by Paul Magrs
Then Reet’s decided he’s finished with the sulky pretty boy and he’s struggling my way with his pint and my Chocolate Vodka.
And he gets the whole story out of me. Everything that went on last night. His eyes are getting wider and wider. We are sat on the tables against the wall in the back room at CC’s.
“That’s a terrible story. You poor thing.”
I just shrug. It wasn’t a big deal, last night. Reet over-dramatizes things. He has this world-weary expression he puts on. A moue, he calls it. Hang on, while I put me moue on. This is my moue, whatever the fuck that is. Anyway, he’s doing it now, staring past me as if he’s taking the weight of my world onto his shoulders. Which makes me laugh, to be honest. I’m twice as broad as he is. I make two of him. But I let Reet look all jaded and disgusted with the world for a while.
I reckon it’s all because of Pat Phoenix. Pat Phoenix is his biggest heroine in the world. In his room he has a massive blow-up of some photo from the sixties. It was used as a single cover by The Smiths. I forget which single.
“She worked hard and she played hard. She was vigorous and glamorous. And she could knock ‘em dead even with her sleeves rolled up.”
And I don’t know whether he means Pat Phoenix or Elsie Tanner. Me, I don’t have heroines, or heroes. I think it’s soft. But I can understand why Reet has them. He has them like I have lenses for my cameras; I keep mine in a box.
Here’s his Pat Phoenix face, puckered up against disaster, staring into the back room of CC’s.
The music is fierce. Karaoke’s over for a little bit and they’ve bumped the dance music back up. A techno version of ‘Wuthering Heights’. Kate Bush’s voice is sped up twice as fast. It’s so high-pitched it’s almost invisible. Even with all the shouting and squealing and stomping going on, I can feel her whistling up the hairs on the nape of my neck.
Reet has a story about his mam, down in Tyneside, seeing Pat Phoenix in the flesh, back in 1962. Pat was opening a refurbished Binns department store. There were crowds all up Frederick Street in South Shields. Reet’s main and her three sisters pushed to the front.
They saw the newly-famous TV star snip the ribbon in front of the golden revolving doors. Inside everything had been modernized, fresh for the sixties. They’d got rid of those chutes and tubes and shuttles through which they used to send your change.
The four sisters could only glimpse her, caught only fragments through the jostling bodies and bags and coats. After, they sat on the bus home and compared notes. The bus chugged through the docks and they built up, in words, a jigsaw of the star they had seen. Lovingly they prepared it for their ailing mother. Who, in a knitted black bed jacket, sat bundled up night and day in their front parlour. This was in one of the Fifteen Streets.
What came out as they sat being jogged along, four abreast on the back seat of the bus, was that Reet’s mam and her three sisters, Linda, Lydia and Laura, had all seen the true colour of Pat Phoenix’s hair. A fact obscured by black-and-white telly, magazines and newspapers.
Hair the colour of the bus they were sitting on.
They took back to their mother news that Elsie Tanner was a scarlet woman, for real.
Their mother refused to believe it, but she never watched Coronation Street again. It wasn’t that she disapproved of redheads. She just resented being hoodwinked as she put it. She liked to know what she was looking at.
Reet loves that story.
And the story I’ve been telling him?
Reet thinks it’s appalling. By this time next week, he’ll have it all over Edinburgh, whether I like it or not. I don’t give a shit. I know that’s what he’s like. He tells stories.
Last night I went home with some woman. Not my usual type. Large, forty-something, charcoal-grey pointy sideburns plastered down to her prominent cheekbones. It was down the Scarlet Empress, where I was on the final shift, three in the morning. I was clearing round, preparing to, close up.
Have I told you much about the Scarlet Empress yet?
I don’t suppose I have. It’s the queer cafe where both Reet and I work. Odd shifts, swanning about, slinking table to table, serving on, up to our eyes in it. A chatty, warm, colourful place with a huge, regular queer clientele.
At three last night I had Mary Black playing on the sound system. It could have been any time of day. I like that about the place. It’s so bright with colour — oh, everything’s faux-naif— you can’t tell what time it that is till you look out of the single window and see that the private garden is black and that lights in the terrace of houses beyond are winking through.
The bare wooden floorboards glow orange under the lights. It’s like walking on hot, glazed toffee.
Last night this woman —Anne — was the last one in. Sat by the window, making the dregs of her pint last. Eventually I realize she’s waiting around for me. She arrived with a glorious shebang of dykes at about nine and they all pissed off to see some show over the road. It was the final night for some dance-piece thing that’s had loads of publicity round here. Apparently it’s all naked dykes flying about in the fucking trapeze and, if you believe the reports, eating fruit — strawberries and that — out of each others’ quims. I’m not kidding.
Anyway, I’ve not seen it.
