by Randal Eliot
Chapter Eight
'Will passengers on the one thirty-five Trans Pennine service to Liverpool please note that your train has been delayed by ten minutes? We apologise for any inconvenience. Thank you.'
On Leeds City Station's busy concourse, just along from the three short queues to the holes in the wall, under the enormous TV screen that silently rolls off news headlines and glossier advertisements as if disasters and ideal consumers' fantasies are part of the same grand design, three teenage girls - a red head, a brunette and a blond - occupied one of Upper Crust's tables. Half-drained bottles of coke and screwed up baguette wrappers rested on their moulded plastic tabletop. A small number of high street carriers were tucked between their feet. Ugg boots, tight blue jeans, a black, quilted coat, a neon pink scarf - though each girl honoured the uniform decided by a vote in the college common room the previous day, the blond did not giggle along with her loquacious friends. She peered between their shoulders, through the ever-changing crowd that studied the digital arrival and departure boards, and, apparently, focused on nothing, for it was unlikely the mundane happenings of Burger King's counter could entrance her.
Presently, the brunette crossed her blue eyes, and turned to the lost blond. In the morbid drawl of a too theatrical clairvoyant, sillily waggling her fingers in the air, the brunette asked, 'Is anybody there?'
'Don't be such an airhead, Paige,' the blond blasted, nervously flinching.
'Oh my god! Excuse me! I hope you've been dreaming of performing at Party in the Park - or somewhere unmentionably special - because you've been nothing but a boring pooper to us this morning.'
'What's bugging you, Alicia?' The red head asked, kicking Paige's shin under the table.
'What goes around, comes around, Sally Jordan.' Paige laughed loudly and nipped her friend's hand, causing her to squeal.
'Something's wrong, Alicia,' Sally tried again, nursing her hand and trying not to titter at Paige's cross-eyed funny face. 'You're usually in your element on our Saturday shopping expeditions...' And this time round Alicia had half-heartedly browsed through the hangers and rails of her most beloved boutiques, purchasing just one reduced plain black vest. Sally and Paige had initially put it down to a strop because for once, just for once, they didn't have to play maids to Alicia's fashion princess: Paige had her birthday money and Sally's mum had shared some of the luck she'd enjoyed at bingo. Yet maybe their idea needed revision:
'I think,' Paige sniggered, under another announcement about the delayed train to Liverpool, 'Alicia's finally realised there's another sex. Who's the lucky guy?'
'If you can't say something worth hearing, don't say anything. Oops! I must be telling you to shut up for good.'
'Whoo!'
'And I don't know why you're grinning because I wasn't joking.'
Alicia's week had been so dreadful it was too much for her to grin and bear its passing. On Monday she and Davie had gone to tea at their grandparents' house. The family seniors had characteristically fussed over their grandkids until Grandma, spooning out chocolate chip ice cream for dessert, naturally couldn't stop herself: 'How did you find out, Alicia, my angel?'
'Find what out, Grandma?'
'The… What made your dad leave.'
'I…' Could have curled up in a shallow grave... 'H-h-heard someone gossiping outside the local shop.'
'That wasn't a nice thing to happen to you, my poor dear, and I'm very sorry to hear about it.' More than sorry: Grandma shook her head in disgust, believing Alicia's painful memory of her discovery explained her stammer and burning red face. She was still so young; a tender girl.
The pious family elder laid bowls of ice cream and fruit salad in front of her grandchildren like she was putting down wreaths at a family memorial service. At least her husband's eyes saw it like that:
'An extremely unpleasant business,' he agreed sternly, taking his bowl of dessert. 'So let's leave it to settle, June, eh?'
'There's more to it than that!' Davie fiercely gushed after staring into his bowl for a minute. He couldn't believe his sister was effortlessly wriggling free of the third degree.
'And how's that?' Grandma froze with a spoonful of ice cream held an inch from her pursed lips.
'Let's not get carried away.' Granddad had noted Alicia's teary eyes.
'She knows more than she's letting on. She might even…'
'Davie, that can't be true and we don't want any unnecessary upset. Hasn't everybody already had a bellyful of it? Alicia isn't responsible for her mother's actions or those of her father for that…'
'No! I'm not!'
'…matter. So maybe we should enjoy our ice cream before it melts.'
'Do as Granddad says.' Alicia waved her spoon in Davie's face: 'Eat with yours and don't stir with it!'
'I heard you arguing with Mum,' Davie riposted, knocking her hand and spoon away. 'You were talking like you knew him.'
'Knew who?' snapped Grandma. 'This is getting beyond me.'
'Mum's boyfriend or whatever he is. Alicia knew his name is Michael.'
Alicia spoke slowly, through grinding teeth: 'I heard Mum say his name.'
'How come she shouted something about going back on a deal?'
'That's going too far, Davie,' said Granddad, 'Alicia can't…'
'Shut your fucking big gob!' Her grandparents looked on speechlessly as tearful Alicia leapt to her feet. 'I hate you!' she seethed at Davie, frantically unravelling the strap of her pink leather handbag that had got wrapped around the back of her dining chair. She fled the second she'd yanked it free. She'd almost reached the street corner by the time Granddad got to the front gate in his slippers. Perceiving that the headstrong girl had enough about her to keep under lamplight, he saw no point in calling out after her. After a shrug, he went back indoors.
Hysterically panting and gasping, Alicia burst in, flew through the kitchen, into the hall and up the stairs. What now? Cathy rapidly blinked like a malfunctioning machine switching on and off. After standing the iron on its heel, she massaged her temples. 'You can do it,' she said softly. The knots in her stomach twisted like a strained gallows' rope creaking in the wind. She pulled her Tefal's plug from the socket. As she stepped through to the hall, the almost crease-free, silky blue blouse she'd been working on slipped from the ironing board to the kitchen tiles.
Cathy tapped three times on her daughter's closed bedroom door. 'Babe, what's happened?'
No reply.
'Why are you back so soon?'
