by Lynne Truss
“Juliet Frampton isn’t,” I muttered, darkly.
And he laughed and said, “Yeah, but that didn’t stop you banging her for two years twice a week at that flat in Broadwick Street, did it? No such thing as a secret, Marko. Hello, picture desk.”
Scene Three: in the car again, but stationary with the windscreen wipers going
[Sigh; shiver] I’m beginning to feel like that bloke in Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased). Using my gigantic powers of deduction, I think I must be Randall. Oh come on, Juliet. If I’ve got to drive you back into town, you might get a move on! Look at that rain! Tell you what, these jeans are soaked from lying on that grass to get the shot through the patio doors.
I’d better not mention Randall and Hopkirk to Juliet. But it’s that TV thing from the sixties with the two detectives where one of them dies and then comes back to help in the investigations. They remade it recently with Vic Reeves. The point is, the dead one is invisible to everyone except his old partner, so he can shout helpful things like, “He’s behind you, Jeff!” and, “He’s got a gun, Jeff!” And sometimes, if he blows really, really hard, he can make a curtain billow or a candle go out. It’s quite entertaining, but as my dad used to say when we watched the re-runs, it’s hardly an ennobling vision of the afterlife. I mean, in the past, people dreaded death for respectable reasons like hell and purgatory, where at least there was an element of personal improvement involved. You were kind of purified in the flames. Whereas now – well. Even more reason to dread death if all you do afterwards is hang around shouting, “You’re about to fall in a hole! Can you hear me? You’re about to fall in a – You see? You fell in a hole!”
Sorry, it’s been a strange day. These jeans are really sticking to me now. And Jules is being AWFUL. She rang me again last night, with a plan this time, about how we could sort of trap my dad into becoming the focus of this piece of hers. “It could be like a Day in the Life!” she said. “Only with the difference that he’s not alive!” I thought quickly about what to say. I didn’t come up with much. “You still fancy me, don’t you, Jules?” I said. And she said, “What’s that got to do with anything?” And I said, “I knew it!” But she wasn’t so easily sidetracked, unfortunately. She was beginning to see my dad as her key to fame. Any objections on my part wouldn’t really bother her. So when we went into the house and met these two, well, you could only call them witch-ladies, I made a point of going straight out into the garden, where I took a few lying-down shots of the house with a yellow filter to make the sky look scary. But I didn’t get away with it for long. I was just texting Kippo a lengthy joke about a bloke whose car breaks down in the Arctic Circle when one of the witch-ladies came out and said I had to join them at once. I’d been there for all of eight minutes, and she and her friend had been bombarded with messages for me; [falsetto] “Like psychic spam!” she said. “Ah,” I said.
Jules was looking all expectant when I got back in, although she curled her lip a bit at the wet trousers. “Mark and I are developing an interesting relationship,” she trilled. “A bit like Salieri and Mozart. Mark is the one singled out for all this supernatural attention, you see, but he doesn’t appreciate how special it is. Whereas I understand its importance, and all I can do is watch.” They looked baffled. “Plus I think she wants to kill me,” I said.
So, here were the messages I got from my dad. I can hardly wait to hear what Jules thought of them all.
One. Someone is breaking into your car. (This was true. I ran outside and chased them off.)
Two. The Chelsea starting line-up tonight will be the first ever premiership side to contain no English players.
Three. Being dead is a bit boring, so remember to take multivitamins.
Four. Why do you keep airbrushing me out of all your pictures?
Five. There never was a key to the coal-shed. Just kick it on the side and the door springs open.
Six. You’re right, son. She does still fancy you.
Oh God.
Scene Four: driving back from Middlesbrough
Go on, then, mate, overtake, that’s right. Little wave wouldn’t hurt, would it? Good.
[Sigh] We did our last one today. Middlesbrough. There were supposed to be three more; we were supposed to be heading north tomorrow, but I’m going home. Shame about the match at the Riverside. Johnners had not only got me an armband, he’d got me a kip for the night and all.
