[Phoenix Court 04] - Fancy Man

by Paul Magrs

  Look at my new address. I know—it’s not a Manchester address. I’ve moved. You’re going to say I’m stupid, I know. And you’ve no right to! You’re still four years younger than me. Just because you’re swanning about in Edinburgh doesn’t mean you can—oh, anyway, sod it, yes—I’ve left Manchester-city-of-my-dreams behind already and come to a small dingy town instead and all for some fella.

  Reader—I married him.

  No, not quite. But I chucked in my university place for him, even before term began. Am I mad or what? I’d even bought my set texts. I’d read them and everything.

  We’re in Lancaster. A bit more north. Well, you know where it is. And if you don’t, you can look on a map. The smallest place I’ve ever been. A little castle with prisoners still inside, a canal with red and green chuggy boats going up and down and lots of mill workers’ houses. There’s a university on a campus out of town. It looks like a whole load of cereal packets and washing up liquid bottles. Looks like they made it on Blue Peter. Maybe I’ll transfer my course to there. We’re still talking it over and seeing what we can afford, and living in a rented house by the canal. From the kitchen window I can watch the swans go by.

  Nigel had to come here, that’s the reason for all of this. He’s started a PhD. He’s going to be a doctor. He’s found this old out-of-print woman (I mean, a novelist) who nobody knows about and whose books he loves. I haven’t read any. This was the only place they’d have him to research her books.

  Write and tell me I’m daft. Or write and bully me into getting back to my degree. Write and tell me to get something done. What am I doing? I’m tending houseplants. Putting up curtains. I’m fixing up the little house by the canal—lovely!—and having a fine old time. Nigel has a car and we run about the place. Lake District. Last weekend we went to see our Linda and that posh bloke of hers. A happy foursome. How we made me puke. Maybe I’ll get fed up with all this soon and do something mad like run away. I could hitch up to Scotland in an afternoon and come to see you. Land on your doorstep, Wendy. What would you think of that?

  Tell me about it all, anyway.

  Nigel’s up in the bedroom, reading. Doing his research. He thinks his old, out-of-print woman might still be alive. Wouldn’t that be something, he said—taking his head out of one of her musty old books—to find her alive and well after all these years! He said this to me when I took him up a cup of tea and a sandwich, an afternoon snack for him. He still wears those yellow glasses...and his blue coat.

  I’m not even reading these days. You know all those doorstep-sized Victorian novels I used to get through? Ravenously? I look at them now...on my new mantlepiece, all their spines happily broken, thin white lines scored on them to show how well-read I am...and now I can’t be bothered. I picked up The Woman in White today and couldn’t get into it. One of my favourites. I cleaned the cooker instead. Even the grisly bits under the rings.

  They’re too big, those books. And, in them, no one goes on normal. Or not very. And there’s no sex. I don’t know why I never saw that before.

  lots of love...

  Mandy.

  Aunty Anne took her to Jenners. As they passed through the tall double doors and shushed into the dark, perfumed, cavernous interior of the store’s ground floor, her Aunty pushed two fifty pound notes into her hand.

  “What’s this?”

  “Your Uncle Pat wants you to buy something nice to wear.”

  “What?”

  “He wants to take us all out for dinner, and...”

  Wendy jumped to her own defence. “What’s wrong with my own clothes?”

  “Nothing,” hissed Aunty Anne. “But...” She shook her head. “Look, are you going to argue about being given a hundred quid?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he shouldn’t spend his money on me. He’s already putting me up, and...”

  “Just take it. He’s got stacks, remember. And I’m not getting any of it, after all.” Aunty Anne hurried over to the Elizabeth Arden nook.

  “Wait a minute,” Wendy went after her. “Did you ask him for this?”

  Aunty Anne ignored her. Wendy asked again.

  “I just said that perhaps you could do with some new...”