Silence.
Cathy gently pushed down on the door handle and entered. Alicia's face was buried in her pillow. The pillowcase's pattern of red love hearts complemented the quilt cover; a match that seemed to Cathy to be the sole point of emotional equilibrium in the whole house. Crouching by the side of the bed, she tenderly kneaded her daughter's blond locks: 'My baby, it can't be so bad.'
'It is! Don't patronise me!' The pillow muffled Alicia's despair without suffocating her anger: remaining face down, she furiously kicked against the love hearts on her quilt as if her limbs were giant, snapping scissors demonstrating how she was cut up inside. Behind a pile of cuddly toys, her headboard banged on the wall.
'No, my baby, nothing's ever that bad. It really isn't.' But despite Cathy's lullaby hush and her gentle hands that teased stress from Alicia's scalp, some time passed before the teenager had calmed enough to sob out the story of her evening. Cathy hugged her tight. 'Sometimes it feels like we've met the end of the world, although we never do. The world never stops going round. It will work out, my love.'
'Davie said…'
'Forget it. Let it go. He doesn't understand…' Or perhaps he understood too well, and, what's more, the hurt was just beginning. It was already too late for regrets: why is someone always to blame in love? Fighting back bitter tears, Cathy clung to Alicia as the landline telephones rang. One across the landing by her own bed, the other downstairs in the living room - their shrill, enervating echoing scor
ched her mind… No! Leave us be!
Davie slunk through the front door. It seemed to him that the house possessed an ominous silence like a horror movie's atmosphere the split second before the villain jumps out and attacks. Only this was for real, and wouldn't everybody consider him to be the bad guy? He glanced at the shoe rack - the girly pink trainers Alicia had been wearing weren't to be seen. It again crossed his mind that his sister hadn't returned home. Or had she and Mum rushed out? Why hadn't the door been locked? Why were the lights still on? He truly sweated after looking down the hall and into the kitchen: Mum's ironing had been abandoned on the floor, which equalled T-R-O-U-B-L-E! Too keen to drop his bombshell, Davie hadn't considered how he'd be caught in the explosion. Though Granddad hadn't exactly said so, it was clear that he thought Davie had lied. Grandma would probably quiz Dad and find out the truth, but what good would come of it? Mum would be furious that he'd tried to expose his sister's role in the family's downfall. Wasn't it sickeningly obvious that it was broken forever?
Until he figured what he should do, the best thing Davie could do was hide. On that thought, he switched off his mobile, pulled off his trainers, crammed them into the shoe rack, and shot up the stairs. Only at the top, when the murmur of a conversation behind a closed door reached his ears, did he learn his sister and mother were safe at home. He rubbed his damp eyes. They must have heard him, yet they carried on regardless, and that was another lift to his spirits. He'd half-expected Alicia to have tipped a vial of paracetamol down her throat, or to have run away someplace the streets crawl with freaks who pimp girls for a lot less than gold. Images of missing posters and wailing ambulances had tormented Davie throughout Granddad's mild but solemn lecture. 'Don't make hard times harder,' the old fellow had said, winding up his speech as he pulled over to the kerb, 'though it's understandable some things are said in the heat of the moment.'
'It was the…'
'Do you receive me, Davie?'
'Loud and clear, Granddad.'
'Good lad. Now go and make it up with Alicia. We'll phone her when she's had time to pull herself together. And if you've any problems, give us a ring. Got that?'
'I suppose.' But hadn't Davie alarmingly seen the frailties and flaws of the people he'd always thought dependably strong? He unclipped the seat belt sensing that life's shifting sands can fast become quicksand, and that the truth is mostly a great secret.
'See you soon, son.'
'Bye.'
Davie quietly closed his bedroom door and stood perfectly still in the darkness, as if it could shelter him from his woes. Surely, given what had happened, the house's strained peace wouldn't last? Tiptoeing over to his desk, he switched on his lamp, which offered a more subdued glow than the ceiling light. He stripped off his school uniform and jumped into bed as a soft tread could be heard moving over the landing. Here we go, he thought, as his mother - he guessed - stopped outside his door. But no, after a pregnant pause she could be heard retreating down the stairs. Pop music softly drifted from Alicia's room. Was that it? At least for now? The clocks had recently been put back an hour and though it was dark outside, it was still far too early for a teenager to sleep. Davie slipped from under his duvet and pulled on his tracksuit, which had been neatly folded over the chair at his desk. 'Where did I put that list?' he murmured, opening up his laptop. And how did he shake off the unsettling intuition that something horrendous was on its way? His search engine threw up reams of hocus-pocus.
On Tuesdays Alicia didn't have to be in college while noon and Davie left for school before she stirred. To his surprise, Mum had cooked up a top-ranking breakfast - a fried bacon and mushroom butty - and she didn't say a dicky about the bust up at Grandma's. 'I've phoned in sick because I've some things that are pressing. I might not be in when you get back so make sure you take your key.' And that was as close as it got to the much anticipated rollicking. Things are getting weirder in this house, Davie thought, licking tomato ketchup from his fingers. He glanced at the clock. Phooey, who needs physics first thing? Oh well, best get his skates on. But not before replying to Eddie's text about meeting up at the shops rather than the climbing frame due to an overused snooze button.
'Rise and shine, my darling.' Cathy gently shook Alicia's shoulder. 'Time to get up and get dressed. I've some good news - you can take the day off. We'll have a ride out to clear our heads.'
'Don't feel like it,' Alicia sleepily mumbled, rolling over and pulling her quilt over her face.
'A bit of fresh air will do us both the world of good.' Cathy insistently but lightly shook the human-shaped lump under the bedcovers.
'Let me sleep.'
'We'll get wrapped up.' Cathy stripped the quilt from her daughter's face. 'What about the seaside?'
'At this time of year?' Alicia's puffy eyes blinked open; had someone lost the plot? 'And you're always telling me I shouldn't miss any lessons.'
