by Geoff Ryman
Mel’s husband is away on a conference. Last night, Mel popped out for a loaf of bread. ‘We are trying to keep this door locked and secure,’ says a hand-lettered sign on the school door. Mel remembered halfway to the shop that she’d left her keys behind. She had to stay the night at her sister’s.
What she is doing or thinking
Mel is dreaming of her brother-in-law, Ray. Shy, sweet, he has high cheek-bones, a snub nose, and black hair that keeps its comb marks. Her sister Sandra has blonde slightly spiky hair. She has two kids and a ring through her nose. Mel showed up, apologized, was given the usual lecture. ‘Honestly, you’d think you’d learn!’ The two sisters don’t get on.
Years ago it was Mel who brought Ray home first. He wasn’t quite her boyfriend, but he was going to be. Sandra as usual wanted something someone else had. She’s got him now.
But Ray still likes Mel best. His eyes go all soft when he looks at her. All of Mel goes soft for him. Asleep now, she dreams of the taste of his tongue, of having his babies.
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166
MRS MARY LENEHAN
Outward appearance
Pixilated and prim, pursed lips, purple hair, slithery lapis dress, and shoes with diamanté buckles. Fills in a typed sheet, smiling.
Inside information
Now works as an EO in the Department of Transport office near Lambeth Bridge. Used to work with mass murderer Donald Nielsen. She has consented yet again to answer questions for another book.
Mary has two boyfriends, both 50, one to pay the bills, the other a well-hung Serb. They don’t know about each other. She plies the first with drink until he passes out. Then she sees Marco and, after a bit of the other, she gets him drunk too, and slips back home.
What she is doing or thinking
Mary is writing terrible lies about Donald. She says that he slept in a coffin imported from Hungary. She writes that he brought curries for the office Christmas party in large pots, the very ones in which he cooked the heads of young boys. She smiles, thinking: this is a lie. It is in fact the truth: she’s told the story so many times she now thinks she made it up.
Mary dropped in on Donald one night to find him very embarrassed. A sleepy young man grinned on the sofa. He was drugged, about to be killed. At the time, Mary was pleased that Donald had a sex life at all. Shame. Rather pretty.
She decides to tell the researcher that Nielsen was addicted to absinthe. Sometimes she confides giggling to friends that she didn’t know Nielsen at all. But she did.
He reads what she writes.
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167
MRS PAULE WRIGHT
Outward appearance
Tired, middle-aged black woman. White track suit bottoms, white trainers. Brown and green coat with a ‘Lake Louise’ logo on it. White shirt in Matisse patterns, pink and black.
Inside information
Lives on a Hercules Road estate. Returning home from a cleaning job. Her husband who worked as a clerk in a bank for years was made redundant, so Paule went back to cleaning offices.
What she is doing or thinking
Has Charley remembered her birthday? He was asleep when she left. She imagines a card on the table, a red rose. Charley is so casual about birthdays. In Paule’s family, birthdays were big.
Paule gets out at Lambeth North. ‘Hello, Paule!’ someone cries and her heart sinks. She turns to see her friend Mary, looking like she just left the beautician’s, with an artfully arranged scarf and a hairdo like Jackie O’s.
‘What you doing out this time of the morning?’ Mary asks.
‘Out early doing my birthday shopping,’ chuckles Paule.
‘Have to do your own? What about that lazy man of yours?’ Mary asks. They laugh sociably all the way to the lift, Paule on tenterhooks.
Mary asks, ‘Your husband still in banking?’ but doesn’t wait for an answer. She talks instead about trouble with a noisy neighbour.
Paule is relieved. She and her husband came here 30 years ago to make something out of life. She doesn’t want anyone to know she’s gone back to cleaning.
It is not until they are outside, saying goodbye, that Paule suddenly thinks: what’s Mary doing coming back at this hour?
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MR GURDEV DHOLLIN
Outward appearance
Tough, perhaps sour, middle-aged man. Black hair streaked with white. Jacket, shirt with broad blue stripes, no tie. Light blue-grey trousers, too tight. Briefcase.
Inside information
Runs a small dry cleaning shop on Kennington Road. Lets his staff do the work while he goes through his business papers. He has a phone in his briefcase and one plugged into the cigarette lighter of his car.
Grew up in the Punjab, where his family are now. Has carefully mapped out his return in five years’ time.
The money from the shop is enough to finance property developments in his native state. His eldest son runs the casino in one of his hotels. The other runs a series of housing developments, building homes for the new middle class.
What he is doing or thinking
Dismayed by the invention of Hindu fundamentalism. Where does this come from? The term Hindu refers to geography not belief. No one in India calls it Hinduism. It is the dharma. People can worship Rama or Durga. All religions are individual and personal.
