[Phoenix Court 02] - Does It Show?

by Paul Magrs

  Liz shuddered and concentrated on shopping. She would dish everything up with expansive gestures, be gregarious, spreading good will as she went, letting the wine flow like busted guttering. It was to be a family meal. The vegetables here were rubbish. Where were the fresh herbs?

  While she took out her chequebook in the queue, she felt everyone was peering into her trolley. At the last minute she plucked a cheap CD off the display by the tills. It was a Burt Bacharach compilation, all his best songs played by the Boston Pops Orchestra. In her haste Liz had assumed they were hits by the original artists. Perfect for tonight, she thought.

  ‘I saw her this morning,’ Jane was saying. ‘Sneaking back from somewhere. His place, I suppose. The bus driver’s. Wherever he lives.’

  ‘Fancy her leaving Penny all night like that!’

  ‘No sense of responsibility. And she looked awful, too. Hadn’t done her hair properly or anything. Had a massive duffel coat on. His, I suppose.’

  ‘That’s passion for you.’

  Jane frowned. ‘I think that hair of hers is a wig.’

  ‘Do you?’ Fran mused, playing with her own.

  Rose had made her own life. Unlike most fairy-tale princesses she had had to carve out her own niche in the world. This didn’t stop her thinking of herself as a princess. She shared her birthday with the Queen. When her Prince Charming had at last appeared, slobbery and drunk at the Labour Club one night in late spring, she had accepted him belatedly as her reward. He clung to her under the club’s new glitter ball as they danced, pivoted to one spot by his leg slowly unscrewing itself as they revolved, love in their eyes.

  Until then, Rose had lived a life of hardships. Of early deaths, single parenting, skivvying after others, one-night stands, the lot. And she had relished every minute of it. It was the same kind of relish she felt once when she lost a ring in the swing bin and found it again by tipping everything on to the lino and rummaging through every particle of filth. She picked through the grime and got rid of it, systematically, finding her treasure, tarnished and safe, then scrubbed her skin red raw under the hot tap afterwards. Jane had picked up the same habits. Mother and daughter spent their lives purging themselves under hot taps. They owed a lot to their immersion heaters.

  Now Rose had decided it was time to chuck in the tea towel. Someone else could support her from now on. No more faked fiances, no more soldiering on. At last it was time for the big white wedding and the trip around the world. She wanted a cruise that would never end. She wanted a big brassy tart of a finale to all those years spent scrubbing.

  She beamed at Ethan as he trundled along beside her. They were circumnavigating the boating lake. It was in two tiers, connected by mechanical waterfalls. Both lakes a dull silver, j ruffled by wind. Ragged willows ranged their edges and three banana-yellow kayaks transported children back and forth.

  She thought about a photo of the same scene, taken for the town’s official postcard in the seventies. There were still a faded handful left on sale in the newsagents in town. In the photo everyone was wearing tight nylon turtlenecks and long hair that needed brushing. Perhaps the card would be reprinted soon — wasn’t that look coming back? If she closed ] her eyes she could smell lake water dried into denim flares, i And what was it Jane had had a craze for that summer? A kind of lolly without a stick. A big hunk of flavoured ice in a packet. She had eaten seven in a day once and given herself the runs.

  Rose remembered the photo because she was in it. Twenty j years younger, in an orange and blue minidress, helping a plump Jane into one of those banana boats. The postcard was I framed on her wall. Mother and daughter had been employed to promote the town. Come to our town, their beaming faces 1 said. Rose felt that she and Jane had done their bit, had signalled people to bring their health, wealth and happiness to the burgeoning new town. And people came. She liked to think that their brave effort, single-parented and self-sufficient, a happy park outing one Saturday in the midseventies, had stood for something. Had, in some small way, helped. People came and, she hoped, they had their happy Saturdays too.

  Happy Saturdays on your own with a kid took a lot of effort. Teachers must find that too, thirty times over. Rose had a lot of respect for teachers, but she had never had the brains to be one or really talk to one. Teachers, though, could wash their hands. Love, obligation, and the disapproving eyes of everybody else didn’t come into it. Teachers were doing a career. Single parents were doing a life sentence.

