[Phoenix Court 01] - Marked for Life

by Paul Magrs

  They are quiet a moment.

  “How did you manage to push the bed through the wall?”

  “Shut it.” The clothes begin to unwind, as if purposefully, like a serpent’s coils. Tony is sloughing Mark’s jeans and shirt. “I want you to do one more thing for me, Simmonds.”

  “Tony, please. Say Peter. Say my name.”

  “Fuck that.”

  Tony is standing right by Simmonds and before the old man knows it there’s a razor blade taking a neat line down his soft cheek. He falls flat on his arse. With his gloves off—as they are now—no one can see Tony coming. Simmonds begins to howl.

  “Shut the fuck up!” Tony hurls Mark’s clothes at him. “Put these on. Now. And we’ll put on some nice make-up, shall we? You used to enjoy dressing up in the old days, didn’t you?”

  Simmonds clambers to his feet, bleeding. “What for?”

  “You’re going to stand in for me. Just for a moment. You can be my best man. You’ll like that.”

  Simmonds regards the empty air. “I’d give you anything to be you, be your best man. You know that.”

  The razor transfixes him as it forces him to change. Mark’s clothes are cool and damp with the snow blowing in. The old man struggles to do as he is bid and Tony says, “Yes. It’s a reason to despise you. Now hurry.”

  TWENTY SIX

  “THE CAR’S FUCKED.”

  In the hallway Bob had the look and the tone of a man whose only concern was his fucked car.

  “It doesn’t matter anyway,” Sam said. “We’d never get home in it now. We’ll all have to take the train.”

  “Together,” Mark said. “Where are the others?”

  “Having breakfast.”

  But they were out in the garden, standing around the fallen bed. In the centre of the garden it sat on four wrecked legs, its bedsteads only just holding on and its mattress rucked up in alarm. A light dusting of snow already covered it.

  There were looking in astonishment at this, and then up at the hole in the wall, far above. The fire escape gave an occasional groan of complaint and steadied itself.

  “This is madness,” Richard said and sat down on the bed he had slept in last night. “I just want to get away from here now.”

  Inside, the removal men were working swiftly. Tony’s house was emptying out.

  Peggy picked up Sally and sat them both beside Richard. “Never mind, love. You’re welcome to stay with us, you know.”

  Iris touched his knee with a wink. “You don’t get out of this family that easily.” She looked at her lover. “Peg, I’m going in to get our things. Check that no-one’s nicked them.”

  “That’s not all, is it?” asked Peggy archly.

  “I want to find Simmonds.”

  “He’ll have pissed off now, with all of his and Tony’s belongings.” Richard was disconsolate. And how could they blame him? He had watched, this morning, the break-up of his happy home.

  His Labrador came bounding up out of the shrubbery to cheer him up and amuse Sally. Iris took the opportunity to slip into the house. Peggy watched him go, her feelings mixing. She wanted to warn her not to be Shelley Winters in The Poseidon Adventure, knowing that she would be.

  Soon, Sam, Mark and Bob came out of the ruined garden to survey the damage. They sat on the bed and, as if expecting a fairy tale, they all drew up their legs onto the mattress.

  “It was Tony who did this,” Mark said.

  “So you saw him?” asked Sam.

  “At last. And it’s all sorted out. He’s out of our lives.”

  “I’ve never been on a train,” Sally said brightly. “Is that how we’re getting back?”

  Sam nodded and kissed her daughter. She looked at Bob, who sat awkwardly on the bed. He seemed to be having some difficulty in looking at either Sam or Mark. Reminded, possibly, of his last adventure on a bed.

  He said, “Sam, tell me. What’s this outrageous plan?”

  He sounded weary. Poor Bob, she thought. Just an ordinary bloke. An ordinary bloke who wants our lives to be normal. And I’ve got to sell him an outrageous plan. But if he wants to be a part of our lives, then he’s got no choice but to swallow it.

  Sam took a deep breath.

  “Mark and I are going to stay together, with Sally, in the flat. And, part-time, as least, I have recourse to you, Bob, your nice house and your bed. And Mark, if he wants to, has Richard.”

  “Cheers,” said Richard bitterly.

  Mark gave him a swift hug. He promised him, “We’ll discuss this.”