  Wendy could have slapped her. “You’d no right to ask him for money for me! And there’s nothing wrong with what I wear!” She looked down at herself, at her denim shirt and jeans, her scuffed trainers. Then she was aware of the other women swishing past the cosmetics counters. Glamorous women with sunglasses pushed up and perched on top of their heads, their hair slick, all dressed up in satin trouser suits.

  “You’re a child,” Aunty Anne snapped. “Someone has to take you in hand, tell you what to do. Your mother can’t anymore.”

  Wendy turned red. “My mother never tried to, anyway. Even when she was here.”

  “Hm,” said Aunty Anne. “She let you all go your own way, didn’t she?”

  Wendy nodded. “What’s wrong with that?”

  “It doesn’t always work. Sometimes people...have to be guided more.”

  “Rubbish.”

  “Nobody’s ever told you how to dress, Wendy.”

  “I don’t need telling! I’m happy how I am.”

  “But everything you wear looks so...cheap.”

  “You mean tarty?”

  “No—cheap! Like you’re wearing things out of a cheap shop.”

  “Most of my things come from charity shops.”

  Aunty Anne gave a look as if to say this proved her point. She ran a hand over the display of lipstick tips. Wendy thought of dog’s willies.

  “It’s got nothing to do with you,” Wendy snapped. “It’s not up to you to see I get brought up like a proper little lady.”

  Aunty Anne looked sceptical.

  “Don’t look at me like Mary Poppins.”

  “Ha! Don’t you have a temper, eh?”

  Wendy stomped off.

  Aunty Anne found her in the ladies’ department. There was a whole display of tartan slacks with elasticated waists. “It’s all clothes for old women up here,” said Wendy.

  “Not all,” her Aunt said coaxingly, and nodded to a section where they had flouncy, silky, ribboned gowns. Wendy rolled her eyes.

  “That’s what they wear to...like, university balls and stuff. Horrible.”

  “What would you like to wear?”

  Wendy shrugged. Aunty Anne offered her the hundred pounds again and this time, with a sigh, Wendy took it.

  “You touched a nerve,” Wendy told her. “Ever since I’ve been in this town, I’ve felt like I’m not dressed right. I was comfy at home, the way I was. I never thought about it.”

  Aunty Anne was nodding sagely. Wendy went on. “Here, I’ve felt like I ought to look different, be different...change myself somehow. Is that because it’s a big city and everyone’s so smart?”

  Aunty Anne was fingering the collar on a nice suit. “Partly that. It’s also your age. You’re bound to want to change.”

  “I don’t want to. I just think maybe I should.”

  “Try things out,” said Aunty Anne. “You can afford to.”

  Wendy looked at the ladieswear. “Not here, anyway.” She stashed her Uncle’s money away.

  Aunty Anne was looking at her strangely.

  “What?” Wendy prompted.

  “You’re doing very well.”

  “Thanks. What at?”

  “Settling in here. It can’t be easy. Getting used to the flat, living with new people. Your Uncle Pat isn’t the easiest person to live with. I should know.”

  Wendy felt like laughing. Next to Aunty Anne, she thought, Uncle Pat was a doddle.

  Aunty Anne said, “He’s very fond of you. I can tell.”

  They were heading for the escalator. Wendy smiled. “It’s hard to tell with him. He’s so skitty.”

  “He likes you a lot,” said Aunty Anne. “He said last night, what a tonic you were to have about. Because you’re not old or ill
.”

  Wendy, smiling, shook her head. “I’m not old or ill.”

  “So you’re doing really well.”

  “Well, thanks!” They were back in the hall of perfumes, where the counters gave of a pale, chill light. Aunty Anne headed straight to the samples. Wendy said, “You sound like a school report.”

  Aunty Anne squirted herself with a small green bottle, sniffed her wrist a grimaced. “You’ve made a good start. He’ll not forget you.” Then she gave Wendy one of her significant looks. “Do you want to try this?”

  It was the most awful flowery scent. “No, thanks.” Wendy was suspicious. “What do you mean, not forget me?”

