Devils, for a change

by Wendy Perriam

  Bello:

  hidden talent rediscovered!

  Bello is a digital only imprint of Pan Macmillan, established to breathe life into previously published classic books.

  At Bello we believe in the timeless power of the imagination, of good story, narrative and entertainment and we want to use digital technology to ensure that many more readers can enjoy these books into the future.

  We publish in ebook and Print on Demand formats to bring these wonderful books to new audiences.

  About Bello:

  www.panmacmillan.com/imprints/bello

  About the author:

  www.panmacmillan.com/author/wendyperriam

  Contents

  Wendy Perriam

  Dedication

  Foreword

  CHRISTMAS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  WINTER

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  SPRING

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  SUMMER

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Chapter Twenty six

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  FALL

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  WINTER

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirtey One

  Chapter Thirty Two

  Chapter Thirty Three

  Chapter Thirty Four

  EPIPHANY

  Chapter Thirty Five

  Chapter Thirty Six

  Wendy Perriam

  Devils, for a Change

  Wendy Perriam

  Wendy Perriam has been writing since the age of five, completing her first ‘novel’ at eleven. Expelled from boarding school for heresy and told she was in Satan’s power, she escaped to Oxford, where she read History and also trod the boards. After a variety of offbeat jobs, ranging from artist’s model to carnation-disbudder, she now divides her time between teaching and writing. Having begun by writing poetry, she went on to publish 16 novels and 7 short-story collections, acclaimed for their power to disturb, divert and shock. She has also written extensively for newspapers and magazines, and was a regular contributor to radio programmes such as Stop the Week and Fourth Column.

  Perriam feels that her many conflicting life experiences – strict convent-school discipline and swinging-sixties wildness, marriage and divorce, infertility and motherhood, 9-to-5 conformity and periodic Bedlam – have helped shape her as a writer. ‘Writing allows for shadow-selves. I’m both the staid conformist matron and the slag; the well-organised author toiling at her desk and the madwoman shrieking in a straitjacket.’

  Dedication

  For Susan Watt,

  with affection and admiration

  Thou shalt not be tempested;

  Thou shalt not be travailed;

  Thou shalt not be disquieted.

  But he said:

  Thou shalt not be overcome.

  Julian of Norwich, 1317

  Then came the words the cold wind brought our springs

  And sprigs of blood: ‘The past and present are as one –

  Accordant and discordant, youth and age,

  And death and birth. For out of one came all –

  From all comes one.’

  Edith Sitwell: ‘The Wind of Early Spring’

  CHRISTMAS

  Chapter One

  ‘What’s happened? Why the hold-up?’

  ‘Man on the line. He jumped.’

  She didn’t dare to look at them. Looked down. Looked down. They went on talking over her. Tall men who smelt of men, a smell she’d quite forgotten.

  ‘Bad time of year for suicides.’

  ‘Spring’s worse. I wouldn’t choose the Central Line, would you?’

  ‘No. Pills for me. And a pint of Scotch in my own armchair.’

  Their laugh boomed in her head. She shouldn’t stand that close. Not to men. More men crowding on to the station, dark in suits and overcoats. A gang of youths in frayed and dirty jeans. Women big with shopping. Pushchair wheels nipping at her ankles; sharp-edged parcels jabbing in her side.

  No light. No air. Someone lit a match, the tiny noise exploding in her face. She’d seen the headlines shouting from the papers: ‘Bomb blast in Armagh’ ‘Earthquake latest: death toll now three hundred.’

  The platform heaved and trembled. She had just ten inches of it, the space her feet took up – her small, slim feet enormous in black Wellingtons. Stolen boots, size eights. Other feet beside them – coloured feet, shades she’d never seen. Shoes were always brown before, but these were shiny purple, acid green.

  ‘You’re not allowed to smoke, you know, not since that frightful fire.’

