Twelve Stories

by Paul Magrs

  Twelve Stories

  Paul Magrs

  Contents

  Also by Paul Magrs:

  Kept Safe and Sound

  Waiting On

  The Foster Parents

  Sunseeker

  Another Go

  Collecting Ada Jones

  The Longsight Branch

  The Girl from Victim Support

  The Great Big Book Exchange

  The Eyes Have It

  Never The Bride

  In the Sixties

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Paul Magrs:

  The Brenda and Effie Mysteries (published by Headline):

  Never the Bride (2006)

  Something Borrowed (2007)

  Conjugal Rites (2008)

  Hell's Belles (2009)

  For Younger Readers (published by Simon and Schuster):

  Strange Boy (2002)

  Hands Up! (2003)

  Eschange (2006)

  Twin Freaks (2007)

  Diary of a Doctor Who Addict (2010)

  Doctor Who (published by BBC Books):

  The Scarlet Empress (1998)

  The Blue Angel (1999)

  Verdigris (2000)

  Mad Dogs and Englishmen (2002)

  Sick Building (2007)

  The Phoenix Court Trilogy (published by Chatto and Windus): Marked for Life (1995)

  Does it Show (1997)

  Could it be Magic (1998)

  The Afterlife Quartet (published by Allison and Busby):

  Modem Love (2000)

  All the Rage (2001)

  Aisles (2003)

  To the Devil - A Diva! (2004)

  Short Stories (published by Vintage):

  Playing Out (1997)

  As Editor:

  The Creative Writing Coursebook (with Julia Bell, 2001)

  Pretext Volumes One and Two (with Julia Bell, 1999 and 2000) Wildthyme on Top (2005)

  Iris Wildthyme and the Celestial Omnibus (with Stuart Douglas, 2009) The Panda Book of Horror (with Stuart Douglas, 2009)

  PUBLISHED BY SALT PUBLISHING

  Fourth Floor, 2 Tavistock Place, Bloomsbury, London WC1H 9RA

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  All rights reserved

  © Paul Magrs, 2009

  * * *

  The right of Paul Magrs to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  * * *

  This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Salt Publishing.

  * * *

  First published 2009

  * * *

  Printed in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group, Bodmin and King’s Lynn

  Typeset in Swift 10 /12

  * * *

  This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  * * *

  ISBN 978 1 84471 720 0 paperback

  * * *

  Salt Publishing Ltd gratefully acknowledges

  the financial assistance of Arts Council England

  To Gladys, my Big Nanna

  Kept Safe and Sound

  Their favourite thing was going to the covered market in the middle of town. It was one of the few excursions that Jack and his mother would take together. He went to school each day and caught the bus from the comer of their street, and his mother popped out to the butcher’s and the grocer’s on the corner, but mostly she would draw the shutters on the tall windows in their fifth storey apartment and the two of them would keep themselves to themselves. Their Saturday journeys to the covered market were the one time in the week mother and son went out together.

  Through the narrow walkways, they were somehow set apart from the crowds. No one ever talked to them, ever greeted them by name. His mother would be in her pristine nurse’s outfit, though she hadn’t worked in a hospital for years. Jack would be wearing his snorkel-hooded anorak with the fur trim. Both of them ambling under the crackling tarpaulins and the rattling awnings of the densely packed and gaudy stalls. Here, on the gentle incline of the market place, nothing stood straight and perpendicular. The town market was proudly higgledly piggledly and everything was awry: it could send you quite dizzy.

  All weathers, even when the sleet and the driving rain made the centre of town the most inhospitable of places to spend a Saturday afternoon wandering and browsing, and only the hardiest of stall-holders laid out their wares and braved the fractious elements: even then the boy and his mother traipsed up and down the ramshackle grid of that market, bargain-seeking, jumblehunting, geegaw-gazing.

  They would split apart and arrange to meet at a particular time under the dripping tree in the main street. A very precise time: Jack’s mother was ever the meticulous timekeeper. He would go off alone, knowing exactly how long he would have to find what he was looking for, and he would have exactly one pound and twenty five pence to spend: his exact allowance. That’s how much it was, the year that he was twelve. His mother was struggling on a widow’s pension. Even still, the boy fancied himself quite rich with those coins in his hand, dodging through the crowd, careful not to talk to any strangers as they milled around the counters slurping sweet, milky tea from mugs.

  Jack would watch them waiting for their hot bacon sandwiches. He’d watch the pigeons darting under the canvas for scraps of burned rind, and the meat cooking in the soupy fat of deep, blackened frying pans. He would eavesdrop on the customers as they tucked into soft white bread buns and then he’d watch the key-cutters at the heel bar: the blue sparks flying off their machines. He loved the rasping and screeching of the metalwork: the sharp tang of iron on the air.

