Utterly Monkey

by Nick Laird

  ‘I will come over, you know.’

  ‘I know you will. Maybe you’ll even like it and stay.’

  ‘But what about Steve?’ She looked up, the big eyes all panda-dark now with smudged make-up.

  ‘Well, only come if you and Steve finish then.’ Malandra was in love. Steve sold and fixed lawnmowers. He’d been round for tea about a month ago and Janice’s dad had requested that, if the event was ever to be repeated, he receive advance written warning. Steve had spent dinner debating, out loud but with himself, whether an electric or petrol machine would be better for the scorched patch of ten foot by eight at the back of their house.

  ‘But that’s never going to happen.’ Another spell of sobs. ‘We’ll stay together and then I’ll never get to see you.’

  ‘Malandra, honey, calm down.’ Janice was whispering. ‘Catch yourself on. You know what’ll happen. Chances are I’ll be home in two weeks and be straight back to Martin’s, straight back to this bed.’ She glanced round her. The room hadn’t changed in a long time. The white walls were empty but pockmarked with Blu-tack and scraped in places. The doors of her wardrobe were still lying open and the insides of the doors were plastered with posters that had somehow escaped the periodic cullings. They all seemed to be of pop bands that had long since disbanded: Take That, The Spice Girls, even New Kids on the Block. They’d all gone now even though she was still here, still sitting on this bed, with this same swirly carpet, and the same little sister crying in her arms. This scene could be from any of the last fifteen years. Malandra sat up and her shoulder blades flattened against Janice’s arm.

  ‘Do you think then, if you don’t come back, that I could have this room? It’s much bigger than mine.’

  Janice was making the tea when Budgie came in. She was grilling gammon steaks and had turned the deep fat fryer on to do chips. She was remembering how as a kid she used to like the sound the basket made when it was sunk into the oil, the hissing and spitting of a cornered cat. You stop noticing those sorts of things. Malandra, face newly made-up, had gone to the shop to get eggs. Her mum was in the living room sewing up a rip in the back of one of her dad’s jumpers. No one knew where he was–meaning exactly which bookie’s or pub–but it was certain that he would turn up on the stroke of seven. He’d sit down at the table and wait on his tea, chatty with the stories from the papers he’d spent all day reading. Budgie had gone straight up to his room. She knew it was him by the way he clumped up the staircase. He always made the house smaller somehow when he entered it, even if he wasn’t in the same room. He could fix his own food anyway. She wasn’t making him anything. There was a yelp from the landing above, then a bang and a sound like something falling down the stairs but it was only Budgie again, moving faster than usual, descending and bursting into the living room. The door from the kitchen was slightly ajar.

  ‘You know she’s only fucking going to London…MUM…I said you know she’s only fucking going to London.’ Janice could hear the low murmur of her mother’s voice in reply but couldn’t make out the words. She smoked forty a day and her voice was an effortful growl. She was the only one who could deal with Budgie, and then only sometimes.

  ‘I can’t fucking believe this.’ Janice was sure Budgie was standing with his back to the fireplace. Her mum would be flopped on the sofa, her head down and the sewing up close to her face. She heard the rhythm of her minimal voice again. She would be asking him not to curse.

  ‘Well, you’re just as useless. This whole family’s fucking useless.’

  Janice braced herself for the kitchen door to swing open and Budgie to pound through it. She had horrible thoughts about the deep fat fryer, of him pushing her hand into it, of her throwing it over him. He had better not touch her. If he laid one more finger on her…she looked around and saw weapons everywhere: the frying pan on the hob, scissors, a breadknife. But then, instead, the front door opened and made its habitual closing bang, and she heard her mother, voice raised to a half-croak, calling her through to the living room. Janice opened the door. Her mother sat with the sewing held up about six inches from the end of her nose. She made two more stitches, then slid the needle from the dark blue thread and bit off the loose end. With both hands she held the diamond-patterned jumper up in front of her, inspected and then lowered it. She looked at Janice and gave a feeble smile. Her hair could use a wash and condition, Janice thought, and her roots needed doing.

