[Phoenix Court 02] - Does It Show?

by Paul Magrs

  He lifted strands of hair away from her neck. Nowadays Cliff didn’t say much when they went to bed. At first he had been chatty, almost hearty, and Liz wondered if that was because he thought she liked that. He was naturally quieter than her. In the car he didn’t mind if the conversation died down. He could absorb himself in driving, which he loved. She became aware of how he changed gears, how he popped on different lights in the dark. Everything with great deliberation. Nothing was erratic about Cliff.

  Down came her zip with a purr, unsealing the hard shiny fabric of her dress. She tried not to say anything else. Cliff’s easy quiet made her tire of the sound of her own voice. That was a new thing for her. Now all she said was, “Here,” and turned to undo his shirt. She felt the dark hair on the back of her hand and she grew hard just from that.

  He kissed at her neck and then her mouth with hard, bunched, silly kisses. Again and again, like eating soft fruit. He made her laugh and tell him to stop. “Kiss me properly!”

  “This is proper!” he said and started pecking at her again. "You’re making me all self-conscious now.”

  “You self-conscious!” she smiled, because he was the most easy-going man she knew. At garages when he went to pay for petrol, he’d go loping in, holding the door open for anyone who wanted past. She would watch him talking with the girl serving, laughing about nothing. He behaved as if he didn’t mind about giving himself away.

  When he came back out to the car with Coke and mints and a tub of Haagen Dazs from the garage freezer, he’d still have a cigarette clamped between his teeth. No one told him to put it out. It was as if, because he wasn’t concerned, no one else was.

  "You worry too much,” he told her. “You’ll get ulcers.”

  “Ulcers!” she said. Then she thought about her stomach lined with pale white dots. Like sequins on the inside for a change.

  Let’s see where this goes. Why is it some people get all excited? They see a turn-off like this and away they go. Ferreting off into the wide blue yonder.

  Liz couldn’t give a bugger. She was never much of an explorer. Stick me on the straight and narrow, she says, and I’ll not wander far. I like to know what’s what. A simple, prosaic soul; that’s what she wants to be. Straight up and down.

  “Oh, don’t be sarcastic.”

  “I’m not,” laughs Cliff, and he isn’t. He thinks it’s funny Liz like to think herself so normal. It tickles him.

  He sees this turn-off which seems to lead nowhere. He wants them to chase up this road into a valley full of ‘sharp crests and blind summits’.

  “Sums up my bloody life,” Liz tuts as they set off, with Cliff peeping his horn when they come upon each blind summit. It’s an eerie punctuation to their ride. Eleven miles into the middle of nowhere and then the road simply stops, as if the planner’s ink ran out, beside a lake the colour of old pennies.

  As they get out of the car, Cliff says, "That mountain looks like two buttocks.” He’s always seeing shapes in things. Liz puts it down to him growing up on the Yorkshire moors, starved of diversions, bless him. She looks at this mountain.

  "Honestly, you’re arse-mad, you are,” and she snorts with laughter. He thinks she looks like a horse. She looks round and sees only a dilapidated boat house right at the water’s edge. “This is what you’ve brought me all these miles to see? A burned out little house?”

  “I thought there might have been more here,” he says, and tramps off through the broken shale and granite, looking for somewhere to pee. "You never know what’s there if you don’t look.”

  To Liz the boat house looks like where a maniac would drive with a transit van full of prisoners. His victims would be found butchered up months later. It’s a landscape made for maniacs, this.

  All the places get to be the same in the end. One night, when they had set themselves a hundred miles to travel before they slept. Liz said, "Look for a phone.” She wanted to call her daughter. Sometimes she would get impulsive like that.

  They stopped in a village and Liz bundled out, into the phone box. Cliff" sat watching her as she talked in that column of light. She was squinting at the houselights opposite, the pub lights, the closed shops. Liz was thinking: people live here; a place I might never come to again. These are people I will never meet. It made her feel perplexed, that she could dash through like this and use their phone, even if it was a public box.

