by Helen Walsh
She spots Dana at last and, relieved, begins to push her way towards her, smiling in that apologetic, frigid way of hers to the people she moves through. It says: ‘I know. I’m really, really dark. But give me a chance. I’m nice.’
She checks herself, not for the ingratiating smile, but for the hatred in her heart. The people in this bar – she hates them. She gets a step closer to Dana but the spectacle has her baulking. An old guy in his forties is kissing Dana passionately; he’s moving his head round in full circular sweeps as he kicks a rhythm into his kissing, and he’s pressing his groin right into her. With his left hand, he mauls her breast – not merely through the fabric of her flowery dress, but right inside the neckline, his gnarled hand fumbles under her bra. Sheila can see her white flesh dimple as he squeezes hard – and it sickens her. In his other hand the guy holds a pint of lager, which he is spilling all over himself. Sheila turns and picks her way back through the throng and out of the bar.
The slap of the cold shocks her for a second but, as she makes her way to the bus station, she feels better and better. So strangely elated is she by her escape that she stops in her tracks, turns and heads for the taxi rank. She’s hardly spent anything tonight. She’ll go home in a cab.
*
Kenny isn’t in there. He hasn’t turned up once since they struck up the friendship. Not that he definitely said he could make it, but Vinnie had held out real hope Kenny might show tonight, see the band, whatever. Accepting it, he tucks his fringe behind his ear and enjoys the frisson that everyone in the place is looking at him. He’s getting curious stares, but it’s good curiosity. He looks cool, all in black, thin and beautiful and exotic. People want to know who he is. He smiles at his glass and tosses off the last of his Jameson and suddenly there’s a shriek of excitement from the end of the bar. ‘It is! I told you! It definitely one hundred per cent no back answers is him!’
Two fat blonde girls have been giving him the eye from the moment he walked in there. He’s not a fan of body mass, but there is something even more loathsome about these girls. They both have identically mean, tiny, calculating eyes. Piggy little eyes in fat faces, faces he can never forget, and they’re beaming across at him.
‘It’s Gaylord!’
‘My God …’
‘He’s gone gorgeous …’
‘I’m going over …’
She swallows her drink and she is coming over. Her face betrays everything – indulgence, complacency, entitlement. For her, this is someone she knows. She knows his name, they have things in common, she has a claim on him and, by staking that claim, she will have him. This is what happens. This is how it works. Vinnie can’t be sure which of the Cohen sisters this is, but it doesn’t really matter. She smiles, making her eyes disappear into slits. She has perfect teeth. Vincent would like teeth like hers – small, indecently white.
‘Vincent Fitzgerald! How are you?’
He looks her up and down, slightly dismayed. ‘Do we know each other?’
She gasps slightly, turns to her sister at the end of the bar, then turns back to Vinnie, bracing herself as the distant possibility of rejection enters her orbit. ‘It’s me! Izzy Cohen! We …’
Vinnie looks her up and down again, very slowly, making evident his displeasure. ‘Nope …’ The sneer on his face leaves no room for ambiguity. ‘I wouldn’t forget a face like yours.’
And though there’s nothing left in his glass he necks the ice water, places the glass gently down on the counter, turns and leaves. As he reaches the door, he can barely suppress his glittering smile.
The closer they get to Thelwall, the more tense she gets. They’re almost there now. The little Pakistani driver has been disapproving from the moment she stepped into his cab, tutting at her appearance, muttering to himself all the way. She’s used to this from Asian men. The men at the market were happy enough to sell her a miniskirt for Ellie, but what a huddle of fury and disdain if she dared to walk past in it. The shame! An Indian girl – dressed like that! Dressed like them. Where was the respect, these days!
The cabbie’s curiosity gets the better of him. He fires off his questions – where is her husband tonight? Where did they meet? Where does he work? Sheila is in no mood to soft-soap him. Politely, but firmly, she confirms his darkest suspicions – that, of all the horrors, she is single. Sheila is a single mother. This dressed-up, made-up, fluffed-up tart was married to a white man and, worse, he has left her – as they do. He can contain himself no longer. He stamps down on the brakes and slams his fists down on the steering wheel. ‘You are a whore! Get out!’
