by Helen Walsh
Daddy,
Hiya, how’s it going? I’ve really, really missed you. Things are fine but sometimes I just miss our walks and the things we used to do. I got no one to talk about the things you know all about. And hey, I’ve gotten really interested in all our Irish heritage and the songs you used to sing me. The older I get, the more Irish I feel. It doesn’t seem to me like I have any link with Mum’s side, though of course I love her to bits. She says hello.
I’m doing fine. I have loads and loads of different friends, all sorts of different things. I go to a kind of youth club, and that’s where I feel most at home. Even with that, I have a terrible feeling that it’s already over. Do you ever get that? That everything good is coming to an end? I’m sorry if I’m waffling on but hey, I am your girl after all and you’ve done it to me enough times (only kidding!).
I think Mum misses you, too. She never really goes out. She sits in watching videos (and Terry Wogan – cringe!), but she seems happy enough. I know we’ll never be a family again, and that makes me sad. Vincent also needs someone to kick him up the backside, now and again. He’s doing really well at school and all that, but he’s not been writing much of late, and arrrgh! It frustrates me so much, because if I had a half of his talent then, well you know what I mean. But whatever, hey? I’d love to see you, even if it was just a flying visit or something. I’ve got no money to get up there, so what I’m going to do and I’m smiling and grinning as I write this ’cos the thought has just popped into my head. Next weekend, I’m going to cook Sunday grill, except could we make it Saturday grill instead?! If you could make it, just this once, just for old time’s sake, that’d be just brilliant. If not, it can’t be helped and I’ll think of you as I scoff all that mmmmmm lovely grilled grub!
I love you, Daddy. I always will.
Your baby,
Ellie xxxxxxxxxxxxx (one for each year of me!)
By the time he’s folded it back into his pocket and staggered to the promenade railings, Robbie is sobbing freely.
Eight
Vinnie is loafing in the bath when Sheila calls up to him. He doesn’t hear her at first, her voice drowned out by the slap of the water and the modulated gravitas of Radio Four. The rap of knuckles against the door sits him up and, instantly guilty, he plunges his needle-scarred arm below the foamy surface. It’s becoming more and more tricky trying to hide this flake of his life from her, and come summer, when he no longer has the luxury of hiding away in long sleeves, he’ll have to be extra vigilant. He should go back to chasing. If the hit were as good, and the ritual of cooking and jamming not so profound, so poetic, he would.
‘There’s a postcard here for you.’
Vinnie feels a sudden bounce of relief and happiness. Kenny. It will be from Kenny. He hooks his clean arm around the bathroom door to accept delivery, then pushes the door shut. He dries his hands, fumbles around for his reading glasses and wipes the steam from them. Outside the door, his mother still lurks. ‘Hey! Don’t be making any sudden plans, you! It’s our video night!’
‘I won’t.’
‘I’m only teasing. You go out, if you want. But let me know in good time, will you? I’m cooking your favourite – toad in the hole. À la vegetarian of course.’ Her voice trails off downstairs.
Vincent shouts after her. ‘Mater! You do me a disservice. I shall be there, on time, as usual – Kleenex at the ready.’ He smiles at the pleasure his words will be bringing down there, right now, and returns to the postcard. It’s a black and white portrait of New Brighton in 1875. So Kenny. Restrained good taste in every choice he makes. He’s missed him. He wasn’t working on Monday or Tuesday – and Vinnie felt weird about drawing attention to their friendship by asking the assistant manager about his rota. He knew that Kenny would be in touch, though. He knew that one of these little billets-doux would drop on the mat, sooner or later.
Dear Dorian,
Relieved of my duties at work. Sure you’ve heard all about it. Need to see you, bad. Howbout Saturday? Forget Rusholme for once – let’s say 8 bells at the Dry Bar for cake and ale.
