The afternoon is at its hottest. Iris is nodding in front of the television. CNN still. The little dog jumps up from his basket and rushes to the door barking in the high pitched tone that denotes excitement. He has heard Stanley's footfall. Iris looks up and sees the door open. Sunshine is flooding into the room and it hurts her eyes. The sun is coming in, not through the front door though, but from the balcony windows that she left open after hanging out the washing. The dog knocks over the ironing board in his mad dash to the door and Stanley can hardly get through the door for it. "Iris, are you there? Are you OK? Have you been drinking?". Iris is suddenly on her feet and moving toward the door. Her eyes are still red. "Oh Stanley I've had an awful day. Just awful" and with this she collapses into his arms.
They are sitting, one either side of the faintly ludicrous Formica breakfast bar that subdivides the long thin room into kitchen and living room. They each have a glass of gin and tonic before them. Between the glasses is an ashtray. "Now luv, don't upset yourself. Just tell me what happened." She looks down into her glass and takes a bite, "That fucking Nazi. I fucking hate him. It was all his fault. Who does he think he is anyway? Nazi bastard! Thinks he can tell me what I can and can't do. Fascist!". Her voice is raised and cracking. Bobby is safely ensconced in his basket. This scares him. Scares him nearly as much as this morning scared him. Bobby shudders a little shudder and tucks his head under his forepaw. "Just tell me what happened but don't upset yourself so."
Over a number of gins, the tonic is finished, the story comes dribbling out. Iris was taking little Bobby for his "morning constitutional" and they had stopped, as usual, outside the big house round the bend. Bobby was doing what Bobby does in the morning and then it all went mad. "That Nazi came out again and started ranting and raving about us using his garden as a toilet for the dog and I said he could poo wherever he liked and that this was a village and that there were sheep that pooed wherever they liked and probably in his garden too and how he couldn't tell me what to do or where to do it and that we'd beaten them in the war and Booby was entitles to poo wherever and that if they didn't like it they should go back to Germany!" Another bite, her gin is gone now and so she reaches for Stanley's but Stanley see it coming and picks his glass up. He empties it in a single swallow. "And he was swearing at me in Greek and waving his arms about and I thought he'd explode he was so red in the face and then he kicked little Bobby and said if I did it again he give ma a "big smack"". "He said what?". Silence. "He said what??" again. Silence. "What did he say??? Tell me what he said!"