by Olivia Levez
Suz is letting her devil sticks fly at all angles. They land, a burning circle around the men, a pigeon’s breath away from their eyes, their ears, their hair. Fairground Man takes a step towards Suz, hands outstretched, and she is onto him instantly, letting another of those batons fly. It loops over his head and narrowly misses his right eye. And now he’s on the ground. Did a baton hit him after all? He’s clutching his head and is moaning.
Suz is hunkered down, fists clenched, in her mad woollen coat, a dark figure, eyes blazing. With her dreadlocks high and wild around her head, she looks like Medusa.
‘She’s crazy.’
‘Mad bitch. Let’s go.’
I get my own fire back. Grab Hash and grapple with him, punch his shoulders, stomach, face.
Feels good. I feel strong.
He can’t take it. The thump and shudder of the boards as he runs off.
‘Bind the other one! Tie him up!’
Suz throws me lengths of something hot and spiky. Fairy lights. They’re lit by battery, metres and metres of them. She helps me bundle the lights round Fairground Man, her knee on his chest. I can tell she’s in pain with her leg by the way she’s gasping, but she doesn’t stop, and for a moment I think she’s going to kill him; his eyes are bulging in the orange lights, like there’s still fire in them. Like there’s hell in them.
‘Wind it round the bastard. Let’s dig a hole. Drown him.’
I force the lights over and under and around him until he’s trussed like a Christmas turkey.
‘Help me move him.’
Somehow we’re pushing him, shoving him onto a boat. It’s rotten, like him. There’s a stench of dead birds and guano and ancient fish, long caught and decayed.
‘Leave him there. Just leave him.’
Suz kicks open the door of the cabin as I wrestle him inside. Lobster pots and coils of rope and things half-rotten. A horror show.
‘Get him inside.’
We ram rotting planks of wood against the door. He’s not going anywhere soon. Leave him to stew in his own stench.
He’s trying to plead, to beg.
‘Should have thought of that, shouldn’t you?’
Suz shoves him with her good knee. Hard. Winds him.
I want to punch and throttle him. I restrain myself.
When we look back, we can still see him through the window, twinkling orange: on-off, on-off. If he’s shouting, we can’t hear him.
Barbie Dolls
Suz starts to walk away. I stare. Rain drums, harder than ever.
She’s shrinking, a dark figure in the hissing street lights.
I hurry after her. Take her by one wet woollen sleeve and force her round to look at me.
‘You!’ I say. ‘You. You took everything, all my money. Everything I had.’
I press my face up to hers, and I am screaming now, into that wet, shiny, rain-run face. I note with satisfaction the flash of fear that she replaces, quick as a whip, with a careful blankness.
‘You conned me. You made me think you were my friend –’
‘I needed to survive. It’s what I do… it’s what I know –’
‘Where is it, I’ll –’
I’m searching through her stuff now; I’ve grabbed the handle of her case, and we’re playing tug-of-war with her devil-sticks.
‘I’ll have them!’ I scream – somewhere I hear my voice scream. ‘Give them to me. I’ll have these instead, you thieving, awful cow –’
She’s breathing hard; I can smell the hot, sour stink of her breath. She yanks the case from me and staggers back, almost falls, but gets her balance. I’m just left with her binbag of crap. Under the street lamp, I pull handfuls of useless, smelly stuff out, all over the shining pavement, and she’s on her hands and knees, just as quickly scooping them up and trying to shove them back.
And I’m still shouting, my voice raw and wet and vicious: ‘Where is it? Where’s my money, you tramp?’ I call her worse names, vile names that I’ve dug deep to find. Words with spitting consonants and short, harsh vowels. And all the time I’m pulling out holey tights and crumpled clothes and unwashed socks and filthy towels and strange, stupid things: tiny ballet shoes with grubby ribbons; a bent and naked Barbie doll with dog-chewed hair; a carrier bag stuffed with pigeon feathers; a glue gun; a packet of pumpkin seeds; fistfuls of paper origami birds; a splay of sherbet-filled plastic straws; a pocket guide to Paris.
‘Stop it!’ she’s saying. ‘Leave my stuff. Leave –’
She kicks me, hard, in my shin, and I yelp and groan, watch through the rain as she scrabbles to pick up her stuff, then grabs her bags and limps away.
