Playing Out

by Paul Magrs

  But this far into the trip I’d grown cocky, I’m afraid. I look back upon my nonchalance—delaying lunch, breezing through the dining room with the feigned intention of changing my book first—with a judder of self-loathing. But there I go, blithely telling Andre the waiter to wait half an hour before bringing my starter and sashaying past the magician’s table where his cutlery is attached to the table by slender golden chains, though it needn’t be, with him being magical and all.

  I flung open his cabinet and breathed short ecstatic breaths on its lacquered surfaces. I felt right into the corners of his mysterious carpetbags with a trembling hand: what new stuff could I find? The doves cooed and nudged each other, watching me stripping quickly and donning her shimmering stage underwear. An alpine-pure bunny scampered to the top of a pile of boxes to quiz my urgent erection as I lay down with a sigh in the sawing cabinet. To the rabbit it was a newcomer which might upstage him in the act. I concentrated on the exhibition I made for myself and only me. In this last carriage of the train we rocked and creaked with the awesome menace of the deep winter woods. Time slipped away from me, as it always does when I’m messing about.

  And then—oh, God—like a terrible moment in an old, old melodrama, there’s the magician’s waxed moustache Pitching in furious indignation above me. His eyes bulge and I expect a card, stencilled in white letters, to appear between us: You cheeky bastard! What the fuck are you up to?

  But it doesn’t come. The magician, it turns out, really is Italian, knows no English and, anyway, finds my hideously exposed recumbence and masturbatory fantasy life uproariously funny. Entirely at his mercy I submit to his terrifying giggles and then, wiping tears and turning to go with a stream of what for all I know could be evil oaths and threats, he bends and kisses me hard, thrusting a massive palpitating tongue into my mouth. Then he’s gone.

  I die of embarrassment.

  The very worst thing about resuming my place in the restaurant car and trying to eat lunch with a measure of equanimity was knowing that the magician would be sitting at his table, only yards away, telling Deborah all about me, his mouth still wet with that stolen kiss.

  I had much rather eat my lunch in however intolerable a situation than fling myself off the train, so I swallowed my pride and went back to my place, determined to ignore them.

  Two things had changed and they saved my face.

  Deborah had gone from their table. The magician ignored me as I went by with my book and he’d gone back to being nondescript. The second change didn’t hit me until after Andre had brought my soup and I was well into the first chapter of the Queen of Scots schlock-horror. The train had stopped; we were completely stationary in the suddenly distinct and terrifying woods and at last sound was beginning to creep in from outside. We had arrived—but in the middle of nowhere.

  Very slowly I closed my book.

  I looked out of the window. The forest had a majesty and horrible glamour you quite missed while hurtling through it on a train. It looked very much like some queer gigantic beast’s larder. These weren’t trees and clearings designed for the aesthetic sense and sensibilities of Western human beings. Everything we relish is deciduous. Nothing, I was sure, grew naturally, fruitily and juicily in this place. The woods were an aggregate of slate and ice and their vegetation was undoubtedly nine tenths poison. Some of my fellow travellers had started to talk, in whispers. They still sounded aggrieved and safe. I was already discomforted by the magician’s kiss: I knew we were up to our necks in it.

  Into our poised silence came Deborah, with that breezy glamour of her own. She went straight to the magician. ‘Miss Farquar has vanished,’ she hissed. Heads turned.

  ‘Who?’ he asked, as if looking past her at somebody else.

  ‘Miss Farquar! The elderly lady we met at dinner a couple of nights ago. An eccentric old lady in a leopard-skin pillbox hat you said had the look of a smuggler about her.’

  ‘Did I?’ the magician purred and I realised they were talking English.

  ‘She’s just gone! Flown the coop! How can she just vanish off a moving train?’

  ‘We’ve stopped now, my dear.’ An indolence in his voice; he indulges her and likes to draw attention to himself. Which he is doing, as cutlery is put down with little clinks and rattles of golden chains.

  ‘She had vanished well before we stopped! I was looking for her when we did. Anyway…’ Deborah glances about with a frown. She hates the inefficient. ‘Why have we stopped?’

