by Amanda Coe
She was damned if she was going to take that one sitting down.
‘Weren’t you thinking of signing her up for something, Hugh?’
He warded her off with his glass. ‘I wouldn’t dream of treading on your toes.’
You’d cast him like a shot as the trusty family doctor, his hand in his pocket like that, the other with his drink but confident enough for a pipe, radiating wholesome energy. Not just as good as the real thing, but better. Quentin could feel herself weakening. Unchilled, the oily vodka entered your body intimately, formalde-hyde in a corpse. Then it opened up a little space, high in your skull behind your eyes. Hugh leaned close, that intimate, devastating invasion. If it had been a movie …
‘Although it does strike me as odd that you want her to go to America to film an English part in an English book. Why not shoot it here? Cheaper all round, for a start. I could handle it at this end. We’d be a team. Licence to print money.’
She was Wile E Coyote, pedalling the air before the fact that she’d run out of cliff caught up with her.
‘We’re both adults,’ he insisted.
She plummeted. ‘You know what? You are so fucking wrong about that.’
And she launched herself off, landing near Mike, who had been abandoned by the dwarf. When she saw Hugh again, towards the end of the night, he had gathered in both Lallie and Katrina. Lallie was back doing impressions, urged on by cast and crew. Personally, Quentin was truly beyond caring. Until next time, she wasn’t going to care about anything ever again.
IT’S ALL PAULINE’S idea. I can’t go home because I’ll get done. If there’s one thing that sends Mum mental, it’s me not looking after my clothes. Getting them dirty’s bad enough, and the dress is certainly dirty, but there’s the big hole I’ve torn under the arm as well because of Pauline. I can’t even blame Pauline either, because Mum’ll go even more mental if I say I’ve been playing with her. I feel sick just thinking about it. Ever since she’s been with Ian, Mum’s temper has been scarier. It’s always been scary, but now you can tell she likes staying angry, and it’s usually with me. And Ian always joins in as well, not angry but sad, because as far as he’s concerned I should be looking after my mother since she’s precious and I only get the one. The second time he said that to me, I nearly said that that might not be true as I seemed to have ended up with two dads, but Mum was in the room, and it would have been a guaranteed slap to the back of the legs. At least. Pointing out that the proper arrangement was her looking after me would also have earned me a slap, but that was true too. Ian’s mad on Mum being looked after, as though she’s fragile, like the sad clown with balloons at Nana’s I’m not allowed to get down from the mantelpiece. Maybe Mum seems like that to him because she’s so much thinner than his good lady. For saying that I’d probably have been killed.
But now I’m going to get done, properly done. Not just for the dress, but for staying out so long without permission. It’s later than teatime already, hours past it. On top of that, probably when Pauline and I were rolling around fighting on the Town Fields, I’ve managed to lose my library ticket. I can’t begin to imagine what lies in store: thinking about it, I reach the door and Mum’s face, and my imagination faints. The later it gets, the more trouble I know I’m in. I want tomorrow to come, and for it all to be over, but it gets harder to think of going back with every minute that runs out of the day. I want to run away, but I don’t know where to. I know after the last time that Dad won’t let me run away to him but, just in case, we go down our old road to the house, and I make Pauline wait by the gate while I try ringing the bell. There’s no one there. It’s too late now for Dad still to be at work. He always comes straight home, usually for his tea and his wash and shave and telly. The bell rings on, into emptiness. It’s no good. There’s no one to help me.
‘I thought you said we’d get chips.’
Pauline and I walk round and round, and sit and eat chips and walk again, and nothing we think of makes it any better, until she suggests the launderette.
That’s what comes first. Why don’t we go in there and wash my dress, Pauline says, and I can recognize that’s a good idea. Some of the shops have closed, but the launderette stays open late, I’ve seen it from the bus on winter nights. But when we get there of course the 12p I’ve got left isn’t enough; to wash and dry the dress will take 30p. Pauline suggests we just wash it, which is 20p, and then I tell Mum I was walking underneath a window-cleaner’s ladder while he was emptying his bucket to explain why it’s wet. I know this isn’t going to work, and besides, we’re short even for the wash. Pauline doesn’t care. While I watch, terrified, she unclasps the purse left on one of the orange chairs by a lady who is distracted by wrestling her sopping sheets into the drier. It’s the same lady we’ve asked about the prices, which makes it worse, but Pauline palms the silver like she’s been given permission. A 10p and two fives – enough for the drier as well. She’d take more if she could, I can see, but I’m frowning furious disapproval, although I don’t dare say anything, because the lady will hear, and we’ll get caught, and I’ll be in as much trouble as Pauline. We might even go to prison. I feel hot inside and out, with the desert air from the driers blowing over my skin and the sickly heat of my own fear deep within. It’s clear to me that Pauline will do anything bad, and that I’ll let her.