So the last of the night’s custom’s gone. All the boisterous gangs of boys and girls, off to somewhere they can hang out till even later (but who’d want to be out after three? Am I getting older, do you think? I mean, sometimes I just love dancing all night...but some of these bunnies are at it all the bloody time). And the last, drifting, homeward-bound faggots have come through, glum, shagless, consoling themselves with a mammoth slice of Banoffee pie. I give them extra when it’s obvious they’re eating to cheer themselves up. It’s something I enjoy about men; their appetites. How they never seem to go. And the thing I envy least about men is this glumness at finding themselves alone.
Anne’s sat there, giving me the eye. And now it’s so apparent that I can’t ignore it. I go to turn off the CD, Mary’s singing ‘Adam at the Window’ for the third I time that night — I love that song. It’s making it clear that it’s time to go.
Anne’s bold. “Do you want to come back With me, doll?”
That’s what they call each other round here. It’s the name the old girls have for each other. The gay boys and girls have taken it over and it sounds sweet.
Anne looks all right. The lighting here is rigged to make everyone look better, actually. Hiding puffiness, tiredness, showing up all your good bones. And she’s framed by the gold-and-green starred curtains, the silver fireplace and its freight of prim les. So I say all right.
When we get back, her room’s a state. It’s in a flat down Leith Walk. A mattress on the floor. But what more do you want?
After the dirty deed — my mind was elsewhere, I can hardly remember what we did, she looked disgruntled throughout — we smoke a joint and she turns out the light, without even asking if I’m staying or what.
I try to sleep. Glass breaks down in the street, somewhere on Leith Walk. I must drift off because next thing I know there’s fresh smoke in the air and look up to see her smoking a new joint in the dark.
“Hey,” I say, companionably enough.
And notice that she’s cradling the phone.
“Yeah, yeah,” she whispers sexily. “Look, she’s awake. I’m going. Hurry yourself up.” She puts the phone down.
“Hey,” I go again, “Who was that?”
Anne shrugs. Her breasts are like two brown-nosed hamsters staring me out.
“Surprise for you, doll. A nice one. Terry’s coming.”
“Who the fuck’s Terry?” I’m sitting up and my heart’s pounding.
“My boyfriend and he’s intae a bit of fanny, like. Two lots. He likes that.”
I can hear a key going in the lock. Terry letting himself in. Turns out he lives just upstairs.
He’s a big fat fucker, I can see that straight away as he lets himself in the room.<
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I’m already on my feet, struggling back into my jeans, pulling my jacket on. They can keep the rest of my things. Just so long as I get away with my jeans and leather jacket; the only two perfect things I have.
“Are ye goin’ doll?”
“Too fuckin’ right,” I shout. I back away as he lumbers towards the mattress. Anne’s lying back again, giving this low chuckle.
“Look, I’m not into this.”
Terry shrugs. “Whatever.” He’s stripping off his T-shirt, showing a fat hairy belly. Big fat monkey’s belly, I call them.
“Make her stay, Terry,” Anne says suddenly. “Get her to stay.”
Terry shrugs. “I can’t fuckin’ make her.”
I’m on my way to the door. “God fuckin’ bless you, Terry,” I go. I’m shitting myself.
“I can’t make her shag us,’ Terry’s saying behind me. He’s sounding all plaintive.
“You’re letting me fanny out!” Anne’s shrieking now. “You’re lettin’ me fuckin’ fanny get away!”
“Shut the fuck up, doll,” he goes.
And then I’m out of there.
Not for the first time, I’m thinking, my sex life’s not just queer. It’s a sex cartoon.
It’s a dank, pissy stairwell down. Three flights to a green front door that’s been left open.
Last night would have been Reet’s worst nightmare. He isn’t the adventurous sort.
The boy’s come to join us. The pretty bar boy in the Adidas top is talking to Reet. Maybe Reet’s luck is in after all. I earwig but it turns out the boy’s just there to show off.
Reet’s taken in. He’s flattered by the conversation. Nodding, fluttering, going Ooh.
“I’ve got nothing against dirty sex but I do draw lines.”
“Oh, yes,” says Reet who, as far as I can tell, does nothing but draw lines.
“I was shagging this bloke. And the bloke asked if I could talk dirty to him. So I did. And I was shagging him and talking dirty and then he starts talking. He’s talking back, going, ‘That’s a virgin hole you’re fucking.’”
“Is this last night?” asks Reet, wide-eyed. He likes to get his facts right, especially in a story.
The boy shrugs. “It was more recent than that, actually. What I’m saying is that, if he’s such a fucking virgin, he wouldn’t be talking like that. It’s bullshit. So I, like, finish shagging him and he’s saying, can we do something else? I shrug and he says, can you put this pair of ladies’ tights on?”
“Oh,” says Reet, “dear.”
“Well, there’s no fucking way.” The boy looks at Reet. “No fucking offence, like. I mean, it’s just fucking daft.”
He laughs and takes a couple of rapid sips of his drink. I can see Reet’s aching to change the subject, to engage the boy in something of his own.