  But best of all he kept till last. At the top of the market place, by the church and the rancid smelling dark doorway of the Gents, was the second-hand bookstall that was Jack’s favourite place in the world. Here there was a man who wore filthy fingerless gloves and whose hair and beard had grown yellow and frangible as the pages of the paperback novels he sold for a pound a time. This man stood in all weathers behind towering and tottering stacks of old books and, as far as Jack knew, he was the most learned man on the planet. He owned and he had read every book in existence. At least, that’s how it seemed to Jack.

  One Saturday, the spring that he was thirteen.

  It was gusty and blustery and his mother had decided they weren’t staying out for long this Saturday. She wanted to be safe at home in the warm. Jack found exactly what he was looking for.

  ‘Volume Six,’ chuckled the old man, smoothing down his wayward beard with one hand. He examined Jack’s chosen paperback with envious eyes. ‘Oho! I remember reading this one for the first time. Oh, there’s fun in store for you, fella-me-lad.’ An embarrassed smile from Jack, reaching over the stacks of lurid thrillers and romances with his coins. The old man was fussing about and looking for a paper bag. Jack was impatient: he had found Volume Six! He could hardly believe it! And only a pound!

  Now the old man was sliding it into the bag. He took a last look at the cover of the book, chuckling still and shaking his head. ‘Books of Mayhem: Volume Six,’ he grinned, and Jack could see bits of food tucked in-between his teeth. ‘That’s quite a find. You can’t have many more of these to get, can you? There was only twelve volumes in all.’

  Jack smiled. When he spoke his voice sounded—even to him shrill and untried and he found himself blushing. ‘That
’s right. There’s only this and Volume Twelve that I need to get.’

  To complete the set,’ wheezed the bookseller. ‘To complete the whole set.’ He glanced at the cover of the Book of Mayhem again. It showed a sheep’s skull with black candles burning all around it. Thick dark blood was streaming from the eye sockets of the sheep. It looked altogether too exciting for words. ‘Mind,’ said the man, at last taking Jack’s money, ‘Mind they don’t give you nightmares. The stories in these books… Well,’ and here the old man drew his breath in with a rancid whistle. ‘They’re quite nasty, they are.’

  Jack mumbled something to the effect that he quite liked scary stories, and beat a hasty retreat. Mission accomplished.

  He hurtled away through the stalls: ecstatic. He held the book in its wrapping in both hands in front of him. Volume Six! Twelve whole new stories to devour at leisure, alone, at home, without his mother knowing. She didn’t—absolutely didn’t—approve of the various volumes of the Books of Mayhem. Jack knew that she prayed he would grow out of them. One day he would stop being quite so absorbed in these macabre tales. These stories of monsters. But not yet. Certainly not yet. Certainly not until he’d completed the set. Now he was one step closer. It was pattering on to rain. Hard, merciless, frozen rain that sliced through the gaps in the awnings. He stowed the book away under his anorak. His mam would want to know how he’d spent his pocket money. She’d be disappointed, he knew.

  He had to meet her. He glanced at his watch as he hared through the crowds, through the fried food stalls, the pets, the fruit and veg. Almost time to meet her. Almost late.

  And then he froze.

  He was right by a stall that sold electrical equipment. It wasn’t the kind of thing that held much interest for him. There didn’t seem to be anyone tending to customers, and all the potential customers were streaming by: knotting scarves and tugging up their collars as the sharp wind keened around the corners of the stalls.

  This stall was a mess of tangled circuitry and half-dismantled equipment. Screens flickered and buzzed and cables and wires hung in despondent festoons. At first Jack didn’t know what it was that had snagged his attention. Then he looked again. And saw, set right back in the comer of the dimly-lit alcove, a small robot dog with its head hanging down.

  It was definitely supposed to be a dog. Its body was blocky and box-shaped and had a whole side missing, exposing a mesh of scrambled circuitry inside. It had a single antennae on its battered head, but its eyelike visor was still glowing a fierce red. Jack couldn’t help himself drawing closer to examine the toy.

  He touched it and it was humming with power. He didn’t think for a second that it might electrocute him.

  ‘You’re in a bad way, boy, aren’t you?’ he asked.

  ‘You’re telling me,’ the robot dog replied.

  Jack jumped back and stared.

  ‘Oh, don’t mind me,’ said the creature. ‘It’s only the first time I’ve spoken in about sixteen years. It’s nothing very special.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Jack gasped, coming closer again.

  And the robot dog told him.

  Nobody wanted to buy the robot dog. He wasn’t the kind of thing anyone wanted in that town. He was past his best and even he knew it. Even at the end of that first, startling conversation. Jack knew that the dog thought a lot of himself, as well he might.

  Jack had never quite seen anything like him before. He hadn’t realised anything like that could exist.

  The stall was owned and ran by a rough-looking young man with dyed black hair and thin, stringy arms. He didn’t like Jack hanging around. Jack had to choose quite carefully his moments when he talked to the robot dog. He had to make sure the nasty young man didn’t see they were conversing. The young man didn’t know half the things the dog could do.

