[Phoenix Court 02] - Does It Show?

by Paul Magrs

  Vince’s room was large and very bare. Its walls and floor were a searing white. The expanse contained a single mattress sprawled messily in the centre, out of kilter with the right angles of the room. Vince’s bed looked as if it had been sailing under its own steam from one side of the room to the other.

  One wall had two mirrored doors, walk-in cupboards where Vince stored all his things. He couldn’t bear to look at them all at the same time. Clothes, books, paintbrushes, were only useful when they were useful. Besides, he hadn’t really unpacked since moving back here in August. When he left Lancaster he loaded the tiny hire van, crammed it all in, and drove across the mountains. When he got back to Aycliffe he had just shoved everything in the cupboards. He didn’t want to see his things out here. They belonged in the house by the canal in Lancaster. There, everything had been perfect. He wanted everything still in boxes so he could leave at a moment’s notice.

  He closed the door and sat on the mattress, admiring his collection of open air and space.

  Jane was gone. It was Peter’s teatime. Fran’s own kids were in the front room with children’s BBC. They were biding their time till Neighbours came on. Today was special, there was a wedding.

  Fran busied herself hacking vegetables in the kitchen. She nicked her thumb with the potato knife. For a moment she glared at the white slit just above her knuckle, defying the blood to come. Then she started worrying that it wouldn’t come at all: ‘I’m turning into a potato!’ So she was glad when the glistening line of red sprang up, flooded over and dribbled on to stainless steel. She held her hand under the tap, watching it sluice away. It kept bleeding.

  When the knock at the back door came, she had to twist awkwardly to open it. Nesta’s daughter Vicki stood there, blinking in the light from the kitchen. Even though it was freezing she was in a thin cotton dress. Her hair was matted with grease, plastered across her pudgy, mottled face. She wouldn’t even look at Fran as she asked, ‘Is my mam here yet?’

  Fran shook her hand dry and turned off the tap. She let her full concentration fall on Vicki, seeing her grey socks rolled down, her bruised, skinny legs. ‘I haven’t seen her all day, pet. Is she still not home?’

  Vicki looked at her. Beads of blood poked out of the flap on Fran’s thumb. They merged and began to trickle again. Vicki never noticed. She had a glazed expression. She was supposed to be deaf, but if you offered her sweets she was quick enough on the uptake.

  ‘Has she still not come home?’ Fran asked more slowly. ‘My dad says, have you seen her today?’

  ‘I haven’t seen her at all. Since yesterday.’

  ‘My dad says…’ Vicki’s voice faded away.

  ‘Tell your dad to come round here. Have you had your tea yet?’

  Vicki blinked.

  ‘Have you had anything to eat since you’ve been back from school?’

  She shook her head.

  Fran shoved her hand back into the sink. ‘Get yourself back home, get your dad to feed you, then tell him to come here himself, and we’ll see about your mam. I’m sure she’ll be back by the time you’ve had your tea.’

  She turned on the tap again. Vicki refused to budge.

  ‘All right, pet?’

  At last the words appeared to reach her, and Vicki nodded quickly, turned, and ran out of the garden. Fran swore as her thumb began to hurt, a long throbbing pain. They’re having oven chips, she decided. Bugger the taties.

  Vince slung his jacket across the white wooden floor. He was pleased with the effect of the purple on white.

  Stretching out on the mattress, he reacquainted himself with his ceiling. Moving the bed about in the empty room threw the ceiling into different shapes, a fresh angle each day. It gave him the feeling of rotating very, very slowly. Vince didn’t like people who moved too fast and he hated people who didn’t move at all.

  At the back of his mind was the impulse to think over the scenes in the staff room. He ought to be teasing out implications, rationalising, making plans. But it was too awful. He hated doing those things at the best of times. He supposed he would just muddle through. Fucking muddle. All he ever did. And improvise when it came to the point, when a crisis loomed or somebody said something. So of course there was no game plan, he would be reliant simply upon the force of his own personality. I always find myself living on my nerves like this, be thought. It isn’t very professional.