  VALKYRIES DECIDE WHO GETS TO VALHALLA. THEY COME SWOOPING ON ruffled and vengeful wings and what do they do then? Arriving at another Ragnarok, how do they stack the dice?

  Iris came backing into the attic room. Some memory of Cheryl Ladd in Charlie’s Angels lent her posture a cautious authority. The cold air through the new hole in the wall was like a slap in the face. It framed a man dressed in Mark’s spare jeans and shirt. She saw his face was smeared in glistening colour.

  “I’m Simmonds!” he shouted, dismayed as Iris advanced. She mistook Tony’s amused chuckling for the beating of her own imaginary wings behind her.

  “I don’t care,” she said grimly.

  “What are you going to do?”

  She wasn’t sure but she advanced on him anyway, with vague thoughts of stamping out a rogue element. It would make the ending of the tale neater, safer.

  Simmonds quailed. “That’s Tony behind you.”

  Amazingly Iris fell for it. She turned and saw Tony’s lurid face hovering alone at her shoulder. A horrible, wingless, grimacing bird. And she saw his stroppy razor as it flensed into her thickly padded side.

  But shock made her shoot forwards, through the hole, onto the fire escape, where she smacked her head on iron bars and went flying, taking the old man with her.

  Tony’s face swooped after, lilac, like a terrible familiar.

  “I THINK THAT SHOULD SATISFY EVERYONE,” SAID SAM, LOOKING ABOUT and wondering if she’d missed anyone out. “In fact, it’s almost the way it was before.” Sam smiled ruefully at Peggy. “And that, Mam, if you remember, is what you asked for.

  Bob pulled a face. “That not too outrageous, I don’t suppose.”

  “But will it stand the test of time?” asked Peggy, who was the oldest and yet the least jaded of them.

  “No idea,” Mark said. “But we’ll hold it together for as long as we can.”

  Peggy realised she was still holding Mark’s books from the shop that morning. Iris had given them to her for safekeeping. “She’s taking her time,” she said.

  “The Emperor’s New Clothes for Sally,” said Mark, opening the parcel. “And a novel by a certain Iris Margaret Wildthyme.”

  As they crowded round to examine the gilded cover of Iris’s long-forgotten novel, Iris’s voice called down to them.

  She was shouting for help, although she never meant to. In her long life Iris had prided herself on never really needing anyone’s help. But at this moment she was perched on the perilous fire escape, held tight in the grip of someone wearing a garishly made-up face and Mark’s clothes.

  “Tony!” Mark shouted, jumping up, the others following his lead.

  Iris, thought Peggy steadily. Don’t be Shelley Winters. Be Orlando. Be a Valkyrie. Just this once.

  The next few moments stretched on for hours.

  Time was playing its tricks although none of them was pissed.

  Mark had never thought to see Tony again. He thought now that he was being betrayed.

  They all cleared the bed and stood around, helpless, looking up, as if instinctively knowing they must provide something to break a fatal fall.

  For in those endless moments the figure wearing Mark’s clothes launched itself and Iris off the fire escape and into the air. They jerked into life as if pulled on strings, or pushed by a hand unseen.

  And then they flew.

  The sky was that flinching blue again and no one in the garden could stop their eyes waterin
g in order to see how they fell. The bodies tumbled and soared, seemed never to descend.

  Then came, amid the gentle snow, a patter of sharp swan’s feathers upon the mattress. They fell, fresh and inexplicable, as around the bed dropped Iris’s many layers of clothing. And finally, in their midst, with shocking suddenness and no harm done, fell a bright pink child, about the size of a rabbit.

  The body in Mark’s clothes hit the wet, stony ground nearby with a hideous crunch.

  Peggy took the baby up, picking the feathers out from between its limbs. “She said she was going somewhere…” There were tears down her face. She looked at Richard. “Well, Mr Houseboy. How are you with kids?”

  Sally grinned at her. “He was brilliant with me. He’ll look after Granny Iris.”

  Ever the vigilant policeman, Bob was tending to the not-so-lucky, the also-ran.

  Simmonds made-up face was smashed on the ruined foundations of an outhouse. But they could see plainly who he was.

  “We’ll have to report this, Sam,” said Bob as they clustered about, appalled.

  She shook her head. “The country’s having snow chaos. We can’t make a fuss. The police have enough on their hands.”

