by Liza Cody
‘Bad technique is worse than no technique at all.’
‘I know,’ I said.
‘Your anger hurts only yourself,’ he said.
‘I’m not angry.’
‘Why not? You have been slighted.’
‘By those squelch-bags? Don’t make me laugh.’
‘Good,’ he said. He gave me his place and went away. I started pulling again. Properly. I began to feel better. It’s funny but I often don’t know when I’m doing something wrong. It takes someone like Harsh to point it out.
Harsh is a purist. He is a wrestler’s wrestler. He may not be a star heavyweight or a crowd puller or a top biller, and maybe he’s the guy they put on first after the interval when half the punters are still in the bar, but sometimes when he’s fighting, other wrestlers will leave their dressing-rooms to watch. And sometimes they even clap. Harsh is a straight shooter. And I can’t say fairer than that.
Afterwards I took a breather, lying back on one of the benches. Gruff Gordon and Pete Carver were on the mat showing off, and Goldie was standing by being told what to do by Mr Deeds. Mr Deeds had his fat hand on her shoulder, but I didn’t watch. I shut my eyes and breathed deeply.
Sam’s Gym is a noisy smelly place, but I like it. Or I would do if persons like Gruff Gordon went elsewhere.
I packed it in early that afternoon. I was sore all over, and my teeth were beginning to hurt again. It was a relief to stand under a heavy stream of hot water and let it massage my neck and shoulders.
As I stood there I found myself thinking about Ma and the way she wouldn’t help me find Simone. You’d have thought she’d want us all together again. Simone was her favourite when she remembered about us – which wasn’t often. And I thought of the way she said, ‘Simone doesn’t want to know you.’
Doesn’t. Like she had just that minute talked to Simone and Simone had said, ‘I don’t want to know Eva.’
It couldn’t be true. Simone would never say that. And the only reason we were apart was because we couldn’t find each other.
But suppose Ma was keeping us apart. I know it sounds stupid, but suppose she was?
Standing there under the hot water I tried to think about it. It seemed so stupid, but I couldn’t help feeling suspicious. Ma was always against me. Ever since I could remember she called me a thorn in her flesh. It would be just like her to keep me away from the one thing I wanted. It’s amazing, when you think about it, that I’ve got so much family feeling, considering the example she sets.
And another thing – Ma would do anything for money. Suppose Simone’s foster family paid Ma to keep away – to keep me away. I only ever went to see them once, and that wasn’t very nice.
In the shower, with the water beating on my head, I nearly remembered what hadn’t been nice about the time I went to find Simone. But my teeth were hurting something cruel so I turned off the taps.
I decided I had to find a dentist quickly. I got dressed and left the changing room.
Amazing things were happening in the gym. I was just in time to see Pete Carver throw Gruff arse-over-tit across the mat. Then he picked Goldie up and slung her over his back. Goldie struggled and squirmed.
‘It’s a little pantomime,’ Harsh told me. He was standing with the Julios, watching.
‘I want some screaming,’ Mr Deeds told Goldie, ‘but otherwise it’s shaping up fine.’
‘Special,’ Flying Phil said. ‘You got Gruff with one fall against him, which makes Pete really cocky. And then Pete kidnaps Gruff’s valet because he fancies her and he’s jealous of Gruff.’
‘Okay,’ Mr Deeds said. ‘Gruff, you’re all fuddled and concussed, right? You get up. You look for Pete but he’s gone from the ring, right? You look for your Girl. Where is she?’
Gruff got to his feet looking fuddled and concussed – not unlike his normal expression if you ask me.
‘Give him an Oscar,’ I said.
Gruff gave me a look.
‘If you can’t take this serious, Eva,’ Mr Deeds said, ‘Fuck off out of it.’
‘It’s entertainment,’ Harsh said quietly. Harsh is so philosophical about everything that sometimes he really pisses me off.
‘It’s pitiful,’ I said. But I said it out of the corner of my mouth so that no one could hear except Harsh. ‘They’re so old and fat they can’t fight straight any more. If they were proper heavyweights they wouldn’t be seen dead doing this shit.’
