Brass

by Helen Walsh

  ‘Duh! It’s like a very long e-ssay!’

  ‘ ’kinell Millie love, I know what a fucken dissertation is! Jesus! I’m asking you what it’s about.’

  ‘Oh ehhm, books. Queer theory, ehhm, deconstruction of stable identities in contemporary literature.’

  ‘Liar.’

  She grins cheekily.

  ‘Sounds good though doesn’t it?!’

  ‘You haven’t even started yet have you? Come ’ead Millie! This is your final year. The end of the road is in sight and all that. You don’t know how fucken lucky you are, you!’

  ‘Alright. Alright.’

  ‘Serious, girl! You live with your aul’ fella who pure fucken indulges you and gives you dough and I don’t know what else… You do what the fuck you want… You don’t even have to work by the way, it’s all so fucken easy to you…’

  ‘I said alright!’

  Her eyes flash with a glazed chemical anger. I change the subject, pronto.

  ‘Knocked him out in training, by the way. Sean. Caught him with a beauty! Left upper and that.’

  ‘Is he coming into town d’you know?’

  ‘Nah, doubt it, girl – I do, seriously doubt it. Goes down to Kellys of a Friday, done he? Him, our Billy and that – they’re steering clear a town after that other thing. But you should’ve seen it Millie! Out fucken cold he were! Fucken O’ Malley went fucken white, la! Was not happy about…’

  ‘Do you fancy going up there after dinner?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Kellys?’

  ‘You fucken wha’? Thought you fucken hated it in there. You said it were full of scum.’

  ‘Respectable scum.’

  ‘Still said they were scum…’

  I’m having a laugh with her now. I’ve known the kid long enough. Course I know what her rap is, but anyway.

  ‘… what’s the sudden interest in Sean? Last time we all went out, the two of youse spent the night bickering like kids didn’t youse? And you told our Billy that you’d pissed in his drink.’

  ‘Did not.’

  I stares into her long and hard, furrowing my brows and stroking my chin like I’m trying to solve some big fucken mystery. Then slowly, dramatically, I lets a knowing grin split my kite.

  ‘Aaahhh, I see. Now I get it. You’ll be wanting a bit of the other, will you? Now listen here Millie. This is the deal, yeah? We’re gonna enjoy this lovely meal together right? And then we’ll maybe have a few cocktails at the Platinum Lounge? And then I’ll drop you wherever you want. Kellys, The Pod, Dreamers, wherever – but for me, it’s bed. I’ve got to be up at eight to take Anne Marie to work and I’m on overtime myself. So there’s no big mad beak bender going on tonight.’

  I almost feel her heart hit the table. But that’s how it is – I’m not giving in to her. Can pull as many pouts as she wants tonight. I’m not relenting.

  ‘Arrr-ay, Millie! Be fucken reasonable, will you? You saw how much earache she gave us last time…’

  I pause. There’ll never be a better time. I go for it.

  ‘… and I need to keep her sweet for next weekend, don’t I?’

  ‘Why? What’s going on next weekend?’

  I gulp. If I don’t spit it out right now, I never will.

  ‘You know! I’m taking her to the Lakes aren’t I? The big one and that!’

  ‘Er, hang on there, Jamie! The big one? What d’you mean the big one?’

  ‘What we talked about, back at yours, after the Blue.’

  ‘What? What did we talk about?’

  All despondency leaks from her kite.

  ‘ ’kinell Millie! D’you not remember anything from that night?’

  ‘Jesus Jamie. I don’t even remember getting to the Blue that night, let alone being back at ours!’

  ‘So? How could you forget something as important as that?’

  ‘As what for fuck’s sake?’

  I pause. I’m shitting it, here. Here goes, anyway.

  ‘Anne Marie. I’m gonna pop the question aren’t I?’

  Millie

  My heart sinks way way down into the pits of my guts. I clutch my snatch involuntarily and swallow back a hot emotion threatening to erupt inside. His eyes are shiny, full of vim – and the olive hued skin of his face opens up like cracks in drying clay as he yields into one brilliant, terrified smile.

  ‘Well? Say something will you!’ he sparks.

  I lean over and throw my arms around him and the warmth of his body radiates through me like a huge shot of Jamesons. I recoil a little, frightened that he might feel the thud of my heart which is pounding so fast that it’s almost a flatliner. He pulls me towards him again and squeezes me and when he releases me and I’m staring right into him, I realise how stone cold sober I am. His face is in focus, smiling and dancing with stupid, stupid happiness and he’s laughing his big hard laugh and I’m laughing too and swamping him with kisses and all the time I’m aware of this sickening sensation in my guts and throat and the painful hum of an organ threatening to shut down.