‘I … don’t you dare …’
‘Do not answer back to me! Get out!’ Sheila goes to get out. The driver pulls her back. ‘Ten pounds!’
Sheila turns slowly to the driver and calmly speaks into his beady eyes. ‘You’d take money from a whore?’
The driver cannot look at her. His black eyes gleaming with contempt, he stares straight ahead.
‘Get. Out,’ he spits.
Without allowing her eyes to leave his face, Sheila drops a five-pound note on the passenger seat and, head held high, she makes her way back to her empty house.
Two
Last night is all forgotten now. Sheila is over it. The taxi driver, Dana, all of them, they mean no harm. It’s just what life does to you, if you let it.
She waves Pat and Enid goodbye, gets into her car – the old orange Lada, still going strong, left, along with all the other stuff that Robbie never came back for and which Vincent, bit by bit, is shunting off into the garage, or the loft, or just out – and reverses away. She bites on her lip as she smiles back at old Pat, waving from the window of their small, terraced house. She’s been visiting them since her very first day on the district; Pat with his respiratory problems and now Enid, his wife, with her ravenous cancer. Sheila cares deeply for all her patients, but of the twenty-five, sometimes thirty clients that make up her weekly rota, Pat and Enid are her favourites. Enid hasn’t long now. Through Sheila’s ministrations, in part, she has been allowed to come home to die in the house she’s lived these past forty-odd years. She will be dead soon, and Pat will be utterly alone.
Sheila sighs as she heads away, promising herself that she will take care of Pat. It’ll be nothing – an extra visit after her day’s shift to make sure he’s comfortable, a phone call over the weekend. She glances in the wing mirror. Pat’s still there, forlorn. She’s choking up now, feeling Pat’s fear and his anguish acutely. What has he to look forward to? Nothing. Yet in spite of her sadness there’s a selfish sense of relief too, that she’s finished her last visit of the day and is finally going home. She’s taken on Saturdays and Sunday mornings to help manage all the extra costs that come with Ellie’s schooling these days – extra kit, drama club, excursions to Chester and Jodrell Bank and Liverpool. But they’re worth it all, her babies, and compared with how things were that first year after Robbie left, they’re doing fine. As a unit she and Ellie and Vincent are doing just fine.
For now, for the next few hours, her time is her own and she’s looking forward to having the house to herself. Once she’s dropped Ellie at her friend’s she’s going to soak all her aches away in a deep, hot bath, then she’ll settle down to a selfish evening with her latest squeeze – Terry Wogan. Her work friends have been teasing her ever since she ventured this little crush. Michael Parkinson, they could half see the attraction; Des O’Connor, well, in his day … But Terry Wogan? That was just wrong! Sheila didn’t mind that they jibed her, but it was futile trying to justify the attraction. They just didn’t get it. The soft brogue, the twinkling eyes and, most of all, the sheer niceness he exuded, only made them all the more wary. ‘Sheeela!’ they’d trill. ‘You need to get out more!’
Sheila smiles to herself. No, thank you very much. I’m just fine as I am.
For a moment, her thoughts switch back to Pat and Enid and a lifetime of loneliness, but her train of consciousness leads her on to her babies, and she wonders
what they’re doing right now, and what they’ll be doing this time next year. She does it all the time, fantasises about what Ellie and Vinnie will make of their lives. They’re only thirteen and eighteen, and already they’ve done so well, achieved so much. They’re both bright kids, each on a scholarship at two of the best schools in the North-West and, in their own distinctive ways, each is turning into a remarkable young person. Vincent with his writing and his poetry, one of the brightest stars of Alty Grammar’s sixth form. As for Ellie, there is no limit to her possibilities. Since starting her third year at Culcheth, she’s blossomed. Not just physically, though with her long legs and caramel skin she could be a model if she weren’t so boisterous; but with her interest in music and drama and everything on the arty side at school, Sheila could see Ellie as a concert pianist, training at the Royal Academy. It was costing her a fortune in extra lessons and specialised sheet music, but what of it? What else was she to spend her money on?