'This once won't do any harm. But if you prefer pushing your pen...'
'Are you serious?'
'Never been more so.' Cathy planted a kiss on Alicia's forehead. 'Now let's see some life in you.'
'It's, like, really off-putting when you smile at me like that.'
And soon enough, despite a heart full of remorse and sympathy, Cathy was tight-lipped and mentally cursing a bad idea day - Alicia morosely dipped toast soldiers in her boiled egg as if she'd been condemned to the trenches: she made a dirge and a death-dance of it because Abba 'isn't motorway music': she gave her mother eyes like murder weapons on seeing the soupy, eerie mist creeping over the North Yorkshire Moors' bleak scrubland. 'Perfect weather for dumping a body,' Cathy said, attempting to tease Alicia into a better mood. 'Got a candidate?'
'Pfft!' Her girl looked away, through the passenger window.
They were on the long sloping road into Whitby when visibility became a streaming blur no matter the work of the windscreen wipers. Cathy slowed, but drove on. The pelting raindrops hardened into hailstones that sounded on the car roof like a thousand gulls desperately pecking to get in. 'I can't believe this,' Alicia bristled, crossing her arms.
'It's ok, babe, it's turning to rain again.'
'That's ok?' Alicia wound down the passenger window by an inch and peered into the driving, swirling pall as a marrow-chilling draught swept through the car. The abbey ruins were an amorphous, grainy blot on the high, desolate cliff. The wet and hazy old town seemed to shiver and shirk from the ancient, grey, violent sea. 'Ok isn't what I'd call it!'
'I suppose the beach is out,' Cathy sarcastically replied and gritted her teeth. 'And we won't be walking up the famous one hundred and ninety-nine steps to the abbey. But let's try to make the best of it?'
'How's that possible, Mum? The sky is falling in.'
'Don't exaggerate, babe. It'll blow over soon enough.'
'There isn't one tiny speck of blue to be seen. Why didn't you check the weather forecast?'
Because it's rained on me so much of late, I've almost forgot that sunshine exists, Cathy felt like yelling. Instead, she dragged on the steering to turn into a car park. 'On the bright side, there are plenty of parking spaces.'
'You don't say. And we're really going out in this?'
'We haven't come all this way for a bit of rain to stop us.'
'I don't get you, Mum. One day you're a classy piece, the next you're some sort of mad hippy teacher on a doomed school outing.'
'Have I really been classy when you think about it, darling?'
'You know what I mean.'
'Do I?'
Alicia reached over to the back seat for her black cagoule. She pulled it over her purple turtleneck jumper after unclipping her seat belt. 'Let's hope the polar bears don't bite.'
'It's more likely to be a vampire in Whitby, according to legend. Now let's see…' Cathy cautiously reversed and braked. 'Chin up, babe,' she said, reaching for her olive cagoule and pulling it over her stripy red and blue sweater. 'I'm glad you listened to me and put on
jeans and sturdy boots. Is it going to be too windy for our umbrellas, I wonder?'
'Now it's the deranged girl guide routine.'
'Don't be silly. Look, I've parked by a ticket machine. I'll quickly get one and then we can shoot across the car park, round the lobster pots and back over the bridge. We'll be in the more sheltered part of town before we know it.'
'The rain isn't dryer on the other side of the river.'
'Alicia, can we make an effort? Give our day a chance?'
'Whatever.'
Hurrying across the swing bridge over the River Esk, a whirling, wet gust violently ripped their umbrellas inside out. Cathy cursed at several bent spokes. Alicia wickedly smirked, letting her brolly be taken from her hand. It inelegantly parachuted towards the river's muddy waters before another huge gust swept it under the bridge. 'You'll have to buy me a new one. It'll have sunk to the bottom already.'
'Just move it, babe,' Cathy testily ordered, struggling in the drenching gale to take down her brolly. Damn and damn again if it wasn't buggered! She stuffed it in a bin outside a closed fish and chip shop on the other side of the bridge. From there, splish-splash, they scurried towards the narrow, cobbled streets. Few others were out and about and several of the quaint, touristy shops had their shutters down - the impression of desertion did nothing to improve Alicia's mood. Trying to keep dry, Cathy led her daughter ducking and diving from one shop to the next. The teenager took less and less interest in whether they sold books, china, pagan trinkets or second-hand clothes in aid of charity. 'Come on, Mum, I'm bored,' she whined whenever Cathy browsed meaningfully. The rain had made their mascara run, and they both looked like they'd wept. Alicia's thunderous, black face and quivering lip as they took some kind of refuge under a stinky fishmongers' dripping awning finally caused Cathy to concede: 'Ok, the weather wins. The day's a wash out. We'll grab some dinner and head home.'
'What great ideas you sometimes have,' Alicia said, rolling her eyes.
'Oh, get over it,' Cathy retaliated, exasperated.
'It's like that, is it? So much for clearing our heads.' Alicia crossed her arms and turned her back, not least because the dead stares of slimy eels and mottled plaice through the shop window were disturbingly gross. And as for those pinkish-orangey creepy-crawlies with black beads for eyes, yuck! The stuff of next week's bad dreams.
They shook their wet cagoules from the doorway of a homely-looking café next to a fish and chip shop so proud of patriotic hope and glory almost everything from the recently mopped floor tiles upwards was red, white and blue. Because the hot fryers blurred the windows with condensation, Cathy had had to press her nose up to the glazing to read the menu. More accessible was a framed print of a young Queen Elizabeth II next to a poster of all the fish in the sea. The chubby, rosy-cheeked assistant wore a plastic, union flag bowler. She started wiping down the counter for want of anybody to serve. Stepping back from the window, Cathy looked down at her leather boots: stuck to her heel was a length of Saint George's flag bunting that had come unfastened from the red, white and blue awning over her head. The bunting trailed in loops across the wet pavement and into a gurgling drain. Oh yes, Cathy thought, a warm seat beats traipsing wet streets with soggy trays. And Alicia didn't argue. 'After you,' she said with a sniff, holding the café door open.
