by Liz Jensen
—Marje was right. You’ve got to grab love. You’ve got to grab any kind of future that’s got love in it. Even if it’s just a little babby from a man who’s no good.
Her nose-stud glinting in the half-light like a little tiny Christmas decoration. The moon outside, floating pale and alone.
GADDERTON LAKE
Christmas has died a death, I must’ve slept, there is no more turkey and that dirty old monkey used to sit in the chair over there has been cremated, he used to try it on with me, he once stuck his thing in my whatsit, I told Mrs M this and I told Hank and the Jill woman and I kept telling everyone at the funeral but no one wanted to know, not even the bloody vicar. What kind of listening ear is that then.
Today it is almost like spring, and it is a nice day. It is a nice day in springtime or in the month of May, so we have packed the car, two cars, one is Hank’s, a Renault 19, the other is Jill’s Mercedes, her slutty daughter is learning to drive so she has L-plates. This is an outing to Gadderton Lake that hasn’t got no more ice on it now but it did before it was springtime or the month of May. Jill, she is wearing a nice smart coat that will get some mud on if she don’t watch out. And did I mention her daughter Melanie, the one with the snake coming out of her bum that calls me Gran? She is here too, and Conchita la Paz, who is friends with her, and Calum who is talking now, saying poo and wee and no and also Granny once, so he is not such a bad little bastard, and has a yellow trike.
—What’s green and goes up and down? I go.
—He’s too young for jokes, Mum, says Hank. —He’s only two!
—Two ain’t too young. What’s green and goes up and down, Calum? I told you jokes this young, I did. What’s green and goes up and down?
I wait for him to say, Dunno, but he’s busy with his trike.
—A gooseberry in a lift!
He don’t laugh, probably ain’t met a gooseberry yet, should’ve said kiwi fruit, never mind, try another.
—How did Captain Hook die?
—Tell me, says Jill.
—Scratched his arse with the wrong hand.
Jill looks away but me and Hank, we laugh and laugh, cos we love that one, we do. We never forget a joke.
It’s a fresh-air day, the weather’s warmish, and the sun shining like a plastic lid up there. In the Portakabin a lady’s knitting a pink woolly for a baby, maybe she is a granny too.
The fishermen is parked there with their rods and placcy macs and little criss-cross stools, and the reeds shine glossy at you bright green, and the dead bulrushes is brown but a bright brown in the sun, it hurts your eyes. Hank’s Wife buys ices from the knitting lady in the Portakabin. I have one called a Mr Big and so does Hank. Jill and Hank’s Wife has made the picnic, Jill has done the savouries and Hank’s Wife has done the sweet stuff, it is sandwiches and tortilla wraps and little pork pies and a sliced Battenberg. Calum spills the crisps under the picnic table and then a big magpie all comes pecking. One for sorrow.
—Nice coat, I tell the Jill woman. —Where d’you get it?
—Harrods, she says, and she and Hank’s Wife look at each other.
—In a sale?
She smiles.
—Full price, I’m afraid. And I’m just opening my mouth to ask how much when she says – Four hundred and seventy-eight pounds.
Well, you could knock me down with a feather.
She’s smiling like she’s given me a present.
—D’you hear that, Hank? I yell at him. —Four hundred and seventy-eight squids! She’s rolling in money, your new girlfriend!
And there’s this look goes between him and her, and they both open their mouths to say something then think: oh never mind and shut them and smile instead. Lovers, eh. I was young once, I was a swell kid, I had a lover, his name was Ron but he said Raan.
—And my skirt cost eighty-three pounds, from John Lewis, she says, showing it me. And the shirt is from Peter Jones in London, it was around fifty pounds if I remember. And this necklace was a present from my husband before he died and I don’t know how much it cost but it was probably over three hundred pounds.
—He got ripped off, I tell her.
But secretly I am gobsmacked, I am, because at last my daughter and I are having a conversation. Then another magpie comes along so it is all right, it is two for joy.
—Another joke for you, Hank? I yell across.
—Go on then, Mum.
We used to have joke sessions the two of us, we did. Back in Tooting. Used to laugh till we widdled.
—There was two men talking about women and one says to the other, I am a tit man myself. And the other one says, Tit man? Did you say tit man? That is very sexist. So the other one thinks for a minute and he says, OK, sorry. Tit person.
That’s a funny one, that is. Even Jill, she smiles.
The Melanie girl and Conchita la Paz is off giggling somewhere, having a look to see what the other fishermen’ve caught, and seeing who’s worth flirting with because they is teenagers. And Jill is playing with Calum and Hank is casting his rod and going Shhh, everyone, but he don’t give a hoot if he catches one or not, I know my Hank, he just likes being by the water, if he don’t catch a Hallelujah fish he ain’t never bothered.