Gurdev blames the failure of politics in India, and he blames that on corruption. He intends to return and enter politics for the Congress party.
India should be a number-one country. It has the resources and the people. Why are they licensing foreign car manufacturers? Give the contract to Indians.
But the image in his mind is this: a slow, sluggish river winding through a hushed, hot landscape, patient, heavy, like a pregnant woman; and a giggling boy shimmying up a tree: himself.
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169
MISS ESTELLE IRTIN
Outward appearance
Large woman in her early thirties. X-Files T-shirt, tie-dyed gown, leather coat with Indian fringe. Generally pugnacious air, softened as she reads a leather-covered book.
Inside information
Since 1991, Estelle has been in love with Saddam Hussein. The Saturday Independent ran a photograph of him swimming. His delighted smile seemed to stare up at Joy itself, his bare shoulders promised an exotic body. Estelle desires his olive skin, his dark and dancing eyes, his cheesy grin. Saddam makes Estelle feel like a loosened girdle.
Her husband used to masturbate at night next to her when he thought she was asleep. He was small, pale, and pretty, and left her for a man. She became obsessed with Saddam: his terrible childhood, his beatings with tar-covered sticks. Part of her thinks she could make him good through love, kissing his closed eyes. Part of her can see his penis, very clearly.
What she is doing or thinking
Estelle has found a rare volume—The Wit and Wisdom of Saddam Hussein. This is one of the jokes: what thing does a rich man keep wrapped in cloth, that a poor man throws away? Answer: the results of a blown nose.
Saddam called his secret police The Apparatus of Yearning. That is tattooed on Estelle’s smooth, white arm. His political prison was called the Palace of the End. He made building-size statues of broken hearts. People paint portraits of him in their own blood, out of devotion.
At home, Estelle has a canvas waiting, a brush and razor blade.
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170
MRS LINDA SCRALG
Outward appearance
Silver blonde hair, white T-shirt, loose black coat and jumper, very tight jeans.
Inside information
Designer at Broad Brush, a small design agency. Recently married to a hulking New Zealand farmer who is also an Olympic high diver. He is to say the least very different from the men she met at St Martins. He’s called Heathcliff.
What she is doing or thinking
That the marriage won’t do.
On Sunday, Heathcliff burned her cat. Verity was a beautiful all-white Persian. She was a famous cat. She’d starred in a series of Broad-Brush greeting cards.
Linda was looking out the window at Daddy’s herbaceous border, and saw Heathcliff throw Verity, stiff as a board, onto a bonfire. She’d died of a heart attack; it was the shock of seeing a farm. Heathcliff couldn’t understand why Linda was upset. ‘It’s just a dead old puss,’ he said.
Then she had some friends round to lunch, and he insisted he could imitate a bull’s mating call so well that the cows would be fooled. There was her new husband making urgent, guttural, bovine noises. The worst of it was that the cows did come crowding round. ‘Is that how you and Linda met, then?’ Livvy asked. It was so embarrassing.
She’s left him down on the farm. The terrible thing is Heathcliff and Daddy get along wonderfully. They sat up ’til three in the morning talking about her. Daddy thinks he’s found someone to inherit the farm.
Heathcliff’s going to be terribly difficult to get rid of. Just like the others.
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MR VICTOR DOWIE
Outward appearance
Short, athletic black man in mid-twenties, sleepily slumped, grinning, occasionally shaking his head in amusement or disbelief.
Inside information
Works as a secretary and sales assistant for Sarf London Security, a shop specializing in locks, bolts, bars and alarms. It’s owned by Sanjay Kumar, but managed by Victor’s mate Ian, who got him the job. Ian’s a fellow Arsenal fan and lets Victor use the shop’s computer to lay out his football fanzine. It takes the piss out of the professional football magazine Shoot! It’s called Shit!
What he is doing or thinking
Thinking of his next issue. He’s just come up with an article called You are the Ref. The reader has to call unusual football violations such as invasion of the pitch by Morris Dancers, or misbehaviour by the giant styrofoam arrow that keeps pointing to the ball. Spot the ball has photographs of football players in showers, shorts etc.
Say Cheese is a more regular feature. It asks for examples of readers’ worst ever football memorabilia. Last week a photograph of the Esso 1970 World Cup Coin collection was sent in by novelist Jeffrey Archer. Victor rang the publishers, and it’s true. ‘I think you need to know that Mr Archer threatens to send you,’ the publicity executive continued, ‘his collection of football star jam jar lids.’
Lame at last. Vic eases out of his seat, still grinning. He’s just had another idea. He’s going to run a story on Jeffrey Archer memorabilia.
It would be nice if there was a way to make money doing this.2
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Another helpful and informative 253 footnote
2 Following the closure of Sarf London Security, Victor’s fanzine went—briefly—professional. He was talent-spotted by British comedians Skinner and Baddiel and ended up on the writing staff of Fantasy Football.