  All that afternoon they dug the iron-hard earth and at last buried the old man in his hi-tech trainers.

  Then they caught the train back home to the north, back to separate homes, in the same town, as planned.

  TWENTY SEVEN

  I’M SOUTH, NOW. IN A RAILWAY STATION, IN BRAND-NEW DRAG.

  Remember, Mark, when I told you about Anna Karenina? Well, for a while I was tempted to pull off her stunt. Remember Garbo being her, bless her? I want to be alone, too.

  I watched your patched-up family board the train at Leeds, happy and contented. I thought about interposing myself, throwing off my disguise bit by bit and making myself apparent. There’s the irony, of course—the more disguise I shrug off, the less apparent I am.

  I could have done one final, self-vindicating disappearing act. I could have been Anna, or Garbo, shedding my coat, my shoes, my hat, leaving only a made-up face, a Cheshire-cat grin, and I could have forced you to watch me mangle it on the railway lines as your train pulled out. Just as you went off home to figure out your new, complex lives.

  But I sat there instead and pretend to be corporeal.

  And you went and I came south.

  I don’t know where I’m going yet. This is a stop-off point. I’ve been travelling for a few days now, choosing a place. I can see the Tyre and Exhaust Centre from here. Tired and Exhausted. I think we all are by now.

  That’s how the wild woods in winter make you feel. But winter is relenting today. The sky has pink and blue shreds drifting through it. Complementary, not quite oppositional spring shades. It’s fucking cold, though. Here I am on one of those metal seats that make you shudder rather than shiver.

  If Frankenstein were written today, would the monster and creator dash about the country on British Rail? They could never be sure of finding each other. If Frankenstein and the monster had an AwayDay now, even if they did come across each other on a dark, windy, romantic platform, they’d never tell who was who anyway.

  This red-bricked station occupies many contradictory states: desolate and busy, orderly and chaotic. On the bench beside me sits an old woman in bright red shoes, who rocks herself and stares and stares. Involved in her own drama, whatever that may be.

  In these stations we have only one role: the quiet traveller, the bit-part player. And no necessary relation to each other. In stations, we needn’t connect.

  Oh, Mark, I’m writing to you again. The lilac paper is resting on my knee. Already written, abandoned sheets lie about my feet on that pockmarked concrete of the platform. Fags are squashed out in the pockmarks like killed beetles. I just feel the need to write again, although I shouldn’t, I suppose.

  Across from me there is a disembowelled train, resting on an unused track. It’s undercarriage has large white letters stencilled upon it: NOT TO BE LOOSE SHUNTED.

  Rest assured, Mark, I will not be shunted loosely into that good night.

  Here’s my train.

  Love,

  Tony.

  TWENTY EIGHT

  MISS KINSEY WAS RATTLING THE STAFF-ROOM BLINDS ONCE MORE. IT WAS home time, the end of the first week of a new term and a new year. This was the hardest time with children—with anyone, really—the deepest months of winter. Her teachers were shattered already. This was the time that the best-laid plans frittered away into disaster. Pipes had burst. The school hall had been flooded.

  Behind her Doris Ewart washed out the staff-room mugs, complaining that no-one bothered to wash their own, and went on with some interminable story about young Miss Francis’s affair with a pet-shop owner. That was, apparently, where all the terrapins came from.

  “Well,” said Miss Kinsey. “I wonder who we’ll get tonight.”

  She was watching the mothers collecting their children. The kids looked so sweet, dashing about in their crumpled uniforms of red jumpers, grey trousers or skirts. To be met by, frankly, mothers who had let themselves go. Who smoked beside the main entranceway, their hair unwashed.

  “What do you mean?” asked Doris, and came to see. Then she realised.

  Sally stood, clutching her lunch box, waiting to be collected.

  “We could run a book on this,” said Doris.

  “I hope you’re not advocating gambling on the school premises,” Miss Kinsey purred.

  “Oh, no. But I bet a fiver we get her mother tonight.”

  “You’re on. A fiver says it’s that nice young man again.”

  Because, so far this week, Sally had had different people to meet her from school each night.

