[Phoenix Court 02] - Does It Show?

by Paul Magrs

  ‘No thanks,’ Jane said frostily. Just as she had when Frank had offered her a lend of his dirty videos, if she was feeling frustrated. Jane didn’t mind a joke with Fran, but not him.

  She said her goodbyes and went. Early today, thought Fran. It was only four.

  Jane arrived home wondering where on earth she would find a Real Ghostbusters toilet with ectoplasm.

  At least Christmas was still a way off. These were the dog days of summer. There was still time to look. But that very night the weather changed. Jane watched it from her window. Dawn drew up dreary and wet. It was autumn, right in time for the kids going back to school.

  TWO

  Nowadays Peter was well-behaved. There was never any trouble when she took him to playschool. Jane had cured him of his tantrums and tears just in time for the start of the autumn term. As she said goodbye this morning, at the doorway of the wooden community shack, he just took a deep breath and turned away, hoping to find someone to play with.

  She did worry about hitting him, sometimes. She spoke to her mam about it, to see what she thought. It was hard. Perhaps Peter’s dad would have known how to control him. Perhaps a man’s influence about the place would have lessened the load. She didn’t know.

  Her mam hadn’t been very helpful. ‘Men can’t discipline children. They get it all wrong. Your father was hopeless too. No, it’s all left up to us, Jane.’

  As a rule Jane’s mam, Rose, didn’t hold with men. Yet in recent years a string of variously debilitated lovers had passed through her life on crutches, in slings, eye patches and wheelchairs. She called them her ‘charity work’. ‘What I’m really looking for,’ Rose would say, ‘is a dwarf. A really little man would be just smashing.’

  ‘You’ve had a dwarf,’ Jane would snap. ‘Mr Flowers was a dwarf.’

  ‘Not small enough. I mean a really little man. About six inches tall, that I can carry around in my handbag.’

  And Jane would look worriedly at her mother. Her mother would be doing the ironing, in thoughtful, heavy strokes. Rose took ironing in from people who were too busy to do it themselves. Jane wondered if her customers would be so keen, if they saw Rose spitting on her iron, smearing it steamily into cloth. That morning, though, Jane was perched at the breakfast bar, fretting about Peter.

  ‘Sometimes he’s lucky he’s not dead.’

  Rose continued ironing. She managed to look glamorous doing even that. A photo of her stooped seductively over the board had appeared in the local paper. She had taken out an ad and business was booming. The kitchen and downstairs hall were tangled with clean bedding and shirts, bluey whiteness everywhere.

  ‘I have to lock him in his room, just to stop me belting seven shades of shit out of him.’

  Rose clucked. ‘I thought you said he was going to playschool nicely now?’

  ‘He is. It’s when he’s home. Just me and him.’

  ‘And you think you’re taking things out on him?’

  Jane began to say ‘yes’, then stopped. ‘Taking what out on him?’

  ‘Your frustrations.’ Rose raised an eyebrow at her. Jane clinked cup to saucer.

  ‘I don’t have any frustrations.’ She fetched her coat from a pile of sheets. ‘And I don’t need anything else in my life.’ She was meeting Fran in town and was going to be late. ‘And neither does Peter. Just sometimes, it gets a bit much. That’s all.’

  ‘Hm.’ Her mother hefted a neat pile of shirts. ‘I’ve only done one arm on each of these. You’ve made me lose concentration.’ Ten crumpled arms hung down the side of the otherwise immaculate set. ‘By the way, Jane, have I told you about Ethan yet?’

  Jane was shuffling through linen to the back door. ‘Yes, old Ethan with the wooden leg.’ Jane remembered the whole story. Rose never spared her the grisly details. Some old bloke keeping her mother waiting in bed, ready for him, while he screwed his wooden leg off. Sometimes Jane wished her mam was more of a proper mother.

  Rose attacked the wayward shirt arms. ‘I’ll say this much. A wooden leg means bugger all lying down. It’s a bit strange getting used to the stump, mind. Anyhow, we’re getting married.’

  ‘You’re what?’

  ‘I said I’d give it a whirl. I’ve nothing to lose.’

  Jane agreed numbly and the rest of her mam’s news passed her by until she left.