  In bed last night a similar thought had struck her. She mulled over all the beds where she’d fucked with Cliff just once. It seemed cavalier of them. It made her feel they were she trying very hard to keep the novelty up, under bedspread after bedspread and never the same one twice.

  On the phone that night Liz’s daughter sounded non-plussed. Nothing had changed at home. “She can be ever so surly,” Liz sighed as they drove and left the village behind.

  Cliff knew better than to add anything. He twizzled the radio on to a station with a request show for ninety-year-olds. Organ music from the 1920s. ‘The Sun Has Got His Hat On’. After a while they sang along.

  It was one morning when they left another of their breakfasts that Liz said you could soon sicken of not having your own place.

  "You can’t exactly rest your bones in someone else’s house. Not properly. I’m always on my guard.”

  Cliff was manoeuvring the car down the sharp zigzag back to the main road. He snapped, “When are you not on your guard?”

  She pursed her lips, deciding not to tell him about this morning. He thought it was odd that the woman from the B&B let them see themselves out. When she told them to just leave the cheque on the breakfast table he marvelled at her trust.

  The B&B woman had said, "I must dash. I’ve got a dress-making class starting at ten. I’m so silly I forgot!” She hurried out in a flap and Liz and Cliff listened to her engine revving in the driveway. They stared at the table. Cliff said, “I hope I haven’t blocked her in the driveway.” But he hadn’t, and they watched her car hare across the bay.

  Who has a dress-making class at ten o’clock in the morning? Liz thought. But she didn’t say anything.

  They had found the bungalow in the dark last night. It had a fine, wide picture window overlooking the bay, and they could see the woman sitting at her desk, under a green-shaded lamp. She was doing her accounts in a houndstooth jacket and a white blouse with ruffled collar. All the bungalows here did B&B, Cliff said. When summer came they cleaned up with passing trade. That’s what we are, thought Liz gloomily, just passing trade.

  Several years back Cliff had lived on this peninsula, doing manual work on somebody’s estate. "It’s such a close-knit community, with everyone looking out for each other. I wonder if they recognize me still!”

  So far no one had. It amazed Liz that he wanted so much to be recognized here: in the petrol station, the post office and by this B&B woman. When at home, in Aycliffe, everyone knew Cliff by sight, because of his being on the buses. He had gained the easy appreciation of all the women Liz knew. She bet they still talked about him even now. What was so special about the people here?

  When this woman let them into her bungalow — and it wasn’t that special inside — Liz felt condescended to. Her hackles went straight up. The B&B woman looked her up and down, as if she thought she was too dressed up for a car journey. Liz felt like a mad woman, or someone kidnapped.

  “I’ve a double room, or a room with twin beds.”

  “Double,” said Cliff with a smile as Liz made her way to the door marked 'bathroom’. The B&B woman called after her: “We turn the ‘occupied’ sign over on the door when we use the bathroom. That way we know. And when we leave we open the window for the condensation. All right?”

  Liz smiled and slammed the door after her.

  Cliff put all their bags in the double room. The bed was very high up. He was sitting on it when Liz came back. “All right?”

  She rolled her eyes. He went into the living room, to be sociable.

  Liz looked at a shelf of books by the bed. Everythin
g Dick Francis had ever written and seven years of the Reader’s Digest, She picked one out and sat down on the two laid-out towels, pink and blue. On Top of a Glacier. She should be getting out her night things. She could hear Cliff mumbling away, asking about people here. The B&B woman recognized him at last. She said how last year had been bad for deaths. The weather came in and picked the oldies off. Someone’s twins had been in a road accident. The roads were atrocious. One of the twins had died and Cliff said that’s the one he’d been friendly with.

  Liz changed into a black dress. Nothing too showy. She went through. “Will you have some tea or whisky before you go?”

  Cliff was saying they’d go for a drink down in the village, so he could show Liz where he’d hung out for a year. The B&B woman added, “I don’t always drink whisky by myself, you know.” She tilted her wine glass, full to the brim with gold. "Only when I’m doing my accounts." She chuckled.

  “Ha!” laughed Cliff, over-eager, and Liz shot him a glance.

