Alice Through the Plastic Sheet Read Online Free PDF Page A

barking, maybe, at a pinch. But to have two in stereo was beyond her.
    The dog next door would settle down each evening. That was when the music came on. It was always Christmas music, but you could only ever tell which song it was by standing out in the front garden. That way you heard not only the beat, but could get the full benefit of the sleigh bells, the choir, the dulcet tones of Bing Crosby, the odd comical parp from Rudolf the Reindeer’s shiny red nose.
    They tried calling the police. The police took down their details. Said they’d drive by and see for themselves.
    One evening the neighbours played ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ seventy-four times straight times in succession. Bing Crosby sang it. Bing sounded angry. Bing hated them and wanted them to suffer. When the song eventually segued into ‘Once in Royal David’s City,’ Alan and Alice felt so relieved they almost cried.
    And in the day time, Alice would tell Alan, when Bobby came home from school, as he did his homework and his chores, he’d be humming Christmas carols under his breath. She asked him to stop. She screamed at him to shut the hell up.
    At work, Alan was forced to call an emergency meeting. He had to use that word in the memo, ‘emergency.’ He told his sales force to work harder. He begged them. Or else he’d be obliged to take punitive measures. He had to use that phrase in the follow-up memo, ‘punitive measures.’ One or two openly laughed at him.
    Alice said she’d called the police again, and that they’d just said the same thing as before. So Alan called them. He explained the situation very calmly. The police took down his details. Said they’d drive by. Said they’d see for themselves.
    The neighbours were at last unpacking their belongings. Their front lawn was littered with cardboard boxes, sheets of plastic wrapping. The breeze would blow them over the fence. And each morning Alan would leave for work, and walk through a flurry of Styrofoam and polystyrene balls.
    The dog continued to bark. Bobby’s dog stopped. Bobby’s dog couldn’t take it anymore. He’d hide in the kitchen when the barking started, and he’d whimper. He’d piss on the floor in fear. He’d throw up.
    Alice told Alan that he had to speak to the neighbours again. To go over there, knock on their door, demand an answer. He suggested they should do it together, that as a family they would more represent a united front. Bobby asked if he could come too, Bobby got very excited, and his parents said no, and Bobby got disappointed and a little cross. Alan and Alice walked to the neighbours’ house. The music playing was ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ again, but it wasn’t Bing this time, it was some other version, so that was good, that was all right. The welcome mat read “Welcome—Welcome to our Home Sweet Home!” Neither Alan nor Alice wanted to tread on it. They stood in the porch and knocked and called through the letterbox. There was no reply. “We’re not giving in,” Alice told Alan, and he agreed. “We’re not going home until we’ve got this straightened out.”
    But some hours later they had to.
    The police told them they should stop phoning them. What they were doing, they said, was harassment. Not only to the neighbours, but to the police receptionist. Their neighbours were fine, good people; they shouldn’t hate them just because they were different. “But different in what way?” asked Alan, and he wasn’t angry, and he clearly wasn’t shouting, so he didn’t think he deserved the subsequent warning. “Just different.”
    Alan and Alice tried knocking on the doors of other people in the street. Neighbours they’d never said hello to, not in all those years. But no one was ever in.
    One evening Alan came home to find Bobby was in the front garden. He was playing in all the bubble wrap. “Look, Daddy,” he said, “I can make it go pop!” He was jumping on it, rolling around in it, setting off a thousand tiny