  This was where Jane had grown up. It was the old part of town, where the houses were turning grey. They had been built in the fifties, with pebble-dashing coming off in chunks. The gardens were bound in by iron railings, scabbed with rust. The wasteground hemming their backs was being filled in with private houses, crammed in but nice. They were bright orange, four windows and a door, like a child’s drawing, filling up the empty space. Jane thought about living in one. They called them ‘starter homes’. Jane had a head start. She thought about ending up in one.

  This whole part of town was nicer than Jane’s. Nicer than the estates. She felt temporary in the estates. People never seemed to stay long. Her own house had been up fifteen years, she was the fifth family in it. But here, where the trees were named after famous poets of the past, people were growing old. Their heels were well dug in.

  Jane mulled over Rose’s predicament as she headed the short way to town. She thought of it as a predicament; a mess that Rose was getting herself into. A new engagement was fairly routine for her. Rarely did she follow them through. If she acted according to habit, soon she would be asking Jane’s advice for shaking this peg leg off.

  Something was disturbing Jane about this one, though. It was the nonchalant way Rose had announced it, just as Jane was leaving. Usually her engagements were a big joke, a bottle of plonk mid-morning. Yet Rose was almost coy about old Ethan. And, as she ironed that morning, in the rumpled whiteness of the kitchen, a large ruby had glinted and winked at Jane from the hand that drove the iron. Well, they would just have to see.

  The cafe was in the arcade. The arcade smelled of many things. Piss on concrete, chlorine from the recreation centre’s swishing doors, flower and animal scents from the pet shop.

  It was dark in here and boys from the comp on their dinner hour were slouching around by the broken automatic doors. They gave her the usual perusal. And I can fettle the lot of you, she thought, elbowing through.

  It was market day and the usual fleet of disabled person’s dodgem cars and metal trolleys was moored outside Boots.

  When she went in she could hear the pensioners still mourning the loss of their own wooden shack where coffee for OAPs was subsidised. Someone had burned it down. Jane couldn’t help seeing the funny side of that heap of blackened chairs and tables outside the ruined shell. Make the old gits pay the same as everyone else. They get the same on a pension that I get for both Peter and me. Some of them have mattresses stuffed with fivers, too.

  Fran was at a table near the back. A mock fireplace stuffed with dried flowers and a number of crowded tables separated them. Fran was with another woman Jane didn’t recognise. She started to squeeze through, moving with a guarded smile towards them.

  It wasn’t often Fran found time to waste in cafes. This morning she had left Frank in charge. He wasn’t going to work. He disappeared beneath the duvet with his favourite upholsterer’s joke: ‘Tell them to stuff it.’

  ‘They’ll get you one of these days, you lazy thing.’

  She put the two toddlers on the bed with him, and took Tracey and Kerry to school. Then she was free for coffee and quiche with the girls.

  Jane approached the table cautiously, prising a way past the hunched backs in anoraks, glad of the diversion. She decided on a casual air and to wait for Fran to introduce her new friend. It didn’t work out that way. A twinge of nervousness took her and she burst out, ‘Hi-ya, Fran! Who’s this?’

  Fran blinked. She moved a strand of dark hair from her eyes. The woman next to her smiled expectantly.

  Fran said, ‘This is Liz. She’s just moved in where Mrs Griffiths who died used to live.’ At the back of Jane.
Jane already knew. She had watched from her window all Saturday afternoon, judging the new arrivals by their furniture.

  ‘Oh, so it’s you,’ she said to Liz, sitting down.

  Liz looked as if she might be a bit stuck-up. She was difficult to put an age to. She obviously took care of herself: smart clothes and properly done highlights. Liz was wearing fuchsia and no one else in town wore those sort of clothes to go shopping in. A garish silk scarf was knotted at her throat. Lot of jewellery, too. Taking out cigarettes, offering them around, she gave off a metallic gleam, like artillery.

  ‘Jane lives at the back of you.’

  ‘Oh,’ Liz mouthed. She and Jane were anxious for Fran to keep talking, or for the waitress to butt in.

  Fran said, ‘Liz has got a little girl. She could be a nice little friend for Peter. I’ve been telling her.’

  Why do they do that? wondered Jane. Matchmaking for the under-fives. What’s wrong with them?

  ‘Sorry, I meant to say,’ Liz began. ‘Penny’s actually seventeen. I tend to make her sound younger.’ They laughed.

