Love of Fat Men

by Helen Dunmore

  Ulli walked across the patterned, food-resistant carpet to their table.

  ‘Oh, has she gone home? Well, I expect she was tired.’

  ‘Nothing wrong, was there, Ulli? Good.’

  ‘Have a drink, Ulli. Now, which was your glass?’

  ‘We’re thinking of going on to the Blue Vine. D’you fancy it? Matti says they’ve got a good band playing there tonight.’

  The smell of the night to come has settled around their table. They lean forward. Matti’ll book the cab. Ulli’s dinner has gone cold, but never mind – she can pick up a frankfurter from a kiosk on the way. And then cigarettes. They are nearly out of cigarettes.

  ‘Go on, have another glass. You’ve hardly had anything.’

  And she let go, yielded herself to the smell and the throb of the night to come. Matti was smiling at her, that shiny smile. There were hours to go before morning, hours of night and rushing through the dark in taxis. Who knows where they’d end up, drinking cold beers and ransacking the fridge for sausages? Who wants to be the one who hangs back, who has to go home, who is giving up smoking and only drinks a careful glass and a quarter and won’t touch spirits? Because it’s night and the night goes on so long.

  The Thief

  ‘Come on, Sam. Don’t make me late. You wouldn’t want to make me late, would you?’

  She shakes her head while the hair-dryer frizzes in her ears. She wouldn’t want to do anything he didn’t want.

  ‘Your hair’s gone to fuck.’

  She straightens. He reaches out and rubs her hair between finger and thumb.

  ‘Like a bag of crisps,’ he says.

  ‘It’s always this way until the baby comes. I should never’ve had that perm.’

  He has the jacket, the bag. The bag she’ll carry. It is a soft, unnoticeable shopping bag like a thousand others, dark brown striped with tan. In its big heart there ought to be soft drinks, spare nappies, a dummy on a string. But there’s nothing. A bag of emptiness, that’s what she’s got. She’d better fill it quick. It’s one of those bags that never wear out no matter what you do to it, no matter how much you come to hate it.

  There is no baby in the house. Why no baby? She talks as if there’s a baby. Lots of babies. There is a baby inside her, that’s for sure. As she stands sideways with the lycra skirt riding up over her bare legs you can see where her belly button has been pushed inside out. That baby’s nearly ready to be born.

  ‘When we’re done you can go to Children’s World,’ he promises. He smiles suddenly and she looks at him straight, without expression. In the baby’s chest there are nine newborn babygros. She only likes designer ones: Over the Moon, Little Friend, Forever Baby. She wouldn’t put a baby of hers into white towelling. She got those special ones for prem babies too. Early Bird. She got six. Shame really to waste them. She’s thirty-nine weeks now and as big as a bus, he keeps telling her. Still, she might need them next time.

  She needs a Forever Baby duvet to go with the cover. But duvets are big. She’ll have to think about it.

  ‘They’ve got those duvets,’ she says. ‘Really nice. They go with the sleepsuits, you know the ones I got?’

  ‘You got so much stuff, how the fuck am I supposed to know?’ he says, but he’s not angry. He likes it really, she knows. He likes things nice, the same as she does.

  Her comb sticks and she tugs it gently, not wanting to hurt herself. When she hurts herself the baby shivers and kicks as if he feels the banging too. Who’d hurt a little baby? She knows it’s a he. They don’t tell you because of these Asians getting rid of the kid if it’s a girl but she looked on the scan. Abortion’s disgusting. She saw its little thingy on the screen.

  She can see the rack of Early Bird mitts and bootees and bodysuits and sleepsuits. Too small for a doll. There was a girl in hospital last time, she’d been in for months. Four pounds eleven ounces her baby was. The midwife was bent down looking in through the side of the box. ‘Like a doll,’ she kept saying. ‘She’s just like a little doll.’ They were all crowded round, all the nurses and midwives, like it was their baby.

  ‘I don’t know what you brought that stuff home for,’ he said when she got the Early Bird babygros, ‘the way you look it’ll be the size of an elephant.’

