[Phoenix Court 03] - Could It Be Magic?

by Paul Magrs

  Sally was at the station, seeing me off. I was thinking I’d never be back in Yorkshire. She was telling me I had to get my education. I had to go to art college. I had to be Michelangelo. Getting on the train, I was embarrassed by this coarse, red-haired, frayed woman, in whose clammy, fleshy arms I had spent the night, telling me to turn myself into Michelangelo. I smiled and urged the train on.

  I wanted to find the father and make myself an architect. I wanted to design the shopping precincts, the tower blocks, the housing estates of the future. That was my destiny.

  I never found Father Dobbs. He’d gone.

  Liz, do you think I should tell you all this?

  Lying there, you’re so receptive.

  Yet you gleam, you give off light. You’re like my mother’s face. But you and her, you’re just reflected light. You give it off without really understanding. Father Dobbs was helping me to understand. He went, like everyone else does. Who’s left to help me understand anything?

  Have you got anything to tell me, Liz?

  You’re poised between life and death. You reflect the light of both states. Tell me. Explain to me.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I’m at the station early today. Overeager. I don’t like stations much. When I was a kid we never went anywhere by train. I only see this one because it’s the quickest route between Darlington and Edinburgh. Straight up and down, like falling. I hate the mass of people. Last time I was here it was to meet Cameron, the last Friday night we had. There were rugby supporters everywhere. I hate the board with its spinning letters and numbers. They flap down and change and I’m never sure that I’m looking at the right thing. Aren’t buses easier? You jump on when they stop by you, jump off when you arrive.

  I’m too early but I hang about in Burger King.

  It’s Craig. He steps off the train with his big rucksack. When he comes up the platform we clap eyes on each other straight away. He’s in a tracksuit and he’s trying to look bluff and matey, to look like he’s used to travelling about. But I can see he’s relieved to find me straight away. When he comes up he’s lurching with his bad foot. I’d forgotten what it was like. I always forget people’s details.

  A wary distance between us, though we’re both grinning.

  “Is Penny here?” I ask. “I didn’t know you were coming too.”

  Craig looks abashed. “Penny’s still at home. She gave me her ticket.”

  “What’s happened to her?”

  He shrugs. “It was all last-minute. The hospital phoned. Something about her mam.” He shifts the weight of his backpack.

  Has Penny sent him up to fetch the money? Is he here to nose on me? I help him with the bag. “Tell me when we get sorted,” I say, sounding friendly, I hope. “We’ll get a cab to mine. It’s not far.”

  The cab swishing onto Prince’s Street. That corner thick with tourists, where there’s always a lone bagpiper having his photo taken. A Japanese husband is making his wife stand next to the piper. Under the clock. Under arches. Onto Leith Walk. Craig’s looking out, interested.

  Craig puts on this serious voice. “For some reason, me and you, we’ve always managed to see eye to eye,” he says. We’re in the cold-floored kitchen of my flat. I make tea and coffee. I lay out warm tomato bread, different cheeses, pesto, olives. Giving him a posh kind of cheese sandwich. He’s saying, “Even though…even though we’re different, we’ve still managed to talk man to man, haven’t we, Andy? We’ve still been proper mates.”

  I shrug. I don’t feel like making it easy for him, whatever it is he’s come all this way to say. I’m in a black jacket and T-shirt. Tartan Waverley Trust ribbon. My hair newly shaved. I look queer as fuck and he knows it.

  Craig tries again. “Everyone sends their love, you know. Penny, Mark, my mam, your uncle Ethan. They all want to know what you’re up to. What’s happening. How you are.”

  I sit down. “Have you really come just to pass on their love?”

  He laughs ruefully. “To tell you the truth, I had to get away from Aycliffe, too.”

  “You and Penny…?”

  “She can’t be doing with me any more.” He looks out of the tall windows, makes appreciative noises over the view. “Well and truly fucked and chucked. That’s me.” He smiles. “You’ve done all right here, haven’t you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I wanted to see where you escaped to. I wanted to see what it was like when you leave Aycliffe.”

  “This is it,” I say.

  Gamely he delivers himself up to my care. Entertain me, Craig says.

