by Moira Murphy
“We’re right at the top,” he said, “it’s a bit of a hike.”
He led me across the black and white tiled hall to the staircase which rose to the right of a heavily embossed wall, the colours of red and cream separated by a wide, carved dado rail, the colour of fudge. Gilt framed pictures lined the walls. All old. Some portraits and some eighteenth century hunting scenes and one strangely enough, of a dog looking a bit like Millie, being cuddled by a child on a velvet chair.
The stair treads splayed wider at the bottom with a mahogany banister sweeping down and into a large flat circle which reminded me of an oversized counter from a draughts set. My hand just about covered the width of the banister as we ascended the stairs and I wondered how many bottoms had been unable to resist sliding down it over the years, making it as smooth and shiny as glass. Guy’s bare feet slapped the stripped wooden treads while my heels tapped them, and both sounds echoed.
“Did you have any trouble finding the address?” he asked.
I hesitated. Had I had any trouble? It had all been such a blur of butterflies.
He waited. I mean it wasn’t as though he’d asked me when Toulouse Lautrec decided he would paint prostitutes for a living, now had he?
I tried to think of something interesting to say; something witty, but I couldn’t think of anything, so I just said, “No.”
“Oh,” he said flatly, “just most of these terraces look alike.”
We reached the top of the stairs. The sun shining through an elaborately stained glass window had sprinkled the walls, floor and ceiling with the colours of melted fruit gums. I felt foolish. The little confidence I possessed was suddenly in danger of bursting like a balloon. He had asked me a perfectly ordinary question and I had answered in a word of one syllable! And, after thinking about it forever. No doubt he’s now thinking, it’s just as well her profile is interesting because her mind is moronic. I told myself I must do better, be humorous, confident. Hey Guy, is that ya paintbrush in ya trouser pocket…
We turned on a landing and climbed another staircase which was equally grand and colourful then up a narrower, shallower flight which led into Guy’s loft studio, and into a different world.
Walking in, I immediately turned my head and squinted against the momentary dazzle. Everything was white. Walls, ceilings, paintwork, everything, pure white. For someone espousing the virtues of colour this was certainly some contradiction. As my eyes adjusted, I expected to smell bleach but instead I smelled heat. Something like singed paper.
The room seemed huge, although long and narrow. The outside wall was probably about ten feet high. The opposite wall was twice as high and the ceiling sloping between the two included three huge velux windows. I had to admit, I found the starkness slightly disorienting. Guy closed the door behind me and being white it sort of disappeared.
Some of Guy’s canvases were hung on the tall wall. Varying sizes, yet somehow hung perfectly symmetrically. Abstract landscapes and seascapes; illusions of scenes and objects in water colours. Underneath the hung canvases and propped up against the wall were dozens of charcoal drawings. Single profiles; some facing left, some facing right. Double profiles; some facing each other, some turned away from each other. A pair of hands clasping. A pair of hands with fingers barely touching. A fingerless hand. A head with no body. A body with no head.
I wondered that the paintings didn’t melt or at least fade in the sunlight. Guy said they’re not there long enough. He said they’re either commissioned or they go into exhibitions and are sold from there.
He indicated a stool for me to sit on. I had to look hard, it was draped in a white sheet, so it wasn’t that easy to see. In fact Guy’s head, hands and feet seemed to float independently, dressed as he was, all in white.
I put my bag down on the floor and stepped up and onto the stool. My profile, my ‘interesting’ profile was about to join the others lining the walls, drawn by gorgeous Guy in this awe-inspiring room. Romance? This was it. Fully fledged. No holds barred. This is what dreams are made of, well mine anyway and I just knew this moment would stay with me forever.
Then someone walked through the wall. It was still hard to see where the door was. He asked me if I would like a coffee and I said yes. He disappeared before returning with the coffee and a guitar. Guy introduced him as Gareth. There was something about Gareth I couldn’t quite put my finger on. He was wearing bib-n-brace dungarees over a bare chest. He was handsome, although not as handsome as Guy of course, but he was toned and tanned (although a bit orangey for my liking) and he obviously worked out. His hair was shorn and he had earrings in both ears. As he put my coffee cup down, the bib of his dungarees flopped forward and I noticed he had nipple rings in both nipples. Oooh, bet that hurt, I thought.
