by Helen Walsh
Jamie
When we breaks the news to Sean he does his usual, acts half like I’m telling him I’ve won a deuce on a scratch card. But then he gives Anne Marie the rest of the day off and he gets on the blower and books us into that French one on Lark Lane. He tells whoever it is on the other end, who we gather is some friend of their Liams, that they’re gonna serve us their finest champagne and he’ll be in sometime in the week to pick up the damage. He also tells us he’ll be flying us First fucken Class to fucken Mexico. At first I’m having none of it. Don’t get me wrong la, it’s lovely what he’s trying to do and that but, end of the day, a lad’s got his pride to consider, hasn’t he? But then I cops the look that Anne Marie is trying to hide, which is disappointment but ultimately shame. Shame at herself for feeling that way. And then it’s myself feeling a cunt, isn’t it? I feel like a twat for nearly letting my own stupid pride prevent her from getting something what she really, really wants. I accept with a heavy heart.
The French gaff on Lark Lane is fucken sound. So lovely, in fact, that I half allows myself to get excited about being here at Sean’s expense. It’s intimate and warm and the staff make you feel dead welcome and the whole thing is just that much nicer than the other night in 60 Hope Street. I mean, fair do’s like and that, Millie was pure done in and by the end of the night, I weren’t exactly Joe Sober myself. But that’s the thing with lil’ Millie – you can’t have a nice time with her. Everything has to be so fucken confrontational with the girl. Ah, feel last now, saying that about her. End of the day though this, now, with Anne Marie – it’s nice.
* * *
She orders a mixed salad for starters – no dressing or nothing, dead conscious about her figure, she is – and stuffed aubergine for her mains. I goes for the French onion soup and the veal but the waitress tells us that they’ve had to take the veal off the menu cos animal rights activists kept putting the windows through. I tries to act that little bit disappointed but inside I’m grinning. This now gives us a legitimate excuse to order the fillet steak! Anne Marie looks skyward and shakes her head. She’s always on at us to try something different when we goes out. She sees my unwavering loyalty to good aul’ steak and chips as a huge embarrassment, a tell-all about my background. Well, one, I got no thingio about my background – it is what it is end of the day. And, two, I’m always telling her what Millie says, that it ain’t like that no more, these days. Fish and chips, bangers and mash, jam roly-poly, you name it – it’s all the rage at the best gaffs. I’m half expecting her to make some little quip about Millie, but instead she looks down, fingers her engagement ring and gives us this adoring look.
‘What d’you think about me and the girls going that London for a Hen night?’ she says with half a nervy look in her eye. She’s got that from her last fella, by the way. Never let her go nowhere, that cunt. Proper fucken jealous-head he were – one of them. Used to tell her what to wear and who she could and couldn’t see and all of that shite, and I suppose she still ain’t got used to the fact that I’m not like that. Way I sees it is, that if you love someone, you should want them to be happy even if that means em going on big mad benders with their mates. I’ve got no time for fucken jealous arses, me. Fellas that lock their birds up and that.
‘Fucken right girl, you’ll have a riot,’ I goes. And I mean it and all, too. ‘I’ll get Liam to sort you a guezzie for that Met Bar if you want?’
‘Ah sound, yeah – the girls’d buzz off that! That’s where Robbie Williams and that goes, isn’t it, that Met Bar?
‘Fuck! When he’s not in L.A. trying to act like he ain’t a quegg!’
‘I could learn to live with that, mind you – money that cunt’s on!’
Then she gives us a dead affectionate little look to show she’s just having a laugh and a joke with us, and she takes my hand in hers, dead sincere and that and goes:
‘What about you though, babes? I want you to go somewhere boss and all, too.’
The sympathy lasts all of five seconds.
‘But don’t think you’re going nowhere mad, by the way! You can forget that Amsterdam, for starters!’
‘Nah, babes – bit too mental for us, that Dam. Had somewhere more serene in mind… like Thailand.’