  I thought about the things you did, the places you go with guests. It was only by showing off my new city to Craig that I realised that this is where I live. I saw how much I knew of it. How great it is here.

  We walked to the Botanical Gardens, one of the last warm days of the year. Through the futuristic silver gates into rolling fields and dark, secluded trees.

  Under the white crystal dome of the hothouses we sat and talked and looked at the orchids. They nestled behind the protective rubber of their leaves: hot pink, acid orange and green, fine white china trumpets of flowers. I had never been here before.

  “Why didn’t we bring the bairn?” Craig said. “It would be a trip out for him.” He was talking more easily about Jep now. At first he’d been wary about even touching my son, as if he’d catch something. Now, when we were home, he’d sling him about fondly, tickle him, lug him around. What do they call it? Dandle him. I was starting to see that Craig would make a good dad. Rush of hormones telling me: he’d make a good father. I was nearly phoning Penny, telling her: he’s good with bairns.

  Today Jep was in the care of my neighbours. Craig didn’t like my friends much. He thought they were posh. When they were round or we were out with them, he kept his head down. Glowered at them, which embarrassed me. It wasn’t helped by the fact that they’d assumed for the first week that he was my new feller. Craig was mortified. “Why do they assume that? That we can’t just be mates?” I shrugged at that.

  “It’s amazing in here,” Craig said as we inspected the South American room. Lilies on ponds, their rubbery hides grown monstrous, covering all the water. In the room that was meant to be a desert, Craig revelled in the cacti. He stayed there ages. I couldn’t stand it. It was musty and hot. He was pretending to be in a western, scuffing through the sand, bending to glare at funny, stumpy things. The needles on them!

  He pointed out the century plant. A dull-looking thing. At Easter, the sign said, they’d had to punch a hole in the glass roof for it, this cactus that flowers once a hundred years and dies. Now it was dying. At Easter — I bloody missed it, of course — it threw up this silly appendage, thirteen feet tall, and produced thousands of banana-yellow flowers. Now gone.

  Craig stood up and brushed off his jeans. “Apparently you can’t tell a century plant is a century plant until it grows suddenly, hugely, and flowers like that. Until it bursts the roof.” He laughed at me, but not nastily. “That’s like you puffs. The way you suddenly come out.”

  I thought, God — he’s not going to tell me something, is he? But then, no, that would be too silly. Of course I’d thought of making a move on him. Of testing him out. But you can’t, can you? He was straight, but being such a sport. Dancing at CC’s, out all the time with me. He was game, old Craig.

  We went back to the orchid house.

  “You feel so safe here,” I said. “The temperature will never drop.”

  He stared at the lilies. It was funny. He’s no queer, perhaps, but I’ve still got him spending afternoons looking at flowers. This hulking, muscle-building brute. “Imagine if the wind got in. The frozen north.”

  I said, “I’m living the life of Riley, but it’s not always a laugh, you know.”

  He seemed to sag down. He looked older suddenly. “Better than my life. I get a shag and it makes my year.”

  “Is that what Penny was? Just a shag?”

  He colours, because for a second he’s forgot
ten that I’m more Penny’s friend than his. “You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah.” I sit down beside him.

  “I don’t think there’s much in me and Penny.”

  “No?” I hold back from saying anything about this.

  He changes the subject. “I’m jealous of you, Andy. You’ve got it all. I came expecting your life to be a disaster. You make yourself sound like a fuck-up. Penny makes it sound like you’ve messed it all up —”

  “Cheers!”

  “But you’ve got everything I want! You’ve even got a bairn...”

  “I’ve even got a bairn.”

  He looks at me seriously. “I don’t know where or how you got him. I don’t know why he is the way he is. I don’t pretend to understand any of your life, Andy. But look at you. Sorted! You’re a father, for God’s sake! How does that make you feel? What’s that like?”

  I shake my head.

  “It’s like…” He hunts out his ciggies. “I can believe in your life because of the weird shit I’ve had in my life recently. Last year I’d never have given you the time of day.”