  ‘Darling, I think you’re going to have to go now, if you’re going to go at all.’

  ‘Well I don’t see why I should have to. Greer’s the one causing hassle.’ Janice felt like a child again, petulant and overlooked.

  ‘I don’t want you to go but Greer…the way he is he might end up hurting you…or me. If you’re still set on going you should go now. I’ll tell him you took a bus and that you’re already away on the plane.’

  ‘Where am I supposed to go?’ Janice was too tired to argue. She was thinking she could just lock the door of her bedroom but then Greer would hammer on it and her mum or dad would have to get up and calm him down.

  ‘Away across to your Auntie Ronnie’s and get her to put you in the back room. Andy’s on the roads this week so she won’t mind. Tell her to ring me if there’s a problem. And tell her that if Greer should come round…if he comes round later looking for you, tell her that she’s not to answer the door.’ Ronnie was Sharon, her mother’s sister, who lived three streets over. She was only six years older than Janice. Her husband Fat Andy was a long distance lorry driver. He seemed to spend most of his time parked up in lay-bys in England, on his mobile to Ronnie complaining about rain or the traffic. He was perfectly bald and still fresh-faced, though he must have been almost forty. His appearance, and the fact that when he was at home he just ate and slept and lay on the sofa, meant that people tended, unconsciously, to treat him as some kind of enormous baby.

  ‘Okay. I suppose that’s okay. Will she be in now?’

  ‘She should be. She never said this morning she was going anywhere. Have your tea first and then I’ll come across with you.’

  It was growing dark. As they’d walked over to Ronnie’s each held a handle of the holdall. It made Janice think of walking with little Greer, Budgie’s son, who lived over in Coagh now with his mother Jackie. Janice and her mum used to walk wee Greer between them like this, letting him swing with his feet off the ground. He’d called them gliders: ‘Let’s do gliders, Auntie Janish.’ This was probably the closest they’d get to swinging her own kid: a tattered black holdall crammed with her clothes and make-up and shoes. Greer Junior used to be round all the time but she hadn’t seen him for months. There’d been some incident with Budgie and Jackie’s dad. They weren’t allowed to ask what. Janice had unconsciously started to swing the holdall a little. She stopped. Her mum had been very quiet since they left the house.

  ‘I’ll probably be back in a week or so anyway.’

  ‘No you stay there.’ She’d said it immediately and it sounded harsh, evidently harsher than she meant since she went on, ‘I mean, I want you to make a go of it. You could do with getting away. It’s terrible sad but…’ She broke off.

  After a pause Janice said, ‘Well, sure we’ll see what happens.’ They were outside Ronnie’s tidy semi. ‘Her roses are doing well.’ Two rows of yellow rosebushes, their petals luminous in the dusk and sodium glow of the streetlights, flanked the garden path. They set the bag down and her mum opened the gate. The house looked dead apart from a single lit bulb at the back of the hall. It made the rectangular glass pane above the front door a plaque of pure light. The path was too narrow to walk abreast so Janice lugged the bag along behind her mum. There was no response when they rang the doorbell. Janice started to walk round the house to get to the back but the side-gate was locked. Her mum was surprised.

  ‘Where on earth is she? She wasn’t going anywhere. We could try her mobile. Have you got yours on you?’

  Janice took her phone from her denim jacket and handed it over. He
r mum held it for a second, seeming to weigh it, and then handed it back.

  ‘I don’t know her number anyway. Only the one for the house.’

  Just then the squat bulk of Mrs MacNeill appeared on the doorstep of the adjoining house. She wore a black felt fedora, carried a large cardboard box and was singing a tune without words. She had seen them.

  ‘Mrs Johnson! Hallo Mrs Johnson.’ She waddled over to the fence. The box she was carrying was full of old newspapers. ‘Hallo Janice.’

  ‘Hello Mrs MacNeill. Your garden’s looking very well.’

  Oddly, considering that it contained several milk crates and the scattered constituent parts of a bicycle, it did look well. She had a few rosebushes and her large rhododendron was in bloom, a little excessively perhaps, beside her wrought iron gate.

