by Paul Magrs
Here at the hinge between years — and these are tricky, rusted hinges that squeal perilously — you could easily slip, show yourself up, make a terrible mistake and lose yourself. Disappear as others have disappeared before you, Penny thought.
She then listened to Elsie pant out her story about Craig’s poor foot and how it and his difficult young life had led him to get in with a bad crowd.
He needs a good woman.
Penny brushed all this aside, running the cold tap to sluice out the basin.
“I’m not going to be sick again,” Elsie said, grasping her arm. “I’m trying to tell you about my boy.”
Andy had never travelled, but even as Vince started to describe it, in a tinny, exhilarated voice, he could see exactly what Paris on New Year’s Eve looked like.
All Andy could say was, “What are you doing? It’s almost midnight! Who are you with?”
Vince was saying again, “I’m in Paris!” as if he couldn’t quite believe it either.
“You haven’t called me in months, and now this!”
“Yeah, yeah.” Vince was drunk. “How are you keeping, pet?”
Andy felt tears spring up. “Oh…smart. How about you?”
There was a pause as Vince decided to be nothing less than honest. Not even consideration for Andy could stop him. “I’m having a lovely time. I love it here.”
“Who are you there with?”
“Ralph.”
“Ralph? Who the fuck’s Ralph?”
“We’ve been together since October. Didn’t Penny tell you?”
Andy pulled a face. “She told me nowt.”
“He’s a Jane Austen expert.”
“Smashing.” Andy scowled, imagining them reading books together. That would be right up Vince’s street. He probably couldn’t think of anything sexier than reading with his lover. On the rare occasions when Andy read anything, he couldn’t bear to have anyone near him. Vince would notice him reading and wanted to be near him, as if proud, drinking that silence up. It embarrassed Andy and put him off. Vince loved to read a novel with Andy hugged to his chest, almost like a child, as if he wanted to read out loud to him, something else Andy hated. Andy also thought it was as if Vince wanted to push his lover’s whole body into the book. He would be happier with his lover inside the book, wasn’t that the truth of the matter?
That was why Vince was no good, Andy decided, with the expensive long-distance seconds zooming by: he was no good because he would rather we were all inside a book. It would be easier on his nerves if he could read about us rather than having to live with us. Andy wouldn’t forgive that look of his — sheer disdain — when he came to live in Phoenix Court and found himself having to slum it. He thought we all talked about stupid things. He wanted to talk about Madame Bovary.
“Well, thanks for phoning.”
“Are you sure you mean that?” Oh, that arch tone of his! On this phone it was worse, crackling and Gallic. Knowing exactly how pissed off Andy was. “I wish I hadn’t phoned at all now. I’ve made you even crosser and depressed, haven’t I?”
“Yeah, frankly, you have. How old’s this Ralph?”
“Forty-six.”
“Vince, he’s twice your age!”
“You’ve had older blokes.”
“And it was awful.”
“Yeah, well. Ralph is wonderful.”
“You’re just playing the little whore to get a free trip.”
“Fuck you, Andy.”
“Ay — fuck you an’ all.”
A pause. “I wish I could, Andy. I wish I was there. You’ve made me want to be in Phoenix Court!”
“Yeah?”
“Nah. You should be over here. I’m in the loveliest café. I could do with a friendly face.”
“Is that all I am?”
“Andy…we can’t talk about anything seriously here and now. We should just say Bon hiver and have done.”
Andy let himself down then. He sounded almost beseeching and hated himself for it. “Will we talk later? Will you phone me again? Can we talk about it? You went before we could.”
He could hear the foreign party noise in the background. He thought, it sounds like a Film on Four! Listen to Vince! He’s in a smart art-house movie with subtitles!
“Ay, Andy. We’ll talk next year. Listen. Happy New Year.”
Andy steeled himself. “Same to you. Give my love to Ralph.” When he slammed down the phone he gave a jump as someone pressed the cold of a lager can against his neck. It was Mark.
“Trouble?”
