by Paul Magrs
In the hallway Penny bangs hard on Andy’s door. “She’s back! Andy! She’s back! My mam’s back!”
By then it is midnight.
FIVE
The Fantastic Four had a skyscraper all to themselves. What did they call it? The Baxter Building, that was. And there was the Batcave, of course. And the Avengers had the Avengers Mansion, and the Justice League of America had a satellite station floating around the world. It was like a staff room, a futuristic staff room they could all adjourn to from their separate cities. The Justice League of America would beam themselves up to the JLA satellite and have meetings about what they had to do to save the world.
Who was in the JLA? Superman of course, who just flew up to the satellite. It was no bother for him, who didn’t have to breathe and could do anything. He had a secret place of his own, too, the Fortress of Solitude, in the North or the South Pole, where he’d go and make his own plans for himself. It was like an ice palace. I remember the stories when someone would get in and there’d be a real panic on. Superman would be furious, someone in his fortress. There was one I remember, but it was a daft story and the intruder was only Batman. It was Superman’s birthday and he was making him a cake. I fucking hated the stupid stories. The jokey ones like they couldn’t be arsed any more taking it seriously.
Who else in the JLA? Aquaman, who lived underwater. Hawkman and Hawkwoman, who had bird powers. Wonder Woman, but she was crap. I hated Wonder Woman. What were her powers? A lasso. And Green Lantern and Green Arrow. I could never tell the difference between them and never knew what they were meant to be anyway. And the Flash, who was dressed all in red and he could run like a bastard.
We used to walk right across town to the newsagent by the Dandy Cart to get American comics. Now, mind, you can buy them everywhere. You get big shops in places like Newcastle, Forbidden Planet and Timeslip, shops like that, and they sell hundreds of comics really expensively. When I was reading them all the time in the seventies, say, you’d get only a handful of them on the spinning racks in the newsagents. The dirty newsagents by the Dandy Cart. That bit of town was even rougher than where we lived, Mam said. I used to go over and buy comics at fifteen pence a time, which was more than English ones cost then. Now it’s like three quid for a bloody comic. The English ones then, even the ones that reprinted the American strips, were in black and white. The Americans were all colour, and small. They were often on yellowed paper and crumpled up. As if they’d been dampened on the boat or plane coming over, and dried on a radiator. On the spinning rack in the Dandy Cart shop they were in direct sunlight and they dried yellowy. You could never buy issues in sequence. It was pot luck. I just bought whatever was there, so I never saw a complete story. Issues began with the pick-up of a cliffhanger and ended with another nail-biting finish. You just had to make up what came before and after. The Dandy Cart stank of the cheese counter. When I think of reading comics and choosing which ones to buy, I think of rancid cheese and the glass counter, scratched by coins, over the Dandy Cart, where you’d pay and get a ten-pence mixture of sweets as well.
Sometimes I wonder, if I asked Steve, what he would say. If I said, Aren’t we like one of them team-ups of superheroes in the old comics? Isn’t that what we’re all like in this house? He would just say I was cracked. He thinks I’m cracked anyway.
I’d like to ask him, though, because he used to read those comics as well. We were at school together and we used to swap them. I got one weird comic off him once about a walking tree in a swamp that went round just killing people. It wasn’t a proper hero comic at all. I wonder if Steve remembers reading those things.
I think that we’re a bit like a super-team when we’re down the gym, especially on a good day when we’re working well, everyone’s muscles all pumped up. When I was little I used to wonder what the superheroes’ costumes were made of. Like rubber or something. But now the material’s common and we all wear it down the gym, even the old biddies and the tarts down there wear it: Lycra. In Lycra everyone’s a fucking superhero. These days it isn’t so hard. So maybe mention it to Steve one day, remind him, make him laugh.
