by Liz Jensen
—Gimme a go at it, gimme a go! I go, and I’m in a frenzy of it, half falling out of the wheelchair, and I take the stick and I bash the fish too, bash it till it’s well dead, no more of that flip-flopping. And then I see her. The baby.
She’s in the water, floating but upright.
She is stark naked and covered in mud and weeds. She’s clutching a mush of fabric in one fat hand, maybe parachute silk, and in the other fat hand a string of whitey-pink glass beads what is mine, I recognise them, My bloody beads! Gimme them back! and the look she’s giving me, it’s full of hate. Hate hate hate. I hate you, she’s saying but silent, just saying it with the power of her thoughts. You might think a baby don’t feel no hate, babies only feel love. But you are wrong because she is feeling hate all right, this one. Then she slips away again and all I can hear is the murmur of Zedorro, his voice all calm and quiet, going, Imagine a stretch of water.
I go wuzzy for a minute and then I try to think of a joke but I can’t, so I give the fish another bash for luck, more stinky blood that’s darker than you think. Zedorro, says a little voice in my head, as I’m bashing and bashing. Zedorro and the Slut Fairy.
What’s happening? The men are shooting me looks, lidding up their maggots, buggering off as if I am a mad old lady gone over the top with something. Oh I get it. This here is not in real actual-factual life the famous-celebrity fish. It’s a bloody blinking impostor.
—The one we were after, he was twice as big, says Hank. —This is only medium-sized. By the way, you totally lost it there, Mum. I mean one hundred per cent. Look what you’ve done, its head’s just pulp.
—I need a wee, I tell him, even though in fact it’s too late because the chair’s gone clammy and my skirt’s got a stain of wet.
He didn’t need to of told me it wasn’t the one, did he. It looks big enough to me and now he’s ripped all the glamour out of it, and the baby girl from the lake, with her mush of fabric and her beads, Gimme them bloody beads back, you little bitch, she has got me so shook and muddled that I can’t think of a single bloody joke.
—Is there a lav round here? I go, and it comes out as a croak. Hank does this big sigh.
When we’ve changed my undies, which is a complicated ruddy hoo-ha even with Disabled, and the fishing gear’s packed and the wheelchair’s folded in the boot, it’s a folding one, Hank collapses it quicker than you can blink, he’s always been good with his hands ever since he was a little boy –
Where –?
Inside me there’s a story about Zedorro and the Slut Fairy, a story that’s screaming to say itself, worse than a joke I can’t remember, worse than some food I can’t lay my hands on. But I lose track, all I know is that in times of war you drop your knickers easier, but they’re all civvies here, in mufti, what is called leisurewear, they’re in no hurry, they don’t see no wrecker balls. If you had known me in the old days you’d have said, She’s not evil or even bad, she is just a girl in wartime doing war things. In fact I like her spark which is now next to nothing, just a tiny pilot light what is small and greeny-blue and trembles in the wind. In times of war you drop your knickers easier. At least I did, I won’t deny it, but it wasn’t like you think. I know what you’re thinking if you are someone watches telly. It wasn’t like that. And if I did something bad –
—Come on, now, let’s get going, says Hank. —Get this customer in, and shoot off home, eh?
The impostor fish goes in the boot wrapped in the Daily Express. You can smell the cold greenish pond smell in the car even with the air freshener which is like a credit card that you hang from the mirror and is lavender flavour.
He’s ruined the day as far as I’m concerned. Might as well have dropped a bomb on it. A doodlebug or one of them incendiaries that you can only put out with sand.
SLUT FAIRY
At the flicks in London – the Regent, cos the Scala was bombed out – they showed a newsreel of a concentration camp they’d opened up like a big old can of worms. Blimey. You wanted to close the lid on it and run away. They didn’t warn you properly or nothing, about how disgusting it was going to be. They just showed it.
No one wants to be photographed or filmed not looking their best, do they? Especially not in the nude. But there they were, those poor bastards. I mean you can take being slim too far. Some of them was just limping skeletons, and some just lay there in their beds or on the floor. They was going to die, them ones, no matter what. They didn’t say it on the newsreel but you could see it. They’d died long ago in their heads, the thing that was human had been sucked out of them.
