by Liz Jensen
—I’d like to take over power of attorney. It’s all been drawn up by the solicitor. Thought it was time I dealt with your admin, if you’ve no objection. What with the stroke and your memory going. Here’s a pen, there we go, and here are your reading specs, that’s it, pop them on. I’m off on the rigs again, two weeks on, two weeks off, so I’m getting a few bits and bobs sorted before I go. If you’d like to sign? We’ll need a couple of witnesses. ’Scuse us, Mrs Manyon? he calls over. —Care to do the honours here?
But Mrs Manyon – she’s the one in charge of the darkies here who natter in corridors, some are thin and some are fat – she’s busy.
—That old boy she’s seeing to, I tell him, name of Ed Mayberley, he’s pushing ninety, he was a POW in Japan like Dad. He can’t keep his hands to himself, he can’t. Yesterday I saw him grabbing one of the foreign girls. She nearly screams the place down and slaps him. It’s abuse, that. Someone should report her.
He’s put the bits of paper in front of me, fanned out on the tray. It looks official.
—When you’re ready, Mrs M? he goes.
Now when I see the papers like that, looking official, some little voice from somewhere inside me tells me, This signing lark is not a one hundred per cent good idea, Gloria, but I can feel the little girl’s eyes on me, boring their way in like two drills, and I can’t think of a joke.
So when Mrs Manyon comes over with a pen and the new care assistant fresh in from the Philippines, I scribble my name quick to get rid of her, and the Philippine girl pretends to read the writing and she signs too, in big letters, Conchita la Paz.
She can’t be more than twelve.
—Anything to eat round here? I go. Because all of a sudden I could devour an entire bloody horse.
What happens when you get hypnotised is nothing you don’t want to happen, that’s what Zedorro said, and he wasn’t lying, he wasn’t no con-man or nothing, he was just a bloke had certain useful powers. It’s not like he was Hitler, hypnotising a whole bloody nation into stirring up a world war. The truth is that I had never thought about being a human rod of iron before, but when he suggested it to me I wanted to be one. And thanks to him having the idea, and me liking it, between us, him and me, and the Slut Fairy, we held a whole theatreful of people spellbound. And to anyone who says that’s a crime, I say bollocks. Hitler was a criminal. The people who followed his orders, they was criminals. But me and the Slut Fairy and Zedorro, we was just three small people living in evil times. You try to go making any comparisons about the rod of iron thing and anything else that happened later, to me or anyone else, and you are sick and mad.
* * *
—Did you hear what Marty Lone said about his mum the other day? says Doris. She means Rubber-Lips, the Gay Homosexual. —Still tucks him up in bed if he’s feeling poorly, she won’t let another woman near him.
—I was like that with Hank when he was a boy. Did everything for him. Tied his shoelaces and combed his hair and put plaster on his knees when he fell off his bike. Helped him with his Airfix models and took him fishing because he didn’t have no dad.
Her granddaughter’s sent a box of chocs, she’s been bragging about it but she’s not sharing. She’s picking out all the orange ones first.
—Did you sign that piece of paper then? she goes. —Because you shouldn’t of, you’ve signed away your rights.
She’s talking nonsense but it’s wormed its way in, and next thing I know I’ve called the Welsh nurse.
—Anything I can get you there, Gloria? she goes.
—Has someone reported you yet? I go. —For attacking poor old Ed? Because it’s called abuse.
—Cup of tea? Coffee?
—I saw what you did. I saw that slap.
—Leave off, Gloria, goes the decrepit one. —Maja’s a good girl and anyway she’s not Welsh, are you, love, you’re just a foreigner.
—From Croatia.
—It’s Abroad, goes the decrepit one. —They had a war there, didn’t they, love? Is it over, or is it one of them ones goes on and on?
—Two my brother disappear, one uncle. Tea, coffee?
—Tea, we both say, simultaneous.
—She’s got a bun in the oven, I whisper to Doris while the girl pours a cuppa.
—Really? goes D, all smiles. —Is it true you’re pregnant, dear?
Ooh, you should see her face. She barely finishes pouring, then crashes off, knocking over some old creature’s drip.
