by Julia Bell
‘And saved me the chance to spoil you a bit? Welcome you back? Don’t you like being treated nice?’
Mum blushes and looks confused. She pecks him on the cheek. ‘A silver Jag, eh?’
We sit in the back of the car, the three of us, Mum in the middle. Dickie’s got a uniform on, proper peaked cap and everything.
‘What’s with all this then?’ Mum says, pointing through the glass at the driver. ‘Rich enough to employ servants now, are we?’
We go to a restaurant in Brindley Place. All the fittings shine in a classy kind of way: marble, glass and chrome. There are dried flowers and twigs in vases on the tables and big, abstract paintings on the wall – expanses of muted blues and greens.
It’s full of people talking quietly. A few stop to look at us as we walk in.
‘If I’d known we were coming here I’d’ve worn a different outfit,’ Mum hisses in my ear. ‘Hundred pound a head they charge. Choose something really expensive.’
The waiter sits us at a table in the corner, Mum insisting that she has the seat that faces the room. ‘I can’t bear not being able to look at people. That’s the point of eating out, isn’t it?’ She smooths her hair self-consciously and looks Billy in the eye. ‘So how come you’re able to afford all this finery then, Billy? Been robbing banks?’
Billy laughs. ‘No, I’ve been meking money.’ He taps a cigarette out of its packet. ‘Food, Maria. Food. It’s a wonderful thing.’ He tells us that he’s been making more money than he knows what to do with. That he’s booked up till Easter. ‘People think they’re getting a good deal. ‘All U Can Eat? Only ten quid? That can’t be right!’ They think they’re getting something for nothing, like. None of the poncey portions you get in here. Proper stuffing and as much of it as you like! ’S brilliant.’ Despite the cool, almost chilly temperature of the restaurant Billy is sweating. ‘It’s amazing,’ he says. ‘Amazing. I’ve never been so loaded in my life.’
A waitress comes with menus, wine lists. Billy orders bottles in exaggerated French, curling the ‘r’ of ‘Corbières’ around his tongue. Mum is watching him, her mouth slightly open, she has a cigarette in her hand that she has forgotten to light.
‘Well, isn’t that great?’ she says eventually, not sounding very convinced.
‘I know, but that’s not the best bit.’ He lowers his voice. ‘You see, no one ever eats ten quid’s worth of food. Even your fattest, grossest, most’ – he puffs his cheeks out – ‘fat bastard can’t eat more than two quid’s worth. Most people eat less than a quid’s worth and they can’t move. And it’s costing me pennies, Maria, pennies. And it’s all shit. All of it. Forget the four food groups. All cheap. All fried. All protein or carbohydrate. And because it’s salty and there’s no discounts on the drinks, I make a fortune on the bar. Food. Who’d’ve thought it, eh? Better money than dealing. And it’s legal.’ He looks at the menu. ‘What you going to have? The fish in here is very good.’
I try to read the menu but it’s all in French. ‘What’s a confit, Mum?’
‘Ahhh. The confee,’ Billy says, putting on his stupid French accent and staring at Mum. He’s grinning like Joker from the Batman film. ‘And what about you, Maria? I think the fish for you perhaps, something low in the fat stakes would suit you.’
Mum looks at him really hard. ‘Billy? Are you on something?’
He looks round the restaurant for the waiter, snaps his fingers. ‘Over here!’
Mum groans. ‘For God’s sake. Why does everything have to be a Jack Nicholson routine with you? People are looking.’
‘Garçon,’ Billy continues. The waiter’s amused, he stands with his pad ready. ‘For these lovely ladies. We’ll have one fish, one chicken and I’ll have the steak, medium rare.’
‘Very good, sir.’
When the waiter has gone Billy looks at us. ‘He went to school with Dave’s brother. Little Pete – remember him?’
‘No.’ Mum has her arms folded across her chest. I’m half expecting her to walk out.
‘Oh, come on, Maria, I thought this was why you came back. For a bit of class, a bit of sophistication. All the things you said we never used to have in Birmingham.’
‘Don’t take the piss, Billy,’ she hisses. ‘Not in front of the child.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, lady lah di dah.’
Billy sniffs, gets a dirty handkerchief out of his pocket and blows his nose loudly.