'Let's shake down our cagoules first.'
Cathy placed their order with the polite, diminutive man at the counter; he might have passed as a Charlie Chaplin look-a-like out of comedy garb. Walking over to the table Alicia had taken by the window, Cathy admired the collection of Toby Jugs on the high shelves on each of the four walls. A faint, warm, doughy smell permeated the café. 'This is cosy,' she said approvingly, pulling her chair from under the table with a nerve-grating scrape. Alicia grimaced. Cathy took pleasure from the spotless quality of the red and white gingham tablecloth. She'd collected cutlery from the counter - both her knife and fork reflected her face without imperfections. 'The type of place where they live by the old saying, cleanliness is next to…'
Alicia yawned and stared out of the window, which was flecked by the ceaseless downpour, obscuring the view.
'Miserable, isn't it? And it's in until the weekend and probably beyond.' The waitress set down their plates of haddock, chips, mushy peas and bread and butter. Perhaps just turned twenty, she had the frame of an overgrown stick insect, and her big, round, blue eyes suggested she'd been born to come out at night. What appeared to be her own floury, slender handprints were smudged on the hips of her black uniform. 'I'll bring your coffee in a mo'. Is that ok?'
'Perfect.'
'Thanks a bunch for the cheery weather forecast,' Alicia sneered when the waitress stepped out of earshot.
'You wished I'd tuned into one.'
'Talk about service with a smile,' Alicia bitched a little louder, ignoring her mother.
'Oh, you've been a candidate to model tooth whitener?'
'Cheese,' Alicia said, with arsey poseur cheesiness.
'Anyway, this is some compensation for the weather: a fish and chips treat.'
'There's a chippy down the road at home. We didn't have to travel for miles.'
'This meal will be as fresh as if it just came off the boat. And think on what the brave fishermen might have gone through to bring their catch in. Come on, tuck in. Even salt and vinegar have a special aroma and taste at the seaside.' She finished shaking the vinegar bottle, put it down, and picked up the salt pot.
Alicia's eyes widened when she stabbed her battered fish with her fork - she couldn't get those slimy, dead peepers at the fishmonger's out of her head.
'Things aren't so terrible, love,' Cathy said, concernedly gazing into her daughter's horror-stricken phiz.
'Don't keep saying that,' Alicia waspishly responded, her mind's eye finally managing to blink away all sea monsters great and small. 'Things are actually worse than terrible - everybody is blaming me for something that wasn't my fault.'
'Babe, no one is accusing you.'
'I'm not paranoid. Davie blames me. Grandma and Granddad know about it.'
'I'll have a word with Davie. And your grandparents didn't believe him. They phoned last night when you were asleep.'
'They will believe him when Dad tells them the same thing!' Alicia banged the ball of her fist that clenched her knife on the table. The impact turned the vinegar into a microcosmic, stormy brown sea in a bottle. 'And then what will you say?'
'Let's not discuss this… Ah, our coffees. Thank you, love.'
'Any deliberate breakages will have to be paid for,' the waitress said, coolly eyeing Alicia. 'Enjoy your meal.'
'Who's breaking anything?' Alicia's belligerent eye burned into the waitress's back like a warning Cathy would be stupid not to heed. Even though the rain had stopped most people from venturing out, a bald, fat man in an out-of-shape, shabby trench coat had a mug of tea at the centre table - a row in front of him, the café's Chaplin-like proprietor and the waitress would be no less humiliating than if Alicia raged in front of a cold-hearted mob. Luckily, the shiny-domed customer appeared lost in his tabloid, biting his rubbery bottom lip. His fingers were nicotine yellow. Cathy discreetly swabbed her welling tears with her napkin. Alicia clattered down her knife and fork and pushed away her plate:
'What's up with it, babe?' Cathy's voice was breaking up.
'Don't feel like it.' Alicia knew it was wrong to punish her mother, and yet somehow it was wickedly empowering. A flashback spotlighted the vile grin of Billy, her friend Sally's six-year-old cousin, as he stamped on bees and ladybirds when they'd taken him for a walk down the lanes this summer gone.
'The batter is gorgeously golden and crispy, and the fish is deliciously flaky…'
'I said, I don't feel like it.'
Cathy found she could steady her tremulous speech if she didn't look up from her plate: 'Well, hold on until I've finished.'
'It's not just about how you feel.'
'I think
I've also had my fill.' Cathy dropped her cutlery. 'Let's get out of here, shall we?' She took a twenty pounds note from her purse and placed it beside her abandoned meal. Grabbing her cagoule, she nearly knocked her chair over in her haste to reach the door.
'God, what's up?' Alicia's boorish pretence that she didn't know she'd gone too far caused the fat man to peer over from his newspaper. She blushed and rushed to the door.
Returning over the swing bridge, Cathy stopped and squinted into the slanting, cold rain that bitterly stung her cheeks. She gazed past the masts of the moored fishing boats, beyond the heaving, frothy mouth of the Esk, to the misty horizon where the sky began and the sea ended at some indeterminate point. She took deep breaths of the bracing air. Her parents had always extolled the sea air's restorative powers, but Cathy felt she most needed potent magic, for nothing else - not even time - could mend the relationships damaged by her affair. Turning round, she saw Alicia nip through the light traffic edging this way across the rainy, windswept bridge. Her girl hurried ahead on the other side of the road as if she had to escape some diabolical thing. Cathy's heart sank deeper like a wreck on an unstable sea bed: what a mess she'd made of parenting and for what? Romance? Her stupid love had sent her family down faster than the setting of her favourite sentimental film, Titanic. She half-wished that a colossal tornado would pick her up and carry her out to sea so that she could be dumped in the wild depths. If she sank to the bottom without a trace, now wouldn’t that remedy everything, once and for all?
She caught up with Alicia in the car park. 'Open sesame,' she said, activating the central locking.