‘You’re mad,’ she shouts over her shoulder. ‘Crazy – off your tree.’ She loops through the streets, criss-crossing over the plaza, zig-zagging across the road. A lone paper bird sinks into a puddle.
‘You come back!’ I bawl.
I need to let it all out – I can’t focus for the moment, for rage. Around me, the fatty fug of chips, doughnuts, popcorn.
Suz is running up the steps now – I can just make out her form, moving towards the top of West Hill.
She’s not getting away with this.
I give chase, and I am faster. Even with the lack of food, without training, all those years of riding and gymnastics and dance classes have paid off.
I find her, panting, by the bench beneath the sycamore trees. She’s bending over, coughing.
‘Please don’t…take…my kit,’ she says. It’s there on the steps, streaming lamp-lit rain, golden against its silver sides.
‘You can stick your fire kit. Where’s my money? I want my money. It was my savings – everything I had.’ Each sentence brought out, forced out, as I’m gripping her shoulders, and she’s surprisingly thin under all that wool. Her clothes smell sour: rank, wet wool and something old and savoury and unwashed. She gives in, very suddenly. The rain over us streams through shiny laurel leaves, on the greasy path.
‘I don’t have it,’ she says, and it’s like she’s waiting for me to hit her. She’s closed her eyes, and her face looks otherworldly, as if she’s a pixie or a sprite. Her cheekbones harsh-shadowed under her hood. I let her go in disgust.
‘Take your stupid fire sticks,’ I say. I sink down onto the bench. In loving memory of Edith, who liked to sit here. Dimly, I wonder who Edith was, and why she liked to sit here; it’s a terrible place to sit, a dark, dog-walker’s alley. I put my head in my hands. My mind, which was jumping and fizzing, is now simply numb.
There’s a creak as Suz sits down too.
‘It’s gone,’ she says, when she can speak again.
I look up.
‘All right?’ Her chin is defiant. ‘It’s all gone. I needed to pay some people what I owed, and there’s nothing left.’
I give up. We sit, clawing for breath, on the slimed bench. Down below, the sea snakes and ripples with red and yellow street lights.
‘And my pills?’
She shakes her head.
‘So, that’s it then,’ I say.
‘That’s it,’ she agrees.
I don’t know what to do. I have nothing.
I think of how I can pull myself out of this mess.
No 1: Find a phone. Ring Daddy.
No 2: Speak to Daddy.
No 3: Wait for a while, not for long; it may be only a matter of hours. Get in his car. It will be big and sleek and valeted, and it will smell of new leather and newer money. It will be driven by his chauffeur, the one who likes to watch French movies late at night and pace around the lake smoking his strong cigarettes. When I was younger, I would pick them up and smell them. Once, I tried to light one and smoke it. It tasted of loneliness and the time before dawn when the sky is still violet.
No 4: Be driven all the way back to Oxfordshire. Enter the house. Up our driveway. Shoes off. Hot bath. Food, prepared by Martyna and served with a scowl. A pair of shoes, in the hall, silly-high, alien. A house drenched in perfume, heavy and sweet and strong. There may still be confetti caugh
t up in the lawn; a paper lantern in hot pink tugging at the willows or in the lake amongst the reeds.
There’ll be the ping of the microwave, laughter in the kitchen and the clink of glasses.
For me, a hurried telephone call, smooth promises and a determined smile.
A uniform, freshly cleaned and pressed, laid out; a trunk, freshly packed.
Another long car journey. Girls’ stares. Whispers.
Counselling. Counselling. Counselling.
I can’t do it.
I can never go home.
I stand up. Begin to walk. I am no one. I have nowhere to go. No one wants me.
‘Wait.’
Suz is back, coughing still, limping after me.
‘Go away.’
‘I can help you.’
‘I don’t need your help. Leave me alone.’
‘I’ve got somewhere to stay.’
I shake her off, and head towards the seafront, towards St Leonards. I don’t know where I’m going, and I can tell she knows that I don’t know. It makes me angry again.
‘It isn’t much,’ she calls. ‘I can help you.’