  She gets off the bus. Sun and sea jostle at the end of the road, but she isn’t going down there. She’s never liked the sea much, the way it lunges at you. Besides, you can hardly move on the pavement without being shoved around by gangs of foreign kids. It’s all right for them. They’re on holiday. One long holiday that’s been going on ever since she can remember. Some people have got work to do, she tells them. One of them understands and points to her bulge and laughs.

  ‘Work!’ he says to his friends. ‘Work!’

  ‘Fuck yourself, why don’t you?’ she says. ‘Do someone else a favour.’

  She hefts the bag and looks up the square. A double-decker slows for a sleeping policeman and she steps out in front of it, knowing it’ll stop. The air brakes hiss and the driver shouts out of the window but she doesn’t listen. She’s late, not much but enough. No good telling him about the buses though he knows what they’re like. It’s all right for him on the bike, nicking in and out of the traffic.

  He used to take her on the back. All that speed in her hair and the cliffs on their right, the sea waiting for them, She crouched behind him, wrapped to his waist. It didn’t matter where they went. Once she looked back and saw rain blowing in like smoke, slicking the road behind them. He was going so fast the rain never caught them.

  ‘Lisa-Marie’ she thinks. That’s a nice name. Only it’s going to be a boy. He won’t have her naming it after him.

  ‘Boy or girl?’ she said to him but he just shrugged.

  ‘He doesn’t mind. He’ll love it to bits whatever it is.’ She’s got the sentence ready in her head but there’s no one to say it to. Maybe at the bus-stop on the way back. Someone who doesn’t know her.

  ‘What do you want, boy or girl?’

  ‘Oh, we don’t mind. He’ll love it to bits whatever it is.’

  But it doesn’t sound right, even coming out of her own mouth in her own head.

  She stands window-shopping. This is a snob shop, she never goes in here. She ties her scarf round her head. It looks all right. Lots of people are wearing scarves because of the wind. Then the sunglasses. They look all right too. She makes a tiny face at herself. All right till you look down.

  She flows back into the stream. Lots of sales on; well, there’s always sales. It doesn’t bother her, she likes crowds. Past the doors and the security men standing on either side of them and in through the racks of clothes and the shoppers. She is like a touch-typist. She doesn’t have to look at her hands. They do their work while she stares at blouses. Her back knows where to find the closed-circuit telly screen. They think you don’t know anything.

  Silly cow trying on a jacket, laughing, baby in a pushchair by her, someone else with the baby, both of them watching the baby. Handbag swinging. Move in, past the end of the rail. Her bag swinging. A tiny bump. The woman turns, laughing, sees the big pregnant belly, apologizes.

  ‘Oh – I’m sorry. I’m in your way.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I’m in your way.’ Who does she think she is?

  She’s late. He’ll be waiting. When she’s finished she can go to Children’s World and look at the Forever Baby duvets.

  They are round the corner, up the back of Gateway. His hands grope in her bag. He’s not good with his hands. He needs her deadpan typist’s face and her quick fingers. He doesn’t like the way she can do it and he can’t. All she’s got this time is cash. No cards. She can still see that face laughing, and the baby laughing too. If there’d been a card she could’ve got the Forever Baby duvet. Doesn’t the stupid cow know it’s all cards now?

  ‘This is fucking useless,’ he says. They are by the supermarket bins. He strips out the cash and throws the rest into the bin. The wind blows the flap of her coat between h
er legs. He takes the money.

  He’ll be back later, she knows he will. It is twenty past eleven. From here the sea looks as if it could get her any time it wanted. It’s a long way to Children’s World but if she has a coffee she could walk up there. She’s got the fare home.

  ‘Lisa-Marie,’ she says, stirring sugar into the coffee.

  ‘Pardon?’ says the woman at the other side of the table.

  ‘Lisa-Marie,’ says Sam. ‘Do you think it’s a nice name?’ Suddenly she’s hungry, desperate. But the woman grasps her carrier bag handles tight and heaves herself off the plastic bench.

  Sam stirs her coffee round and round. The baby’ll be Pisces. The way it’s lying now it feels as if it’s going to come out of her arse.

  Last time she was at the clinic the new midwife, the one who hadn’t read her notes, bent over Sam and felt her belly, squaring it up between her hands. She said, ‘You’ve got a footballer in here. You’ll have your hands full with this one. How big was your first?’ Then Anne, the other side of the room, frowned at her and shook her head, a little shake so Sam wouldn’t see. They’re not supposed to talk about that. Not supposed to talk about what happens after.