  Rose still worried about Jane. She had trained her to full self-sufficiency, trained her too well, and now Jane showed no inclination to end her solitary confinement. She wouldn’t stir herself to seek out a Prince Charming. She never thought of herself as a princess. But at least she still went out. That was something.

  ‘Me and you’ — she smiled down at Ethan — ‘will set an example to our Jane and all the other young’uns.’ His face creased in pleasure, hanging on to her arm and every word. ‘We’ll show them they can’t do without marriage and a family and a proper home, no matter what.’ She sighed expansively, crushing his hand in hers.

  Following the Burnside path lined with poplars, they passed by the junior school Jane had attended. The grass was long and rank, full of the bright purple tails of foxgloves and those fleshy, pink flowers that stood taller than Rose herself. Sometimes the Burn was like a wilderness. They should do something about cleaning it up, she thought. And she certainly wouldn’t come down here without her escort.

  At last they came to the town centre. They made straight for the cafe, where the waiter looked cross and flustered again. He had a stub of pencil behind one ear and a Silk Cut behind the other. Rose asked if the ladies were in yet. The boy rolled his eyes and led them to the table at the back. There, the pensioners who edited the free local paper were waiting for the happy couple, their yellow legal pads open on the gritty tablecloth. Love had been found locally again, among their own. Rose and Ethan deserved to be publicised as an example. Cilia Black should turn up, really, singing something. Rose was leading the way forward, the town’s figurehead and inspiration once more.

  Once she sat down, her coat over her knees, sipping tea.

  Rose found herself warming to the idea of being interviewed. She told them that the secret of making a relationship tick was never going to bed not talking. Ethan and the lady reporters beamed. Then they told them to pull in closer, they were going to take their picture.

  For Fran there was a certain cut-off point at which another cup of tea would just taste of so much hot water with a dribble of milk in it. But Jane never seemed to mind.

  There was a Battenburg cake on the table, waiting for the kids and teatime, cut into eight irregular slices. Fran urged one on Jane. She took one, then another and another, at five-minute intervals, talking as she did so and hardly aware of what she was eating. Her fingers went picking automatically over greasy yellow crumbs. Fran had a rush of protectiveness for her kids. Their cake, she thought. I’ll never do enough for them. They deserve more because they’re mine. She felt a sudden hatred of Jane, smacking her pale lips, but quelled it. ‘So Nesta’s really missing? How do you know?’

  Fran sighed. The novelty had worn off her piece of news. Jane would talk things to death and gossip with her became less fun as the hours went by. It was like Aladdin’s lamp rubbed too hard, too often. ‘Well, first of all she never came round for milk this morning. Then I saw that gormless husband of hers, Tony, taking their Vicki to school.’

  ‘Poor kid! They’ll have her crackers as well.’

  ‘After that he came here to ask if I’d seen his wife. He said it like that — “Have you seen my wife?” — as if I’d shoved her under the settee.’ Fran thought that Jane wouldn’t find the whole thing as funny if she had dealt with Tony at that point. He was in his blue, snorkel-hooded anorak, looking red in the face, and his eyes looked weepy, though that might just have been the cold. He really wanted Nesta to be hiding out at Fran’s house. Fran thought at that moment, He real
ly loves her. We spend so long laughing at them or saying they’re daft and drinking cider all the time, we don’t really think about that. A few hours apart from dozy, lumpy, obnoxious Nesta and Tony was pining away. He was banging on doors belonging to people he was usually too shy to talk to.

  ‘He’s probably shoved her under the settee himself and forgotten. Have you seen their manky settee?’

  ‘He looked really worried.’

  ‘I think he’s got a look of that Fred West.’

  ‘Oh, don’t say that, Jane. That’s awful!’

  ‘She’s on pills, isn’t she?’

  ‘They’re bringing her off them again.’

  ‘Don’t you think we should pop round, see if she’s back?’

  ‘I’ll wait till he brings Vicki back at hometime. I’ll ask then. I’ve got my own life to get on with.’ This was aimed pointedly at Jane. ‘I can’t go worrying about neighbours all the time.’

  ‘There goes Liz.’ Jane stood and went to the window, closing the blinds slightly to hide herself. ‘Back with all her shopping. She’s got a French stick. I bet she’ll be entertaining this evening.’