‘Are you mad? Why would I need your help?’
‘You don’t have anywhere. I saved you. From those fellers. I have skills I could teach you, remember?’
The rain streams. My bag is sodden against my back. I slow down.
‘It’s not far,’ she shouts. ‘I’ve got tea.’
I stop.
A cup of hot tea sounds good. Tomorrow, I think, I will get sorted out tomorrow. I will make decisions, make a list. I will ask at the café if they can put me up, let me work for them –
I –
I can’t go back.
I turn to Suz.
‘Just for the night,’ I say. ‘You owe me.’
We reach the place by climbing a fire escape. It’s rusted and peeling, and has seen better days. The house is one of those big Edwardian ones with a sea view if you crane your neck far enough. It looks like it’s in the process of being done up; scaffolding cages the front.
‘Look,’ says Suz. ‘You can just see the pier – see that?’
She hangs right off the ladder, craning her neck. It’s still hissing rain, but she doesn’t move. She’s staring out to the small patch of sea, biting her lip. ‘I effing love that place,’ she says. ‘Cried my eyes out when it burnt down.’ Then she seems to collect herself.
‘Quiet for this part,’ she hisses. I watch as she swings herself up off the steps and onto the roof. It’s broad and wide and someone’s made an effort with a tiny roof garden: a hammock and a bit of trellising and a plastic sack of soil with a few straggling tomato plants.
‘Quick, they’re home,’ she mouths. She treads softly over the roof and past a skylight. Below, steam rises, curryscented. Someone’s cooking.
Over this side of the roof it’s much scruffier. Lumps of broken concrete, and a child’s bicycle. A rusted barbecue bucket. A pile of baskets. And everywhere, chalked drawings: overlapping flowers and strange animals and cities with melted skylines and Kafka-esque dead-ends and Escher-esque alleyways. It’s like some monstrous and beautiful tattoo.
Except the rain is melting it.
Suz slushes through the chalk-slime, and pushes aside a stack of plastic, weather-warped tubs and crates. There are sticks and branches and metal poles and toy dinosaurs and mirrors and odd shoes and wellies with flowers and checks and squiggles and footballs and tennis balls.
A broken ironing board.
An old-style TV set with a smashed screen.
A table with no legs.
A hula hoop.
A lampshade, mustard yellow.
A leather Chesterfield sofa, with a ripped and ruined seat. Pinned-up feathers on a washing line.
‘They can’t see us here,’ Suz says.
I don’t ask who ‘they’ are. I am shivering violently. All of a sudden, I feel tired and ill.
The skylight on this side is covered by a rug that once must have been lovely. Now it is beaten and old and rat-tugged.
‘There’s no light,’ Suz whispers. ‘You have to feel your way. Just follow me.’
I watch Suz reach down the matching skylight on this side, and fiddle with something until she’s satisfied.
‘You have to be careful – there’s a drop before you reach the ladder. But it’s totally safe, if you know what you’re doing.’ She gives me a quick smile, and vanishes down the hatch, hands gripping the frame for a moment, and then they too disappear.
I shuffle my way forward on my bottom. I don’t know if I can ever stand up again. Maybe it was all the running, or I’m suffering from delayed shock from what happened at the beach, but I can’t seem to stop shaking. I slide my legs down the hole and try to feel for the top of the ladder; feel Suz’s hand grip my ankle and guide me. Close my eyes for a moment, and then half-slide, half-fall onto the ladder, and down it to the passage below.
It’s a house of horror.
Abandoned. Dark. Musty.
‘Used to be a shop. A department store,’ Suz says. She busies herself, removing her cardigan, hanging it on a shop dummy with an afro wig and yellow John Lennon glasses. One of its arms is raised and holding a plastic wand. Suz pauses to examine a tooth in the blade of a vintage-looking ice skate with no laces. She sees me watching, and beams her crooked, broken smile; gestures vaguely around with the ice skate.
‘Wonderful, don’t you think?’
It isn’t wonderful. It smells, and it’s horrid.
A counter in fifties’ laminate looms ghostlike. Everything smells sour, like old garlic, potatoes, things left in the dark to fester and push out invisible threads. We pass a cubbyhole with a blackened toilet.
