The Family Way

by Tony Parsons

  The Here Pussy Pussy bar is on P. Borgos Street in the heart of Manila’s red-light district.

  The bar has stood on the same spot since the Vietnam War. Originally its clientele were American soldiers looking for rest and recreation. Today the men are usually expatriate businessmen in search of intercourse and intoxication. After more than thirty years, only the music has changed at the Here Pussy Pussy.

  Young women in bikinis still sway and smile on the stage, while men in short-sleeve shirts still nurse a San Miguel beer and watch the lazy dancing, never quite knowing if they are the hunter or the game.

  Kirk became a regular at the Here Pussy Pussy after he was laid off by the dive school in Cebu. The British owner was very apologetic – only months earlier he had persuaded Kirk to move from Sydney to the Philippines. But the spate of terrorist bombs had frightened away the tourists, and on most days Kirk was alone on the dive boat.

  Maybe he should have felt angrier with his boss. The truth was he had been glad to get out of Australia. His girlfriend kept talking about where they were going and Kirk knew in his bones that it would never be where she wanted to go. He had never doubted that he would marry this girl, but he had been wrong. Kirk just couldn’t pretend it was the same as when he had left. Two years away had changed him. Meeting Megan had changed him too.

  He had lost his girlfriend in Australia and his job in the Philippines. So now he propped up the bar in the Here Pussy Pussy, watching all those acres of golden female flesh, and trying to stave off that point of drunkenness where he would pay some girl’s bar fine – the fee paid to the Here Pussy Pussy for losing an employee for the night – and take her back to his hotel.

  ‘Where you from? What hotel you stay?’

  A slender woman in a green lycra string bikini had appeared by his side. She lightly touched his arm.

  ‘You very gwapo,’ she said, framing his face with a thumb and index finger.

  ‘Thank you,’ Kirk said, though he knew she would have told the Elephant Man he was gwapo, meaning handsome.

  Like most of the girls in the Here Pussy Pussy, she was a strange mix of shy and shameless. After the introductions were over, she was stroking her side and wiggling her hips, her frail body swaying on her towering high heels.

  ‘I never enough,’ she said. ‘Oh! Ah! I never enough.’

  He smiled politely and looked back at the stage. Usually the girls at the Here Pussy Pussy moved as though they were sleepwalking. This was part boredom, and part exhaustion. Although they all had youth on their side, none of them older than their middle twenties, if nobody paid their bar fine they were expected to dance until four in the morning. Yet occasionally the Here Pussy Pussy DJ put on a record that made them burst into life, and when that happened they laughed and swung their long black hair and moved with real joy and abandon, no longer dancing for the men in the bar, now dancing for nobody but themselves.

  There was no rationale behind the songs they loved. Although the Here Pussy Pussy dancers were all dedicated students of popular music, the songs that moved them were as likely to be years old as they were to be last week’s number one. They were way beyond fashion.

  The girls at the Here Pussy Pussy came to life for ‘Jump Around’ by House of Pain. ‘Without You’ by Eminem. ‘Sex Bomb’ by Tom Jones and Mousse T. ‘See You When You Get There’ by Coolio. ‘Macarena’ by Los del Mar. But most of all they went wild when the DJ played, ‘A Girl Like You’ by Edwyn Collins.

  That girl, Kirk thought. That girl Megan.

  It was stupid. He knew it was stupid. It was only one night, but she had got under his skin. He wasn’t over her. Maybe because it was only one night. Maybe because he never had the chance to get her out of his system. But probably because he cared, and she really didn’t.

  Megan, he thought, looking at fifty other girls, all of them half-naked, any of them his for a night for pin money. He could have two of them if he wanted, or even three, if he could afford it, and if he had been eating his greens. But that wasn’t going to happen.

  Megan, Megan, Megan.

  After another few San Miguels, the bar girl was still by his side, a small, proprietorial hand laid on his arm. Even in the pulsating gloom of the Here Pussy Pussy, he could make out the Caesarean scar on her stomach.

  Most of them have babies, these girls, he thought. Why else would they be here? Because they enjoy it? Because the guys that come here have such terrific personalities?

  Seeing him watching her, she closed her eyes and opened her mouth, winding and unwinding her slender hips.