  ‘Uh-huh. The flowers look right and nice don’t they?’

  ‘They do.’

  ‘Are youse two looking for Sharon? I haven’t seen hide nor hair of her all day.’ Mrs MacNeill set the box down on her side of the low wall that separated the gardens and, straightening up, noticed the bag by their feet. ‘You off on yer holidays?’

  ‘I was going to stay at Ronnie’s tonight.’

  ‘Lot of stuff for the one night. If you need somewhere to stay love we’ve a spare room.’

  ‘No, no, I can always go back and stay at home. I’m sure Ronnie’ll be back later.’

  Janice felt her mum surreptitiously squeeze her elbow. She wasn’t sure what she meant by it.

  ‘Ach sure it’s no bother at all. And you know how Gerry loves to see you.’

  Janice knew exactly how Gerry loved to see her. He couldn’t stop fiddling in his pockets when he walked past her on the street.

  ‘He’s got some new photos in his album. You should have a wee look. Some of them are the last word.’

  Gerry’s album was famous throughout Ballyglass, although neither Janice nor anyone she knew had actually seen it. The story went that Gerry had a CB radio hooked up to speakers around the house. It was apparently set to the police band-length and, as soon as a call went out to the RUC, Gerry would get on his bike and cycle to the crime scene, often getting there before the police themselves. He always brought his camera and took pictures of whatever he saw. Janice was almost considering going into the house to take a peek when Ronnie appeared, moving fast down the pavement, clinking a blue plastic bag which was clinging tightly to its contents: two bottles of red.

  ‘Ladies, how are we all? I ran out.’ She lifted the bag towards them, swinging it. ‘Just what you don’t want on a Saturday night. C’mon in, c’mon in. What’s in the big bag Jan? Good night Mrs MacNeill.’ She bustled past them up the path.

  LATE EVENING

  Mr Terry of the reception desk had been replaced by the smiley Emma Sullivan, who wished Danny and Ellen a sprightly Good evening as she accepted their keys. Outside was still dry but it had got colder and a wind had kicked up. As it blew against them he could feel the dampness left in his hair from the bath. They stepped into the road, to cross to the Crown Liquor Saloon, and Danny unconsciously took Ellen’s elbow. She jerked it away a little sharply, but then linked her arm through his.

  The Crown was the most famous pub in the North and Danny had got drunk there before. From the outside it was a Venetian palace. Two marble pillars guarded its entrance and the whole façade was decorated with Italianate tiles of gilt and rich turquoise. Danny pushed open the doors and it was like being embraced by some love-starved aunt, one who smokes heavily and shouts. He let Ellen go first. The place was packed and softly lit. The arches at the back of the bar were fitted with mirrors decorated at the edges with painted tendrils of foliage. The booths, illuminated by gas lamps, were accessed through saloon-style swing doors, and the stained glass windows above them were backlit by the streetlamps outside on the pavement. The queue round the bar was four-deep.

  ‘It’s Saturday night.’ Danny turned to Ellen as they stood, closely together, just inside the pub’s door.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘No, I mean that’s why it’s so busy. Because it’s Saturday night.’

  ‘I knew what you meant.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Danny looked around. The bar room was lined with oak panelling. Raised highballs or pint jars glinted in the gloom and all the faces were rouged by drink and glossy with laughter. There were no seats anywhere and not much standing room. Danny thought of the hold of an emigrant ship, dark and hot and filled to the rafters with shouty Irish, excepting one quiet black girl who was standing beside him, her skin more polished and dark than the smoke-dark wood of the walls.

  ‘Will we stay here then or go somewhere else?’

  ‘What?’ Her nose crinkled.

  ‘Do you want to stay here?’

  ‘Sure. I don’t mind.’ She shrugged. She could be utterly indifferent, Danny thought.

  ‘What can I get you?’

  ‘White wine. Just a glass of white wine.’

  He nodded and left Ellen standing by a pillar. When he came back, ten minutes later, with her wine and his pint of Tennants, she was typing a message into her phone. When he reached her she slipped it back into the pocket of her raincoat.