We had to see this woman today, you see, Jane Starling, her name is, she helps the police with their inquiries and has a framed letter on the mantelpiece from the Strathclyde Constabulary acknowledging her assistance in finding bodies and weapons and caches of gold bullion. And she wasn’t a bit like the others; she was really abrupt and businesslike. She was even quite hostile when we arrived. Especially towards me. [Geordie accent] “I don’t want HIM in here, pet,” she said, without even looking at me properly. “He’s draining all me psychic energy and he’s hardly got his foot through the front door, like.” Of course, I said, [cheerful; relieved] “Okey dokey; your house!” and was halfway back to the car, but Jules dragged me back in, saying, “Oh, Mark has that effect on everyone! [Laugh] Half an hour in his company and most people lose the will to live!”
Hang on, where are we? Junction 24. Bloody hell, that’s not far. I’ll have to take a rest in a minute. I’ll be doing the rest of this in the dark as it is.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yes. I reckon the problem with this Jane Starling woman is that nobody believes in her in the normal run of her life. They think she’s some kind of fraud. Hence the peculiar aggression at the outset.
“Remember the Pammy Babcock case?”
“No.”
“Well, it was me who found that hairbrush!” [He doesn’t react]
“Remember the Glasgow bullion robbery?”
“Er, no.”
“It was me who told them to focus on a grey van with the number seventeen on the licence plate.” It was a bit tiring, all this, and I could see Jules was starting to get fed up with her, so she said, very carefully, “Mrs Starling, I haven’t come here to judge you in any way, or test you. I just want to talk to you about your gift. And if you have any messages for either of us, that would be marvellous. We have had a few messages recently from Mark’s dad, but they’ve been a bit – well, to be honest, they’ve been a bit banal.”
Mrs Starling shrugged. Since most of the messages she received were about hairbrushes and licence plates, she was hardly likely to be sympathetic. But Jules was insistent. I was sitting next to her on the sofa. “If you manage to speak to Mark’s dad first,” said Jules, “could you impress on him that what we’d really like –” I don’t know where the “we” came from, but anyway – “what we’d really like is something a bit less to do with, well, sport, or missing keys, or cleaning tickets, that sort of thing.”
“Right, pet,” said Mrs Starling, but she didn’t look happy.
I grabbed a couple of shots of the room while we were waiting.
[Long pause] “Anything?” Jules said.
I took some more shots.
[Long pause] “Anything yet?”
“Well – no.” [Pause] “Er—”
[Breathless] “Yes?” Jules was so excited she dug her nails into my knee.
“I’m not sure. It’s to do with the new Doctor Who, like.”
Jules thumped my knee with her fist. “No!” she said. “Ow!” I said.
“Right,” said Mrs Starling.
Jules glared at me as if all this was my fault. I just shrugged. I really wanted to hear the Doctor Who news. In fact, I was just about to stop all this and ask Mrs Starling to go back a bit, when she gave up anyway.
“It’s no good, pet. All I can get is some stuff about Christopher Eccleston, the winner of the 3.30 at Doncaster, a reminder that the clocks go forward at the weekend, and the words, ‘He’s behind you, Jeff!’, which he says you’ll understand.”
Jules nearly screamed, but I took a more rational position. I looked at the clock. I
t was just after three. “It wasn’t Laughing Dingo, was it? In the 3.30?”
“It was, pet. How did you know that?”
“Well, he was rubbish last time out, so that would be very interesting, you see.”
Jules said, “Please shut up, Mark. [Gritted teeth] Anything else, Mrs Starling?”
[Pause] “Oh yes. He’s fifteen to one, like!”
“No, I mean, anything else besides the racing tip.”
“Oh. Well, no.”
And then the phone rang and Mrs Starling positively shot out of her chair to answer it. We heard her in the hall. [Relief] “Chief Inspector!” she said. “You’ve no idea how pleased I am to hear from you!”
Jules and I sat there together in silence. I knew she was angry with my dad, but I didn’t see what I could do about it. I wondered whether to tell her the joke about the man in the Arctic with the Inuit AA, but decided to carry on texting it to Kippo instead. In the hall, Mrs Starling was saying things like, “HOW many fingers did you say, Inspector? Mm, well, I’ve never worked with less than the full hand, but there’s a first time for everything!” In the end, of course, just as I sent my text to London, Jules spoke first.
“You know those messages at the witch-ladies’, Mark? What did your dad mean about you airbrushing your pictures?”