—Gloria, do you have second sight or something?
And I say —Yes, as a matter of fact I do.
But a bad feeling’s squirming about inside me, and I could do with my mum, and Marje, and Hank’s Wife making chips in the kitchen, and me and Calum cuddled up on the sofa watching Teletubbies.
It’s the night and she’s there. The little girl. She was smaller last time, she was just practically a baby, but now she’s older, about four or five, wearing a yellow pinafore dress with just a little smear of mud and a plosh of pond-weed on it. Hair dripping wet. Sitting right on the bed with these whitey-pink beads made of glass that string together on a long string, they’re mine, I know it, I found them on a bomb-site in London and I’m thinking: gimme. She’s working like billy-o, stringing together one and then another and then another, very industrious, you’d think it was factory work. She don’t look up. Don’t give a stuff. She’s obviously not the type you can tell a joke to.
—Piss off, I tell her. —Go boil your nitty head.
But she don’t go, don’t say nothing neither. I get the creeps then so I shut my eyes and when I open them again she’s buggered off but there’s a dent on the bed where she sat.
—Wanna smoke, hon? he says outside the theatre, with his packet of Lucky Strikes.
—I don’t smoke, I go. —I don’t know how.
If Mum was there, she’d say, And you don’t want to know how, my girl, it is the beginning of a slippery slope, ciggies are for the men, you don’t want to look mannish.
Old-fashioned, see. But she ain’t there, is she, and Ron’s laughing and pulling out two ciggies.
—Want me to teach ya? he goes, waving one at me, circling it, then popping it in my mouth like a thermometer. I can feel the paper of it.
—You mustn’t laugh if I cough, I go, my lips clenched on it. He looks me in the eyes all serious. —Promise you won’t?
—Honey. Cross my heart and hope to die, I won’t laugh at ya, babe. Now when I hold the flame to it, you suck the air in, but don’t inhale. Just take some air into that cute little mouth, like this. (He shows me, it looks easy enough.) —Then blow out the smoke. Let’s see ya do it.
I did what he said.
I coughed of course, and he laughed like he promised not to. But the next puff I didn’t cough, and it was fine after that. That was my first ciggie. I didn’t think much of it, but I came to like it and by the end of the war I was a chimney, wasn’t I.
There was other things I came to like too.
All the people was streaming out of the theatre, out into the deep dark of the street.
I’d had boyfriends before the war of course and I’ve always liked men and they’ve always liked me. But I felt new with Ron, like what happened in the theatre with the Great Zedorro made it special even before it began. In the street where we first kissed after we’d stamped out the ciggies, there was a hot-water bottle slashed open as if someone’d taken a knife to it. As he was kissing me I’d open one eye from time to time and look at that hot-water bottle, like it was an anchor to keep me from floating up into the sky like a balloon on the gush of rum and smoke and man-smell that was his kiss, and this time there was no little voice whispering, No, Gloria, don’t do it, or if there was it was drowned out by another voice saying, Yes, Gloria, do.
I knew I wouldn’t be a virgin for much longer the way I was feeling, and him too, pressing against me, and you could feel the hardness.
Yes, Gloria, do.
On the way home we saw searchlights swinging across th
e low clouds, and there was this bright glow on the road that was its reflection. Then all of a sudden the lights went out, just like that, and we were left in the pitch dark. We stood still, holding hands, and then kissing. Snogging our faces off, we were, and my knickers was getting looser by the second, I can tell you.
When we stopped to breathe he said, —Hey, this is different, isn’t it, Miss Gloria Double-U.
And I said. —Different? I should coco.
—I was just a cog in one hell of a big fucking war machine.
We’re swaying because we’re a bit drunk and maybe even then a bit in love, walking through the blackout together. I can’t believe what a dirty mouth he has, but the swear words are different from English ones, they’re right sexy. I’ve told him about the Lousy Nitwit factory, and now he’s telling me about how he got here.