The sun shone through the glass, the room was warm, the smell of singed paper was fast becoming my favourite smell and I was comfortable perched on my stool. My shirt buttons were loosened just enough to bare my shoulders and my ‘burnished copper’ locks spiralled warm against my skin. I was about to be charcoaled by this dazzling man who looked into my face as though he were looking into my soul.
He gently lifted my chin and turned my neck into position with his fingertips. My nerve endings tingled.
The soft strumming of a guitar emanated from somewhere across the room. I was beginning to feel orgasmic.
A soft voice accompanied the strumming. He was singing the song Mary Magdalene sang to Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar.
‘… And I’ve had so many men before…’
I watched Guy. A secret smile played on his lips as he listened. I glanced sideways at Gareth, he was smiling coyly at Guy. They caught each other’s look, but not before I did. I had dissected it, bisected it and turned it inside out.
It was theatre. It could have been Mary Magdalene singing to Jesus; albeit with ambiguous connotations. It was pantomime. ‘Look out, he’s behind you’. Well, he certainly would be if I wasn’t there.
It was romance, their romance. I hadn’t left the starting block. I was an interloper, a voyeur. I suddenly did not want to be there. The room was impressive but claustrophobic. I wanted to be outside to see the green of the grass, the blue of the sky, my little red Peugeot. I wanted to feel the breeze in my hair, see branches swaying, leaves falling. I wanted to kick a can, hug a tree, join the Moonies. The brightness was blinding. Okay, so I wouldn’t be waking up with gorgeous Guy but I didn’t want to wake up with conjunctivitis.
I told him I was sorry but I couldn’t stay. I said I’d remembered something I’d forgotten. He looked confused, as well he might. I buttoned my shirt, slid off the stool, grabbed my bag and tripped over the empty coffee cup. I didn’t see it, it was white, and where the hell was that damned door!
20
PLAY IT AGAIN SAM
I’m in shock!
My mother, my eighty-three-year-old mother, has just rung, excitedly, to inform me she has a boyfriend and is going on a date!
This is not something I would normally expect to hear from my mother on a Monday. Monday is pension day and what I expect to hear, is how long she waited in the queue at the Post Office, and, who was before and who was after her in that queue.
I expect to hear that poor Mr Arthurs, bless him, waited a full half hour and all he wanted was an airmail envelope to write to his daughter in America. This is the daughter who insists Mr Arthurs should be using email as that was the reason she sent him the money to buy a computer. But Mr Arthurs says it was airmail that had got him through the war, it wasn’t email. I expect to hear that Vera Clegg who has an ASBO said, ‘Sod this for a game of soldiers’ and stormed out, which meant Mr Pringle was able to move up a place. I expect to hear that poor Mrs Gaffney, can’t get her feet into a decent pair of shoes because of her chilblains and that there is now only £60 between Mrs Stewart and her Stannah Stair Lift. I expect to hear that Mrs Ma
son from Number 11, knows for a certain fact that her from Number 10 has been at it again with the co-op delivery man.
What I do NOT expect to hear, is that my mother has a boyfriend and is going on a date.
Nevertheless, she continued to inform me that the boyfriend is one Sam Pickles, who, my mother says, had been her first love and who she had never quite forgotten.
Oh yes! And where, I wondered, did my father feature in all of this?
My mother said she had not set eyes on Sam Pickles for more than sixty years. He had left prison and moved away and the last she had heard he was on the merchant ships. Then, to her amazement, and I might add, transparently undisguised joy, he had turned up at the Old Thyme Formation Dancing a couple of days ago.
