by Deborah Levy
On the other side of the car park. The dark side. Louise is not on her own. She’s saying something. Her lips are moving. She’s not fully dressed, or rather, her dress is hitched up to her armpits. ‘I gotta go, Danny, I gotta go.’ Danny’s got his hands everywhere on anything to do with Louise. His jeans are undone, his face buried in Louise, lifting her up, putting her down, lifting her up, her arms wrapped tight round his neck, laughing and fighting at the same time. And then something terrible happens. Louise looks Girl straight in the eye. Her lips are moving. Her eyes poking into Girl’s eyes. Louise says, ‘I’ll be seeing you later.’ Girl knows the words are for her. When the cab splutters into the car park, she dives inside quick. Sweating.
Louise with Danny the prince. Denim round his ankles. Danny the dog prince. Doing it in the car park with Louise. Girl can feel a great girlhowl coming on, making its way west through her body.
Weather warning. Stay in your homes. Board up your windows. Switch off all electrical appliances. Call in the cats and dogs. Bring your pet rabbits and tortoises inside. Stop your washing machine mid-programme. Those of you unfortunate enough to be out walking, find a church and lock the door. Even the cab driver well used to motoring barely human life forms to their destinations – even he who is suprised not to be abused by his passengers – jumps in his seat when Girl asks him to stop outside Oddbins and wait.
Wait while she buys a bottle of tequila, a bottle of Triple Sec and a pack of menthols. When she climbs back into the car, cursing Billy out loud for not thinking to get lemons and limes instead of goddamn pizza, the driver is surprised to find himself checking that his radio phone is still working. Sometimes it just blanks out and he can’t get directions when he’s lost. Yesterday he spent two hours trying to find Trafalgar Square. Eventually a Japanese tourist gave him detailed instructions and even then it was a long haul. No wonder the ashtray is overflowing with butts and foul squibs of spat-out chewing gum with teethmarks in it.
Girl throws a FreezerWorld tenner into his lap. When she slams the cab door, the window falls out, completely intact, and drops six foot into the hole where the road is being dug up. Girl checks for one terrible second that she hasn’t left her FreezerWorld carrier in Oddbins, though she knows she hasn’t because she’s just parted with some of her precious bleep loot. She just stands there in a daze, watching the driver roll his trousers up and climb deeper and deeper into the hole. Look at that fucking car. Someone should show it the way to the cab cemetery. Her pulse has gone crazy. She’s going to be sick and then she’s going to make a margarita.
The driver grips the glass under his arm and clambers out of the hole. When he finally manages to open the boot, a complicated task achieved with a screwdriver and a two-pence piece, he wedges the glass between a vital part of the engine that fell off yesterday and an exhaust pipe swapped that very morning for a windscreen wiper.
A tenner! That sobbing psycho didn’t even ask how much the ride was. What’s wrong with girls these days? Even his seven-year-old daughter has started to get stroppy about him practising his three-point turns when he takes her to school in the mornings.
Whining, but never looking up from her book on quarks.
Chapter 13
Weirdness in Billy’s face. Slow freaked paces across the kitchen lino. Billy is home. Ho-me! Bandage wrapped tight round his hand from casualty, clutching a bouquet of flowers, compliments of FreezerWorld, in his good hand.
‘Five stitches. Blood everywhere.’
‘God, Billy! What you want to cut yourself like that for?’
Girl sits him down, lights him a menthol cigarette and gives him a glass. ‘Best margarita you’ll ever taste, Billy boy.’
Billy takes a gulp, punches his head, sends the whites of his eyes up to the ceiling, pokes out his tongue, rises on tiptoe, spreads out his arms and throws himself against the wall.
Mom and Dad are masked dancing figures on stilts. The sun is shining well into the night, damaging concrete and skin structures. Birds stalk their prey on suburban lawns. Billy has his ear to the ground. He is a catastrophe theorist who will export his mind like grapefruits and potatoes to every corner of the globe. But for now it’s gone quiet. Panic quiet. Girl inhaling exhaling menthol. Billy hallucinating scenes of macabre margarita beauty. Mom in a tiara made from ice. Dad waistdeep in snow caught in a storm of bees. Images for his first book on pain. Pain is as mysterious as love. A world of feeling and silence. Mood changes and sobbing. Both enter the body, love and pain often the same thing. Both cause profound change and even death. Biographies, symptoms, histories.
