Playing Out

by Paul Magrs

  * * *

  We flew all day across the limitless seas. The land slipped away behind us, and I could hardly credit my earlier fear at being sent away to a school for bad girls. What fear could hold me now, aloft?

  They were flying slowly, much more slowly than usual, as my youngest brother informed me. I was weighing them down and already, as we entered the latter half of the afternoon, there were mutinous squawkings in the squadron’s hindquarters; ‘We aren’t going to make it before nightfall. She’s brought us disaster.’

  Curiously, I felt only the mildest of perturbations at this. Indeed, it was somewhat satisfying to be regarded as the albatross, hung irrevocably around my errant brothers’ necks.

  I spent the day watching the waters below, strung out in leisure on my feathery hammock. As I say, people have become swans for all sorts of reasons. The Australians, in the arid outback, were terrified of flooding. They twisted themselves into the malevolent black swan, like those that haunt the underworld’s tepid rivers in Finnish mythology. The water determined their form as it does the gnarling of cliff edges, the gentle convexity of pebbles. Softly as an irreversible spell the tide creeps in and out under the moon’s stark guidance.

  My stepmother, too, had set her spell in silence. We wondered why she haunted graveyards for nettles, pulped, mashed, spun and wove them into eleven fine green shirts. Then we discovered she was after revenge for my violation. It was for me that she presented my brothers with the shirts. Changed utterly, my brothers took flight.

  I think they secretly knew I could be of no help to them. But they hoped, they hoped. I simply wanted to tell them, Make the best of it. Aren’t you happy as swans? Sufficient unto yourselves, your own closed circuit of desire, swooping by day over the multitudinous cross-currents that everywhere determine the form and shape of lives? At least you are now immutable, you swans. Violence is a reaction to the fear and apprehension one experiences in the face of mutability. You are freed of violence; set in your ways as you are, inviolable and muted, mute swans. Is that not enough?

  But no. They wished to be ‘human’ again, they wanted my help still, and I was not to withhold it.

  I never even had to try to exact justice. Odin, or whoever, saw to it for me. Gravity it was, I rather think, that exerted its influence, and declared that there would be no leniency for them.

  As daylight waned, the sanctuary of their rock was nowhere in sight. The oldest brother, he who had first been transformed, reverted first to human form. He fell, and in shocked, panicked silence, the others beat on into the gathering night. Then another, and another. The remaining brothers shouldered their increasing responsibility for my mass and pushed desperately onwards, upwards, hoping for land. Another, another. They slipped out from under us with barely a scream. Those left were breathing ragged the length of their tortured, elegant necks. Flecks of blood and spittle appeared on their beaks. More, more of them fell.

  Still I was not frightened.

  The flight slowed down. We would never make it. We realised now.

  Soon I was wrestling in mid-air with my youngest brother. He was the last one left and, as I discovered, utterly useless. One of his wings was still a human arm, just as, when human, one arm was a wing. His brothers had been buoying him up. His was the nettle shirt with the left arm incomplete.

  ‘I am the odd one out.’ He smiled ruefully, as he ruptured in flight and spread out bare-limbed. Human-formed, yet with one comically inept, immaculate bird’s wing, he dropped into the ocean below.

  And I? I flew away.

  I had my answer now, with which to confront Hilde. I had also discovered my vocation in life. And with that, I might do anything. Hilde was reduced to piddling about with archbishops and princes. Now that I had shed my feathery impedimenta, I pretty much had the world at my feet.

  WILL YOU STAY IN OUR

  LOVERS’ STORY?

  She hated him first of all because he had silver hair. Her mother was stroking it the first time Mandy clapped eyes on him.

  ‘This is your new dad,’ her mother said, sitting next to him on the kitchen bench.

  ‘But he’s old,’ Mandy said and they laughed. When she remembered her first dad, he was young. He was up to his knees in the river, catching sticklebacks for her, and his face was prickled softly with beard.

  Now Mam and this Les were laughing and getting married. His eyes creased up and closed in when he laughed. She hoped he would never come to pick her up from school.

  The registry office smelled of disinfectant and new flowers. Outside the room where Mam and Les married each other, there was a large board full of names. Each name had a number beside it. Mandy, in her crinkled new green dress, read them all while they waited to go in. ‘They’re all old,’ she thought. Her head swam. Then Mam, shaking with nerves, ushered her in.

  Two old women did the service. There wasn’t a vicar. Everything was silver and blue, even the flowers. The fat woman read the words out, Mam and Les repeated them. A thinner woman at a desk nearby was writing in a big yellow book. She blew on the page when she finished, as if the ink was hot.

  ‘Isn’t this a nice family group?’ the thinner woman sighed, taking their photo when it was all over. ‘I hope I don’t cut your heads off.’

  She gave Mandy a special smile.