  Your first. Stupid cow.

  ‘Blood pressure’s down a bit. You’re doing nicely, Sam.’ And Anne gives that smile she thinks covers up what’s in her eyes. They think I’m dirt.

  ‘These last weeks are awful, aren’t they,’ said the new midwife. ‘Bet you can’t wait.’ And this time Anne walks across to her, pretends to put something on the shelf, elbows the new midwife so she looks up, startled. They think you’re thick. Think you don’t notice.

  Lisa-Marie ought to of kept out of his way. Why did she have to go aggravating him? He couldn’t take the noise she made. You couldn’t dress her up nice. There was always something. Soon as you washed her face it was mucked up with tears and stuff she’d wiped into her hair. The day he was going to take them to Thorpe Park there was sick all down her new Girlsworld sweat top. Then she started wetting herself though she’d been dry at eighteen months.

  ‘Why can’t she use a potty? Other kids use a potty.’

  She was like a little animal. She ought to of known better. Then sometimes you’d pull a funny face and she’d still smile at you. Shut my eyes. Click. It’s still there, her smile. Why can’t you be a good girl? And then the noise’d start. Like mewing. You’d go in to her in the morning and she knew she’d been a bad girl. Pull the curtains back. Then the duvet. She’s curled up by the wall like she’s going to push herself through it. You pull her legs out. Her arms. She won’t look at you, she’s all scrunched up in herself where you can’t find her. Then you say, ‘I got your breakfast ready, Lisa-Marie,’ and then she looks at you and big shakes start in her and she curls away and you pull her open and then –

  The coffee is sweet, just right. The baby thuds into position. With Lisa-Marie the head engaged. That’s what they call it. But it doesn’t happen a second time. Outside it’s raining hard, slashing in squalls across the window. A woman comes in and flumps on to the other side of the table. Big blobs of water skip on to the seat as she fights her way out of her mac. She looks at Sam’s belly.

  ‘If they knew what it’s like they’d never come out,’ she says.

  Ullikins

  She hasn’t found anything for her fat man. She is almost panicking. In the department store mirror her eyes are wide like the eyes of a chased animal. She fingers a dark purple woollen ski-sock on a revolving stand in LADIES SPORTS. Her skin itches at the touch. Who’d wear it? She thinks of white hairy legs marked with the thick welt of the sock. The smell of pine in changing-rooms. Girls bent over, strapping on skis, bright neat curls dangling from their caps. Their upside-down faces laugh and whisper. Who’s going out with Jorma? Then the first swerve out into the blinding snow. Ulli hooks the socks back over one arm of the stand and gives the stand a twirl.

  Sweat prickles her neck. She doesn’t like department stores, but at this time of the year you find yourself sucked in to them, hopelessly looking for things you don’t want. The store throbs with public heat and with the private heat of hundreds of packed jostling bodies which are jockeying for cheap things to give. Fur caps and jackets make a hive of personal saunas. Ulli has been shopping all afternoon, first buying a plain white quilt for her own bed, then doing her Christmas shopping. The quilt has been boxed for her in Christmas paper and it’s tucked behind a desk on the third floor. In her carrier bag she has four stout bayberry candles, a felt waistcoat embroidered with silk for her baby niece, and a sheaf of silk scarves. Light, easy to post, inoffensive. They all have good-quality brand names on them. You can’t argue with silk. She’s got the whole thing out of the way quite easily this year. All she needs to do now is to slip money, big notes, into a card for her grandmother.

  A small crowd has gathered around the ski-sock stand already, attracted by its movement. Black and white zigzagged socks whizz round like weather forecast lightning symbols. Each time the stand slows, somebody pushes it again. But nobody’s buying. It’s getting late. Little white-haired, ski-suited fuzzballs of children are tearing at their mothers’ hands.

  ‘Mummy! Mummy! Get it for me!’

  ‘We’ll see, if you’re a good girl …’

  Indulgent smiles have gone rigid, masking irritation. One mother furtively pinches her shrieking kid.