‘Could have done with a few days in the hospital.’ Billy eventually staggers up from the floor. ‘A lovely nurse bringing me my cup of tea in the morning. Time for the doctor’s round. Morning, Billy England. And how are we feeling today?’
‘Start packing, Billy. We’re off.’
Her brother walks to the oven and turns the gas down to four. ‘Pizza’s burning. Gas too high. Always read the instructions on the box.’
‘There’s a cab coming in one hour’.
Billy doesn’t want to hear departure words. He is somewhere else already. Can’t be in two places at the same time. Pain is a place. Too heavy-hearted to be a tourist.
‘There was some commotion on Till Five. All the baskets fighting it out with the trolleys. Tens is chief of the FreezerWorld tribe. But he just can’t work out what’s happening. He can’t control his own people. Doesn’t understand what makes ’em tick. There was one man who only had a loaf of sliced bread in his basket. He went mad. Totally cracked up in Trolleyland.’ Billy’s whining morose voice.
‘I mean, there is Tens being mobbed by the Basket tribe. Does he reach for a couple of bottles of FreezerWorld champagne? Give them a complimentary drink? No. He offers to give the basket people an IOU for any special offers sold out while they were on the long march to Trolleyland!’
Girl opens the oven and takes out the sizzling four cheeses pizza just like Mama used to make.
‘I said, there’s a cab coming.’
Not just a bit rainy. It’s bucketing down, if you know what I mean.
‘I did a Mom check in FreezerWorld.’
Girl has gone quiet. Sinister, Billy thinks while he shovels the pizza into his mouth. Not quiet, downright sinister.
‘She was holding a little pink baby shoe.’
Billy waves his bandaged hand to stop her talking, but Girl’s voice is hardly there. Her eyes are shutting down. Over and out. Mom is like the phantom limb of an amputee. It tingles in the stump where she once was. Pain is not just in the body. It is in the mind and soul. Call Himmler. Call Dr Ruth and Oprah. Call Oscar Wilde and Descartes. Most importantly, call FreezerWorld Louise. Anyone who knows a bit about hurting.
‘Naaaaaa.’ Billy is fading too. Screwing up his eyes like he’s gone snow blind. ‘Those shoes were a free gift. A FreezerWorld promotion. They all had one. Every single Frozen customer had one. They got bubble bath in ’em.’
Billy knows his sister is about to cry her girl tears. Got to keep talking. Talk all the way through grief and out the other side. Thing is, all words have stopped. He wants to go to bed. He hasn’t got any summer clothes to pack. On account of the weather. Got winter clothes. Clothes for the cold. Trying to talk sunshine and shades but all words have stopped. Ice in his mouth. Shivering. Wants animal skins and furs. Girl has taken out the cash and is counting it at the table, tears pelting onto the fifty-pound notes.
‘Louise said she was going to see me later.’
‘Yeah.’ That’s the only word Billy wants to ever say again. Not too much effort. Yeah.
‘She’s dangerous.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Know what she does in her tea break?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Does it in the car park with Danny. D-a-n-n-y.’ Girl puts as much disgust into her voice as she can.
‘Louise helped us, Billy. She doesn’t know she wanted to, but she helped us all the same.’<
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Her brother puts his arms around her thin shoulders. ‘You’re a heroine, Girl. You were brilliant.’
‘Louise wants us to save her. From Mr Tens. From Danny. From the Frozen World.’
Billy takes notes in his head. Girl is his patient and Girl is his sister. When he is famous and the TV cameras travel across his pain features and make them a public spectacle, he will say, ‘Take your time. Stare at me without embarrassment. Don’t feel you have to look away. The great pain tundra of Billy England. I will wait if you have to inhale from your asthma machines. I will wait if you have to telephone your families to say you will be late. I will wait while you order coffees and Danish pastries from your subsidised cafeteria. I will even wait while you snort cocaine in the toilets.’
‘It’s a respectable cash haul, Billy.’ Girl is whispering now. Big smile. Big enough to cross the Thames and not fall in. ‘It’s enough. Run me a bath. The last bath I will ever have in England.’
