501

by Robert Field

  ‘Hi, gorgeous. D’yer fancy a drink?’

  I stop, turn around.

  ‘Who’s asking?’

  There’s a group of Teddy Boys lounging on the warm evening. One detaches himself and says, ‘I’m asking.’

  He’s the leader, this one. He’s tall and strong-looking, and so, so confident. He’s drainpipe trousers, drape jacket, a D.A. with long sideburns, and crepe boots. He’s big and handsome and dangerous.

  ‘Well,’ he says, ‘do you want a drink or no?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘We’ll go somewhere quieter, away from the crush.’

  Then he takes my arm like he owns me and pulls me gently into a side street, into a smoky pub where old folks sip their drinks and click dominoes on the table tops.

  We claim a corner seat and Teddy Boy says, ‘A drink, what’syername?’

  ‘Marie, and a gin and tonic, what’syername?’

  ‘Tony,’ he says.

  So this is a hot summer night with a dark-haired boy who looks more Italian than Scottish. He laughs at my ‘soft Dundee accent’ and he says he’ll teach me ‘real Glasgee’ if I give him the chance.

  But all the time he’s talking to me he’s looking at my lips, at my mouth, at my body.

  And I’ve seen that look before.

  And I know where it’s going to lead.

  He’s walking me back when the first patters of rain smack heavy and wet onto the pavement. Then there’s a terrific flash of lightning and a crack of thunder that leaves my ears ringing. The street lamps flicker and go out and already we’re running for home.

  So what was I then? A confused girl? A little tart? A contrary little madam?

  I think I was more like Mam than I knew and, like her, there were things that I needed, that I would always need.

  Just like she had.

  Men.

  Outside this house of just me and Robert the Bruce the rain is starting: cold winter rain that taps on the glass and drips down the chimney. This is the steady soaking of the season, not like the cloudburst of that long-ago night when I was so young.

  So I’m this fresh, healthy girl running for shelter, tipsy with drink, and with an itch that’s ripe for scratching.

  There’s no lights on anywhere: in the streets, in the rows of dark windows. It’s like the black-out in the War and, by the time we reach home, I’m out of breath and drenched through and still the thunder rolls and lightning slashes the sky.

  But once inside, I light the gas fire and then we’re fumbling at each other, clutching, touching, clinging. There’s to be no niceties, no waiting here. We’re beyond impatience.

  I say, ‘Have you got something?’ because although I’m like Mam I don’t want to end up like her.

  ‘I’m a boy scout,’ he says. ‘Always prepared.’

  We’re voices, shadows on the couch. Shadows struggling in the gas-light, dressed in wet clothes and passion.

  And that passion is brief. In fact it’s over before I’ve hardly started and it pisses me off that he starts to get dressed while I’m still not properly undressed.

  He lights up a cigarette and I see his face in the darkness. ‘I think we can still make closing,’ he says. ‘You coming?’

  I tell him he can go on his fucking own, and he laughs and says that if I fancy a repeat performance I know where to find him.

  I say after that performance he’s not getting an encore and he laughs again and calls me a funny girl.

  He’s still chuckling as he steps out into the night.

  With nothing better to do, I go up to bed and later, much later, the electric clicks on and the landing light floods through my door: that and the sound of Dad and Diva clumping up the stairs.

  We always have breakfast at ten o’clock and this morning I don’t get up till then. I’m glad of the lie-in because, to tell the truth, I’ve a little bit of a hang-over.

  Dad grunts ‘G’morning Marie’ over his paper and the tea-pot, yawns and lights a cigarette.

  ‘Late night, Dad?’

  ‘Early morning,’ he says.

  He’s sitting opposite me with his hair uncombed and blue stubble on his chin. But he’s handsome, so handsome. He’s in a summer shirt and his arms are lean and muscular, hard and strong. He lowers the paper and says, ‘You’re bright-eyed, Marie.’ When I’m obviously not.

  ‘Good night’s sleep, Dad.’ When I obviously hadn’t.

  Then from the front room Diva says loudly, clearly, ‘The dirty cow.’ Then she’s standing in the doorway, pinching between thumb and forefinger a wrinkled, soggy, dangling French Letter.