'Common sense finally shines through.' Alicia flung her dripping wet cagoule over the back seat. 'But not before my jeans are wet through and I have to risk catching my death of it. I'd better not miss much college. You're always going on about education's importance and this mad excursion has put me even further behind.'
'I never thought I'd see you climb on top of a pile of textbooks to claim the moral high ground.' Cathy shook her drenched cagoule out of the window, folded it up, and put it on the rubber floor mat under her legs. Her jeans were also saturated. She turned the ignition and started the motor. 'I don't suppose I've ever done anything right, have I, Alicia?'
'You said that, not me.'
'And I think we'd both better button it before something is said that will be long regretted.'
'It's fine with me if a certain big piggy goes shush all the way home.'
'Oh, don't we all know you haven't been tickled.'
Alicia had been booked to perform at a ruby wedding anniversary taking place in the George V on Wednesday. The pub was a few miles out of town in a former mining village that hadn't developed - after all these years - a new identity, unless out cold ghetto counts. Over time, a mean spirit had usurped that of community; men expected to be punched for nothing, women expected nothing in their purses long before pay day, and too many kids learnt, unless they want nothing forever, the difference between right and wrong is getting caught.
Another brooding silence hung over Cathy and Alicia as they drove down another drizzly street of tired, crooked, red-brick terraces. The George V loomed on a corner next to a grubby, second-hand car showroom with several eggs smashed on and dripping down its windows. 'This can't be right.' Alicia's lip curled with petulant disdain. 'There must be two pubs with the same name.'
'Not according to the satnav.'
'Boden will be booking me into hell's sewers next.'
Cathy quickly gave the pub a once-over. Its murky whitewash façade, scruffy, drawn curtains that didn't let anybody look in or out, and graffiti riddled fire exit surrounded by broken glass were first impressions to make her put her foot down like she wanted nothing to do with the crime. Instead, she indicated and turned into the car park, conscious of hiding as she reversed between a transit van and a tall brick wall. On the side of the pub, a street art gangster smoking a spliff was in the glare of a security light: Anon. had cheekily used it like a gallery's spotlight.
'You sure you want to go ahead with this, babe?'
'Don't constantly babe me, please. My agent says the profession needs learning from the bottom up.'
'He would do seeing that he's never had anything to do with the top. We're having a rough enough time at home without coming to the frontline of an old war zone like this.'
'Bombs away, glamour puss,' Alicia grimly replied, unbuckling her seat belt. She slammed the door so hard Cathy shuddered. Either something gives or someone cracks, she thought, locking the vehicle and tracing her daughter's steps to the entrance.
A considerable, boisterous crowd had taken the buffet to pieces; its remains were spread across four long tables with white tablecloths covered in crumbs and spilled pickles and sauces. Toddlers laughed and hollered, playing tag between and around their boozing relations' tables. A bearded, paunchy, middle-aged man in a white shirt and red tie read out the celebrating couple's cards from the tiny stage. He raised laughs by undermining each tribute with an in-law joke. Alicia was stood at the back of the room sick to death of party balloons and tinsel when Cathy entered. With a discreet jerk of her head, she indicated that Alicia should meet her at the bar.
Cathy was about to speak to the publican when the resident barfly quipped, 'If you're the strip-o-gram, I'm the birthday boy.' He grinned toothlessly and Cathy's lips thinned. Likening the grey, stubbly, balding creature on a bar stool to a perverted gnome on a toadstool, she decided he was best ignored. He'd doubtlessly talk another kind of stool like it was his religion.
The publican's glowing, sweaty, drooping face bore similarities to a miniature sun on meltdown. A Brylcreemed tuft on his bonce and an Elvis tattoo on his neck were dying embers of his Teddy Boy youth. He stuffed a slice of uncooked black pudding from the silver tray on the bar before asking: 'You the turn, love?'
'My daughter's the performer…'
'I bet she is,' sniggered the barfly.
'Hey now, let the lady speak,' the publican said, severely.
'Whatever you say, boss.' The barfly stared into his near empty glass, suppressing his laughter.
'Excuse Pete, love, some say he's got a disease. I'm Big Dave by the way. Right, ahem, let's crack on.' Big Dave stuffed another two slices of black pudding from the tray on the bar. 'A couple of things,' he said, munching away. 'Firstly, I do the fiddling with the PA because one such useless act's messing cost me more than I'd taken all night. To rub it in, they could've meddled until the cows came home and they'd still have been dung, if you get my drift.'
Alicia crossed her arms and scowled as if he'd slyly slighted her act.
'Secondly, she - yes, I know she's not the cat's mother, love - has to change into any stage gear in the toilets. We've never had a dressing room and my wife doesn't allow strange girls in the living quarters, you know what they're like once they've a ring on their finger…'
'This is so West End,' Alicia mockingly cut in.
'Like it or lump it. Once upon a time I was a sought after Elvis impersonator and I sang in some tough holes. I wouldn't expect ladies to even listen to the stories. I just ask you to get changed in the loo.'
'And you've no idea how charming that is. It’s devastating we never saw you sing 'In the Ghetto'.'
Alicia had to pinch her nose on checking out her makeshift dressing room - the old troll who'd just flushed had truly confirmed that the deal stank. Didn't that fat rock 'n' roll reject know who he was dealing with? Mr Boden had better have a good excuse for hooking her up with Big Dave and his grotty pub! Arrggh!
Even if the van she'd parked behind provided an impenetrable curtain, Cathy agreed that it was a good idea that she keep look out while Alicia changed on the back seat of the car. 'It's not a crime to pull out of a show when you don't feel up to it,' she counselled through the slight gap in the window.
'God, there's no room in here,' Alicia replied irately, pulling the hem of her dress out of her knickers. 'And
don't you know the show always goes on?'
'I know I've sometimes taken too much notice of what people thoughtlessly say, babe. Don't make the same mistake…'
'If you want to go home, I'll get a taxi back.'
