by John Niven
The English way – milk and two sugars into the abyss.
Alf managed a smile at that as, behind her, Julie heard an electrical whirr, the bang of the door being shunted open and then the bellowed greeting: ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY, YOU FUCKING OLD SHAGGER!’
She turned round. ‘Morning, Ethel.’
Ethel Merriman, eighty-seven, sat beaming in her electric wheelchair, her ‘grabbing stick’ – a telescopic device with a mechanical claw on the end that enabled Ethel to get hold of things that were out of her reach – tucked in behind her the way a coachman’s musket would once have been carried. Pushing twenty stone now, her hair a mad shock of reddish blonde framing a face that was somehow still pretty, a face that was right now set in its default expression, one best characterised as a merciless leer. Julie noticed Ethel had lipstick on her teeth. On the front of her wheelchair was a ‘WHERE’S THE BEEF?’ bumper sticker. On the back another proclaimed ‘I BRAKE FOR NO ONE’. Ethel took in Mr Bledlow, the bucket, the mop and soiled sheets wrapped in a ball. ‘Oh aye,’ she said. ‘Shat the bed, is it?’
‘Ethel!’ Julie snapped.
‘Hey, no bother,’ Ethel said. ‘Like my Oscar used to say – you’ve not been properly drunk till you’ve shat yourself. Here, Alf.’ Ethel reached under herself and tossed a bag of barley sugars into Alf’s lap. ‘Get stuck into that lot. Nicked them from that old cow Allenby down in 4C.’
‘Ethel!’ Julie said again.
‘You, birthday girl, shut it. Come on – fag break.’ Ethel pulled up the top of her leisure suit – a spectacular powder-blue velour number today – to reveal the pewter hip flask stuck in her waistband. ‘I’m holding.’
‘Jesus Christ …’ Julie sighed as two nurses came back into the room carrying fresh bedding for Alf, pushing their way around Ethel, ignoring her. They had previous. Everyone had previous with Ethel.
‘Morning, Nurse Bull, Nurse Diesel,’ Ethel said cheerfully to no response.
‘Right, five minutes,’ Julie said. ‘You be OK, Alf?’
Alf nodded, gratefully crunching a barley sugar.
THREE
‘SIXTY. YOU OLD bastard. You fucking ruin.’
They were out in the sunshine of the fire escape. ‘I know, Ethel. Christ, how did that happen, eh?’ Julie dragged deeply and passed the cigarette back to Ethel, glancing towards the door.
With a grunt Ethel levered herself up out of the wheelchair, trotted the few steps over, and pushed the fire door securely shut. Julie knew that the degree of Ethel’s immobility, like the degree of her deafness, was selective. She could get out of that wheelchair and move a few steps when it suited her all right, like when another resident had left a bag of boiled sweets temptingly unguarded and just out of arm’s reach.
‘Oh, shut up,’ Ethel said, taking the fag with one hand, the other clamped around her hip flask, glittering in the morning sun out here. ‘I’m just taking the piss. Sixty’s nothing. Fuck, when I was your age I was ruling. I had it all, bitch, let me tell you. So much cock …’ She took a pull on whatever was in the flask and let out a long, satisfied ‘ahhhh’ before adding, almost as an afterthought, ‘Fanny too.’ Julie laughed as Ethel offered her the flask. She shook her head. ‘Man up,’ Ethel said, still proffering the booze.
‘It’s just after nine, Ethel!’
‘Did I ask you the time? Did I ask you the fucking time?’
‘And I’ve got lunch with Susan later.’
‘Oof. Let the party begin.’
‘Oh, stop it. Susan’s all right once you get to know her.’
‘Boring,’ Ethel trilled.
‘And then we’ve got this party thing tonight after her rehearsal. You’re still coming?’
‘A few hours out of here? Even the Wroxham Players are sufferable for that. But to return to the matter in hand.’ Ethel looked at the hip flask, as though it contained the key to all mythologies. ‘You seem to have misunderstood me. I did not ask for the time. Nor did I enquire as to your bastard schedule for the next twenty-four hours. I simply requested that you join me in a drink on your birthday.’