  In this moment I look at her, I look at Dad. I look at what’s on their faces.

  Diva’s is grimacing distaste.

  Dad’s is like he can’t believe what he’s seeing. His face shows the workings of his mind.

  She says to Dad, ‘In the front room, on my best carpet. She must have had some boy round when we were out.’

  I’m thinking that she didn’t have to do it like this; she didn’t have to tell Dad. She could have pulled me to one side, given me a pep talk, but she wants him to know, wants him to see what I’m really like.

  Her expression is one of sly triumph and I would love to scratch that face, those dark eyes. But I sit still in this horrified silence while my heartbeat drums in my ears.

  She says, ‘Well, Marie?’ and, as though to prompt my answer, she gives the Johnny a little shake, the fucking bitch.

  Then Dad just says, ‘Oh, Marie.’ And there is such a sadness in his voice I want this to be a bad dream, a terrible nightmare. I pinch my thigh, squeeze the flesh as hard as I can. I squeeze the top of my arm. I squeeze and squeeze and squeeze.

  But nothing changes and it’s ten o’clock and I’m still at the breakfast table and Diva is still dangling that Johnny like she’s won first prize in a raffle.

  I get up, go to my room, sit on the bed and say to myself, ‘Why have I spoilt it? Why didn’t that fucking creep just slip it into his pocket.’

  Then I pack my case, have a cry – that’s all I seem to do lately – then I wait.

  They leave about one o’clock, shutting the front door quietly behind them like they don’t want me to hear. But I watch them from the window, see Dad’s car drift away down the road: him and that fucking bitch.

  I give them five minutes, smoke a fag, and then carry my case downstairs. Off the hook I take Diva’s favourite coat and then I’m to the door, saying my goodbyes to an empty house, thinking that I’ll get away as far as I can. Then I think I’ll leave a note, just a few words to Dad telling him I’m sorry, and leaving my love.

  So this is what I’m doing when the door swings opens and he’s standing there looking at my case, looking at me writing my goodbyes.

  ‘Marie, ‘he says. ‘What’s going on?’

  But he doesn’t have to ask, not really.

  Then he says, ‘You can’t go, Marie.’

  ‘I can. I’m nearly sixteen.’

  ‘You’re too young.’

  ‘Mam wasn’t too young.’

  I know this is a lie, I know Mam was a year older than me but it’s a smart thing to say, and it cuts into Dad.

  He says, ‘That was different, Marie,’ in a smack of an answer.

  And it’s a different Dad; he’s edgy and nervous and he’s saying that he came back from the club to talk to me.

  ‘I don’t want anything to change…’ He hesitates. ‘After what’s happened.’

  After what I did, he means.

  I say, ‘And Diva?’

  ‘She’ll come round. In time.’

  So we’re in a kind of truce, with me feeling a bit ashamed and now only pretending about wanting to run away.

  ‘Dad, I’m sorry.’

  It seems I’m saying it as though I betrayed him. I say I’m sorry again and then he says, ‘Come here, Marie,’ and what is going to be a comfort, a cuddle, turns into much more. He holds me fast and hard and strong but with – I can’t explain ho
w – such tenderness.

  And with love.

  And I don’t care because it’s what I want, what I need.

  I’m going to take a breather now because this pain, this gnawing in my stomach, is making me catch my breath. It twists me double and I have to wait until it’s done a lap of fucking honour before it passes. Then I pour myself a double Bells.

  Robert the Bruce has slid off my lap and he’s studying my grimace, so I lift him up again and settle him on my knees, while outside the wet night gathers strength.

  Then I close my eyes and let the past drift over me.

  And what a thing this past is, where wrong is right and that wrong fills me up, burns me up, takes me by the hand and leads me into the misunderstood.

  After the Johnny episode, it’s a week before Diva speaks to me properly, politely. She serves up breakfast with a curt, ‘Here you are, Marie.’ Then as she and Dad leave for the club, she says, ‘Don’t forget the washing-up. Oh, and the kitchen floor.’ And at the front door she calls back, with a toss of her jet-black hair, a flash of her dark eyes, ‘The dirty washing’s in the basket.’

