by Paul Magrs
“I hope you haven’t got one on me,” said Serena frostily.
“Actually… I haven’t.”
From his galley kitchen Josh had a fire escape down into his
garden which was invisible in the night. I sat with him there for a while, amongst the potted pansies and the garden gnomes. He picked one of these up. “We call this one The Shagging Gnome because it props the kitchen door open when it’s hot. It looks like he’s, um… shagging the bottom of the door.”
“Shagging is such a ridiculous word,” I said.
“I’m sorry my sister was here. She turned up and I couldn’t…”
“I think she’s funny. She takes the wind right out of Serena’s sails.”
“That’s good for Serena, once in a while, when the likes of your aunt spend their time puffing her up.” He looked at me. “You never flatter Serena. You treat her like you treat everyone else.”
“And how’s that?”
“I’m not sure yet.” He blew out his smoke in that way he had, all in one rush. “A nice way, I hope.”
“We’re daft sitting out in the cold.”
“It’s good.” He was thoughtful. “Sometimes I think our family has spoiled itself. Melissa the way she is, like a character out of Congreve. Married to that husband of hers. Me frittering my time away. Tootling and footling my time.”
“Hey, you say that, too!”
“There’s only Katy with a level head on her shoulders.”
“She’s got that all right.”
“My family’s drifted about and split apart. The parts don’t know each other at all.”
“So’s mine,” I said. “When Mam died we all broke up and went off. It’s in the blood, though, I think. You grow up together and something tells you to get away. For a while at least.”
Josh looked sad. “Whatever that is, it isn’t in our blood. Melissa and I were adopted. Our adopted parents were old. They both died. There’s only us.”
“Oh.” I took the cigarette’s lost, hot drag. “I wondered about her accent.”
“Well,” he said. “She lays that on a bit thick, anyway.”
“Did you never want to see your biological mother?”
He turned cold. “No. I couldn’t. My parents were my real parents. I didn’t need others.”
“Did Melissa want to meet hers?”
“She did. And she found her mother. A different one to mine. And it didn’t work out. The woman didn’t want to know.” He finished his own cigarette. “Poor Melissa. She laughs at herself, but most of the time she’s quite unhappy. Shall we go back in? I’m fucking frozen.”
I laughed as we stood up. “Do you know something. It’s daft, but… I love the way you say ‘fucking’.”
“What?”
“So refined and proper.”
“Fucking fucking fucking fucking.”
Behind us, Melinda coughed. “Lovies, Katy wants to say goodnight to everyone.”
Wendy watched him kiss his daughter goodnight. From the doorway she could see walls covered with Spice Girls things and Disney things, but there was some evidence that these had been displaced recently and a whole new space, for a new preoccupation, had opened up. While Josh fussed over Katy, Wendy stared at the wall opposite her and saw a mass of newspaper print, interspersed with glossy magazine clippings. Amongst the text were pictures that Wendy herself knew off by heart. The deep chocolate brown and lemon glow of the video stills grabbed from Timon’s video. The slight, pin-prick figures in the light. And, repeated all around Katy’s collage, the faces of Timon and Belinda themselves, looking alarmed in the photographers’ glare, then more composed and intent, when interviewed. She thought: Katy is a fan of my friends. Then she remembered seeing the child in the baths in a Strange Matter T shirt.
“Wendy looks like she’s going to throw up,” Katy observed.
Joshua frowned. “That’ll be the trout.”
“I wish you wouldn’t cook things with bones in, dad.”
“I was just looking at your bits out of the papers,” said Wendy.
Katy brightened up at this and, in showing her enthusiasm, seemed for the first time like a nine year old. “Timon and Belinda,” she smiled.
Joshua laughed. “Katy has a crush on both of them.”
“I know them,” said Wendy. “I know them very well.”
“No…” whispered Katy. “Are they really from space?”
“Timon’s from Blackpool.”
“And we thought it would be us introducing Wendy to the great and the good!’ said Josh, tucking his daughter in. “Sleep now. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
“Can we meet them?” Katy insisted. “Can I go and meet them?”
