by Alexei Sayle
I’d fallen in love before and I hadn’t particularly liked it. It had felt like being an indoctrinated citizen of some country run by a terrible dictator; the object of my love had become the Beloved Leader, appearance flawless, morals perfect, beliefs exemplary, every dazzling utterance endlessly fascinating, every brilliant statement needing to be endlessly dissected for meaning and subtext. No matter whether I liked it or not, I knew as soon as I saw her that it was happening to me again: I experienced the tumbling sensation in my mind that told me my feelings for Florence had shown their papers to the border guards and had crossed over the barbed wire into the country of love.
One of the few ways I’d found to protect myself from total gawpishness was to look for defects in the girl’s appearance and thus to diminish slightly her perfection.
I realised I’d never seen Florence in daylight so hoped perhaps to see some blemish in her skin but when I got up to her and kissed her on the cheek it was flawless like the rest of her. She looked a little smaller perhaps, but that was it and in fact her smallness made her seem even cuter.
For the ordinary civilian their body was merely something to go down to the shops in but for a performer such as Florence it was as if her body was a beautiful dress that she had just that minute put on; she was aware of every brush of its fabric against her, a beautiful dress that she knew staggered the onlooker and that she deliberately turned in the light so its diamonds and pearls sparkled and hummed. On top of that the dress she was actually wearing was quite something too: an old-fashioned ballet skirt, layer after layer of black netting down to her knees with black satin petals laid on the top, a black Adidas top zipped up to her neck, black fishnet tights on her long legs and white Reebok trainers with a blue stripe down the centre. When she saw me a big smile spread across her face and she jumped up and down with excitement, making her skirt bounce in harmony and making me smile too. I put my hands on her waist and kissed her on the cheek.
‘Hi,’ I said.
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I’ve been looking forward to seeing you this much.’ And she spread her arms apart to indicate a huge amount.
‘Me too.’
She took me by the hand and said, ‘Before we go on trip, I want you to come and say hello to the rest of everybody.’
‘Yeah okay, sure,’ I replied reluctantly. ‘Even Valery?’ She began to lead me towards the cirKuss tent. ‘Especially Valery. You must understand Valery is my special friend. My buddy. He is from the next village to me back home, so he knows me like nobody. But I cannot stand it if you are not friends with Valery. Unlucky though he cannot speak nearly any English so he cannot tell you all the great things about me.’
‘I hope I find them out for myself,’ I simpered.
She took me across the tarmac showground into the big mouth and we entered the hot interior of the tent. Everybody I recalled from my previous visit seemed to be in there though quite why I couldn’t discern; there seemed no reason for them to be inside the tent since they were all sprawled about on the benched seating or on the floor of the ring doing absolutely nothing at all. I felt like a fat family driving their shitbox saloon car tentatively into the lion enclosure of a safari park. All around me sinuous feline forms stared with cold eyes and slowly unwound themselves, sniffing the air and wondering whether I was edible or not.
Still, Florence’s happiness was contagious; it made me grin idiotically just to look at her as she dragged me from one bizarrely named person to another. ‘Glinka this is Kelvin, Pnnnngg and Bvvvvxxx say hello to Kelvin, Kelvin this is my good friend Toast Arrangement…’ It dawned on me that I was being shown off, that for some reason this stunning woman was proud of me as she introduced me one after another to her fellow cast members. I shook hands with various Asians, Africans, assorted shades of Levantine and Slav, none of whom seemed to display the enthusiasm for me that Florence felt.
I also got the impression that unlike Florence not many of the other performers had made much effort to learn English, that they lived in their own enclosed world and rarely ventured outside it.
Finally we came to Valery. Florence ordered me, ‘Kelvin, say again how you are sorry to Valery.’
Eager to please her I said, ‘Valery, I’m sorry I threw your ball away that time.’
At first the clown just mumbled something under his breath in a foreign language but Florence snapped a string of clacking words at him and surprisingly the big man rose and took me in a tight embrace. I hugged him back but then unseen and unheard by anyone else Valery whispered in my ear, ‘You stay away her.’