  ‘That’s what I’d like to know!’ shouts a gruff extra in a brown pinstriped suit.

  ‘Yes!’ adds another, an auntyish type, rather haplessly. ‘We all have appointments to keep. Why hasn’t the captain informed us?’

  The magician laughs shortly. ‘Trains, as far as I know, do not have captains.’

  ‘They have something!’ the aunty replies curtly. She’s carrying some kind of cat. ‘And why can’t you spirit us back on the right tracks if you’re such a wizard at magic?’ He goes on laughing as if he hadn’t a care in the world. ‘Did anybody else see what happened to Miss Farquar?’ Deborah asks, with just a steely hint of desperation in her voice now, which is unusual for someone routinely stabbed and sawn up on stage. ‘I’m rather worried about her now; You see, she was elderly and diabetic, she said…’

  The frowsty aunty said, ‘I’m sure I don’t know who you mean,’ before turning back to her lunch.

  ‘You must have noticed her. She always had a leopard-skin pillbox hat with her. She carried it obsessively as you do your cat, or that man does a recent book. As if she had something precious and rare sewn into its lining.’

  The man in the brown suit shrugged and he too returned to his meal, as did the others, all refusing to remember Miss Farquar.

  ‘But you must recall her! She was such a personality!’ And Deborah’s eyes hit on me then. I squirmed under that momentary glance. I felt she must see through my waistcoat, see her fake jewel-encrusted basque—which I hadn’t had time to remove—beneath.

  ‘You! The journalist—you were in her compartment, weren’t you?’

  With the faint sound of the cock crowing accusations of betrayal in my popping ears, I shook my head and returned to my book and my soup.

  Deborah gave a faintly hysterical grunt of frustration. She called out, ‘I’m going to investigate this! It’s not me going mad! You’re not getting me to think that!’

  She stalked off towards the front end of the train, going for official assistance.

  The magician called after her, ‘While you’re about it, my dear, you might as well ask why we’ve stopped. This is, actually, ridiculous.’

  She had left a couple of pink feathers behind her on the dining-car floor. Andre trod them into the pile when he cleared my table. They must have dropped out from under her travelling clothes when she was stamping her heel in indignation. Did she, too, wear stage clothes underneath her demure outer layers?

  Back in my compartment I sat alone, stomach grumbling a habitual dream of indigestion brought on, no doubt, by my reviewee’s prose. I started to skim-read, which I only do in the greatest of emergencies. My compartment was otherwise empty; the two nuns and the schoolgirl weren’t back yet from wherever they went. They were quite as vanished as the elderly Miss Farquar in her leopard-skin hat.

  I might have told Deborah: yes, of course Miss Farquar was and is real. I have spent much of this endless journey avoiding that roving, weeping eye of hers. But why should I do Deborah any favours? Fuck her! She’s got exactly the job and the lifestyle I should kill for. Well, not quite. My palate and vocabulary had picked up a faintly gothic air from my recent reading.

  And at this point through my carriage window I saw two lions fucking in the undergrowth. Quite extraordinary and unabashed they were at it. Their shaggy, remorseless, leonine copulation. Vivid and auburn against the icing-sugar snow, they tumbled each other and ploughed up little showers of brilliance. Their lolling tongues were a decided hot pink in that frigid clearing.<
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  I watched with a fascination excused only by the uniqueness of this privileged, TV-documentary proximity. They were magnificent and, when I think back, I wonder if I have since invented some of the tender and complicit caresses this king and queen of the forest exchanged. There was a sureness and equality about their performance… Did I really see her snag his golden, furry prick and balls and roll them about in her slavering, deadly jaws? Watch him bark in pleasure as she released them, safe, and his cock was shiny and sticky like the fresh bud of a horsechestnut; but immense indeed?

  And did he toss back that fabulous dreadlocked mane while she sprawled dangerously before him and then did he lick and lap at her cunt, occasionally tossing spumes of fresh snow her way to tease her and cool her and dabbled at her again with his strong tongue. All around their superbly engined bodies the snow crept its thickness back as if drawing down the sheets, pulling them deeper into bed. In truth, I thought, it Was their fierceness with each other that melted all about them and set up an energetic drizzle of dead icicles from the branches above them. They romped and I watched—for how long?

