Collected Stories

by Bernard Maclaverty

  He stood up from the kneeling position and closed the sketchbook lying on the bed. He might work on the drawings later. Or just fix them as they were. He walked to the window. Dawn would not be for hours yet. In America his brother would be getting ready for bed. Tomorrow would be time enough. He could phone from Mrs Rankin’s this afternoon sometime – and a death certificate would be needed. There was nothing he could do at the moment, except perhaps tie up the jaw. The Miss Harts when they arrived would know everything that ought to be done.

  PHONEFUN LIMITED

  WHEN SHE HEARD the whine of the last customer’s fast spin – a bearded student with what seemed like a year’s supply of Y-fronts – Sadie Thompson changed her blue nylon launderette coat for her outdoor one and stood jingling the keys by the door until he left. It was dark and wet and the streets reflected the lights from the shop windows. She had to rush to get to the Spar before it closed, and was out of breath – not that she had much to buy, potatoes, sugar and tea-bags. In the corner shop she got her cigarettes, the evening paper and a copy of Men Only, which she slipped inside the newspaper and put in her carrier bag. She slowly climbed the steep street in darkness because the Army had put out most of the street lights. She turned in at Number ninety-six. The door stuck momentarily on a large envelope lying on the mat.

  She had the table set and the dinner ready for Agnes when she came in.

  ‘Hello, Sadie, love,’ she said and kissed her on the cheek. Beside Sadie, Agnes was huge. She wore an expensive silver-fox fur coat. Sadie did not like the coat and had said so. It was much too much for a woman whose only job was cleaning the local primary school.

  ‘I’m knackered,’ said Agnes, kicking off her shoes and falling into the armchair. There was a hole in the toe of her tights.

  ‘Take off your coat, your dinner’s ready,’ said Sadie.

  ‘Hang on. Let me have a fag first.’

  She lit up a cigarette and put her head back in the chair. Sadie thought she looked a putty colour. She was grossly overweight but would do nothing about it, no matter what Sadie said.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I’ll be all right in a minute. It’s that bloody hill. It’s like entering the Olympics.’

  ‘If you ask me, you’re carrying too much weight. When did you last weigh yourself?’

  ‘This morning.’

  ‘And what were you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Agnes laughing, ‘I was afraid to look.’

  With her head back like that her fat neck and chin were one. There were red arcs of lipstick on the cork-tip of her cigarette. Sadie served the mash and sausages.

  ‘Sit over,’ she said. Agnes stubbed her cigarette out and, groaning for effect, came to the table still wearing her coat.

  ‘You’d think to hear you that you’d cleaned that school by yourself.’

  ‘It feels like I did.’ Agnes raised her fork listlessly to her mouth. ‘Did the post come?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Much?’

  ‘It feels fat.’

  ‘Aw God no.’

  ‘You’ll have to brighten up a bit. Don’t be so glum.’

  ‘God, that’s a good one coming from you, Sadie. I don’t think I’ve seen you smiling since Christmas.’

  ‘I’m the brains. You’re supposed to be the charm. I don’t have to smile.’ They ate in silence except for the sound of their forks making small screeches against the plate.

  ‘I wish you’d take off your coat when you’re eating. It looks that slovenly,’ said Sadie. Agnes heaved herself to her feet, took off her coat and flung it on the sofa. She turned on the transistor. The news was on so she tuned it to some music.

  ‘I need a wee doze before I brighten up. You know that, Sadie.’

  ‘I suppose I’m not tired after a day in that bloody laundryette?’

  Agnes nibbled her sausage at the front of her closed mouth, very quickly, like a rabbit. The music on the radio stopped and a foreign voice came on and babbled.

  ‘That’s a great programme you picked.’

  ‘It’s better than the Northern Ireland news.’

  The foreign voice stopped and music came on again. Agnes finished what was on her plate.

  ‘Is there anything for afters?’

  ‘You can open some plums if you want.’

  Agnes lurched out to the tiled kitchen and opened a tin of plums. She threw the circle of lid into the bucket and came back with the tin and a spoon.

  ‘It’s cold on your feet out there. There’s a draught coming in under that door that would clean corn.’ She ate the plums from the tin. Some juice trickled on to her chin.