Part Two
Chapter 1
Billy and Girl thought they were were heading for California. Knew all about America from the brochures and TV. Imagined themselves drinking daiquiris under the palm trees and blue movie skies. ’Cept it wasn’t the big buck agents, the surf and Disney pets that wanted them. No Mickey and his lovely first lady Minnie in her lickle white gloves to welcome Billy and Girl to the land of plentiful. No TexMex was to pass their lips. No tax-free shopping in Tijuana. No healthy walks through miles of mall to stretch the legs and get blood circulating pronto to the remaining shards of Billy and Girl heart-hacked with English weather problems. No Florida crocs and beauty-queen mermaids to tickle their pain history and stretch lips into knowing kitsch smiles. Girl was never to become a Nevada cowgirl sprayed into denim and photographed for gentlemen’s leisure mags. She thought she would be wearing high-cut orange bathers and shooshing her peroxide fluffy hair when she spoke to male lifeguards all muscle and morality and megahormone narratives. Poor Girl. I mean, can you see her scrawny white-bread English thighs lazing with the Californian beach girls? English Girl with her introspection and minicab rage and no cosmetic surgery to armour her and no sweet talk inside her to simper its way out and get involved with local boyfriend and beach-life issues? Girl buying donuts in bulk to bait every obese woman she meets into giving her an interview? Hi, Mom. Have a donut. Have three. No. That’s all over.
Billy was not to be discovered by Hollywood highballs on Malibu beach in his Speedo minitrunks. Not that kind of boy icon. For a start, even with a tan, even with a personal trainer in a de luxe Malibu gym, Billy is not reliable or predictable. He can’t be trusted to learn his lines. Writer delivers script. Director reckons this is the one to swipe all the Oscars on the big night and he is already getting his wife to write his speech. She’s faxing a draft to him right now. How he discovered William English singing ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star’ whilst strumming a toy plastic banjo, and how he just knew, with Great Director’s Instinct, that the boy was a screen God for the contemporary world. Billy is wined and dined, groomed and flattered. Billy eats with gusto. Bloody steaks flap off the sides of his plate. Fistfuls of Californian french fries are shovelled into his boy mouth. Billy never has to eat another chicken winglet again. He gets a little plumper but won’t do arm curls, not even with the starter weights that even a poodle can lift effortlessly with one manicured pawkin. He reads the script. Agrees to be a star. He’ll play a sulky James Dean reincarnation called Jonnie. His co-star is an apple-pie babe with attitude and her character is called Candy. They go over the script together and then the big day arrives. Billy has to be dragged kicking and screaming out of his trailer and pushed onto the set. The scene is set in a moody bar.
JONNIE: See you’re drinking beer.
CANDY: Yeah. So what?
JONNIE: That’s a good brand.
CANDY: I know.
JONNIE: Mind if i sit here?
Candy shrugs. Jonnie sits.
JONNIE: I feel really good sitting next to you.
CANDY: (Secretly flattered) Well, thank you.
Not too demanding, is it, Billy? Lights. Sound. Action.
BILLY: See you’re drinking beer?
CANDY: Yeah, so what?
BILLY: That’s a good brand.
CANDY: I know.
BILLY: Mind if i sit here?
Candy shrugs. Billy sits.
BILLY: You remind me of my sister.
CANDY: (Improvising for camera) Oh.
BILLY: She won’t let me fall in love with other girls.
CANDY: Is that right?
BILLY: I don’t mind. Cos I’m frigid.
CANDY: (Catching director’s eye. He’s saying busk it.) Uh-huh.
BILLY: Completely totally fucking frigid.
CANDY: (Cracking up now) We’ll soon do something about that, Jonnie.
BILLY: Frigid.
DIRECTOR: Cut cut cut cut!
Okay. The English boy has a kind of anti-charisma that’s interesting. Inneresting. Let him ad lib. Look at him. He’s taking out a little pen knife and cleaning his fingernails. That’s not in the script either. Okay. Okay. But hang on. Frigid? Frigid??? Can’t have boy icon say he’s fuckin’ frigid. Not good for box office. Not good for the plot. Not good for the next scene when he has to take Candy home and make love to her in the shower. Cos the only power Jonnie’s got in this movie is his bad-boy sex appeal. So why not give Billy England a chance and try shooting that shower scene? See how that goes and then come back to the bar. Okay.