  ‘Oh, I never enough!’

  He knew he would not be seeing Megan tonight, or possibly ever again. So he paid the girl’s bar fine to one of the Here Pussy Pussy’s mamma-sans, and waited while she went to the dressing room. When she finally returned he felt an enormous wave of tenderness. She had changed from her professional bikini and heels and was now dressed in the heartbreakingly ordinary T-shirt and jeans of her civilian life. From whore to girl next door, in just one costume change.

  Once they were out of the Here Pussy Pussy, away from the bar’s bouncers and the smiling owner who kept a shotgun in his desk, the girls were at the mercy of their customers. They walked into strange hotel rooms with middle-aged Germans and Scandinavians and Brits, or even young Australians, and were expected to negotiate a price, an act, and still get out with their life.

  Kirk didn’t negotiate. He just gave her everything he had in his wallet and told her to buy something for her child. She was grateful.

  ‘I never enough, Dirk,’ she whispered in the steaming darkness of the Manila night. ‘Oh, Dirk, I never enough.’

  And he knew it was true. This would never be enough.

  Megan wearily climbed the concrete steps of the Sunny View Estate.

  Inside her, the baby was sleeping. She – and Megan knew it was definitely a she – always slept when Megan was moving, the rocking motion of the working day soothing the unborn baby girl to sleep. It was only when Megan was attempting to sleep herself that a tiny fist or foot would be slammed with alarming force against the wall of her uterus.

  That’s my girl, Megan thought, giving her enormous stomach the protective, possessive double stroke that was second nature to her now.

  Poppy. My daughter, Poppy. She was running out of space in there.

  At twenty-nine weeks, Megan no longer recognised her body. There were thick blue veins visible in her new breasts. Stretch marks on her stomach and thighs that brought with them an unbearable itchiness. She slept in one-hour shifts, woken by the need to scratch, or pee, or Poppy giving her a firm right hook.

  Near the top of the stone stairway, with all the grimy sprawl of Hackney stretching out below her, Megan felt the contraction.

  The sensation was uncomfortable rather than painful, and although her heart fluttered with panic, she knew this wasn’t the real thing. This was a Braxton-Hicks contraction. False labour – a bit like a dress rehearsal for opening night.

  She sat down on the cold stone stairs and waited for the discomfort to pass. A pale thin child in a baseball cap wheeled an enormous bike past her as she sat rotating her ankles and gently stroking her bump.

  ‘Not yet, Poppy,’ she whispered. ‘Not yet.’

  Wearily pulling herself up, Megan made her way to Mrs Marley’s door. Thrash metal was playing loud enough to rattle the windows. Sighing, Megan knocked. No response. She knocked louder and longer. Mrs Marley opened the door. The music hit Megan’s face like a blast of hot air from a suddenly opened oven and she felt herself recoil. Mrs Marley regarded Megan with a cold stare, a cigarette dangling from her lower lip.

  ‘Daisy’s inside,’ she grunted. Then her sneer turned to a smirk as she regarded Megan’s bump. ‘Left you in the lurch, did he, dear?’

  Megan ignored her and went into the flat. It was even more squalid than usual. Dirty clothes and the stinking debris of takeaways beyond number were strewn around. There were broken toys underfoot and, inexplicably,
perhaps a dozen TV sets and DVD players pushed into the corner of the room. Daisy was reclining on the sofa, a Hello Kitty duvet pulled up to her chin, a half-eaten Egg McMuffin in her little paw.

  Megan knelt by her side, smiling.

  ‘Do you think you could turn that music down?’ Megan said, not looking round.

  ‘It’s me brother,’ Mrs Marley said. ‘It’s Warren. He says you can’t appreciate it if it’s too low. It’s why he got slung out of his council flat.’

  A shiftless, scrawny young man in Adidas tracksuit bottoms came into the room, lighting a cigarette. He leered at Megan, scratching his crutch.

  ‘Could you turn it down, please? The music?’

  ‘I don’t give a fuck,’ the young man said. ‘I’ve got the fucking right, haven’t I?’

  He went into the bedroom, trailing cigarette smoke and outraged resentment. Megan turned back to Daisy, giving up.

  The child had been complaining of stomach pains. Megan examined her, took her temperature and then watched her quickly inhale the rest of her Egg McMuffin. There was nothing wrong with her appetite.