  ‘Oh, sod it! If they keep us waiting all this time, then …’

  She looked up, watched the cigarette move from hand to mouth, spew a curl of smoke. She closed her eyes, heard angry hungry crackling flames charring the whole station into ash.

  ‘Anyway, I thought you’d given up.’

  ‘I had.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Four days. I put on half a stone.’

  The girl was fat. Too fat. All these people, weighed and crushed together, would total tons and tons. Tons of flesh pressing into her flesh. Naked flesh. She had even lost her skin. Ripped off. Raw and bleeding.

  O God, make haste to help me.

  Lord, come to my aid.

  The cigarette smelt strong. Everything smelt strong: women’s faces; children’s sweets. And people looked so strange. Some were wearing sports clothes, with running shoes or gym shoes, as if they’d just changed for PT. Why gym on Christmas Eve? And why those foreign letters on their clothes? She spelt them out: ‘ADIDAS, NIKE’. Were they names of schools or colleges?

  A dark-skinned lad had squeezed into the crowd. He wore a headband round his hair, attached to wires which trailed down to a small black box. His hands were clasped around it; his eyes were shut, lips moving. Was he praying? Why the wires? She’d noticed three other boys with wires, all four young and rough. Perhaps they were offenders, and this was some new punishment, to avoid sending them to overcrowded gaols: electric shocks jolted from those boxes right into their skulls. She tried to edge away, collided with another conversation.

  ‘What’s up? A strike or something?’

  ‘No. A body on the line. They have to stop the trains until they’ve picked the pieces up.’

  ‘Well, I wish they’d get a move on. My turkey’s not defrosted, and I’ve got seven pounds of sprouts to clean.’

  ‘They don’t always find the pieces.’ The girl removed her chewing gum, stuck it on the wall. ‘I used to know this bloke who worked for London Transport, and he said they searched for hours, once, to find some woman’s head. She jumped at South Ealing – you know, that open part where the line comes up from under ground, so her head must have spun off up the bank. They never found it, anyway.’

  ‘God, Sue, you’re disgusting! I don’t want to hear these …’

  A sudden roar. The earthquake. ‘Two villages collapsed like children’s toys; tiny babies screaming in the ruins.’ She shouldn’t read the papers. Other people’s papers.
Shouldn’t soak up other people’s words.

  ‘A train! Thank God. Now, push, Jen.’

  Voices lost. Only crash and thunder, flare of sparks. Then sudden jolting stop. Voice from nowhere: ‘Let them off first, please. Mind the gap.’

  What gap? Doors opening. People pouring out, tangling with the people pouring in. She was squashed between, swept on. Impossible to move. More people jamming in, blocking up the doors. Lights frightening bright inside. Faces, faces, strained exhausted faces beneath their garish coloured masks; green eyelids, purple lips. One girl with tinsel in her hair, but frown-lines just below it, bitter twisted mouth. The faces in the posters didn’t frown. Girls in swimsuits laughing on gold beaches. Real people wore heavy coats and scowls. She lost her balance, fell on someone’s scowl. ‘I’m sorry …’

  No one heard. She’d lost her voice as well. The doors groaned and shuddered shut. Seething crowds still left behind, stranded on the station. She should have given up her place, let someone else get on, someone with a family, a turkey to defrost.

  A Negro yelled ‘Happy Christmas, man!’ She hadn’t seen a Negro, not for years and years. She tried to grab a rail. The train was moving, lurching from the station. Impossible to fall now. Too many people cushioned right against her, packed flesh on flesh on flesh. She kept feeling for her money, to check it was still there. ‘Beware pickpockets!’ she’d read, as she’d crept down to the tube. There wasn’t much left anyway. She’d been amazed at what a rail fare cost. ‘Single or return?’ the ticket man had asked her, on the tiny Norfolk station with its two slow trains a day.

  ‘Single.’ Frightening word.

