Kicking Up My Heels...in Heels

by Liam Livings

  They continued talking, but I left them to it, already feeling a bit bad for eavesdropping. I walked upstairs, one heavy foot at a time, wondering what Mum would do with my duvet cover and pyjamas once I was gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I DID SEE Barbara. Bruce managed to get me an appointment within the week—there seemed to be no end to the strings he could pull when needed—and we talked about the artefacts and how that was what I was worried about. I told her about Smokey the cat, and how the artefacts were worse than his death, they were like a constant reminder, some sort of living shrine to him in the house, and how I didn’t want the same for Mum and Tony, and Bruce. I wanted them to get on with their lives, as if I hadn’t been around, I didn’t want people wasting time on me, mourning, being sad, because after all, I’d brought it all on myself, and really, didn’t I deserve what had happened.

  She asked me why I thought I would be going so soon, explained Bruce hadn’t said that at all, and I looked pretty healthy—not that she was a doctor of course, she laughed at that.

  Despite all my feelings to the contrary, after the first session with her, I left the family planning clinic’s talking therapies room, with its box of tissues and soft chairs, feeling a bit lighter. I believed I could go on, maybe for a while, confident I didn’t have to worry about what artefacts I left behind, thinking I should maybe, for now, concentrate on using the things, living my life, and not thinking about what I’d leave behind me.

  OF COURSE, IAN was marvellous, he’d arranged a small show for me to appear at the small gay pub in Winchester. Bless him. He’d booked the venue, confirmed the payment, everything, all I had to do was turn up and sing. But I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay in bed, under the duvet not participating in my life, ignoring the world. I had told Ian there was something wrong with me; I didn’t go into details, said I’d had a health scare and he’d gone quiet at the end of the phone. He hadn’t pried, he’d said to take it easy and I needed to get back in the saddle. So, this little show in Winchester was his attempt at giving me a bunk up back into the saddle of my life, like getting on a small pony, or something.

  The only reason I actually turned up was because I didn’t want to let Ian and Tony down. Tony? He drove me there, it was like having my own personal chauffeur service. Tony Cars, or something. “Don’t get used to this,” he said, as we arrived at the pub car park.

  I was still a bit wobbly driving, so Tony and Ian had felt it was the best option to actually get me there.

  I couldn’t have given a shit about the audience, I didn’t know the audience, didn’t give them a second thought actually. But it was Tony and Ian who had spurred me on, one step at a time, to get up, get dressed and put my black and white outfit on, get into Tony’s car and go on stage.

  I wore a lacy black dress, like Morticia Adams from The Addams Family, pale white face and black lipstick, and eye shadow. It looked like I’d been punched in both eyes, but no matter, I’d done it, I’d got up, put my slap on and gone on stage. How was I meant to feel fearless, to be all I am Kev, hear me roar, when I was death and disease and what people should fear?

  Waiting in the wings, before going on stage, I did something I never do. Something I’ve not done since the first time I went on stage; I threw up on the floor.

  Tony rubbed my back, held my hair out the way as I spat a few remaining bits of sick onto the floor, then handed me a glass of water with two small tablets. “These will calm you down. Trust me.”

  I gulped them back, grateful for the fresh taste of the water instead of the acidy taste of the sick. The tablets went down in one gulp and I felt them doing their work, even though realistically that was impossible, but the mere act of swallowing them, taking them from Tony’s hand seemed to physically relax me somehow.

  Tony leant me against the wall, asked the back-stage person if I could have another five minutes, asked for something to clean up the mess, and then said, “What do you want to do with the rest of your life?”

  “Nothing.” I shrugged.

  “You can let this thing change you and your life, or you can refuse to lie down and let it win, and you can beat it, and get on with your life, with the Plan 2000. Which do you choose?”

  I shook my head, tears threatening to burst from my eyes and smudge my mascara down my cheeks. I shrugged. “Nothing. Can I choose nothing?”

  Tony accepted a mop and bucket from a backstage person and started cleaning up the mess. “I’ve not given up on you. Look I’m cleaning up your sick. So why should you give up on you?”