‘You wha’! You being serious, James?’
‘Fucken right I am, girl! Liam’s already offered to fly us all over, hasn’t he? We’re gonna spend a couple of nights in Bangkok then do a week in one of them islands. Punyani I think it’s called.’
‘Thailand. You can forget that one straight away! You can go back to that Liam and tell him he’s got another think coming. Thailand!’
‘What’s so bad about Thailand, babe? Liam’s paying for it. Thought you’d be made up for us.’
‘I’m sorry James, no – you’re not on. We’re getting married in six months. We’ll be spending three weeks in fucken Mexico! How you gonna get time off work to go Thailand, hey? Cos if you think we’re cutting our honeymoon short so that…’
Her North End accent comes raging through. Her face starts to tense and burn as she remembers and flinches and I realise I’ve taken the joke too far. I make a big winding gesture with my hand. She stares at us, bolly-eyed.
‘Anne Marie. I’m having you on.’
Her face melts with relief.
‘You hard-faced…’ She drops her voice right down and leans into us. ‘You hard-faced bastard. I believed you and all.’
‘So. Where are you gonna go, then?’
‘Haven’t give it that much thingio, if the truth be known. Couldn’t take it for granted you was gonna say yes, could I? I can start thinking about all that now, can’t I? Probably just have a quiet meal in town and that, go round the bars and what have you.’
‘Oh you’re makin’ us feel last, now! Couldn’t you at least go that Society or something?’
‘Oh aye, yeah – can really see my aul’ fella throwing his hands in the air for Dave fucken Graham. Nah babe
– just gonna keep it low key. Me Dad, our Billy, Sean, their Liam, Millie and one or two of the lads from work.’
‘Millie?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Er,’ scuse me, James. You havin’ a laugh?’
Her face tenses up again. How do I tell her that this isn’t a joke?
‘Why? What’s up?’
‘You can’t invite Millie to a stag do!’
‘Why not?’
‘You just can’t. She’s a girl.’
‘So?’
‘So? Don’t be so fucken stupid, James! How the fuck d’you think that makes me look, hey?’
The accents back again now, thick and flagrant and tight with contempt.
‘Hadn’t really thought about it that way, to be fair. She’s just another one of my mates and that, Millie. Maybe she could go down to London with the girls then.’
‘I don’t think so. I’ve got no problem with the girl James, you know that, but it’d be a little bit awkward having her there. She doesn’t know no one, does she?’
‘You mean your pals wouldn’t like her?’
‘I mean, she wouldn’t get on with my pals.’
‘Why not?’
‘Ah, come ’ead, Jamie – don’t make us spell it out to you.’
She raises her eyebrows and a thick silence wedges us. She cracks first.
‘She’s a lovely girl and that, I’m not saying notten about her, but… she’s, well you know, she’s…’
Another long pause.
‘She wouldn’t fit in,’ she says, letting go, ‘Not to the places where we want to go anyway. She’s embarrassing James. She’s a fucking oddball – and she half thinks she’s a lad. Have you seen the way she looks at girls? Girls, James. Not women. Kids if you like. It’s fucken. It’s fucken sick.’
I’m burning with hurt. It’s like it’s myself she’s slagging.
Minutes pass. The waitress comes back with a basket of hot bread. I plunge straight in, avoiding Anne Marie’s eyeline. She’s having none
of it, mind you – pure will not have none of it. She gives us this half flirty, half ‘grow up’ sort of a look and she kicks off her shoe and she finds us under the table and she does us with the ball of her foot, and her heel, and her toes. Does us through my kecks, she does, just like that. I’m easy. I’m hers again. Two bottles of champagne later, and Millie ain’t even coming the fucken wedding. Like Anne Marie points out – who’s the only one that hasn’t had the goodness of ear to send their congratulations and that? I know she’s been busy with classes and that, new start of term and what have you – but if I was texting her to meet us in town she’d have well been back to us by now.