  Someone leant across her – a sudden waft of scent and sweat – jammed the window open. A dirty wind blew in, tugging at her headscarf. She clutched it back. They mustn’t see her hair. The scarf was far too skimpy, let in every sound; all her clothes too thin; musty tattered play-clothes from the ancient dressing-up trunk. She’d tried to choose the plainest: an old black skirt, though even that had braid on; a flimsy silver blouse; a tunic Herod wore, added not for warmth but to bulk her out, make her feel less frail. She’d put a coat on top – the gardener’s anorak. It was far too big, yet light. She still weighed almost nothing, and without the boots, she would simply fly away. She curled her toes, tried to feel the heavy rubber toe-caps; felt nothing, only space.

  The train juddered to a stop. She couldn’t see a station. Only black outside, a sudden hush inside. She felt the terror spreading, smelt the fear. Someone laughed, a scared laugh. A man peeled silver paper from a chocolate bar. The crowd inside was swelling, fear padding out each body. Soon they wouldn’t fit. The crush would snap the train and they’d all fall into darkness. A tall man’s knee was pressing on her thigh; a dark boy’s curry breath reminding her of food. She hadn’t eaten since six o’clock that morning. One dry slice of bread. She could feel the crumbs still scratching in her throat, couldn’t get them down. Her mouth felt dry and gritty, her whole body light and saggy, as if she’d lost her bones.

  The tall man kept on staring. He could probably see right inside her skin; see her cells, intestines. She shouldn’t be with people, especially not with men. She was far too close to them, could glimpse the stubble pushing through their skin, the long hairs in their noses, coarse hairs in their ears. She tried to squeeze towards the doors. Impossible.

  The silence seemed to gasp. She peered out through the window – nothing but dense black. Better to be a body on the line. Alone and quiet, at least. A child was wailing now, a skinny frightened child in a coat too big for it, screaming to escape. Supposing someone else should scream, start to fight or panic, lose control? One snapped or fraying nerve and the whole carriage would explode. She held her breath, watched the man eat chocolate, jumped as each square snapped. She could taste it on her tongue, sweet and melting chocolate, a shred of silver paper twingeing on one tooth. The child’s screams went on. And on.

  Oxford Circus. The one name she knew in London. She’d been to London only twice, and both times as a child. Shopping trips with Mother. She’d seen the letters singing on her tube map – OXFORD CIRCUS – looked forward to the lions and clowns, could almost smell the sawdust. They’d landed in a large and boring shop, bought gym-skirts and a blue felt hat. The ‘Oxford’ was misleading, too. Oxford wasn’t London, but a place her father worshipped, twinned with Cambridge, hoped she’d go to one day, to make up for his own poor degree from Sheffield. Her father had taught geography, hadn’t liked the subject or the boys, pinned all his hopes on her. Her father’s brainy daughter who’d thrown it all away.

  There were shops at Oxford Circus and she had to buy some shoes. The money wouldn’t stretch to clothes. But she couldn’t spend all Christmas in a pair of muddy Wellingtons.

  She stumbled up two escalators, found herself still underground in what looked like a cage. The low grey ceiling was roofed with bars, looped with tangled wires. She felt trapped, closed in, stifled by the fetid air. Two teenage boys were sprawling on the floor, slumped against a poster of a woman’s naked leg. The fair one had his eyes closed, his skin transparent pale, empty bottles fencing him around. The darker one was staring into nothing, with an expression of such total desolation, she felt it was contagious, and he was giving off some virus of despair. She paused a moment, concern outlawing fear. They were both so young and thin, needed food more than she did shoes. She took a step towards them, fumbling for her money. The fair one opened his eyes, blinking at the light as if it stung; seemed not to see her, not to focus, even; started muttering ragged words, angry jumbled swearwords, directed not at her, but at the world.

  She shrank back against the wall, watched the hordes of people fighting up the stairs. Those were skills she didn’t have – pushing skills, shoving skills. Yet the shops would all be closing if she skulked there any longer. She wished she knew the time; had never owned a watch, never really needed one before.

