bought a carton. Thought you weren’t coming, or you forgot us.’
    There was a war on the TV. A Pacific paradise was littered with the dead and broken bodies of Japanese soldiers. Guns were shooting off-screen. A helicopter flew over. A dumb American hero larded with olive oil was staring into space while he listened to it-shouldn’t-have-been-like-this music coming from stereo speakers.
    He was the kind of man Ruben had dreamed of becoming when he was young. A man with nothing except an extraordinary punch who would find himself in a position to save the world. When he was a teenager Ruben didn’t know if he would use his punch or let the world go to Hell and it was the same with the figure on the screen. You could see it in his body language. He had done his duty and the world was safe but it might have been better if he hadn’t bothered. The man was still alone. His government would give him a few gongs to mask the bloodstains but even if they gouged out his eyes he’d see the horror every day of his life.
    ‘Kitty,’ he said.
    ‘What’s he say?’ Shaz said, coming back into the room with three mugs of tea on a tray.
    ‘Kiddie, something like that.’
    ‘Sounded like titty to me,’ Shaz said, and they both shook for a moment.
    ‘Might be your lucky day,’ Stell told him.
    ‘Kitty,’ Ruben said, getting an edge into his voice. The tears stopped falling and he wiped his face with the tissues. He looked from one woman to the other. Shaz had blonde hair and black roots and Stell had white skin and black features. They both wore glossy lipstick and lilac nail varnish.
    ‘I’m