  And then he wondered if he would be forced to punch the PE teacher.

  He laughed at himself. What with being jumped on in the street last night and the hassle at school today, he felt he was in a documentary about something.

  Oh, but I’m too arch, he thought. I wish I could get properly worked up and earnest about something. But he had got worked up in the staff room. He had very nearly flown off the handle. He had always assumed that the moment he lost control, that was the moment that would work like a charm and make him, like Pinocchio, into a real boy. A real boy like Andy.

  One hand connected with something alien to his bed. It was a poster tube.

  There was a brisk knock and then his dad was bringing in one of his mugs of sugary tea. Weeks ago Vince had asked him to wait longer before barging in, that he could be doing anything, but his father always forgot. It was as if they lived in a garage or a workshop.

  ‘Oh, I got you something today. A present to cheer your room up.’ Vivid in his scarlet waistcoat, his father was frowning at the bare walls.

  ‘What is it?’ Vince wasn’t used to getting things. He unsheathed and unrolled the poster. Looking down at it, he couldn’t think what to say. It was tasteful. A black and white photograph, quite unlike his dad’s taste, which tended towards things that looked like Warhol or Jeff Koons, though he’d never have known who they were. What was more unlike his dad’s taste was that it was a picture of a nearly naked man, shielding his face and standing by a bath. An Athena poster. He must have been out of town to get it. Vince stared at the grainy silvery grey flesh of the solid thighs. There was a peekaboo tuft of pubic hair over his towel and the weighty impression of a partial erection under it.

  ‘What’s this for?’

  ‘I thought you’d like it.’ His father wouldn’t look at it.

  Vince was appalled. ‘I don’t like posters,’ was all he could say. He kept thinking. What’s he playing at?

  ‘It’s what you like, though, isn’t it? That sort of thing?’

  Vince glanced up sharply to read his expression, but his father was looking away through the window.

  ‘Men with all their bits on display? Is that what you’re saying?’

  His father’s averted gaze flinched slightly.

  Vince threw the tube after his jacket. ‘Is this some kind of sick joke?’

  It wasn’t meant to be like this. No disappointed, vengeful father ever did things like this. When he found Vince, at the age of eleven, smoking by the garages, he gave him a packet of twenty and tried to sicken him by making him smoke one after another until they were all gone. Vince had thanked him and done just that. He’d had a headache afterwards and a craving in the morning.

  This could be the same shock tactic. But the poster was too… well, tasteful, although tacky in the way that tasteful things from Athena are, and his father’s whole manner was cowed, submissive.

  ‘I’ve been reading some of the books you’ve read.’

  ‘You’ve been going through my things?’

  ‘The books you’ve left lying about downstairs…’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, that Maurice bloke, and…’

  ‘What are you trying to say?’

  ‘I know, son. I know what you’re going through.’

  ‘Been through, Dad. You missed it.’

  His father looked at him, pained. ‘I’m trying. Bloody hard.’

  ‘Pictures of this feller getting into a bath aren’t going to make it any easier. What’s the matter with you?’

  His father fiddled anxiously with his string tie, jamming the metal win
gs right under his thick chin.

  Vince stood up and kicked the mattress into a new position. ‘You’re supposed to be furious.’ He looked at him. You’re supposed to threaten me with death, chuck me out, he thought, finally break down and tell me about all the sacrifices you’ve made for me. Plead with me eventually to mend my ways and find a nice girlfriend. You’re supposed to be my father, for God’s sake, wanting grandchildren, a daughter-in-law. ‘You’re not meant to be buying me dirty pictures.’

  ‘It’s not a dirty picture.’

  Vince had once found his father’s stash of 1950s pornography in the attic. Jazz mags, the lads had called them at school. The colours were very bright. Very blue skies, very orange skin. Vince had wondered why the fifties were so colourful, the sixties so black and white. ‘Not by your standards it’s not.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I threw them all out. After you found them.’

  ‘No, you didn’t.’

  ‘All right, I sold them.’