  Monday, a nice young man with wavy hair, a Labrador and a leather jacket. Miss Kinsey and Doris Ewart were a little concerned, but on Tuesday night Sam—the legitimate mother—had picked Sally up and explained that Richard was ‘a friend of the family’. On Wednesday came Sally’s grandmother—whom Miss Kinsey had met before—with a pushchair and a squawking brat. (Miss Kinsey liked children to be between the ages of five and eight.) And on Thursday there was a police car for Sally and a beaming, handsome policeman. The other kids will be getting jealous, the headmistress thought.

  “We’ve both lost a fiver,” Doris Ewart said.

  Miss Kinsey sighed. “What a shame!” And she went to close the venetian blinds.

  Because on Friday night Mark came to collect Sally. She ran to him and grasped his blue hand. The crowd of mothers and kids, waving thickly painted posters and tugging on anoraks, didn’t move apart for this casual reunion. Sally and Mark had to fight through the mass, standing out for anyone’s inspection only by virtue of the tattoos and the especially vivid pink of Sally’s lunch box.

  JUDITH’S DO ROUND HERS

  I’LL TELL YOU WHO I’M A FAN OF THESE DAYS, AND THAT’S THAT ROSEANNE. You know that fat wife on Channel Four? I think she’s dead funny. And it’s like they say in the TV Times: she’s a role model.

  She’s my role model now, I’ve decided. She gets away with it. She’s not ashamed of who she is, and she tells people what she thinks of them. She doesn’t put up with any old shit.

  I was at work when I was reading this interview with her, the one in the TV Times. We keep them on the counter with the evening papers. Which means we have to stand there all week with the same old famous faces staring up at us. You can watch the weeks go by that way.

  Last week it was Roseanne and I thought she looked dead glamorous. Well, she is dead glamorous for a fatty.

  I’m not being nasty when I say that. She says she’s a fatty herself, she admits to it and has a laugh about it. She’s famous anyway and it needn’t bother her now. She knows she’s a fatty and really, she’s made her fortune out of it. And I can’t use it as a term of abuse anyway, because when the chips are down, I’m a fatty. Mind, it’s got me bloody nowhere.

  So all last week it was Roseanne’s face staring up fro
m the counter, and that’s when I read the interview. It was quite interesting. She’s had a hard life, actually, even though she’s on the telly and that. I felt quite sorry for her.

  I like a good read. Especially interviews with stars like that. When they’d had a decently hard life, but everything turns out all right and there was stardom waiting just around the corner.

  We get all the magazines with that kind of real-life stuff in here. I can have a good flick through when we get slack. I needn’t ever buy the things. Which is a saving, really, because I think I’m addicted, sometimes, to showbiz gossip and chitchat.

  No, that’s not true. Some of them stars I couldn’t care less about. Specially some of them younger ones. Pauline, who I’m on with serving usually, asks me who it is on the cover of Hello! or Top Santy or whatever, and sometimes I just can’t tell her. Who are these people? Why do they think they’re famous? I have to look to see what it says underneath the faces.

  Pauline still follows both, so she knows more than me. She still asks me to read the names out. Tell the truth, I think the lass has trouble reading. She squints up right close at invoices and stuff. And she’s only just out of school. I’ve told her—I’ve had a lot longer than she has to forget everything what they taught me!

  Anyway, yeh, so I read these chitchats and articles when we get a moment to ourselves. I mean, there’s always someone in the shop. It’s one of those shops where there’s always someone coming in for something. We’re handy and that’s the point. Cigarettes—we’re the place they come dashing out to and we’ve got an impressive range from your Craven As to your tweny-five-to-a-packet Royals, all the way up to your John Players and your Marlboros and even your Hamlet cigars. Top-of-the-range stuff we don’t sell a lot of, but makes the place classier to have on show.

  Or at least, so says Eric. Now, Eric’s the bloke who owns the place. He’s a bit younger than me, in about his mid-forties I’d say, and he speaks a different language. He’s been in business and done courses. I’d call him a greedy bugger, actually, but to give the bloke credit, he’s turned this place into a goldmine. But it’s for no-one’s benefit but his own. He serves his community, like he says, but it’s also for his community that he’s got broken bottles cemented roud the wall at the back of the shop. What about that bairn—he was only a bairn—trying to break in round the back that night with his mates? Slashed all his legs, top of Eric’s back wall. Severed tendons, the lot. And what does Eric say? Serves the thieving get right.