'Ok, ok. I wouldn't miss it for anything.'
'Is that meant to be funny?'
'Don't be silly.'
'Well, give me some me time to compose myself. It's something even the biggest stars sometimes have to do. Not that you'd understand.'
As the lights went down, Cathy took a seat in the empty corner along the concert room's back wall. Anybody would have been forgiven for thinking she'd come from another planet and not just three miles down the road, the way they stared. The mucky-minded, hostile hunger she detected in several men's eyes was as grotesque as the deprivation that spawned it; from the youngest to the oldest these people somehow seemed horribly, inescapably worn and gnarled. The boom of Alicia's backing tape spared Cathy from further visual prodding by turning all heads to the stage. Alicia appeared from the wings in a glittery, skimpy dress; she'd put on red lipstick and let down her hair. Yet she loitered in front of the microphone stand as if she didn't belong: her arms and hands were limp by her sides, her glittery heels refused to acknowledge the beat. And when she opened up, she sounded painfully lacklustre, frail, like a sparrow with a broken wing. Nobody wanted to dance with anybody. Cathy forced herself to bear the spectacle, each empty note and lyric like a stab to her heart.
The older punters looked unsure as to whether the occasion required them to politely applaud at the opening number's death. One or two tried it, but when their clapping didn't catch on, they reached for their alcohol. Their younger counterparts grinned mercilessly when Pete the incorrigible barfly heckled the pointless warbler. 'Is this slow death by disco or revenge of the X-Factor misfits?'
'You tell her, Pete!'
'I'm telling her! I'm telling her!' he raved with a strangely orgasmic spite. 'She might as well flash her tits and have done with it.'
'Watch your language in front of children,' a too young grandma chided, punctuating each word by stabbing her index finger in his direction.
'They'll learn it in the playground. And it's not all they'll learn, ha ha! No one stays innocent for long round here.' His twisted laughter was an echo of the evil lessons in life that had defeated him. Sweat collected on his brow. 'They'll all go the same way,' he declared, before swilling his pint.
Cathy was tempted to go stick her fist on his ugly lip. It'd give the lot of them something to laugh about, and wouldn't he deserve it! But wait! His insults had boiled Alicia's blood and stoked up some fighting spirit - if she spat the opening line of some twee, jaunty pop song, she was also fit to burst with feisty, sparkling oomph! Conversations stopped in mid-flow; heads turned. Cathy read the lips of a gaunt, youngish blond whose burly, flat-nosed man nodded in agreement: 'This is actually quite good'. With her heart in it, Alicia reignited the party atmosphere: those who knew the words sang along and swayed in their seats, while the celebrating pensioners took to the floor and creakily danced ballroom-style. Triumphantly, defiantly, Alicia held the song's final note to resounding applause. 'That showed you, Pisshead Pete,' someone shouted.
'Hear! Hear!' Cathy yelled, swelling with pride.
Pete spun his arse on his stool and stuck his elbows on the bar, showing his back to his critics. Cathy twigged that he made enemies all too easily.
Alicia's pride had got her on song, and once she was there, the sheer exhilaration of performing helped her to forget herself and her worries. She soulfully belted out slushy ballad after disco stomper after sing-along classic until, with a dazed, surprised expression, she was taking a bow that signalled the end of her first set. Mr Son-in-law in the white shirt and red tie jumped up onto the stage and seized the microphone. 'A hand for the lovely lass with the big voice, please. Yes, John, we're aware you'd like to give her more than a hand.' Bawdy laughter rumbled along with the ovation for the blushing songstress slipping into the wings.
'Frank and Doris want each and every one of you kids to have fun on their big day. Who's up for party games?'
A few kids cheered over the fading applause.
'I said, are you up for it?'
'YESSSSS!'
Alicia gave Pete the barfly a glare like she'd love to swat him as she strutted along the bar to meet her mother, whose face shone delightedly. 'That was mind-blowing, babe, and I've filmed several songs. One of your videos is bound to go viral one day soon. What would our superstar-in-waiting like to drink?'
'Can I have the car keys?'
'Do you have them with ice?'
'Please don't split my sides. I want to sit outside until I have to sing again.'
'They really need a dressing room. It's scandalous. I'll bet you're not the first performer who hasn't been in a mood for socialising.' Cathy rummaged in her purse. 'What have I done with them? Oh, there you go.'
Unsmiling Alicia let the keys drop into her palm and swivelled on her heels towards the exit.
Cathy knocked back her orange juice. Such things go through teenagers' minds; wasn't it wise to check up on her darling?
Her hands behind her head, her knees up, Alicia was laid across the back seat. 'I'd rather be alone, thanks,' she said, without opening her eyes.
'Like I'm staying in there on my own.' Cathy shut the door and settled in the driver's seat. 'The way things have been we obviously don't have to speak.'
'Your presence puts me off.'
'Puts you off what?'
'Meditating.'
'You're indulging an out of body experience, are you?'
'Shut up, Mum.'
'Oh, I should shut up?'
'Yes.'
'Isn't it a pity you hadn't zipped it up when your dad lost his job?'
The back door clicked open. The slam rocked the car.
'Fuck!' Cathy thumped the steering wheel. Why did she have to say that?
Alicia didn't know how she survived another ten songs, while kids ran amok and their family and their friends nattered as if she was just another dumb blond dreamer destined for nowhere. Gradually, after congratulating the old couple one more time, the guests dispersed. Alicia took a final bow to a gentle ripple of applause. She stepped off the stage, which was only raised by a foot, with a gloom that deepened the moment she set eyes on Boden. In his trademark trilby and black suit, he leant on the bar promoting some scheme that wasn't winning her mother over. Her brows were sceptically raised and her arms were defensively crossed. 'Ah Alicia,' Boden said with a simpering smile that turned two pretty faces to cold stone. He scratched his red, bulbous hooter; his watery, bloodshot, cobalt eyes narrowed. 'How's my budding starlet?'