Love
Rene
Of course, Vinnie hasn’t heard all about it, but the thought chases a little shiver of amusement down his spine. He reads it again and again, reading huge significance into every little inflection. ‘Need to see you bad’. Every time he reads it there is a gladdening of the heart as his gaze swoops on that one little word. Love. He can’t stop staring at it, over and over. He hasn’t felt so high, so absolutely, ecstatically, laughably merry about a message through the post since the time he won the writing prize. He tries to keep a rein on his feelings – he’s followed this path of balmy optimism before, only to be deceived by it. So he breathes slow and deep, tries to steady the lurch of his heart and tells himself this is nothing – a careless slip of the nib; maybe even a blundering apology for his offhand manner last time he saw him, Sunday afternoon. Kenny wasn’t unfriendly as such, more remote, or awkward. Different to how things were, anyway – and Vinnie had every intention of going to front him about Rusholme. Had Kenny just hated his pals? Or was Vinnie being a phoney that night; or was it that he just got up and vanished? But Kenny didn’t show for work the next evening or the evening after that and, gutted though he was at the time, now that he knows the reason why, Vinnie is glad he didn’t make a fool of himself.
Vinnie hooks a toe around the chain of the plug and tugs. He lies there staring at the card until the bath drains empty. Just a few lines, but what magic when transcribed by Kenny’s hand. If he stacks up all the hours they’ve spent together it’s less than a day – yet he knows him so well. He smiles at the recollection of them perched out on the steep steps by the loading bay, smoking, circling one another. And then there was that first, sudden, avalanche of conversation where both of them caved simultaneously, barely able to wait for the other to pause so they could jump in and add their bit; it felt like they’d been put there to find each other, to be with one another, to be big friends. Vinnie smiles – weeks, mere weeks, yet it seems a lifetime ago. He’d looked Kenny in the eye and told him: ‘Without beauty, there can be no love. And without youth, there is no beauty.’
Kenny had smiled, taken a drag on his cigarette and cocked his head back as he blew a pillar of smoke straight up into the silver-grey sky: ‘Dorian Gray,’ he’d murmured. And Dorian he had stayed.
Ellie and Vinnie leave the house together. Ellie pauses at the bottom of the road, hitches her skirt right up, then tucks the hem under so it’s grazing her arse. An old lady looks on, jowls wobbling in self-righteous disgust. Ellie grins and spears her tongue at her. Vinnie drags her away towards the bus stop, but he can’t keep the smile off his face. He’s still on a high, but he knows that if he doesn’t confront her now, he’ll bottle it later on. ‘Listen Ellie.’
She’s onto him straight away. ‘Please don’t start sentences like that, Vin.’ She rakes him with a playful eye. ‘I don’t need a lecture about the perils of drug-taking from someone who swans home with the dawn chorus …’
‘I wasn’t …’
‘Give us a break hey, Vin. It’s a weekend thing. I’m fine.’
He smiles at the irony, but he just can’t bring himself to push on. He wants to help, but he can’t. Meantime, he’ll be there in the background, keeping an eye out. They’re starting to gel at long last, him and Ellie. He can be there for her in other ways. He lets out a nervous giggle. ‘I was just thinking …’
‘Oh God. Sounds gooey.’
‘No,’ ang on … it’s only gooey if being taken away on holiday by your hard-working big brother is considered gooey these days …’
She’s all eyes. ‘Serious? Where?’
‘Dunno. I was thinking maybe we could get off to Brighton or something.’ He articulates the proposal as casually as possible.
‘Brighton?’ she almost spits the word out.
Vinnie makes a decent fist of dissembling his hurt. ‘Well … doesn’t have to be Br
ighton. Could go to London if you want?’
She grins, eyes alive. ‘How about Ibiza, more like!’
Vinnie shakes his head, laughing. ‘The hedonist’s club paradise, known for its liberal slant on all things bacchanalian, with a particular yen for the mind-bending designer drug ec-stas-ee.’
She twigs the affectionate poke at their mother. ‘Ah, but what about Mum? Won’t she be hurt?’
Vinnie shakes his head, half grins. ‘Hurt? About getting a break from us two loons?’
‘You sure about this, Vin?’
‘Sure? I couldn’t be more sure! Besides …’ He drapes an arm around her, feels awkward, withdraws it and continues, stepping on and off the pavement as they go. ‘Mums just love it when their kids spend time together. Serious. She’ll be ecstatic.’
‘Ec-stat-ic.’
‘And we’ll still go to KL, whenever, yeah?’
Ellie groans, rolls her eyes.