Jeffrey Archer made a guest appearance.
172
MS LISA MUIR
Outward appearance
Fawn overcoat belted over brown corduroy trousers, yellow sweater, fawn jacket. Thick, fur-lined gloves in pocket. Large cloth bag laden with papers. Reading Exchange and Mart. Mid-thirties but first impression is ten years younger.
Inside information
A property developer. Does up properties or supervises building work under contract. The recession made her life easier. It weeded out the cowboys and made everyone else grateful for work. Her previous jobs have included reviewing feature films for airlines, selling car insurance, and writing template tenders for corporate identities. Knows contract law backwards.
What she is doing or thinking
Getting a rough idea of property prices this week. Smiling slightly to herself because she has sprung a trap.
She showed up yesterday at a flat being converted on King Edward Walk. It was 4.45 and the house was empty and dark. One of the mates showed up, claiming to have just stepped out for fags. She pretended to believe him; and casually let him know her car was being serviced today.
This morning, she’ll let herself into King Edward Walk with a small electric heater, some letters to finish and some reading to do. She’ll be there for 8.45. It will be interesting to see when they turn up. Any time after 10.00, and they’re fired.
She likes it when their faces fall, and they suddenly realize that this slim pretty woman knows what she’s talking about and that she has no problems with fights and firings. In fact she rather enjoys them. She has enjoyed them for these last fifteen years.
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MRS DELIA HENDY
Outward appearance
Camilla Parker-Bowles? A white sporting jacket with a thick, accordion collar over a brown sweater and a white sailing shirt. White towelling trousers, thick-soled, clean trainers. Waterproof bag printed with bamboo imagery and a stamp ‘Forbidden Cargo’. Stares shell-shocked at a form, then writes.
Inside information
A professional domestic carer, contracted to Lambeth Council. She visits the infirm, cleaning their flats and cooking them lunch. The Billericay Building Society has just found a new way to make her homeless.
In November she bid for a house that the Billericay had repossessed. She won the auction fair and square, for £34,000. Guess it wasn’t enough. They exchanged contracts, and the Bill told her the completion date would be January 12th.
She went and sold her flat didn’t she? Exchanged contracts. Then her solicitor got a letter saying the Billericay (‘Feel Dicky with the Billericay’) were pulling out of the deal.
Delia rang and the girl cheerfully admitted that they had reneged. She kept calling Delia Mrs Henry, despite being corrected. ‘It happens sometimes,’ the girl bubbled. ‘We will be paying you compensation for any inconvenience caused.’ Delia is now sleeping on a client’s floor. You call that inconvenient?
What she is doing or thinking
The Bill has sent her a customer satisfaction questionnaire.
Does she like the decor of her local branch? How long does she have to wait in line? Do staff smile? She has responded positively to each question. There is no opportunity to do anything else.
Suddenly she writes at the bottom, ‘But I hate you.’
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MR ANTHONY AULDGIRTH
Outward appearance
Old blind man with a white cane and carefully maintained suit. A few wisps of red hair over his head. The bald skin is mottled with age spots, which have gone crusty. His hands are frail bundles of tendon and blue veins. He sits patiently, quietly, waiting.
Inside information
His name would have been well known to readers of The Times during the early 1950s. Became a friend of Samuel Beckett’s at Trinity College, Dublin. Saw Godot in its earliest production and realized then his friend was marked for greatness.
Misses his wife Elizabeth beyond endurance. In New York, Norman Mailer once said of her: ‘This is a woman you can talk to on any level.’ Elizabeth died of cancer in 1985.
What he is doing or thinking
Remembering his first meeting with his wife’s best friend in 1934. Daphne lived in a house right on the banks of the Thames. She wore a green bathing suit. Anthony was shy: all he could think of saying was ‘Elizabeth tells me you stand on your head.’ Daphne promptly did so, and walked back into the house on her hands.
Daphne’s son Thomas is now 50 years old, running a business in Australia. Thomas knows nothing of the house near Reading, or of how beautiful his mother once was. As a schoolboy in the 1950s, Thomas would come to stay, bringing his friend. In consequence, here Anthony is, in the 1990s, going to visit that friend in West Square with Elizabeth’s daughter. T
he consequences go on and on.
The people don’t, of course.
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MRS MADELEINE STRICKLER
Outward appearance
Instant 1960s. Long auburn hair, brown overcoat, left arm across tummy, right hand in ‘Thinker’ position, both resting on top of Acorn computer bag. Contemplates the old gentleman next to her.
Inside information
Freelance editor and journalist. Lived for many years in the Orient, then America, where her children now live. Converted to Buddhism along with her husband. Lives with her father who is sitting next to her. They are visiting a family friend near the Elephant.