by Paul Magrs
This morning while Fran was gone, her neighbour paid a call. Frank was woken too early by a hammering at the back door. He was used to being prised from his bed after seven, the same time as the bairns. Then the house would be warmed through and Fran would have breakfast on the go. Today he jolted awake, alarmed by the noise downstairs. He shambled down to find Nesta from next door framed in the glass.
‘Can I have milk?’ she asked when he opened the door.
Frank couldn’t bear the sight of her. Her complexion was like tinned rice pudding, its broken veins and acne strawberry jam stirred into it. She wore a navy anorak and her fawn ski pants were gathered at the knees.
‘We’ve got no milk in for the baby and the milkmen didn’t bring ours.’
Frank looked past her, to see if theirs had been delivered. Two bottles stood on the sludge of old leaves. He fetched them and gave one to Nesta. She nodded her rapid thanks and hurried away, remembering her own dislike of him.
Free milk, Nesta thought excitedly, hurrying across the grass. Free milk like in school when that’s what they gave you at breaktime. And there was bird crap on the tinsel tops. You poked your straw in and it tasted too warm and creamy because it had stood outside too long. She stopped at the house where the new woman had moved in. Fran had told her she was called Liz and she looked as if she had a bit of money put by. She was the glamorous type. Nesta couldn’t stand that type. They didn’t want that type here. Clutching her new bottle of milk, Nesta crept closer to the front window of Liz’s house, the window that looked out on the grass and the kid’s play park. She narrowed her eyes to slits and stared inside.
In the living room Liz was kneeling in front of the biggest mirror she had, watching TV out of the corner of one eye, concentrating on her hair with the other. Her wig sat on its pedestal before her and she teased skilfully, slowly at it. Nesta’s eyes boggled at this, and at the sight of this woman without hair, without make-up, kneeling in her kimono. Absently Nesta stroked her own hair. Then there were footsteps in the play park behind her. She turned to see Jane crossing.
‘Nesta? What are you doing?’
Nesta broke away from the window and hurried back to the path. ‘Milk for the baby!’ she called out, as if that explained everything.
Jane shrugged and left it at that. She couldn’t get on with Nesta. You couldn’t get a sensible word out of her. Jane had more things to worry about. She had to cross town to pick up Peter from his nanna’s, where he had spent the night, and she reckoned that old feller with the one leg had spent the night there again. She wasn’t sure how she felt about Peter coming under his influence. By the time she got to Rose’s, to find Peter having his Weetabix at the breakfast bar and staring in awe at the old man’s leg by the coat rack, Fran had already returned home from work.
By eight the school buses had started to come and go, bright blue and rowdy. Fran’s eldest were dispatched while she waved from the roadside with her youngest two round her ankles. The toddlers were interested in a dead dog lying on the grass verge. Fran went to see what they were dancing round and then recoiled in shock. The poor thing was past helping. She thought it looked like the pit-bull that belonged to Gary. She didn’t fancy telling him his dog was dead in case he accused her of killing it. She hurried her kids away and phoned the police from the box.
Little Lyndsey said, ‘Tell them blood. The blood coming out its mouth.’
When she finished talking to the police, declining out of habit to give her own name, Fran turned to see Gary marching out of his garden. He seemed ready to say something, but changed his mind and walked away. Let him find out about the dog himself, Fran thought.
‘Time to get inside,’ she told the kids. ‘There’s something I want to ask your dad before he goes out to work.’
To their surprise, Frank was dressed and in the kitchen when they got back, checking the beer cans in the fridge. As soon as she was indoors, hearing the kids going on and on about the dead dog, she wished she could have done more about it. She hated seeing animals hurt. And what if Gary walked that way and saw his own dog dead like that? She should have broken it to him gently. Maybe she’d pop over after. That’s you, Fran, doing turns for everyone, she thought.
She ushered Lyndsey and Jeff into place for breakfast. She poured their extra-milky tea. ‘How come we’ve only got one pint?’ she asked Frank and only then realised they were her first words to him.
