Life's Lottery

by Kim Newman

  The early ’70s — which were, of course, the years of the oil crisis, the three-day week, power cuts, strikes, the Ulster troubles, Watergate, flared trousers and the mullet haircut — become an Edenic refuge. Recounting in detail the differences between a Mivvi and a Sky Ray lolly or wondering when blue bags of salt were phased out of crisp packets, you almost transport yourself back in time.

  It becomes a project, a game, a pastime.

  Vince prompts you, because your memory is more detailed. If you close your eyes and clear your mind, you can banish the writhing black spiders of the present by furnishing a three-dimensional dayglo picture of the world as it was. Pop music you hated at the time — Mud, the Bay City Rollers, the Osmonds — becomes evocative, and Vince haunts jumble sales for scratched albums. He has a complete set of the Top of the Pops compilations of chart hit cover versions, with some smiling bird in a dolly mixture dress on the sleeves. You retrieve boxes of stuff from Mum’s attic. They turn out to be treasure chests of Biggles books, Aurora glow-in-the-dark monster models, Dinky toys (Goldfinger Aston-Martin with ejector-seat figure missing), sweet cigarette cards (when did they stop making sweet cigarettes?), board games (Campaign, with Napoleon-hatted General pieces) and comics (Vince’s eyes water). For a moment, you feel like a pirate, unearthing long-lost booty.

  … you’re on your knees, scratching at the hard earth of a flower-bed, searching for a tin of marbles. You’re wearing a cardboard eyepatch and a pirate hat with a silvery skull-headed pin and a plastic plume.

  Then you’re back in the flat over the chip shop, listening as Vince tells you how much your April 1969 Streak ZC comic is worth, since it marks the first appearance of now-popular arch-enemy Dead Thing.

  It was real. You were back there, you were home.

  The next weekend, when Marie-Laure has taken the kids to see her mum in the hope of gouging a hand-out from the old woman, you repeat the experiment under controlled circumstances.

  When you shut your eyes, it is 1990.

  In the dark of your head, red-eyed spiders crawl.

  You open your eyes, heart pounding. You’re lying on your bed, looking at the cracked ceiling. Half your life has come and gone since you left school. You are thirty years old. You have done nothing.

  You shut your eyes again, determined. You furnish the dark, imagining your room in Mum and Dad’s house. Your room as it was when you were thirteen.

  … Maths homework. You hate it. You want to get it over with so you can watch Top of the Pops. A spider crawls on your hand.

  You open your eyes.

  It was real. You were there.

  Next time, you stay longer, ignoring the spiders. You finish the homework and go downstairs. James and Laraine are in the television room, young again.

  Mum washes up in the kitchen. A Telegraph is folded up, and you see your Dad.

  Alive.

  A rush of something makes your eyes water.

  Is it love? Or regret.

  ‘What’s up, Keith?’

  Dad talked to you. You were there.

  You made it back. You can go home again. You can, you can, you can.

  But how do you want it to be? When did things change? From where do you want to start? And where do you want to end up?

  Excited, you make Nescafé and try to think. You’re cramped in the flat’s tiny kitchen. Josh’s scrawled ‘drawings’ are stuck to the fridge. The place smells of fried food. There’s washing-up in the sink. Marie-Laure will nag you about that when she gets back.

  Where you were was before Marie-Laure, before the kids. If you go back again, they might not be part of your life. The kids might not be born.

  This is what you have. You might complain about the government and the DSS, but you are here by choice. Even in a socialist utopia, you’d be an unemployable layabout who can’t support his kids.

  It’s been eating you bit by bit for years.

  But do you really want to leave?

  Really?

  If you just want things to be better now, go to 87. If you want things back the way they were, go to 89.

  33

  You’re trying to have a conversation with Gully Eastment and his girlfriend, Bronagh. Surprisingly, in the all-bets-off chaos of Rag Day, they seem the most sensible folk around. You and Gully are the only people in your year at college who have been asked by the principal to sit Oxford entrance exams. You’ve gone along with it, with your parents’ support, but Gully is trying to talk you out of it.