Harsh didn’t answer, but Danny Julio said, ‘You should’ve seen Gruff a few years ago. He was a big man. But that was when we were on telly and there was money in the game.’
When Danny Julio starts gobbing off about how many times he was on telly in the dear old days you know it’s time to get on your bike. I made for the door.
Mr Deeds was saying, ‘Okay Gruff, you see your Girl. Pete’s got her. I want real fury here. I want a real howl, a roar. Like the Incredible Hulk, right?’
I pushed through the door and out into the corridor. I didn’t even look at Goldie. What did I care? It wasn’t as if she was family or anything.
She came running after me. ‘Where are you going, Eva? Wait.’
I stopped but I didn’t turn round.
She said, ‘Why are you doing this?’
‘What?’
‘This.’
‘You’re making a fool of yourself.’
‘It’s money,’ she said. ‘I’ve got nothing.’
‘You’ve got me.’
‘You’ve got nothing.’
‘I’ve got everything,’ I said. ‘I’ve got everything I need.’
‘I didn’t mean to hurt you. If I’d known you would be like this I would’ve turned them down. But I’ve got to earn some money. I can’t keep sponging off you.’
‘All right,’ I said. She always came up with the right thing to say.
‘Really?’
‘I said “all right”.’
‘Yes, but where are you going?’
‘To the dentist,’ I said.
Just then we heard this horrible noise from inside the gym. It was Gruff Gordon practising his roar.
Goldie looked at me, and I looked at her, and we both cracked up. When I recovered I said, ‘I’ll come back and pick you up in an hour or two.’
‘You won’t forget?’
‘Nah,’ I said.
‘Do you really have toothache?’ she asked. ‘You look a bit pale.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, take care,’ she said. ‘Toothache’s horrid.’ And she went back into the gym. That was Goldie all right. She always thought of the right thing to say.
So I walked along, looking for a dentist, not thinking about anything very much. I didn’t have an appointment but I thought, if I found one, they might take me in as an emergency. But I sort of lost track of time and I found myself just round the corner from my mum’s block of flats. I hate it when that happens, because I’m never exactly sure how I got where I get to. But, look on the bright side, the toothache was gone. I don’t know where that went either but I wasn’t grumbling.
Ma might just as well live in a yard like me. There are so many piles of rubbish and motors up on bricks that her block looks as if it is growing out of a garbage tip.
I climbed the stairs to her flat and knocked on the door. She didn’t answer, but I could hear the telly blaring away inside. I knocked again.
Of course it was a daft time to go and see Ma. She would either be totally slobbed out or in the boozer.
The woman next door poked her head out and said, ‘What’s all the racket?’
‘I’m looking for my ma.’
‘She your mum?’ The woman looked me up and down, sort of surprised. ‘I didn’t know she had kids.’
Well, she wouldn’t, would she? Ma doesn’t admit to much.
‘She’s gone out,’ the woman said. ‘Left her bleedin’ telly on again.’
‘Got a spare key?’ I asked.
‘These walls are paper thin,’ she said. ‘S
he ought to have more consideration, your mum.’ Her lips were all thin and pinched with blame. I knew that look.
‘She’s had a hard life,’ I said. The way I always do.
‘Ain’t we all?’ she said. ‘Hang on a tick.’
She came back quickly with a pink plastic spatula.
‘Try this,’ she said. ‘It works on next door but one.’
The spatula had some old egg on it but it fitted between door and jamb.
‘Give it a shove,’ the woman said.
I gave it a shove and the lock came open.
‘The way they build these places,’ the woman said, ‘we’re none of us safe in our beds.’ She held out her hand and I gave her back her spatula.
‘Ta,’ I said and I went in.
‘And turn that bleedin’ noise off,’ she shouted after me.
When I turned off Ma’s telly I could hear the woman’s telly through the wall. And her kids screaming. It’s the only way to survive in these places. You make so much din yourself you can’t hear anything else. I’m glad I don’t have neighbours.
I went into Ma’s bedroom. Now, believe me or believe me not, I had never before been in Ma’s bedroom – not in this present flat, I hadn’t. And it gave me quite a turn, because there on her clatty old dressing table was a picture of Simone in an oval silver frame. And, what is more, it was a picture of Simone as I had never seen her. It was a picture of Simone grown up.