Vinnie feels exactly the same way – the thought of spending three weeks in a blistering hot climate, while being interrogated by Mum’s brothers and fussed over by her sisters doesn’t conform to his ideal of the great vacation. They eat, Mum’s relatives. They eat, always, and when they’re not eating they’re planning a meal, preparing it, talking about food. He conjures up a grin for his sister. ‘It’ll be fun, you know. Me and you, we’ll take a train up to Thailand. I’ll take you to one of those full moon parties.’
Ellie seems vaguely appeased. He gives her a peck as she starts to peel away from him towards the park. She pauses at its wrought-iron gates, wraps her fingers around a rusty bar and calls out to him, swinging herself from side to side. ‘OK. We’ll go for Brighton – but I’m not staying in some sweaty B&B. And we’re not going to see any of those wrist-slitting bands of yours.’
He grins broadly and waves to his sister.
‘Luego!’ she says, and with that she hauls herself round the gate and off into the park.
‘Luego,’ he echoes fondly, watching her go. She’s already halfway across the grass, walking her speed-fire walk, head down as she forages her bag for fags. The sight of her naked legs and swishing mane plants something awful in his stomach and he scolds himself for his own self-pity, for locking himself away at a time when she needed him, or somebody, more than ever before. Where did she go to, Ellie? And where has she been? He needs to get back in her life. He has a queasy misgiving that come Brighton, London, or even Ibiza, it will already be too late.
Ellie gets on her bus, but jumps off at the next stop – an irritating but mandatory precaution to throw her canny brother off the scent. Not that she believes for one moment he’d shop her for skiving, but it would leave her prey to another of his paternal tête-à-têtes. Only the other day he’d left a hopeful little bundle of books outside her bedroom door. It made her sad, somehow – as though he’d left them there fully expecting rejection, like you’d leave a bone for a scolded dog. She shuffled through the books, wanting to like something. He’d left her George Orwell’s 1984, Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, William Burroughs’ The Naked Lunch, Bret Easton Ellis’ Less Than Zero and Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye for her spiritual enrichment. There were a few photocopied passages from Timothy Leary and Guy Debord, and a couple of postcard prints of Bacon and Munch. Finally, he’d copied out a Philip Larkin poem about parents and left it on top of the pile. Only the cover of Less Than Zero even vaguely grabbed her, but by the third page she’d drifted off, absentmindedly doodling the lurid squiggly Legends logo. It was good that Vin was more normal these days, but she didn’t want him all over her.
As the bus pulls away, a diminutive lad squeezes his face through one of the slats on the top deck. He whistles down at her. He’s older than her, cute enough too, but at the end of the day, he’s still a boy and boys do nothing for her these days. She plays the game nonetheless – flicks back her hair and juts out her chest without so much as glancing upwards, even once. The bus rumbles away along with the lad’s chances. She crosses the road, buries herself deep into the lee of the shelter and waits for the town bus. She sparks a fag and carves out a rough plan for the day. She flirts with the idea of bunking a train to one of the big cities – Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds – or she could just mooch around the town centre in the hope of stumbling upon some of the Legends heads. But before she makes any firm decisions, she needs to pack in an hour’s graft. Funds are running on empty and she can barely scrape change for a ten pack, never mind her Saturday night rider of Es and whizz. The weekend starts here.
Ellie heads over to the market. It’s early and the shopkeepers are hauling up their shutters, starting to primp their stalls to life. The Asian stallholders already stand poised and expectant, eager for trade, eyeing each browser and passer-by as a potential sale. This first half-hour or so is usually good for business – early-bird shoppers who know what they want, while most of the other traders are still half asleep. Ellie takes a seat at one of the outdoor tables in the market café and waits for things to get busy. It’s futile trying anything while it’s this quiet. She stands out anyway with her brown face, green eyes and flame red hair, but in a royal-blue, micro-skirted school uniform she might as well tie bells to her shoes.
The air’s already fat with the cloying smell of rendered-down lard and tobacco. It makes her hungry for the filthy buzz and she scans the caff for a John. She spies one inside, by the window. His hands are shaking so badly he can barely put his cigarette to his lips. She goes in and plonks herself down at his table – it’s just assumed that a chap that old and that lonely will be grateful of her company. She’s a past master at this. She rolls her eyes. ‘God, just imagine – what must it have been like to come to town on market day when this place was a real hub, hey?’ She hits all the right buttons.