Next, we have to ask the woman we’ve stolen the money from for powder, because we can’t afford any. Pauline does this because she isn’t as shy as me, although I smile a lot, pleadingly. The lady gives us the powder, although she doesn’t return the smiles. Her unfriendliness makes me feel better about taking the money. We put the dress in the machine and wait, and I don’t even care that I’m sitting in the launderette in just my pants and vest for all the world to see. Well, not as much as everything else that’s bad about the day and the general run of days up to now. In the chair next to me, Pauline seems to be dozing, in that weird way she has. For the first time since we saw her on the Town Fields, I think of Lallie. I feel very far away from her. I don’t think ever in her life she’s had to sit in a launderette in her vest and pants, unless for some funny skit with Marmaduke that turned into a big song-and-dance routine. I don’t want to think about what Pauline has said Lallie does, what we fought about. I put it in the same place I put Mum’s angry face, and Ian and the suncream, and Dad’s absence, a sci-fi blank, like a pit someone gets thrown in through a door in Doctor Who. ‘For Sale’ is in there too, now. I prefer to think instead of my version of what Lallie’s doing now, a life on the set of the TV show, without parents, but looked after. The trick, like squinting with one eye and then the other so your focus hops between them, is to see her in my life, sleeping in a version of my bed, eating versions of my meals, wearing the clothes I’d prefer to be wearing, me, but better: me as Lallie. Telling myself about this usually comforts me, but now I can’t get it to stick, and I’m left sweating in my underwear, staring at Pauline. She has grey grooves under her sliding eyes, and grease from the chips we ate earlier slicks her chin. Her head jerks back brutally every time she falls asleep, so that her hair shakes and releases its sour smell, but it doesn’t stop her nodding back off. I don’t want her to go to sleep and leave me on my own. I prod her awake.
‘Mam,’ she says, her eyes still roaming. Then she realizes who I am and kicks me sharply on the side of my leg. I kick her back, just to show her. She’s already crying, though; she started in her half-sleep.
‘What are you crying for?’ I ask her.
She tells me to eff-word off, although real tears clump her eyelashes. There’s no point in insisting. And anyway, I’m now thinking that my dress will still have the tear in it, leading, with my lateness – later than ever now – to my still getting done. I point this out to her. Pauline thinks, one knee up, contorting her hand to chew the fleshy bit at the bottom of her palm. Or I think she’s thinking, since she seems to have gone away again. At least she’s not falling asleep.
Just after we’ve put the dress into the dri
er, and I feel as though I’ve lived my whole life in the launderette, like I did in the airport when our flight was delayed in Spain, a girl and a woman come in to do their washing. The woman Pauline stole from has left, and for some time we’ve been alone except for the launderette manager, who is only a muffled stream of Radio Two from the room at the back. The mother and daughter are coloured, the woman with a baggy wool coat and a hat which have nothing to do with the weather. The girl is wearing a Brownie uniform, but it’s the cardigan slipping off her domed shoulders that I recognize first as belonging to Cynthia, my bullied charge at the school dinner table. There is something very different about her. It takes me some staring to realize it’s nothing to do with her change of outfit. It’s because she’s talking to her mum and her mum is talking back to her, and she’s smiling – not the appeasing, frightened smile she produces at school, but a real smile with a giggle bubbling from it. It’s as shocking as realizing teachers have first names.