  ‘So where did you live before?’ Jane asked, blunter than she had meant to be.

  ‘In Durham,’ Liz said. ‘Quite near the centre of the city.’ Several assumptions clicked into place for both Jane and Fran. She’s come right down in the world, they thought. We wonder why.

  ‘I do like these council houses,’ Liz said. ‘They’re so much cosier.’

  Jane snorted. ‘Not when they’re being fire-bombed.’

  Fran stared at her. ‘We’ve never been fire-bombed.’

  ‘I meant that it isn’t always that cosy.’

  Liz asked, ‘So you get trouble on the estates still?’

  The waitress was heading their way. Jane nodded solemnly.

  ‘We’ve got a vicious gang across the road and they go setting fire to cars. One of them, the leader, is meant to be on a curfew. But he’s been out one night recently and bitten someone’s ear off. Down by the Burn. And just next to me there’s an ex-soldier who keeps threatening to beat people up.’

  ‘So what can we get you?’

  The waitress was stooped right over their table, nose pressed almost against her notebook, squinting with her pencil at the ready.

  ‘Tea for three,’ Liz replied. ‘So it’s still the same old place then?’

  Fran and Jane exchanged a glance. ‘Same as what?’

  Liz grinned. Her cigarette smoke was vanishing up the nose of the waitress as she scribbled. ‘I mean, nothing’s changed since the seventies, when I last lived on a council estate.’

  ‘Where was that?’ Fran asked.

  ‘Oh, in this town, still. In the Blackhouses. It’s even rougher there.’

  ‘You’ve been right around the block then,’ Jane said.

  ‘Aye,’ Liz snorted. ‘You’re not kidding there.’

  They stayed at their table longer than they had planned to. Even some of the pensioners left before them. To string the time out they ordered cups of tea by turns, like teenagers skiving off school.

  Fran told Liz about her kids’ new gerbils killing the budgie. ‘The poor thing must have been attracted to all the sand in the tank. It flew in and got the shock of its life. All these things popped out and jumped on it. It was pitiful to see. It sat on the perch three days with no feathers. Then it fell off, dead.’

  ‘We had the drama of the budgie going on for days,’ Jane said. ‘Every time I went round I got a newsflash on its health. But they used to let it fly around where it liked. It was bound to happen.’

  ‘Only because Frank sawed off the bottom of its cage when he was pissed.’

  ‘I hate birds flying round the house. It’s like that film. Sets me right on edge. If they’re not crapping on you they’re pecking your eyes out. But anyway, it’s tea round Fran’s kitchen every afternoon. I go round at about one. You’ll have to come too, Liz.’

  Fran grimaced and looked round at Jane. She felt like saying to her, Thanks a bloody bundle. Why don’t you tell her to stay till teatime like you do, too, Jane? But she didn’t say anything.

  ‘I probably won’t get the chance,’ Liz said quickly, noting the look on Fran’s face. There was an awkward pause.

  Then Jane told them about her mother’s engagement.

  ‘Screwing what off?’ Liz cackled. Her laughter was surprising, raising heads all round the cafe.

  ‘His leg. He’s got a wooden leg.’

  Fran at last took a cigarette. ‘Only one. I can’t afford to get started again. Jane’s mam goes out picking up men in nightclubs.’

  ‘She’s not that bad. And it’s usually the Navy Club. They’ve usually got something missing or wrong with them. She reckons that’s what it’s like when you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel.’

  ‘She’s off her head.’ Fran laughed. Her own head was swimming after a couple of drags. ‘Tell her what she gave you last Christmas.’

  ‘Last year it was a watering can. And the year before that, one pink glove.’

  Liz was stifling her cackles. ‘One? What for?’

  ‘I don’t know. She said she’d “used” the other one. She drinks. Last year me and Peter went round for Christmas dinner and she never turned up till four in the afternoon, rolling in pissed with this bloke from the pub. She’d forgotten all about dinner and she gave me this watering-can thing.’ Fran squinted across the room through plumes of smoke. She seized Jane’s forearm as it went reaching for her purse. ‘What is it?’

  Fran kept very still. ‘Over there. Isn’t that your bus driver?’ Jane looked over her shoulder, trying to look cool. There, at a corner table, out of place in his blue uniform, was her friendly driver.