“There I was, Joanne, with my back to the door, chatting to Dorothy from the corner shop about her sister’s operation while we waited for Geoff to set the music up, when I heard a man’s voice asking Sadie if this was where the Movers and the Shakers hung out? Sadie said, ‘Well Movers is stretching it a bit but there’s plenty of Shakers’, which had made the man laugh. Well, I remembered that laugh as if I’d heard it only yesterday and when I turned, there he was, large as life, Sam Pickles. And he recognised me straight away. ‘Gwendoline Griffiths!’ he said, ‘as I live and breathe.’ Of course he only knew me by my maiden name. And that was that. We only had eyes for each other for the rest of the afternoon.”
I said, “Er, sorry to interrupt mam, just for a minute back there I thought you mentioned prison?”
She said, a bit too dismissively I thought, “Oh Joanne, it was something or nothing. These days he would just have to clean graffiti off the walls of the underpass.”
Then her tone softened as she said, “He was just a naughty boy really.”
Bloody hell! My life is going from bad to worse. My mother is consorting with a criminal, she could have been a gangster’s moll in a previous life and I have been lulled into a false sense of security with treacle tarts and rhubarb crumbles. When I put this to her, she said, “Oh for goodness sake Joanne, lighten up. Sam is not a gangster and never has been, he’s a sailor and anyway, it’s better than going out with pond life.”
Lighten up! pond life!
She said I sounded just like my grandmother, who wouldn’t hear of my mother having anything more to do with Sam Pickles when he went to prison, said he was a bad lot. Then Gerard, my father came along in his Trilby hat and his made-to-measure suits and his Fair Isle cardigans in autumnal colours, with pockets for his carefully folded hankies, which of course had to be initialled with a G, and his nail file and his Fisherman’s Friends – God rest his soul, she added, more, I suspect, for my benefit.
Then she said brightly, “Anyway, Joanne, I’m going on a date with Sam but I’d like you to meet him first. He’s coming for tea on Saturday and I’d like you to come too.”
I asked her what they intended to do on this date, don masks and striped pyjamas and take a trip around Wormword Scrubs for old time’s sake perhaps?
She ignored me and said they were going ten pin bowling and I wasn’t to worry about her bad back as Sam said there were contraptions which, after you pointed the bowl in the direction you wanted it go, did the hard work for you. Afterwards, Sam said they could either stay in the centre for a couple of beers and a game of pool, or else go into town for a pizza.
And what, might I ask, was wrong with an old person’s toddle round the park and tea and toasted teacake in the café? I mean it wasn’t as if I minded my mother having a boyfriend per se, her neighbour Harold was nice enough, gentlemanly, and he had taken a shine to my mother, asked her round for tea a couple of times but he had never drummed up the excitement that this Sam Pickles has. I mean who was he? Some ex-con dredged up from the sea bed!
That night I woke up in a cold sweat. I dreamt my mother was a patient of Harold Shipman.
I didn’t tell Lucy and Josh their grandmother had a boyfriend. It was too bizarre. I needed to get used to the idea myself first. Just as well I was to meet him on Saturday as Josh would be at the fun-fair with Jack and his parents as part of Jack’s birthday treat and Lucy would be in Starbucks with Chloe, making eyes at the new waiter, the one with the eyelashes.
Well, Saturday came round and I’d no sooner hung my coat in my mother’s hall when the doorbell rang. My mother hurried past me to answer it and in bowled Sam Pickles.
He had a box of chocolates, a miniature rose in a plant pot and a kiss on the cheek for my mother. He impressed me as not so much a sailor, more a pirate. Not so much Captain Birdseye, more Popeye. Not so much a gangster, more a bookie’s runner.
My mother introduced us. Sam took my hand into both of his and shook it vigorously. He said although I was pretty enough I was not a patch on my mother for looks. My mother coquettishly fluffed at her apron and said, “Sam Pickles, what are you like?” Then off she went into the kitchen to make tea and to put scones and currant buns onto plates with doilies, while I was left to entertain Sam.