  CHAPTER 2

  Millie

  The bronchial cough of next door’s car drags me from a filthy dream – Angelina Jolie giving me a lapdance. It’s the Jolie from Gia, a sultry womanchild – vulnerable and accessible and utterly fuckable. She’s pulling that lewd expression she pulls for magazine covers and all the blokes in there are foaming at the mouth ’cos it’s clear how much she’s enjoying dancing for me. Three songs lapse and she’s still slithering away, only just removed her bra, and the management’s going berserk. She’ll probably get the sack for this but she doesn’t care. She’s drop dead in love with me. I force a stubborn eye open and snap it shut again, willing her to carry on dancing or at least pull her panties to one side. But the car carries on spluttering and groaning and hurls me into the hub of an evil Monday morning. I fling myself upright, jerking my legs over the side of my bed and leap to the window.

  Mrs Mason, the old boiler from next door, is stooped over the engine of her pristine Allegro. I prise open the window and shout down.

  ‘Oi! Some of us are still sleeping.’

  She bolts out from under the bonnet, knocking her head along the way.

  ‘I beg your pardon, young lady?’

  ‘I said, some of us are still sleeping! Keep the racket down, you selfish bitch!’

  ‘I don’t believe what I’m hearing Millie O’Reilley.’

  ‘No, me neither. I mean, this isn’t the first time you’ve woken me up is it? You should get rid of that heap. It’s a fucking eyesore. Lowers the tone of the whole street.’

  She looks crushed.

  ‘I’m going to tell your father what you just said.’

  ‘Well make sure you don’t leave out the fucks and bitches.’

  I slam the window shut and fumble my way to the toilet, chest tight and heavy, head pounding violently from the effects of cheap wine. And then it slaps me in the face – hard, wet and fast. I start back at Uni today.

  I take a piss, which seems to go on forever, then haul myself downstairs.

  Lying on the kitchen table is a timetable with all my classes and corresponding room numbers neatly filled in. There’s also a couple of biros, a ruler, an A4 pad and a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice sitting next to a post-it which reads:

  First day back!

  Don’t be late Millie. If you want a lift home, meet me outside the Eleanor Rathbone building at 5.30.

  Dad xxx

  I feel lousy. About many things, but most of all about my absolute lack of enthusiasm for the year ahead. As it stands, time is still on my side. Although I got pretty crap grades last year, I have three clean terms ahead of me – terms in which I could hand in all my essays on time, go to all my lectures, participate in the tutorials and revise properly for my finals. But throughout the summer holidays, this final year has loomed over me like the inevitable death of a terminally ill relative.

  I guzzle the juice in a few thirsty gulps, perch myself on the ki
tchen table and light up a cigarette. It tastes vulgar. My mouth feels like a chewed moth. I take another drag and kill it. I trudge back upstairs. I brush my teeth three times, tease my hair into a low pony, and slip into anonymous Uni kit – jeans, trainies and Dad’s denim jacket.

  Outside, my spirits lift slightly as the wind sweeps chip shop wrappers into the Masons’ rose bush. A crumpled Coca-Cola can rattles over to my feet. I pick it up and gleefully stuff it next to the chip papers. As I lean over her garden wall I notice a few of the bricks have come unsteady. I attack them with my right heel, only letting up when I’ve smashed half the wall into her precious – and pathetic – bedding plants. ‘There now,’ I say, rubbing my hands and smiling triumphantly. I glance from left to right then scuttle away with the wind behind me, aiding my getaway.

  I love the wind.

  Always have done since I was a kid when Dad used to take us down to Cornwall to see Auntie Mo. To little me, she was the most amazing, exotic, glamorous woman I had ever seen. She lived on a cliff top. She painted and smoked cheroots and well-spoken men in polo necks would come and go. I’d comb her wild red hair and light her ciggies for her when no one was looking. It was our secret. No one else I knew ever called them that. Cheroots.

