by Louisa Young
I was in Clerkenwell in my grotty squat, as I reverted to what I liked to think of as my working-class roots – in fact it was just a grotesque form of insecurity: if I didn’t try, I couldn’t fail, could I? Apart from the dancing, I didn’t know what I was good at. And the dancing didn’t count. Not with my education. I stopped doing it for a while, thinking that might force me into a proper consideration of what I was ‘meant’ to be doing. All that happened was that I had no money.
Janie was in Camden with her baby banker boyfriend and her aspirations to worldly success. She always had crap taste in men, after Colin, the childhood-sweetheart-who-let-her-down. ‘Can you blame me?’ she said. ‘After what Colin did, how could I ever trust a nice guy again?’ Indisputable Janie logic, issued through her angelic pink mouth, corroborated by her big innocent eyes.
Harry was watching me. Harry, who has always been pure Shepherd’s Bush, was looking considerably more Holland Park now. For someone who was such a post-punk anarchist urban biker squatter ten years ago, he had clearly done all right. Most of them look just the same at thirty-five as they did at twenty-five: grimy, skinny, resentful, poor, drunk, drugged, wild. But what is charmingly rebellious and sexy at twenty-five becomes an inescapable, ugly rut at thirty-five. Then at forty they die.
Harry did not look as if he were going to die. He was still wearing black pegleg jeans and a leather jacket, and no doubt the tattoos were still there underneath them, but he clearly had access to hot water, and used it, and I didn’t think he’d found the jeans in a skip. Suddenly I was in 1986, lurching and pulling a skip-salvaged bathtub down the road with Harry, delighted because now we could plumb it in and I could have hot baths in my own house. Well, my own squat.
This musing was not going to bring Harry back into my confidence.
‘You’ve a fly in your hair,’ he said, reaching over to remove it. ‘Or something.’ Or nothing, I think.
‘Lay off, Harry,’ I said.
‘No, you’re looking good. Doing well. It’s good.’ He was smiling at me. Oh, Harry. Oh, really.
If this were all happening by God’s own honest-to-goodness chance would I respond to this stuff? Lord knows, squabbling with Neil is no substitute for emotional satisfaction. I smiled prettily. The question that had bothered me since 1988 burned in my throat now he was here in front of me. Harry, why did you go so mad that night?
But I was here to chum up, not to sort out old tragedies. If we started sorting out, we might end up actually making friends again, and that was the last thing I wanted. Or not, I wondered, looking at his face. There is something so lovely about a face you know well.
Stop it. You were here to chum up, for Ben Cooper, for Lily, that’s all.
‘Do you remember the day we went to Brighton?’ I said. It was the Pontiac’s last outing, not that I was going to mention that yet.
‘Yeah.’
‘What did we do? I can’t remember.’ I couldn’t, actually.
‘Saw Janie, I should think,’ he said. Suddenly I could remember. Janie was living there. She’d been incredibly bad-tempered when we left, standing on the area steps of her basement flat, complaining about where he’d parked the car.
‘Why didn’t you come to her funeral?’ I asked, suddenly and viciously, the only thing I had said to him so far that I actually meant. Why hadn’t he?
‘I didn’t know if I’d be welcome.’
‘Oh, crap, that’s why people die, so that other people can make up at funerals. You should have come. All sorts of people came.’
*
Mum and Dad, looking irrelevant, like they didn’t understand and nothing understood them. Neil, trying to hold my arm. Ben Cooper was there, well wouldn’t he be, his collar turned up against the grey wind under the trees out by the grave. People I didn’t know.
I looked at Mum and couldn’t understand how she could just be there. She gave birth to us. She should have spontaneously combusted, or dissolved, or spun away up like a tornado into a vortex of anti-matter. The child shouldn’t die before the mother. It’s against natural law. How can the mother just stand there? I think she felt it too.