“They’re in New York just now, but… yeah. I’m sure they’d love to meet you.”
Katy lay rigid, her eyes wide. “Something new, coming true! That’s what Timon always says.”
“I know,” said Wendy as Joshua led the way out of the child’s room. “And it’s true, too, hon.”
While the others were gone, leaving Serena and Melissa in the sitting room, the plumper woman stopped fluttering and concentrated on the visitor. Her head went on one side and she considered Serena for some time before saying, “You’ve been very successful, haven’t you, lovey?”
Serena poured herself another Martini and then enjoyed carefully lacing the sweetness with vodka. “What do you mean by that?”
“I’m sure it will all work out fine—Godwilling—but you can’t pretend you aren’t putting them together for a reason.”
“Ah. Do you mean you’re objecting to Wendy? What is she, too young? Too stupid? Too northern?”
“None of those things, I’m sure. I’m rather worried about her.”
“I don’t see why you should be.”
“I like the girl, the little of her I’ve seen. She’s a match for Joshua in many ways.”
“Then maybe it’s all right,” smiled Serena. “And you needn’t fret.”
“Can I be frank, lovey?”
“Be my guest.”
“It’s you I can’t stick. I’ve told Joshua, too. You took him up and did for him. I think you’re a horrid, snobby old bitch.”
“Well…!”
“And when you get together with Joshua, it’s like a nasty commingling of natures and you encourage him to behave worse than he is. Alone, I’m sure you’re safe enough. When you’re round Joshua, though, I tend to get protective.”
“The protective older sister.”
“That’s right.”
“Not that he’s even your natural brother.”
“That doesn’t matter a jot.” Melissa clicked her fingers and Serena laughed.
“You might like Wendy, but she thinks you’re a pain. You should have seen the looks she was giving me,” said Serena.
“I don’t care. I don’t need to be liked.”
“That’s just as well.
“I can still warn her that Joshua will make her miserable.”
“Oh, keep out of it. You’re like a black albatross hanging in everyone’s faces. You depress everyone. And if you call me ‘lovey’ just once more I shall slap you.”
“Giving Wendy to Joshua is like throwing good money after bad.”
“Your brother is bad money?”
“He’s a risk, I think.”
“And you don’t approve of Wendy’s money?”
“I don’t know if she’s got any.”
“She’s stinking.”
Melissa craned her heard, mishearing this. “She’s what, lovey?”
“I said, she’s stinking rich.” A thunderous, dead tone.
“Good for her,” cackled Melissa. “She should watch herself.”
“What’s this about?” asked Joshua, frowning, coming in with Wendy.
Serena swore under her breath. “Two old ladies gossiping, what else?”
“What?” asked Melissa, who really was having trouble with her ears. “You know, I’ve asked to be syringed
again, but…”
Joshua was glaring at Serena. “Wendy tells me that those alien people, Timon and Belinda, are friends of hers. You never told me that.” His voice was flat and full of warning.
“Didn’t I?” She looked flustered. “I mustn’t have thought it very interesting. It’s a lot of nonsense, isn’t it?”
“Not to Timon and Belinda it isn’t,” said Wendy, going to fetch their coats. “I’ll phone a cab.” The atmosphere seemed to have gone out of the night. It was time to head home.
“I like those alien people,” Melissa chuckled, catching up at last. “Especially the big black one. Anytime he liked he could take me into space.”
THIRTY-SIX
He didn’t want to stay in London for longer than an afternoon. He explained, as they sat with ice creams in Russell Square, that he didn’t want to see his mother.
“She’d love to see you, Colin,” Wendy told him. “She’s always asking if you’ve been in touch.”
“I don’t want to give her the satisfaction of seeing me alone. You know how she was when I got it together with David.”
The square was teeming with people catching the unseasonal warmth. Pigeons strutted and bickered on the paths, pumping their heads and tidying litter. Colin looked at Wendy and went on. “It’s finished. He got up one morning and decided he wasn’t queer after all. It took him months to figure it out. He got a good deal on it, though. Weeks in a hotel with a miraculous Paris view, getting his cock sucked while he thought it over.”