She allows herself a smile as she cruises on past the canal. Surely she won’t be jinxing their good fortune if she allows herself to dream out loud for a second? Her heart bumps along wildly as she pictures her little man leaving for university. She and her elegant young daughter will head off to Rusholme together, sharing secrets over an intimate meal, maybe even a bottle of wine. But much closer on the horizon is the pilgrimage back home the three of them will make next year. Vinnie and Ellie will visit Kuala Lumpur for the first time in their lives.
There is much to look forward to, yet still she feels sad for Robbie. It was never on, he and she. She can see that, now. And she no longer blames him. She’s never hated him and of late she’s started to sympathise with him. She wonders what the world holds in store for the hopeless, shambolic romancer. Above all else, she hopes for some equilibrium in his relationship with the kids. She wishes he could make his peace with Vincent. Each of them needs to give way a little, yet Robbie is even more childish than his boy. He was eleven for goodness’ sake, and Robbie can’t get over it. Won’t get over it. Yet the more he drinks himself into oblivion in Blackpool, the more besotted his daughter becomes. She’d visit him there, regularly, until a few months ago. With so much going on at school though, even Ellie can’t be everywhere all at once.
As she approaches the swing bridge, Sheila is taken unawares by the depth of her sorrow for him. She sees the flame-haired man racing along the towpath with the five-year-old Ellie. She sees him running, always running. It’s all too sad. She has a strong sense that Robbie is still roaming, still searching the wasteland of his youth as he chases the splintered echo of a dream. And she can’t shrug off the cold, probing finger that points at her. Deep down, she feels that somehow she is to blame.
Three
Vinnie keeps a wary eye on the two young lads prowling closer towards him. They’re nothing, just a pair of townies from Orford or Bewsey. They’re bottom rung too, the whey-faced, glue-sniffing skins in the worst of naff, market shell suits and big, overbuilt last-year’s trainers. Even Vinnie knows that no one wears Travel Fox any more. These two are just guttersnipes, glueheads on the prowl. Furtive and instantly guilty like all teen nightcrawlers, they ram their solvents deep down into their shit, shiny, black tracksuit bottoms. He can hear the clank of the click-ball inside the aerosol. Warrington has its fair share of baddies, but these lads are nothing. Vinnie has learnt what to look out for. They pass him by, trying to look hard, only looking very young, very bored, very ugly.
They get right down the far end of the overpass.
‘Hey! Paki!’
He hears the death rattle of their krylon spray paint as they whip it back out, give it a good shake and drag their handiwork all over the perspex easel. The pair of them work quickly. They’ve done this before.
‘Look and learn, raghead!’ They back away, cranking out a half-hearted one-arm salute, turn and leg it.
Vinnie could not be less disturbed by them. Almost feels sorry for them. He sighs hard, cranes his neck and squints at their graffiti. BNP. He fishes out a roll-up from his empty ten-pack of Lambert & Butler and sparks up, smiling. So this is the public face of the great white menace, then? Fourteen-year-old ferrets in shell suits with hideous acne. Somehow the Aryan ideal has been lost in translation.
He presses on towards the bus station at the end of the walkway, pulling his famous blue raincoat tight around him. Time is leaking away, and he has to move quickly. He should be in Rusholme by now, sat there in Abdul’s, perched in his favourite upstairs window pew, watching the dusk wend its way along the pulsing artery of Little India, flickering the street lamps to life. He should be there with his leather-bound notebook, tracing the shifting inflections of night as it rises up beyond the solemn tower blocks that stand over Moss Side, dreaming up stories that, later, he’ll go in search of. It’s Saturday night and the main drag of Rusholme will soon be coming alive without him. He has to be there before the Indian sweet stalls and the grocers pack away their rare, plump ‘fayre’ – their yams and their pickle and their little tubs of cumin and turmeric and their bunches of fragrant coriander; before the silk and cloth stalls shut down and remove the gaudy shock of their extravagant colours and patterns; before the clanking, twinkling bracelets disappear from the trinket stands, Bollywood film scores drifting out and up and away down the tide of the street. He has to get to Rusholme before they all close up, fold away and stand back for the main attraction. The restaurants. The grub. The legend of the Curry Mile. Vinnie Fitzgerald is a writer, and he needs to be a part of that lambent snatch of time before night settles, before the pavements are flooded with the spice-seeking vagrants from suburbia. That magical Happy Hour, filled with the gleeful shouts of traders who’ve done well, whistling and laughing as they dismantle the tubular frames of their stalls and stow them away for another day. The sounds and smells pour forth, of the street winding down; a mellow, contemplative moment in time before the next act bellows into town. This is the Rusholme that buzzes Vinnie’s head with stories.