The vicar said all sorts of nonsense and no one cried. I didn’t know why I wasn’t dead. We’d always been together. How could she be dead without me? We didn’t bring Lily, and Jim glared at me as if he knew I had her secreted about my person, as if I was a shoplifter and he, store detective, just knew she was there in my deep deep pockets. And so in a way she was. A batch of girls we’d been at school with came, for some reason. Zeinab came and stood just behind me all afternoon, muttering in Arabic. Blessings and prayers, I think …
Everyone came back to mine afterwards – God, London is a terrible city, a twelve-mile drive to the nearest burial ground with room for her, and twelve miles back for the drink. We knew she was dying but were we allowed to bring her home from the hospital to die? No. Then she’s taken off and sliced up and post mortemed and are we allowed to lay her out at home for the final respects? No. Mum was upset. Where’s home anyway, when no one knows the vicar? Mum and Dad came in from Enfield. What the hell are they doing living in Enfield? Where the hell is Enfield?
‘We can’t afford to stay here any more,’ they’d said, packing up in their sixties, God help us, to move their generations of living in Ladbroke Grove out to the far east. They were throwing things away. I said, ‘Take all that with you. That’s for Janie and me to throw away when you’re dead. Don’t you throw it away.’ And then Mum got this sad old look in her eyes and said, ‘Angie, love,’ meaning, ‘You’re strange, why do you have to be like that?’ like she’s been saying ever since I dug up the school alligator a year after it had died to see what its skeleton looked like. She thought it was strange of me to remember so long, let alone to want to see the skeleton.
Mum’s a bit deaf because she was cleaning her ear with a Q-tip coming downstairs and she fell and punctured her eardrum. Now why was she cleaning her ears coming downstairs? Neat, worriable her of all people? Perhaps everybody does incredibly out-of-character things when there’s no one there to see them. Perhaps character is only what other people see; defined by being observed. Bless you, Mum, and I won’t dig up Janie, don’t worry. I know what her skeleton looks like because I looked at her X-rays after the crash when they thought she might survive even though she was still unconscious, and thought about how we would have laughed about it, but the laughter made my broken ribs flex and so I stopped. My broken ribs, her crushed organs. Lily, you miracle.
*
‘I would have come,’ he said, and I knew he was lying but I didn’t know why. I was glad he was being a pig, it made it easier. Easier to betray him, but not easier to get on with him. I needed something … some excuse to hold us together for the duration. And not sex.
‘Harry,’ I said, ‘can you find me a car?’
‘Is a bear a Catholic?’ he responded with his cheeky-chappie grin. ‘Name it, Angel, and it’s yours. How much do you want to spend?’
Well, of course, I didn’t want to spend anything. Yes, I know I already had a car – a poor thing, but mine own. Small, white after a rainstorm, looks like a wedge of cheese, squidged up at the back, got a stereo. Couldn’t remember the make. Cars have never got me, despite all Harry’s blandishments on their behalf in the old days. Too many wheels.
Meanwhile, I was thinking. What I was thinking was, ‘Keep it simple.’
‘Well, I’ve got this … um … this little white thing, and it’s OK, but it’s got negative kudos, really, and it’s ugly, and …’ Inspiration. Go for sympathy, ‘… and if I’m never going to ride a bike again I need a car with a bit more going for it.’
‘Never going to ride again?’ His concern looked genuine. It was the sort of thing he could understand. ‘But your leg’s not that bad, is it? What’s the problem?’
‘Combination,’ I said. I tried to look a little pathetic, a brave strong butterfly fluttering gamely against the tempests of a remorseless world; proud girl bro
ught down but not letting it get to her, former belly-dancer-on-a-Harley taking the bus to the creche. ‘I can’t afford both. I need the car for Lily, for work. My leg … you know when you realize you’re mortal?’ I asked, and looked at him straight.
‘Yes and no,’ he said warily.
‘If I did anything more to my leg now I couldn’t work at all. Not at what I do. Even now, without full use of it, I don’t know how safe I’d be on a bike. I’ve got to work, I’ve got to be in good nick, because Lily needs me. I can’t do things, because of what might happen. A bit different to how I was, eh? And I …’ I didn’t say that I’m never ever ever going to damage another person ever again.