  Winter was best. Our visits were always punctuated by wild, religious storms and as the skies presaged trouble, Dad would stop whatever he was doing and lug me down to the beach. We’d sit on the shore and watch from a dangerous proximity, the wind torment the ocean to a frenzy. The rain would lash down and burn our cheeks red raw and the silver scrolled waves would grow menacing and spit splinters of driftwood at us. And just as the storm threatened to savage us, Dad would scoop me up and we’d tear back up the beach. Mum would watch with pursed lips from the back bedroom window and when we returned, saturated with rain and fearful excitement, she’d glare at Dad with bare-restrained fury. Had her big sister not been there to absorb the heat from her temper, Dad would have got a verbal thrashing to go with the sting of the windstorm. It was rare for Mum to give vent to her anger, and when she did I’d hurl myself into the crossfire, desperate for them to be friends again. She’d sit there, coiled and bitter, her porcelain cheeks stained pink with rage. Even at that age, I could see in her eyes that Mo was holding back. She didn’t want to add to the tension. She’d look at her little sister and she’d wonder where all that anger could come from and she’d jolly us all up and open a bottle of wine.

  Not even Mo could smoke cheroots all day, every day, and drink red wine and be so in love with living that she said yes to everything though. She died just before my twelfth birthday. They wouldn’t let me go to her funeral.

  I still love the wind.

  I take a circuitous route to the bus stop to avoid walking down Bridge Road which is full of wannabe hoodlums. It and they depress the fuck out of me. Instead, I trot alongside two dogs with their snouts held high in the wind. You can always tell the quality of a barrio by its canine residents. Around this part of L18, for example, the streets are littered with distempered creatures of indiscernible breed. But over the railway and up towards the park, where we used to live and where Sean now resides, the dogs are good looking and obedient. That observation belongs to Jamie’s Dad. It was one of the first things he ever said to me when Jamie took me round to meet him and Mrs Keeley. I’d asked him in all innocence why the dogs round their way, even the puppies, wore such ravaged faces. Lovely people, Jamie’s folks. Just thinking of them sends my spirits crashing down again. I get this horrible foreboding that I’m not going to see them any more. That I’ll no longer be able to just call round for my tea on my way home from Uni, or go drinking at The Dispensary with his Dad and his gang of old rascals. Since that night, I’ve avoided all contact with Jamie. He’s been easy enough to dodge mind you, seeing as though he’s spent the weekend in the Lakes with her. He’ll be driving back this morning, hitting the M6 about now. Her hand on his lap and his myopic eyes shining with happiness. Or perhaps not. Maybe she’s said no and she’s staring bleary eyed out of the window with her arms folded and he’s feeling as hollow and sad as I am. I don’t know which would sting more?

  I push the thought away and make a sprint for the bus which is rammed with old people and teenage mothers with noisy babies. I hand my fare over and make my way to the back. Half way down the aisle, the driver calls me back and asks to see my pass. His voice is soft and squeaky and at odds with his appearance – badly shaven head, boxer’s nose, and labourer’s hands scarcely visible through fat chunks of sovereign.

  ‘I don’t have one,’ I say.

  He shrugs his shoulders.

  ‘Full fare then isn’t it?’

  I pull a face which I’ve exhausted to perfection. It’s my get what I want face. I exploit it shamelessly and apart from Dad and Jamie, most men fall for it. It seems to work. His face yields into a smile and I grin my way back up the aisle.

  ‘Ehmm, not so fast Missus. I need to see a pass or you’ll have to pay full fare.’

  A few old dames start tutting and a fat girl in a tracksuit with two young boys lets out a long exasperated sigh. I turn and find his eyes smiling at me through the mirror. Smug little cunt. He’s clearly enjoying the pathetic bit of authority that occasions like this lend his life ‘cos outside that driver’s cabin he’s nobody. A sad little prick with a nondescript life. I slam the rest of the fare down and swagger back up the aisle. I park myself in the middle of the back seat between an old man who reeks of piss and two girls off my course, a blonde and a striking brunette, neither of whom acknowledges me. The blonde is wearing a tiny yellow jumper so tight it makes her breasts look deformed. She’s talking in that loud self-conscious student way about her cold, uncaring mother and her absent father. I hate it when people use their parents in that self-analytical way. It’s vain and unnecessary.

