The History of Us

by Jonathan Harvey

  We hurried back to the concession, though it was tricky for Kathleen and Wendy in their tight Chinese dresses. They shuffled. It was easier for me in my Chinese pyjamas and trainers, so I got there first.

  ‘I did ask Zoe from Ghost to keep an eye on the stall, Wendy,’ I heard Kathleen saying.

  ‘She doesn’t have a vested interest. You do.’

  Once back I saw that Zoe from Ghost, the stall next to ours, was flicking through a copy of Jurassic Park. She called out, in her thick-as-treacle Dublin accent, ‘Wait till you read this. You’ll DIE.’

  ‘What’s it about, Zo?’

  ‘Feckin’ DINOSAURS.’

  ‘Jeez. Like that’s gonna catch on!’

  She seemed stung. ‘It’s actually complete gas!’

  ‘Yeah, right!’

  Just then Wendy and Kathleen shuffled back.

  ‘Don’t talk to Ghost.’ Wendy snapped. Fraternizing with the enemy was frowned on by our boss.

  Zoe gave her daggers and called, ‘I shifted one o’ them weird cubist T-shirts for you. Money’s in the till.’

  ‘Thanks, Zo!’ I called back. And Wendy allowed a tight smile before checking that everything was hanging on the rails just the way she liked it.

  The cubist T-shirts were these oversized T-shirts that had rubber cubes hanging off them. The Pet Shop Boys had worn them in a photoshoot in i-D recently and now everyone was going mad for them, even if when you wore them out it was hard not to knock people’s drinks over, or have people ask why you were wearing a Christmas tree dressed by Picasso. Wendy busied herself for five minutes, running her finger along the till desk to check it wasn’t dusty, counting money in said till, flattening down lumps in the wicker-style flooring mats with her wooden soles, before she decreed that she was happy with the place; and then she buggered off to meet Yuki, her fella, at Quaglino’s for lunch. Though it has to be said, with all that shuffling it took her a good twenty minutes to get across the basement and slowly limp up the stairs to the ground floor, where she not-so-promptly disappeared from view.

  On the whole working at Hyper Hyper was great craic, to coin an Irish phrase. Most of the time we treated it like one big playground. Nicking mannequins from other people’s stalls and hiding them in the loos was one of our favourite pastimes, as was taking money out of the till and nipping across to Marks and Spencer’s and buying some champagne to help speed up the hours before closing. Now, I wasn’t saying that everyone who worked there was operating some sort of scam, but . . .

  Or maybe I was.

  Well, maybe not everybody.

  OK, quite a few were.

  Some days there could be a real party atmosphere, particularly on a Saturday when the management paid for a DJ to play all afternoon. Other days, we made a party of our own.

  Today, though, was about making money.

  Once the coast was clear and Wendy had definitely left the building, Kathleen dragged a sports bag out from under the till desk and pulled an old checked shirt of hers from it. She then took a needle and thread out from the desk drawer, and sat down to get to work.

  Kathleen and I had moved to London the previous year to follow our dream of making it big in showbiz. Well, that was my dream; I wasn’t really sure what Kathleen’s was, but she seemed more than happy to float along on my coat-tails. And she did have her uses. It turned out that her nan’s cousin had a daughter called Lou who was London-based and cleaned for various people in South London. Lou – or Loo Cleaner, as me and Kathleen called her – cleaned for a posh woman called Delia who lived in West Norwood, and she was off travelling and wanted someone to house-sit for her. Me and Kathleen got the gig.

  West Norwood wasn’t that amazing, but it was London and so it had an inbuilt feeling of glamour, even if it wasn’t exactly Primrose Hill. The house itself was a lovely place, all stripped wood floors and rickety staircases. Every wall seemed to be covered in books. Really good books, the sort no-one would ever dream of reading. Things hung from ceilings – old bike wheels, puppets of eagles – it was like hanging out in Aladdin’s cave. And it was ours, rent-free, for six months. We didn’t know we were born. All we had to do was keep an eye on the place and walk her smelly Dalmatian, Kinnock, twice a day, that was the deal. Kinnock was a lovely dog, despite the smell. But he did have a tendency to fart quite a bit. And he showed no shame.