‘Oh God,’ Julie groaned, reaching for the thing. She glanced again towards the fire-escape door and took a quick swallow. She felt neat gin scorching her innards, torching through her like a house fire seeking oxygen. ‘Shiiitttt.’
Ethel laughed. ‘Martini. My own recipe. Well, I say my own. I nicked it from an RAF boy, just after the war. What was the bugger’s name? Cecil? Cedric? Celly? Something wet. Flew Mosquitoes out of Duxford. Not much up top but fit as a Dobermann in the employ of a retailer of meats, if you catch my meaning.’
‘Yes, Ethel. It’s not that obscure, your meaning.’
‘Gin had to be near freezing, viscous, was his rule. And you just rubbed the Vermouth bottle against it.’
She passed the fag back. Julie took it and they looked over the rooftops of the home together: chimney pots, puddles on the flat asphalt, TV aerials, decaying brickwork. The sun was already warm though. It looked like it would be a fine day. Ethel watched Julie smoke, her cheeks flushed slightly from the gin and a faraway look in her eyes. ‘Right, out with it,’ Ethel said.
‘What?’
‘Don’t fucking what me.’
‘It’s just … sixty, Ethel. This isn’t where I thought I’d be.’
‘Where did you think you’d be?’
‘I dunno. Somewhere nicer than this. Not living in a rented flat. Mopping up piss.’
‘You think you’ve got problems? Here, give us a last drag on that. Look at me – star of stage and screen reduced to mixing my own cocktails in a locked bathroom and stealing barley sugars from sleeping pensioners.’
‘Were you really famous, Ethel?’
‘From Piccadilly to the Amalfi Coast, darling – if it had a bar and a stage chances are I’ve sung and danced in it.’
They both turned at the sound of someone trying to force the fire-escape door. It was only a second or two before the door scraped open, but that was enough time for Ethel to deftly peg the smouldering butt over the ledge with one hand while, with the other, she reholstered the hip flask like a gunslinger who’d just blown someone away. They found themselves facing the hulking form of Miss Kendal. Kendal was in her mid-thirties, florid of complexion, her hair hanging in a loose greasy fringe. She was crammed into a business suit slightly too small for her and carried her ever-present clipboard. She looked to Ethel like someone who consumed her meal-for-one alone every night and who masturbated joylessly twice a year. She looked like someone who crapped out in the early rounds of The Apprentice.
‘What’s going on out here?’ Kendal asked, already – always – suspicious.
‘Papers please!’ Ethel said in a heavily Germanic accent. Kendal ignored her.
‘Just took Ethel out for some fresh air, Miss Kendal.’
Kendal sniffed nicotine-tainted air, eyes narrowing.
‘Miss Wickham, as you’re leaving us early today, I’m sure there must be some duties you can be attending to?’
‘Yes, Miss Kendal.’
‘Right. Well then.’
The door banged behind her. Instantly Ethel had both sets of V-signs aloft and was blowing the world’s biggest raspberry.
‘Oh, grow up, Ethel,’ Julie said.
FOUR
SUSAN SAT ALONE at the table in La Taverna, the best Italian restaurant in Wroxham, and sipped her mineral water. She glanced at her watch again. Julie was a little late. (Susan Frobisher and Julie Wickham – with the names they had Susan sometimes thought that the only place they could ever have existed was in some dreary soap opera about Middle England.) The gift-wrapped box nestled beside her and Susan felt the warm, anticipatory tingle of someone who knows they have bought the perfect gift. She’d lied to Barry that morning – she’d spent a lot more on Julie than she’d meant to.
And it did cross Susan’s mind – was there vanity involved in the gift giving, the lunching, with Julie? Was there pride? I can do this, see? Was there even cru
elty? Because there had been a time, and it wasn’t even so long ago, when it looked like Julie’s life was going to outstrip her own. She’d travelled a lot, Julie, in her twenties and thirties. London, Europe, America, Australia even. Then she’d come back home at the end of the eighties and there had been the salon, then the boutique, then the second boutique over in Axminster. Running about town in her little SLK. The string of boyfriends, some from London, some of them impossibly glamorous, older than her, younger than her, Julie didn’t care what people thought.
