All the Rage

by A. L. Kennedy

  None of them prospered in the long term.

  Then it stopped.

  Mike was already sitting on his sofa before he realised that he’d wandered into the living room. He got up again and faced the fly-hampering windows and then kind of folded. He eased down onto the floor and came to rest with his back against the wall. The window glass was blank, night-filled, curtainless.

  His armchairs were here with him, huddled in a knot. One might guess they were chatting and didn’t wish to be disturbed.

  He was tired.

  And he was heavy-handed. This had endured – his ability to break things and be bewildered in his fingers. He rested his knuckles on the carpet as if he were setting down stones.

  Van comes in the morning, hauls everything into storage. What’s left.

  It would be none of his business when, in the afternoon, a couple would show up and open his door with the keys that were presently hiding in his coat pocket.

  Then they’ll let themselves in and they’ll let themselves in.

  He wasn’t going to wait for them, because that would be peculiar.

  He wasn’t going to say they ought to leave the kitchen as it is, because it has warm work surfaces which are good for making bread, and that loaves had been baked in its oven regularly and had smelled like love and been only beautiful to come home for.

  He wasn’t going to mention that they shouldn’t repaint the walls – the scruffy, unimpressive walls – because they were important. The last time they were painted, he’d taken a week off to do it and so had Margaret and they’d uniformed up in cheap blue overalls. Hers were enormous on her: sexy, baggy, rolled at the ankles and wrists – smooth, fine ankles and wrists – and clearly there was a sense, a true sense, a provable, testable sense, that she was naked and shifting and warm there and surprising and understood – by him understood – and just there, so there, inside them. She was extremely there inside them. God bless all women with long 1930s’ hips.

  So deep it didn’t hurt, never hurt, did not hurt anyone ever. We were the opposite of hurt.

  And they’d bought themselves brushes, rollers, paint trays, paint and other practical gifts and they’d cleared and covered what they wanted to stay clean and so there was nothing to do but the fun part – starting in.

  With music.

  They tried different types.

  R&B was good, it often suited, and sometimes they went slipping down the seam between it and the blues, pure blues.

  So they hadn’t painted, they had danced.

  One week of dancing.

  And the work rolled on, smooth with the rhythms, room after room, no effort, just heat. Easy. Although they’d complain in the mornings: stiff shoulders, tender backs; before the beats kicked up and Ray Davis helped them, Aretha Franklin helped them, C.W. Stoneking helped them, the early Stones helped them and the late Stones helped them and Justin Timberlake helped them and the Black Eyed Peas helped them. They had a lot of help, in fact – they kept it successfully varied.

  They worked up a sweat. They got happyweary until it was evening and time to put on Simon and Garfunkel – a folky exception to their rules and suitable for winding down – and they’d lean back against songs that sounded unconsoled and broken, but happy with it. They made everything seem fine and mildly transcendent. Perfect.

  Once the bridge had gone over the troubled water, Mike set the brushes to soak and cleaned the rollers and Margaret would unveil the room, be dramatic as she whisked back dustsheets and tore away masking tape.

  Then they’d smile. Then they’d pause. Then they’d have to get tidy themselves, because that was simply necessary, anything else would be uncivilised.

  They’d trot off to be with each other in the shower and search for signs of paint, get scrubbed down to new pink and as clean as weans and as grown as grown and lovely. This running of joy along their skin.

  On their last day, he’d told her that they ought to start again, give themselves a new profession, be a couple who painted their flat forever, who’d hook and roll and sidestep for each other. He wanted to mainly spend his life making shapes to entertain her and watching her make them back and feeling her take it home, right home, right home for him.

  But they did declare it over and finish. She said she felt wiped out the following afternoon, seriously exhausted, which was their first clue. Maggie didn’t seem quite right to herself from then on.

  And the doctors agreed when she saw them. She wasn’t quite right.

  And after that was badness.

  Night.

  And I can’t stand it.

  I can’t.