One woman – I could tell she was a woman because there was the remains of tits on her chest – she looked so terrible. Even if you’d tried to improve her with a bit of nose-powder and some lipstick, and given her a nice wig for hair, she’d still have looked like a bloody nightmare. Death warmed up, she was, and her haggardy Jew eyes followed you, accusing, as if what Hitler did to her was your fault, as if you didn’t have enough problems of your own to keep you awake nights.
My heart was thumping like mad, and my breathing wasn’t right, so in the end I got up and barged my way along the line of seats and out into the street, where there was a bloke who left just before me, throwing up all over the pavement.
That Jew woman with the remains of tits, she didn’t never let me alone after that.
I couldn’t do no proper crying, so I just walked and walked, by all the bombed-out shops and houses, craters and rubble everywhere. Saw an upstairs room cut clean in half. Saw the wallpaper, and a fireplace with a mantel and a mirror above. Table looked set for a meal, plates and all, and chairs. Bit of red carpet hanging down flapping in the wind, like a busted doll’s house.
Still I felt her, those eyes following me all down the street, blaming me for stuff I didn’t do. I couldn’t think of a joke and I got hungrier and hungrier for banana custard, tinned peaches, jam roly-poly, real oranges, all those things you couldn’t get.
Sometimes in the night when I can’t sleep I still see those haggardy Jew eyes. And sometimes in the day I can still feel them on me. It’s like I never shook her off.
Hypnotism works like this. You get a man, it is usually a man, who has a way of looking into your eyes that reaches right clear to your soul. He tells you to do a thing you want to do anyway. You do it. And when it’s done, who takes the blame?
Him?
You?
No one?
The war?
The curtain’s twitching.
I know what’s making it twitch. It’s her. The little girl, the floating one from Gadderton, giving me the once-over. I don’t have to see her to know she’s there, I can feel her sucking away on them glass beads of mine wrapped in her mush of parachute silk like an ugly little mermaid that’s an abortion.
Twitch twitch.
Well, sod it, I’m calling her bluff, I am. She gave me a bit of a shock at the lake, I won’t deny it, made me lose it with the dead fish. But now I know she’s just one of them things happen at my age, like widdle escaping into your knickers before you reach the lav, like Zedorro and the Slut Fairy popping up out of nowhere, like catching an impostor and bashing its head to pulp, cos you got in a time muddle. Like forgetting the bloody punchline.
So she can twitch away behind that curtain all she likes, but it won’t butter no parsnips with me, I can just blinking well ignore her and that is what I ruddy well plan to do.
—You hear that, young madam? I call across. —You hear what I’m planning? Cos excuse me, if anyone’s a victim of atrocity, it’s me.
It’s quite a show. Look at him in his black and white and red, and the Slut Fairy flashing her sequins like a lit-up whore. First comes the tricks with rabbits and hats ever so slick, and then the coloured handkerchiefs which is silk-looking. Then he gets the Slut Fairy in a wood cabinet and saws her in half.
—They do this with mirrors, hon, Ron murmurs at me. —I seen it before back in Chicago.
On and on goes the sawing, with he
r legs at the bottom and her head at the top. And I wouldn’t’ve grieved if that was for real the way Ron’s looking at her, his eyes swooping up and down like searchlights in the Blitz. I feel like telling him when she comes out (all in one piece, but if you think about it, it’d be a much better show if she was in bits), she’s wearing falsies under that blinking tutu, mate – but we’re not that close yet and he might think less of me so I keep my trap shut. Anyway the cutting-in-half stuff was just to get our appetite going, because everyone knows what the Great Zedorro’s speciality is, don’t they, he’s world-famous for his powers of Mind Control, it says so on the posters outside.
—Now are any of you ladies and gentlemen feeling the urge to come on stage? Do I have any risk-takers in the audience? goes Mr Zedorro. Anyone feel their hand ready to shoot up and say yes to something?
There certainly is, mister. It’s me, and my hand’s shot up, so eager it’s straining the stitching in my blouse.