“Thing is,” the boy says, “I wouldn’t fucking mind putting them on my head, say. Or cutting them in half, up the fanny, like. We could wear one each, then. On our heads. That’d be a fucking laugh.”
Reet laughs. “I’m going downstairs,” I say. “Dancing.”
And I think — Don’t go sucking up to the likes of him, Reet. Don’t fucking bother.
Downstairs they’re playing Pulp’s ‘Common People’.
The floor’s packed. This summer, the girls in silver lamé, hair bleached with roots showing, the boys in scarlet tartan.
Oh, I know these details will fade. I know the details will date this piece. But I’m not after universality. I’m a photographer. It’s all specifics with me.
So I drag Reet — my chum, my mate, my best fucking pal — and we dance to Pulp doing ‘Common People’ and everyone around us is in silver and leopardskin and tartan. And the detail of which song it was — which year, which fucking date — is important, cause we are fucking common. We’re common as muck the pair of us.
And we go home.
I leave Reet down the top of Leith Walk, by the statue of Sherlock Holmes. Cast in bronze, he always looks a bit humpy-backed. Or as if he’s slyly checking his flies. The town is still throbbing with crowds. Police cars and ambulances force their own lights in competition with everyone’s memory of the fireworks.
We say ta-ra. The bouncer outside Bosie’s, the seedy little club on the corner, is watching us, arms crossed. We went down there once, a couple of weeks ago, for a laugh. It’s men only. I breezed in. Reet got hassled at the door. He had to show some ID. We’ve never been back. Reet went to what he though was the loo and found a PVC settee squeaking in the dark, occupied by he didn’t know how many people and then he stumbled on somebody’s legs and had to feel his way back out.
And I come home. I wander about all over at night and never really think about it. Reet’s the same. He talks about the little town he lived in until this summer. A new town in the north east of England where he said you wouldn’t dream of running about in the early hours. Not unless you were daft. He lived on an estate and to me it sounds a bit rough. He says here he has a false sense of security and perversely he loves it. I reckon I’m the same. This is a city. I have to be out.
Past the Portrait Gallery, which in the dark looks salmon pink, a salmon pink palace wedged between office blocks. Up Queen Street. Restaurants with dark windows. All the places where I wish I could eat. It kills me living on the doorstep of about fifty lovely restaurants. Why does no one I know have money? Is this something we’ve chosen?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PAUL MAGRS lives and writes in Manchester. In a twenty-odd year writing career he has published novels in every genre from Literary to Gothic Mystery to Science Fiction. His most recent books are The Martian Girl (Firefly Press) and Fellowship of Ink (Snowbooks.) He has taught Creative Writing at both the University of East Anglia and Manchester Metropolitan University, and now writes full time.
MORE BY PAUL MAGRS FROM LETHE PRESS
MARKED FOR LIFE
Meet: Mark Kelly – a man tattooed with glorious designs over every inch of his body. He’s married to the slightly unhinged Sam and has a young daughter who’s about to be kidnapped at Christmas by an escaped convict and old flame of our hero’s. Over one snowy festive season the whole family sets off in perilous pursuit… accompanied by Sam’s mother, who’s become a nudist lesbian and her girlfriend, who claims to be a time-transcending novelist known as Iris Wildthyme…
DOES IT SHOW?
Meet: Penny Robinson who’s a sixteen year old with witchy powers and an impossibly glamorous and overbearing mother called Liz. They’ve just moved into the neighbourhood and the friendships they make will start off a bizarre chain of events involving love affairs with hunky bus drivers, people dressing up as dogs, raucous nights out with the ladies and a very surprising revelation on the dance floor during Goth Night in Darlington...
COULD IT BE MAGIC?
Meet: Andy, a young gay man who finds himself quite unexpectedly pregnant. Andy runs away to Edinburgh to sample the delights of the wicked city and to give birth to a child of his own: one covered in golden leopard fur…
*
FANCY MAN
The never-before-published ‘lost’ novel that continues in the same inimitable style of Phoenix Court.
Meet: Wendy, who grows up the youngest of three brash sisters in Blackpool and who leaves home when her mother dies. She moves to Edinburgh under the wing of her vulgar Aunty Anne, whose sights are set on the millions her ex-husband has recently won on the lottery. Wendy spends a happy summer finding herself amongst her new family: Uncle Pat, frail cousin Colin, Captain Simon and Belinda, who believes herself to be an alien abductee.
Published by Lethe Press
lethepressbooks.com
Originally published by Vintage in 1998
Copyright © 1998, 2017 Paul Magrs
Introduction © 2017 Paul Magrs
‘Jep’ previously unpublished
‘Fond of a Treat’ first published in Metropolitan #7
ISBN: 978-1-59021-653-8
No part of
this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, microfilm, and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Author or Publisher.
Author photo by
Clair Macnamee
Cover and interior design
by Inkspiral Design