  Les sprawled. He made a mess of their house, although Mam didn’t seem to mind. Mandy watched him make a pot of tea to watch telly with. He left tea bags steaming in the sink and clogging the plughole. The bench was sticky with wet sugar. He ate chocolate biscuits, humming through the crumbs as he poured out. Mam sat with the telly, not minding.

  It was Les’s idea to cut down on fuel bills. He had read something in the Sunday paper, he said, about saving electricity.

  ‘Sounds like a good idea,’ said Mam and switched off the heating. All three curled up on the settee to watch the telly, a duvet over their knees, pulled up to their chins. Mandy had to sit between them all night. She couldn’t get out, even when she got bored. Les ate crisps. She listened to him mashing them to a slimy pulp.

  When there was a film on he fell asleep next to her. Old people did that. He never saw the end of a film. She heard the breath startle in his throat, listened to the slight, fluting snores from his nose. His head would touch down on her shoulder, as if he were comfortable with her. For the rest of the film she would have his bristly silver hair weighing down on her.

  And he wasn’t comfortable with her. When they took Mam to the doctor’s and neither of them was allowed to go in with her, they would have to sit together in the waiting room. He kept quiet. He couldn’t think of anything to say. Yet, when her mam was there, he would be coming out with all sorts of things.

  ‘Do you know what windmills are for, Mandy?’

  ‘What are you reading at school, Mand?’

  ‘What do you think Mummy would like for her birthday?’

  He called Mam Mummy. Mandy never called her that. She didn’t even look like a mummy.

  He gave a sigh of relief when Mam came out of the consulting room. Not because she was smiling, the doctor hadn’t given her bad news, but because Mummy was there again, between them. It was easier with three of them there.

  Mandy liked it best when it was just her and Mam. It was like old times when they went to the shops together. Mandy wasn’t old enough to call this nostalgia. They would sit in a cafe and Mandy would get a plate of chips. Mam would pinch one, letting it cool for a moment on her saucer.

  ‘You could talk to Les more.’

  ‘I do talk to him.’ She could feel her socks slipping off. When Mam asked questions like this, Mandy imagined that a small vicious dog under the table was tugging her shoes and then her socks off for spite. She had to pretend nothing was happening.

  ‘You grunt at him. He’s only trying to be nice.’

  ‘He asks stupid things.’

  ‘Pardon, madam?’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  It was on one of these trips that Mam took
bad. Mandy hated Les even more for not being there with his car. It ended up with Mandy calling for her first taxi.

  They were pushing a trolley between them through the supermarket’s automatic doors. They had a lot to get. Mam waved a long list about, then clasped her head. She grabbed her bag off the trolley.

  ‘Mam?’

  Mam whirled round and ran back out of the double doors.

  The duvet went back upstairs. Mam under it, in bed. The heating went back on. Mandy watched the telly with Les and he watched The Benny Hill Show. He laughed all the way through. His short, barking laugh filled the room. Mandy couldn’t see what he was laughing at. She tried her best to join in and even talk to him.

  ‘When will Mam be better?’

  He stopped mid-laugh and looked at her, mouth hanging open, full of crisps.

  Les started taking Mandy to and from school. He waited outside with all the mams and seemed pleased to see her. He stood a little apart from the others and they didn’t try to include him. A few asked how Mandy’s mam was and Les was rude to them.

  ‘She’s all right,’ he said, tight-lipped. Mandy blushed with shame.

  ‘They’re Mam’s friends,’ she said as they walked off quickly, quicker than everyone else.

  ‘Your mam doesn’t need friends. She’s got me.’

  It got to the summer holidays. Mam’s room was hot, musty, dark green. Her bedside table was covered with bottles of pills, cups half-empty with soured barley water and scummed coffee. Les was reading to her in a loud, clear voice, Catherine Cookson novels, one after another. He didn’t try to put any life into the voices, but Mam seemed to be asleep most of the time anyway.

  One morning Les woke Mandy up.

  ‘Get up, Mand. We’re going on a trip.’

  He opened her curtains. Mandy screwed up her eyes.

  ‘Where to?’

  His hair was white in the light. ‘Flamingoland. Get dressed.’

  Now that Les was here they were supposed to have holidays. More money now, Mam had said. Two weeks away in a caravan. Coniston maybe. Pack up his car and ride away over the hills. Picnics, plodging, going round shops. Les had said they would go mad with all his money. It was useless until he had met Mandy’s mam. He would lavish it on them, he said. Their lives would change for ever. First, though, Mam had to stop the tranquillisers.

  She was trying hard. Failing. Trying harder. But she couldn’t go on holiday yet. She explained to Mandy that she wanted to be taken back home to her sickbed each night. ‘So it’ll be day trips we’ll be having this summer,’ she said. Scarborough, Ullswater, Flamingoland.