  So leave the flat.

  Please.

  Leave the flat alone.

  Please.

  Keep what’s left of us safe without me, because I can’t stay, because it was lovely, because I’m asking. You won’t hear, but I’m still asking.

  Because Maggie was the kindest person I ever met.

  She was where I used to live.

  Please.

  The Effects of Good Government on the City

  EVENTUALLY HE’S GOING to say it: ‘You don’t love me any more.’ You can see it in him – a panicky, bleaty light about his eyes – and a couple of times he’s actually started the sentence.

  ‘You don—’

  It’s not that you interrupt him because he’s wrong – you can’t actually remember if he’s wrong. It is true that you didn’t think of him especially while you were away. Then again, you thought of no one especially while you were away.

  There’d been nowhere for thinking while you were away. Close the doors and draw the blinds and block the chimney, that was the sensible best when you’d been out there.

  Not that they’d had really any chimneys out there. Not the way she was used to.

  ‘You don—’

  You don’t mean him any harm. You wonder if you should tell him, for example, Stay on known safe areas. Avoid verges. This is good and accurately retained information, but may not be applicable from his point of view.

  He is making you tense and perhaps attempting to bring on a confrontation.

  ‘You don—’

  You don’t have clarity. It is unclear – no, it is uninteresting whether you love him – and your main aim at the moment should be simply to prevent the argument and the ending.

  You can’t break up with him here.

  Not in Blackpool.

  You don’t want to break up with anyone in Blackpool.

  You don’t want to be in Blackpool and commit an act you may at some later date recall. Not anyone, not anything, not at any time, not in Blackpool.

  That should be the rule. Your rule.

  What happens in Blackpool shouldn’t.

  Not in Blackpool.

  Not in fucking Blackpool.

  So hard to keep other determinations steady, but you’re glad you can be sure that if Blackpool has touched a thing, then the taint will stick. This is a macabre consideration. There’s someone you trained with who’d put it like that and where they’ve ended up since then you’ve no idea, not where you did, not where you have, that’s sure certain. It’s macabre but bloody funny, sort of, to picture yourself in your death’s hour, your own death’s moment, and your inner eye, you discover, ends up full of that postcard view of Blackpool Tower. That would be a joke. You’d lie there remembering sterilised milk and over-stewed tea – daytime here tastes of that – and if it wasn’t the Tower you’d see your boyfriend’s face, only not romantic. And they’ll watch you – whatever observers are there – and they’ll possibly guess you are staring at inrushing angels, heaven’s glare, but it’ll be all Blackpool stuff you’re seeing and you’ll want to piss yourself laughing and explain, but no chance there.

  This is good, excellent – so much to hate in Blackpool, such a focus. Focus is essential for operational efficiency.

  The beach here doesn’t even smell of beach – it’s got that particular stink of small houses where they fry too much. Yo
u’re right by it, a real sea with the wrong smell and this pretend shoreline, you’re on the sand and walking beside the cold of these huge concrete tidal defences – giant steps like something left over from the Reichstag, something bloody vicious, something you’d fabricate to stop a car bomb, an assault.

  Is that what they’re expecting? An assault? A landing? Amphibious craft and reckless foes swarming in towards Louis Tussaud’s?

  There’s a man up there with a high-pressure hose, wiping the algae and the seaweed off the steps. It’ll take him days. And when he moves on he doesn’t leave them really clean. Rubbish job, so why bother doing it well? Or maybe that’s his best attempt, right there – doing everything he can with what he’s got, maximum effort and nobody’s right to criticise. The observer can never tell.

  Not that you’re observing, you’re flat-out staring at him – no reason to do it, but also no reason to stop – and you’re stuck in between the concrete and the poisoned wave tops on this dead-flat sand and the Central Pier’s behind you and the South Pier’s up ahead. Hemmed in, as you might consider it. The South Pier being the Scum Pier, apparently, and the North somehow more sophisticated about its slots and tuppenny falls and kiddies’ rides and variety shows involving people you thought were long gone, sewn up years ago and nailed underground to stop them corralling the biffs and pensioners and heroes returned home and singing at them, or dancing, or doing tricks, or cranking out gags to please, or maybe all of the above.