  Long enough for the nuns to return to our car.

  When the door shot open and they eased their gentle shrouded selves inside, I jumped as if poked and yanked down the Liberty-print blind. Surely, 1 thought, still sweating as they nodded and smiled at me in their foreign language they could hear the silent frolic outside? Orgasm has its own pitch and sounds thunderous to everyone attuned to it, surely? But with the blind down they were oblivious to what was going on outside.

  Irritably I pretended to be reading again and we all set about looking impatient for the off. But actually, I wanted to stay for a while and watch the lions’ glorious pride in lovemaking. It galled me that I was missing out on this grand, no-holds-barred demonstration of a bestial mutuality. We could all do with such a display, I thought.

  It was then, in my crossness, I looked at the floor of the carriage in an effort to prevent myself flinging up the blind once more, and I noticed that both nuns wore under their habits scarlet high heels.

  Shit! the cultural critic and journalist that I am thought. Why is that so familiar? What Hitchcock film did nuns wear high heels in?

  I set to work thinking hard and fast; blocking out the afterimage and afterglow that still had me blushing. Which film was it? This is the kind of thing I’m meant to be up on.

  The door opened again and I expected it to be that brat from the Swiss finishing school, but it wasn’t; it was Deborah, looking pink and cross. She smiled tersely and let herself in, followed by a black porter and a wryly amused magician. The magician gave me a special smile and I blushed even harder.

  ‘This lady is looking for another lady she says belonged to this compartment,’ the porter began. He wore a gorgeous purple suit with gold braid. Portering seemed like quite a good deal if that was the drag that went with it.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, just wanting everyone to leave me alone so I could see if the lions were still out there or not. It also occurred to me that something else might be going on. It had struck me earlier that Miss Farquar with her boxes of sticky Belgian chocolates and her leopard-skin pillbox hat was up to no good. What if this was some kind of intelligence test, or a spying deal and they were testing us out?

  Best say nothing. So I clammed up, to the porter’s relief, Deborah’s pique and the magician’s further wry amusement. He followed them out with that wily, magical glint in his eye, tipping his hat to the nuns who, similarly and presumably for reasons of their own, had apparently never clapped eyes on Miss Farquar. He tipped his hat to me too with, if I wasn’t mistaken, distinctly salacious intent. The fucker!

  Just go, piss off, just go, I was thinking and aiming it at the nuns. They sat there, though, and one took out her knitting. Red high heels! I thought. Well, I never! We all have little foibles.

  It started coming back to me. The Hitchcock film was one where the nun obviously isn’t what she seems. She’s a prostitute or something, and she is looking after a corpse, which is all bandaged beyond recognition and en route to somewhere in Europe and is… on a train!

  Across the compartment both nuns tapped their red slinky feet to a secret rhythm. They set up an unconscious tattoo mimicking train noises. They wanted to be off, but their faces beamed nothing but contentment.

  And it was a train that stopped unexpectedly… something to do with spies in wartime. There were fierce SS men stuck out hidden in the undergrowth, shooting at the passengers in the stationary, derailed train. And the tarty nun in the high heels got shot! Near the end of the film. That’s right! It was Hitchcock’s wartime propaganda movie. That was the one.

  And the train had stopped because… the spy was on hoard, swathed in bandages and she’d been found… by a young woman looking for… an elderly woman she’d befriended en route to England… who had vanished inexplicably and now turned out to be a dangerous spy.

  It was a fabulous film and you ought to see it.

  Since my little adventure I’ve meant to hire it or buy it, but it’s one of those things you just don’t get round to. The Lady Vanishes. I’d still like to see how close we came, that afternoon, to being just like the film.

  I went to the toilet and stood on its carved wooden seat to look through the slit of a window. I could just—only just—see the rowdy big cats going for it. It was a mammoth session.

  A knock at the bathroom door. We’d been pitched into a disaster movie, but were still terribly polite, it seemed. ‘Hang on,’ I piped, flushing the chain, washing my hands, but the door flew open and the magician stepped in, locking it behind him.