  I almost say something trite about how we all change. I bite my tongue. If he gets irritated he could punch me one. He’s got a temper, this one. But I’ve also seen him work, measured and patient, that day he fixed our telly by taking it all to pieces. Breaking it into the smallest possible pieces. He’s doing that with my life, his life, he’s working his way round his own thoughts very carefully.

  “You’re so selfish!” he says at last. “You’ve not let anyone hold you back! There’s no one at home you feel guilty about! How can you be so selfish? How can I get to be like that?”

  Hallowe’en on Leith Walk. There’s me, scared of everything. Waiting at the bus stop, leaning on a lamppost, and it’s humming in my ear. The whole thing throbs with energy. It’s got me swaying on the spot.

  The wind is picking up. It takes one of the bin bags piled at the kerb and flings it into the middle of the road.

  Waiting to cause an accident. Traffic streams past. It never stops down here.

  I’m waiting for the C3 across town. Stupid time to be out. Back in Aycliffe I wouldn’t be out on Hallowe’en. When we were kids we used to run about everywhere, dressed in bin bags, banging on doors. A mate of mine crapped on someone’s front path when they wouldn’t give us Hallowe’en money.

  Pub crawlers go past in gangs. One whole load dressed up. The women are all witches, one is a nun. The men find it harder, thinking up what to be on Hallowe’en. This one’s decided to be a punk. They shout at me, some of the women waving. I don’t know how to take that sometimes. People find it very easy to include me, to bring me in. They call me mate, pat my back, talk to me in queues, in shops, in bars. I’m pliable.

  Dressing up. I should have my leopard spots on. Better than any make-up.

  Some bloke goes past in an anorak, fetches the rubbish off the road. So there won’t be an accident.

  An old man goes zipping by in a disabled dodgem car. He careers all over the path, minding the dog shit. So his wheels won’t track it into his front hall. He pulls up outside a closed toy shop and stares at the model spaceships. An Indian woman passes him, tinkling with golden hoops and pulling a child. She’s looking in the charity-shop windows.

  When the bus comes, everyone on it is drunk. Young men dressed to go out, in leather jackets, hair plastered back with wax. Women done up a bit tarty for a night out. We get underway, pulling through the fish-and-kebab part of town. All the grey fairy-tale buildings of Waverley, lit blue from beneath.

  We let on a dirty man and his dog on a string. The dog’s matted pelt is the same colour as his owner’s hair. The Bridges. South Clerk Street. This city is filthy. I am sunk into its dirt. It is everywhere and I am included.

  TWENTY-THREE

  It was a long coming back. It was as if she was on a cruise liner, waving to the shore from the deck.

  The decks of the QE2 like tiers of a wedding cake.

  Where was her groom?

  Everyone came out to meet her.

  Which day would she arrive?

  Phoenix Court kept to the usual visiting rota. Everyone

  wondered if they would be the one to see her wake.

  Fran thought it was weird. Who would really want to be a witness?

  “Oh, I think it would be lovely,” said Nesta. “Have you seen her recently? She’s not moving much, but all her colour’s come back.”

  This was at the bus stop, in the rain. Nesta in a see-through headscarf. “She looks like a princess.”

  Fran thought that was going too far. She hoped it wouldn’t be Nesta there when Liz returned. She’d need proper medical care. Someone sensible should be on hand. Nesta would be sentimental, excitable. She would fall on the floor, weeping and praying. She’d carry on as if it was ET. Liz the traveller returned from the brink.

  “I wouldn’t want to see Liz wake,” Fran said. “Poor thing! She’s been looked at enough, these past few months. She’ll feel funny.”

  Fran could imagine that being looked at in your sleep would be like being interfered with.

  “I think it’s lovely.” Nesta smiled. “It’s made me feel happy. Good news, for once.”

  “Mm.”

  That was true, mind. Good news at last.

  Last week Penny burst into Fran’s kitchen.

  “They reckon Mam’s coming back!”

  Fran’s lot were having their tea.

  “Who reckons? Sit down, pet. Get your breath.”

  “The doctors.” She couldn’t sit. Pacing up and down the kitchen. “They say she’s coming back to us!”

  Fran and Nesta went to sit on the back seat.