  I shrugged again, watching him as he cleaned up my mess, knowing I should feel grateful for what he was doing for me, but strangely not feeling quite in touch with that emotion, like how I’d felt disconnected from all emotions since the letter. I didn’t even feel hopeless, I felt nothingness instead.

  Tony stopped mopping, walked towards me. “Don’t think I won’t slap you again. Cos I will. Oh yes, I will.” His eyes stared straight through me, piercing my soul, what was left of it. He held his hand up, ready to slap me. “If I have to slap you into the middle of next week, if that’s what it takes for you to get back into your life. So, help me, Kylie, that’s what I’ll do.”

  Neither of us being particularly religious, him calling our next best thing, into the mix showed me how much he meant business.

  IT WAS ONLY a short set, so I only did two songs: “Stay” by Shakespeares Sister, followed by “The Monster Mash”. After all, I was the monster. I think there was some applause between songs, and after I’d finished, I can’t really remember. I didn’t have the energy for any audience participation or chatter; I barely had the energy for participation with Tony, never mind a room of strangers.

  Tony took me home in silence. Well, I was silent, he spent the whole journey trying to get me to talk, asking me how I’d thought it had gone, why had I chosen those songs, telling me he liked the makeup and outfit, I should try some stuff a bit darker sometimes, mix it up from all the show tunes I normally did. The whole way home, he didn’t stop talking. But I sat silently staring at the road as it approached us, mesmerised by the lights of oncoming cars, wondering what was happening in the cars of the other people.

  Tony bundled me inside, upstairs, into my room. Sat me at the dressing table, I stared at the face staring back at me from the mirror.

  He stood behind me, his hands on my shoulders. “You can’t go to sleep like that. You’ll mark the pillows with all that white and black muck on your face.”

  I blinked a tear rolled down my face, leaving a black smudge from my eye through my cheek and then onto my neck.

  “I have this love, and I’m not afraid to use it.” He held his hand out, wiggling the fingers.

  I blinked and a tear followed the same path on my other cheek.

  Tony knelt beside me, putting the makeup remover on a ball of cotton wool and slowly removed the makeup and tears from my face in gentle sweeping motions from the centre of my face to the edge, on first the right side, then the left. “Arms up.”

  I obeyed.

  He tried to pull the dress off up over my head but, realising I was still sat on part of it, asked me to stand.

  I obeyed.

  Eventually, with some wriggling and stretching, he pulled the lacy black dress over my head.

  I stood in my women’s underwear, my bra filled with the chicken fillets I always used. I shivered slightly.

  Tony unclipped the bra, then handed me an old T-shirt from my bed. “I’m not taking off your knickers. You can get in bed now.” He led me to my bed, tucked me in with a hug and a kiss. “It’s not much, but you got out and did it. That’s the most important thing.” He put a small pile of paper money on my bedside cabinet, turned off the light and standing by the door said, “I’m not giving up on you. You might have done, but I won’t.” And he was gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  TWO OR THREE days later, Bruce called. I had lost track of the days as they merged into one, and as I
didn’t have any reason to get up, I didn’t. Tony was at work and couldn’t be there to throw the covers back and get me out of bed, and Mum had tried a few times, as she left for work, but once she was out the house, I crawled back under the duvet into bed.

  One ear on the pillow, the other with my mobile phone clamped to it, Bruce said, “You need to come to the clinic now.” There was a pause. “As in now, now. This minute, leave the house, get into town, now.”

  “I know I said I’d sort out the tablets later, one thing at a time all right. I’m busy today. I’m tired. I’ll call you later.”

  “I made some calls. There was a big fuck-up. More than the letter, the appointment and the counselling. It’s good news. Get dressed and get to the clinic. Half an hour all right?” another pause. “I’ll call you back in five minutes to check you’re dressed. Go!”

  “My chauffeur is otherwise engaged. I’m not up to driving.”

  “Your chauffeur? Who’s that when he’s at home?”

  “Tony. He’s been driving me about. I couldn’t possibly drive. I’m still a bit all over the shop.” I was. I really was still very wobbly. But I was also milking the chauffeur bit slightly, ever so slightly if I was honest with myself. But I was ill, so if ever there was a time, I could milk it slightly, it was then.