For a moment tonight it felt like we were a super-team. A bit out of it, running out of the house over the snow. When you’re skidding about and piling after each other in the snow and you can hardly see two feet in front, then that’s a bit like flying. When we came pounding out of the house at midnight I could see us all, like in one of those full-page frames that each comic begins with, streaking into the sky with wings and masks and cloaks streaming behind us. When the superheroes flew, the artists always drew a faint trail behind them, to show how fast they were going and where they had been. Last night I saw us all leaving those trails. And the heroes gritted their teeth when flying or fighting. Their mouths were wide rectangles with the teeth bared and that’s how we all were, the seven of us, running across the estate.
What they thought they were doing, I’m fucked if I know. Suddenly we were out there and it was all going on. They had that lass, that Donna on the ground. And then there was the other woman there.
I made sure that Donna got away from them. Donna’s soft in the head. She was scared of them. I helped her get away. I did that much.
The other one, Penny’s mam. She’s been away. She came back all of a sudden. She got mixed up where she shouldn’t have.
They dragged her body out onto the playground, where she’d be found easy. I was going to stay, to make sure. Steve said no way. We’d get the blame. They dragged her over to the play park. Pulled on her fur coat. She was bleeding. A hank of fake fur came off in Steve’s hands.
I watched tonight from the upstairs window of the Forsythe house. I wanted to see them find Liz. I wanted to see her all right. There was more snow. When they drew snow in the comics, it was like blots of old paper. I was dozing off, waking with a jolt, drifting away again, my head on the cold windowsill. I watched the lights of Penny’s party house...and heard our own party downstairs.
I dreamed I phoned Penny in the middle of the party. I’ve never talked to the lass before. I phoned her and told her, “They attacked your mam. They made her fall and hit her head.”
If I phoned Penny’s house, they’d never hear the ringing anyway, because of the party’s noise.
A taxi driver climbed into his empty cab. Its doors had been left open like wings. Black on clean white. He drove off.
What vehicles did the superheroes have? Mr Fantastic of the Fantastic Four could invent anything. Cars like spaceships, with a seat for each of the four, that would transport them through the scary Phantom Zone that connected their universe with the fucked-up Skrull universe.
My chin resting on the cold, white-painted windowsill, watching over the road. The room behind me smelled of lager. I started dreaming about the Justice League and thinking, they wouldn’t have done what my lot had done. But the Justice League were squeaky fucking clean and that’s why I hated them. Why were Marvel comics always better than DC?
I could see people leaving the party, crossing the road, drunk and stoned and hopeless. I could see the snow getting ploughed up. I could see Penny in the street, wrapped up, yelling at the others, “It is her! It is her!”
And the whole party crowded around Liz. Light from the opened doors of all the friendly, open homes shone on the recumbent Liz. Everyone gathered and watched her regain consciousness. She stretched and yawned. Sleeping Beauty. She sat up. Penny helped her to her feet. “Mam, you’re back!” she must have been saying.
Liz supported herself on the walk to her house. Everyone followed. She appeared tired but unharmed. I was glad. The door closed behind them all. Liz was safe.
“Where is she, Andy? Where’s she gone?” Penny has forgotten to put a coat on. She’s standing in the main road with Andy, who has dressed himself hastily. Mark has gone home. The party is breaking up. Someone said Liz was back, but she hasn’t appeared.
The taxi driver leads Penny to his cab. They come hurrying over the snow. “She was
here! She was here! I drove her from Darlington!” The driver is furious. He never got his money. Liz has left his car door open. “That’s twelve quid that!” he shouts.
Penny and Andy won’t pay him. They watch him leave.
“Maybe he was just trying it on,” Andy says. “Maybe she never came back at all.”
“No, she must have,” Penny says. “She just changed her mind about seeing me. She’s come back and lost her nerve.” Penny’s face is grim. She sets off, back to number sixteen. “She’s nicked off again.”
Andy follows her back to the house. Some fucking party. His body aches and he’s shivering now, the cold and anxiety are starting to get to him. Happy New Year, he thinks.
They pass the play park without a second glance. Liz’s white fur coat is camouflage in the snow, which falls heavier and heavier, covering her face.