“Vince, phoning from Paris, with some old bloke he’s fucking.” The words were out before Andy could tailor them for straight consumption. Andy was so cross he’d forgotten the usual edit. Mark didn’t bat a painted eyelid.
“Who’s Vince?”
Andy shrugged. “He was my last boyfriend.”
“Oh.” Mark looked down, making a deliberate `Oh’ shape with his mouth. Andy thought he was embarrassed. Oh, he must be mortified — this tattooed, single father of one, at having been shanghaied into spending chatty hours, whole mornings, nude in a sauna in the amber light, the air scented like ginger snaps, sharing his time and intimacy with a big fag. Mark looked up and asked, “Is he treating you badly?”
“Just a bit. He walked out on me months ago.”
“So it’s over.”
“I reckon so.”
Now it was Andy’s turn to feel embarrassed. Mark was doing the sensitive straight man act. He was doing it well and it made Andy want to cry. The few soft words Mark had said, the way he looked and seemed concerned, all of it conspired to gather Andy up. Mark was taking his relationship with Vince as seriously as he would a straight one, a straight marriage, and Andy wasn’t even used to taking himself that seriously. Was that why Vince couldn’t be with him? Because he couldn’t give them that self-importance?
“Come on,” Mark was saying. “Let’s talk somewhere quiet.”
Boney M were back on in the hallway. Big Sue and Nesta were dancing around and miming to ‘Ra Ra Rasputin’.
It’s coming on to midnight over Phoenix Court. It is the focus of the night. It is time to think about the way the year will turn. Time concentrates the main events as they go off — one, two, three — around the chimes.
Either side of the main road the two parties are peaking and tumbling out of control. The bad lads are coming out of the house, spilling into the yard, into the clean snow of the street.
Sheila and Simon’s daughter is picking stones in the snow. How she can find them in the dark and the snow is anyone’s guess. She is a lumbering figure in her anorak, on the grass verge. The bad lads have seen her. The town clock, across the estates, across the Burn, starts to chime midnight.
Craig follows on behind the others as they run from the house, towards Phoenix Court. They’re shouting and kicking at each other, as if they can’t get there fast enough. Craig’s wondering what they’re going to do. He’s just feeling slow and unhappy. Someone gives a tug of his ponytail. The road is almost obliterated with snow. The bad lads are churning everything up. They’ve got — and he starts to run when he sees this — they’ve got Sheila and Simon’s daughter on her back in the snow.
Hardly stealthily, they’ve crept up on her and pushed her down on her back. Her collected stones lie scattered all around her head. When Craig reaches the bad lads and her, there is a silence none of them can quite figure out. All of them staring down at her massive form, her hair fanned out, her anorak zipped up. Craig looks down at her — Donna, they call her Donna — and she isn’t screaming or saying anything. Donna looks too depressed to say anything.
Andy is in his bedroom and he’s telling Mark, who sits listening patiently, that Vince means nothing to him now. He can’t bear people sounding pleased with themselves, as Vince does when he’s happy, and never even asking how the other person is. Sulkily Andy flops back on his bed, which is dark and strewn with mess. Mark is perched on dirty laundry on a painted wickerwork chair. He
’s wondering what he’s doing there. Andy’s still dressed as a cowboy, rubbing his palms into his eyes. On the walls there are posters from Pulp Fiction, The X Files and Blur’s Parklife.
Mark reaches forward and eases off Andy’s boots. They aren’t real cowboy boots, just his normal ones. Andy stops listening to the tired squeaking of his eyes as he rubs them. He tenses.
Mark leans over him. “Andy…”
“Are you putting me to bed?”
Marks shrugs.
“Am I that drunk?”
“I don’t know. Are you?”
“So why are you putting me to bed?”
Big Sue is looking for the loo, not used to the layout of these houses with upstairs landings. Even on a small trip out like tonight, she can start to miss her own bungalow. There’s nothing like your own place, she’s telling Jane as she hauls herself up the stairs. Jane is sitting with a Fuzzy Navel, made with Pernod instead of orange juice.