  A group of schoolboys with glue sniffing complexions pile on at Toxteth. I recognise one of them as Dominic Myers from our gym. O’Malley’s got him pinned down as the next Shea Nearey. He’s definitely got Welter potential. You should see him dance. But the passion’s not there. He loves the sport but he wouldn’t hand his life over to it. Not like Liam Flynn’s son, Tony. He’s only ten, but boxing’s all that drives him. It owns him. Like Christmas morning, last year – all the young ones were charging round the park on those micro scooters. Little Tony though, he was doing laps. And then in the afternoon, Liam went round to O’Malleys to get the keys for the gym so he could do some bag work. He’s talented Tony, but only through sheer application and graft. It’s not innate, not like it is with Dominic and a couple of O’Malley’s other young hopefuls. I mean, Tony’s footwork’s pretty flawless and he’s got combinations that disorientate me and he’s definitely got the makings of a puncher’s physique – the slim waist and the broad, sloping shoulders. But he doesn’t have the rhythm of a fighter. There’s no flow, no spontaneity to his movements. It’s like watching a white guy dancing to R & B. And O’Malley knows he’ll never make it as a pro but keeps on urging him on just to keep his Daddy sweet, which is too cruel if you ask me. He’s gonna break that little boy’s heart.

  ‘ ’kinell la! Get on that!’ The oldest and by far the mouthiest of the group points at blondie’s assets. ‘It’s fucken Jordan’s kid sister!’

  ‘Come ’ead, Jordan junior – show us your tits!’ chirps his sidekick.

  ‘Dey falsies are dey, girl? Come ’ead, let’s give ’em a little test!’

  She’s quite impressive. She eyeballs them one at a time.

  ‘Oh fuck off will you, you stupid little boys. You wouldn’t know how to handle a girl like me – none of you!’

  ‘ ’kinell girl, I didn’t ask for ye hand in marriage or nothing!’ he snaps back. ‘Only wanted to see yer tits!’

  His proteges guffaw on cue, all except Dominic who has spotted me and slunk low in his seat, pretending not to be a part of it all. She’s quite a honey this big-breasted blonde piece, and she bears all the hallmarks of someone who is incapabl
e of finding a bloke who will offer her respect and commitment. She’s mainstream. Universally attractive. Big blue eyes, large breasts, honey-hued skin, a cute button nose and a Colgate smile. There’s nothing to her. As Billy would say, a pure spunk deposit. Her mate though, the Pocahontas lookalike is a different story altogether. Her beauty inhabits a kind of aesthetic no man’s land. And it either seduces you or alienates you. She’s shockingly beautiful. Her cheekbones are dramatic, like she’s permanently pulling on a badly made joint and her eyes are pure pupil. Her mouth is sullen and slightly lopsided. She’s a skewed beauty. Pure Vogue material. And straight as fuck. Ah well, Millie.

  I pull my timetable from my bag and the sight of Dad’s handwriting brings on another flush of guilt. First lecture’s at 12.00 – Classics with Dr Hallam in the Edward Naughton Lecture Theatre – followed by Postmodernism and Literature in the Politics block. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are fucking merciless but Thursday is pretty much empty and Fridays are blissfully and absolutely free.

  I disembark at the bottom of Catherine Street to avoid the onslaught of students at the top of Myrtle Street. The very thought of facing them en masse is giving me palpitations. The bus pulls off and I flash Pocahontas a wink. I take a right onto Percy Street, then veer sharp left onto South Bedford Street where I pause at the nursery playground. I love just standing and staring at the kids in this place – they’re stunning. Every race under the sun comes together here, sometimes the progeny of one common father, or mother, or several. For me, this little nursery is a showcase for all that’s special about Liverpool 8.

  I wish I could stay longer, but time’s out. This is it.

  I idle into the grounds opposite the Sydney Jones Library, which even in mid term, remains the most isolated part of the campus. I sit down on a bench and light a cigarette. I inhale deeply and empty my mind, savouring my last seconds of freedom for the next nine months.

  * * *

  Dad’s lurking outside the Eleanor Rathbone building smoking a Marlboro, looking more like a broody postgraduate than a professor. I stand back and observe him, experiencing a sudden bolt of adoration. Two freshers walk past him. The more attractive of the two throws him an ambitious smile. He smiles back, professionally, neutrally. The girl walks away, glowing. I don’t know if I’m proud or embarrassed. My Dad’s a good looking fella – way too sexy to be a professor. He should have been a rock star or an actor or something equally glamorous. His crow-black hair is flecked with grey now, but that only complements his chiselled, tanned face and his clever blue eyes. I love the way my Dad deals with being the campus fanny magnet. He’s ice cool, almost blasé about it. I couldn’t then and still do not reconcile the image Mum painted of him the night she walked out.