So Candy’s in the shower. Jonnie’s got to take off his kit, climb in with her and soap her breasts, real slow and sexy. Thing is, Billy English won’t take off his clothes. No matter director and art director saying he can keep his pants on. This boy doesn’t even wear short sleeves. No way. Says in England he showers in his anorak. That’s why it’s waterproof. Director thinks, Let’s get a little experimental. Why not? We’re ahead of schedule. Let him.
Lights. Sound. Action.
Billy English fully clothed gets into the shower with naked Candy. He takes the soap. What does he do? Starts washing his fucking hair. Standing under shower in anorak washing his hair. Inneresting. Only thing is he’s got lines scripted for him by the writer who is sobbing into his script, shouting something about never working again. Never let the writer near the shoot. Big mistake. Jonnie is supposed to say, ‘I’ve been wanting to do this ever since I first saw you in the bar.’ Do what? Wash his hair while naked nubile looks on? I mean, what kind of pervy movie is this?
So now actress playing Candy is going berserk. Wants to call her agent. Says why don’t she wear her skis in the shower? Hell, why not eat a Caesar salad in the shower? Director gets an idea. He’s not giving up on Billy England. Says to Candy, ‘Okay, sweetheart, tell you what. Talk dirty to Jonnie while he soaps his hair in his anorak.’
Okay. Camera’s rolling. Candy narrows her eyes. Voice honey low. ‘Hey, Jonnie. I want you to do things to me.’ She presses her breasts against his anorak. What does Billy do? Billy screams. Got soap in his eyes, hasn’t he?
Director turns to camera. Genuine disbelief. Gestures to Billy. Someone take him away. Hang him. Mince him into mad Heritage British beef patties and feed him to the welfare single mothers and their bastard brats.
Billy informs director that he’s got a pricking pain all over his nerve fibres. He’s not quite sure where the site of his injury is but he’s researching the whole phenomenon and it’s his life’s work. All he knows is that pain is a black box full of mystery and one day he will unpack it for the reading public. The boy feels he has to explain further. The whole crew gather round. Make-up, continuity, gaffers, all-purpose electricians, the extras playing pool in the makeshift bar, the runners and boom-swinger guy who seems to be in some sort of shock because his arm is frozen in midair and he’s muttering something about an aeroplane overhead when he’s not even recording. Every time his eyes graze those of Billy English, he shuts them tight so he doesn’t have to put a face to
the whining voice cracking into his head, wasting his time, encouraging the director to go berserk and sack the whole crew while he recasts.
Billy is saying, See, it’s a chronic interdependent kind of pain, a union of what the Greeks call the psyche (mind) and soma (body). He, Billy England, is perfectly aware that he is addicted to his pain. It is his narcotic, and he must give it up and endure cold turkey etc., but before he can do this he will have to find a way of declaring his grief before he can reshape it. Finally, Billy gasps breathlessly, finding an opportune moment to reach for a smoked-salmon bagel from the catering staff, is the director familiar with Freud’s description of cancer of the jaw being like a ‘small island of pain in a sea of indifference’? No? Well, he, Billy, is the small island of English pain in the Hollywood Hills, could someone pass him another bagel pleeeese? No, not salad. No, not egg mayonnaise. Billy England is a neurosurgeon of the mind – he will build stone cities, carve into rocks, build railroads of the mind, but for now his own soul-tissue damage precludes the possibility of being a boy star.
When the director’s jaw actually drops open, culled into silence by this gobbling goofy goy guy ranting in his wet anorak, Billy can see the thousands of dollars of dental work that have been put into the famous director’s teeth and gums. Billy wants that kind of attention too. Not in the dental department, though. No. Billy is not reliable. Girl knows this. Look how he nearly sawed through his wrist to create a small diversion in FreezerWorld? Billy. Gulp.
Billy and Girl are Mom-and-Dad pain bonkers. FreezerWorld lucre. They counted their stolen loot again. Minicabs came and went through the night. Girl has some distant memory of being Empress of Minicab Empire. But the infrastructure had gone. Bombed itself into oblivion. Call another cab. She punched in the numbers, dazed and shivering. Practising her big smile. Wiping it off again. Arranging words in some kind of order, not knowing what they meant. Bad-tempered drivers banged on the door and left cursing without a fare. Eventually the minicab office banned all calls from number 24 Harkham Road. Billy and Girl can’t even drag themselves to bed, never mind into an aeroplane full of potential Mom-check material.