Oh, fucking brilliant, I thought as I unwrapped myself from the clown. He fancies her and he’s fucking jealous. Then, surprising myself, I realised I felt really sort of pleased that someone was jealous of me.
Unaware that things weren’t now perfect, Florence took my hand and announced to the cirKuss folk, ‘We’re going to Liverpool!’
Outside I said, ‘Shall we get the train?’
‘No train!’ she said, pointing to one of the grey-painted vehicles ranged alongside the tent. ‘We go in my truck.’ The vehicle she indicated was one of the smaller four-wheel drives but still it rode high on huge all-terrain tyres, there was a split windscreen driver’s cab complete with machine-gun cupola in the roof hunkering behind a long tapering bonnet. Mounted on the back of the heavy steel ladder chassis was a separate box body, its roof adorned with powerful auxiliary spotlights; wooden steps led up to a padlocked metal door set in its side.
‘You want to see where I live first?’ she asked. ‘Sure,’ I said.
She scampered ahead of me up the steps, unlocked the door and stepped inside. I followed her, subconsciously expecting something like the interior of the caravan my parents had rented for years on a site just outside Llandudno — frilly cushions, cupboards up the walls, narrow foam banquettes and the smell of powerful toilet chemicals so that I was unprepared to see … a room. Simply that, a room with an old-fashioned couch and matching moquettecovered armchair, standard lamp with fringed shade in one corner, paintings of mountain villages, lakes and forests on the walls, rag rugs over the floor, telly in the other corner.
Florence giggled at my amazement. ‘Is proper living room. I don’t want to live in caravan, I’m not fucking gypsy or Dutch tourist. I don’t cook so no cooker and for toilet there is always fields, so no toilet. I don’t want to sleep with a bucket of shit, you know.’
‘Who would,’ I said.
‘Exactly, so now we go to Liverpool.’
We climbed back out of the body of the truck, Florence locked the door and folded the stairs away underneath. Then she skipped round to the left-hand driver’s side of the cab, opened the door and jumped straight up, twisted in mid-air and dropped into the driver’s seat. On the other side I climbed like a drugged monkey swinging off various grab handles, projecting bolts, obscure protuberances and metal steps, my shoes slipping on the wheel rim until I clumsily managed to haul myself gasping into the passenger seat of the high cab.
Florence started up the big diesel by pressing a red button on the metal dash, stomped on the enormous clutch pedal, wrestled the truck into first gear with both hands and, hauling on the enormous thin-rimmed wheel, steered the truck out of the cirKuss ground. The sight of this beautiful young woman, her whole body bending to the machine, sent a shiver of desire corkscrewing up my legs through my trunk and out the top of my head.
Noticing this spasm she asked, ‘Are cold? The heater is slow to …’
‘No, not cold, no,’ I said. ‘I, erm … haven’t been in a vehicle since the … you know, the …’
‘You scared?’
‘In this thing? No, just memories kicking me around.’ Indeed as we rolled slowly down the slip road to join the M57 (we had to go slow at first because one lane was entirely taken up by a long ragged trench, overflowing with rainwater and garbage but no workmen — I actually don’t think it was one of mine), then picked up speed with the engine note building to a stentorian cackle
, the cab and body began pitching and creaking to such an extent that conversation became too much of an effort and I found myself relaxing in the bouncing seat and watching her drive, so that after a while a benign calm settled over me and I felt more at peace than I had done for a long time.
She left the truck taking up two parking spaces at the top of London Road and from there we walked into Liverpool town centre.
I said, ‘So you know this place is the north-west’s largest independent retailer of disabled and elderly products; you don’t think it’s a juggling shop or anything?’
‘That’s right. I know what it is.’
‘So what are you going there to buy, stuff for people back home who’ve been like wounded in the civil war?’
‘No, why would I do that?’ she asked. ‘I’m buying stuff for me.’
‘For you? But you’re not disabled and elderly.’