  “Get on the fucking bus.” Bruce breathed heavily down the phone.

  “Too much. Can’t you tell me now? I can’t face a bus. Tony’s at work. He can’t take any more time off he said.”

  “Right, I’m sending a taxi round. Fifteen minutes. You’re gonna want to be here for this. Trust me. Just be dressed and not too smelly when the taxi arrives. Trust me.”

  “Yes.” I put the phone down, rolled over and had another few glorious minutes basting in my own sleepiness, dressed with a sprinkling of self-pity, which I was by now, well used to.

  A car’s horn beeped outside the house.

  I jumped from bed to see a taxi waiting outside the house.

  Shit. He really meant it. This must be some real shit he’s got to tell me. But could I really cope with another slice of shit pie like before? No, I knew I couldn’t. But he’d said it was good news. I distinctly remembered that, amid my morning foggy sleepy memory, he’d definitely said that. And Bruce was not a man to lie or pretend something was good when in fact it was really a shit sandwich, despite all his life is a journey crap, he was pretty straight talking.

  The horn beeped again.

  I leant out the window, shouted I’d be down. Throwing on some jeans, a T-shirt, jacket and trainers, not bothering with socks or underpants, I splashed my face at the bathroom sink, grabbed a cup full of mouth wash, which I swished around my mouth as I ran downstairs. Bursting out of the house, I slammed the door, and spat the mouthwash into the street at the same time.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  IN THE CONSULTATION room, I sat on the same bench where I’d had my blood sample taken. The black shaved-headed nurse stood next to me, and Bruce stood at the foot of the bench.

  Bruce said, “There’s lots of things going wrong with the clinic. The manager, wasn’t, well, managing very well. She was taking stuff home with her, taking things off other people, not delegating, confidential patient notes coming home with her on the bus, boxes of notes still at her house. Well, not any more, she’s gone, and we’ve got them, but before, it was all…” He looked at the nurse.

  “A bit of a mess.” She coughed. “A lot of a mess actually.” She paused, smiling at me, taking my hand. “A lot of things were mixed up. Samples, notes, letters, everything really.” She handed me a letter with the same logo as the previous one.

  I took it from her. “What’s this for? I’ve got mine. I don’t need another one.”

  “Read it,” Bruce said. “It’s what she said, there’s been some mix-ups. And your letter was one of them.”

  I couldn’t quite grasp what they were saying, amid all the stuff about the manager who’d not managed it so well, and all the things she’d done well, and the usual not feeling anything sensation I carried with me now. I glanced down at the letter, skipping the stuff I didn’t need to reread, until I got to the bit next to test results. Negative.

  It said, negative.

  I looked up from the letter. “Is this my letter?”

  They both nodded.

  “Negative.”

  Bruce nodded. “They mixed up some of the letters. Yours should have been negative all the time. Good, eh?” He smiled.

  I hugged him, still holding the letter with one hand. I let the new information sink in, allowing it to seep into all the cracks the old information had formed, allowing it to fill up the worries and doubts I’d had. Closing my eyes as Bruce hugged me. Then it struck me, a terrible thought. I opened my eyes, pulled away from the hug. “What about Tony? How many others have got the wrong letters? If mine was positive and should have been negative, what about the other way round?” The horror, the horror. I covered my mouth, thinking about the others who would be going through what I’d gone through weeks ago, including, possibly, Tony. It was too much to bear. I dropped the letter and closed my eyes tightly, it was all too much to think about, not now, not after he’d been so amazing to me, after he’d resigned himself to the good news, to have it all dashed away from under him.

  The nurse said, “There are some mix-ups with letters, both ways.”

  Bruce added, “We’re still working through them all. Like I said, it was a big mess; the manager hadn’t really been managing for months. We’ve got months and months of stuff to sort out.”

  I took my hand from my mouth. “Do you know about Tony?”

  “Not yet. But if we did, we couldn’t tell you, either way. Patient confidentiality.” He looked at the nurse, who nodded slowly, closing her eyes.