  ‘Everything okay?’

  ‘Yep.’ She gave him a deliberately innocent look.

  Danny thought she was trying to provoke him into asking who it was she’d been texting, so he just smiled and said ‘Good,’ as though to suggest that something had just been decided between them.

  They stood at the pillar and talked about work, at first, about which trainers and partners were good to sit with and which to avoid. Ellen had only taken a job at Monks so that they’d sponsor her through two years of law school. She intended to qualify into employment and then leave a year or so later to work at a smaller firm. It turned out she was posh, or posh-ish, having been to a public school somewhere in Hampshire (‘You won’t know it…no, really you won’t know it’). Her dad worked as a building contractor and her mum was a child psychologist.

  Standing, they had nowhere to set down their glasses, and drank quickly. Ellen went to get the second round and returned almost immediately. The barman had obviously singled her out for service. This both pleased and unsettled Danny: it was another confirmation of Ellen’s attraction and yet also a confirmation that being with her must involve continually watching your back. He thought of that bit in The Golden Bough, which he’d read parts of at college, where a guy guards the tree with the golden apples. Each guard eventually gets killed and the murderer becomes the new guard and so on. He looked over at her. She was glancing around the pub, and her face, as it sometimes did, seemed so completely closed, so impassable that she was her own guard, her own defence and protection.

  Behind her, Danny noticed the snug nearest the front door become free–four short young men tumbled out through its swing doors like circus performers, boisterous with Guinness and the night’s full potential. He strode across to it, not even taking the time to tell Ellen in case the delay cost them the table. The commandeering successful, they slid in across from each other. The booth still had a bell-push which was linked to a board in one of the arches behind the bar. When the bell was pressed a disc lit up on the board for whichever snug-dwellers wanted a drink. Danny pressed it firmly, not sure it would work since the pub was so crowded. Like the back of the bar, the booth also contained little mirrors overgrown with painted flowers and foliage, and its entrance was guarded by two carvings: a sneaky-looking gryphon and a lion with his head timidly bowed. Reproachfully bearing their shields and facing each other down across the swing doors that separated and joined them, they had something of the aura of an unhappy marriage. Ellen jumped back up from the table to inspect the inscriptions on the shields.

  She read the lion’s out to Danny first, ‘Amor patriae,’ and then the gryphon’s, tracing the words with a finger, ‘Fortes fortuna iuvat. Any ideas?’

  ‘Let me think…I would say love patriots and…strength brings luck.’

>   ‘Close. Love of country and Fortune favours the brave.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  Ellen nodded. ‘School. Can’t speak any French or German but my Latin’s still pretty good.’

  ‘Unbelievable…What does it mean Love of country? That’s it?’

  She nodded again, her hand still on the gryphon’s sly head. Danny went on, ‘Not loving your country is great or loving your country is pointless?’

  Ellen turned back to the carved lion. He looked a little shyer, as if he wasn’t enjoying the attention and wanted to fade back into the weathered grain.

  ‘Nope. Just love of country.’

  ‘I suppose it’s suitably ambiguous.’ The swing doors were pushed open by a barmaid who grimaced at them. She looked small and overwhelmed, and wore the uniform of the waiting classes: a plain white blouse and a black skirt.

  ‘You looking for service?’

  ‘Please. I’ll have another Tennants and…’ Danny glanced at Ellen.

  ‘A white wine, please.’

  After they’d finished up they crossed back to the Europa. The still-cheerful Emma Sullivan directed them upstairs to the restaurant where they were given a table by the window. The place was busy but with a different crowd from the pub, older and moneyed: the men boxy in blazers and sports jackets, while their fragrant wives, in colour coordinated outfits, looked as if they’d been lowered into huge vats of tea, left to steep and only recently been winched back out. Their colour bordered on puce, although it glinted with jewellery and was shaded with make-up. There was a good view over Belfast from here. The city stretched on and on, down to the docks and the two defunct shipyard cranes, Samson and Goliath, stilled mid-swing, stopped in the motion of giving a blessing.