SIX
Years later they went on Ricki Lake to talk about it: how the children in question always knew that they never quite belonged, that there had been a mix-up. They felt a nagging. Genetics pulled on them like magnetism, taking them back where they belonged. Andy couldn’t quite imagine that easy sense of belonging. Mind, there was Elsie and her Craig — how much they looked alike with those big facial features. Her face was a little-old-woman version of his, and her features looked more natural on him.
How many of the bairns in this room beyond the glass would grow up queer? He squinted along the rows for early signs. If there was a gene involved, then they were already queer. Gay babies.
The room was like a field, he thought. Or a battery-hen farm. It was completely fascinating. He remembered Logan’s Run and a scene early in the film where they look at a room of babies like this and it turns out that in the future no one knows whose baby is whose and all child-rearing is communal. There was no fuss, no nonsense and no need for straight parenting. He couldn’t remember what had made Logan run.
His favourite film of all time was still Escape from the Planet of the Apes, which ended with the death of a swaddled monkey baby; that scene broke his heart every time. So I must have a sentimental streak about babies, he thought, frowning. In Logan’s Run they executed all the adults when they got to thirty, he couldn’t remember why. Some weird, fucked-up science-fiction reason. They dressed the thirty-year-olds in red frocks, stood them in an arena and they got sucked up into a giant red crystal in the ceiling. It was like a rave. Dead by thirty, he thought.
It made him angry, suddenly, that last year Vince had tried to kill himself. He tried to poison himself with embalming fluid. He swallowed the whole bottle and only just made it. He was the healthiest, safest person Andy knew — how could he even have thought of doing himself harm? Ruining that perfection? Perfection that the clever Ralph, the Jane Austen expert, was getting the pure benefit of in Paris right now.
Andy closed his eyes, his forehead to the thick glass wall. When he opened his eyes, he thought one baby in particular was giving him a dirty look. Little bastard, Andy thought. He’s looking at me almost patronisingly. Then the child seemed to sigh and roll over, turning its face away from him. Andy felt the blood burn in his cheeks.
When Craig joined them in the main waiting room, he kept scratching himself. He worked his fingers through his jeans into his shins and thighs as he told them about Liz’s progress — or lack of it.
“And then they chucked me out. Next of kin only. So here I am.” He shrugged and rubbed at the back of his knee.
“Next of kin,” tutted Elsie. “That means poor Penny is in there by herself. Anyway, you did smashing, pet.” She smiled proudly at her son. “I wouldn’t be surprised if, when that Liz gets out of here, she doesn’t give you something. A reward. He deserves it, doesn’t he?”
Fran smiled tightly and Big Sue just looked disgusted.
Craig said, “I just did what anyone would.”
“No, you were a star,” said Elsie. “You were masterful.”
“Oh, get away!” He was scratching himself again and his mam noticed that Big Sue was frowning at this. He ran his hands nervously through his hair. His ponytail was out and his hair hung down all over the place. He went to the coffee machine in the corridor and his mam followed him.
“What are you itching for?”
“You what?” He punched Bovril.
“Oh, you don’t want that. What about mad cows?”
He rolled his eyes. “Mam, you’ve always, always bought the cheapest Walter Wilson own-brand beefburgers. One cup of Bovril won’t kill me now.”
“Cheapest!” she cried. “Listen, tell me, why are you scratching all the time?”
He pressed for sugar by mistake. “Shite.”
“Craig!”
“I’m not scratching all the time.”
“It’s like you’ve got fleas. Oh, Craig, it’s not crabs, is it?”
He blushed. “No, it’s not. I’ve had crabs, I know what —”
“You haven’t!” She looked shocked.
“And I used that lotion stuff that smells like pear drops.”
Elsie grimaced, remembering a bout of her own.
“But I am itching,” he said. “Like there’s something under my skin.”
She looked scared. “You want to get down the doctors’.” She looked around. “Maybe they’ll look at you while you’re here.”
“Don’t be daft.” He lowered his voice. “Everyone in the house is like this. I reckon it’s something in the beds, in the mattresses. Someone said something about scabies.”
Elsie could only think about dogs foaming at the mouth. She said, “Isn’t that rabies, when they go mad and turn homophobic?”
“You what?” He frowned. “This is scabies. It’s like having itchy worms under your skin.”