—I was working with my old man in our gasoline station back in Chicago, fixing cars out the back, that’s what we did, we pumped gas and fixed automobiles. I didn’t want to be no fuckin’ cannon fodder. But shit, along came Pearl Harbor and I thought: hey. That’s it, man. Soon as I heard that news I enlisted. Did my Ninety-Day Wonder and my pilot’s training and shipped out here in November last year. Then went to Tunisia.
Tooneesia, it sounded like.
We walk along a bit more and then stop and kiss some more and then he starts tickling me and I get the giggles, and tell him the joke about the wide-mouthed frog, and when he stops laughing he says to me —Gee, I sure get a bang outa the way you guys talk.
—I’m a cockney, me, so’s Marje, we’re not Bristol people. We don’t talk like the others, we got teased at school.
—Well, you Brits all sound the same to me, he goes. —You came from London, huh?
—When I was twelve and Marje was fourteen. Our dad worked in meat in Cheapside, but he and Mum wanted to move to Bristol, better hours on the buses, see. But I’m a Londoner, me, I’m going back there one day. Soon as I can, soon as the war’s over. Now go on, tell me about Tooneesia.
He thinks for a bit.
—That desert was so darn cold, man, he goes. —You lay in your tent two hours before dawn, thinking: I’ve never been so miserable in my whole goddamn life. You put all the blankets on top of you, you ache from how hard the ground is. You put some underneath, you freeze your ass off. But when the sun comes up, boy, it’s like the American West! Real Technicolor. White sand and this green desert grass, it’s like Arizona or somewhere. He spits out his gum and it lands with a tiny splat in the dark. —But back home they don’t have no Ayrabs.
Me and Doris is watching this new game show called I Must Confess. There’s families and some of them is bluffing about the bad things they did and some is not, and if you win you get a thousand quid. But the host man, he says squids, as in, A thousand squids, ladies and gentlemen.
Then in walks Hank’s Wife who is having an affair, every Thursday he comes to do the business. He’s got one of them red cars with eyelids, I heard her tell him I’ve got Mad Cow, Her mind’s a sieve, was her words. Hank thinks he is her accountant of course, accountant my arse.
—Bought a little pressie for you, says Hank’s Wife, and plonks this little bag in my lap that’s got a drawstring.
—You should go on that programme, I tell her. —Confess your sins. You could win us some dosh.
But she’s pretending not to hear, fussing with the baby, who’s crawling about on the floor getting his dummy all fluffed up, my Hank never had a dummy. Know something? There wasn’t a better baby than Hank in all the world. And not a better boy than Hank and not a better man, she don’t deserve him, she don’t.
—Are you going to have a look then, Gloria?
The bag’s made of fake silk which is red and Chinesey. There’s stones in it.
—Semi-precious, she says. —Healing Stones, they’re the latest thing. I’ve ordered some for the shop. You hold them in your palm and they calm your mind. Re-energise you. I’m so glad you’ve settled in. It’s a lovely home, isn’t it? Nice carers, lovely view –
—Do I look like I need bloody sodding stuffing blinking re-energising? It comes out loud, louder than I thought I could shout, because the blood’s rushing about now. No stopping it. —Handful of bloody pebbles is all they are, look! Load of old rubbish!
I’ve chucked the lot at the window, and it splits across with a big crack. Then all the air from outside is whooshing in, it smells of frankfurters from the harbour, there’s a van does them.
—Healing, my arse. Healing, my flaming arse!
Next thing the little pregnant nurse is on the scene saying —Calm down, please, Gloria, all she do, she come give you nice present, you go break window! I tell Mrs M!
Calum starts screaming the place down like a spoilt brat. If there’s one thing I hate it’s a baby.
—I’m the closest you’ll ever get to having a daughter, goes Hank’s Wife.
—Who says I wanted one, eh? Who ever bloody says I wanted one?
I’m shouting cos the Hoover’s started up.
—Time to say bye-byes to Granny, Calum. Upsy-daisy, off we go.
—Girls are nothing but trouble, I tell Doris when Hank’s Wife has buggered off. —They get pregnant. Vicious circle.
—My granddaughter isn’t trouble, she says.
—So where is she, I go, Timbuktu?
—Rushed off her feet, she’s got five, and two under seven. She sent me these chocs though, see? Just what the doctor ordered.
