Room Little Darker

by June Caldwell

  0028 ‘Now is not the time,’ MAN replies.

  0029 ‘Why did you fuck her?’ SUBJECT asks MAN.

  0030 ‘Now is not the time,’ MAN repeats.

  0031 ‘You can just see the future of abortion clinics in Ireland, can’t you?’ SUBJECT says to MAN.

  0032 ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ MAN says, seeming amused.

  0033 ‘Me here, you there,’ SUBJECT says, starting to cry. ‘Why the fuck did I get this bastard thing into me in the first place?’

  0034 ‘We’ll have a nice meal afterwards,’ MAN says.

  0035 ‘Yeah, that’ll do it,’ SUBJECT says.

  0034 Doctor closes door on MAN.

  0036 Doctors informs SUBJECT implant is ‘caught up in muscle tissue, requires hard pulling, with a stitch afterwards.’

  0037 ‘We don’t let men into the treatment rooms,’ Doctor informs SUBJECT. ‘They’re just not able for what goes on in here.’

  0038 SUBJECT says she ‘understands how it goes’.

  0039 ‘He fucked someone else and I blamed myself,’ SUBJECT says.

  0040 ‘I hear that a lot,’ the Doctor remarks. ‘You should look the other way for this.’

  0041 ‘Yeah, I think I know how to do that,’ SUBJECT informs Doctor.

  ABORT ABORT ABORT ABORT ABORT ABORT ABORT ABORT ABORT ABORT ABORT ABORT

  Cadaverus Moves

  There’s a fan whirring and a smell of slag intestines snaking through to where I sit waiting to see a dead body for the first time. Yours, of course. And that Remains of the Day arsehole in full hat-tip regalia telling me it’s a good idea to sip some water before I go in, like I might not even recognise you, uses the word ‘Madam’ from the Co-op Funeral Book, abbreviated ‘Mme’, plural Mesdames, who happen to be walking about outside smoking at the corrugated bins, talking about cheap cuts. You’re fucking dead. Straight as a pea shoot. Let’s get that out of the way from the getgo. Barley brushes of hell tickling the sky-chin of a giant torn tuna with a blood clot at the end of your nose for sucking brains through. White jelly shoes a gardener might like to stick small plants in to cheer someone up. Tumour mash scoops, mole hills, speed bumps, a face of sheer beaver. Wax hands, ten embedded wicks, historically used as a method of timekeeping and picking up flame-grilled chicken tits layered with Emmental cheese and back bacon, hickory-smoked BBQ sauce, seasoned fries and buttered peas. I walk outside. The roofs of Britain are pretty much the cardboard same. Piss ball up in the sky shining down on an awful lot of dogs and scratched cars. Those street drains small children throw cutlery into all summer. Seems pretty meaningless to me. So I suggest we go for a pint. It’s the icing bar the two neon trannies from Blackpool own, where they bring other trannies for card games, dress-up nights and tin-can karaoke. The barman eyes you up pretty mean as if you’ve stolen the celebrity supplement of the Sunday paper, though he gets ‘the look’ back from me and serves us both to avoid some sort of face-off. You say nothing, gooing all around you, Mr Magoo, as if already, only twelve hours into rock-clot, you’ve forgotten the drama of being alive, the shit-arse boredom of it, the handing out of small change and tiny snatches of courteous dialogue in places like this that always have a launderette and enormous drive-in gizmo nearby with ATMs and small bags of rip-off coal. Ah sure, where would ye be going without a bell on yer bike? Better out than in. Like. If I don’t see ye I’ll see ye when I see ye. Phone calls have been made, sure, cos the door keeps beepin’ ‘n’ creakin’, a series of nods, string-boom of ‘It can’t be him!’, followed by what I would call collective anger not felt since some skinny nurse of the war years sucked off a German soldier behind a plum tree in a public park and tried to keep it quiet. ‘He’ll have to go,’ the barman says. ‘Oh yeah, really?’ I say, turning around to take them all on, one by one if needs be. ‘Out!’ he says. You were already gone, I was there. I could not have hated you more.