She’d finally settled on Thomas, a debonair colt ten years her junior, and it seemed, for a moment, caught there at the apex of her flight, that Julie ‘had it all’: her own business, handsome young lover, flash car. And there was Susan – still married to boring Barry whom she’d known since school. Pottering about with her roses and her bread-making and her am-dram.
And then it all came crashing down: the tax problem, the business slump, and, finally, young Thomas disappearing one night with the company chequebook, never to be seen again.
It would be unfair to say that Susan had taken comfort in Julie’s fall because it allowed her to be alpha female on deck. Grossly unfair. She did love Julie. But lifelong friendships are curious things – the yardsticks by which we often measure ourselves. They were deep pools where there were tensions, currents and strange eddies that it was best to steer clear of. But, at the end of the day and all that, here they were, both turning sixty this year. It looked like the results were in and Susan was the one with her nose across the finishing line.
And here was her yardstick coming through the door now, already mouthing ‘Sorry!’ Susan’s face broke into a smile as she rose to greet her.
‘Happy birthday, darling!’
The two women embraced, Julie hoping the last blast of Chanel she’d given herself had masked the lingering reek of ammonia and institution. (It had been almost the last of the Chanel too, the small bottle she’d nursed carefully since Susan gave it to her two Christmases ago.)
‘Sorry I’m late. I couldn’t get parked anywhere. Where did you park?’
‘The little one, across from Debenhams?’
‘Oh, right.’ Good. Across from Debenhams. That’d be a left out of the restaurant then. Julie needed to know this.
Susan was signalling to the waitress now who, as arranged, was coming into view with an ice bucket containing a bottle of Moët & Chandon. She placed it on the table with a flourish.
‘Oh God, champagne! Susan!’
‘My treat.’
‘It’ll have to be, love.’
‘I mustn’t have more than two glasses though. I’ll be plastered. You’re still coming to the party tonight, aren’t you?’
‘Yeah, of course. Ethel too.’
‘Oh God. Will she behave?’
‘You know Ethel …’
Susan did know Ethel.
Julie had brought her to their Christmas drinks party last year. She’d drunk six snowballs, lit a cigarette in the kitchen, then propositioned one of the boys working for the catering company in the downstairs bathroom before turning the music off and singing an – admittedly very tuneful – a cappella version of some rugby song, something called ‘Barnacle Bill the Sailor’ (Susan remembered a couplet that went ‘You can sleep upon the mat. Oh, bugger the mat you can’t f*** that.’ She’d thought Jill Worth was going to faint) before Julie wheeled her into the conservatory where she passed out.
As the waitress cracked the cork and Julie settled herself, fussing with napkin, cutlery and menu, Susan decided she couldn’t wait any longer, certainly not until the end of the meal. ‘Oh bugger, look, here, darling. Happy birthday!’ She placed the box on the table.
‘Christ,’ Julie said.
‘Openitopenitopenit …’
‘God! OK! Hang on …’
Julie started fiddling with the bow as the waitress finished pouring the champagne. ‘I’ll give you ladies a few moments with the menus. And happy birthday by the way!’
‘Thank you!’ Julie said.
‘Come on!’ Susan squeaked, clapping her hands together.
With a riiiip Julie tore the paper off. She saw the hallowed words immediately, inscribed right there on the glossy box: CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN.
‘Oh, Susan.’
Another squeak from Susan.
Julie removed the top from the shoebox as carefully as an archaeologist might remove the lid from a sarcophagus. There they were – classic black, open-toed, the famous red soles seeming to almost glow.
‘Oh fuck,’ Julie said.
‘I know it’s a bit OTT but it is your sixtieth and they were on sale and you are the only woman our age I know who still has the legs to carry them off and –’
Susan stopped jabbering. Because she saw that, across the table from her, Julie’s eyes were beginning to brim. And these did not look like the expected joyous tears of gratitude either. They looked like something else entirely. And Julie was not a crier. ‘Julie, are you –’
‘No. Please. Just give me a minute. I don’t want my mascara to run.’ Julie fanned at her face with one hand while taking fast, shallow breaths, her eyes craning upwards, as though trying not to look at the tears forming in the ducts below.
