by Paul Magrs
Call Me
The In-Crowd
The Windmills of Your Mind
You’re the Devil in Disguise
Where Do I Begin?
This last, sassy number performed by the great, still-living Scots-Caribbean songstress, Brenda Soobie. As the song shimmered and slunk to its climax David happened to glance at the marquee’s entrance, where each newcomer was having their wrist stamped with an ultra violet stamper. And there was Wendy, looking around and smiling hopefully, in a Wombles T shirt.
EIGHTEEN
We went back to a flat in the centre of town, one of the back streets I hadn’t explored, which was dark and cobbled, with warehouse doors locked and bolted down for the night, and fire escapes stretching up to the flats which, I realised, must fill the upper levels of all the buildings here. Colin came with us. It was after four, and we had danced through the whole night, finishing in the shopping centre beneath the marquee, where the music was pumped down onto the galleries, fountains and pools of the mall. We were exhausted and Colin came along with us. None of us thought about it. It wasn’t as if I was going back with David. It hadn’t come to that. We’d had a laugh and he hadn’t made any moves. It seemed that one minute we were dancing to the final few songs and then we were halfway up this perilous fire escape, and Colin was saying, “This is where my mum is making her fortune. Give it a couple of hours, just after dawn, and she’ll be here. Driving a hard bargain.” As David unlocked his door at the top of all the steps, Colin said, “Mum’s making her fortune as if it was a competition. But Dad got his in a fluke. If she succeeds in making it, it will still be his. She doesn’t see that. If it’s a competition, it’s like giving it straight to him.”
Then we were in David’s flat, which he shared with his friend Rab, who lay tripping on the green velvet settee, his daschund stretched out on his chest. He was feeding the dog cold sausages and listening to some kind of hard core dance music, with one of the Beat Poets intoning over the top. Even though it was a warm night Rab wore a colourful tea cosy hat as though he’d just come in and flung himself down. He said he’d been in all night. David turned down the music and made us strong, sugary tea. He flung open the tall windows and explained that they were so high up here that they need never worry about burglars slinking in. He cursed Rab and his habit of pulling all the windows shut.
“It’s the noise from outside I can’t manage,” said Rab, putting his hands over his ears. “It’s too much stimulus. You can have too much stimulus.”
David snorted with laughter at this.
It was then we realised that the Christmas decorations were still up. Ratty tinsel hung from the pictures on the walls, the window frames and the many parched yukka plants.
Colin settled himself down to look through Rab’s records, and started playing a few, picking up the needle and replaying particular tracks. Rab lay back and let him play what he wanted. The daschund raised its head to stare at Colin.
David and I drank our tea in the kitchen alcove. It was better organised than you’d imagine for a kitchen belonging to two careless straight men: they were vegetarians. Plastic tubs were labelled bulgar wheat, green lentils, mung beans. David was telling me how cheaply you can live off pulses and beans and sprouts. He ransacked their homemade spice rack, opening jars and getting me to identify spices by smell, my eyes closed. Paprika, cumin, garam masala. He showed me Rab’s favourite cookery book, one with silly cartoons of a very badly-drawn ‘lady vegan’ as they called her. “You don’t have to worry about eating cheaply, though,” David smirked. “Isn’t your uncle a multi-millionaire?”
“Not quite.” The subject of his money embarrassed me. It was true, I’d become used to eating very well since I’d been in Edinburgh. I wouldn’t touch instant coffee now, or soup out of a tin. How strange the boys’ jars of dried, earthy foodstuffs looked to me. All their food was stockpiled here: just add water and see.
The strip lighting was harsh and made the rag rugs glow with colour. As I stared David caught me up in his arms and started to nuzzle at my neck. This was his move and, after all, I was rather relieved. His stubble had started to grow in: it was almost dawn. Here you could see across the high rooftops of the city to the docks, and the pink dawn smudging into the vague tangerine of the streetlights. I was too sensitive, or my skin was. When he kissed me I felt too raw, like he was peeling me away. He told me I tasted nice and all I could imagine tasting of was lager and cigarettes.