  Aunty Anne tutted. “You know...in his thingy, his will. When he passes away, eventually.”

  “How can you think that!”

  Aunty Anne smiled kindly. “Of course I can! I can think it on your behalf, you silly thing. I can’t think it on my own behalf. I won’t be getting anything. Not his poor ex-wife. And I don’t expect to.” Anne put down the last of the samples and rubbed both wrists together, crushing all of her scents in one. “Shall we go?”

  Wendy’s voice was calm. “I’m not here to beg for that old man’s money.”

  “Oh, lovey, come on. None of us can afford to be that noble.”

  “I feel sick.”

  Aunty Anne gave her a gentle push, and nudged her elbow. “Would you really turn up your nose at all his millions?”

  “You’ve brought me here to beg...to...”

  Aunty Anne became flustered and cross. “Not ‘to’ anything. What was I meant to do? Of course I brought you here.” Her voice had gone too loud. “Now, look...don’t spoil it. Come on, let’s find a shop for trendy young ladies...and let’s blow that money.”

  Wendy crinkled the notes in her pocket. “I wish you’d left me at home.”

  Aunty Anne drew herself up to her full height. Even with a scarf wrapped into a turban to cover her hair, pink bits were poking out from under and she looked ridiculous. It was like candy floss under her turban, Wendy thought. “I think you’re kidding yourself, Wendy. It was your choice. You thought as well as I did that you deserved a crack at ending up in that old devil’s will. You’re not as innocent as all that.”

  Wendy kept quiet. She couldn’t look her aunt in the eye.

  Anne said, “Let’s get you dressed up. Come on. He’s serious about going out to dinner. He doesn’t want you looking scraggy-arsed, does he?”

  The next time I went to the museum I headed straight to my glass cabinet full of all the kinds of bears in the world. They hadn’t budged an inch. I liked this about them...but, I realised, what I also liked about them (a lot) was that, on the other side of that outside wall behind them...was a Balti restaurant. Did the Balti people know? It was probably their toilets, at the back of that place. I imagined fellas peeing up against urinals. And I was pleased, because I imagined them suddenly getting X-ray specs and seeing all these splendid bears.

  The extinct room made me think, too. In one corner they had the tallest bird that had ever walked the earth. It was shaggy like horsehair. Ten foot tall. And I knew for a fact it backed up against a green grocer’s. I waited to see it come to life and peck a hole in the wall. Give someone a fright. I would sit here for an hour or more, looking at stuffed beasts. It calmed me down.

  ELEVEN

  Her new town—The New Town, as they called it—was in a grid. Streets like a crossword. Three across. Two down. Starts with a V, six letters, second last letter R. Wendy zig-zagged everywhere she needed to go. It was Georgian architecture, Captain Simon said. Obviously the product of a tidy mind. Of a whole host of tidy minds. They all had tidy minds in the eighteenth century.

  “A tidy mind!” said Aunty Anne, as if she had never heard of such a thing. It was breakfast time and, while the others were reading their post, she was flipping through last night’s Evening Post. There had been a collision in space between an unmanned supply ship and a Russian space station. It was the worst space accident in years. Aunty Anne had found herself talking about these things quite a lot recently, with Captain Simon, whose hobby, he said, was outer space. Anne scanned through the small piece on the accident, genning up.

  Wendy, meanwhile, was thinking about spending the day zig-zagging around town on her bike. Aunty Anne had given her an old bike, which had been left in the outhouse in the shared garden. It was as good as new. Uncle Pat had bought her a blue riding helmet and, although Wendy wasn’t convinced that she looked right on a bike, the new blue helmet settled the matter: she would have to make an effort.

  But the traffic on the streets of Edinburgh was very fierce.

  For the moment, she put it out of her mind and read Timon’s letter.

  I’m flakey. I’m flighty. You know I am, hon. So I’m rubbish at writing to absent friends—but I’ve been missing you, even though I’m hanging out with other people. You know how it is.