‘That bloody Nesta from next door came round while you were out. She says she can’t afford milk. So I gave her it.’ He crumpled his first emptied can.
‘She’s been round here every day for a week! I told her no more.’
‘I didn’t know that. What do you want me to do, go round and take it back?’
Busy with cornflakes, Fran waved him away. Lyndsey and Jeff were chatting between themselves. ‘That would be something at least. You’d give her the stair carpet if she asked, you’re that daft. You’re addled.’
Frank gritted his teeth and rubbed his belly. ‘She’s got that baby. If she can’t afford milk —’
‘If she can’t afford milk, she should lay off the Woodpecker. So should that dopey husband of hers, that Tony. Some people will do anything to get their booze.’
‘I’m getting ready for work.’
Fran shouted after him, ‘You can look after the bairns tonight. Me and some of the lasses have decided we’re having a night out tonight. You’re staying in and you’re not getting drunk.’
He turned around. ‘You’ve organised this quick.’
She snorted. ‘It’s about time.’
‘I see.’
Fran went to the sink and turned the taps on, making lots of noise. The noise drummed away the tension in the air.
At last he said, ‘I want you in by eleven.’
Then he was gone, leaving the kids kicking each other under the bench, and Fran silently watching over the sink as it filled. All you’ve got to do, she told herself, all you’ve ever done, is ride out the worst of it. It was what she was best at. She could cling on for dear life. Anyone else would have got shot of Frank years ago ... yet here she was. When things got tough, that was when a grim resolve came over her and she dug her heels in even harder. Her mother said she’d learned her stubbornness from the horses she’d broken in with her brothers. She had subdued them all to her implacable will in a way those strapping boys had never managed. Fran simply held out for people. Until the age of nine she had, with the grimmest intensity, thought that she was herself a horse.
Something of that hadn’t quite left her. When she and Frank made love he always felt gripped to her, that his heart would burst before she would let him go. And she in turn felt that she was carrying him and she made herself strong and content to be ridden like this, by him.
She lifted the plates one by one from warm soapy water and watched the scum of grease slide into the froth.
He woke ten miles away from home in a stifling room. When he opened his eyes, the air was dark orange because of the curtains, which hung in musty velvet folds. On an armchair misshapen by their thrown-off clothing, a marmalade cat was sitting. It stared unblinking at Vince. It nodded at him once and then was gone, out of the door they had, in their haste, left open.
He had a peculiarly guilty thought about abandoning Penny on the streets of Darlington. But she could look after herself, surely? Odd that his first thought — after last night of all nights — should be of her. Maybe he had dreamed about her. He groaned, feeling yesterday’s events wash over him slowly. He could taste lemon and tequila and something less definable. His tongue, his eyes and his cock all felt tender and bruised and he moved carefully, aware that the slightest twitch might break the delicate train of his thoughts. It might unhook him from yesterday’s surprises and render them untrue. His memories always took some reeling in. But when they came it was with a clarity he could relish, and one he was convinced nobody else ever knew.
The light in the room was a treacly amber and it was dulling h
im somewhat. He couldn’t work out what time it was. The day before seemed caught in flight, etched in the air before him. He couldn’t see where the arc of his memory ended. Which meant that the story was going on still. He was still embroiled in something. So it didn’t matter what time it was, whether he was late for work or not. There could be no question of going in. He’d phone. He was busy.
There was a line of warm sticky heaviness down his left side and leg. A trickle of sweat on the flat of his stomach. Andy was still deeply asleep, by the look of it, glued to him. He was on his back, impassive, as if determined that sleep should have no effect. For all that his expression seemed peaceful and content.
He could feel their bodies sticking in other points of contact. Their feet were tangled warmly together like shoes. His palms itched to be back around his lover, for the feel of him. Vince could feel his cock shrugging and thickening itself, leaning out towards the sleeping Andy. Gently Vince peeled himself free of the semi-embrace and moved across the bed. He was determined to make that call.