‘I don’t see why you always have to be so bloody obnoxious.’
He inspects the contents of his handkerchief then screws it in a ball and stuffs it back in his pocket. ‘I thought that was the point. Never mind the bollocks and all that. Being obnoxious, it’s rock and roll, Maria.’
‘For you and Lisa maybe. Not me, Billy, never me. I’m not one of your gang.’
‘Still haven’t seen her yet, have you?’
Mum stiffens. ‘Why? She been bitching about me?’
‘Has it occurred to you she might want to see you?’
‘She knows where to find me.’ Mum squeezes her lips together, exaggerating the lines around her mouth. She looks old and mean.
‘If you don’t watch it, the wind will change and you’ll get stuck like that, Maria.’
Mum harrumphs and opens her mouth. She stops when she sees the waiter weaving through the tables, plates balanced along his arm like an acrobat. Our food is arranged and garnished like pictures from a cookery book. Mum’s fish has still got its head; a steely eye looks up from her plate. She pokes it with her knife.
‘I can’t deal with this,’ she says.
20
She’s thrown my baseball cap away and it’s cold and drizzly outside. I finger the tenner that Billy gave me, folded up to the size of a stamp in my pocket. My stomach is sore. I had to throw up twice after dinner last night because Billy insisted that I have a pudding.
Without stopping to think about it, I walk up the hill towards the city centre, past the bus stop to school. The shops aren’t open yet and town is full of the shushing of road sweepers clearing leaves out of the gutters.
I buy a pack of ten Silk Cut from a newsagent in the underpass. I look at the display of chocolate. The bright wrappers, the gooey toffee chocolate taste that would coat my mouth like a comfort blanket. I turn away before I’m tempted.
Huddling in the doorway outside the Odeon cinema, I watch the crowds building up into one big stream of people, heels clack-clacking, hurrying their way to work. I press back against the glass. A man with a dog on a scruffy lead squats down in the doorway next me, spreads his coat on the floor in front of him and puts a pile of Big Issue magazines on top.
‘Big Isshoo,’ he shouts. His dog sidles up to me, sniffing my ankles. I pretend not to notice.
Mums says only drug addicts and mad people end up on the street. She never gives them money or buys their magazines. ‘It only makes things worse for them in the end,’ she tells me. I look at the man out the corner of my eye, clutching my change in my fist in case he tries to rob me. When he turns and smiles showing a row of broken teeth, I look away and push off into the surging crowd, letting the momentum carry me all the way up the street to Victoria Square.
I sit by the fountain for a bit, watching pigeons fighting over scraps of food round the bins. The statue of the woman at the top of the fountain is fat. Reclining with her thick legs crossed at the ankle, her hand resting across her lap. Mum said that it was grotesque, in this day and age. ‘Fat just isn’t beautiful any more. If all the girls looked like that floozy we’d be out of business in a day.’
‘Can’t you just make bigger clothes?’ I asked, for once failing to follow her logic.
‘Of course we could,’ she said. ‘But we don’t want to. Fat people put customers off. I mean, we’re not Evans or Etam, for God’s sake. Our clothes are classy, and classy women are thin. I’m sorry, Carmen, but there’s the truth of it – you’ll see.’
I look at the women rushing to work. Lots of tight, shiny trousers, neat leather ja
ckets, business suits. They move sleekly, in one elegant movement as if they all have the same body. I snuggle into my Adidas bench coat that I got Dad to buy me, and light another fag. I like the taste of them now and they stop you from feeling hungry.
When the morning rush is over the drizzle turns to rain. My fag fizzles out; water runs in little trickles under my sweater, down the collar of my school shirt. I plunge my hands deep into my jacket pockets and walk back down New Street. I’ll go and find Lisa, get her to make me a cup of tea. I’ll pretend it’s teacher-training day or something.
I get lost on the way to the markets. They’ve boarded up the underpasses and signs saying Danger Demolition are everywhere. I try to cut across St Martin’s Circus but all the entrances are boarded up.
On the signs it says the markets have moved to temporary accommodation somewhere nearby, but I can’t work out how to get there from here. The rain is pelting now, thick splashes that make sodden puddles on the greasy pavements. The water is brown with brick dust and mud. My trainers start leaking and my feet squelch stickily inside them.