Colin was white and thinner. He had shaved off his odd little beard and looked even more drawn. His clothes were expensive and hanging off him.
“Where is he now?”
“He went straight off to Scotland, just before the weekend. They’ve offered him a better job in Glasgow, some record shop. He’s doing a management course and moving there.”
“Are you going after him?”
“I want to talk to him. I’m catching the four o’clock. There’s the flat in the Circus to sort out, to air and clean up. We’ve left it empty for ages. We could have squatters.”
“And you’ll talk it through with David?”
“It’s because I’m positive, you know. It’s not just him getting cold feet. He wasn’t faking it. You can’t, can you?”
“When did you tell him you were positive?”
“Oh, he guessed at the start. All the signs. The extra care I took.”
“He’ll deal with it. He’ll realise.”
“I’m not in love with the fella. But… he’s all right. I mean, he wasn’t the love of my life. I don’t believe in that. But we had a good time.”
“You were paying for everything, too. Splashing your money around. Maybe he can’t handle that, either.”
“We’ll see.” He looked at Russell Square. “When I’m here, I think of Virginia Woolf when she was writing Mrs Dalloway. She came running through here at night, going doo-lally and confused, ripping her clothes off. No one to help her.”
“Why is it everyone else I know knows about books and I don’t?”
“I wish I was staying, really. Then I could meet your Mandy at last. We were kids last time. Now she’s going to be a writer.”
“It’s the do, the day after tomorrow.”
“I can’t stay, though. I’ll come down again, maybe soon.”
Wendy sighed. “I miss your dad, Colin.”
“I know.”
“He had sense. He could sort things out.” Wendy wondered whether to ask Colin about Joshua. She found she couldn’t sort out a picture of Josh to describe to him. She couldn’t put him into words.
“What have you done with the money?” he asked.
“Given chunks away. Nothing much. There’s a friend of Serena’s, someone I’ve been seeing—well, not seeing as in seeing, but seeing around—who said he had a few tips for investing it. I’m going to invest it.”
“Who’s this friend?”
“Joshua Black.”
“Oh, god. Him.”
“What’s wrong with Josh?”
“I met him ages ago. When Serena was dragging me and mum around her London social whirl. There was something funny about him.”
“So I shouldn’t invest?”
“Nope. He made all his money in the City in the Eighties and then he gave the working bit up. The money he put into a whole range of ideas. Made a fortune, but it sounded very dodgy to me. And he was such a condescending get, too. You’ve not been doing filthy things with him, have you…?”
“No…”
“You should get away from that Serena. I don’t like her.”
They had coffee and cakes and stopped at a small bookshop. There, in a display, they found early copies of the union-jacketed, brick-thick BritLit Four. Automatically loyal, Wendy flipped to Mandy’s story. She showed Colin.
“’Me in the Monster Museum.’ That sounds about right.” He bought it. “Something to read on the train. She’s five pages long. That’s a page an hour.”
They walked up the bright, leafy streets to King’s Cross.
“There’s five hundred pages of other smart young things in there,” said Wendy.
“All writing about raves and acid and kicking each others’ heads in. Dreary internal monologues about S&M and Welsh football hooligans on joyrides. No thanks.”
“I hope that’s not what Mandy’s story is like,” Wendy said. “She claimed she was writing about our family.”
“Jesus God,” smiled Colin.
SuperBooks was well-lit and user-friendly, open until eleven at night and priding itself on its readings and launches. It was, it proclaimed, the world’s first chain of literary supermarkets. Browsers who’d come in after work to choose something to read on the tube were used to getting startled by faces famous from flyleafs intoning their deathless prose. The do for BritLit Four had the shop full to overflowing, mostly with the ninety-eight contributors and their friends and family members. Editors, agents and British Council people milled about the stands with plastic cups of wine, all knowing each other. The new young writers were in a kind of roped-in paddock, wearing flashy name badges and eyeing each other. The editors of the anthology, Alfie Smart and Lucy Webb, both of whom had been (as their respective blurbs had it) active and seminal since the nineteen-sixties, seemed wary of their paddock of ninety-eight authors under thirty.