  Etch A Sketch of a year since you were declared ‘terminal’. I still ride the blanks and hope no one in the library notices. I set off most days with Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel playing in my head. Out past the squiggle of purposeless shops and homeless men who nudge their heads up like broken birds from splintered eggs in the basement of the church. On to the Tolka Bridge where an orange city fox stalks me in the first draft of morning. Conversations become cataracts of sorts. ‘Wouldn’t it bite the toes right off ye?’ a woman said at the bus stop last October when you rang with the news. ‘I can’t be doing with this heat!’ the same woman stupidly says today in June. Time bungles by on the long borrow. You’re still here, but fading. I pick you up at the airport and you’re wearing a Daily Mash T-shirt with the words: DO NOT PANIC BUT YOU ARE GOING TO DIE. ‘Funny as fuck!’ you say, pushing the luggage trolley out into the main foyer. Your two teenage kids Hollie and Ryan hug me tight. Words eclipse. ‘So this is it,’ you say, scanning Arrivals. You are back in Ireland to say goodbye. A dance with neutrons and protons, that’s what’s ahead of you now. Sliding up and down wallpaper. Watching us in our daily drudge. You meet the women I work with. The building is Georgian, a carved wedding cake, crafted cornicing, walls of tedious green and piercing yellow. Corridors cropped in spiderweb wigs where the elderly shuffle through to read or snore or attend literary readings upstairs. Almost everyone who strolls in wears glasses and carries a spiked umbrella. There’s a small café on the ground floor that serves tea, fair-trade coffee, tray bakes and ham sandwiches made at the curvature of dawn by an old crooked cook who reeks of rotten lilies. I feel proud showing you around. ‘My brother, home from Ipswich.’ You are only forty-seven, a dissolution. In the quiet clammy armpit of early afternoon we visit our parents. ‘Be prepared,’ I warn. ‘He’s pissing the house for ages, she’s swimming in the Nile.’ Our mother opens the door, gasps. I follow her into the kitchen. You head into the ogre in the sitting room. ‘I got an awful land!’ she says. ‘Looks like someone shoved his head in an open fire.’ Shakes uncontrollably. ‘It’s just the chemo, last batch was the hardest, proper burn.’ I carry in a tray of tea and Kimberley biscuits. The kids chuckle on the couch. ‘What’s going on?’ I ask. ‘It’s Grandad, we can’t make out a word he’s saying.’ Happens a lot. Eighty-two, pickled brain. ‘Have you still got a dickie tummy?’ he asks. You take a deep breath. ‘Cancer, I’ve explained several times on the phone, nothing they can do now.’ Sneers. ‘Rubbish!’ he roars. ‘A scam between the health insurance company and your job.’ You run at him. ‘No one pretends they’re dying you mad bastard.’ Grabbing his hand, you roll it around the bevy of tumours lumping out your gut like caddy fare. ‘Can you feel them? They’re real, you fucking moron.’ You scour the house one last time, commenting on the size of the back garden, the freshly painted purple walls in the kitchen. ‘I was going to use my share to buy a mobile home in France for holidays with the kids.’ She gets weak. He stays in his chair. Kids’ heads are lowered. I turned you into Workie the Lion, rode this hall on your back many times. Threw a wax apple at your head, alms of a scar. You gave me my first joint upstairs to the bawl of Bowie. ‘Look after yourself,’ she says. Final words. ‘I love you, my sunshine.’ Back at the flat I make your favourite monkfish curry but you push it away. ‘Sorry, smells the dogs, just can’t hold anything down.’ We stroll out to the back garden. The night sky is clearer than I ever remember. Alabaster stars flickering against a plush overlay of navy. There it is as we crane our necks: a shooting star. A dying star. Zipping across the chaos on its way home. What a crummy beautiful coincidence. We clank our glasses and smile.