Across the room Rab had fallen into a stupor and Colin seemed to be asleep, curled awkwardly on rucked-up mats.
“We should have gone home earlier,” I said.
“I’ll be buzzing all night,” David said. “I won’t sleep till lunch time.”
“You’ll miss the best part of the day.”
“Yeah?” He kissed me again and then he licked my eyebrows.
“What was that for?”
But he didn’t explain. His frilly blue shirt was sweat-dampened still. When I leaned against the kitchen counter, he came with me, and I could feel the tight, mysterious knot of flesh in the front of his trousers. He asked me if I wanted to come to bed for the few hours until morning.
I let his question hang in the air for a moment.
“Have you ever slept with anyone before?” he asked.
I told him that not really, no. But that a friend of mine, Timon, had shown me a thing or two on the beach at Blackpool, late one night.
I didn’t tell you about that, did I? It wasn’t much. We never made love. I badgered him, friend to friend, to show me the kind of thing I might have to expect. I did it for a laugh, frankly, but I had Timon on that I was ignorant. I made Timon show me his glorious hard-on as we sat on the mucky sands down from the Pleasure Beach. In the moonlight it was like some weird crustacean that had wandered out of the sea. He breathed in little gasps as I took it in both hands like a microphone. Bless Timon. He could hardly get it back inside his pants when I decided I’d seen enough.
So when I went into David’s small room, sat on the bed, and watched him strip himself bare, I could look at him like an expert. I took his sticky, excitable cock and the soft bag of his balls in both hands and drew him down onto the unmade bed.
At six in the morning I led the sill-drowsy, dopey-sounding Colin on the walk back to the Royal Circus. He was terribly hung-over.
“You never fucked him,” he said, aghast.
I shook my head.
“I mean,” said Colin. “He’s a sweet, rough-looking boy, if that’s what you’re into...but...”
“We never fucked,” I said, through gritted teeth. “It all happened naturally. He licked my fanny for a while and came in his own hand. Then he fell asleep.”
“Marvellous,” said Colin scathingly.
When she lay on her bed it was nearly seven and too light to sleep. There was no blocking out the light in her room. She listened to Colin down in the kitchen, having a final, thoughtful cup of tea by himself, then pad off down the corridor and into his room.
Minutes later another bedroom door clicked pen. Someone was up early. Wendy closed her eyes. She heard two pairs of feet shushing into the kitchen. Then two voices, talking carefully to each other.
“It’s bad enough here,” said a man’s voice. “But it would be even worse downstairs.” It was Captain Simon, sounding grumpier than I’d ever heard him.
Aunty Anne was with him. I could just see her in that fake fur trimmed robe of hers, pulled to cover her bosom. “It’s like a French farce,” she yawned.
There was a peaceful lull.
Captain Simon said suddenly, “All the same, I think it would be better...for all concerned, kind of thing...if we didn’t get up to anything like this...ehm...anymore.”
Aunty Anne’s voice came out harsh. “What’s your problem?”
“No problem. I think what we’re doing is unwise.”
“Of course it’s unwise, you old fool. That’s the point, isn’t it?”
“It isn’t my point,
Anne.”
“Love like this isn’t sensible,” she said. “It isn’t tameable or well-mannered. Of course it causes problems.”
“I’m not in love with you,” he said, affronted.
“Not love then,” she said. “Desire. Destructive passions.”
“Well, I can’t be doing with them anymore.”
“I see.”
“Pat is my friend. I sit with him, I drink his drink, enjoy his company. This is betraying him. And he’s ill, too. This is wicked.”
Aunty Anne didn’t reply for some time. “So I’m wicked, am I?”
“I think you’re a very...impressive woman, Anne. You’re glamorous and sexy...”
She made a bitter, dismissive noise. “You’re no special friend to Pat. He’s told me what he thinks.”
