Notes for Whoever Covers Senga's Dinners
A short story about a Govan dinner lady retiring after twenty-six years and the handover note she leaves her replacement: allergies, feuds, fish fingers and one quiet boy no official form has room for.
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Story Time is original short fiction. The characters, places and events in this story are invented.
1. The custard urn sticks. Give the tap a quarter turn and no more, or it comes out in one big rush and you'll have custard on your shoes till the October holidays. Bernadette in the kitchen will tell you it's fine. It's no fine. It's no been fine since 2009.
2. Mrs Kerrigan asked me to keep this to one page. This is the first page. Read them all before Monday.
3. When it rains, the skylight above table six drips. The bucket's behind the PE mats in the big cupboard. Don't sit the Primary 2s at table six on a wet day, because they'll take turns putting their hands under the drip and then you've a queue for the toilets and a wee one greetin' about her cardigan. Move them to the end of table nine. Table nine wobbles. Fold a napkin in four and put it under the left leg, the one nearest the fire door.
4. Allergies. The list on the kitchen wall is right, but here's what it doesn't tell you. Amira Hussain, P3, nuts. She knows her own allergy better than you or me, and she'll ask you to check anyway. So check. Properly, while she watches. Read the label out loud. Don't say "it's fine, hen" without looking. She'll never trust you again and she'd be right not to.
Ruby and Skye Kennedy, P4, twins. Ruby's coeliac, Skye isn't, and they swap jumpers for a laugh. Look at their shoes. Skye has the green laces. Ruby has the plain black ones because she says green is for babies. They've never once thought to swap shoes.
5. Feuds. Ollie Brennan and Josh Gallagher, P7, are not to sit on the same bench. It started over a football sticker in Primary 3. Neither of them can tell you now whose sticker it was, but they're committed. They're away to the high school in a fortnight. Let them have it.
6. Friday is fish fingers. Four each. The P1s get three, because they won't eat four, they'll make a raft out of the fourth and sail it through the beans. Tartare sauce goes in the wee pots, never on the plate. Declan Moffat will tell you the sauce touched his chips and he can't eat them now, and he means it, so just don't let it touch. There's always one tray left over. Give it to Tam the janitor at quarter past one. He'll say he doesnae want it. He wants it.
7. Noise. Three hundred weans at once makes a noise like the Clyde coming in. Don't use the whistle. The whistle's for the playground. In here, put your hand up and wait. The P7s will see it first and put theirs up, then the P6s, and it goes down the hall like the tide going out. Takes about forty seconds. If you shout, it takes the whole of lunch and you've a sore throat by Wednesday.
8. Leon Docherty hides his peas in his milk carton. Don't make a show of it. Ask him for a joke instead. He'll eat three peas while he's thinking one up. The jokes are terrible. Laugh anyway.
9. The ones who eat on their own aren't all lonely. Precious Adeyemi reads a book on her knee under the edge of the table and she's the happiest wean in the building. Leave her be. The one to watch is the one who's eating on their own and looking at the door.
10. This is where I stopped the first time.
11. Kai MacPhail, P6, table four, end seat nearest the radiator. He's no on the allergy list. He's no on any list. He's the quietest boy in the school, his jotters are tidy and his shirt's ironed, so nobody looks twice, and that's how his mum likes it, and that's how he likes it.
He eats everything. That's the first thing I noticed. Not fast, mind. He's careful, he's been taught his manners. But everything, every crumb, and then his eyes go to the trays coming back from the P1s with half a roll still on them.
P6 isn't free dinners. They've said it will be next year. They said that last year as well. His mum pays the dinner money on the app on a Monday and some weeks it doesn't go through till the Wednesday. Since Easter, on a Tuesday, he comes in grey. You'll know what I mean when you see it. Grey round the mouth.
12. I filled in the form. There is a form. It's called a Wellbeing Concern and it has four boxes: Physical, Emotional, Attendance, Other. There's no box for a boy who folds his crusts into his blazer pocket for later. I ticked Other.
Mrs Kerrigan is a good woman and she did what the form tells her to. A meeting. A letter home. A phone call. Kai was off for three days after the letter. When he came back he'd stopped looking at the P1 trays. He'd learned not to look. That's worse. Believe me, that's worse.
13. So I'm no putting this on a form. I've torn this page out twice already and written it again. I don't know you. You might be the kind that's straight to the office with everything, and I'd not blame you. It's your job, you've your own bills, and you've no reason to take the word of a woman you've never met over a procedure somebody wrote in Edinburgh. But you've read this far, which is further than most folk read anything, so I'm going to trust you with it.
14. Here's what I do. The toaster for the breakfast club runs till twenty past eight. There's always the heel of a loaf left. I make two slices extra, butter them, wrap them in a napkin, and put them in the blue tub on the shelf above the hand-dryer, the one marked LOST PROPERTY GLOVES. Nobody opens a gloves tub in June.
At lunch, when Kai brings his tray back, I say, "Kai, son, see if there's any gloves in there that are yours." In two months he's never once come back and said there were no gloves. He's a clever boy.
15. He'll say thank you to the tub, not to you. Let him.
16. Rules for the toast. Never more than two slices, or he'll know you know. Never in front of the others. Never ask about home. If he ever tells you something about home himself, then that's different. Then you go to Mrs Kerrigan and you go that same day, and you phone me after to say you did. But he won't. He'll tell you about buses instead. He knows every bus route in the city. Ask him how you'd get from Govan Cross to Braehead on a Sunday and you'll get ten minutes, with the times. Listen to all ten minutes. That's what he's really there for.
17. You'll be thinking, so who makes the toast now she's away. Well. I've put my name down to volunteer at the breakfast club, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Mrs Kerrigan was that pleased she nearly greeted, she thinks I can't let go of the place. So the gloves tub will have something in it on those days, same as always. Do not mention it to Mrs Kerrigan. She thinks I'm there to help with the reading. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays are yours, if you want them. The bread knife's in the second drawer, under the tea towels, where it's been for twenty-six years.
Senga