In the hallway there was a payphone. He remembered that. He looked around for something to wrap around himself and decided not to bother. Andy lived alone. He had nothing to be ashamed of here.
This was something he had promised himself long ago he would never do again. And yet it was bliss.
The hallway was dowdy and grey. He nicked ten pence from the money box and rang the school. He got the secretary and made himself sound terribly afflicted with cold. Her voice in his ear was tinny and nonplussed. Shamefacedly Vince clutched the plastic coil of the phone’s lead and looked down at the carpet. He stared at his cock, bulging absurdly over the phone table as he muttered excuses. Almost without interest he was saying, ‘Yes, do give my apologies to Mrs Bell, and say we’ve reached the trip into the countryside in Room with a View. She won’t mind doing that bit with my class.’ He put the phone down and hurried back to Andy’s room.
He snuggled down separately, burying himself in the bulky oppression of blankets. Why did Andy need so many? It was sweltering in here. He’d always been like that. Like a hibernating beast, Vince thought, sleeping all day. Which was why he was happy with a night-time job.
Oddly the memory of the things that irked him about Andy brought home to him the ease of slipping back into his life. Walking down North Road and feeling like a couple was the beginning of it. Falling wordlessly into this lumpy nest upon arrival was the obvious continuation. But the relief of an old lover… Vince knew all about that. In college he had fallen back in with old lovers once or twice. A few extra nights in fallow spots, to resume relations, remind themselves, to pass the time. Ex-lovers seemed always to be around and available. Eventually, in a town as small and incestuous as Lancaster, he had worn the whole scene dry. Yet he hadn’t made love to Andy since they were both eighteen.
Suddenly he wanted to wake him up. He felt a burst of optimism, like a physical sensation in his chest. He looked at Andy and hesitated. This is a holiday, he thought. A proper holiday. Already at school he felt too old and too young. Somewhere between the pupils and teachers, doing his own thing. At least here he was with a peer. The only one he ever needed.
Andy’s head and shoulders stuck out of the duvet like a statue upon a tomb, cast in orange and blue shadow. It always amazed Vince how people looked different in bed. He couldn’t believe that the perfection they had then never lasted. It never seemed to carry to outdoors. Why didn’t people remark upon Andy’s beauty all the time? Because here it was plain as day in the half-light. He was seized by a rush of affection and stretched out under the covers to grasp Andy’s chest in a hug.
Andy’s head whipped round as he started awake. Never had Vince felt that Andy was his until this moment. Andy always woke like this, as if at gunpoint. As if he never trusted anyone. Now he smiled, his mouth stretching his whole face into a triangle, with those green, glinting eyes alive in the corners. ‘It’s you,’ he said to Vince, feigning surprise.
Vince squeezed his chest. You’re mine, he thought. And realised that was part of the charm; the unlasting spell of beauty of the other in bed with you. In that moment they have chosen to be yours. They are vulnerable and there for you. He decided this was exactly the point. The beauty is fleeting because the next thing that happens is that they go. You end up alone. But... there must be more to this, because here was Andy again. His again. Looking vulnerable. Andy always looked unsure what to say around Vince. No matter how much they had done together or how much they ever loved each other, he always felt inarticulate. It amused Vince, seeing Andy struggle to pitch their conversation. He would follow Andy’s lead.
‘I thought you’d come to tell me last night that you were seeing that girl,’ Andy said at last. So Penny was the first thing on his mind this morning, too. ‘I thought she’d turned you.’
Vince reached for Andy’s hand and clasped it. Their fingers were dry and flaky with each other’s come. Last night they had made love too eagerly, perhaps, as if it was something just to get over with, like the lick-slam-suck of the tequila, before settling down to the real business of clinging hard to each other and whispering away each other’s pounding headaches in the middle of the night. Vince had a sudden, vivid recollection of the night’s final embrace, his face in the taut whiteness of Andy’s neck, the length of their bodies pressed hard, too hard together, as if in contest. Their stomachs were wet and Vince could feel one of their pricks softening between them, he wasn’t certain whose, and Andy was crying, heaving out dry sobs. Now he couldn’t remember what had begun that storm.