“Are you looking for the loo?” Jane asks after her, following her. “Because there’s a queue…”
Big Sue has flung open the walk-in cupboard at the top of the stairs and with a great sigh it disgorges its contents into the hall and down the stairs, taking Jane with it. Jane vanishes under squashy bags of old clothes, stacks of vinyl LPs and floppy paperbacks. She gives a squawk and is silent, buried under what looks like a car-boot sale. The stuff keeps on coming out of the cupboard, as if pushed. Nesta and a few others standing at the bottom of the stairs are screaming. Jane sits, very calmly, in a heap of old Look-in magazines, and discovers that she has twisted her arm.
Penny comes out of the bathroom to see all these old belongings strewn. She groans and snaps at Sue when asked where the toilet is. “How am I going to get this lot back in there!”
Elsie is at her elbow. “Give it to the spastics!” she says, gleeful again. Her hair smells of vomit, Penny realises. “Give me it all to give to the spastics!” And Penny remembers that Elsie does voluntary work in the week.
“Penny?” A deep voice comes from the downstairs hail, someone new making themselves heard above the music and kerfuffle. “Is Penny here?” the voice asks crossly. “Is Penny Robinson here?”
Her head jerks up as she starts kicking her way through the old records and tangle of musty coats. She skids her way to the top of the stairs and takes them at a run, almost pitching herself headfirst. “Who is it?” Penny daren’t admit to herself who she hopes it might be. In her heart she knows she has to be right. This year, this New Year, her mother has to have returned.
At the bottom stair there is a man she doesn’t know. He is in a tank top and nylon trousers and he wears a taxi driver’s numbered badge. “Are you Penny Robinson?”
Standing on the middle stair, Penny nods.
“I’ve brought someone from the station,” he says.
Liz is bundled up in the back of the black cab, smoking a quiet cigarette, tapping the ash out of the partly opened window. That cold shushes in and she snuggles into her fur, sighing. Soon she’s got to go back to the house that used to be hers. Will Penny be cross that she sent the taxi driver in ahead? Liz wanted to make a big entrance but, when it came to it, she couldn’t do it alone. She wants to return with her daughter at her side.
Liz stares at the low, square houses and the play park, the humped shapes of parked cars, the lit windows. Phoenix Court seems so small to her now. But she’s got to fit back in. No more flitting about. Nervously she smokes the ciggy down to its filter. She stubs it out on the old-fashioned metal ashtray and tosses the filter out the window. The town clock begins to chime. She wanted to be indoors for this, there in the thick of the party, among her own kind. Are they my own kind? she wonders. She straightens and glances out over the street. Everyone, it seems, is round number sixteen. Penny has made herself the centre of it all. Shit, thinks her mother, I needn’t have worried about Penny being lonely.
She lets herself out of the taxi and steps carefully, as if testing the slipperiness of the snow. Then she braces herself and starts to hurry across the gravel as the snow starts falling again. The music from her house is getting louder, pulling her in.
Between Liz and her house, there is Donna, flat on her back with the bad lads round her, still weighing up what best to do with her on the stroke of midnight. Donna wills herself the strength to move just one hand a little, pick up one of the rocks she has collected, and throw it at one of the lads. The one closest to her. The bravest one, or the one who thinks he’s bravest, who’s chuckling now, low in his throat, as if he’s decided what to do with her.
Donna doesn’t even think it’s worth yelling out. Everyone she knows in the world is in the loud house, having a party. She’s fallen out of her orbit. She clenches her teeth.
Craig has closed his eyes and he wishes she would start to yell. He could yell, but where would that get any of them?
“Penny?” a voice calls to them.
In a long white fur coat there is a figure trotting carefully across the gravel of the play park. Her hair is shaken out, wavy and golden white. As she approaches, she is lighting herself another cigarette and her thin, awkward body looks ready to bolt and flee. The woman approaching, as the lads look up and watch her, seems suddenly terrified.
“Who is that?” she demands, her voice sounding smoky and broken.
The worst of the bad lads, Steve, tosses his head at her and says, “Who have we got here?”
While Liz takes up their attention, Craig crouches over Donna, rolls her up and over like someone bedridden and tells her to flee.