‘Piss on a pudding!’ I said, and I had to sit down on Ma’s rumply sweaty bed. I felt hot and cold and wobbly all at the same time. And then I found I couldn’t really look at the picture. I looked everywhere else and it was as if I didn’t want to see it.
It meant that all my suspicions about Ma were true, and it made me feel hollow inside.
‘You’re a mean, lying, crafty, old witch,’ I said to Ma, who wasn’t there. And then I got up and pulled open all the drawers of her dressing table and her chest of drawers one by one. And I threw everything onto the floor and stamped on the heaps of her clothes. And I ripped one of her dresses to shreds with my bare hands.
It was while I was doing this that I saw her old jewellery case, and in it were her beads and earrings and bangles. And I remembered how Simone and I used to dress up in Ma’s clothes when Ma was out, and how Simone would deck herself out with all Ma’s beads and pretend to be a princess.
Then I felt a bit sorry for the mess I’d made and I started to put everything away again. Because, when all was said and done, Ma was just being Ma, and she did have a hard life.
It was while I was tidying up that I found the letter. There was only the one and it came from a solicitor in Braintree, Essex. It was at the back of the drawer where Ma put her underwear when she remembered. I just glanced at the top of it, but it was enough to know that the letter talked about ‘the child’, and ‘our clients’. I stuffed it into my jacket pocket for later.
It was time to look grown-up Simone straight in the face. I stared at her and she looked back at me from over her shoulder. She was wearing a gold and black ball gown but her shoulders were bare, and funnily enough she did look a bit like a princess. Only it was a real princess she looked like, and that was because the dress and hairstyle were copies of what Princess Di wore a few years back. And she gazed out from under her eyelashes just the way the real princess did.
I was disappointed, but I could see why Ma would want the picture on her dressing table. Then I thought it was just the good-girlie sort of crap foster parents would want her to wear, and it made me feel better to know that Simone hadn’t chosen her own clothes. But all the same I didn’t like the picture.
The one I liked was the old one on Simone’s twelfth birthday.
Ma didn’t deserve it any more so I went into the sitting-room and stole the album. Ma wouldn’t notice. She had about as much family feeling as a fly who lays her eggs on a piece of rotten meat and then buzzes off.
Chapter 12
It was a seesaw day – up, down, up, down. As I walked away from Ma’s place I found something I have never before found in all my life – a Ford Cortina, door open, keys in ignition, engine warm. A bleeding Christmas present. Nobody, in my experience, ever leaves a motor in that condition. Ever. I have always had to put some work in for my motors, because nobody made it easy for me. Nobody.
What a day!
I got back to Sam’s Gym in double quick time, and when I got there I saw Harsh sitting on one of the benches in a funny position and, behind him, that artist dweeg from Bermuda Smith’s bar was drawing his picture.
I was very surprised, but I said, ‘Where’s my friend Goldie?’ Because Goldie was why I’d come and I couldn’t see her anywhere.
Harsh said, ‘Showers.’
And the artist said, ‘Don’t move, please.’
‘What the fuck you doing here?’ I asked.
‘I’ll tell you in a minute,’ he said. He looked at Harsh and he looked at his picture but not at me. His fingers were black with charcoal and his hands moved like terriers on the paper.
I looked at the picture, and you could tell it was Harsh, even though it was only his back, because of the shape of his trapezius muscles. I was surprised again. At least he knew enough to recognise a good trapezius when he saw it.
‘He’s done your trapezius proud,’ I told Harsh, in case he was worried. ‘And the lats aren’t half bad either.’
Harsh said nothing, so I went into the showers to find Goldie. She was fluffing up her hair under the hand drier and she had a sort of shine on. I was pleased because I’d thought some exercise would do her good, and I was right.
‘Phew!’ she said when she noticed me. ‘That Gruff Gordon smells like a circus bear when he sweats, and Pete’s not much better.’
‘They’re out of shape,’ I said. ‘If you’re out of shape your sweat smells bad.’
‘I never knew that.’