  My favourite thing in the house was Delia’s electric typewriter. When Lou had explained that I had aspirations to be a writer, she said I could use it as much as I wanted. So I decided that during our six-month residency I would use my time wisely and make sure I wrote a play. I had it all worked out in my head. It was going to be a masterpiece. A masterpiece called Supper with Sam. I know. Genius title.

  We got the jobs in Hyper Hyper quite quickly; there seemed to be loads of shop work going in central London. In the evenings I would work on Supper with Sam and Kathleen would do her night job, selling cigarettes at a trendy bar called the Atlantic round the back of Piccadilly. She had to walk round like a cinema usherette with a tray of all kinds of ciggies. Those were the days.

  She’d recently started experimenting with different looks, and her current one was a severe bob like our boss Wendy. Everyone agreed it really suited her, and it made a feature of her massive nose, rather than trying to distract from it. Now her nose appeared to poke proudly from her heavy fringe, and suddenly became magnificent rather than monstrous. It was like she was finally falling in love with it.

  So while she was out showing her nose off and selling tobacco to the cocaine-snorting ne’er-do-wells from the city each night, I would sit in the upstairs bay window, looking out over the rooftops of West Norwood, dreaming and writing my life away.

  I knew I was a good writer. I’d never told Kathleen this, but I’d bunked in to the back of church all those years ago and watched my first piece, How Far Is It to Bethlehem? (Not Very Far), and aside from some ad-libbing from that cheeky twat who reckoned he’d been in The Sound of Music – which was doubtful, he’d been far too tall for a Kurt – the script held together well. And apart from a few old dears who fell asleep, it was received very well. Jocelyn had got a round of applause every time she’d finished a song. And even though I say it myself, it had been a genius idea to rewrite ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’ as ‘Ain’t No Manger’. During the final bows I’d slipped out again, unseen.

  I mean, it was a shame half the play was missing because of that silly cow Paul’s sister tripping up and having to be carted off in an ambulance. And basically the play turned into Jocelyn singing her favourite carols a capella. But the bits of the play that we did see – well, they really had legs.

  So I was pretty damn confident writing Supper with Sam. The words poured out of me. And as a famous playwright once said, if you’re unsure what to write about, write about what you know. I think it was that Chekhov. So I did.

  ‘How’s the play coming along?’ Kathleen asked as she studiously unpicked the label from the checked shirt.

  I looked around the shop floor, affecting an air of nonchalance, not that I really understood what nonchalance was, and said,‘Yeah, really well actually. I’m past the second interval and into the denouement now.’

  ‘It’s got two intervals?’ gasped Kathleen, sounding mightily impressed.

  ‘Well, it’s a massive big work of art, Kathleen,’ I said with a shrug. ‘I was toying with three, but . . .’

  She pulled a face at that. ‘I hate long plays, Adam.’

  The cheek of it. The bare-faced cheek of it!

  ‘Er, Kathleen. The extent of your theatrical experience is seeing Cilla Black jump out of a bag o’ washing and singing “Surprise, Surprise” in Widow Twankey’s laundry bag, in thingy at the Empire when we went with the school . . .’

  ‘Aladdin.’

  ‘So don’t tell me how long plays should be. Have yer ever seen any Shakespeare?’

  ‘No. Have you?’

  ‘Course not! I’m too busy writing me own masterpiec
e! But take my word for it. They all last a lifetime, comprendez?’

  ‘Sorry, Adam.’

  ‘You don’t even mean that!’

  ‘I do!’

  ‘Oh, you’re doing me head in, Kathleen. I’m going for a walk.’

  And off I went in what could only be described as a huff. God, Kathleen could be annoying sometimes. She was so whiney! And moany. Most of the time she was fine, a hoot, a scream, but some of the time she made me really miss Jocelyn.

  I thought about Jocelyn a lot. And as time went on I’d forgiven her for sleeping with the love of my life, Mark.

  OK, so ‘love of my life’ was a bit of an exaggeration. But he was the first bloke I’d met who’d awoken that side of me. Don’t get me wrong, I’d always been camp, I’d come out of the womb wearing tap shoes and belting out the bridge from ‘From New York to LA’, but even though since time immemorial I’d been called a queer at school, I’d never been sure whether it was true. Because I’d never actually fancied any lads.