  The mothers are candle-white with tiredness, but still automatically turning over yet another tray of those special little Christmas surprises. A tape of Christmas songs, none of them religious, beats overhead. This is the third time Ulli’s heard it through since she’s been in the store.

  Give me JOY for Christmas

  Give me JOY for Christmas …

  The store’s overhead lighting flickers on and off and a flutey girl’s voice comes over the public address system. It’s the same pert, lipsticky voice that you hear in all the department stores and railway stations and airport lounges of the world.

  ‘FIVE MINUTES TO CLOSING, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! THANK YOU FOR SHOPPING WITH US. WE SHALL REOPEN FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE AT 8.00 a.m. TOMORROW. FIVE MINUTES TO CLOSING, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN …’

  A salesgirl in black skirt and white frilly blouse whisks the covers on to the perfumery counter. The cover flops over a sign saying WHY NOT PAMPER HER THIS CHRISTMAS? Two fat out-of-town women heave themselves through the store exit just in front of Ulli. Their broad sweating faces gleam as they turn to wedge the doors with their backsides, and then they hoick their parcels out into the cold.

  ‘It was worth the trip! We really got some bargains!’

  ‘Yes, and you can always keep those mitts for Antti’s birthday. They’ll fit him a treat by then.’

  But even they haven’t bought the purple ski-socks. Ulli looks back and there they are hanging from the stand, limp. Then slab after slab of merchandise floats off into darkness as the store lights go out.

  Outside the street rings with sleigh bells, relayed from loudspeakers stuffed into a Christmas tree at each corner of the square. Everybody is loaded down with shopping. Her own bags feel as skimpy and light as air. She ought to have collected the quilt. If she’d been wrestling with that in its big awkward box, people could have swapped grins of fellow-feeling with her over the top of their own parcels. But let the quilt wait, she thinks. It’s her own present to herself: a fat white quilt in a plain white cover that will settle on her bed like a drift of snow.

  There are candles in the windows of the apartments above the shops. They wink over her head. The warm glittering apartments signal to one another:

  All aboard! Gang-plank up! Seal the windows! We’ve got dried fish for Christmas Eve and presentation boxes of reindeer’s tongue and single white roses in plastic tubes. We’ve got family photos and grandma’s knitting and the kids tucked up in bed with mobiles of snowflakes and story-book quilts. Church at Christmas of course. An hour of boredom to sweeten the dinner! Gang-plank up! All aboard!

  In the blocks of a
partments door after door bangs shut. If you put your ear to the door panels you’d hear laughter and voices and people protesting: ‘No, for heaven’s sake! Half that! Are you trying to get me drunk? Just a little one for me!’ Visitors. Happy Christmas.

  Outside the sky heaves and unrolls another snowfall. The wind lets rip. A faint tickle of it passes through the double-glazed windows. A whine comes up the lift-shaft like the whine of dogs or worse at the long-ago edge of the village. Another packed lift-full of flesh is assumed into warm air smelling of food. Once, long ago, on a lonely night, a poor traveller …

  In their warm beds children are listening to Christmas stories, the old stories about homeless travellers. It’s strange how their parents seem to love homeless people, all at once. ‘I don’t like you,’ the children whisper to one another. ‘You’re not my friend.’ Their toes curl up under their quilts and they smell the spices drifting from the kitchen. Their sharp little toenails pick at one another’s shins.

  Ulli remembers her brothers, her three older brothers with their long cold bony feet. They used to tease her at Christmas time, telling her stories about what Father Christmas was going to bring for her, until her head swarmed with greed. They had more money than her and they saved up and hid their savings under their pillows. They let her weigh the thick clumps of coin in her hands. They chose a green phial of perfume for Mother.

  WITH LOVE. WITH LOTS OF LOVE. WITH FONDEST LOVE. WITH ALL OUR LOVE. WITH LOVE FROM US ALL. TONS OF LOVE. A MILLION KISSES.

  Her brothers rolled together, aching and giggling. A green phial of perfume for Mother. Let Ulli hold it. There was a tiny rubber stopper which she had to fidget out with her fingers. Only Ulli’s fingers were neat enough. One drop of yellow scent tipped on the inside of her wrist. ‘Don’t tell! Oh, ULLI! How can you be so stupid?’ And she shrank, shamed, to the very edge of the bed, to the cold wall.