—Hey what’s up, honey, siddown, goes Ron.
But I’m wanting this, wanting to show Ron what I am made of, which is not the same as the Slut Fairy because I can work precision tools in a factory and earn ten quid a week plus danger money, and I saw Iris blown up this morning, saw her arm and shoulder on the floor –
—Siddown, sweetie.
—No! You watch, I want to do this!
Because I am the risk-taker in the audience, aren’t I. I am feeling the urge, just like the man said. I am not the only one with my hand up, but mine’s the highest.
And Ron can see there’s no stopping me and so I’m up there on the stage and the great Zedorro’s kissing my hand like he is a romantic foreigner such as a spic.
—Please be seated on this chair. What is your name, please? Ah, right now, Miss Winstanley, have you ever been exposed to hypnotism before? There is no need to feel hesitation of any kind, because you will at all times be in control of your own destiny, as it were; all you need do is trust me. Do you trust me, do you think, Miss Double-U? Even though I am a relative stranger to you? We are taught not to trust strangers, are we not – and there is after all a war on. Yet there are times when we do. Do you feel you are in safe hands with me, Miss Double-U? Do you feel that you are in some way part of a family here? That the audience in this theatre will not let anything bad happen to you? Just as your family would protect you, should they sense any danger approaching?
And while he keeps up his patter the Slut Fairy’s bringing more chairs out from behind the red hoopy curtain, and standing them in line till there’s a whole little row of them next to the one I’m sitting on. And from up here I can see her legs might be better than mine but I’ve a bigger bust, and what’s more hers is definitely fake bosoms bought in a shop, she’s probably flat as a pancake underneath. I will tell Ron this later, I will.
—And now will my lovely assistant please fetch the final item? he goes.
And the Slut Fairy brings out a little stand from behind the curtain, and fetches this big glass bowl full of oranges and perches it on top of the stand. Looks lovely, it does, that strong orange colour. I count six. Feels like years since I ate one. I can feel my mouth water, even though from close up you can see they’re fakes like the bosoms.
—Remember, ladies and gentlemen and Miss Winstanley, he’s going. —Nobody can be hypnotised against their will and nobody can be persuaded under hypnosis to do something they don’t want to do. So whatever you see Miss Winstanley here doing will be of her own free will under my direction. Do you think of yourself as suggestible, Miss Double-U?
I giggle a bit, and say —Dunno, might be. Try me then.
—So shall we, ladies and gentlemen? Should Miss Winstanley trust me, do you think?
And they’re roaring yes and I’m feeling all those eyes on me. A million dollars. The Great Zedorro’d like me to stretch myself out along the row of chairs as if it’s a bed, and close those beautiful eyes. So I do that, no problem. And I will continue to follow his suggestions, thank you, Miss Double-U. Well, he goes on suggesting one thing after another, such as I will choose of my own free will to do as he says, because I am at all times perfectly safe. And none of it seems unreasonable and I’m perfectly calm, aren’t I, because it don’t seem unreasonable to lie down on my back on the row of chairs. It don’t seem unreasonable to do the next thing he suggests to me neither. Feels like the most natural thing in the world, as a matter of fact, very do-able.
—Now, Miss Winstanley. I want you to become aware of your body transforming itself into . . .
Then he pauses and whispers, very intense —A rod of iron.
You can hear the audience suck in their breath and do some wondering – but me I’m in no doubts, because straightaway I let this big bold feeling of weight and power creep up on me from somewhere inside, and I am for the first time in my life certain of what it feels like to be not flesh but metal. Nothing simpler. What’s more, I am not just any rod of iron, I am the best, strongest and most rigid rod of iron there ever bloody was.
So not unreasonable to stay like that while a drum-roll sets up from somewhere nearby, and Zedorro and the Slut Fairy start taking away the chairs, one after another, from in between my head and my feet. No trouble, what with being so rigid. I can feel the chairs going, first one under my shoulders then a second from under my knees till there’s just one left under my bum, and then the drum-roll gets louder and I feel the chair slide away and hear a big old gasp from out there, because there I am, a human rod of iron, head on one chair, feet on another, nothing in the middle except Zedorro’s Mind Control what I have agreed to.
