by Paul Magrs
Anyway, the Kellys seem happy enough tonight, coming in with her mother Peggy and some young bloke she says she lives with, across town. I’d bet money it’s her toyboy, although she cracks on he’s her houseboy. Ay, right.
Andrew’s put on Elton John in the living room and when the place is filling up nicely, ‘Don’t Go Breaking Me Heart’ comes on. It could be 1976 all over again. When I was getting me divorce and every now and then I was going proper wild. Everyone’s getting a canny bit of drink and having sausage rolls and that. That tattooed bloke even grabs me for a bit dancin’! Whey, everyone knows me round here, working in the shop, like.
Then there’s Jane’s mam and stepdad, Rose and Ethan, this old bloke with a wooden leg, coming in, and then our Joanne, back early for my do, from wherever it is she’s been. She gives us a peck on the cheek as that tattooed Mark whirls me round and then she goes over to get Andrew to pour her a drink. High-class, our Joanne, she liks her drinks mixed proper. Won’t touch a can.
And then at half past seven there’s a knock at the door I recognise. Bang bang bloody bang. Just when, ordinarily, I’d be settling down happily to Coronation Street. You’d think they were doing it for badness. Someone I don’t even recognise is opening the back door to them. By now the house is heaving with invited and uninvited company and Elsie and Tom shuffle in looking mortified.
“Is it somebody’s birthday?” asks Elsie when they eventually find me.
“Get some cake and some drinking in,” is all I say and scarper elsewhere, leaving them to it. Someone’s blowing one of them party kazoos and streamers have appeared from bloody nowhere. Honestly, round here they don’t need any excuse to get arseholed.
“Mam, it’s the phone!” Andrew tugging on me arm. “The police are asking us to quieten down.”
“Tell them to haddaway and shite. They never get on to the Forsyths over the road when they’re up all night ravin’ and stuff. They can bugger off.”
Andrew looked sick at this. He hates confrontations, even over the phone, bless him. He’s never been one to stand up for his rights. I grab the receiver off him.
“Is it the desk sergeant you’ve been talking to?”
Glumly he nods.
“Right.” Andrew winces just before I yell into the phone. “I don’t care who’s phoned in to complain, you toerag, but you can fuck off! It’s only ’cause you’re not invited.” And I slam the phone down. I had to shout louder even than I meant to, because of all the noise of the party. Good! Deafen the bastard.
Andrew looks scandalised. “Mam!” Behind him Tom is returning from the toilet, and he looks sick. “Mam, you can’t...”
“Ah, shurrup, man, Andrew. It’s only yer dad.”
“But Mam, he was tellin us—the neighbours have been phonin’ to complain.”
“But all the neighbours are here now.”
“Except the Forsyths.”
“They’d never...!”
But I’d not put owt past the Forsyths. Last month one of them was up for biting off someone’s ear.
At the moment, though, I’m still thinking about Andrew’s dad, even though I don’t want to, but talking to him just then, just when the party was reminding us of the seventies and all, well, it seemed sort of right to me. It brought lots of it back in a flash. Mind, faces round here have changed. Even the ones that were here in the seventies, they’ve changed. We’re all a good sight more haggard. Time’s been having it’s revenges and all our bairns—the bairns who in the seventies were in their polyester Incredible Hulk T-shirts and pigtails and played with Bionic Men and Sindies—they’re all grown up themselves now. And I mean, really, God knows what they’re up to. They don’t tell you owt.
There’s a lot of drink at my party. The whole night comes to me in snatches and bits I don’t recall. At one point I’m drinking out of a paper cup for some bloody reason, and I’m sitting on the stairs with that Peggy, Sam’s mam, and all I can think is, but I never bought any paper cups! The party, Peggy’s saying, dead seriously—and we’re the best of mates by now—the party has run away on its own steam and we must be ready for anything to happen.