'I've already told you she isn't so good. And you haven't yet explained what sort of gig this is supposed to be.'
'All acts cut their teeth somewhere, my good lady. And do I regretfully detect snobbery in your thinking, Mrs Randall? This is a deprived area in socio-economic terms, but that doesn't stop the people loving music. The locals have as much right to see my acts as anyone else. And, I must say, Alicia stuck to her task with professional gusto… No, no, no, don't interrupt, Mrs R. I've an important piece of advice for Alicia after analysing her excellent show: in between sets it's often productive to mingle. The most difficult audiences can be won over with a few tricks of the trade. And isn't it about happy punters?'
'Alicia's a classy singer not a downtown hooker,' Cathy fumed. She felt most aggrieved because condescending Boden was partly right - she had been looking down her nose when she had no earthly right to. 'Alicia will be out of here as soon as she receives her fee. Get your hand in your wallet - we're also socio-economically deprived, as you so eloquently put it. I'll wait in the car, babe.'
'People often have trouble,' Boden commented, watching Cathy blaze a trail to the exit, 'adapting to the pressure of the biz. Not to worry.'
'Easy for you to say,' Alicia sneere
d, unable to say who she found the most ridiculous and repulsive: bull-talking Boden or her sharp-tongued, interfering bug of a mum? Gawd, she could be irritating and cruel.
'I have, erm, dealt with our finances, my beautiful little honey tonsils. Here's your thirty - a more than reasonable sum for a low-key event.'
Alicia screwed her fee into a ball in the palm of her hand.
'My pop princess, there are bigger nights on our horizons. Big Dave, for instance, did his Elvis thing under my wing and ended up with a full season at Butlin's. And you know your mum can always have a night off because I'd be honoured to chaperone my special star. We could go places.' He winked his watery, bloodshot eye and slung back a shot of whiskey. 'Think about it.'
'I'll do that,' Alicia said, grimacing.
'Have a pleasant ride.'
Alicia hated it when he talked to her cleavage, but only when she was halfway home did she fully understand the randy old pervert's intent. How dare he?
'There's no point in getting angry with us. You might as well let us in on it. Who's your dream date? Love's the explanation for this.'
'Paige, I'm not sure that it is.'
'Don't stick up for her, Sally. You agreed with me the other day that it's time Alicia got a boyfriend.'
'Boys disgust me,' Alicia said sharply.
'Try a man.'
'They're worse.'
'As if you'd know. And it's not what your mum thinks.'
'What did you say?'
'Everybody knows, Alicia. There's no need to act shocked.'
'You flaming bitch!' Alicia grabbed her carrier bag and sprung up as if she'd adjusted her bum on her seat and been pricked by a prankster's drawing-pin. Her chair fell backwards and crashed to the floor. The public address system and general bustle absorbed the clatter. 'And I thought you were my friend, Sally.'
'It's not what you think...'
But Alicia was zigzagging through the crowd to the platforms' gates.
Sally got up and put the fallen chair on its legs. 'What was that about, Paige?'
'Her ignorance gets on my nerves. It's true about her slapper mum, anyway.'
'She's got problems at home.'
'Don't be so touchy, Sally. She isn't the only person whose parents split up.'
'And that's how I know exactly what she's going through. Alicia's my friend. Is she your friend?'
'It's always about her.'
'That's a yes?'
'What do you think?'
'Show her some understanding, then. We'd best leave her to cool down and come round. We'll finish our cokes before going to the train.'
Up the escalator, across the busy bridge, and down the furthest escalator, the two girls spotted Alicia along the platform some time before she clocked their approach. She was hunched up into herself beside a metal bench adjacent to the stationary Metro's first pair of closed doors. On the bench, a young couple's goo-goo talk and daft faces couldn't quieten their tot. Baby in blue had blubbered and wailed when a drunken Scotsman aired a rebel folk song. He was waiting to get on at the far end of the train's two carriages. Many of the shoppers along the draughty platform pulled faces at his slurred, rough melody. Everybody seemed glad when he forgot the words to the second verse. 'Bloody Sassenachs,' he laughed, swaying and swigging from his vodka bottle.
'Remember, Paige, we want peace,' Sally whispered, before beaming hopefully in Alicia's direction.
'I heard you the first time,' Paige replied loud and clear, without any such exhibition of pearly friendliness.
Several times over Alicia had run through her mind the things she wished she'd said. On seeing Paige and Sally, she let her tongue loose like a whip. 'You've some need to talk about my mum, Paige. She went with one other person. The boys at college call you One Hundred and Eighty - you've had more pricks than a dartboard.'
'You cheeky cow! I've news for you! All the boys hate you! Alicia Cockteaser, that's your name.'
'Will the pair of you please stop it?' begged Sally, feeling like she'd shrunk to an inch high.
'So you think she can say that to me, Sally?'
'You admitted you shouldn't have said anything about her mum.'
'I was going to apologise. She's no chance now.'
'Do you think I care?' Alicia blazed.
'Shush! Everybody's watching us!'
Paige and Alicia peered around and found everybody on the platform gawping their way.
'I can't take you anywhere, can I?' Sally drolly added, hoping to defuse the controversy. But the giggles of two youngish women proved to be infectious. Even a sombre-looking man with a wispy white beard and in a tatty grey suit smiled, his eyes momentarily losing their haunted, impoverished harshness to twinkle distantly. The tot on the bench sucked his dummy and looked on through red, wet, wide-eyes.
'What are you lot staring at?' Paige's snarly crack at letting them know she didn't see the situation's funny side only more brightly illuminated it. 'You're worse than babies! You can bog off!' Swinging her shopping, Paige set off marching to the other end of the train, glowering intensely to shift people out of her way.