  “Remember the sexy bus driver that Liz ran away with?” asked Fran.

  “Ay, I do.” Nesta nodded. “He was a hunk.”

  Fran hated this expression. As though men were edible.

  Nesta said, “When Liz is back, she can tell us what she did with him!” She looked slyly at Fran. “Just shows, you should never get involved with a younger man.”

  “My Frank’s a younger man.”

  “Just shows.”

  Fran pursed her lips.

  “Penny should think about selling her story to Take a Break magazine,” Nesta said. “You get hundreds of pounds for writing up your true-life tales.”

  “You could mention it to her.”

  “Somebody should.” Nesta stared at the rainy streets. “People like real escapes and returns to life.”

  Nesta thought of J.R. Ewing, of Bobby Ewing. All the Ewings of Southfork, Dallas, were shot dead at one time or another. Easy to go and come back. Easy to come back with a new actress in your shoes. A new, more beautiful and younger actress. Like when they ditched Miss Ellie on Dallas and brought a new one in. It was easy coming back, Nesta knew.

  On Monday morning Penny took a deep breath and went to the spastics shop. At one level she thought it was tempting fate, telling people so soon. They said, when you were having a bairn, you should wait a little while before telling, before buying things. This was the same. Yet she wanted to tell everyone. She was thrilled by this news.

  Elsie looked up from the counter, straight at her, when she walked in. There was that smell of starch and softener and spray-on deodorant. The shop was gloomy.

  “Elsie, I’ve got something to tell you.”

  Elsie just looked at her.

  “I know we’ve not been seeing eye to eye these past few months…”

  The older woman snorted.

  “I’ve got some news about Mam.”

  “Oh?” To conceal her interest, Elsie started folding cardigans on the counter, rapidly, making a mess of them.

  “You’ve not been for a while to the hospital, I know. You don’t know the latest.”

  Elsie’s eyes flashed. “Can you blame me for losing interest in the doings of your family?”

  “Elsie! Me and Craig split up! I’m sorry! But it was a two-sided thing!”

&nbs
p; Elsie tutted. “Little madam,” she muttered.

  Actually, thought Penny, I do sound like a little madam, coming in here, telling her things she doesn’t want to hear. “All right. go. I wish I’d never bothered.”

  “Hang on, you,” Elsie said, coming round the counter.

  God, she’s going to punch me, thought Penny. She’d heard about Elsie in the old days, drunk in the factory and starting fights.

  “I don’t care what you say,” Elsie said. “It’s your fault our Craig’s gone off to Edinburgh and left us. He had to get away so he wasn’t haunted by the sight of you. You’ve driven away my only son!”

  “Oh, get away! He’s only gone on a trip.”

  “He’s never left me before,” Elsie said. “What does he need with being away?”

  “He’s just gone away to visit his mate Andy.”

  “Oh, him,” snapped Elsie.

  “What do you mean, oh, him?”

  Elsie was red in the face. “That shirt lifter. Why’s our Craig staying with a ponce?”

  Penny looked around. All the shop’s browsers and Elsie’s elderly colleague Charlotte were watching now.

  “What, are you saying that I’ve turned your son? I’ve turned him into a queer?”

  Elsie bridled. Penny was jeering at her. ”I wouldn’t put anything past you, you minx. That Andy was your boyfriend and he turned —”

  “He was never my boyfriend —”

  “And you’re carrying on behind Craig’s back with the tattooed man and… and!” Elsie laughed harshly, preparing to deliver her suddenly decided upon killing blow. “I could tell you a few home truths about your precious, lovely Mark Kelly.”

  “Oh, don’t bother,” Penny muttered, heading for the door.

  “I think you should hear this. You’re in deep waters with all these queers, Penny Robinson. You should know the man you’re sleeping with now is a queer as well. I saw him on New Year’s Eve!”

  Penny laughed. “Kissing Santa Claus?”

  “Kissing Andy! Where the coats were hung up!”

  “So?”

  “Oh, you brazen thing, you!”

  “Elsie, to be honest, I don’t care what men get up to. They always get up to things. They’re dirty beasts. You know that.”