  Knobby’s high-rise flat in East London and there’s a gun on the table. ‘Man innit man innit’ is all I can make out. Reggae tunes, loud and demanding. Too much Barney Rubble. Ain’t it Mork and Mindy out. Cunts cunts cunts. One of his cronies wiping coke-snot from his hooter, rubbing runways of slick onto a gnarled hand. Fear ferreting up my legs so much I have to step out onto the balcony to glare at hal
f-lit office blocks with tiny security men anting around inside. I’m shaking. Two other men wander in and out. Stare at my black velvet dress pulled over black tights tossed with white nylon spiders. We were meant to be celebrating other people’s abortions. Trying to make fun of what’s been hurting us. Some petite blonde from Dublin you were in love with, a gangster’s wife. My ex-boyfriend who gave away my Morris Ital to a married woman who had a termination for him when we were still together. It is the summer of getting stoned, of taking risks. You wanted to score some blow. The pub we’re drinking in earlier on this night is Pitbull rough, jammed with Stratford locals. Batches of bare tattooed arms and dreadlocks wall to wall. You are wearing a white shirt and a pink Irish fucked face, holding two flip bottles of Grolsch. Acid-house tunes persecuting the air. Long-legged women shimmying the carpet with slippy feet inside white sandals. You hand me a spliff to take outside. ‘How do you do it?’ you ask when I come back in. Do what? ‘Fat one year, skinny the next.’ Then you say, ‘I have it sorted, we need to get into the car now.’ You’ve had a welly of booze. We follow the Beamer to Knobby’s flat. ‘We’ll take a lump and go if that’s OK mate?’ you say to Knobby. Not how it works around here. ‘Nah, nah, you’ll stay and have a toke, innit, get the lady a Vera Lynn.’ One of the men pulls a chair up beside me, pushes in against my small thighs. ‘You’ve a nice boat race,’ he whispers. You tell him I’m your skin ‘n’ blister, to go easy. Knobby picks up the gun, shows it to you, peacock proud. ‘This, my friend, is a fucking thing of high beauty.’ The men laugh. One of them says. ‘Not if you get it in the head, makes a right Elliot Ness.’ The room spins. Voices mingle and merge until I’m no longer sure who’s who, who I am, or you. The sitting room is brown. The men are brown. The night is brown. The pizza boxes are brown. The stash is brown. My eyes are yellow. ‘No, no, that wouldn’t be polite, c’mon now,’ you say when they ask if they can have a go at me. I begin to sway. Bend forward, droop. My half-permed blonde hair serpent-tailing exposed shoulders. Someone’s hand is on my arse. I wonder if this is it, if this is how we straggle to oblivion. I stop listening. Everything slows. It slows and I think how the years ahead may have been too fast for us to manage anyway. I wanted to go to university. I wanted to get my belly button pierced. I wanted to teach English in Japan. What if they rape you first? What if they fling me still breathing into a supermarket skip full of putrid fish and grey pork chops? What if they torture us, searing my legs with a house iron, slipping your eye out with a flick-knife? They ask if you’ll deal for them. You politely decline. Silence slinks and slumps. I think of being a girl, shadowing strangers around the estate at dusk, eating snow off gritty walls. Your card gambling tin, all that dosh pinched by me for blue and orange sweets, Pink Panther chocolate bars. I think of drives to Glendalough, locked inside the navy Cortina with a small bottle of lemonade between four of us, legs stuck fast to the plastic seats in the back. I can’t remember exactly why I left Ireland. You grab my elbow and say, ‘Up, up, get up, thanks lads, keep it sweet.’ Reef me out the door. We’re in the piss graffiti lift with ‘Mandy Is A Dirty Slag’ on the ceiling. Me pressed up against the back panel mirror, hands slowly slipping down to my knees to balance myself, in tears. You, laughing, choking, spitting, yahooing. What year is it? Back out in the pitch-dark wet car park you say, ‘Fuck me that was close, at least we have enough to do us till next week.’ The wind batters my face from the rolled-down window. It is raining hard. You drive too fast. Our words slow to molasses.