Cynthia’s mum is neither young nor old in her strange clothes. Like Cynthia, she wears cartoonishly thick glasses. I feel like a spy. The two of them, talking, laughing, unload their washing from the mum’s maroon wheeled shopper and a blue mesh bag. Cynthia is too busy and happy to notice us. Pauline is as interested as I am to begin with, then she goes back to chewing her hand. Once the washing is in the machine, Cynthia settles back in a chair at the end of our row (there are two rows of plastic chairs, back to back) and her mum hands her something from the shopper. It looks like a book. Then she gives her a yellow apple, which Cynthia puts on the chair next to her, and then, surprisingly, her mum turns and wheels the shopper off out of the launderette, leaving her alone. Cynthia swings her bare, calfless legs and sees us for the first time. She jerks her old familiar smile and caves her chest, as though we’ve already hit her. Just like that. My hello makes a point of being matter-of-fact and friendly, despite me being in my vest and pants. Very quickly, Cynthia ducks and picks up her book, which isn’t a book at all but something limp made of felt which she’s sewing. I stare at the absolutely straight white parting, like a perfect road, that divides her black hair into two stubby bunches. She doesn’t look up. Her fingers crest in and out, making stitches as her legs swing.
‘Can we have a lend of that?’ says Pauline, loud enough for me and Cynthia both to jump. Cynthia is already cowering as Pauline gets off her chair and snatches the sewing from her. It’s shaped like a small book, with white felt inside and a purple felt cover, stitched with an incomplete bouquet.
‘What’s it for?’ asks Pauline.
Cynthia mutters, glasses downcast.
‘You what?’ Whatever she says, I can see Pauline will be inclined to disbelieve her.
‘It’s a needle case,’ I explain. ‘You keep needles in it, so you don’t lose them.’
‘Can we lend it?’ Pauline says, taking it. Cynthia’s slack fingers acknowledge that this isn’t a request. I wonder what Pauline is going to do. As she pulls the needle free of its thread she briefly admires the embroidery, which is much better than the lumpy cross-stitch we occasionally produce at school.
‘You can sew your dress,’ she points out to me, and then to Cynthia, ‘Got any more cotton?’
Cynthia shakes her head. Unbothered, Pauline hands me the needle and begins to tug at the woven yellow thread attached to the buttercup petal Cynthia is stitching. The surrounding fabric buckles and bunches, but the embroidery silk doesn’t give, even when Pauline uses her teeth. It’ll be hard to smooth out what she’s done. I stand there, holding the needle, as Pauline glares at Cynthia, ready to blame her for thwarting her brainwave.
‘Nig-nog,’ she says.
I know it’s hopeless, really. I know Mum will find the hole beneath the sleeve, if not tonight, when I’ll be in enough trouble for being out so late, then another day, dealing me a double portion for my attempts at deception. But the force of Pauline’s determination blunts this knowledge. She chucks the soft booklet at Cynthia’s face, making her flinch.
‘It’s no good!’
Taking the sewing on to her lap, Cynthia’s fingers attempt to smooth the clotted stitches. ‘Sorry,’ she says, keeping her remote eyes in their bottle lenses turned away from us. She’s saying it to make us leave her alone.
‘We just need to get some cotton,’ I reassure Pauline. And then for Cynthia, in the same spirit in which I give her big portions at school dinners, ‘Embroidery stuff’s probably too thick anyway.’
But Pauline isn’t about to let go. ‘Was that yer mam?’ she demands. Cynthia nods. Suddenly, Pauline shunts forward hard on both legs so that she rams Cynthia’s shins with her own, making her slam back in her chair. Pauline’s face denies what she’s just done. ‘When’s she coming back?’
Cynthia attempts to shrug, but it isn’t good enough, and Pauline rams her again so that she gestures at the machines and says, ‘When it’s dry,’ in her almost voiceless voice.
‘Fucking nig-nog!’ Pauline grabs the sewing from her and chucks it across the row of chairs. I go to rescue it. It’s probably a present for someone, like a grandma. I wonder if I’ll ever make a present again for my grandma, since she belongs to Dad. I feel sick and tired and excited. No one comes from the back room where the radio chunters on, playing ‘The Most Beautiful Girl in the World’ by Charlie Rich. No one comes in to do their washing. Cynthia is crying, which she sometimes does at school, the type of hopeless crying you usually cry only at the end, when you’ve been crying a long time, the way Pauline was crying in her sleep.
When I pick up the needle case, I start unpicking the petal Cynthia was working on, reversing the smooth official stitches to decode the back of the felt square where the connecting lines are chaotic and random, in search of a starting knot.