  I don’t want to go making you jealous with talk of all my new lady friends. I’ve been seeing a bit of your sisters, of Mandy and Linda. I even went up to Lancaster to see your Mandy in her new house. Did you know she’d pulled out of her course? Silly girl. I told her: you’ll live to regret this. You’ll look back one day at all your golden chances—Oh, fuck off, Timon, she snapped, you horrible black bugger. So that shut me up, and we went out for a drink. We didn’t take that silly stuffy boyfriend of hers. He hardly said a word to me the whole time I was there. I think he was jealous. I can’t see why Mandy sticks it with him. She reckons he’s the dog’s bollocks in bed, and I couldn’t work out if that meant he was bad or good.

  You know, Wendy, you never told me about that trick your Mandy does—with those metal bangles she wears. When we sat in the bay window of the City Bar, she pushed both bangles inside her mouth, to stretch her lips as wide as they’d go. She looked frigging awful, bless her. She says, Timon, why do the men never look at me now? And I laugh, because when she does that, she looks like a monster. Your Mandy’s been doing that trick too much. She went to the doctor, he told her to stop. She’s stretched her lips and the bottom one is bending curling over and it won’t go back. The Doctor said, my dear, you are losing your elasticity. That’s what he said. You must stop this nonsense at once. So there she is, hon. That’s the shape your loopy sister is in. I’m ok. I’m writing still. My droll little stories. (Very little). I’m on the verge of selling something (I think).

  love to you....

  Timon.

  Timon’s letters would always come like this. No real information in them. Nothing like the ordinary stuff people put in letters.

  Usually it would just be a postcard’s worth of stuff like the above. And...he’d probably made it up anyway. Had Mandy really started to lose the elasticity in her lips because of a trick she did with bangles? Mandy had always pulled faces... She loved to turn her beauty grotesque. But was she actually hanging and flapping open? In Lancaster? And had she really gone to the doctor? Timon, I wish you would write me sensible stuff.

  Whatever Timon wrote, it was never the product of a tidy mind. Wendy sighed and went off with her helmet on, to ride around the city.

  Aunty Anne and Captain Simon Sing a Sexy Duet About

  Collisions in Space.

  Or...Aunty Anne wishes this was a duet.

  She bursts into spontaneous:

  Singing songs at our age,

  Old man, we must be fools...

  Ah, you rotten devil, Captain Simon

  did you do something valorous once?

  or maybe repetitively some times?

  These days...

  I’m bumping into you on the stairs

  the echoing stairwell between these flats

  where I stay with my ex-fella

  and your best friend,

  and the pigsty where you live

  with your funny

  fat-kneed sister: how can you bear her?

  hanging around all the time...

  Strange old thing, as obsessed wit
h

  space as you are, I’ve heard.

  We bump each day nose to nose on the steps

  I hold in my breath as we pass...

  hold my hand in your skinny old hand

  like holding a handful of spam

  you need someone warming you up...

  ships squashing by in the night

  or fuel ships, fuel ships that go

  colliding with Russian space stations

  (I thought you’d appreciate

  a racy, spacey turn of phrase)

  Oh, Captain, I’m thinking of us in no gravity

  of us in no clothes

  in no gravity

  turning and turning

  head over heels, tit over bum

  cock over clit over

  coiffure...

  do I shock you my silly old darling

  old man?

  I feel I can take this liberty,

  say, I want to be the first to

  fuck

  an old man

  in outer space

  (how kind no gravity will be on

  brittle old bones! And nothing will

  sag!)

  I want to shunt our station out of its

  worldly orbit by

  shagging

  What a word!

  A word I’ve not used before...

  but one that makes me think

  of...rumbunctious, woolly-arsed humping

  in zero atmosphere

  our faces all flushed up...

  old goat, have you really

  got a hairy bottom?

  In my mind I can see it

  And it’s like the full moon

  And all that comes from our bodies

  all that will float free...

  will slide weightless and loose in

  the absence of air...