“About what?”
“He said, only the other day. About you. About you being a greedy old devil, hanging around, seeing what you can scrounge. He thinks you’re waiting for him to die, seeing what you can get. Don’t you think he gets enough begging letters?”
“That’s not what I’m here for.”
“You’re not here for me, either, are you?”
“No, Anne, I’m not. I’m afraid you’ve rather compromised me.”
“I’ve compromised you?”
“You’ve ambushed me. You’ve made things impossible for me.”
“That’s right. Blame the woman. The vile, ungovernable appetites of the woman.”
His chair legs scraped on stone as he stood up. “If that’s how you want to put it.”
“You misogynistic old bastard.”
“I love honest women. Good women.”
“Like your bonkers sister.”
“Don’t call Belinda. She’s twice the woman you are. Your niece is a good girl, too. No, it’s you, Anne. You’re a greedy woman. You don’t have a shred of fellow-feeling or compassion in your...”
There was a loud crack then, as she hit him. He received the blow silently. There was a second crack, as she hit him again. Then the doors banged and he was gone. He went downstairs to his own flat.
I lay, still unable to sleep, listening to Aunty Anne sob out her heart at the kitchen table.
NINETEEN
The next day—and maybe it was guilt—I went to Job Party for the first time. I was setting out, remarkably untired after the night I’d had, and Aunty Anne caught hold of me.
“You came in much too late last night.”
By now I knew it was best not to go on the offensive. “I know. We lost track.” I looked at her red-lined eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“You have to learn how to do the right things, Wendy. What’s right and what’s wrong. I’m sure your Uncle Pat doesn’t mind you getting out and enjoying yourself, but he’s in no fit state to worry about you.”
I nodded.
“There’s a right way and a wrong way,” she said. “And you can only push it so far.” She stared at me appraisingly. “You want to push it, don’t you? You want to find out how far you can go.”
I shrugged.
“All right,” she said. “You’re a good girl, I know.”
She let me go then. Colin hadn’t emerged from his room yet, but I felt sure he’d get a talking to as well.
Job Party consisted of six others who all looked up, surprised, when I arrived still wearing the blue cycling helmet Uncle Pat had bought me. I was the mysterious Wendy, who was meant to be languishing with glandular fever, or so my explanatory notes had told them.
They were an unpromising bunch. Most of them were men over thirty. The woman in charge talked brightly and pragmatically, twisting in her chair so she could make eye contact with everyone in turn, making her heavy earrings tinkle. She talked about opportunity and re-training, but seemed to know a little about everyone there. She asked me to explain to the group what my ambitions were. It was something they had done for each other at their first meeting.
I made something up. “I want to write a novel, just one novel in my lifetime, that everyone will read and that will change lives.”
They looked at me. Luckily, I’d heard enough from Timon and our Mandy to substantiate this wild claim as my own ambition. They encouraged me. But they also said what a precarious ambition that must be, being a paperback writer. I was told to expect lots of rejection letters. That I must be prepared to fund my ambitions by taking all kinds of ordinary day-jobs, but that would be what would teach me about life, about people, about the World of Work.
“I once thought about writing a book,” said Janice, the woman with the earrings.
One of the older men perked up. “They say everyone’s got a book in them.”
“That’s right, Derek,” she said. “And I’ve got good life experience. That’s what it’s all about. Experience.”
The group looked at me then, and I felt about six years old.
One of the other older men, Douggie, started telling us about the novel he’d written at weekends ten years ago. He had two photostatted copies in his desk at home. “It was about my experience of the Sixties. Paralleled with my father’s being tortured by the Japanese in the Second World War. He wouldn’t talk about it usually, but I interviewed him for hours. I tried to get a publisher. I said it was about father-son conflict. When I was made redundant I thought, this is my chance to make a success of myself. I read the thing again. And it was hopeless. I realised I couldn’t even string a sentence together. It looked like a bairn had written it.”