  Fran joined her. ‘Off the bus.’

  ‘She’ll be getting free fares now,’ Jane muttered. ‘You know, she’s not as attractive as I thought at first.’

  ‘She’s glamorous,’ Fran said. They watched her vanish indoors, the light go on. Fran thought about pulling the kids in since it was starting to get dark. ‘I saw that straight away when we first met her in the Copper Kettle. She’s definitely got something about her. Charisma. She’s got something about her that you don’t see very often.’

  Jane swivelled the blinds open again, narrowing her eyes to look at Peter, who was up a climbing frame. ‘He’s showing off for the girls. Like his father. Yeah, there’s something about her. But not just glamour or charisma. I’m not sure what it is, but it’s something else.’

  ‘What now then?’ Penny asked as the school started to fill up with the smell of disinfectant. The cleaners emerged in their blue overalls for the end of the day. Their chemical smell masked the fug of dirty hair and sweat. ‘What are you doing tonight?’

  ‘I’m going home to Daddy Dearest,’ Vince replied, cramming his Victorian novel into an overcoat pocket. ‘Another nightmare.’

  ‘Do you fight much?’

  ‘Oh, you know. Two men together.’ He shrugged.

  ‘Why is it I know so many one-parent families?’ Penny asked. She asked this as they came, last of all, down the cement staircase and pushed through the airlock doors at the bottom. ‘Where do we all come from?’

  ‘I think it’s more of a case of where we all go to. And it’s usually places like this. That’s why.’ He pulled up his coat collar, shivering under the darkness of this part of school.

  She considered this as they passed the staff-room rose bushes, following the crazy paving that hadn’t started out that way. ‘Sometimes I wish I knew some normal people.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, with a harsh laugh. ‘Right.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘When you get to college you’ll meet people there more normal than you’ll ever meet. More space cadets too. And everything in between.’ He sniffed appreciatively at the teatime sky.

  Penny asked, ‘Is that what it was like for you?’

  He smiled. ‘Oh, yes.’ They were standing by the incinerator at the edge of the field.

  She studied his face. His bruises were showing up again, and there was something else there. He looked flushed. ‘Something’s happened this afternoon, hasn’t it?’

  ‘It’s nothing really.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  He looked at her and smiled. Penny looked fierce and… loyal. He realised he trusted her. ‘Oh, in the staff room, as I was leaving just now, Melanie Bell had a little word with me.’

  ‘Is that what she’s called, Melanie?’ Penny asked.

  A whole gang of fifth-year boys were coming past, lighting cigarettes, ripping off their ties, their shirts untucked and hair mussed. They jeered at Penny and Vince standing together by the incinerator. One of them, the tallest, called out loudly, ‘Queer bastard!’ The others were straight on to this. There was a spate of mumbling and hissing and then a ragged, deep-throated chant of ‘Queer bastard, queer bastard’ until they were gone.

  Vince’s face had drained. ‘That’s what she wanted to talk about.’

  ‘Oh, God!’

  ‘The lass in the toilets who overheard us talking about Andy is seeing one of the fifth-year lads. Now it’s everywhere. Today’s news.’

  ‘What was Mrs Bell saying about it? You’re not gonna get the sack?’

  Vince smiled ruefully. ‘No, she was really good. She talked about the implications of being out at school. She was shit-hot, actually.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘She wanted to make sure I knew what I was taking on, being out here. I said I thought it was important. She wanted to remind me what our school was like. And she was good, you know. She remembered what a rotten time I had when I was going through this school myself. When the kids ganged up on me without really knowing why. She said, Don’t be surprised if it’s worse now. Even worse. She said, Don’t think that being grown-up makes you any more brave.’

  Penny was fishing in her bag for her own cigarettes. She lit them one each. Vince didn’t want to tell Penny the rest of it. At that point the PE teacher had loped into the staff room, leering at him. He had just left the boys’ shower block after taking the fifth-years for rugby. In the showers he had caught up with the gossip. He called across to Mrs Bell and Vince, where they were standing, ‘You can forget what I said before, when I warned you about hanging around the lasses you taught. No one’s gonna worry about you doing anything with them, are they?’