“I’m not standing with that lot,” Mandy told her sister, so they kept to one side, nursing their drinks. Only six of the authors had been chosen to read, three minutes each. Mandy was one of them. She felt sick. “I look like a space hopper,” she said. “An orange maternity dress. What was I thinking of? Draw a face on the bump and I’ll look like a frigging space hopper.”
“Shall I?” asked Wendy.
Mandy marched up to a bookshop boy, who was writing out last minute name cards with a blue marker. She took it off him and told Wendy to draw the face in the middle of her orange belly. “Space Hoppers had shaggy eyebrows and a kind of whiskery, doggy face.”
A young woman with waxed, fair hair came up, clutching a drink and a stack of books. “Nuala, from Lucifer and Lucifer. I think your story is by far the best.”
“Oh,” said Mandy, cheering up as Wendy drew on her.
“It seems to me that you’re taking risks at the level of language…”
“You mean, no one understands what I’m going on about. That’s nowt new.”
“I was with you every word. I was born in Didsbury,” said Nuala, as if that explained it. “Have you got a novel?”
“Actually,” said Mandy, “It’s in my bag.”
“My boss would like to see it. He sent me here to see you. He’s skiing, but he’s the publisher at Lucifer and Lucifer. Have you got an agent?”
Mandy said that she hadn’t and took the woman’s card and then, with a smile, the woman moved off.
“Taking risks at the level of language,” Mandy laughed.
“Don’t lose your elasticity,” Wendy said.
&
nbsp; “What?”
“Don’t let it turn your head.”
Then they were met by a tall, curly-haired man in a black velvet suit. Last year he had published his first novel, which was based on the Fred and Rosemary West case and it had been a fantastic success. Cher and Bob Hoskins were going to be in the movie. “Mandy,” he purred, fag ash all down his velvet lapels. “Fantastic. You are exactly how I imagined you.” Then he too started going on about the risks she took at the level of language. Mandy’s eyes glazed when he went on to bring in what the French Feminists had to say about the language of the pre-oedipal womb. “Christ,” he suddenly muttered, seeing that his agent was trying to attract his attention through the crowd. “There’ll be a call coming in. Cher is apparently shitting herself because she’s just seen photos of Rosemary West and now she’s not too keen on the part. Excuse me.” He squeezed through the crush.
“Prick,” said Mandy after him.
“Oh, boy,” Wendy said.
“Daniel should be here. He used to love talking about things like that. Lulu Iffygay – or someone - was one of his biggies, in the days when he was obsessed with French Feminist criticism. The Speculum of the Other Woman. He said you had to read inside a woman’s body to see what she was on about.”
“The dirty pig.” Wendy got them refills. “You’ve beaten Timon to this, anyway…”
“Timon wouldn’t be interested in all of this.”
“Yeah, but he wants his book to come out. It’s called Pieces of Belinda.”
Mandy loved that. “Shit. Which pieces?”
“He’s fobbing off the publisher. Actually—that’s Lucifer and Lucifer, too. We should have asked that Nuala woman. He’s got a massive advance and they’re knocking up the cover as we speak. Timon and Belinda falling through the stars. But the thing is… he’s gone and lost the only copy of the manuscript he had.” Wendy kept her voice down. “He’s been going frantic.”
“He always was daft.”
“He reckons it’s been nicked.”
Just then the editors started calling everyone to attention.
“Jesus God,” said Mandy. “Now I’ve got to read.”
You could tell she was nervous when she got up in front of everyone. She was the first one, so it was difficult, but as soon as she opened her mouth her voice took over. Her voice had grown strong and evenly-pitched through her winter of muttering to herself, walking all over frozen Lancaster, and reading to the Professor in the night. She wedged her unborn baby above the table, displaying the Space Hopper face, and read her few pages.