‘Yeah,’ I told her. ‘It’s all the grease and poisons coming out through the pores.’
‘Really?’
‘If you’re fit it’s just salt and water. And that don’t pong hardly at all.’
‘The things you find out!’ Goldie said, brushing away at her hair.
‘You can tell how healthy a person is just from the way their sweat smells.’
‘No kidding.’
‘Yeah. I wouldn’t be amazed if Gruff Gordon dropped dead tomorrow – the way he stinks.’
‘Not till after Saturday, please,’ she said, straightening up and turning towards the mirror. ‘If he doesn’t fight, Mr Deeds won’t give me the other half of my money.’
I wanted to tell her about Simone and the solicitor’s letter. I thought, with her education, she might be able to explain what it was all about. But she was doing something to her eyes, and you can’t expect any sense out of someone who’s drawing lines round her eyes, can you?
She smudged the corners with her little finger and as if by magic her eyes became big and mysterious. I’ve never understood how that happens. I tried it once and it looked like someone had bopped me.
She stared at herself and sighed, although I couldn’t for the life of me see what she had to sigh about.
‘Let’s go,’ she said, and started to collect up loads of bags and packages. She really had been shopping, and I was quite worried until I remembered that Mr Deeds had given her an advance.
‘He’s changing all the posters,’ she said. ‘For Saturday.’
‘Who?’
‘Mr Deeds.’
‘Why?’
‘He wants my name on them. “Gruff Gordon and Goldie”.’
‘Yeah?’
I couldn’t help it – I was choked. Because Gruff and Pete, being heavyweights, got top billing. So that meant her name would be at the top of the bill too. And in bigger letters than mine. And it wasn’t as if she could fight.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked. She had this way of knowing something was wrong when all I said was ‘Yeah.’ It really pissed me off.
&nbs
p; ‘Look,’ she said, facing me, ‘don’t worry.’
‘I’m not worried.’
‘I’m just a face again,’ she said. ‘I can’t actually do anything. No one takes me seriously. I’m a prop. Y’know, a puppet or a mascot. Like George says, a gimmick.’
‘Who’s George?’
‘Mr Deeds. George Deeds.’
Well, I never knew that. I’d been working for him for months and he never told me his name was George.
‘Nobody knows me,’ she said. ‘Nobody knows who I am. Only you. I’m just a face.’
She looked so sad I said, ‘Your legs aren’t bad either.’ Just to cheer her up. And she started laughing so hard I thought she’d choke. It made me laugh too, except I wasn’t sure what was funny.
We were still in pieces when we went through to the gym. The artist bloke had stopped drawing and was talking to Harsh.
Harsh said, ‘Don’t bite his head off, Eva. Give him a hearing.’ And he went to the men’s showers.
‘Interesting chap,’ the artist said, watching him go.
‘Well?’ I said. ‘How’d you find this place?’
‘Harry Richards told me you trained here,’ he said. ‘Don’t look like that. He didn’t tell me your address or anything. And I really had to twist his arm to get this far. He knows me, and he knows I’m all right.’
‘Silly old fool,’ I said. I was wondering who else Harry told. But Harry wouldn’t dob on me to the polizei. Not Harry.
‘Just a minute,’ he said. He patted his pockets. Then he shook his drawing book, and a small, glossy book fell on the floor. He picked it up and gave it to me. On the front it said, ‘Shrodinger Gallery. An Exhibition of Sculpture by Dave de Lysle R.A.’
‘That’s me,’ he said, ‘Dave de Lysle.’
‘R.A.’ I said. ‘I can read.’
‘I’m giving you the catalogue to prove that I’m genuine.’
‘Oh you’re genuine all right.’
‘I’d better talk fast,’ he said. ‘Because I can see you aren’t going to give me much time. There’s a new sports complex being built near Winnipeg, in Canada. They ran this competition, which I won, to do a relief frieze, or rather, friezes, over the main doorways. Also a free standing group in a fountain setting. The theme of the work, or rather, works, is of course, to be sport, physical fitness, strength, energy etcetera. The style is to be figurative. I need models. You’d be perfect. I would pay by the hour. Standard rates. You could fit it in with your other activities, to suit yourself.’