‘Watch your footing. We have to climb over rafters to get to my kitchen.’
I nod, and wish I could stop shivering.
‘There’s no floor on this bit. It’s my mezzanine,’ Suz says. Her eyes are watching me closely. I realise that she is proud of this place, that it’s her home, and she’s desperate for me to like it.
I swallow. ‘It’s lovely,’ I say.
She looks gratified. ‘Come on, I’ll make you tea. And sausages,’ she says ‘I’m totally vegan, but I do eat sausages.’
Balanced on the rafters are jars of lentils and pulses and beans and flour, peanut butter and jam and chocolate spread. Strung around the beams are fairy lights and strings of paper birds.
‘I can’t eat animals,’ she says. ‘I feel their pain. Like a tight band. Makes me stop breathing. These are my Suz sausages. Sit down, come on. I’ll cook some for you.’
I look around, but there’s nowhere to sit: only the rafters and a filthy-looking pile of cushions and mattresses pushed under the roof.
Suz laughs. ‘Just don’t look down,’ she says. She takes her boots off and walks straight across the beam and back without looking, stoops to pick up a plastic bowl with a cloth over it. There’s a little camping stove in the corner and she sits cross-legged in front of it and starts frying whatever’s in the bowl until it starts to throw out acrid smoke, all the time casting me sidelong glances.
I sit on a beam, and try to take off my damp coat, give up, sit staring down to the dusty sheeted floor below and wondering how much courage it would take just to slide off and drop.
‘Ta-da!’ she says. ‘Suz’s sausages. Made of lentils, flour and peanut butter.’ She passes me the pan and a fork.
They are truly awful. Dusty and old-tasting. I try to eat, but all I want to do is to lie down somewhere and maybe never wake up.
Suz is passing me something hot and steaming. I take the chipped mug. The Cadbury’s Easter bunny leers up at me and winks. I hope it’s tea. It isn’t.
It tastes…hot. There are things floating, which look like husks of bugs.
‘Cardamom tea,’ she says. ‘From the market. They have spices…on offer, kind of.’
I imagine her filling her pockets. I sip, and try not to mind that the mug is deeply stained. Like
the bottom of a pen pot, scribbled round and round with biro. The tea tastes of perfume.
I shiver again.
‘Hey, you’re cold,’ she says. ‘And still wet. Here –’
She helps me take off my soaking coat, and I just let her; I don’t care any more. I let myself lean forward as she peels away my damp top and rubs me vigorously with a gross-looking, evil-smelling tea towel.
‘Come on, you can have my bed to lie down on, it’s totally fine.’
I let her lead me to the stinking sheets on the stained and awful mattress, and I lie down, and close my eyes. When I open them, Suz is hovering over me like a mother hen, and behind her is a row of naked Barbie dolls.
‘There,’ Suz says. ‘There you go. That’s better.’ I feel like she’s rubbing away yet another layer of myself.
Soon, there will nothing of me left.
Dream-dancer
My mother’s face turns to me, smiles, as she pats her hair. ‘Come,’ she says, beckoning me to sit on her lap. Her hair smells of rose oil and magic.
‘I will teach you to fly,’ she whispers. ‘Close your eyes now.’
And I climb onto her lap and I close my eyes as she wets her finger and smooths cool powder over each eyelid, applies kohl with a thin brush.
‘Now stand against the wall,’ she smiles. ‘Go on, pretty one.’
I run to where she is pointing; it is a round board and I am to stretch out my arms like a star.
‘And your feet too,’ my mother’s voice says. ‘Keep your eyes closed.’
So I stand with my arms and feet outstretched and my butterfly eyes, and I laugh as my mother sends something whistling past my ear. It digs with a thwack into the board. There’s another, by the right side of my head, and all around my legs, pinpointing me like a dot-to-dot picture.
But I am scared.
I do open my eyes. And this is when I begin to cry, because Mother is smiling and laughing with her curved red lips, hurling knives at me, one after another, and now she’s coming closer; her face is that of a giant, like the troll in my fairy tale book who frightened me with his big red lips and huge globe eyes.
‘Stop it,’ I say. ‘I want to fly.’
But she’s still throwing the knives, and they sing as they land.