Susan glanced nervously around the restaurant. This wasn’t going at all as she’d imagined it would. After a moment it looked like Julie had it under control. She took a long draught of champagne and gazed at the shoes sadly.
‘What’s the matter? I thought you’d love –’
‘I do love them, Susan. They’re gorgeous. It’s just … where am I going to wear these? Now. At my age. Mopping up at the home?’
‘Come on, love. It’s only temporary. It was all you could get.’
‘Or running for the bus? Sitting in that bloody flat on a Friday night?’ Julie sighed. The shoes said impossible glamour. Infinite promise. All the things Julie was flat out of.
Susan said, ‘Bus?’
Julie sighed. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you. That’s why I asked where you’d parked. I was going to pretend I had to go the other way. I wasn’t late because of parking. I was late because the bloody bus was late. The car broke down three weeks ago. Some bloody manifold arse or other. Five hundred-odd quid they want to fix it.’ About exactly what the shoes cost, Susan had time to reflect while she tried to picture Julie on a bus. That SLK didn’t seem so long ago. ‘It might as well be a million.’
‘Julie.’ Susan leaned across the table, taking her friend’s hand. ‘I’ve told you before, if you want to borrow –’
‘No.’ Julie shook her head. ‘We’re not starting down that road.’
‘But you need your car.’
‘I can barely afford to run it anyway. Have you seen the price of petrol now?’
‘I know.’ Susan couldn’t have told you the price of a litre of petrol with a gun at her head. It just went on the card. Barry dealt with it all. They sat in silence for a moment. The shoes and champagne unregarded on the table between them. The waitress approached the table, notepad at the ready. Susan smiled softly and shook her head and the girl retreated. ‘Well,’ Susan said, ‘some birthday celebration this turned out to be. Nice going, Susan.’
‘I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. It’s all lovely of you, it’s just … sixty. I mean, you can’t go on fooling yourself at this age, can you? I’m not going through some kind of slump or whatever. This is it. This is how my life turned out, Susan. On my own in a rented flat, working in a care home.’
‘You’re a bit down. Birthdays can be hard.’
‘I just …’
Julie looked out across the restaurant, through the windows, down towards the pub-encrusted town centre where the two of them had run gleefully in their late teens and early twenties, their lives a blur of fun and possibility stretching ahead of them. Julie seemed to see everything that had happened between then and now, all the wrong turns and bad decisions and half-baked schemes appearing to her as a mad parade. ‘I got a gas bi
ll the other day for January to April. Two hundred and fifty quid. For a one-bedroom flat. I just … we’re old, Susan, aren’t we? I can remember bloody Wilson getting elected and I can’t remember life ever being as hard as this. It’s just so fucking hard.’
‘You know what we’re going to?’ Susan said. ‘We’re going to eat something and drink this champagne and then we’re going to go and return these stupid bloody shoes and we’ll use the money to get your car fixed and pay your gas bill. That’s what we’re going to do.’
Julie smiled for the first time in a while and said, ‘Never speak ill of the shoes, Susan.’
FIVE
DESPITE HER EXCITEMENT Jill Worth took the time to fully engage the handbrake before she got out of her ageing Polo and hurried round to the boot. Using all her strength she lifted the big jar out. It was the kind of jar used to store boiled sweets in old confectionery shops. A hole had been cut in the metal lid and the jar had been filled nearly to the brim with money: silver and bronze coins mainly, but there were a good few crumpled five-pound notes threaded through there as well. ‘Nearly six hundred quid I reckon, Mrs Worth,’ the barman at the Black Swan had told her, proudly slapping the lid. And that was just since Christmas! Less than five months!
She walked carefully up the short path, carrying the jar sideways, like a newborn, and rang the doorbell. She waited a few moments then rang again. Nothing. ‘Linda?’ she called through the door. Muffled noises from up the stairs. Then shouting. ‘Come in, Mum.’ Jill opened the door and walked into the hall grinning with her prize in her arms. When she saw her daughter sat halfway down the stairs, slumped against the wall, her grin crumbled. Linda was a mess – panda eyes, mascara blotched down her cheeks, a sheen of sweat on her forehead. ‘Darling,’ Jill began, ‘what hap—’