Peggy starts some long, daft story about a baby left in her care since last Christmas. She reckons it fell out of the sky in a shower of feathers, but she’s more pissed than I am and, quite honestly, I’m starting to think that everyone at my party is bloody daft or mad. And suddenly there’s Elsie tottering out of the downstairs toilet, pissed as a hatter and clutching a bottle of Pils.
“Hee hee! I’ve got the Lord in me!” she screams at us on the stairs and she looks friggin’ manic.
Quick as a flash Peggy yells back, “Ay, and I’ve had him in me an’ all and he was crap.”
We piss oursels laughing and Elsie doesn’t get it, which makes it funnier. She staggers down me hallway and falls flat on her face. We cackle a bit longer, waiting for her to get up. Which she doesn’t.
The next thing I remember sees us all sitting round Elsie’s cooling corpse on my Redicut rug in the living room. It’s past midnight and the music’s now off. Like a bloody vigil. Some bugger’s found me emergency candles and everyone’s sitting round Elsie’s body, watching Tom stooped over her. For some reason I’m the only one talking.
“If we have a power cut,” I’m saying, “one of you buggers is gonna buy me new candles. If I’m caught short in a blackout...”
And then I look at Elsie, along with everyone else.
We all look shattered, in our party clothes. No one looks as white as Elsie. She’s got an even dafter look on her face than usual.
“I wouldn’t give her the fuckin’ kiss of life. I’d kiss me own arse first.”
Yes, I know. I’m ashamed of it all now and all the lasses have reminded me of the horrible details. Mind, we can still have a laugh about it.
I can see everyone gasping and watching as Tom rubs Elsie’s hands and breathes warm, foisty air into her face. Honestly, it’s better than the Paul Daniels show and Elsie’s that Debbie Magee, his tart.
Then she’s got a pale-blue glow all around her and she sits up like a fuckin’ zombie.
Whey, I scream like I‘ve never screamed before.
That starts some of the other lasses off, who think I’ve seen something they haven’t seen. Jane’s nearly hysterical by the time Elsie has coughed three times in a row and started to sing in a really high-pitched voice that chorus from that Ken Dodd song about happiness being the greatest gift that he possesses.
Then she passes out again and Tom cries out at the top of his lungs, “Praise the Lord!”
No one round here’s that religious, so no one adds anything to that, only dirty Simon, Sheila’s husband, pipes up, “Are we all doing turns then? ’Cause we’ve got a karaoke tape we could bring round for yers, if yer like. It’s a fuckin’ hoot.”
So they do and the party’s going on till dawn.
Joanne and Andrew haul me up to bed eventually, while it’s all still going on. Through the floorboards I can hear Jane belting out ‘I Will Survive’ and then ‘Agadoo’ with Nesta and then she comes up with Fran to check on me and I’ve been sick on me dressing table.
Apparently, before I fell asleep, I was crying and saying that I wanted Eric—me bloody boss!—inside me again like he was when I was seventeen and he was twelve.
I’d never say that unless I was paralytic, and I reckon I was because I never made it to the shop for work the next morning.
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
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
118 Heritage Ave, Maple Shade, NJ 08052
lethepressbooks.com
Originally published by Vintage in 1996
Copyright © 1996, 2017 Paul Magrs
Introduction © 2017 Paul Magrs
‘Patient Iris’ first published in New Writing 4
‘Judith’s Do Round Hers’ first published in Playing Out
ISBN: 9781590215258
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.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Magrs, Paul, 1969- author.
Title: Marked for life / Paul Magrs.
Description: Maple Shade, NJ : Lethe Press, 2017. | Series: The Phoenix Court
; Book 1
Identifiers: LCCN 2017000828 | ISBN 9781590215258 (alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Gay men--Fiction. | Lesbians--Fiction. | Tattooed
people--Fiction. | England, Northern--Fiction.
Classification: LCC PR6063.A3313 M37 2017 | DDC 823/.914--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017000828
Author photo by
CLAIR MACNAMEE
Cover and interior design
by INKSPIRAL DESIGN