  ‘Remember Marling’s, Keith? It’ll be worse. A single-sex college is like a jail.’

  Outside, in an alley, Rowena is being sick. For twenty minutes, she’s been puking. Mary keeps coming back with reports. She displays sisterhood with the sick girl, though Rowena was never a special friend. Penny Gaye, Michael’s girlfriend, is also helping.

  You drink steadily, radiating a nothing-to-do-with-me-mate vibe.

  Rowena’s heaves are amazingly loud.

  ‘Always know your limit,’ you say, sipping another half of cider.

  ‘Too fuckin’ true,’ says Gully.

  You are sophisticates, far removed from the struggling fools all around. You need Gully and he needs you: neither of you has anyone else to pace himself against. If either were to slacken off, the other might also stumble.

  Maybe you’ll end up at the same university?

  Mickey Yeo makes an announcement: ‘Dave Tamlyn’s chunder-up record has fallen.’

  The pub cheers.

  A shadow falls over the table. You look up. Victoria stands there, half-full pint glass huge in her delicate hand.

  ‘Hi, Vickie,’ you say.

  Outside, Rowena pukes again. She vomits with an animal cry. An embarrassment to herself and everyone else. You’re well shot of her.

  ‘That doesn’t bother you at all, does it?’

  You freeze half-way into a shrug and a smile.

  Cold beer hits you in the face, dashed into your eyes, soaking your collar, seeping down your chest. You splutter through a noseful of liquid.

  You can still hear Rowena.

  You want to protest. It really has nothing to do with you. When you come down to it, it’s Roger’s fault.

  Victoria smashes the glass against the side of your head.

  The pain is sharp and wet. Gully and Bronagh get out of the way. You feel a warm gush as blood pours down the side of your face. You have splinters in your forehead and cheek.

  Victoria has no right. You have stood up.

  The bitch glassed you. She could have blinded or killed you. She has crossed a line. She must take the consequences.

  Your hands are fists.

  There are places you can go from which you can never come back. Hitting a girl, any girl, is one of them.

  ‘You’re pathetic, Keith,’ Victoria says.

  If you hit Victoria, go to 39. If you try to laugh it off and sit down, go to 43.

  34

  You and Vanda get a flat together in town, above a launderette — which is handy — and, because she has to declare you’re cohabiting, your benefit is cut. She gives you pocket money and within a week of your moving in together starts gently to suggest you get a job. Her income supports your idleness and she feels entitled.

  Since Vanda is a tease rather than a nag, you allow yourself to be reshaped a little. You admit you were in a rut. You start shaving and get a proper haircut. Vanda buys you shirts and ties. She says you look better when you’re smart.

  The amazing thing about living together, for you, is the sex. Every evening and all the weekend, you spend in the big bed in the flat. You’ve never made love in a double bed before. It’s a major improvement.

  Vanda is everything Marie-Laure wasn’t. Curvy rather than skinny, open rather than shut, predictable rather than neurotic. She doesn’t have mood swings. She doesn’t contradict herself. She never hits you with ashtrays.

  She says she loves you. In bed, she proves it. She says she enjoys giving fellatio. You suppose y
ou love her. You certainly say so.

  Though they weren’t sure at first, Mum and Dad come to like Vanda. She can be trusted to carry out their instructions when it comes to you.

  Often you overhear your dad’s distinctive ‘Tell him that …’ when Vanda is talking with them on the phone. She then relays the orders of the day.

  An opening comes up at the bank.

  You still don’t want to be a clerk, but Vanda is one so you can’t go on about that. Despite the three years of nothing in your life, you’ll earn more than she does now the first week you turn up. And three years is a long time to do nothing, to be marking time.

  It seems to make sense.

  Vanda takes an afternoon off work and joins forces with your mum to help you buy two suits. For the bank. You revolt deep down at the thought of embracing prat-dom.