  ‘And bought my Christmas present with the proceeds. How would you like to have a bike bought with profits from dirty magazines?’

  ‘I’ve tried so hard for you. I’ve made so many sacrifices —’

  ‘I knew we’d get to that. Even though you’re trying to be so bloody liberal.’

  His father turned to go.

  ‘Is this the only way you can deal with it? Pretend that I’m still like you? Why didn’t you talk to me?’

  He followed his father on to the dark landing. He found him slumped against the wall, forehead resting on Gene Pitney, who was grinning. ‘I just wanted to understand.’

  ‘But it’s not the same, Dad. Not the same.’

  His father looked up. ‘Isn’t it?’

  Dinner was almost finished when the kitchen door flew open, and Fran and the kids were treated to the sight of Frank, home from work and already drunk. Gary stood a little way behind in a similar state, and smiling inanely in his snorkel hood. Fran went to the oven, where Frank’s tea had spent the last half-hour coagulating.

  ‘What was the excuse for celebration tonight?’ she asked. The kids kept quiet, unsure.

  He made to take the plate but she pulled it away. He’d burn himself. ‘Consoling Gary.’

  This forced Fran to acknowledge the army man. She was reluctant after the summer holiday street-fighting. ‘What’s the matter with Gary?’

  He stood where he was on the doorstep, face dark inside the furred hood, teetering slightly. ‘She’s left me.’

  ‘Oh. Another one.’ Fran put the plate down. The heat was scorching through her damp tea towel. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘I threw her out. She took the kid. She was too weak.’

  ‘Frank, come and get your tea.’ All the heat of the kitchen was vanishing out the door. Into the army man’s snorkel hood, Fran thought grimly, and wished he would go. Frank had his head in the fridge.

  ‘Aren’t there any cans left?’

  Gary said, ‘She couldn’t hack married life. Married life’s about being stuck in the same house together sometimes twenty-four hours a day and surviving. No matter what happens. It’s not about breaking down. That’s weak.’

  ‘I’d give you a can if we had one,’ Frank apologised.

  ‘No. I’d better go home.’

  There’s male bonding for you, Fran sneered. Only a little while ago they were threatening each other with axes in the street. Gary stood a moment, as if regaining his bearings, and turned to leave. At the garden gate he was startled in the dark, yelling, ‘Who the fuck’s that?’

  There was a quick, wet crash, the kids giggled and Fran groaned.

  ‘It’s me,’ Tony gasped, appearing in the doorway. ‘I’ve smashed a bottle of milk. Here’s two more, to pay you back. I never knew she’d been taking them off you.’ Fran automatically took the bottles. Tony stood frozen, mouth open, apparently fascinated by the Elastoplast on Fran’s thumb. He asked, ‘Have you seen her yet?’ The streetlight made his thickly curled hair look blue, the same blue as his anorak.

  ‘Have you fed your Vicki?’

  ‘She’s had Lion King pasta shapes. Where’s Nesta?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Tony began to look very scared. Fran pulled him into the kitchen, still with an eye on Gary the army man making his unsteady way up the street. He was singing ‘Respectable’ by Mel and Kim.

  ‘I think the police ought to know.’

  Tony looked sick. ‘Is it that bad, do you think?’

  ‘You’ve got two bairns, one of them not out of nappies. You can’t go out searching the streets while you’ve got them to see to. I’ll phone the coppers and you can sit with Vicki and the baby. I’ll come and tell you what’s happening.’

  As Fran ushered Tony out, Frank sat down heavily at the head of the table. He eyed his kids as they resumed their meal, their chips cooled by the outside air.

  ‘All the women are going,’ he told them. ‘They’re all leaving the street. You lot keep hold of your mam.’

  Fran paused on her way to the phone. ‘I’m not going anywhere, am I?’

  Cliff was sliding on a white shirt, never worn. It had hung alone in the bedroom of his small flat, waiting for tonight. He shivered, listening to its creases unfold, rumpling closer to his body’s shape. Like the shadows of clouds, goose bumps appeared and faded on his ruddy flesh.