I’d been hoping she hadn’t remembered that. I got the big Nikon out of the bag and held it up for her to see the screen on the back. [Matter-of-fact] “I have to get rid of these shiny lights all the time, that’s all.” I brought up one of the Mister Lister pictures and pointed to the corner. A spot of silvery light. “There,” I said. I scrolled through half a dozen more. “See? It’s there. There. There. Bit of a nuisance, that’s all.” I looked at Jules. I knew it: she was impressed.
“This couldn’t be a defect in the camera?” she said.
“No,” I said. “It’s been in every picture I’ve taken, with every camera I’ve used, for the past ten years.”
“What, even in news pictures?”
“Yeah. But it’s quite easy to blank it out.”
“We could print these, Mark!”
“Nah,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Because people would assume I’d tampered with them, Jules. The way I tamper with them already.”
Oh good. Services two miles.
So what happened then? Oh yeah. Mrs Starling came back with a tray of tea. She’d been really cheered up by the call from the plod. “Sorry I couldn’t help much, pet,” she said. “Funny how things are. Ask me to locate a headless corpse in Grimsby, like, and I’m off like a greased whippet. Wagon Wheel, anyone?”
She put down the tea and munchies, and then went back in the hall, found her purse and put her coat on. It was ten past three. She was evidently heading for the bookies, and I didn’t blame her.
“I’ve got another message from your dad,” she said. “He’s a bit worried, pet. He says to ask, you don’t think he’s a bit SHALLOW, do you?”
“Course not,” I said. “Er – you couldn’t, if you’re going to the bookies?” I reached in my wallet and pulled out a fifty. She took it.
“Right, pet. Fifty on the nose. You won’t regret it, like. Anyway, the thing is, pet, he says other spirits send better messages than this, don’t they, about love and stuff. ‘I’m so proud of you, son,’ that kind of thing. ‘I never told you enough when I was alive!’ He doesn’t want you to feel left out. He’s worried you’ll think he’s not as deep as the other dads.”
“But I know he loves me,” I said. “I know he’s proud of me. He did tell me enough when he was alive. No, tell him I’ve never had a minute’s doubt in my whole life, and I’m forty-two. Besides, what’s wrong with shallow? I’m shallow, Jules is shallow; you’re a bit shallow yourself, Mrs Starling; it’s what keeps us cheerful. Why should I want Dad to be any different just because he’s dead?”
She put her arm round me and kissed me on the head. “You’re a good son, pet. You’re your father’s son. And I’ll be back at about twenty to four with the winnings!”
We heard the front door slam and then we saw her sprint past the window with a determined look on her face. Jules turned off her tape recorder and put her notebook away. My phone beeped. It was probably Kippo. I decided to ignore it. Jules and I might be having a togetherness moment.
[Gentle] “Have you really always known your dad loved you, Mark?”
“Oh yeah.”
I put my arm round her. I know I’m lucky. I felt I should say something sort-of profound and reassuring.
“So, there’s this bloke driving across the Arctic when his car breaks down.”
“Heard it,” she said.
I nestled closer to her. [Soft] “Jules,” I said. “When I said you were shallow just now, I was only being rhetorical, you know that, don’t you?”
“Look, whatever your dad says, I don’t still fancy you, Mark,” she said.
So I said, [taking arm away; little sigh] “Oh. All right, then. Fair enough.”
The Mother
JANEY is bright, posh Scottish, brittle.
Scene One: at a health spa. Sounds of swimming pool
“You have the skin of a thirty-year-old, Mrs Phipps,” Maureen said to me this morning. And I said to her, “You’re heading for a very large gratuity, Maureen, if you keep saying things like that.” Whether she heard me I don’t know. I was lying on her massage bench at the time with my face pressed through the face-hole-thing, and Maureen was putting a lot of puff and effort into shoving all the flesh on my back up to my neck – I suppose there’s a chance that one of these days it will stay there. I have to say I smiled to myself – a bit reckless, I know, when you consider the wear and tear on the facial lines. But a thirty-year-old! What would Sasha say? Sasha being twenty-one, that would have me giving birth to her at the age of [thinks about it] … nine! Eight? Nine. I was so bucked up. I mean, my hands are good for my age. And I’ve made a point of never plucking above the lip, which Maureen agreed will certainly pay dividends in the long run. The only thing that spoiled it was at the end, when I was just getting back into the fluffy white bathrobe and slippers and Maureen said, “So. Mrs Phipps. How do you find your skin?” Well, I didn’t know what to say. HOW DO YOU FIND YOUR SKIN? “What a strange question,” I said. “Everywhere I look on my body, Maureen, it’s there.”