  In the car Cliff said, "She didn’t remember me at all.” He waved vaguely at the picture window.

  “Should she?”

  "She used to come and cook for the old bag I was working for. I remember being in the kitchen once and she was being made to cook lobster ‘the correct way’. She was bullied into it.”

  They got on to the main road. Liz didn’t want to go for a drink, but anything to get out of the B&B. “What was the correct way?”

  “Cut it in half lengthways, while it’s still alive. Rubber bands around its pincers, or it have your fingers off. Then shove the two halves under the grill while it’s still twitching. The old bag insisted and her from the B&B did it.”

  All the way to the village in the dark — another pub I’ll never go to! Someone else’s local — Liz thought about Cliff watching the B&B woman gritting her teeth and splitting a lobster into neat halves, the knife grinding down on the wet shell.

  She slept badly, even though the air was so healthy. Even though everyone round here said how it was gloriously peaceful. She lay awake and watched Cliff, who always went off like a light. Liz didn’t even have anything to read.

  They hadn’t made love tonight. She didn’t know which room the B&B woman slept in or how close within hearing range it was. Liz knew she and Cliff were noisy. “What does it matter?” he complained. “We’re paying her thirty quid!”

  Liz tutted. In the middle of the night she had to go to the loo. Cliff stirred. “You know me,” she said. “My bladder holds as much as a dessert spoon.” When she climbed off the too-high bed she couldn’t be bothered searching in the bags for her kimono, or anything else to cover herself. Let the dark be enough. So she crept into the hallway in a pair of pants.

  She stood a moment, readjusting to the moonlight. There was a noticeboard with a map of the whole area, plastic pockets full of leaflets to do with walks and nature. Fancy someone putting all this stuff up in their own house. It was to be helpful but Liz thought it was weird. Like playing at schools. A thermometer thing on a card was pinned to the map; a universal scale reader, whatever that was. You were meant to take it out of the plastic, read your scales, and put it back. Everything on the noticeboard looked like it had rules attached.

  Liz opened the bathroom door.

  There sat the B&B woman, on the toilet, in her slippers with her nightie pulled up round her midriff. She was holding the Reader’s Digest at arm’s length.

  Liz jumped back, shocked. But the B&B woman looked more shocked. She stared.

  Liz without her wig. And in nothing but her pants.

  At first the B&B woman simply didn’t recognize her house-guest. She saw a nude intruder. A skinny little man in black clingy pants. Not a stitch of hair on his pale body.

  Then their eyes locked and the B&B woman knew she was looking at Liz.

  They both heard the distinct plop as the B&B woman finished her nocturnal business. Liz slammed the door and hurried back to the room, her heart playing merry hell. As she flung herself under the heavy duvet, all she could think was: that woman didn’t keep by her own rules. The ‘occupied’ sign wasn’t turned round.

  So the next day the B&B woman ran off to her dress-making class. She couldn’t face me, Liz thought, with a peculiar satisfaction.

  She made herself up carefully at the old-fashioned dressing table. Crocheted antimacassars stood under everything, protecting the wood.

  When she sat down to breakfast everything was out and ready. Liz ate some new kind of bran. Hard little brown balls. She ate sausages with mustard from Arran. Cliff had black pudding and she imagined kissing him later, pretending he hadn’t had sticky pig’s blood on his teeth. She kept eating, suddenly hungry.

  “Get your money’s worth,” said Cliff, smiling.

  Everything was laid out properly. Milk in a jug, even salt in a dish, with a tiny silver spoon. “What’s this?”

  He sighed. “I can’t believe you’ve never seen a salt spoon before.”

  “A salt spoon,” she muttered derisively and popped it into her pocket. “I want to go now,” she said and stood up. She looked around. “Fancy sharing your home with strangers.”

  The B&B woman had explained she’d take just about anyone in. She wasn’t prejudiced, though she’d had some bother with Italians. They shouted from room to room and the walls here were paper thin.

  Liz said, “The next time I live somewhere that’s my own, I won’t let any strangers in. It’ll just be for me and who I want.”