  ‘I never knew he came here for his break.’

  Fran told Liz, ‘Jane’s got a thing about men in uniform.’

  ‘Not bloody soldiers.’

  The driver was looking their way just the same. Jane stared with the frankness she felt their connection allowed. He was as tempting in this private moment as he was in a public one.

  ‘He’s very nice,’ Liz said. ‘But I bet he’s about five foot one when he stands up. They always are.’ She sighed.

  ‘Who cares about height?’ Jane remembered what her mother had said about stumps and lying down.

  ‘Listen to her!’ Fran laughed.

  ‘Are you up to something you shouldn’t be with him, then?’

  ‘Chance would be a fine thing.’ Jane smiled. ‘But he’s always nice to me.’

  Liz called for the bill. ‘Go over and talk to him.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Go on!’ Fran urged. ‘The only other time you’ll see him is on a bus. Take your chances.’

  ‘I’ll ask him for some change,’ Jane decided. ‘He’s bound to have plenty on him. He always does on the bus.’

  She stood up and began to weave her hesitant way towards him. Fran and Liz automatically glanced down, so they could listen and not be seen observing. The waitress came over and insisted on standing in the way and talking.

  ‘Hi-ya again.’

  Jane felt foolish, hands resting on the chair opposite him. The bus driver looked surprised to be interrupted here. His face came out of the Daily Mirror, still burned red, with eyes deep as black coffee. He smiled, apparently recognising her at once.

  ‘I was going to ask you for some change. For a tip.’

  Any strategy she had had in mind flew straight out the window. Jane’s courage had failed. She wanted to get away as soon as possible.

  He fiddled for change. Then he spoke. ‘I saw you earlier on.’

  Her heart slipped a bit and she said, ‘Oh.’

  ‘I didn’t like to come over because you had company.’

  ‘That’s all right. They wouldn’t have minded. We weren’t doing anything special.’

  A nag of conscience for this. Because they were doing something special. Quiche in here was her one treat of the week. He couldn’t have spoiled it if he tried, though.

  �
�I recognise those two. They live just by you, don’t they?’ She was shocked. He’s been checking up on me! It didn’t seem half as sinister as it might have.

  ‘Yes, Fran and Liz. Liz moved in last Saturday.’

  ‘Liz, is it?’

  ‘I don’t know her very well yet. She seems all right. A bit flashy, if you ask me.’

  He was peering past the bent heads, catching a glimpse of Liz and Fran looking back at him with now unconcealed curiosity.

  ‘I don’t suppose you could…’ He laughed and shook his head. ‘Could you introduce me to her?’

  Jane’s hands gripped the chair back very hard indeed. ‘God, I don’t even know your name?’

  ‘Jane,’ she said.

  ‘Jane. Would you mind introducing me to your new friend?’

  His eyes never left the gap he had found through the crowd. He never even glanced at Jane. Not even when he asked her name.

  ‘Right,’ she said.

  THREE

  The wind ruffled Penny’s hair as she stood in the grey mud under a goalpost. She lit a cigarette.

  It’s been an epidemic this summer, her mam had said. Burning things down. First the Portakabin in town where the pensioners went to drink tea and then Penny’s new school. Penny gazed at the ruined section of her new school. In the early-morning drizzle it glistened and its smell was acrid in the air.

  ‘Newton Aycliffe’s rough,’ her mam warned, with the air of someone who knew the place of old. Apparently they had both lived there in the late seventies, early eighties, but Penny couldn’t remember that at all. No, that wasn’t true. She could picture the royal wedding and some kind of street party in a cul-de-sac.

  Since then, though, mother and daughter had lived in Durham. Penny had always loved their house there. Her window looked out over woodland and you could just see the cathedral if you stood on her bed. Theirs was a house on the end of a terrace of converted miners’ houses.

  All you could see from upstairs in the new house in Aycliffe was Woodham Comprehensive and its slushy, trudged-over playing fields. When they lost their house in Durham it was her mam’s idea to come back to Aycliffe. She got them down on the council waiting list and it took almost a year for their number to come up. They were given a place in Phoenix Court, on the Yellowhouses estate, between the blocks of flats and Burn Lane. ‘Better the devil you know,’ Liz told Penny.