You’ll notice she’s mentioned them again. Rubber-lips comes on and we both spot he’s looking peaky but think nothing of it, just that he might have a bit of a temperature. When the Hoovering stops and the window’s been taped up, the curtain starts twitching again. But she still don’t come out.
—No one’s that shy nowadays, I tell Doris. —It’s not the fashion.
But Doris is off with the fairies, staring straight ahead of her with a choc melting in her hand.
—There’s an Englishman, Irishman and a Scotsman, I tell her. —They’ve all done crimes, so they go to jail for twenty years but they’re allowed to take in one luxury, so the Englishman, he takes loads of women, the Scotsman takes loads of whisky, and the Irishman he asks for a million cigarettes. After twenty years they’re all released and the press is there asking how it was. The Englishman, he can hardly walk he’s been having it away so much with all them women, but he’s got a big smile on his face. Great, he says. Then the Scotsman he staggers out blind drunk. How was it, they ask, and he’s too pissed to answer but he’s happy as Larry. Then out comes the Irishman, who wanted all of them ciggies. And d’you know what he says to all them people? He says, Have you got a light there now?
That’s a funny one, my sis Marje came back from night-shift with it.
But Doris don’t laugh. She just stays sitting there, with the melted choc in her hand, staring straight ahead like a blinking statue.
—You should get some air, Doris, I tell her. —Just look at you. Your face is all white.
BLUE-EYED BOY
The Great Zedorro had an effect on us, a sex effect. No mistaking it. We’d always joke about it, we’d talk about a Zedorro Moment, that was our secret code for it. I wanna give you a Zedorro Moment, hon, he’d say, hand sliding up my skirt, rum and ciggies on his breath, that tang of American aftershave mingled in, or sometimes in the evenings his stubble would be growing back cos of being a hairy bugger and his chin would scrape my skin like sandpaper, the roughest kind of sandpaper, and my face would be red from it afterwards, like mutilation.
Anyway after that first kiss when I looked at the hot-water bottle and he walked me home through the blackout, I asked him in and we sat on the settee together having a bit of a snog. Marjorie was on shift, and the house was ours, Mum and Dad staring down at us from the mantelpiece, I nearly turned them to face the wall and then I thought: no, you’re gone now, this is my life, I can do what I want, and you can blinking well watch.
He’s a talker, my blue-eyed a
irman. As in, you can’t get a bloody word in – but I’m happy to listen. Don’t understand half of what he says, but that’s not the point, is it. The point is that it’s like being with a real live film star.
—Those P-38s we flew in Tunisia, they’re rugged ships, man. This buddy of mine, he was strafing some trucks and he came in to attack so low he hit his right wing against a telephone pole. Any other plane, that wing would’ve come off right there. Hitting the pole that way flipped him over on his back, and he was flying upside-down ten feet off the ground.
He drops my hand so he can show me the movements.
—He gripped that stick so hard the inside of his hand was black and blue for a week afterward. And you know what? She came right side up and he flew her home.
I’m about to say something but he’s off again.
—See, any one-engine plane would have slipped and crashed into the ground. But the thing about those two counter-rotating props is, they do one hell of a job when it comes to eliminating torque.
My hand’s on his knee and I’m thinking: what’s torque, and suddenly he notices me again.
—You sure are cute, honey, he goes. Then he laughs to himself, and his blue eyes get this glitter in them. —You know how long it’s been since I did this? And he’s pressing on my right tit.
But I don’t want to know, do I, because it’s probably only a week or so, and anyway I’m not interested in them other girls he had, I’m interested in him and me. So the snogging and smooching turns to more like heavy petting and he’s got my blouse unbuttoned, my bra undone – you can tell he’s an expert – and my tits out, he’s kissing them all over like they’re precious and he can’t decide which one’s the best, rolling his tongue around the nipples, and it gives me this jabbing tingle that spreads like fever or one of them electric storms, so that I’m three-quarters of the way towards you-know-whatnot, it could happen any time if I just let it, but I want that thing of his in me first.
—Come to bed, I’m gasping, can’t even speak properly I’m that gone, my tongue’s glue.