—This is a lovely picnic you’ve done for us, Karen, I tell Hank’s Wife. You have done us proud, you have.
And then for some reason she bursts into tears. Talk about moody.
—You called me Karen, she goes.
—Well, it’s your name, isn’t it? As far as I’m aware?
—Yes, Gloria, she says, blowing a big blow into a napkin. —It’s my name.
All right. So that is that cleared up then.
I have lived a life, I have. I have been places and done stuff and seen lots about the world on telly and I have lived through the war. I did my bit for my country with my Victory onions and working in munitions and keeping hens, I ain’t no war criminal, I was just a girl made mistakes, stupid-girl mistakes thinking that carpets are for sweeping stuff under when my mum could’ve told me any day, No, that is not the case, my girl, it is not the case for you and it is not the case for no one, the dirt comes out somehow or other, no matter what, the first crime is the first crime but pretend it ain’t done and you are doing a second crime and then maybe there will be a third and no one will learn nothing.
That what my mum would’ve said or anyone with a grain of sense but I was the stupid one, remember.
Anyway look at me, it weren’t a bad life even if it got a bit snafued. I have raised a good son and done him proud, taken him to Blackpool on holiday, he can’t complain about me being a bad mum, I was the best bloody mother there ever was to that boy. So this’ll do me here, in the sunshine, with some people about who seems to know me. There is a tiny pilot light wants to switch itself off now. It is like shutting out a little light, a little trembling pilot light in your head.
Easier than you think, you know.
You’ll see.
And when the light has gone out, there is just a little glow left behind, where you were. Look at you there in the wheelchair, so old, so old you look, Gloria, how did you go on so long. You were a swell kid once, you were a real A-one honey. And nobody has seen yet what has happened, and that is all right, because afterwards they will say what a peaceful way to go, sitting by the lake, looking out at the water.
All right, this is.
In the green water which is green I can see the little girl floating but upright, and Doris who is waving. There they are, and there’s Zedorro, and the Slut Fairy, and Ron, and Marje, and my mum and dad, and Bobby and Mrs Blathershite O’Malley and Iris who is whole again, and the Jew woman who got the guilt squirming in me, there she is with the others, on the water’s skin, shining where it’s clear above the mud. Not staring full of hate no more, cos her face it has gone gentle at last, and I would like my face to go gentle like that.
Would I care to join them, they are wondering. Would I care to join them on Gadderton Lake. Floating on t
he green water.
On the green clear water of Gadderton, where the past and the future and the now-time is all one, and if you open your mouth the taste of the water tells you, Yes, yes, yes, Gloria, you are forgiven.
And I am.
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to The New Yorker Book of War Pieces, for background material about GIs during World War Two. Occasionally I have quoted directly from soldiers’ personal accounts of their war experiences, but mostly I have modified and re-invented their accounts to fit my story. Particularly inspiring were A.J. Liebling’s ‘The Foamy Fields’, Hank Murphy’s ‘Eighty-Three Days’, and Brendan Gill’s ‘Young Man Behind Plexiglas’. Also very helpful were Diary of a Bristol Woman 1938–45 by V.A.M., and Sentimental Journey, the Story of the GI Brides by Pamela Winfield – who was kind enough to read my manuscript, and correct a multiplicity of factual errors.
I am grateful to the Society of Authors, who provided a travel grant which enabled me to visit ‘GI bride’ Olivia Poole and her husband John, of Corona del Mar, California. Fortunately for the Pooles, they are as unlike Gloria and Ron as it is possible to be. But they generously shared with me their many vivid memories of wartime Britain, and life back in America after the war. I am eternally grateful for this, and for their friendship.
A Note on the Author
Liz Jensen is the acclaimed author of The Paper Eater, Egg Dancing and Ark Baby, which was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize. She lives in London.
A NOTE ON THE TYPE
The text of this book is set in Linotype Sabon, named after the type founder, Jacques Sabon. It was designed by Jan Tschichold and jointly developed by Linotype, Monotype and Stempel, in response to a need for a typeface to be available in identical form for mechanical hot metal composition and hand composition using foundry type.
Tschichold based his design for Sabon roman on a fount engraved by Garamond, and Sabon italic on a fount by Granjon. It was first used in 1966 and has proved an enduring modern classic.
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Sit back, suspend your disbelief, and enjoy’
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TIME OUT
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Table of Contents
Title
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
By The Same Author
Joke
I Fell in Love
Sea View
The Hallelujah Monster
Slut Fairy
Blue-Eyed Boy
Old Nazi
Chicago Box
No Irish No Dogs No Jehovah’s Witnesses
The Big Smoke
Boiling Soap
Is Not a Crime
Like We are Children
Dr Kaplan Comes to Play
Shellshock
I Must’ve Slept
Fish And Chips
The Windy City
Gadderton Lake
Acknowledgement
About the Author
A Note on the Type
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