  Dad, following her out, raises his eyes and blows me a kiss. I blow him one back and he gives me the sweetest of smiles and if only he could hold me now, kiss me now, and not stop for the world.

  And do what we did before.

  Anyway, I’m on a curfew which includes even helping at the club, but Dad says give it a few more days and we’ll be back to normal.

  So I start my chores, my penance for sinning with a Teddy Boy who didn’t even try to hide the evidence. Useless bastard.

  And Dad’s never mentioned this sinning; we’ve sort of skirted the subject. But for a few days afterwards, in the way he looked at me, I expected him to say, ‘You’re just like your mother.’

  And he would have been right, wouldn’t he?

  So now I’m in the house on my own, pissed off once again, and thinking that I’m only a fucking skivvy here. But I also think that if I rush through the washing-up, the floor cleaning, the laundry, I could catch the bus to the market and lose myself for a couple of hours and no one would know.

  I light up the gas boiler, light up a cigarette and, as the water’s warming, I sprinkle in some soap-flakes and sort through the washing. I sort whites from colours, Dad’s shirts from his socks, Diva’s bright skirt from her white blouses and white slips of knickers; all the clothes of a week to go into the tub.

  So I boil up the whites, stir them with the paddle, let them bubble away while I have another cigarette and nurse my resentment of Diva. I’m also a bit pissed off that Dad lets her call the tune, that she decides what I should and shouldn’t do.

  Sodding cow, always bossing, always hanging on Dad’s arm, always snuggling up to him on the settee like she owns him. Well, if only she knew.

  But she won’t, because it’s our secret, mine and Dad’s.

  All the same when I look at those knickers, bubbling pure and white in the wash, I suddenly have this image of Dad peeling them slowly down from Diva’s narrow hips. Then this image becomes one of them lying together in their bed at night; lying together like they belong together. Pressing together.

  And then I’m angry with both of them and it’s with the anger of the helpless in the last year of childhood.

  Fuck them. Fuck them. Fuck them.

  But I’m not quite helpless and though it seems a juvenile thing to do, I slowly drop, one at a time, Diva’s tight red sweater – the one that she thinks makes her look like Lana Turner – plus Dad’s blue socks, a yellow tie (yellow?) and an armful of colours into the boiler. I chuck in my dog-end for good measure, and then I stir the cauldron like a witch; I stir my growing resentment faster and faster, ’til the suds slop over the side and hiss onto the gas ring.

  I’m a little bit uneasy when, on the draining board, Dad’s cream shirt is now a pale shade of pink, his vest exactly the same. But I can’t help laughing to myself that at least they match.

  I laugh even more that Diva’s favourite pale blouse is no longer pale and her white brief knickers are streaked red and blue like little union flags. But my uneasiness is growing.

  Then I think of what Mam would have said. ‘What’s done is done, Marie. Worrying’s not going to change anything.’

  And she never worried in her life. Well, only about the next drink. Or the next man.

  But she never had to answer to anyone, did she?

  There’s a fuss, of course, when Dad and Diva come home.

  Diva says, ‘How could you?’

  ‘I slung the lot in together. Wasn’t thinking.’

  ‘You’d need a brain to think.’

  Dad says, ‘She said it was an accident.’

  Diva says, ‘Don’t stick up for her.’

  Dad says sharply, ‘It’s done, Diva, give it a rest.’

  She looks at him as though she’s about to cry. There’s shock on her face and her mouth drops open. ‘You must see what’s she’s doing, Canny.’

  ‘You’ve had your knife in her ever since she got here.’

  ‘Canny, I haven’t. It’s not me, it’s her.’

  But Dad’s had enough; he’s out of here, slamming the door behind him.

  Diva screams at me, ‘We were all right before you came.’ She raises her hand and slaps me hard across the chops.

  ‘You little bitch,’ she says.

  But I’ve had a tough upbringing and I slap her right back, a damn sight harder.

  That does Diva and she stands stock still, with tears filling her eyes and the mark of my hand burning her cheek.