  ‘You might just wait,’ I told him crossly, drying my hands.

  Eyeing a sash of glittering fabric which I had poking out from under my waistcoat, he sneered.

  ‘Deborah thinks you are lying about the existence of her friend Miss Farquar, in an effort to prove her mad.’

  I gave a decent impersonation of a snort of incredulity. ‘Why should I want to do that?’

  He was squat and heavy and his pointed beard was a glossy black. He was devilish and swift and in a split second upon me, forcing me back against the cistern and thrusting that beard in my face.

  ‘I don’t mind if you do drive Deborah mad,’ he hissed. ‘Wouldn’t you like to replace her in my magic box?’

  He chuckled greasily and kissed me as before. But when he drew back I surprised him. Kissed him back and thrust my tongue for good measure between his tiny, shiny teeth.

  The magician’s eyebrows raised together and I could tell he was pleased. He licked his lips, sucked his teeth slowly, as if tasting wine. We tried it again and he released his grip on me, though it became no less ardent.

  ‘Carry on.’ He grinned. ‘We’ll get rid of my present assistant together.’

  When I returned to my compartment the nuns were gone. The lino was peppered with depressions from their heels.

  I flicked up the blind. The lions were gone.

  Or rather, the lion was gone.

  Sprawled in elegant torpor, exhausted in his heartless absence, the spent but regal lioness occupied pride of place in the ruinous calm of the glade. She was all but smoking a post-coital cigarette. Knocked askance on her beautiful brow—a wonder I hadn’t noticed it earlier—was a leopard-skin pillbox hat.

  OCARINA

  We were at this party after a poetry reading in Darlington. It was late and we weren’t planning to stay for much longer but we sat on the Tuscany patio for a couple more drinks. In the dark we struggled to find places on the wall, moving urns of flowers aside and feeling the concrete for spilled wine. As time got on, the patio started to fill up. It was the most popular spot.

  The party was a surprise. One of the poets had flung her home open to all and sundry. Inside and out there were paper lanterns and nibbles. What made it exotic was the number of fish tanks Chelsea kept.

  ‘This evening I have come as a mermaid,’ she’d been telling everyone. She was a psychiatric nu
rse and was stretched into an indigo sheath. When the party was on she slunk about between poets and hangers-on, holding plates aloft and tantalising everyone with snacks. Lucky she’s got big hands, I thought. She put me in mind of a transvestite I’d had in a novel I wrote the previous year.

  Chelsea’s teenage daughters and son had been roped in to pour drinks and serve gateaux. I noticed that after a certain point they had given up to sit on the staircase and pass a bottle of vodka between them, watching the proceedings with bored eyes. All up the tall staircase there were alcoves set into the wall. More fish, swimming.

  The patio windows were slid back, gaping, and the whole house was fragrant with a summer night in Darlington. The woman who ran the poetry group—a poet in her own right—sat in a deck chair in the centre of the flagstones and sobbed into her wineglass. She waved her free hand as if ready to add something pertinent once she had finished crying.

  We really had to go soon. There was quite a drive. You were driving so you only sipped your drink. You read well tonight, I thought. I wouldn’t touch the broccoli quiche. There was already some folded discreetly into the urn beside me.

  Somebody smashed a glass and it sounded musical.

  Inside Chelsea’s extension, beyond the spread french windows, two soft settees faced each other. Animated conversation, laughing, choking on crisps and bubbles. Pairs of tired feet tangled and toyed with their shoes and blocked the way back into the extension. Chelsea was perched on her new boyfriend’s knee, feeding him trifle with her fingers.

  He had a green chin and laughed deep in his throat when she tried to stick a cherry up his nose. He wore a navy blazer and shiny shoes. His hair was cut short. Looked like he played sports. Off-duty policeman, I thought. Chelsea ruffled the stubble on his head.

  ‘Margaret,’ you said, smiling in welcome because Margaret had lurched through the ferns with her paper plate and glass to talk to us. You cleared a seat for her. She was struggling with her nibbles and drink and that walking stick.