‘See what you mean,’ he said. He was stirring his coffee. ‘So. Do people think you’re an old bore now? Not want to play with you any more?’
‘I don’t care,’ I said. ‘Things are different. Different priorities, different interests …’
Lily tired of the pigeons. ‘I want juice,’ she said. We slipped into the ritual.
‘What do you say?’
‘Apple juice,’ she said.
‘No,’ I said. She looked as if she were about to whine. Not in front of Harry you don’t. I am the perfect mother. The perfect not-mother. ‘Come on, love, how do you put it if you want something?’
She looked at him, looked at me. Wise eyes.
‘Darling beautiful Angeline, please please please may I have some apple juice?’ she said. Oh, wow. ‘May I’, no less. None of your ‘can I’. A simple please would have done me.
I tried not to laugh and said, ‘Of course, darling.’
Harry may have developed some understanding of how it is when you have a child, but he went off into a blank during this interchange, as the child-ignorant always do. And then carried on regardless with what he was in the middle of, not taking on board that I was now committed to doing something else for someone else, and in the near future.
‘So yes,’ he said. ‘I’m not surprised. Look at you. No bike, gammy leg, no more flowing chiffon and sequins, bed by ten, babysitters, single mother, burden on society, working all the time you’re not mopping up sick …’
‘Three-year-olds aren’t sick,’ I retorted. ‘And I’m not a burden on society.’ Of course he was teasing. Damn. Close enough to my fears that I fell for it.
‘What are you doing then, if you’re not wriggling?’
‘Angelmum,’ Lily murmured. (That’s the sort of thing she calls me. All sorts of combinations of what I am, and what I am to her.)
‘I am a consultant wriggler,’ I said, patting her. ‘I am actually something of a scholastic expert on wriggling, the art and history of it. I wrote a book on wriggling. I have designed wriggling costumes for very rich foreigners – well, for their wrigglers, not for them personally. I tell film designers how to get their harem scenes right. I do all right, thank you.’ I made light and bright. I regretted my slip into defensive snappiness. Show him no weakness.
‘Good for you,’ he said. ‘I knew you would. You always have the energy.’ God bless him. ‘Got a boyfriend then?’ Damn him.
‘Admirers,’ I said, with a pretty smile. Pretty, and subject closing. ‘I must get Lily her juice.’
No, I don’t have a boyfriend. Not that I wouldn’t like one. I’m old-fashioned that way. I like sex (as far as I can recall) and love and company, and it’s nice having someone around to blame for everything. But there is a single-mother problem. It’s not that men don’t ask us out. They do. Men over thirty love single mothers because they feel let off the hook; we already have a kid so we’re not going to start all that ‘marry me marry me’ biological clock stuff. Men who never grew up adore us. They think we won’t notice another three-year-old round the house, won’t mind whining and can’t tell that the laundry load was suddenly doubled. The only person I ever met who insisted that men won’t go out with single mothers was a man who wanted to lower my self-esteem so far that I would consider going out with him.
But a single mother builds up a world, a careful world. It works by balancing, by constant care. You can’t jeopardize it. You can’t let just anybody into it. There’s a Turkish word: enderun. The inside world, where you live, the area you protect. Your territory. A single mother can’t cry for a week if her heart is broken. You can’t stay up all night if you have to work and be sweet with the infant the next day. You can’t kick the child who is used to sleeping in your bed out of it for the sake of a quick thrill. You can’t get your quick thrill elsewhere unless you have a particularly accommodating babysitter. You can’t do anything in private. You may be able to face a child saying, ‘Is he my new daddy then?’, but I can’t. The stakes are higher and it’s not just you at stake. (Do you want a daddy? Yes.)
‘You should give yourself a break,’ says Brigid, who manages to be far more relaxed about these things than I am. Brigid runs a string of admirers and half the time one of them is babysitting while she’s out with another. But Brigid is tougher than me. And her kids are more interested in each other than in her sex-life. I suppose it’s just that having killed Lily’s mother there’s nothing I would consider too great a sacrifice in the interests of her security and well-being.