  “Fuck patient confidentiality, he’s my best friend. He’s my rock. He’s practically wiped my arse since I found out. I want to be able to help him. How am I meant to do that if I don’t know?”

  “Calm down. We have a system, a process face-to-face, or another letter, depending what the mix up was. We’re not sure, but we don’t think all of the letters are wrong, only a small proportion.”

  “But you don’t know if Tony’s in that small proportion?”

  “I can’t tell you, Kev. Patient…”

  “Fuck you and your patient confidentially. Fuck you and your process, this is my friend. He’s my brother. How about that?”

  “You’ll just have to wait.”

  “I’ve been told this, and I’m meant to tell Tony it was a mix up at the clinic, the clinic where he came with me to get his test, and I’m meant to say there’s nothing wrong with his, is that what I’m meant to do? I can’t lie to him. I physically can’t lie, not to Tony. If he asks me, I’ll have to tell him the truth; you’re looking into it, and he’ll know.”

  The nurse patted my shoulder, which I tried to shake off, but she continued, then said, “Tell him what you have to, but you can’t tell him if his letter was wrong or right, because you don’t know, because we’ve not told you.”

  They calmed me down slightly, and I briefly, allowed myself a small tiny celebration at what I’d been told about me, but it was quickly overshadowed by the worry about whether Tony would be affected by it too. I’d never felt so conflicted with emotions before in my life. One second I was happy for myself, the next worried and feeling guilty for Tony’s as yet unknown news.

  I walked around town for a while, mooching about the music shops, deciding if any of the chart hits were worth buying and learning, going to some of the better charity shops, scouring for clothes I could adapt, for either show outfits, or more every day looks. I even had some lunch, something I’d not done, unaided since I’d received the letter.

  I rang Bruce to ask if he could stretch to a taxi back for me, and after laughing and congratulating me on my cheek and front, he said go on then, on this occasion.

  I sat back in my taxi, revelling in the luxury and way it made me feel lik
e a very minor celebrity, until I got home.

  Mum was home from work, busying herself reorganising her crockery, checking for chipped ones, anything with a stain and sorting or throwing out the offending items.

  I told her as I walked into the kitchen, starting with the mix-ups at the clinic, and the letters, and read my new letter.

  She dropped two bright white plates she had been inspecting for imperfections. They both smashed on the hard floor, little bits of white plate on the floor all around her pink-slippered feet. “Give me that.” She took the letter from me, scanning it, blinking quickly to stop tears blurring her vision. “I’ll kill them. That bloody clinic, I’ll kill them. To have put us through this, all for nothing. Who do I kill? Someone needs to pay. I’ll write to them. I’ll write a complaint. No, I won’t, I will kill them.”

  “Can’t we put it all behind us, Mum? She’s gone, the manager, long gone. Let’s get on with our lives.” Quietly, half whispered, I said, under my breath, “We might have to do it all again, for Tony.” I could hardly bear to say it out loud.

  “Do what, love?”

  I waved the letter. “Tony.” It came out as a strangled noise, barely recognisable as his name.

  She asked what I was on about, so I explained about the far-reaching and significant mismanagement of the clinic, and how we didn’t know if it had affected Tony, and how in the meantime I had to sit on my hands and say nothing. Because I didn’t know anything.

  “You gonna tell him about yours?”

  “’Course. I can’t keep that from him.” I planned to keep it to this piece of information, and not mention the other possible mixed up letters, no point worrying him unnecessarily.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  THE SUN SHONE brightly in a deep blue, cloudless sky. I inserted a coin into the slot, pulled my trolley towards me, pushing back the long strands of my blonde wig, adjusting my bosom in the slightly too-tight, pink, halter-neck top as I leant forward, pulling the trolley backwards. I wobbled slightly as I steered it to the entrance, cursing myself for wearing such skin-tight, flared, light-denim jeans, and cork-soled platform sandals I hadn’t been able to resist from the New Look sale, but soldiered onwards anyway. This would be a piece of piss, compared with the bus journey before. I pulled the large pink sunglasses off my eyes, and rested them on my head, catching a glimpse of Mum a few steps behind me, doing the same wrestling coin insertion match with her trolley.