  Quite probably all of the above. Some of these people are highly versatile – annoying the arse off you in bags of ways.

  Vince Hill’s here. My dad likes him. Vince Hill ‘singing and answering questions’. Bet he never thought he’d end up doing that. Questions. About what?

  The whole of your childhood’s telly is still here. Hard to be sure which side of the equation is the one in hell: the waxworked entertainers or yourself.

  But you would notice, wouldn’t you? If you were in hell.

  The Central Pier is said to be, just as it ought, somewhere in the middle when it comes to the style and tenor of its diversions.

  Trust Blackpool never to miss the obvious.

  And the boyfriend, too.

  He’s looking at you – easy to tell without having to check, because his attention is tangibly leaking, scampering down the side of your face. Fair enough, your boyfriend’s supposed to pay heed, but his payment feels like a trickle of something sad. Or as if he’s spitting on you.

  It is offensive to be spat at, a provocation in many cultures.

  He does, of course, want you to be happy here and to accept the blousy, big-grinning town in the proper spirit. He’d like you to join in – this is absolutely the capital of joining in and being of an age when fake plates of bacon and egg made from peppermint rock should prove hilarious, or tasty, maybe even a proof of magical undercurrents in your world.

  When you were little here it was all sweet undercurrents.

  Recalling your childhood unleashes your capacity for wonder, appreciation of kindness and belief. Returning someone to their child self will cause an increase in their potential depth of helplessness and fear. The shock of capture, prolonged, can assist in usefully producing this effect.

  Half the shops are selling cocks made of rock now. Or sticks with filth written through them. This isn’t for the kiddies and families any more. It’s for lap dancers and being on the lash, and sick lights squirming down flat in the rain and being with the boys, except you can’t, you’ve got to watch that – they forget you’re not a boy, or else they remember and both are No Bloody Chance in the end. You are not one thing and not the other. You are not most things. You have been somewhere in which most things are not most things and no one gives a toss so why should you and how would you know you ought to and this is how you’ve ended up.

  Bad enough, but then you talked to a milk-white lawyer. Afterwards, he hated you more than anyone, even though you did nothing. You did nothing. That was the point. You did nothing in every way. Nothing about the goings-on, the box of frogs clusterfuck of what was going on.

  You did nothing. Then you talked. And you didn’t mention the well-meant but turned-out-badly rugby tackles and honest self-defence, because that was bollocks and you were sick of it. You did not speak as agreed.

  By the end, with the lawyer and the lawyer’s people, there was contempt. You were doing them a favour and that’s how they repaid you.

  ‘Are you tired?’ Weak boyfriend has to ask something, so he picks a weak question, one you won’t block.

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘Are you sure? You look tired.’

  This is unsurprising because you do not sleep and, for the last three days, he has been with you and found that out. It is easy to imagine that your wakefulness disturbs him.

  ‘You’ve got these big shadows under your eyes.’

  Lack of sleep cannot be underestimated as a modifier of behaviour and personality. The truth will out.

  Easier to imagine your sleep has crawled away from you during the dark and infected him, slid into his pillow and filled him with your dreams. It is Sunday – he looks at you differently today – not the way he did on Saturday or Friday.

  ‘Are you listening?’

  You offer him, ‘What?’ Because you want to delay him, give him another go, so he can change direction.

  ‘I said you seem tired . . .’ He pushes an unmistakable amount of misery into his following, trailing silence while he scrambles about for other words, ones that you’ll like. ‘I thought this would be nice for you. A holiday . . . To get away . . .’ He keeps putting you in charge of conversations, choices, directions. You would rather he did not. You would rather be without responsibility.