‘Not now I’m not,’ she said, then after a pause went on, ‘Look, you read car magazines right, man with car like that reads car magazines?’
‘Sometimes … not now, I used to.’
‘Well, in car magazines they always say that when you want to buy speciality car best time to do it is out of season when they are not so in demand. So if you’ve got your heart set on Mercedes convertible much better you do a deal in winter when nobody else is thinking about convertible car. Same if you want four-wheel drive you go down to the Land-Rover showroom in the height of summer when nobody thinking about driving in the mud. So now I think that one show at the cirKuss I will have bad fall in the ring or if not I will certainly be old one day then will need walking-stick or wheelchair or what you call that frame thing?’
‘Zimmer frame.’
‘Zimmer frame, yes. Now in those shops, where they sell disabled stuff they used to having people in who are all sick and weak, they not going to do a deal with those people but I go in there and I say, “Hey, look at me. I don’t need your stuff, do me a good bargain!” and they will: it’s guaranteed.’
I wasn’t so sure that was how things worked, but considered her way of thinking about the sweetest thing anybody had ever said; it gave me a mild hard on. I said, ‘I’m not certain you can haggle in a medical goods showroom.’
‘Oh, everybody haggle,’ she stated emphatically as we turned through the double doors of the north-west’s largest independent retailer of disabled and elderly products. For a while we were left unattended to browse and Florence scuttled about with adorable enthusiasm poking at walkingsticks and vibrating seats and wheelchairs and adult incontinence pants (organic or non-organic) with squeals of delight. She was particularly taken by one of those giant big-foot heated slippers that a whole person can sit in. ‘Oh, dis would be great for my truck,’ she said. ‘I would be so snug in there.’ And I wanted to fuck her right there and then, pulling her tights down and bending her over a display of commodes or perhaps I thought we could do it inside the big slipper. Eventually a middle-aged man in a greasy suit wandered over to us just as Florence was trying out the brakes on a wheeled Zimmer frame. ‘Good afternoon, can I help you?’ he asked dubiously.
‘Sure,’ replied Florence. ‘I am interested in buying many things for myself, okay? But before we talk about that I would like you to watch this.’ And so saying she performed a series of five somersaults down the central aisle of the shop, ending the last one with a handstand; she balanced upside down for a few seconds before shooting herself upwards, turning over in mid-air and landing in the splits. Finally she sprang back up and took a deep bow by bending right over, her head sweeping the floor. ‘And look,’ she said as she came back up, indicating the spot on the floor where her legs had been spread, ‘I didn’t pee myself.’
‘I thought everybody haggle,’ Florence said angrily as she stomped down the street with me behind her struggling to keep up.
‘Apparently not.’
‘Stupid motherfuckers.’
‘You know, thinking about it, you might have had a narrow escape.’
‘In what way?’
‘You might have bought all that stuff then it might be your bad luck to live to be a hundred and twenty years old with no injuries or infirmities.’
She stopped and said with vehemence, ‘No I can’t think like that.’
‘Why not?’ I asked.
She considered for a moment. ‘Okay. Do you know why most old people are so grumpy? I tell you. Because old age come as a big shock to them, dey not expecting it at all. One day to them dey running about climbing trees then the next day dey got crumbly bones syndrome. My plan is that if you think about being old all the time and you expect the worst all the time then it won’t be such a big shock to you when it happen.’ Then she said thoughtfully, ‘You know you’re lucky, you already got a head start in knowing what it’s like to be old person.’
‘How’s that?’ I asked.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘all your friends are already dead.’ She took my arm. ‘Is your home-town?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So show me important places for you, show where little Kelvin used to go.’
So we walked around town and I pointed out to her where the superclub Cream had been and I talked about the beginning of places like Cream and Ministry and the anarchy of clandestine rave culture. I showed her where Liverpool’s first branch of Next had opened, where I’d bought my first Nintendo, the pub where I’d seen my first alcopop, the chip shop I’d been in when I’d heard about Thatcher’s resignation and how people had danced in the streets, the time Ant and Dec had come to open the new branch of HMV records and a madman had shouted obscenities at them. Then she told me she had to get back to our town for her evening show.