  She forced herself to brave the stairs, people charging past her, elbows used as weapons. A sudden lull, an inch or two of space, and she darted to the top, was swept towards the exit; stopped, bewildered, as stinging rain blasted in her face. She had walked into a phalanx of umbrellas, all jabbing at each other; a crush of people ten-deep on the pavement, swearing as their umbrella spokes entangled.

  The sky was navy-dark now, not the sullen grey she’d glimpsed at Liverpool Street before bolting underground. Yet it was brighter than before – lights and colours flashing, more brilliant in the rain, reflected in the puddles; scarlet reindeer strung above the streets, Christmas stars twinkling and revolving. She stepped towards the kerb, dodged back again as a hot-red bus roared and panted past, spraying her with water. Traffic bearing down on her, policemen in the midst of it, shouting through tin trumpets as pedestrians disobeyed them, dashed out in front of cars.

  She tried to shrink into herself, lose her limbs, her body; so she wouldn’t have to touch people, wouldn’t hold them up. She was jostled off the pavement, heard her feet crunch and squelch in something – rotting fruit fallen from a stall. More stalls selling garish Christmas paper, swathed in sheets of polythene to shield it from the rain.

  ‘Ten sheets for 30p. All half-price now, ladies. Get your wrapping done tonight, half-price.’

  The man looked ill. Black eyes sunken in a yellow face, dirty hands in fingerless red mittens. Rain beating on his head. No one bought. Too busy struggling home. Too much to carry anyway: parcels, bags, umbrellas. She was struggling now herself. It was hard to walk in boots. Huge and heavy garden boots dragging down her feet. Her legs felt cold, exposed. Her skirt was far too short, barely skimmed her knees; the anorak an inch or two above it.

  She stopped a moment, stared in shock at the whirling drift of snowflakes. Could rain have changed to snow so soon? She glanced behind her; still the rain, and slackening off a little now. No – the snow was falling in the shop, inside the warm and lighted windows; falling on the mannequins who were dressed for summer parties, not for winter cold. The
y wore off-the-shoulder evening gowns, arms naked save for bracelets, heads bare except for tiny silver bows. They were lying in deep snowdrifts, in strange unnatural postures; frozen there for ever, their brilliant make-up perfect, their sandals flimsy gold. The snow looked cruel, not white and soft, but white and sharp, as if tiny splinters of broken glass had been trodden into it. Yet their blank unsmiling faces expressed neither cold nor pain. Their eyes were empty sockets, their mouths were scarlet holes. Like her, they dared not feel.

  She walked on through the drizzle. Shoeshops everywhere. Racks and racks and racks of shoes, in every style and colour. She hardly ever wore them. Her feet had spread from going barefoot. They were probably even dirty and she hadn’t any socks. She glanced in through a window at the thick-pile lilac carpet. She couldn’t spoil that carpet with her muddy boots, or take them off and stand there with her calluses, the dirt engrained from walking on wooden floors.

  Forget the shoes. If her feet were blistered, good. She ought to hurt, needed to do penance for the theft. She had to find a phone box, ring her aunt. Still difficult to walk with all the crowds. Umbrellas folding down now, but everyone with shopping; bags banging at her knees, a six-foot plastic Christmas tree butting her aside. The Three Kings shone in lights above the street, themselves weighed down with frankincense and myrrh. She stared up at their shoes – golden slippers, pointed at the ends – play clothes.

  Three phone booths just ahead, a hunched shape inside each one, and a group of people queuing just outside. She stood behind a woman in an iridescent mac, her dyed two-colour hair escaping from its plastic clasp. She shouldn’t look around, keep noticing such details. She’d been trained to keep her eyes down, block out all distraction; had never disobeyed until today. But now her eyes were aching, assaulted by the glare, the clash and jar of colours. She wasn’t used to colours, kept jumping at the sounds: sudden blasts from horns, or wails from sirens; the steady roar of traffic, the steady roar of humans.