What on earth did my mother see in him? He was wearing a collarless shirt rolled up at the cuffs, a red and white spotted bandana knotted around his neck, white Adidas trainers and combat pants with braces. The body parts I could see, his hands, knuckles and lower arms, were heavily tattooed with anchors and crossbones and what looked like a version of noughts and crosses. He was on the short side. My father had been tall. He had a round face, a ruddy complexion which I put down to sea spray and piercing blue eyes which twinkled impishly for an old man, I thought. He had bushy white side-whiskers which stood out against the red of his cheeks. His white hair was thin and combed straight back, and, it needed a double take, but I spied a wispy little ponytail tied with a red stretchy band at the nape of his neck! He wasn’t wearing earrings, although I checked for piercings and both his legs were intact, but otherwise, a parrot on his shoulder wouldn’t have looked too out of place.
My mother had said men were in short supply at the Old Thyme dancing, but it seemed to me there was short supply and desperation. My father, who had been a department manager in a large department store, had been an excellent ballroom dancer. And indeed his father, an articled clerk before his early demise, had medals for it. No bushy side-whiskers, no tattoos, and definitely NO ponytails there, thank you.
I asked Sam if he had any family. He said he had never married, couldn’t keep his land legs long enough, said he would still be on the ships if he hadn’t gotten too old. He had been living in Portsmouth with his sister after he retired, but she had died and so he’d come back up North. He had a strange, sea-faring sort of accent. I asked him if he thought things had changed up here. He said, changed! He would never have recognised the place, motorways and shopping malls everywhere. He had gone in search of the motorbike shop which used to be on the High Street, but found it was now a Kwik Fit garage. He said he quite fancied another motorbike, had one when he was young. He said my mother could ride pillion and they could ‘burn up’ the countryside. His eyes glazed over. My blood ran cold. My mother riding pillion! Had he had his kicks on Route 66 or, after a pint and a pizza and a good old revving of his Harley Davidson, did hope spring eternal?
Between the arch of his legs, his lean mean pullin’ machine vibrates expectantly, then splutters and dies. He strokes it, he coaxes it. He revs, it shudders. He revs again, it pulsates. He revs again and it throbs, ready for action. He punches the air triumphantly yelling, ‘Born to be Wild’ at the top of his voice. His unzipped leather jacket shows the printing on his tee shirt, ‘A Friend with Weed – is a Friend Indeed’.
My mother, with hair by Kawasaki, is waving to me with one hand while clinging onto his waist with the other. She has ‘Bat Outta Hell’ printed on the back of her leather jacket, the fringe of which flies back in the sudden gust of takeoff. She’s calling, “We’re hittin’ the highway Joanne, then we’re hittin’ the sack. Don’t wait up…”
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nbsp; I glanced sideways at Sam. He looked miles away, a smile tickling the corner of his lips. Was he reminiscing or was he planning?
I asked him if, apart from my mother, there was anyone else he recognised from the old days. He looked startled for a minute, as if I’d poked him in the ribs with a stick. Then, clearing his throat, he said he had noticed one or two familiar faces but he had trouble putting a name to them. He said there was one bloke in particular who he had seen recently at the formation dancing and who he remembered from the dances at the Palaise, after the war, “Thought he was Fred Astaire with knobs on. Still does if you ask me, can’t think of his name though.”
Then he called to my mother in the kitchen, “Gwen, who’s that bloke goes to the formation dancing, thinks he’s the dog’s bollocks?”
My mother called back saying she couldn’t think who he meant.
Er. My mother, trying to think of someone who thinks he’s the dog’s bollocks!!
“You know who I mean, Gwen. Smarmy bugger, smells like a whore’s handbag. Looks like that lecherous git off the carry-on films. Whatsisname?”
“Sid James,” my mother offered from the kitchen.
“Sid James!” said Sam, astonished, as if my mother had suddenly lost her marbles.
“No Gwen, he plays that slimy bugger, says ding-dong when he sees a bird he fancies.”
My mother didn’t respond. Sam looked at me. I shrugged. Then he clicked his fingers. “Leslie Phillips! That’s him.”
“Leslie Phillips, Gwen,” he called to my mother, “I knew it would come to me sooner or later.”
My mother came in with the tea tray,.“Leslie Phillips, Sam? I don’t recall anyone by that name goes to the formation dancing.”