  The bank’s policy is theoretically against close relatives working together in a branch but your father has such a straight reputation that he has a special dispensation. And he will not be your direct boss. Sean Rye is still at the bank, as assistant loans adviser. You’ll be ‘under’ him.

  Vanda is proud of you in your suit.

  It is 1979. Margaret Thatcher is prime minister. It’s a new era. You allow yourself to be gentled into the life, to be convinced.

  It’s not as bad as you thought it would be. The work is easy. Dad arranges that you have two afternoons off a week to take catch-up courses at the college. If you pass exams at the end of the year, you could be promoted within the bank.

  You buckle up and knuckle down.

  Walking home through town one evening, after your first few weeks in the job, you are passing Brink’s Café. Inside, Marie-Laure is having a heated argument with the manager. She pauses in her tirade, sees you through the window, does a goggle-eyed double-take, opens the door and cadges a pound off you to pay for a broken cup.

  ‘Don’t go away,’ she says.

  She has red and grey streaks in her tangle of hair. She’s even more jittery than you remember, looking everywhere at once like a paranoid owl, hands always on the move.

  She comes back out and looks at you.

  ‘Good God,’ she says. ‘Arachnoid body-snatchers have struck.’

  Over the last year, you’ve received sporadic silent phone calls. You always assumed it was Marie-Laure. You don’t know what to say to her. Her mother sent her away for a time last year. Vanda said her claim was suspended while she was being treated in a private ‘hospital’.

  ‘I never really liked you,’ she says, spitefully. ‘You were always too common.’

  ‘You owe me a pound,’ you say.

  She kisses you, wriggling her tongue into your mouth.

  ‘There,’ she says. ‘Even?’

  She zig-zags away, ragged blue shawl clutched round her skinny shoulders.

  You never forget her eyes.

  For the first time, with the job, you have money. You can treat Vanda, buy her things for a change. You enjoy that. You have lunch together every day, in pubs and cafés. You insist on paying, to make up for the last couple of years. Every Friday, you come home with a scarf or a household implement.

  She suggests you find a bigger flat, or a cottage. You work out that soon you could afford it.

  Vanda has learned to drive and bought a second-hand car, a Ford Cortina. You promise to take lessons as soon as your college course is completed. Again, you’re on an exam treadmill. But this time, the results mean something.

  You wonder why you ever resisted.

  You have two weeks’ holiday in the summer. You go camping in Wales. You make love in a tent. You go to quiet pubs, and cuddle in dark corners. You wander round Snowdonia. Nature doesn’t care whether you wear a suit. It’s just there, magnificent even without you to see it. Alone in the wild with Vanda, you feel calm.

  Later, you work out that this is where your first baby was conceived. In a tent pitched by a culvert, water flowing into the mountain as you flow into Vanda.

  You get married well before the bump shows. You arrange a mortgage at a preferential rate through the bank and think about buying a cottage in one of the outlying villages. In the end, you get a newly built house in town, anonymous but solid.

  Vanda enjoys decorating. Dad gives you DIY tips. Vanda doesn’t go back to work after Jason is born. Less than a year later, your son has a sister, Jesse.

  Laraine gets married to a bloke called Fred. James joins the army. Sean becomes loans officer. Marie-Laure is institutionalised.

  Vanda suggests you have a vasectomy, and you do.

  Money begins to get tight.

  In 1982, your Dad dies, of a sudden coronary. It’s unexpected. Sean Rye is made acting manager. You’re worried he’ll purge you. You’ve always thought, deep down, your position was something Dad fixed up.

  A week after the funeral, Sean calls you in for an interview. First, he tells you what a great man and a good friend your father was. You’ve only just begun to see this yourself, and resent the intrusion.

  Sean is still wearing a 1975 suit, with wide lapels. He is still a prat. Acting prat.

  ‘Keith,’ says Sean, ‘I don’t mind telling you your dad was this branch. I can’t replace him, but London have confirmed me in this job.’

  Here it comes. You’re out.

  If Laraine hadn’t chucked him for that hippie …

  ‘A lot of customers need a sense of continuity. I know it’s absurd, but the name — Mr Marion — means a lot. I’d like you to take over loans.’