‘I’m here, aren’t I?’
‘People never come here,’ Andy said, letting Vince take his hand back, letting him begin to touch the rest of him. He watched as Vince started to tug back the voluptuous warmth of all the bedclothes, exposing them. He stared at Vince as he knelt by him, his urgent cock. ‘People never want to come back to a taxidermist’s.’
Vince gave a little laugh and bent to put his mouth to Andy’s prick, drawing it out of itself. Andy took hold of him under his arms and hoisted him up in a morning kiss.
‘Morning dog breath,’ Vince said.
i don’t mind,’ Andy said.
For a few moments they rolled about like this, pushing the covers right back to allow themselves room to play in. They let the conversation drop and there was a sense of their using these embraces to stretch life into their limbs. To wrestle the sleepiness out of themselves. These were warming-up exercises. Soon, however, this cool, almost rehearsed rigour was replaced by a determination and a pressure that brought up its own fresh sweat. They began to tear at each other, breathing hard. Vince embarrassed himself by groaning out loud and long when Andy got right underneath him, probing with a strong, practised tongue under his balls and then right into his arse. Automatically Vince arched his back right up to spread himself further apart and let Andy inveigle himself inside in a way they had once, some years ago, rowed about. Vince had been dead set against it. Andy had desired it in the way his own noises now showed. He came up again to lay Vince’s legs along his haunches and, taking his reddened, angry cock in his hand, made him come in one, two, three savage jerks. Vince sat up, cross and smarting, immediately. They held each other then, both a bit surprised at how frantic it had all been.
When they got their breath back, Vince said, ‘You never came.’
Andy shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter.’
‘That used to make you all bothered.’
‘I was reading something that said it did you good not to.’
‘Yeah?’ Vince was sceptical. ‘Here.’ And he started to kiss Andy again, trying to replicate the moment before. He reached for his own cock and found it still as hard, and started to pull at it, wanking just as Andy had shown him, the way he did himself. And then Vince felt a bit ridiculous, found himself faking his own excitement now that his own moment had passed. Andy beneath him was delirious, however, soaked with sweat and falling back on to the sheet, tossing his head as if in fever. Vi
nce was losing his grip, getting cramp, found himself muttering encouragement. Next thing he knew Andy had slipped his own hand down, taken his own cock from Vince, and was doing himself. He left Vince braced between his knees, watching with a smile as suddenly Andy seemed to break something inside; his eyes went wide, and then he shot spunk all over his chest in copious amounts. Its first lucid stream laced down the side of his face. Sudden as it had begun, his fever subsided and he wanted another hug.
‘I think,’ he said groggily, some moments later, ‘this place puts people off.’
‘Yeah?’ Vince tried to get up, wanting to be up and about now. But Andy was holding him down, tender but strong.
‘A few months ago I was seeing an older man. House of his own. Good job. He would never come here. Made me feel I had no life of my own.’
‘I can see that,’ Vince murmured.
Andy turned to look right at him. ‘Are you staying tonight?’
Vince clasped him, the once familiar, everyday weight of him. ‘I don’t see why not.’
Andy grinned. Tasting his own saltiness down the side of his face, he wiped at it. ‘We’ll have a night out then. We’ll go out on the town. We’ll dress you up nice.’
Penny walked into the living room just as Liz finished preparing herself to face the day. She was doing her eyeliner and ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ was playing, not quite loud enough to drown out the telly. She took great care with her make-up every day, even those days when she wouldn’t be seeing anyone. As if to keep her vigilant, mirrors were everywhere in the house, except in her bedroom. Liz felt that if she slackened the effort at keeping herself perfect it might make her ill again, and she didn’t want that. Now everything had to be in its right place, her eyes drawn in exactly, and then it would be all right.