The only other woman, Sandra, said she’d written off to Mills and Boon once, to get the tape of instructions they sent out to prospective writers of romance. “It was so complicated, though. You’re not allowed to get inside the man’s head, which was all right by me, because how do I know how a man thinks?” She looked at the glum faces around her. “And they said you have to know all about your characters. You have to know them inside out. I thought it would have been a bit of pin money for me. I never got started. I wanted an exotic location, so I got a batch of brochures from Thomas Cook and pored over them for hours. I still have the tape somewhere, would you like it?”
They looked at me and I smiled. Janice, the woman in charge, said she hoped they’d been some help to me. And maybe I should look for jobs—perhaps in publishing—in the back pages of the Times Literary Supplement.
Walking home I wondered if I could get a job in a record shop. But David had said that in the interview they ask you about current bands and records and really, I knew nothing. I only knew the things I liked, and they were all old things, or things that weren’t popular.
I stood outside his Megastore and wondered if I should go in. I could pretend I was after a form for casual staff. It would be something to write on my slip for the DSS, to prove that I was making an effort. David might think I was chasing after him. Let him phone me instead.
I went next door to the Body Shop, where they had a vacancy for part-time work. It was like stepping into our Linda’s world, considering a job in a shop like that. I walked home, thinking dreamily about facial scrubs and eye gels.
All that week there was no phone call from David. He led a busy life, Wendy told herself. And so did she, she added.
In the Scarlet Empress one day she saw his friend Rab, sitting opposite his daschund, who got a chair to himself. Rab was writing in a notebook, barely stopping to tap out his cigarette ash. Wendy said hullo and broke his spell.
“I’ve had this sentence going on for almost twelve hours non-stop,” he said crossly. “Now I’ve lost its thread.”
Rab was, he explained, a master of convoluted sub-clauses. He wanted to write a book-length something, maybe a novel, that was all one sentence. Wendy rolled her eyes. Everyone was at it.
“You’re the girl from that night,” he said, staring at her. His eyes were still jerking left to right, she noticed. Wendy tried to see what he had written, but it looked like scrawl. “Dave’s wanted to phone you,” he said smugly. The daschund yapped at this, as if Rab was giving away
secrets. “But he thought you had gone off him. You and your mate, the little queer fella, upped and left at the crack of dawn. Dave didn’t get out of bed till tea time.”
“I left him a nice note.”
Rab shrugged.
Wendy sighed. “Tell him I don’t hate him. Tell him to phone me.”
“You phone him.” Rab was still wearing that tea cosy hat. She wondered if he was bald. “Listen,” said Rab. “He’s a nice fella. I’m only saying this because I know him and I don’t know you. He’s too nice for you to go messing him about.”
Wendy drew back. “I’ll phone him, all right?”
Rab nodded and went back to figuring out where his sentence was going.
It must be a city of words, thought Wendy, ordering herself some more coffee. A city where everybody wanted to be writing. The streets of the New Town seemed clear-cut and easily cryptic as a crossword, but the intrigues and the endlessly elastic sentences of the people who lived here ran any which way they wanted.
“You’re a lovely girl,” said Captain Simon to her one night when she walked into the kitchen to fetch a glass of water. “A really lovely girl. Isn’t she, Pat?”
Uncle Pat twinkled. “Apple of my eye.”
“You shouldn’t be drinking booze, Uncle Pat. Not on top of your pills.”
“Listen to how she thinks about me!” cried Uncle Pat, as if she had said something startling. “See, Simon! That’s the kind of woman you want. A thoughtful woman like that.”
“I’ve done with the female of the species,” said Captain Simon.
“Pish,” said Uncle Pat. “It’s never too late to enjoy a pretty face around the place. Your sister’s a fine woman. Where’s she tonight?”
Captain Simon chuckled. “She’s gotten the hang of my telescope. She’s sworn on pain of death to treat it kind. I left her star-gazing. She’ll be happy for hours.”
Belinda saw something in the night sky over Calton Hill. She