  Still, you’d wanted to leave the village, the cottage, he’s right about that. As soon as you were back there you’d noticed the spiders and they’d worried you. Everyone said the weather had been wet for the whole of the summer and autumn – floods in the lower valleys and warm, unremitting rain, damp plaster in your old bedroom’s ceiling.

  Not your old bedroom – it’s just still your bedroom. No one else’s.

  For some reason these conditions had bred up spiders, fat-bodied and numerous, an infestation your father had failed to mention in his letters. They hung in the corners of doorways and from lamp posts, traffic signs, window frames, in the dark of shrubs and hedges. They bobbed and fidgeted, a sense of unnatural weight about them. Your dad didn’t seem to mind – almost gave the impression he had somehow encouraged them, let them colonise the fading raspberry canes and the beans, the shed, the chicken coop. For some reason, the chickens didn’t eat them – perhaps this breed was venomous to some degree.

  And he let them go into your bedroom. You killed four. Killed them for making it different when it should have been the same.

  So you’d cut short your visit, left a bag to show you’d be back, indicate affection, and off to Blackpool with the boyfriend.

  Stupid word – he isn’t a boy and isn’t a friend.

  But Blackpool is also inaccessible to lawyers and questions, just as Cyprus will be. And Cyprus is renowned for causing service personnel to get innocent and forget, I’m told. And this is a good thing for everyone, I’m told.

  You and your not-boyfriend are currently facing each other – no idea how that happened – and he is very visible, but you realise that if you reach out you won’t touch him, he’ll be further than the moon, than hell’s arsehole, than the back of your mind in the mornings, although this is not his intention.

  ‘Do you want to go? Will we pack up and . . . there are other places . . .’

  Like Cyprus.

  In the distance beyond him there are three dark shapes, thin men standing and angled perfectly into the breeze, the slack little gusts that taste of dirty washing and stale fat.

  They stick on your skin, the oily scents, because of the oil that you have on yourself, the greasiness of being human.

  First time you
went into the Castle, that’s what you noticed – the human reek. Made you gag. Nowhere else was like it: not a tent, not the broil of a Saracen, not the scared wet heat that you leave with your clothes.

  You bring it outside on yourself when you leave, the stink, and it doesn’t go and you know each other by it – the ones who are your kind – you would know them in the dark.

  It is sometimes very dark.

  Back and forth from your block to the Castle and the Castle to your block. Noises dragging at your ankles. You didn’t like it. You imagined your footsteps laid down as if they were sacking and wet and guilty and layering up.

  Guilt is triggered by proximity – over the line and you’re too near them and you don’t know who should ask the questions, them or you. You’ve both done stuff, everyone has done stuff – nobody clean over there, and blink and it gets all mixed up. Get in first and then you’re safe, it’s the order that makes everything. Keep the order and keep angry and then you’ll be cooking by gas – that’s what you’ve observed. That’s what you’re not forgetting, although you will, of course you will.

  Your boyfriend is confused. This is your fault, because for a while you liked Blackpool, it was a buzz. You have misled him: first when you arrived you thought the town was fine and this afternoon it’s not. Up at the swaying top of the Tower and holding hands while you stood on that little square of clear plastic, the one that lets you peer down at the streets between your feet – that was okay. And shunting each other at the dodgems wasn’t bad: the two of you by yourselves, chasing round and round, because the season’s over and no one else is playing any more. That electric tang when you swallowed, those spiky little flowers of noise, you would have preferred to skip them. But being one of two adults trying to laugh and yell and get happy, that was okay, a bit mong but okay. And having an Olde Time photo taken together, you couldn’t think why you shouldn’t. They gave you a dress that fitted in silly places, because you’re lean and also muscular and not an average customer. You have grown into the shape the job requires.

  The boyfriend who isn’t is keeping a copy for when you’ve left again – straight backs, you’re good at that, and sepia, an aspidistra on a table – and you will throw your copy away, because in Cloppa Castle it will not make sense.