An hour and a half later as she dropped me at the end of my road she said, ‘Sunday night is last show we’re doing here, there is always party afterwards, you want to come?’
‘Yeah, sure, that’d be great.’
‘Thank you for my lovely day,’ she said, then she kissed me on the cheek before I clambered backwards out of the cab, burning my hand on a hot exhaust pipe that I tried to hold on to.
Two days later I went to meet Sidney Maxton-Brown. As the taxi took me across the flat black cabbage-stinking farmland the driver was saying, ‘… so I never knew me real parents but me foster dad wasn’t too bad I suppose, at first, until he got back from the Falklands that is, that’s when the delusions started. I had to go to school wrapped in Bacofoil and fuse wire which meant that the bullying which hadn’t been too bad started to get …’
Off the A road we turned, down a long high-hedged lane that took us suddenly past a ten-foot-high studded black metal gate set in a towering bramble and elder hedge. The driver braked and without for a second interrupting his Dostoyevskian narrative, reversed to skid backwards into the entrance. This abrupt arrival set howling an indeterminate number of big dogs. ‘I’m not fucking going in there,’ mumbled the driver, who only seconds before had been telling me that every second of every day all he wanted to do was to lie down and die, but now seemed all of a sudden to have discovered a wish to live.
So I paid him off, watched him drive away and stood alone on a sunny afternoon in front of a metal gate in a country lane waiting to meet Sidney Maxton-Brown. There was a steel entryphone set into a pillar at the side of the gate. I pressed a button, and after a few seconds a girl’s voice answered. I said, ‘I’ve come to see Sidney Maxton-Brown.’
‘Right,’ she replied. ‘You’ve come to see the Dad.’ And with a zizzing sound the gate swung open.
While the unseen hounds continued to bay, I was presented with a vision that caused me to laugh out loud. Straight ahead across a patch of worn grass about the size of a tennis court was the most gigantic log cabin I’d ever seen. I had read about them in building trade magazines, complete kits built in Canada or northern United States, shipped over and assembled in situ, but had never actually stood in front of one until now.
This was two storeys high, with a massive glass prow front in the centr
e and to one side a wide pine staircase leading from the grass up to a wooden deck supported on pillars running around the entire front of the house at the first-floor level.
At the top of the staircase stood the man I supposed was Sidney Maxton-Brown. Remember he had not been brought up into the court when the trial was suspended and I had not returned to witness him being sentenced so I didn’t know what he looked like. In the intervening days since making the phone call I had many times imagined what this man might look like: one of my images had been of an overweight, balding, thick-spectacled man looking all of fifty-five years old, wearing a green cardigan over greasy shirt and green pants that his belly had turned over at the top to show his white underpants and the grimy grey trouser lining, and I’d been entirely right, except his trousers were brown. Next to him stood a woman of about the same age; she had flat, greasy, muddy-coloured hair streaked with grey, a scoopnecked turquoise T-shirt and a grubby floral skirt whose elasticated waist rested just below her flabby flat breasts.
Several times in and out of the building game I had met people who each morning splashed on the authentic perfume of evil. Men from whom you wanted to run every second that you were laughing and joking and dancing in their company; for instance most members of the Gorci and the Muke families that I’d been at school with made me feel exactly like that, even though I’d always. been extremely popular with all of them. One of the conversations me and my friends had had every few years was what our special gift was; we thought each of us had one. Sage Pasquale’s special gift was that she never ever stepped in dog shit; she could be walking down a pitch-black alley at night but somehow her foot would always swerve away from any pile of canine crap lying in ambush. Colin could invariably tell what people’s pets were called, Loyd could always guess a person’s shoe size; they all agreed that my gift was that I got along with absolutely everyone. I supposed that quality must come in useful when you were about to meet someone who had killed your five best friends. Except that I didn’t think I was like that any more, that friendly fellow had gone. Well, I needed to call him up again for this task.