  Till Mark. I guess my life thus far was divided into two categories: BM (Before Mark) and AM (After Mark). Mark, with his wedge and his swagger and his tight trousers that left bugger all to the imagination, and his freckly skin and his hazel eyes and his perfect white teeth. Mark who actually gave me the time of day instead of punching my arm, shouting FUCK OFF QUEER, then legging it or doing a piley-on. Mark who it was easy to follow round everywhere coz it was common knowledge that Kathleen was obsessed with him. I egged her on to swoon over him as it gave me a good excuse to follow him round everywhere too, feigning support.

  And then it had happened.

  We’d seen Jocelyn climbing out of the church window that day, stepping out of the vestry – no longer a virgin, now a proper woman. And she’d made that journey with him. And even though I knew that day would arrive sooner or later, I just didn’t expect it to arrive with her.

  The great thing about writing Supper with Sam was that it had been cathartic for me. I hadn’t told Kathleen yet but it was all based on our teenage years and, put it this way, was set in the organ loft of a fictional church in Liverpool, St Samuel’s. There was a character based on me (a hopeless romantic with a pocketful of dreams, literary leanings and a yearning to move to the Smoke), a character based on Kathleen (bit nerdy, big nose, hanger-on), and then of course the bitchy black one based on Jocelyn, and the hunky one based on Mark. The great thing with the play was that I could rewrite history. So just before the second interval, my character and the Marky one copped off together. Which made him getting off with and having a baby by Jocelyn at the end even more tragic for all concerned. It was going to be amazing. I could just feel it in my waters. Every time I read it back to myself it moved me to tears and made me laugh out loud. I couldn’t think of anything else I’d ever seen that was like it. It was unique.

  Well, it would be, whenever I got around to finishing it. I was nearing the end of it, but at the same time didn’t want the writing process to end. I loved retreating into this semi-fictional world in my head – it made more sense and gave me greater pleasure than anything that was happening in the real world. So I was aware that lately I was really taking my time with every new line of dialogue, because I wanted to drag that warm sensation out for as long as possible.

  The liberating thing about the process was that because I’d had to put myself in the shoes of all the various characters, I’d come to a point where I felt a degree of forgiveness towards Jocelyn. I’d had to imagine how she was feeling. I kind of got her now. I’d at no point said to her, ‘Please don’t sleep with Mark, I fancy him.’ She’d not been breaking a pact any of us had made to ‘not go there’ for the sake of the others. She’d obviously fancied him as much as me and Kathleen and, when the time had come, she’d gone for it.

  Basically, she was one lucky bitch.

  And now that I’d had to put myself in her shoes to write a character ‘sort of ’ based on her, I discovered an empathy for her I’d hitherto lacked.

  She was only doing what I would have done given the opportunity, so why should I be angry about that?

  What’s worse, she’d ended up having a baby. And because we’d all fallen out in such a stupid way, it meant she had to go through all that on her own. And because we weren’t there we’d had to buy into the lie that the baby was really her mum’s, and wasn’t she lucky having a baby later in life, and there was nothing wrong with it, and . . . and all that shit.

  I’d actually tried calling her a while back. I’d phoned her mum’s place in Alderson Road, only to be told by a voice I didn’t recognize that Jocelyn had moved away. And when I’d asked where to, they’d replied, Who gives a damn? Which I felt was very Hollywood circa 1955.

  I’d actually wanted to reply in a breathy American accent: Me, Goddamit! I do! I give a damn!

  But I hadn’t. And I’d hung up.

  Maybe she’d run away, like me and Kathleen had.

  OK, that’s a bit dramatic. We’d told everyone where we were going, and they didn’t try to stop us, as they saw the sense in us having a place rent-free for six months in exchange for walking a dog twice a day. But running away sounded so dramatic. Like pretending I was an orphan – another thing I liked to do occasionally. It went down really well in Hyper Hyper. But where would Jocelyn have run to, I wondered? Where did you go when you wanted to break into the music business like she did – presuming she still wanted to do that? London was the obvious choice, but maybe she’d gone somewhere closer to home, like Manchester.