‘We can just undo this bit,’ I reassure them both. Pauline is interested. She wants to do it, but I won’t let her. Her filthy hands have already greyed the white pages meant for the future needles. Once I’ve started, it’s enjoyable to undo Cynthia’s embroidery. I’m being nice to her really. It could be much worse. After all, I only need one bit of cotton to repair the hole in my dress.
As I thread the needle with the wrinkled, freed cotton, Pauline gets my dress out from the drier. It’s puckered around its seams and I realize it might have shrunk from the heat. I try to smooth it, panicked again. Everything gets worse, whatever you do. Looking up from the mess I’ve made, I see Cynthia staring out of the window, probably wondering where her mum is, and I realize that’s another mess. She might be a blackie but Cynthia’s mum is still a grown-up, and if she gets back before we’ve gone, Cynthia will dob us in. Her mum’s anger will be another route to my own mum and the final reckoning of my crimes, which now includes conclusively ruining my clothes.
‘We’ll get done if her mum comes back,’ I tell Pauline, and hoist the dress back over my head. Sure enough, it feels newly snug and comes further up my legs than before. Pauline doesn’t notice, though, so maybe it’s not as bad as I think. And at least it’s clean.
‘What about the sewing?’
‘We’ll take it with us.’
I pincer the needle and then, since I need to carry my library books, give it to Pauline. Cynthia is holding herself tense, waiting for us to go. Pauline pricks the top of her arm with the needle as we pass. Two more effortless tears crawl from beneath Cynthia’s glasses. They make me feel bad.
‘Listen,’ I say, about the needle and thread, ‘we’ll give it back.’
She doesn’t make any response at all. I may as well not have bothered to speak.
‘Promise,’ I say. ‘Swear to God.’ Which is a promise I have never in my life broken. But she doesn’t know that, does she?
‘You’re really good at sewing,’ I proffer. Pauline’s nodding me out of the door, but it feels essential to get Cynthia to know that I’m not horrible, like Pauline.
‘Tell you what, why don’t you come with us and you can sew my dress? It’s got a hole.’
I lift my arm
to show her, but her glasses don’t angle up to take it in. She’s beginning to nark me.
‘I’m rubbish at sewing,’ I tell her, which isn’t even true. I make a last attempt. ‘If you sew it for us I’ll get you something. A lolly, sweets.’ Even though we don’t have any money left. She won’t know that though, will she, until after she’s finished? And it’s true that she might do a better job than me, better than Pauline certainly, and if I sew it myself, wherever we go to I’ll have to take the dress off again outside and parade my underwear. In any case it feels very important now not to leave her alone, unconsoled, before her mum gets back. It feels important that she can’t resist us.
‘Go on,’ says Pauline, wheedling. I’m surprised she’s so instantly keen for Cynthia to come with us, but I’m grateful for the help. I pick up the needle case from where it’s slipped to the floor, square its soft pages.
‘It’s really nice.’
Patiently, I hold it in front of her and in the end she stands to take it. Then she shuffles with me to the door, as though she has no choice. I feel like I’ve won. She must believe I’m not horrible.
‘Is it a present?’
She nods.
‘Who for?’
Outside, the low sun is about to be swallowed by buildings. I wonder if my dad is at home yet, having his wash and shave. Pauline and I both seem to know we need to be somewhere where there are no people. We walk for a bit, and although Cynthia casts a look back a couple of times as streets grow between us and the launderette, she doesn’t say anything. She could say something, and if she did, I would listen to her, but she chooses not to. I know she can speak up, now I’ve seen her with her mum, so it’s her own fault. There’s no pushing even, now she’s walking with us.
Once we reach the Town Fields, I lead the way to the back of the pavilion. It’s boarded up and shabby and is the only destin ation, apart from our school, in the whole space. It’s never been used by the school, as far as I know. As far as I know, it’s never been used by anyone, although it must have been built for a reason. It has Tudor beams and pebble-dashed gables at the top and powdered glass and cigarette ends at the bottom. The rubbish accumulates on the side away from the road, screened from both the wind and a human view. Standing there, I raise my arm, ready for Cynthia to sew up the tear. She’s ner vous about it, because of my skin being so close to the material, especially now the dress has shrunk.