  I’m wearing a floppy wine corduroy hat, seersucker blouse, striped leggings, red boots, an awful lot of tiger’s eye to ward off rich Jersey males who only tolerate whore’s gold. ‘It’s weird here, they’re into witchcraft as soon as the tourists go home.’ You look midered, like you’ve just stepped out of a tube at Wood Green. Long silver trench coat, black shirt and trousers, silver winklepicker shoes. ‘Caroline left a car for you, I think it’s a Punto, she’s too fucked most of the time to drive.’ We take the coast road around the back of the island on into the Vic in the Valley where you immediately nab the pub manager’s job and a small flat in a converted barn on the grounds. Twenty minutes on the island and you have transport, a job, a place to live. ‘That’s how you fucking do it, oh yeah baby!’ you holler, rolling a joint on the dashboard. ‘You have to be so careful here, they deport people for fuck all. It’s illegal to dance on Sundays. All these strange laws. They out petty crime on the news every night at 6 p.m., even minor traffic offences. A Scottish builder was barred from the islands for stealing a garden gate. A Portuguese janitor got stuck inside a cow’s vagina, found in a field the next day by police still clamped on. They photographed it for their files.’ You stare out at the silver strips of sea and Elizabeth’s Castle, grey and lumpy as an exotic elephant washing itself in a dust bath. ‘Tell me about the Wizard,’ you say. ‘Your letters were so full of shit they almost made me piss myself.’ I tell him, ‘No, it’s true, he’s big into this Carlos Castaneda astral projection thing, travelling outside the body into other dimensions. His spirit guide is a soldier from the American Civil War.’ You laugh so hard the car bonnet bashes bushes on the roadside. ‘He says you can choose whether to be in this world or a dream world.’ I want to tell you that I knew because one night after we’d taken tabs of acid, I got horny and stuck a roll-on deodorant bottle up me in bed. I don’t know why I did it but they were all eating hummus on wheaten crackers downstairs, and the Wizard said to me, ‘I could see what you were doing up there.’ I stopped playing with myself after that and only bathed with a light nightdress on me. Caroline says it’s all the sandalwood he burns, it’s sent his brain somewhere else. I explain that you have to be Jersey-born and living on the island fifteen years before you’re allowed rent somewhere with its own entrance or exit. Visitors like us can only get jobs in the service industry that supplies accommodation. ‘How come you work in an office then?’ you ask. I’m staying illegally in a luxury penthouse with a camembert-scoffing alcoholic who’s the kept mistress of the Prince of Oman. ‘She’s not bullshiting either … he came one night with a flotilla of suited bodyguards to take her somewhere for posh fish.’ I get £10 an hour for sticking labels on envelopes. It’s £0.90 for twenty fags and £1.60 a pint. ‘The locals out in the valley where you’ll be speak a weird mixture of French and English that no one can understand.’ You say, ‘Fuck them.’ My other friends live in a house on Le Geyt Street in the town centre with a jazz band, rented by the Wizard. ‘You’ll see for yourself, there’s a man from Portsmouth who lies on the kitchen floor every night after downing a litre of vodka. He won the lotto, and lost his life.’ No matter where you drive on the island eventually the capital, St Helier, sneaks into view. ‘A lot of insurance companies,’ you say. ‘And banks. I’d say there’s some rich fucks stashing their wedges of cash right here.’ Hot as badgers, the last day of August. ‘We go to a pizza place inside a cave at weekends. They put slices of raw garlic on the dough. Everyone eats Moules Marinières on a Sunday, it’s the only full day workers get off. We get really messed up, you’ll see for yourself.’ We arrive at the house, Caroline jumps up to give you a hug. ‘You’re gas, look at you!’ she says, amused by your formal attire. ‘The jammy fucker got himself a job straight from the airport,’ I tell her. The men in the house are all wearing shorts. She’s going travelling around Thailand soon. ‘Can I skin one up?’ you ask, picking up a lump of yellow from the coffee table. ‘Go easy on it,’ I say. ‘It’s way stronger over here, comes straight in from Africa.’ There’s a man in the corner rubbing snails on his face from inside the patio door, he thinks they’re ice cubes. Geraldine is out in the yard rubbing vanilla ice cream on her legs to cool herself down. The Wizard introduces his girlfriend Theresa and says she’s a reincarnated town crier. He tells you that the apocalypse happened thousands of years ago and genial aliens came from an outer galaxy to build the pyramids and help us start up again. ‘Nice one,’ you say. ‘And I hear you drive a bin truck during the day, how do
es that work for you?’ Caroline laughs. Nine cats with the same life stroll about mewing for meat in the vegetarian kitchen that’s growing its own bean sprouts in the tile grouting. We get totally fucked and end up lying on the parquet floor. ‘I think I’m going to enjoy this gig,’ you say. Later into the night when everyone is slumped open-mouthed on damask chairs, you steal the Wizard’s girlfriend. Riding her hard in the spare room upstairs until she calls you ‘daddy’ and asks for more. Hippy hell breaks loose. You never get to see the jazz band play. The Wizard puts a curse on you. ‘I’ll get E.T. to do him up the arse next time he’s in town,’ you say.