  Or maybe she’d won Mark back and they were living together with the baby.

  Perish the thought. Anyway, I knew that wasn’t true, or else my mum would have told me. My mum knew all the local gossip. So I’d called her immediately.

  ‘No, love. I thought they’d all moved away, to be honest with you, coz I’ve certainly not seen that mother of hers in months. How’s that Kathleen getting on?’

  Mother. Always gossiping. Then the one time you actually needed something from her she was next to useless. Family, eh? Can’t live with them, can’t get gossip from them when really necessary.

  The baby would be four by now. He would probably be a lovely coffee colour and be completely gorgeous because with Jocelyn and Mark’s genes . . . well, he’d have to be, right? His name was William, that much we did know from living on Alderson Road. But whether people called him that, or Will, or Billy, was anyone’s guess.

  He was probably still living with his grandma. Thinking she was his mum. His sister long gone from their lives, unable to cope with seeing her child brought up by someone else, yet so close to home. Or maybe she’d buggered off because . . . well . . . she actually just didn’t give a damn. Like the person on the phone. Maybe that person had been her mum, putting a voice on. The possibilities were endless.

  Some nights when Kathleen was out at work and I was meant to be tapping away on my typewriter, I would take a break and amuse myself by phoning a gay chatline. It was a premium rate number, which meant that it must’ve been costing me a zillion pounds a minute, but it was worth it. Despite my confidence at work, or my confidence about my writing, one thing I still got nervous about was going into gay bars or clubs and chatting to blokes. What I felt more at home doing was ringing the chat rooms. Apart from anything else, I could reinvent myself on the phone. Turn the Scouse accent on a bit, lower the voice and emit an aura of ‘just in from football training’, and soon all the guys in the chat room wanted to go into a private conflab for me. It worked every time. Sometimes I said my name was Mark. Somehow I managed to make out I was the straight-acting guy of their dreams, when actually I was just acting. And, let’s be honest, there was nothing too straight-acting about sleeping with a fella.

  Mark. Maybe by pretending to be him, I could at last feel close to him.

  Some nights I just entertained myself by creating a bonkers character and chatting to whoever on the phone. Other nights, I bit the bullet and went to meet whoever I was chatting to. When I did
, I would leave a little note on my bed telling Kathleen where I had gone and who I had gone to meet, just in case they turned out to be a mad axeman. And every time, even though I wasn’t the big macho lout the guys thought they were getting, none of them ever complained.

  Maybe I was a better actor than I thought.

  None of them ever screamed, ‘OH MY GOD, YOU’RE CAMP! I WAS EXPECTING BARRY FROM BROOKSIDE!’ I suppose, like me, they were glad to find some comfort, any old port in a storm.

  Usually I could have my fun and games and be home well before Kathleen got back from the Atlantic. She was none the wiser. As far as she was concerned I lived the life of a play-writing monk.

  I turned a corner to head back to the Pullman cafe when a figure dressed head to toe in black and with what could best be described as a two-foot conical black dunce’s cap on her head came hurtling towards me, sniffing. Floor manager Kiki Daniels. I knew what the sniff meant: it meant she’d just come from the staff toilets, and had had a little ‘livener’.

  ‘Everything OK?’ she barked at me as she sped past.

  ‘Yes, thanks, Kiki,’ I offered. ‘You?’

  ‘Getting there!’ she barked, and disappeared from view as she turned a corner. Then I heard her shouting it again: ‘Geddinthere!’

  There was nobody very interesting in the cafe, so I pootled back to the stall, where Kathleen was now sewing a ‘Wendy1’ label into her old checked shirt. She then hung it up on the rack.

  ‘How much are we charging for that?’ I asked, trying to sound like I’d forgiven her, even though possibly there was nothing to forgive.

  ‘Thirty?’ she asked perkily, as if nothing had happened. She could be great sometimes, could Kathleen.

  ‘Good work, old thing,’ I said in a cod posh accent. And then we both fell about hysterically.

  After we’d settled down, Kathleen nudged me and nodded. I looked to where she was indicating. A young French designer was walking past. His name was Michel, and despite his incredible sense of taste there was no concealing the fact that he was a walking skeleton. After he’d passed, Kathleen sighed.