It is good to feel all those eyes on me. I feel calm, like I did in the factory when Iris’s shoulder got ripped out of its socket.
—Now I am going to place this heavy bowl of oranges on Miss Double-U’s stomach, he goes. —As you can see, she is in a state of rigidity. She is perfectly conscious of her state, and she remains in it of her own free will.
The drum-roll sets up again and when it reaches a pitch some cymbals clash and I feel the bowl park on my belly, and hear another gasp and a wow from the stalls. But as I’m still a rod of iron, it don’t make no difference to me, it ain’t no weight, as the oranges are phonies, made of papier mâché or something what is hollow.
—Voilà! goes Zedorro, and I suppose he and the Slut Fairy now takes a bow, because there is clapping and whistles and catcalls.
Is it the oranges that’s impressing them? Could be, because real ones’d set you back well over two bob a pound on the black market, but no, it’s really me that’s getting them all worked up. I mean how often do you get to see a thing like that? I have to keep my eyes shut of course or the spell will be broken, but I hear a pop and there’s a little white flash so someone has taken a picture, that I do know. A photograph of Miss Double-U the human rod of iron with a bowl of fake oranges on her belly.
Ooh and aah, I’m hearing. His voice calms you down.
—What you are witnessing here, ladies and gentlemen, is the power of auto-suggestion . . . Now very importantly, I can make this subject emerge from the hypnotic state at any time by a simple snap of the fingers . . . Miss Double-U here can hear my voice and everything I am saying to you but it is her choice to remain rigid for as long as I ask her to . . .
This is the life, I thought.
Then, too soon, I can feel the bowl being taken off my tummy and the chairs being slid back underneath me one by one, and then he says. —You may now return to your normal state, thank you, Miss Winstanley, and the minute he says that I am all flopped again, a bit jelly-like, it feels, after being a rod of iron.
Then I’m to stand up, and show the ladies and gentlemen that I am back to normal again, so that’s what I do, and I give a little wave, and try to see where Ron’s sitting so’s I can blow him a kiss, but I can’t spot him with the lights, and the cymbals clash again, da-zong, for quiet.
—The power of Mind Over Matter, says Zedorro. —Salute it, ladies and gentlemen. It is willpower that
will help us through this war, the willpower of ordinary men and women like Miss Winstanley here. What you have seen tonight is not a miracle, it is more than that.
He stops and looks around, makes sure they’re listening.
—What Miss Winstanley has personified for us tonight is nothing other than the triumph of the British spirit!
Well, they love this old bollocks, don’t they, because they’re whooping and clapping and God Save the King-ing, and everyone stands, and there we are on the stage, me and Zedorro and the Slut Fairy, celebrating Mind Over Matter, and me feeling special, like from this moment on, my life will not be the same because I have according to Zedorro boosted the war effort by being a human rod of iron and helping morale with fake oranges.
—You looked so cute, he said later, once I’d told him all about the Slut Fairy’s false tits.
—How cute?
—Real hot.
He sounded like the flicks.
—How real hot?
—This real hot, he’d go, and we’d be at it again, cos it was our private secret, our own little country where only Ron and me spoke the secret filthy lingo.
We have our tea early, so the cook woman can go home and do it all over again for her family. I’ve found myself a nice chair, it’s the chair of an old bird who croaked a week ago but I don’t believe in ghosts and even if I did I wouldn’t fuss. The little kid from Gadderton Lake, she’s still loitering behind the curtain near the tropical-fish tank, you’d get a good view of it from there, see them flitting about like little underwater fireworks. Every now and then one of them ends up floating. They bloat out when they die, full of the gas of death.
Hank shows up after Doris has spilt her stew and the news, where bad things is always happening. I don’t watch it myself, I’d rather not know, thanks.
—Hi, Mum, nice sleep then?
They’re showing this heart-and-lung transplant girl’s birthday party on telly, but he wants to talk about this bit of paper he’s waving.