Sometimes he will barely blink as he silently observes the city coming back to life again – Saturday night fever in this wondrous metropolis. He sees them all prowling, purring, eyeing each other up – all the different tribes sliding and darting in and around each other, part of each others’ worlds for this one short spasm of time and space. Rusholme is a pan-Asiatic curry of Goans, Kerali, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Persians, Punjabis, Tamils. But the spice that gives it its kick are the white folk. The goths with their alabaster faces, the weekly pilgrimages of Smiths fans, the punk revivalists, the myriad students in all their scruff and pomp. And then there are the Rusholme Ruffians in all of theirs – dressed-down casuals from Wythenshawe up for the night to have a go at Moss Side’s Young Guvnors. There’s a weird little crew of old-time skinheads, tight white jeans, braces dangling down from beneath their petrol-green flying jackets, boots and shaved heads and questioning, disappointed faces. They prowl up and down, letting everyone know they’re there, a bitter, watchful minority.
Abdul’s is the only restaurant along the stretch that affords the ideal vantage point. Sometimes Abdul himself will come and sit with Vinnie during those twilight hours, making smiling, faltering small talk as he, too, tries to pick out whatever it is on the street below that causes Vinnie’s eyes to dance and sparkle. Vinnie only ever orders a coffee, but Abdul lets him stay until the table is needed, refilling his cup while Vinnie’s pen scorches across the page like the crazed indie speed freaks outside. Sometimes Abdul will watch him from the kitchen with his cooks, their tittering faces crammed into the small grid of glass. They’re endlessly amused by the tall, skinny waif with his girl’s fringe and thick wedge of eyeliner. Abdul assumes he’s a hard-up student, so shockingly thin is young Vincent. He lavishes him with samosas and yesterday’s naan bread, half hoping he might one day immortalise his busy little eating house in fiction.
‘On Abdul’s!’ he announces as he places the plate in front of Vinnie. His tone is as proud as it is paternal. ‘Jus
t remember me when you are famous worr-rryte-ah, yeah?’ He pronounces the ‘w’ in writer as though he’s using it to tune up for all those rippling ‘r’s. Vinnie makes a big thing out of feigning embarrassment and gratitude at the gift of food, swooping on the steaming parcels of pastry and mince as though they were brand new vinyl. But as soon as Abdul turns his back, the food parcels are mummified in tissue and stashed in his raincoat, ready for his grateful friends. He just hasn’t got it in his heart to tell the lively little man with the clever brown eyes no thank you. It’s not that he can’t afford to eat – he’s just not big on food.
As he approaches the bus station he sees the nose of the Manchester bus edging out. He can still make it – if he runs.
Just past Wythenshawe a nasty little crew in Jazzy B clobber pile on and instinctively Vinnie touches the welted, double-stitched pocket of his blue raincoat and reaches out for his notebook. No sooner had he heard the gorgeous lilting refrain of the Leonard Cohen paean than he knew that song was for him. That would be him, one day. A writer in a loft. A place on Clinton Street where there’d be music drifting up to him, all through the evening. And he wanted to start living that life, now. He was already someone who wrote, compulsively, wherever the inspiration gripped him. Finding that raincoat, though – that was the making of him. His pals already looked up to him as a muse, a loner, a true original, and the raincoat – the famous blue raincoat – was his totem.
Taking himself out of the line of fire Vinnie lowers his head to his notebook and transcribes their broad-vowelled argot. They can’t be fifteen yet, but these scrawny white kids decked out in Moss Side garb are well aware of the fear they generate. They revel in it – the instant clamming-up of conversation, the ducking of heads behind newspapers – they know it’s all down to them and the menace they exude. Vinnie feels for the young lad in front of him. He’s now studying the route map on the window, desperate not to provoke the mob of hyenas eyeing him up, waiting. If he catches their eye, he’s fucked. If he has to, he’ll stare at it all the way into town – anything to avoid the accusatory ‘what the fuck yoh lookin’ at, cunt face?’