‘Forget Chester!’ He gleams. ‘Capital of Cheshire was Warrington! Oh aye …’
She injects just the right level of deference in replying, ‘Oh, I know. We’re just doing it at school …’
His eyes are grey and glazed, but he’s still able to work his features into a twinkle. ‘How come you’re not in today, then?’
Ellie thinks about bullshitting him but decides to give the old boy some respect. She beckons him closer, twinkling back at him. ‘Because I’m a carefree, chain-smoking teenage truant enjoying the very best years of her life.’ She winks and gestures to his cigarette pack. ‘About the chain-smoking bit …’
He slides them over without hesitation, dips in his pocket, pulls out his lighter. She steadies the quiver of his wrist as she leans in to the flame, sucking hungrily on the fag. They chat. He’s easy to talk to, regaling her with tales of derring-do in his days as a ‘one for the ladies’. He checks his watch and, hands trembling hard as he uses the table top to lever himself up, tells her he has a hospital appointment. He gives her three cigarettes and a kiss on the cheek. She’s actually quite sorry to see him go.
Ten o’clock and the market is alive. She makes her way to the back of the market where she weaves in and around the Asian rag stalls, pausing to roll her skirt up another hitch, willing their contempt. They take the bait; the women are the worst, tutting, cussing, elbowing fellow vendors to alert them to the spectacle. She knows the drill of shame, and she plays to it, grinding her hips and flipping her bum as she passes.
Ellie spots her mark – a woman in a fake fur coat buying fabric from Khan’s. Her bag is wide open and – it never ceases to amaze Ellie the way women will persist with this – her purse is lying right on top. She’s forever chiding Mum about it. She doesn’t feel great about it but it’s there, it’s easy, and Khan is one of the most odious little men in the market. This is one sale he won’t be making.
In the market toilets, she squats down in a cubicle, empties out the contents into her skirt. It’s pay day – there’s a twenty spot and a good few fifty pence bits. That’s Saturday night sorted, then. There’s a couple of cards, too. She’s way too young to weigh the kite in herself, but two spanking new credit cards – a
n Access and a Visa – will be worth a few bob to her if she gets rid quick. She slots them in the sole of her shoe, then jams the pillaged purse into a sanitary bin.
As she’s coming out of the market, Ellie spots two lads lolloping down the road with the inimitable Legends gait – the blithe, slack-shouldered slouch, roughly treading a straight line as they almost dance along the pavement. She runs to catch up, latching on to them as they peel right onto Market Street and disappear inside a pub. She hesitates outside. She’ll never get served. She peers in through the window. There’s a big gang of them – ten or twelve faces she recognises, Legends’ hardcore, all the older ones, the full-on full-timers. She’s got to go in there.
‘I swear to you, Billy, there were a great big rabbit outside the patio fucking leering in at us.’
‘How come it’s always a fuckin’ rabbit, though? Serious! How come no one ever sees, like, a sloth or something? How come a big, mad hamster never materialises in these situations …?’
She stands off by the swing doors, staring at them. They look amazing in their bright array of fleeces and cricket hats tugged down over blanched faces. Lunchtime drinkers look on nervously. Ellie laughs to herself – it’s that familiar, giddy, diving-in feeling. She doesn’t know and doesn’t really care how this is going to pan out. School uniform or not, she’s going in there. She sashays into the lounge, goading the regulars with her tiny school skirt. She keeps her eyes straight ahead and pretends she doesn’t know the inner circle are in there.
‘Hey! Ella! Here she is!’
It’s nothing, but it’s everything to her. She tries to mask her big, flattered, delighted blush. It’s like a Panini stamp collection of top heads in there. She knows all their names, their drug history, their scrapes with adventure and death. She nods as coolly as her red face and wire braces allow, and squeezes herself down on the half-moon banquette between Marnie and Crazy Larry. Marnie gives her a sad little look but, just as quickly, makes more room for her and puts an easy, protective arm around her. Ellie notices for the first time the glazed flush of their sleep-starved eyes. Her first impression is that they’re stoned. Then Crazy Larry folds a beer mat into a sharp point and stabs it between his teeth. He yelps out loud, flinging the offending object across the floor. He dabs his gums, nods once as he sees he’s drawn blood. Larry addresses the table. ‘All right. That were fuckin’ shit, that. Who’s got any dental floss?’