She looked sick. “Oh, my God!” Elsie had never had much, but she’d always been clean. Her house had always been spotless and there had never been vermin. Never. “That does it then, Craig. You’re not to go back there. It must be filthy. You can’t go back to that den of vermin.”
He threw away the sugary Bovril and she realised she was holding her breath, awaiting an outburst. It never came. When he looked at her, he just seemed obscurely pleased.
“Look, we’ll see, Mam. We’ll just see.”
Penny didn’t want to see her mam like that. Tubes up her nose.
They had let her into her mother’s room to watch all the urgent fussing around. Penny was content to sit in the corridor. She couldn’t watch what they were doing.
She flipped through the tatty magazines left lying about. Mysteries of the Mind: UFOs, abductions, spontaneous combustion. She bloody hated mysteries. What was the point of the unexplained if no one explained it to you at the end?
It had shocked Penny that, while the doctors and nurses were working on her mam, they left her dressed in her golden frock and high heels. She was the most glamorous victim Penny had ever seen. She was bald and her wig was propped on the cardiograph machine like a mascot.
To Penny her mother looked blue. It was as if she was still getting colder, and she couldn’t stop herself from turning blue.
She listened to the muted hospital-corridor sounds. She couldn’t believe they were so stupid as not to see her last night. Her own mam, unconscious in the snow. The image of Liz being snowed on and blotted out preyed on Penny’s mind.
She’d been mugged, there was no doubt about it. You didn’t slip and end up like that. Someone had hit her. Penny made a quiet resolution to find out what had happened.
She had stared now for some minutes on end at a page in her Unexplained magazine. It was a page of ghostly apparitions. Grainy, probably faked photographs. There was a whole magazine dedicated to wondering whether they were real. It made her sick such effort was made to prove these shabby ghosts true.
SEVEN
“I’m not sure where my time goes. It just goes. It’s not as if I’m doing anything special.” Mark was peering into the grill at their cheese on toast. The red element was reflected on the cheese’s
oily surface. “And I can’t even find time to cook a proper meal.” He looked up at Andy, who stood holding the bottle of Hardy’s Nonage Hill he’d brought, feeling daft. “Sorry.” He pulled the grill pan out and looked at the toast. “I bet you thought this was going to be a proper meal, didn’t you?”
Andy, who had indeed expected something more, shrugged and put his bottle down on the kitchen surface, screwing the tissue paper into a pink carnation. “Oh, I haven’t been eating properly for days, anyway,” he said. “It was just nice of you to invite me round.”
Stiffly Mark plonked their toast on two plates. He handed Andy his. “Shall we go through there?”
They were being strange with each other, the way they would have been a week ago, when they still knew each other only from Completely Fit. A week ago it was Christmastime, Andy thought. At home he and Penny were taking turns at being the optimistic one, while the other sank into despondence. Penny had no idea why Andy looked depressed. She thought he was simply sharing the way she felt over Liz.
“It must be…” Mark paused, choosing his word. “It must be hectic round your house just now.”
“It’s not hectic,” Andy said.
They had to choose between sitting on the settee or at the dining table. The settee. Would Mark switch the telly on? Would they make it as informal as that? They kept it off. Mark wanted to talk to him.
“It’s not hectic,” Andy said again. “To tell you the truth, it’s like the bloody morgue.” His heart leaped daringly inside him. This was treachery.
“Is she still in the coma?” Mark asked, although he knew fine well that she was. Only that afternoon he had been round Fran’s house getting the latest. Fran looked worn down. Hers was the most recent visit to Liz and she came back telling everyone that, even hooked up to life support, Liz still looked like the Queen of Sheba. Tubes gurgled into her nose, lights pinged and monitors skipped, and among it all Liz looked indomitable. She’d come out of this soon. Over tea and Battenburg cake this afternoon, Fran had told Mark she imagined Liz coming back from the brink of the next world and telling them all about it. She could see her sitting at the kitchen table, just like this, regaling them all with the lowdown on life after death. Liz would be just the type to have an out-of-body experience.