How I love dear old Woodlands. This is my fifth time. Of course I get the detox headaches, but somehow I always go home a couple of pounds lighter, rested, and with a sort of glow. I finally had my colours done yesterday – I’m a spring person, which came as no surprise. I should wear greens, yellows, peach, pink, lilac. “There’s a very famous spring person, when you think about it, Mrs Phipps,” the woman said. So I thought about it. Greens, yellows, pinks. “Elton John?” I said. “The Queen,” she said. And it was one of those lovely moments when everything falls into place. Anyway, before that I had the manicure, the pedicure, the astringent neck poultice, the deep sonar navel cleansing, the organza scrub and the all-body Bering Straits seaweed. Oh, and the long-distance hosing, which was a bit like finding yourself in the path of a water cannon, actually, but they promise is fantastically good for the flabby bit under the arm, although I read somewhere in a magazine that if you TALK to the flabby bit under the arm, sit it down with a cup of coffee and really explain to it that it’s nothing personal, it’s just not welcome, there’s a real possibility it will give up and throw in the towel. The colours lady – whose name is Ros, and who I did think might have been a man dressed up, actually, monarchist or not – anyway, Ros says when I get home I must simply throw away all my wintry blacks and purples, autumny browns and tans, and summery [thinks] … summery whatever they were. According to Ros I have been locked in an unconscious pigmentation tussle with my own wardrobe! For years! And I always assumed the enemy was – within.
I phoned Sasha just before the optional introduction-to-yoga class, where a chap called Gerald in lemon socks asked us brightly what we
thought of when we heard the word “spirit”, and I suppose I was still thinking what’s wrong with Sasha, a girl who since puberty has had absolutely no spirit at all. “Anyone?” he said, looking round. “Janey?” He pointed a finger at me, revolver style, and pulled the imaginary trigger. I went all hot. People were looking.
“Me?” I said.
“Yes, Janey. Tell us what you think of when you hear the word spirit.”
“Spunk,” I said. A pained expression flashed across his face as if he were chewing a bee, so it obviously wasn’t the right answer, and he turned to the Irish woman with the gold jewellery and the soaraway pashmina import business.
“Well, I wasn’t THINKING of spunk,” he said. “But yes, yes, I think I –”
“Get up and go,” I explained.
“Thank you, Janey,” he said.
“Nerve, guts, va-va-voom,” I said.
“Yes, I see where you’re going with that, Janey,” he smiled. “Now, Dervla. What do you think of when you hear the word … spirit?” She fiddled with the end of her apricot pashmina.
“Would you be thinking of the Blair Witch Project at all?” she said. At which point Gerald gave up on the interactive experiment and pushed on with his flip-chart. Tried to sell us a yoga holiday. He gave me his card later, when I let him buy me a low-calorie elderflower presse with no strings attached. He had a nice nose. Lovely hair. But a man with lemon socks? I couldn’t. I thought about it quite deeply afterwards, and I – just – couldn’t.
Anyway, when I phoned Sasha, the Rotter was there in the background, I could hear him. “Are you suffering to be beautiful then?” she asked, in her usual hurtful way. I told her that actually the deep sonar navel thing wasn’t at all pleasant, the boom echoed inside for hours and they hand you the fluff afterwards in a little plastic tub, several inches of it, so I still felt a bit sick, and then happened to mention that the masseuse said I had the skin of a thirty-year-old. Why do I never learn? Sasha covered the receiver and said something to the Rotter – only she doesn’t call him the Rotter, she calls him Mike. The Rotter shouted loud enough for me to hear, “Wait till the thirty-year-old finds out!” And Sasha laughed. She doesn’t want me to be happy. She is the centre of my world, the core of my being, the offspring of my youth – although I wasn’t nine, obviously, when I had her, I was twenty-two. How can I bear it that she never, ever wants me to be happy?