  "What’s the matter with you?” Cliff said.

  Liz shrugged. “Sometimes I feel like private property.”

  It was where they had their first proper row; some sort of National Park, crammed with wonders. It wasn’t quite in public, but close enough. There were other couples wandering around the shaded, composty paths, and they all looked National Trusty, nature-loving couples, all in walking boots with leaflets open and pointing at things. Liz was embarrassed to be heard shouting by them.

  “We didn’t pay the two pound to get in,” was how it started, Liz looking back at the people on the trail behind them. They were slotting coins into a perspex box on the gate.

  Cliff tutted. “I’m not paying to walk round some old garden.”

  "It’s a done-up garden," said Liz, sounding sullen even to herself. Small ponds were cut into the lawn, kidney-shaped and swarming with livid orange, shoe-sized fish. “You’d complain if someone climbed on your bus and didn’t pay.”

  "That’s different.”

  “I don’t see why.”

  He grunted and they headed for the trees. “Anyway,” he said. "Scotland’s different. In Scotland you have the right to walk anywhere. It’s not the same as England. No one can tell you to get off their land.”

  "I didn’t know that.”

  “They think it should all be public.”

  “Well," said Liz.

  In the woods it smelled damp. It smelled like something left in a fridge to go off. They left the path — oh, foolishly! Liz warned herself, thinking of Red Riding Hood — and Cliff went striding ahead. The mossy ground, springy and treacherous, made Liz’s heart sink as, once more, her shoes got filthied up. “You keep dragging me out to terrible places!" she muttered. She watched his back as he wove and ducked through the trees. His beautiful back incensed her. “I mean, what are we doing here? Looking at trees!”

  “I like looking at trees,” he said.

  They came to the edge of the woods, where the ground dropped away and there was the sea, suddenly. Cliff was kicking at the vast, upturned roots of a fallen tree. They were ripped apart, as if in a terrible storm. Broken shards of bark and blackened wood stood up in nasty spikes. “This looks like lightning,” said Liz with a shudder.

  He shook his head. “Just frost.” He pointed to clearly cracked-open rocks tangled in roots thick as his arm. “Water in cracks in the rocks freezes and the whole thing bursts open.”

  “You always know everything,” she said, turning away. “You can be too
practical you know. It gets on people’s nerves. I still say it was lightning.”

  “Well, you would.”

  She raised an eyebrow. There was a bench so you could watch the sea. Liz swished over to it, and Cliff followed.

  “Didn’t you tell me some story about you being struck by lightning once?” he asked.

  Liz eyed him. “I remember,” he said, sitting beside her. “You said you were holding your Penny at the time. She was a baby and you were outside—”

  “In a car park,” Liz prompted.

  “—in a car park, and lightning struck you…and that’s why you turned into a woman!” He sat back on the metal bench, stretching out his legs with a chuckle.

  Liz had gone red, but her voice was very cold. “You’re simplifying that just a bit.”

  Cliff laughed. “You make things sound so sensational. It’s ridiculous.” He shook his head. He realized what he thought Liz was like: a comic book superhero. Each superhero had an origin story that they flashbacked to, telling you how they ended up like that. The She Hulk was bathed in green radiation. Spider Woman was bitten by a radioactive spider. Liz got struck by lightning. What did she become? Woman Woman.

  “What’s ridiculous about it?” Liz was shrill suddenly.

  He sighed. “Lightning can’t give you ideas about a thing like that! You just made it up! You make everything up!” He stood up. “You know what I think?” He was baiting her now.

  Liz saw one of the couples with proper leaflets and boots coming through the gap in the trees, and she shushed Cliff. The intruders looked mortified at disturbing the row and they backed carefully away.

  "What do you think?” she asked through gritted teeth.

  “You can’t face the truth of any of it. You make up all these over the fact of your own decisions.”

  “Oh, really?”

  "You can’t face it, so you dress it up like fate, like everything changed in a flash of light.”

  "Cliff,” she said “You understand nothing.”

  “I understand that you think you’re the Queen of bloody Sheba, and the laws of the universe run different for you.”