It’s only when we’re back at hers, lying in bed and she politely shrugs off my advances, tells us she’s just that little bit done in from all the excitement of the day that I can lie back and watch her dozing and take it all in though. Lil’ Millie ain’t replied – and I can cover it up any which way, make all kinds of excuses for her but, end of day, she pure has not got back to us. Fucken hurts, that does.
Millie
The door swings open and a woman walks in. Skinny, savage face and a dark wiry shock of hair. Brass. She stands in the doorway, her eyes flitting around the room ’til they fasten on the back of a young Kurdish bloke. He’s sat at the bar, hunched over The Racing Post. The barmaid nudges him and he pivots his head round, slowly, owlishly and acknowledges her with a sideways jerk of the head. She mouths something to him, shrugs her shoulders then she’s gone. He returns to his paper. The image of her legs, white and skinny – whore’s legs – linger in my mind. I’m horny but not quite drunk enough to go after her.
I’ve had a time-lapse. I don’t remember this Kurdish guy coming in, or the old ladies to my left or the lads in trackies playing backgammon at the end of the bar. And my old boy from opposite has lifted his bald brown skull off his chest and slunk away into the night unnoticed. When did it get dark, anyway? It’s not so long ago that it’d still be mellow sunlight at this time of day – but out there, the darkness has enshrouded the windows. I spark up a fag, strangely frightened and detached from everything. The three empty pint glasses on the table, the ashtray heaped with ciggie butts, the drone of the TV and the assembly of dilapidated bodies slumped under a thick fog of spiralling smoke, all seem at a distance now.
I order another pint and buy more fags. I sit at a different table, opposite a drunk with a sloppy face and stunted fingers. I’m thinking that this new vantage point >might reassure me, remind me why I love this smoky old room. It doesn’t. The lager just makes me numb and I can no longer remember what it is I’m drinking myself away from. It’s all a blur of faces, fears, misgivings – just a mess. It’s Jamie. University. Loneliness. A remote and gnawing sense that this is the start of the end. Jamie. Mum. Dad. Jamie. Anne Marie. Mum. All dislocated thoughts and snapshots, all running at the same time, in the same direction. But then I blank out again and abandon myself to the numbness.
I think I’m the last to leave the pub. I’m drunk and heavy on my feet but the autumn night is crisp and sharp and sobers me a little. The sky is alive with stars, just there, just an arm’s reach away. The city is stretched out before me in brilliant shades of red and blue and yellow, dancing and flickering like a Chinese lantern. I start walking in no particular direction. My stomach feels queasy. I haven’t eaten a thing all day. I head back down Falkner Street, thinking of the Kebab House on Leece Street but knowing there’s another pull back this way, too. I check my watch. Nearly midnight. I should go home. The Monday streets are silent and empty of business apart from the occasional taxi rumbling past and the odd lone figure slouching home, head stooped low and hands in pockets. All the girls will be stepping out of their veneer now – stripping off their makeup, taking a bath, washing away the filth and ruthlessness of the streets, reinventing themselves as mothers, as wives, girlfriends, daughters, somebody’s neighbour. They’ll flop out and watch the telly, make a cup of tea, slice of toast, maybe. They won’t be whores any more. The thought of them going about their everyday lives, in their own warm places submerges me with a sense of helplessness. The promise of a warm bed in my own house offers no consolation. I keep on walking.
I’m slouched in a doorway on Hope Street, sparking a ciggie. My mind is flitting hopelessly between home and booze and just staying out, seeing what may happen next. I think of Jacko. He’s fuck all to me, but I wish I were with him now. The cigarette end is burning my thumb before I’ve even had a drag. I light another one.
A skinny silhouette totters unsteadily across the road. This one’s actually dressed like brass – heels, skirt, grinding arse. As drunk as I am I know it’s her – the girl from The Blackburne before. She’s walking towards the Cathedral. I drag myself up and follow. The glare of a headlight jolts her into a bouncy, hard-assed swagger. The driver slows and takes a good long look but either he doesn’t like what he’s seeing or he loses his nerve. He lurches off, the screech of his tyres piercing the queer stillness of the night.