  A pause.

  You’re not being fired. You’re being promoted.

  ‘I’ve cleared it with head office,’ Sean says. ‘They’re very enthusiastic.’

  ‘Thank you, Sean,’ you say.

  ‘Thank you, Keith.’

  You worry it will all go away.

  The promotion means Vanda doesn’t have to go back to work. You approve an extension of your own mortgage and move to a cottage in Sutton Mallet. You lay out on the first new car of your life, a Ford Montego.

  James comes back from the Falklands. He has been wounded slightly, and leaves the army. Your mum remarries, to a younger man, Phil Parslowe. Jason and Jesse go to playgroup. Laraine gets divorced from that bloke called Fred.

  Sean gets married to a woman you were at school with, Rowena Douglass. You and Vanda and Sean and Rowena play badminton together on Thursdays, have barbecues at the weekends in summer.

  Though you and Vanda vote Social Democrat, Mrs Thatcher wins a second term. They say it’s the Falklands factor.

  Your duties at the bank expand. You’re required to give investment advice. You and Sean are a bit puzzled by this head office decree. You’re mates now. You see that he isn’t the prat you thought. Laraine could have done a lot worse; indeed, her marriage to Frightful Fred suggests that she did.

  Neither of you has ever invested in anything more venturesome than premium bonds, but everyone is into the stock market these days and your bank wants a slice of its customers’ action. Other banks in town have recently established securities desks and you have to compete. You both study the whole thing, and go on week-long courses to get up to speed.

  You are surprised Sean is unfaithful to Rowena with women on the courses. Thin, sharp-suited, bright-eyed professionals. You talk it over with him. He says that he doesn’t love Ro any less, but that the ’80s are about taking opportunities.

  ‘What we learn here makes us better back home.’

  You’re sort of convinced, but you don’t join Sean in his energetic chatting-up in hotel bars.

  On the train on the way back from one course, Sean proposes a scheme to make more sense of the investment business. He suggests you each put £2500 into a fund, and have the bank match the £5000 with capital from petty cash. Then, experimentally, you should make investments and see what happens. If you make a go of it, you can pay the bank back and take a bonus out of the profits. If you don’t, you pay the bank back and take a loss of part or all of your own investm
ent. After all, it’s only £2500.

  Two thousand five hundred doesn’t sound that only to you. And speculating with petty cash goes well beyond the legal grey area into something that could coldly be called embezzlement.

  ‘It’ll just be a flutter,’ Sean says, ‘like the Grand National.’

  If you go in with Sean, go to 41. If you back off, go to 47.

  35

  Achelzoy is miles out of town, across the moor. The road is straight for a stretch, then winds like a snake. Originally, the Somerset levels were marshes. Villages used to be islands: the common ‘zoy’ in place names is a local contraction of ‘zoyland’ or ‘island’. Roads were navigable waterways. In December, the fields are bare and black. Ditches, called ‘rhynes’, are deep and water-filled. They separate fields and run either side of the road.

  Between you is an atmosphere you can’t understand. What has happened this evening is still sketchy, unconfirmed. You don’t know if Mary wants to murder you or marry you. You are excited but hesitant. You really wish you hadn’t drunk so much; it’s only in the last year that you’ve looked old enough to get served in pubs, and you downed several pints of cider in the Lime Kiln before you went to the show. It occurs to you that you don’t know how much Mary has drunk.

  The road is empty at this time of night. Between villages, the only light comes from the headlamps.

  As the road weaves from side to side, Mary drives in the centre, staying on the white line to avoid the curves. Catseyes stare back at you. You aren’t sure if this is a good idea.

  Mary laughs when you mention it.

  Then the Honda loses traction on a slick patch of ice. Up ahead is a right-angle bend.

  The car hits the verge and your side lifts up as it slams into a signpost. The windscreen fractures to frost.

  Wheels grinding grassy earth and air, the Honda crunches over a bank and its front end falls five feet, crashing through a thin layer of ice.