  There’s an oil-slick all along the beach in Blackpool when we get our first proper look at the promenade. Blackened seagulls and other smaller birds stiff in horror, a forfeit of high commerce. ‘Isn’t that terrible, I bet there’ll be no swimsuit competition this year,’ our mum says. We look at each other and snicker. Moonhead is pissed out of his balls driving the car. He forbids any more ‘children’s talk’ until he can get another double whiskey down the gullet. But we are too excited. ‘Look at the trams!’ I say. ‘Big deal,’ you say. ‘Shut it,’ Mum says. ‘Yeah, shut it,’ Moonface says. At the Sunnybank B&B a Welsh woman with huge tits and plaited loaves high hair tells us the oil slick has caused a lot of damage to business. ‘The husband’s a pansy,’ Moonhead says, as we make our way up the stairs. ‘They said they keep the resident’s bar open until 1 a.m.’ There are two single beds and a double in the room, a shower and toilet shared with another couple from the Isle of Man. Dinner is served in small silver bowls: hot chicken soup with reconstituted small vegetables floating around, followed by chicken and chips, and strawberry ice cream served in the same silver bowls, still warm from the soup. ‘All the way from Ireland,’ the Welsh woman says, pointing us out to the other diners who stare and nod. ‘I put plastic dog shit in his bed,’ you say, knowing that Moonface was born minus a sense of humour and will punch one of us in the face for misbehaving. ‘Don’t!’ I plead. ‘Just don’t.’ Every holiday in Blackpool starts the same way. ‘We’re going to the Tower Ballroom tonight, your father wants a dance, and tomorrow we’ll hit the Pleasure Beach,’ Mum says, looking stupidly happy. ‘I’m going to a punk disco,’ you announce. ‘I saw a poster for it earlier.’ Mum says, ‘On your nelly, you’re only thirteen.’ Outside the streets are flushed with red and blue windmills, buckets and spades, giant jelly infant soothers, ‘Kiss Me Quick’ felt bowler hats, polystyrene triangles loaded with smelly periwinkles. I try skipping along but you keep pushing me into small bumpy walls, scraping the skin on my arms. There are donkeys being pulled home along the pathways by vendors. Candy floss lights up fairy pink under flashing neon on makeshift fairground stalls. Bingo men shout out numbers. Face painters pull us in and Moonface pulls us out again. Inside the Tower there’s a map of what’s on each floor: an aquarium, Jungle Jim’s, a soft-ball pit, a dungeon, a circus. We’re herded into the lift to the darkened dance hall and told to ‘sit still’ while they hit the floor. ‘I’m off,’ you say. ‘Tell them I’ve gone to the toilet.’ I wait around for a while and go look for you. You’re kissing a girl called Paula at a viewing window three floors above. It is a shock to see you kissing someone but you seem to know how to do it proper. ‘Piss off,’ you say. You’re getting too grown up for me. Moonface is seething we left the drinks unattended at their table. Some gobshite has taken away a globule of yellow that was still sat happy in his glass. ‘Where’s that pup?’ he asks about you, but I will not tell, not now or into forever. A bald man bangs an organ and Mum says, ‘Isn’t this lovely, aren’t we having a great time!’ A security man pulls you into the ballroom, dragging you towards mum and Moonface. ‘Is he yours?’ he asks, as if you are a dog. ‘He’s been drinking beer out there in the corridor.’ This is a terrible thing to happen. Moonface says, ‘You’ll get my belt later.’ You look away and don’t seem to care. All the way back Mum is saying, ‘Don’t, for God’s sake they’re on their holidays.’ At the B&B Moonface slams the front door, unable to contain his anger. Mum says, ‘Go upstairs, I’ll take your father to the bar to calm him down.’ You jump on the bed and tell me you got the tit off Paula and are meeting her tomorrow night for more. I don’t know what this means but I can tell you are excited. ‘Do you love her?’ I ask and you say you might well do, for a week anyway. ‘Look!’ you shout, with your head full out the window, legs splayed behind. ‘It’s unreal.’ I run over and stick my head out. ‘What? Where?’ I say. You pull the heavy Victorian window down onto the small of my back, jamming me into place. ‘Tell them I’ve gone to the punk disco, I’m a teenager now, I can do what the fuck I like.’