I stay on my side of the road and try to catch up with her. When there’s nothing but a width of tarmac separating us, I slow right down again. I can see her clearly, now. She pauses outside the newsagents, hitches up her skirt and thrusts her hips out casually, classic hooker stance, like she’s just taking a rest.
My cunt is throbbing. I suck in a deep breath, ready to cross the road. I’m shitting it, perched on the top ready and waiting for the plunge, but paralysed with fear. I do it. I jump. I cross over and walk up to her, as casual as my thumping heart and tense fanny will allow.
Close up she’s harder, and troubled. She’s not quite with it. Behind the narcotic glaze her eyes throb with some dark desperation. She’s marked up badly and her make-up is worn like a mask – layer upon layer upon layer, as if to hide her from those that gaze upon her. The only thing sexy about her is that she’s a whore.
Her mouth jumps when she sees me but recovers quickly and contorts into a scowl.
‘Yeah?’ she growls. ‘Worrisit, girl?’
Her top lip recoils to show stumpy grits of teeth. Somehow, I’m no longer scared of her.
‘Have you got somewhere we could go?’
‘Yer wha’?’
‘Is there somewhere we could like be together?’
She stares right into me. I glance from left to right and all around. There is nothing but the night, velvet and stock-still.
‘Yer trying to be funny, girl?’
The scowl intensifies.
‘No, I’m being serious. Have you got a pad we could go to?’
‘If I was yew girl, I’d fuck off quick-quick.’
I stand there. I’m thinking that if I stand there she’ll change her mind.
‘Are you with me, girl? Fucken do one!’
Still I can’t give up on it.
‘Are you sure?’
I try to drop my voice to a seductive croon.
‘It’s all the same money, you know – and it can be really nice, girl on girl. Who’s gonna know, hey?’
Her eyes bulge with contempt and loathing. She pushes past me, onto the road where the beam of a police van’s headlamps sweep the back of her neck. It drives on oblivious but the incident unnerves her. She lunges back towards me. My body tenses in fear, but she barges right past and breaks into a fearful trot. Only at the top of Percy Street does she swing round in anger. Her voice is hurt and confused – and pathetically girlish.
‘Yer fucken perv!’ she spits. And then she’s gone, swallowed up by the night.
CHAPTER 3
Millie
Since Mum left, a protocol of silence has been established between Dad and I. At first he tried to sit me down, to talk it through, to help me see – all those things that parents feel they need to do. To me, it wasn’t like that. It was something else. It was a pure and instant shutdown. It was the shock of my life. It happened, it flattened me – and I just did not want to know anything else. I think that suits him fine, now. He still wears his wedding ring like an
old thick scar, but to a stranger walking in the house, it’s as though she never existed.
In my heart and mind though, she lives on.
Winter nights.
Me and Dad playing cards in the living room. Dad sneaking me nips of Jamesons. Mum in the kitchen, preparing supper – humming a different tune to the one on the radio. The three of us laughing and talking late into the night.
She left one Thursday evening, late in August. I was still high from my A-level results and all the beckoning promise of the days and months ahead. It was a gorgeous evening. The sun had hammered down all day. It was the hottest day of the year, and as it sank into the skyline, it drenched the streets in a hundred shades of crimson. I sat on the garage roof, puffing a joint, watching the smoke drift off in nostalgic layers. I gazed out over to the Welsh mountains and beyond, the beauty of it radiating through me like a glass of red wine. I should have been in Manchester, fixing up accommodation, books, this, that – but the heat of the day took the heat out of me. I could always go tomorrow. So I stayed up there until dusk had drained all colour from the sky, until it was just a dome of molten lead. No stars. No moon. Just acres and acres of tar black. And that’s where I heard it.