  ‘I’ll never forget this, Marie,’ she hisses. And there’s more threat in those quiet words than any I’ve heard in my life.

  I say, ‘Bollocks to you, Diva.’ And the she turns without another word and leaves me alone in the kitchen with the mess of the laundry scattered over the floor.

  The hand that slapped Diva sixty years ago is now gently stroking Robert the Bruce. And that hand is lined and old. Like my face.

  Sometimes I catch my reflection in a shop window and I see a skinny pensioner, a bag of bones, a Scottish refugee who’s spent too long in the soft south. That’s what I see but what I want is the image of that busty young blonde that life couldn’t cower; young and firm and so in love that blindness and carelessness surely had to follow.

  I can trace all this now, as clear as yesterday. As clear as this dawn breaking over this wet town that’s been my home for twenty years in my exile.

  As clear as that terrible attraction that, once started, was like a drug.

  Yes, I can see it, feel it, touch it, but I’m not sorry for it.

  And I’m not sorry for the trouble I caused that cow Diva; in fact, I relish every time she felt her heart break, because mine was broken just the once.

  Because of her, and forever.

  So now the night rain falls steadily over my little terraced house, while in that smart semi in a Glasgow suburb my other life goes on.

  After the laundry episode – seems my life’s made up of episodes – it’s three days before Diva even acknowledges me again. She’s been cold, distant, and when she enters a room she brings a chill for company. She’s the original ice-maiden.

  Anyway, she comes into the kitchen, and I hear her take a deep breath before she says, ‘You’re to come to the club with us this afternoon.’ She adds, ‘If you like?’

  I reckon she’s trying for Dad’s sake because she’s being extra nice to him, calling him ‘darling’ all the time, pouring his tea, buttering his toast. But it’s even more than that, she adores him. Those dark eyes follow him everywhere and she’s grateful for his attention, for his thank yous. If she were a dog, she’d be a lovesick spaniel.

  And what does Dad think of her, really think of her? I know he tells me he loves me, that he’s so glad he found me again. But he’s still in her bed at night and that’s something I don’t want to think about.

  ‘Well,’ she says, ‘are you?’

&nb
sp; I tell her yes, smile brightly at her, as she purses her lips.

  ‘At three,’ she says. ‘Be ready at three.’

  So the afternoon finds us in the dim indoors of the club, and it’s this club that, as Dad says, puts the bread and butter on the table. It also pays for the car and the nice house, for Diva’s clothes, and for keeping me, I suppose.

  We do the usual cleaning up from the night before: mopping the floor, wiping the tables, stocking the shelves.

  Dad’s told me that if I help I’ll be on the payroll.

  ‘Can’t afford too much, mind,’ he says.

  Diva starts to laugh, starts to tell him he’s a tightwad, but then remembers that this is about me and she clams up. She’s not going to forget what happened in a hurry.

  If ever.

  But she’s given me a glimpse of what it was like between them, probably still is when I’m not there, and I’m seeing it through green glass.

  So life goes on in this uneasy world, in this uneasy truce. It passes through the end of a hot listless summer, a wet autumn, and a winter that dusts the streets with snow before November is out. After Christmas and when I’ve turned sixteen, and despite diva’s protests, Dad lets me serve behind the bar. I’m good at this, flirting and pouring beer, or stretching up to the optics aware of the eyes that look, the long glances that give away interest.

  And sometimes I’ll turn and it’ll be Dad.

  And sometimes I’ll turn and it’ll be Diva with her cold dark eyes.

  I take a break about midnight, go and stand by the door with Bert the Bouncer. He always offers me a cigarette, tells me how pretty I am and wishes he were ten years younger.

  ‘Twenty,’ I say, and he laughs a gummy laugh, this toothless, scarred giant of a man.

  He says, ‘You’re right, I’m getting too old for this game.’

  But he keeps the door for Dad two nights a week and spreads out the rest to the highest bidders. Dad says that Bert’s a legend and he’d have been a top pro if the war hadn’t taken away his best years.

  ‘Like all of us, I suppose,’ he says, and it’s in a wistful way, as though those years of conflict had stolen much more than his time. Which they have, when I think about it.