  ‘Want some?’ She offered the half-finished tin to Sadie, but she refused.

  ‘It’s no wonder you’re fat.’

  ‘It oils my voice. Makes it nice for the phone.’

  ‘I got you a Men Only if you run out of inspiration. It’s there on the sideboard.’

  ‘Thanks, love, but I don’t think I’ll need it.’ Agnes drank off the last of the juice from the tin.

  ‘You’ll cut your lip one of these days,’ said Sadie, ‘don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

  Agnes lit a cigarette and rolled one across the table to Sadie. She dropped the dead match into the tin.

  ‘That was good,’ she said. ‘I’m full to the gunnels.’ She slapped her large stomach with the flat of her hand in satisfaction. The foreigner began to speak gobbledegook again.

  ‘Aw shut up,’ said Sadie. ‘Men are all the same no matter what they’re speaking.’ She twiddled the knob until she got another station with music. Almost immediately the music stopped and a man with a rich American drawl began to speak.

  ‘Aw God, Sadie, do you remember the Yanks? He sounds just like one I had.’

  ‘Will I ever forget them? They could spend money all right.’

  ‘That’s exactly like his voice. It’s the spit of him.’

  ‘Give us a light.’ Agnes leaned over and touched Sadie’s cigarette with her own. Sadie pulled hard until it was lit.

  ‘I fancied him no end,’ said Agnes. ‘He was lovely. I think it was his first time but he pretended it wasn’t.’

  ‘I think you told me about him.’

  ‘My Yankee Doodle Dandy, I called him. I can still feel the stubble of his haircut. It was like he had sandpapered up the back of his neck. Blondie. We sort of went together for a while.’

  ‘You mean he didn’t pay.’

  ‘That kind of thing.’

  ‘Better clear this table.’ Sadie put the cigarette in her mouth, closing one eye against the trickle of blue smoke and began to remove the dirty plates. Ash toppled on to the cloth. She came back from the kitchen and gently brushed the grey roll into the palm of her other hand and dropped it into Agnes’s tin. Agnes said,

  ‘You wash and I’ll dry.’

  ‘What you mean is I’ll wash and put them in the rack and then about ten o’clock you’ll come out and put them in the cupboard.’

  ‘Well, it’s more hygienic that way. I saw in the paper that the tea-towel leaves germs all over them.’

  ‘You only read what suits you.’

  Sadie went out into the kitchen to wash up the dishes. She heard the programme on the radio finish and change to a service with an American preacher. It kept fading and going out of focus and was mixed up with pips of Morse Code. When she had finished she washed out the tea-towel in some Lux and hung it in the yard to dry. She could do her own washing at the launderette but she hated lugging the bagful of damp clothes home. There was such a weight in wet clothes. If she did that too often she would end up with arms like a chimpanzee. When she went back into the living room Agnes was asleep in her armchair beside the radio with a silly smile on her face.

  Sadie picked up the large envelope off the sideboard and opened it with her thumb and spilled out the pile of envelopes on to the table. She began to open them and separate the cheques and money. On each letter she marked down the amount of money c
ontained and then set it to one side. Agnes began to snore wetly, her head pitched forward on to her chest. When she had all the letters opened, Sadie got up and switched off the radio. In the silence Agnes woke with a start. Sadie said,

  ‘So you’re back with us again.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You were sound asleep.’

  ‘I was not. I was only closing my eyes. Just for a minute.’

  ‘You were snoring like a drunk.’

  ‘Indeed I was not. I was just resting my eyes.’

  The ticking of the clock annoyed Agnes so she switched the radio on again just in time to hear ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’ being sung in a smooth American drawl. She tuned it to Radio One. Sadie said,

  ‘Hymns give me the creeps. That Billy Graham one. Euchh!’ She shuddered. ‘You weren’t in Belfast for the Blitz, were you?’

  ‘No, I was still a nice country girl from Cookstown. My Americans all came from the camp out at Larrycormack. That’s where my Yankee Doodle Dandy was stationed. You stuck it out here through the Blitz?’

  ‘You can say that again. We all slept on the Cavehill for a couple of nights. Watched the whole thing. It was terrible – fires everywhere.’