Air conditioning blasts hot air out into the street. Mum’s shop is narrow, with a tall front window that has dresses arranged on wires, like they’re floating up towards the second floor. Mum is standing by the counter talking to a girl behind the till who has a face the colour of red cheese.
When she sees me, her expression freezes. ‘Carmen? Is that you? What are you doing here? Look at the state of you.’ She pulls the hood of my jacket down.
‘Felt sick,’ I say.
‘Show your face, girl. Why are you wearing your trainers? I thought you put your shoes on this morning? Those trainers have got holes in. I should have made you throw them away. What are you doing here?’
‘I’m sick,’ I say again.
‘Oh.’ She looks flustered and smiles at cheese-powder features. ‘Excuse me a moment, won’t you, Theresa?’
She grabs me round the waist, pushing me towards the door, out past the rails of winter coats and shiny Christmas dresses. From behind it must look like she’s giving me a hug. ‘Go away. You can’t come here,’ she hisses.
‘But I’ve been sick,’ I say. I wish I could faint or something. I try and wobble, go floppy on her. Outside the rain gurgles greedily down the street.
‘Look at this weather,’ she says. Her arm is tight around my waist. ‘I suppose you can wait until it stops.’ She looks dubiously at the sky. ‘If it ever bloody does. Why didn’t you tell me you were feeling ill this morning?’
‘It only came on when I was on the bus.’
She touches my forehead. Her hands are freezing. ‘Well you haven’t got a temperature. Come on, you can sit in my office for a bit.’
She seems to come from nowhere, barrelling round the corner, walking from side to side like a duck, plastic rain cap tied over her greying hair. She’s carrying shopping bags from Tesco’s, Sainsbury’s, Marks and Spencer’s, Asda, they’re all torn with material poking out of them. The left side of her face is disfigured, purple with a birthmark that runs across the whole of her cheek and down her neck.
‘Excuse me,’ she says, pushing past us. I catch a breath of pee and stale chips.
Mum makes a noise, a kind of high-pitched croak. When I turn round I can see the woman has made her way across the shop to the changing rooms, a couple of winter coats flung over her arm.
‘Excuse me! Excuse me!’ Mum is waving uselessly at her back but she disappears into the changing room before Mum can stop her.
Mum wants Theresa to go in. A couple of women come out of the changing rooms, give their clothes back and walk out the shop.
‘We’re losing customers,’ Mum hisses.
‘I think we should call the police,’ Theresa says. She gets her tan out of a bottle. I can see where it’s gone all streaky at the back of her neck.
‘No, no. I’ll sort this out. Carmen, darling, make yourself useful. Go and see what she’s doing.’ Mum and Theresa both look at me. I wiggle my toes in my soggy trainers. Mum flips the hood up on my jacket. ‘Go on.’
Through the curtain is a small, cold room, partitioned off into cubicles. There is a full-length mirror at one end and a chair with a couple of copies of FHM for boyfriends.
She’s standing in front of the mirror, not bothering with the privacy of a cubicle. Her figure is round as a beachball, and she’s struggling to move her unwieldy arms out of the sleeves of her pink dress. There’s bags all over the floor.
‘Orrighht, love,’ she says when she sees me. She smiles, her cheeks knotting into apples. ‘Couldn’t give us a hand could ya? Here,’ she hands me a sleeve of the dress, ‘if you’d just pull that out in front of me like that.’ She twists her wrist out of narrow cuffs. ‘Wonderful ta-a. They don’t make clothes big enough these days, do they? Not for growing girls like you and me. Trouble with me, when I stopped growing up I started growing out instead.’ She laughs and pulls the dress down. ‘Here, help us undo the zip,’ she says, turning her back to me.
When I’m done she stands up, leaving her dress in a puddle, and waddles towards the mirror. She’s filthy, her hands blackened and her legs streaked with mud. Her skin is saggy and veiny, her breasts hang down nearly to her waist. The birthmark is livid against her white skin. I don’t know where to look.
‘We-ell, there’s a sight for sore eyes,’ she says. ‘What d’you reckon? Do I look orright?’
I don’t know what to say.
‘I know, hardly God’s gift.’ She laughs wheezily.
She picks one of the coats off the rail and wraps it around herself. It won’t do up and she mutters something about dolls and disgraceful.