Then they are all around the older woman, the newcomer. The lads seem to sense there is more fun to be had from her. She is more nervy and excitable, she has more fight. And her glamour, too, attracts and repels them. They think her ridiculous and long to drag her down. Liz is being baited. Her fur coat is plucked at, her cigarettes are taken from her, passed around. The boys surround her in a ring she can’t escape and she remembers this from years ago, at school, when they played piggy-in-the-middle. She wishes she’d gone into the house in the first place, with the taxi driver. And where has he got to anyway? Why can’t she ever do things the right way? She starts yelling out threats and this panics the lads, but doesn’t make them let her go. When they panic they start to do worse things. Someone holds her chin and looks into her eyes. “Give us a kiss, then.”
“She’s old enough to be your mam!”
And before any of them know it, her wig comes off in their hands. She drops to the ground, clearing an angel-space of snow a few yards away from Donna’s. The boy with her wig in his hands gives a yell and drops it. It falls, as if drawn, back onto Liz’s head, but looks dislodged and crazy. Steve kicks her in the stomach.
“It’s not even her real hair!”
Someone stands on her hand, crushing rings into the flesh of her fingers. “Pick her up,” Steve commands in that easy way he has. Craig hates himself even as he finds that he does what Steve tells him.
“Did you hear that, Craig?” Steve snickers. “Did you hear what she called you? Under her breath?”
Craig is confused. “What?” Did Liz call him something? Her head is down.
“She did!” Steve crows. “That bitch called you a pegleg. She said you’re a spacker. She called you a fucking spacker!”
A rushing fills Craig’s ears. He can’t believe this. He gulps down his breath. His pulse races.
They brace the frail weight of Liz between them, her wig slipped askance. “Smack her one,” Steve shouts. “Fucking smack her one!” He shouts it in Craig’s face. “She called you a fucking cripple, didn’t you hear?”
“What?” Craig whimpers this, but his body is tensed against them all, he can see nothing but Steve’s face and Liz’s face and all he can hear is Steve’s voice screaming at him.
“You! Fuck’n spacker! Crack her one!”
Craig shouts and lashes out. Next thing they all know, Liz has toppled once more to the ground.
Craig lurches forward
to do something and, in that instant, there is a resounding crack as Liz’s head hits the pavement. Her body jolts, convulses and lies still.
It was a sickening drop. He wants to tell the others the sound it made. He looks, although he doesn’t want to, and there is something dark and oily coming out from under her head, from under the wig.
Craig grabs Steve’s arm. Holding the crook of his arm as if for support, he points at the blood and says, “We’ve cracked her head open. She’s fucking dead.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Steve backs off.
“We’ve fucking killed her.”
Steve backs further off, then turns and runs. The others run with him. Craig shouts, “We can’t leave her! We can’t leave her lying like this!”
Steve comes back. “We can. You’re coming with us. If you stay, they’ll know you did it.”
“I did it,” Craig echoes.
“Right. Come back. Get indoors. Just look what you’ve done.”
Craig takes one last, frantic look at Liz’s body, on which snow has already started to settle. Then he turns and runs after the others to the Forsyth house.
Will this ever happen again? is the first thing Andy wants to ask him.
Mark slides back and rests there.
Will we ever do this again? is what Andy was thinking even in the moments before either of them came, because he realised he wasn’t making the most of this time. They were in the thick of things, it was all going on, but somehow, he couldn’t quite grasp the situation. It wasn’t real enough. He wanted to see Mark’s tattoos, see the designs he had come to know in recent weeks, flexing and working, shifting their outlines as the two of them had sex. It wasn’t enough, just this, it might be anyone.
He hears Mark rustling about, thoughtfully silent and then frozen, as if he has found something. Andy shrugs off his quiet. “What’s up?”
Like a footballer, Mark has his hand cupped over his cock. “Condom’s split.” He hoists himself up. “It split.”
“When?” Now Andy is sitting up. They are both staring at each other, the sheets, the mattress, as if one of them has lost a contact lens. “Inside of me?” asks Andy. “Did it split inside of me?”