  ‘Sadie, will you do my hair?’

  Sadie took the polythene bag bulging with rollers from under the table and began combing Agnes’s hair.

  ‘It needs to be dyed again. Your roots is beginning to show.’

  ‘I think I’ll maybe grow them out this time. Have it greying at the temples.’

  Sadie damped each strand of hair and rolled it up tight into Agnes’s head, then fixed it with a hairpin. With each tug of the brush Agnes let her head jerk with it.

  ‘I love somebody working with my hair. It’s so relaxing.’ Sadie couldn’t answer because her mouth was bristling with hairpins. Agnes said,

  ‘How much was there in the envelopes?’

  ‘Hengy-hee oung.’

  ‘How much?’

  Sadie took the hairpins from her mouth.

  ‘Sixty-eight pounds.’

  ‘That’s not bad at all.’

  ‘You’re right there. It’s better than walking the streets on a night like this.’

  ‘If it goes on like this I’m going to give up my job in that bloody school.’

  ‘I think you’d be foolish. Anything could happen. It could all fall through any day.’

  ‘How could it?’

  ‘I don’t know. It all seems too good to be true. The Post Office could catch on. Even the Law. Or the tax man.’

  ‘It’s not against the law?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be too sure.’

  ‘It’s against the law the other way round but not the way we do it.’

  ‘There. That’s you finished,’ said Sadie, giving the rollers a final pat in close to her head. She held the mirror up for Agnes to see but before she put it away she looked at herself. Her neck was a dead give away. That’s where the age really showed. You could do what you liked with make-up on your face but there was no way of disguising those chicken sinews on your neck. And the back of the hands. They showed it too. She put the mirror on the mantelpiece and said,

  ‘Are you ready, Agnes?’

  ‘Let’s have a wee gin first.’

  ‘O.K.’

  She poured two gins and filled them to the brim with tonic. Agnes sat over to the table. When she drank her gin she pinched in her mouth with the delightful bitterness.

  ‘Too much gin,’ she said.

  ‘You say that every time.’

  Agnes sipped some more out of her glass and then topped up with tonic. She began to sort through the letters. She laughed and nodded her head at some. At others she turned down the corners of her mouth.

  ‘I suppose I better make a start.’

  She lifted the telephone and set it beside her on the table. She burst out laughing.

  ‘Have you read any of these, Sadie?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Listen to this. “Dear Samantha, you really turn me on with that sexy voice of yours. Not only me but my wife as well. I get her to listen on the extension. Sometimes it’s too much for the both of us.” Good Gawd. I never thought there was any women listening to me.’ She picked up the phone and snuggled it between her ear and the fat of her shoulder.

  ‘Kick over that pouffe, Sadie.’

  Sadie brought the pouffe to her feet. Agnes covered the hole in the toe of her tights with the sole of her other foot. She sorted through the letters and chose one.

  ‘“Available at any time.” He must be an oul’ bachelor. O three one. That’s Edinburgh isn’t it? Dirty oul’ kilty.’

  She dialled the number and while she listened to the dialling tone she smiled at Sadie. She raised her eyebrows as if she thought she was posh. A voice answered at the other end. Agnes’s voice changed into a soft purr which pronounced its -ings.

  ‘Hello is Ian there? . . . Oh, I didn’t recognise your voice. This is Samantha . . . Yes, I can hold on, but not too long.’ She covered the mouthpiece with her hand and, exaggerating her lips, said to Sadie,

  ‘The egg-timer.’

  Sadie went out to the kitchen and came back with it. It was a cheap plastic one with pink sand. She set it on the table with the full side on top.

  ‘Ah, there you are again, honey,’ whispered Agnes into the mouthpiece, ‘are you all ready now? Good. What would you like to talk about? . . . Well, I’m lying here on my bed. It’s a lovely bed with black silk sheets . . . No, it has really. Does that do something for you? Mmm, it’s warm. I have the heating turned up full. It’s so warm all I am wearing are my undies . . . Lemon . . . Yes, and the panties are lemon too . . . All right, if you insist . . .’ Agnes put the phone down on the table and signalled to Sadie to light her a fag. She made a rustling noise with her sleeve close to the mouthpiece then picked up the phone again.