‘That’s a bit warped, actually,’ says Brigid. ‘And anyway, a kid needs a dad.’ Exactly, that too. If I could cut straight to being three years into true love and happily domestic ever after, then I would. And of course that would look good when I go for adoption too. But the early hit and miss stages … No. No, I don’t have a boyfriend.
‘And how about you?’ I said, when I came back.
‘Oh, hundreds of ‘em,’ he said.
‘What? – Oh, no, I meant – you know, life. What are you doing?’
‘I’m in the motor trade, darling, same as I always was,’ he replied. ‘Only better. Period cars for the movies, customized cars for the foolishly rich, gorgeous cars for weddings and bar mitzvahs, for sale or hire, whatever they want. You should come down to the showroom.’
‘I’d love to,’ I said. Step one accomplished. ‘But, God, I probably couldn’t afford anything you’ve got.’
‘I’ll find you something,’ he said. ‘Leave it to me. I’ll have a think. I know what you want.’
Well, thank God you don’t, I thought.
Lily slurped through her straw.
‘Is Harry handsome?’ she said.
SIX
Harry in His Showroom
Lily and I got home on Monday to find Brigid in the kitchen saying could she leave Caitlin for half an hour, and a letter in the second post from a law firm whose name I didn’t recognize. I parked the girls with a magic colouring book and a glass of water, and studied the letter.
It was straightforward enough. ‘As the child’s father, Mr Guest wants his daughter to be with him, and is accordingly applying for a residence order under Section 8 of the Children Act 1989 …’
Well, I’d been expecting it. I wasn’t going to ring Mum and Dad. I’d talk to them later, if I had to. Perhaps there was a simple way through this, without upsetting them. What I needed was some facts and some law.
Oh dear.
Lily and Caitlin began to squabble over the paintbrushes. I patted them absently.
I’d have to talk to Neil. I didn’t want him clambering well-meaningly through my hair if I was juggling Jim and Harry and Ben Cooper already, but I had no choice really. I knew I’d need help. Last time, when my parents and I each got parental responsibility, it was easy, because nobody was contesting anything.
Parental responsibility.
Neil might well still be angry with me, but he would help. I just didn’t want to talk to him, that was all.
Brigid was late picking Caitlin up so I made tea for both of them and put them in the bath, Caitlin so red and bouncing and Lily so creamy with her long long hair. Lily was calling me Mummy. I don’t always correct her. By her logic all kids have mothers, and mothers aren’t dead, they’re the ones that feed you and pick you up from playschool. Peter S
cott hatched some cygnets once whose mother had died; when they popped out of the eggs the first thing they saw was his Wellington boots. And at regular intervals the Wellingtons would arrive and give them food. They loved the Wellington boots. By Lily’s logic, I am her mother.
*
The next day I worked. An Arab airline wanted an article on the history of belly dancing for its in-flight magazine. It would probably be an excuse for lots of pictures of half-naked babes, but there we go. Six hundred pounds is six hundred pounds, and the picture choice is their business. I would give them something academic and poetic, full of Kutchuck Hanem and Flaubert, Baladi dancing, and the fertility dances of the Mother Goddess.
I put on a video of Fifi Abdu to get me in the mood. God, that woman’s hips. Even at my youngest and lithest I never ever came near her. And I was good, you know. I learnt rakkase from the gypsies of Sulukule in Istanbul, I learnt from the Ouled Nail and the Chikhat. I danced on tables up and down Charlotte Street and never once put my jewelled toe in a plate of mezes. Unless you count the time when I kicked a dish of houmous into the face of a guy who had just suggested that I ‘dance on this, baby’, and made to unbutton his fly.
He kept laughing, so I did my rose-water trick. I learnt it from an Egyptian dancer in Cairo, who said she always did it to French tourists in revenge for Napoleon. She did it to me – I didn’t know whether to be flattered or what.