  ‘He’s using me for spare parts,’ said the robot, depressed. ‘Bit by bit. Breaking me up. It’s true. Soon there’ll be nothing left.’

  ‘But that’s awful!’ Jack said. ‘Doesn’t he know what you are? Can’t you tell him you’re… real?’

  ‘I’m worth more to him as bits,’ the dog said. ‘He doesn’t care if I’m real or not. What does ‘real’ mean anyway?’ The dog’s electronic voice was querulous and philosophical. Jack was only thirteen. He wasn’t sure how to answer that. He didn’t want to hurt his new friend’s feelings, and he was sure that the dog really did have feelings. And he was sure that they had become friends, too. Jack would visit him every Saturday on his solitary traipse round the market stalls. The dog was always there, waiting, unmoved.

  ‘I’m not hurrying away anywhere,’ the dog moaned.

  But each week there was less of the robot left. One week another whole panel was missing. More circuitry was loose inside. His castors went, one at a time, and the dog felt less mobile than ever, that week.

  Jack took to leaving school early, even during the day. He bunked off and bussed into town midweek, to pay visits on his friend.

  ‘I am being whittled away,’ the dog said glumly.

  ‘I’m afraid you are,’ was all Jack could say.

  ‘And if only you knew,’ the robot said, ‘about the kind of life used to have! The adventures! The dashing about! I’m not used to this kind of misery, you know. In my day, I used to be quite chipper. Quite brave.’

  Then the young man with the black hair and the tattoos would turn up and ask Jack if he were ready interested in buying anything. And Jack would have to slope away.

  Sometimes Jack thought about telling his mother about the plight of the talking dog. He wasn’t sure that she’d understand. She mightn’t approve, either. Jack was very wary of his mother’s disapproval. Her nerves were worn to a frazzle and, though she kept up this immaculate front of hygiene and perseverance, he knew she was quite fragile really.

  She was warm towards him, but brusque: a real stickler for the right way of doing things. The efficient way, the cleanest way. She taught Jack all these things when he was very young. She wanted him to be self-sufficient and sensible when he grew up. She didn’t want him turning into one of those useless men: the kind who shambled around in their batchelor’s mess, wearing old vests and waiting for some poor woman to sort them out. Jack was raised to look after himself: to always act, think, speak, react—just so.

  His mother was conscious of the fact he had no father. It didn’t make any difference to Jack, who could hardly remember his dad. Mam would get the pictures out sometimes, on those evenings when she put old sentimental songs on and hauled out the faded albums. She had a proper record player and real old vinyl LPs. Jack would stare at the family pictures and try to make this stranger fit into his life. He couldn’t really imagine it. Not another person, living here. It wouldn’t fit somehow.

  But it would never do to say so. Not to his mam. His dad had died in a tragedy. Some terrible accident. A senseless event, when Jack had been a toddler. Something his mam would never talk about.

  Just like she didn’t like talk of monsters.

  So Jack would have to read his Books of Mayhem quietly, in his own room, where she couldn’t see.

  His mother played her records. Old vinyl records. Songs from the old shows. Crackling, oily records and these old-fashioned voices. Drinking sloe gin by herself in their shrouded living room, singing along to ancient songs.

  Jack reading his horror stories, listening abstractedly to his mother growing rowdier, more shrill, and muffled through the wall.

  ‘Your father was eaten by a monster!’ she howled from his bedroom doorway one night. She had come to say good night to him, dead drunk. She was propped on the threshold in her nurse’s uniform, the landing light brilliant behind her. ‘Eaten in broad daylight by a tyrannosaurus rex! By a dinosaur! In England! In the middle of the day!’

  She had found him reading one of his Books of Mayhem. He slid it away and weathered the storm.

  She had gone away in the end and he heard her turn the volume up on the stereo. She was listening to Gypsy. Ethel Merman
.

  By the morning she was her usual pristine self, and nothing more was said.

  The old records were what his mother sought out on the market when they went together on Saturdays. She would spend hours going through the racks and the old cardboard boxes. He had seen her slide the old discs out and examine them for scratches and gouges and the indelible marks of time. Once satisfied that a record was playable, then she would offer the vendor some small amount. But Jack knew that, however diffident she might seem, she was avid for all these old songs.

  She had a hobby. She was rescuing these records from oblivion. Otherwise they would fall forgotten by the wayside. Crunched into fragments, warped by the rain, melted down into ashtrays. The kinds of records perhaps only she was still interested in. Stage shows everyone had forgotten, and certainly everyone in them would be dead by now. To Jack, those preserved voices that his mother liberated at night via the cruel-looking stylus on the stereo, seemed ghostly and hollow. The very past itself came warbling and yodelling out of the dusty speakers of her system.

  But if it kept his mother happy, he was happy too.

  He knew he was growing up. He knew that, someday, he would have to leave her. And she knew that too.

  Some days Jack felt he was grown already. He had a proper man’s body: that’s how it felt. He ached and thrummed with energy and frustration. He knew he was ready for the world.