  ‘Daisy?’ Megan said.

  ‘Yes, miss?’

  ‘Is anyone being nasty to you at school?’

  A pause. ‘Elvis takes me sweet money.’

  ‘That’s horrible. Can you try talking to your teacher? Or Elvis’s mummy?’

  Silence.

  ‘I reckon it’s her appendicitis,’ Mrs Marley diagnosed. ‘I reckon she wants it out.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with Daisy,’ Megan said, standing up. ‘She’s being bullied.’

  ‘You got it wrong before, didn’t you?’ Mrs Marley flared. ‘Think you’re so smart. Coming round here. And you got it wrong, didn’t you? Nobody bullies my Daisy.’

  ‘Mrs Marley,’ Megan said. And then she saw it. Poking out from under the ragged sofa. As casually discarded as a pizza box. The syringe. Megan crossed the room quickly and picked up the phone.

  ‘Who you calling, Lady Muck?’

  ‘Social services,’ Megan said.

  Mrs Marley didn’t stick around to argue. She went into the bedroom to get her brother. Megan was vaguely aware of pandemonium being played out behind her. Raised voices, thrash metal, the sound of a child sobbing.

  A pre-recorded voice was telling her to press the star button twice when he grabbed her from behind. An arm lock around her neck, dragging her down and away from the phone.

  I should be able to deal with this, she thought. Four years of wado ryu karate. I should know what to do. Smash his knee with my heel. Grab a hunk of flesh from the top of his thigh. Seek out the nerves in his wrist. But her mind was blank. She could not remember the lessons that Rory had taught her every Wednesday night for all those years.

  And then Warren Marley was screaming obscenities as he slammed her head hard against the wall, then pulling back and doing it again. Like a battering ram.

  ‘I’ve got the right, you cow,’ he was raving. ‘I’ve got the fucking right to do whatever I fucking well like.’

  Four years studying in a dojo with Rory and she didn’t remember a thing. Endless martial arts classes and she was as helpless as a punch bag. Four years of striking, kicking and blocking, of white pyjamas and war cries, and she couldn’t find it in her to put up a fight. It felt like she had just been pretending to be tough, and now she was in the real world.

  All Megan could do was cover herself and think, but what about my daughter?

  It was way after midnight but the infamous Greek resort of Ratarsi was still swarming with people.

  Almost all of them were tanned, drunk and British. Pierced, pissed and tattooed. Modern boys and girls having fun in the sun. Which largely consisted of turning a five-hundred-year-old fishing village into an al fresco vomitorium.

  Cat was at least ten years older than most of them, although she was in better shape than all of them. Junk food, junk sex, buckets of alcohol – it took its toll.

  But what really made her different to the young folk in the streets of Ratarsi wasn’t the fact that she was older, but that she was sober.

  And alone.

  It wasn’t meant to be this way. Cat wasn’t meant to be going on holiday by herself. Brigitte was meant to be coming with her. But then Digby begged Brigitte to take him back, and suddenly Brigitte’s plans changed, and Cat was off to Ratarsi all alone.

  ‘What happened to Digby and the bimbo?’ Cat had said.

  ‘It didn’t work out.’ Brigitte smiled. ‘I think his recovery time was a problem.’

  ‘Recovery time?’

  ‘You know. The time it takes a man to be ready to go again.’

  ‘Go again? Oh – go again.’

  ‘These young girls are not like us, Cat. They might be easy for a guy like Digby to pick up, but they expect to get fucked two or three times a night. Digby is forty-five and a prime candidate for a dicky heart. Even with his half an aspirin a day. You seem surprised.’

  Cat tried to keep her tone neutral. But she thought of Brigitte’s holiday photos with Digby, and how they had looked being passed through the shredder.

  ‘I’m not surprised it didn’t work out between them,’ Cat said. ‘I’m surprised you’re taking him back. After what he did to you.’

  But Brigitte was upbeat, as if this was a practical decision, and not the stuff of humiliation.

  ‘Well. He doesn’t crowd me. He makes me laugh. We get on. To be honest, I’m not sure you can hope for much more than that. It’s what growing up is all about, isn’t it?’

  Cat hoped she would never be that grown up.