  ‘There, I’ve done what you asked . . . You’re not normally breathless, are you, Ian? Have you just run up the stairs? . . . No, I’m only kidding . . . I know only too well what it’s like to have asthma.’

  She listened for a while, taking the lit cigarette from Sadie. She rolled her eyes to heaven and smiled across the table at her. She covered the mouthpiece with her hand.

  ‘He’s doing his nut.’

  Sadie topped up her gin and tonic from the gin bottle.

  ‘Do you really want me to do that? That might cost a little more money . . . All right, just for you love.’ She laughed heartily and paused. ‘Yes, I’m doing it now . . . Yes, it’s fairly pleasant. A bit awkward . . . Actually I’m getting to like it. Ohhh, I love it now . . . Say what again? . . . Ohhh, I love it.’

  She turned to Sadie.

  ‘He’s rung off. That didn’t take long. He just came and went. Who’s next?’

  Sadie flicked another letter to her.

  ‘London,’ she said. ‘Jerome. Only on Thursdays after eight.’

  ‘That’s today. Probably the wife’s night out at the Bingo.’

  She dialled the number and when a voice answered she said,

  ‘Hello Jerome, this is Samantha.’

  Sadie turned over the egg-timer.

  ‘Oh, sorry love – say that again. Ger – o – mey. I thought it was Ger – ome. Like Ger-ome Cairns, the song writer. Would you like to talk or do you want me to . . . O.K., fire away . . . I’m twenty-four . . . Blonde . . . Lemon, mostly . . . Yes, as brief as possible. Sometimes they’re so brief they cut into me.’ She listened for a moment, then covering the mouthpiece said to Sadie,

  ‘This one’s disgusting. How much did he pay?’

  Sadie looked at the letter.

  ‘Ten pounds. Don’t lose him. Do what he says.’

  ‘Yes, this is still Samantha.’ Her voice went babyish and her mouth pouted. ‘How could a nice little girl like me do a thing like that? . . . Well, if it pleases you.’ Agnes lifted her stubby finger and wobbled it wetly against her lips. ‘Can you hear that? . . . Yes, I like it . . . Yes, I have ve
ry long legs.’ She lifted her legs off the pouffe and looked at them disapprovingly. She had too many varicose veins. She’d had them out twice.

  ‘You are a bold boy, but your time is nearly up.’ The last of the pink sand was caving in and trickling through. Sadie raised a warning finger then signalled with all ten. She mouthed,

  ‘Ten pounds. Don’t lose him.’

  ‘All right, just for you . . . Then I’ll have to go,’ said Agnes and she wobbled her finger against her lips again. ‘Is that enough? . . . You just write us another letter. You know the box number? Good . . . I love you too, Ger – o – mey, Bye-eee.’ She put the phone down.

  ‘For God’s sake give us another gin,’ she said. ‘What a creep!’

  ‘It’s better than walking the street,’ said Sadie. ‘What I like about it is that they can’t get near you.’

  ‘Catch yourself on, Sadie. If anyone got near us now they’d run a mile.’

  ‘I used to be frightened of them. Not all the time. But there was one every so often that made your scalp crawl. Something not right about them. Those ones gave me the heemy-jeemies, I can tell you. You felt you were going to end up in an entry somewhere – strangled – with your clothes over your head.’

  Agnes nodded in agreement. ‘Or worse,’ she said.

  Sadie went on, ‘When I think of the things I’ve had to endure. Do you remember that pig that gave me the kicking? I was in hospital for a fortnight. A broken arm and a ruptured spleen – the bastard.’

  Agnes began to laugh. ‘Do you remember the time I broke my ankle? Jumping out of a lavatory window. Gawd, I was sure and certain I was going to be murdered that night.’

  ‘Was that the guy with the steel plate in his head?’

  ‘The very one. He said he would go mad if I didn’t stroke it for him.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘His steel plate.’

  ‘I can still smell some of those rooms. It was no picnic, Agnes, I can tell you.’

  ‘The only disease you can get at this game is an ear infection. Who’s next?’

  Sadie passed another letter to her.

  ‘Bristol, I think.’

  ‘This one wants me to breathe. Good God, what will they think of next?’