The other coat does just about do up and she twirls it in front of the mirror. It’s a long frock coat with a weighted skirt, the kind that sweeps around the legs. ‘There’s lovely. I’ll take it,’ she says. ‘Won’t bother taking it off, they can sort me out at the till.’ She gathers up her bags, leaving the pink dress on the floor. ‘They can give that to charity.’
‘Carmen!’ Mum’s voice filters through the curtain. ‘Carmen! What’s going on in there?’
‘Look—’ I start, realizing that my voice is little more than a whisper.
‘Cynthia, call me Cynthia. C’mon then, we better get on with it. She’s waiting.’ She fumbles in her bag and brings out a fistful of five-pound notes. ‘I’ve got good money.’
At the till Mum tells Cynthia that she’ll have to take the coat off so they can remove the security tag. ‘I’m sorry.’
Cynthia looks bemused. ‘Why? I’ve got good money.’ She throws fivers all over the cash desk, crumpled up like little tissues. ‘Can’t be bothered going back in there. It’s depressing, All those mirrors. I’ll take it off here if you like.’ She starts to unbutton the coat.
‘NO!’ Mum screeches, then steadies herself. ‘No. It’s all right.’ She tells Theresa to ring in £199 and to check all the notes under the UV light.
Cynthia sets off all the alarms when she leaves the shop and it takes Mum ages to switch them off.
She comes back to the till, shaking her head. ‘God, wasn’t she horrible? You would have thought she could get plastic surgery these days. And you didn’t have to stare like that, Carmen. Poor woman.’
21
‘Good,’ she says, looking at the scales. ‘That’s more like it.’ Her fingers are like twigs. The bones of her hands are gnarled and knotted, the skin almost transparent. She is trembling slightly. She looks in the mirror and frowns. ‘Look at that chin,’ she says, tugging at the skin on her throat. ‘Funny, isn’t it, how it’s the first place to show and the last place to go.’
There are lots of ugly things about my body. I have written them down to remind me what I have to do, of the mountainous task that lies ahead of me.
Hair – too long, too frizzy.
Face – too freckled, too fat.
Chin – FAT.
Shoulders and arms – FAT.
Chest – too big, too FAT.
(Clothes hang better on a flat chest.)
Belly –
Here I have to stop to punch it. It sticks out too much, bulges, makes me look pregnant. It should be flat.
Nails – tatty. (Need to manicure.)
Mum knocks on the door. ‘Hurry up, sweetheart, or we’ll be late.’
We’re going to Nana’s. Mum says she’s been complaining that we haven’t been to visit and she wants to make arrangements for Christmas. ‘Why, I don’t know, because it’s only November. She’ll be buying food in already I expect, stupid woman.’
‘Why don’t you cut it down then?’ Mum says. ‘You could get someone in while he’s down the pub.’
Nana shrugs and looks at her orthopaedic shoes. The hedge is taller than the house now, the tops of the ferns waving in the breeze, high above the chimneys. It’s Leylandii, grows faster than weeds, even in the winter.
‘Have some cake, love,’ Nana holds a plate out, wedges of cake arranged on it. Mum holds her hand up.
‘No thanks, Mum,’ she says. ‘We’ve just eaten.’
Nana puts the plate down on the table. I look at the cake while they talk. I am so hungry. I can imagine the taste of it, the texture, the cream, the sugar, the cocoa. My body feels hollow. Just a little bit, just a little . . .
‘Carmen! What are you doing?’
‘I haven’t eaten the whole piece,’ I say.
Mum gives me a look.
‘Have a bit more, love,’ Nana says.
Only a thin streak of bile comes up. A swirl of chocolaty goo. I scrape my knuckles on my teeth, trying to get my hand out of the way.
I look at my face in the mirror. My eyes are a bit watery, so I sit on the toilet seat and wait for them to dry.
The doorbell goes. I can hear voices in the corridor. Mum’s voice distant and then just outside the door.
‘Carmen. Carmen, hurry up. We’ve got to go. Now.’
I turn the tap on, splash my hands under the water. Flush again in case there’s anything left.
When I open the door Mum is standing outside and I can see Lisa in front of Nana peering down the corridor. She’s wearing a shiny red mac with a matching check handbag.