Sally's dilemma as to whether she should stay with Alicia or go with Paige was put on hold: the train driver and ticket inspector had ambled up, causing the other passengers to step forward in anticipation of opening doors. It was easier for Sally to hop on board rather than push against the flow. Holding onto the rail by the luggage racks, the young red head watched the travellers pile on. One or two smiled at her sympathetically, as if to say, 'With friends like that you've always got enemies'. A sickly reek of sweaty cheese and onion pasties and stale beer hung in the air. Alicia passed her as if they were strangers, and Sally's shoulders heaved despondently. She'd be accused of taking sides whoever she sat alongside. But did she have an option? Until her own parents had separated, she and Alicia had grown up together on the same street - it wouldn't be right to desert her oldest friend during a bad patch. Alicia would never forgive such a betrayal. And anyway, Sally wasn't a fool - Paige had wanted trouble the way she'd nudged and winked, encouraging her to laugh at Alicia when she'd forlornly daydreamed in the shopping centres. Paige shouldn't have bitched about Mrs Randall, either. What's more, it got Sally's goat the way Paige flirted with her Matthew. It was true; Paige was an untrustworthy warm arse.
The train got moving. Sally smiled optimistically when she took the seat beside her friend. Alicia gazed out of the window as if the rusty, graffiti covered, redundant hopper cars of the inner city's industrial wastelands were more to her taste. How tiresome was this going to get? Sally typed a text and sent it to Paige with the last-ditch hope that everything could somehow be forgotten. Paige didn't reply.
The train soon trundled along tracks that coursed through heavy, waterlogged farmland under a grey, sagging sky. A Victorian stone bridge and the slow-moving river it crossed zoomed in and out of sight. Then a soggy golf course without players. High embankments with thorny bushes. The foul stench of a sewerage works stole in through an open window, provoking laughter amongst a gang of boys. A handful of people got off at an unmanned station the other side of a dense wood, rich with seasonal, golden leaves. The ticket inspector worked down the aisle as the train gathered speed again. Sally smiled at her friend when he took their tickets - Alicia sniffed and looked away. 'It isn't fair to punish people who've done nothing wrong,' Sally asserted, putting in her earphones. If it often wasn't any use for communication, her mobile had some wicked tunes downloaded on it.
In the next-to-last station before their destination, Alicia's loneliness got the better of her sulks. She gently nudged Sally who directly unplugged herself from her mobile. Alicia sounded genuinely fed up when she asked: 'What are you doing when we get off?'
'Do you want to come round to our place for tea?'
'I haven't enough time. I've to prepare for tonight's show.'
'I'd love to come - I really would - but I've heaps of homework, and Matthew wants to co
me round and…'
'It doesn't matter. My mum's taking me. One of her friends is coming along to give me support. And to shamelessly flirt with anything in trousers.'
'You always wanted your own shows. What's changed?'
‘I can't stand dingy pubs and clubs where men stare at you like you know what. With their x-ray eyes I might as well be a stripper.'
'Everybody has to start somewhere and you know that because you've said it. As long as the men don't touch, let them see whatever they think they're seeing. My gran jokes its how to deal with most things with dangly bits. Our Lisa swears she isn't wrong.'
'The danger is I'll get stuck in dives. It's like I'm living in some seedy film that I'd turn off if it came on my TV.'
'Just make sure you keep up with college work so you've something to fall back on.'
'That sounds like my mum.'
'It's common sense. I'm determined to get into a good uni. There's no point leaving education when there are no real jobs to go into.'
'All that student debt scares me. My mum's been a bit crazy on a few credit cards and I can tell there's a whole lot of trouble brewing. And I hate academic stuff - I can do it, but I hate it. Shit! I'll be at it all Sunday because of tonight's gig. I hate my life. Sometimes I just want to leave home. Davie needs murdering and as for my mum, oh, give me strength.'
'Do you miss your dad? I missed mine when my parents split up. It's not so bad now I can go round to his place whenever I want to.'
'I… Sort of…' The thought of meeting her dad again made Alicia's heart cower behind untruths and uncertainties. '…Don't know how I feel about everything.' That was the best she could offer.
'I've an idea. Let's call at Morrison's café for a drink, a bun and a problem shared and all that.'
'What about Paige?' Alicia said, doubtfully. 'Anything we say in front of her will fly round college on Monday.'
'I don't think she's in a mood to listen right now, anyway.'
Ahead of the other disembarking passengers, Paige raced up the steps of the iron bridge over the tracks. By the time Alicia and Sally had crossed it and were exiting the station, their new foe was climbing in the passenger seat of her family's silver saloon. Her mother frostily glared through the windscreen, forcing the two girls to look down, hiding their giggles, until the car pulled away.
'Hi superstar! I'm buzzing about your concert tonight,' called a sugary voice so overly affected it was plain sickly.
'Liam, what are you doing here?'
'I was gutted to find out I'd missed your midweek extravaganza,' he announced from his perch on the station's periphery wall. 'Can't think why anybody would block me from their Facebook page, can you?'
'That would be one of the great mysteries,' answered Sally irreverently. 'And I didn't know you were eagerly hunting Alicia's autograph, bad boy.'
'I'm her biggest fan, don't you know?' Liam pulled a ten-pack from his England tracksuit top. He lit up a half-smoked tab with a lurid green disposable. 'She's a super sexy performer who's going all the way, aren't you, babe?'
'But not with you.'
'Don't entertain him, Sally. Let's get out of here. I'd sooner sit naked in a pit of tarantulas than spend time conversing with bulldog features. How does he know where I am all the time?'
'I like Twitter as much as the next person,' Liam replied, exhaling smoke from the corner of his mouth.
Sally took Alicia's arm. Liam watched them walk away in the direction of the town like a cat trying to decide which mouse he'd most like to pounce on. 'See you tonight, babe,' he called out, suddenly satisfied.
Sally turned her head and silently formed 'get lost' on her lips.
'Shake your booty,' Liam called, his laughter turning hollow as that guts and groin twisting loneliness enveloped him. He jumped down from the wall and, frowning, crushed the butt of his smoke underfoot. What kind of cruel old life is this?