  Melanie Bell bridled. ‘Are you talking to me, Mr Ariel?’ His eyebrows knotted. ‘No, Mrs Bell. I’m talking to him. Your little mate.’

  ‘Perhaps it would be better not to shout across the room,’ she said. ‘You aren’t out on your fields now.’

  ‘It’s a staff room. It’s after four o’clock. I can do what I want in here.’

  ‘You can’t harass other members of staff.’

  ‘Harass!’ He laughed and looked around for support. Beside him was the other, older PE teacher, who was deaf. ‘Was I harassing you?’ he asked Vince.

  Vince just wanted to get away rrom there. It was too much like being fourteen. But to see him looking so bluff and aggrieved, shouting his mouth off, made him stop and say, ‘No, you aren’t harassing me. You’re threatening to. And I’ll warn you now. If I start getting hassle from you, if I get any more hassle from you, I’ll fucking report it. But before that, I’ll fucking deck you.’

  And that had been that. The PE teacher snorted and started to pack his Adidas bag, slinging piles of first-year maths books in with his dirty boots and towel. He stomped out past Vince and Mrs Bell and mumbled under his breath, loud enough for the room to hear, ‘Arse bandit.’

  Mrs Bell looked up at Vince. ‘You see? That’s what you’ll have to contend with. Pigs like that.’

  Vince shrugged. ‘He’s like that anyway.’

  Penny looked at him now. He looked terrible. ‘Don’t worry about it. People will be all right. It’s not like you’ve made a mistake or anything. I don’t think you had any choice about coming out.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There were rumours going about anyway.’

  He shrugged. ‘Ah, well.’

  ‘They can’t do anything to you.’

  ‘No. But sometimes it feels as if people can cut you down to size with just a few words.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to get home and meet this bus driver my mam’s seeing.’

  ‘He’s coming round, is he?’

  ‘That’s what she came to school to tell me.’

  Vince shook his head and whistled. ‘She’s a right one, your mam.’

  ‘You can say that again.’
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  Then they said goodbye and turned to leave each other. He turned back to give her a swift hug and Penny lurched awkwardly into it, as if she wasn’t comfortable with people holding her. Walking away, Vince felt sixteen again, walking home on the slippery school field, fumbling embraces with girls.

  ELEVEN

  Vince’s dad often came home with injuries. He worked in a factory on machines with heavy, grinding parts. Something like that. Vince never asked about the particulars. For as long as he could remember his dad had been coming home sporting bandages, sticking plasters, even slings. It was part and parcel of the job.

  Further down school Vince had detested metalwork. He fell behind the rest of his class, keeping his specially bought, oatmeal-coloured apron spotlessly clean, avoiding the machines. He had seen enough industrial injuries.

  His father slowly came to accept that he was not the sort of boy who tinkered with metal machine parts. In a way he was pleased. It would keep him out of trouble.

  Vince let himself into the kitchen, finding his father at the cooker, in shirtsleeves, stirring a pan of baked beans. Before looking at him, Vince’s father bent his neck to light a cigarette on the ring. Vince stared at the smouldering tobacco flakes left behind.

  ‘What’s happened to your face?’

  ‘Someone decided to have a go at me.’ The make-up must have rubbed away, he thought. There’s none to replace it with in this house.

  ‘Who? Have you phoned the coppers?’

  ‘No.’ Vince made his way up the narrow staircase. The house was very small, its walls yellow with ingrained fumes and covered with ancient LP covers, stuck up with drawing pins. The carpet on the stairs was full of swirling blue and purple shapes. To Vince, the carpet colours and the LP covers meant home, though he would never wear the colours or play the records.

  A night at home. Here we go. Should’ve brought Andy back. He clicked on his room’s light, across the landing. Ha! What would Dad make of Andy? A lathe operator most probably. Ask him if he’s ever considered the possibility. Andy might be interested too. Vince could see him working at a lathe, working intently, his mind on nothing in particular but bringing two surfaces together. To grind them into powder. Andy’s scary eyes glaring at the spinning blades, happy for ever more. He mustn’t let Dad and Andy meet. Andy was too susceptible. He could turn into anything, whenever anyone asked him to. This facility scared Vince, and it made him jealous. Now that he thought about it, it was with Andy that he felt most wooden and intractable.