  So she went to Ratarsi alone and walked through its sticky streets, appalled at the sight of her countrymen on holiday, and wondering why she hadn’t chosen to go hiking in the Lake District with all the well-behaved German and Japanese tourists. And then she saw him. Propped up against a wall, his Hawaiian shirt ripped, an Alcopop in each hand.

  Rory’s son. Jake.

  Some mocking, mini-skirted girls were standing in front of him, impersonating his legless state.

  Cat got him to his feet and led him away from the jeering girls. She waited at the end of an alley while he emptied his guts into an overflowing dustbin.

  Then she took him to the last good hotel in Ratarsi and guided him on his rubber legs into the dining room. It was almost empty. Ratarsi was no longer the place to come for fine dining and delicate wines.

  ‘Can we just get some coffee?’ Cat asked a waiter.

  The waiter visibly shivered. Must think I’m some game old bird with her toy boy, thought Cat.

  ‘Coffee only with meal,’ said the waiter.

  ‘Then we will have a meal,’ Cat said, the hint of steel in her voice that she used on bolshy kitchen staff. ‘Think you could hold down some food, Jake?’

  The boy nodded uncertainly. When the waiter had reluctantly escorted them to a table, Jake seemed to recognise her for the first time.

  ‘I think I got a bad kebab,’ he said.

  Cat laughed. ‘Yes, we all get a lot of bad kebabs at fifteen.’

  ‘Sixteen,’ he said. ‘Last week. This is my birthday present from my dad. Ten days in Ratarsi with my friend Jude.’ He looked around the restaurant at the thin scattering of sunburned middle-aged tourists. ‘Don’t know what happened to old Jude.’

  ‘Wow, a holiday in Ratarsi as a birthday present. Whatever happened to a nice bicycle and an Action Man?’

  Jake shrugged, ‘I dunno.’

  ‘How’s your family?’

  ‘My mum’s not so good. She lost a baby. You know. What do you call it? A miscarriage.’

  Cat wondered how old Ali must be by now. Forty-five? Forty-six? And she already had a boy and a girl. But some women couldn’t get enough of it. They couldn’t see that it was time to stop giving birth to children, and start bringing them up.

  The waiter returned.

  ‘Ready to order?’

  Jake examined the menu with wary respect, as if he had never seen one bef
ore.

  ‘I’ll have, er, some vinaigrette.’

  The waiter stared at the ceiling. He sighed audibly. Then he was silent.

  ‘Me too,’ Cat said into the silence.

  ‘Vinaigrette,’ spat the waiter, ‘is a salad dressing.’

  ‘We know,’ said Cat. ‘We’re on the Atkins diet.’

  The waiter left. Cat and Jake smiled at each other. It had been a long time since that had happened.

  The waiter returned with coffee and two silver bowls of vinaigrette.

  ‘Spoons?’ he said.

  ‘Please,’ Cat said.

  Together they sipped their salad dressing and pulled a face.

  ‘Horrible,’ Jake said.

  ‘Yes, but you’ll know next time,’ Cat said.

  He stared into his coffee. ‘Thanks for – you know. Getting me.’

  ‘That’s okay, Jake.’

  ‘You’ve been so nice to me.’

  ‘Yes,’ Cat said. ‘You’re lucky I’m not your stepmother.’

  He guffawed, uncertain how to respond. She saw that he was still just a child.

  ‘And what about your dad?’

  ‘My dad’s fine,’ Jake said.

  ‘That’s good. Give him my – you know. Tell him I said hello.’

  ‘I’ll do that.’

  Cat tried to imagine Rory’s life, but it was beyond her imagination. Was he settled down in some cosy, long-term relationship? Was he screwing around? Either possibility made her heart go pang. It must be strange being a man who could no longer have children. Did every turning feel like a dead end? Cat was suddenly furious with herself.

  She refused to accept that a relationship could only be serious if it included children. Because if that was true, then what did that make what she had had with Rory? That made it just a joke. And it wasn’t a joke.

  She stared across the table at Jake, and for the first time saw the shadow of his father’s craggy face in those abashed teenage features. She missed him. She had never realised she would miss him this much. It was more than breaking up with the latest man.

  Cat felt like she had lost one of her family.