  Matching jacket and trousers. His interview suit. His facing-the-public suit. The thin black tie, draped around his neck, down his chest, alive of its own accord as he pulled it on before the mirror. Music played in the next room. The Human League, ‘Don’t You Want Me?’ This kind of excitement always sent him back to the music from his teens. Music on trannies, from the time of hanging around the streets in gangs. Music on radios, he corrected himself.

  Dressing, he made slow but steady progress. He was taking his time. Making sure that all the bits were right, especially for dinner with Liz.

  Vince’s father ate both platefuls of fish fingers, beans and oven chips, by himself in the kitchen, looking out at the back yard. He had played Gene Pitney’s Sixteen Greatest through three times over. Vince was upstairs, adrift on his mattress and refusing to speak.

  The flesh beneath the grilled orange crusts was, in places, an unhealthy grey. Cheap fish fingers. He felt sick. What was it Vince wanted him to cook? Pasta, rice, foreign things, but apparently healthy and economical. Vince’s father had been stung by the suggestion. What’s wrong with fish fingers? Or with mince pies from the bakery? It’s what I brought you up on. Remember the pieces of string we found in a pie once? You said it’s what they had strangled the cow with.

  So the poster had been a bad idea. What next? Maybe he would come round. Maybe it would be up on his wall tomorrow morning. I’ll check, he decided. Surely it was the same as an ordinary lad having a picture up of some tart with her baps out? What was wrong with that? It was healthy. Only appetite. To him Vince was just the same, only the other way round. Vince didn’t have to have such a different life.

  Vince himself didn’t see that yet. He wanted to seem queer.

  There would be no grandchildren, though. Never mind. He went to wash the dishes.

  Grandchildren make you old. Teddy boys can’t be old. You can’t be an old rebel. You can’t have a leather jacket with a grey quiff. Distressed leather, fine; distressed hair is another thing altogether.

  But a house of bachelors, washing two dirty plates by themselves. No noise except Gene Pitney.

  And now, the noise of pebbles against glass. Thrown from the field, out of the darkness. A swift ricochet and into the grass. Someone was out there, throwing stones at Vince’s window. The floorboards creaked upstairs. Vince would be craning his neck out the window. His father did the same. He saw a dark figure; Prussian blue, fists clenched, looking up.

  ‘Vince!’ he heard, cautiously hissed by a male voice.

  Leaving everything simmering, Liz had rushed upst
airs for last-minute adjustments to herself. Penny went to oversee the pasta, which she found clagged together, bubbling in a sickly yellow froth. Liz was a careless and extravagant cook. Penny set about separating pasta twirls with a wooden spatula.

  The dining room was aglow with golden candles and sprays of plastic tiger lilies in blue glass vases. Liz had reappeared, standing ready, arm draped on a chairback. The scene had taken on the unctuous gaudiness of a Pre-Raphaelite painting. The wine they had drunk already was making Penny lose her appetite.

  ‘Open another one.’ Her mother passed a bottle. She couldn’t deal with the cork herself because of her nails. Penny went to the kitchen sink; she might spill red wine everywhere. Her nerves were shot. Liz busied herself, easing the soundtrack of Saturday Night Fever from its worn sleeve.

  ‘I’ve been made homeless. Can I stay here?’

  It wasn’t certain whether Andy was asking Vince or Vince’s father. One was frozen on the stairs, the other was holding the back door.

  Andy was in his leather jacket, carrying his rucksack. He looked whiter than ever, fading away beneath the unshaded kitchen light. His eyes roved hungrily around the room.

  ‘He’s your friend, Vince?’ Vince nodded. His father asked, ‘Who threw you out?’

  ‘My uncle. Because he’s getting married.’

  ‘That’s hard luck. You’d better close the door.’

  Vince took a hesitant step downstairs. ‘You’re letting him stay?’

  Out of his blue nylon uniform the bus driver looked strange to Penny. He was grinning hugely, a vision in the steamy kitchen, a bunch of roses in either hand. Liz stepped forward and kissed the bus driver’s cheek. ‘Hello.’