  She got a letter from the TV people one morning and Les had to write back for her. She couldn’t take her place on the team for Family Fortunes because she was bad.

  ‘There,’ Les spat as he wrote. ‘That’s what them tablets are doing to you. You can’t go on the telly stoned to the eyeballs.’

  Mandy was watching her mam, lying on the settee. Her eyes were like Cleopatra’s in history books, but she wasn’t wearing make-up.

  Aunty Christine, who was clever and would have gone to college if it wasn’t for that insurance clerk, took Mam’s place on Family Fortunes. Grandma was disappointed in her. She thought she might have pulled herself together in time. But she didn’t come to visit. Their family team won three thousand pounds.

  Mam, Les and Mandy watched it from under the duvet. Mam came down for the evening for once, even though she already knew how it ended. Grandma and her sisters had already blown the money on a holiday. Mam thought her sisters looked tarty. They were abroad now.

  ‘All the questions were easy,’ said Mam afterwards as her family waved to her under the rolling credits. ‘I’d have won that.’

  ‘We know, love,’ Les said.

  Mandy went looking for clothes in the washing basket, wondering what was suitable for Flamingoland Zoo.

  Last night Les had said, ‘Mandy…’ He looked around him as if he thought someone might be listening. ‘One day soon, your mummy might well die.’

  Dungarees, she thought. It’s bound to be muddy.

  Mam was walking slowly. She was withdrawing again. Les put his arm around her waist and helped her along. Mandy watched them, sitting in the passenger seat of Les’s car. He had parked at the edge of a brown lake. She didn’t want to see the flamingos, but Mam did. Les was practically pulling her to the edge of the water. Mandy put the radio on.

  They had already driven through the bits with the lions and the rhinos running wild. It wasn’t very scary because they all looked tired.

  Mandy didn’t want to watch. Les holding Mam up on the gravelly shore, pointing at the big pink turkeys on their spindly legs. The birds waded awkwardly, shot into and out of the air, skimmed over the calm surface. Mam was craning her neck about to see. Mandy watched.

  Les had left the keys in the ignition. They swung there and Mandy wished she could drive. She locked the car doors and rolled the windows up. The radio got on her nerves so she switched it off and listened to herself breathe. She misted up the windscreen and wiped it away with her cardigan sleeve, misted it again.

  Two men had appeared and were talking to Mam and Les. Mandy frowned because they seemed to be arguing. I bet we’re not supposed to park here, she thought. Then she saw that the men had silver hair like Les, and folded wings hanging out of the back of their dresses. They took Mam’s arms and held her between them. Mam looked wildly about her and Mandy could hear Les shouting, even with the windows rolled up. He was throwing a tantrum, as the great white wings began to beat.

  And then Mam seemed to calm down. The men with wings were digging into the pockets of their frocks and producing handfuls of sweets; Smarties, M and M’s. They pushed them into Mam’s face and she swallowed and seemed to sag between them. Mam’s sandalled feet left the beach’s shingle.

  Les came running back to the car. He tried to open the door. But Mandy had locked it.

  ‘Mand! Open this door!’ he yelled, pulling at the handle. He wanted to drag Mam back into the car, whisk them back home, shove her back under the duvet and read her Catherine Cookson.

  ‘Mand! Mandy!’

  Mandy wiped the rest of the fog from the window. Mam had been lifted right off the ground and she was struggling only slightly now. The angels had stopped feeding her and they let the Smarties drop in a fine rainbow shower beneath them. It drummed and rattled on the car roof for a while. Mandy saw multicoloured capsules bouncing off the bonnet, off Les’s coat, sticking in his silvery hair. Then the shower finished.

  The flamingos, who had raised their horned beaks to watch the flight, looked back at the water now that the show was finished and dredged the lake bottom for sweets.

  COULD IT BE MAGIC?

  I kept on at you with a fierce, perverse love, didn’t I?

  Things like this were the reason.

  We sat somewhere public, bottle of yellow wine between us—you were getting me into wine and I admitted preferring being pissed on wine to being pissed on lager—and you started fingering the petals of the silk freesias they’d stuck in a mineral-water bottle.

  They were so purple and realistic-looking, I waited to see pollen smudging your skin.

  You said you loathed silk flowers. That loud, admonishing tone you’d take on often in my presence. Never about me, but about things close to me. The accoutrements to our little scenes.

  I asked why you hated them.

  ‘Because they aren’t plastic flowers.’

  This morning I’m back in my own town. Far from your presence and your influence.

  ‘Out from under that man’s skin,’ came a postcard from Vienna, from my mother, in the post this morning. Nothing from you, urging me back to our flat. She thinks I’m well shot of you. She never liked you and she’s dying to return from singing in Vienna to see how her darling son’s getting on by himself. She asks in her postcard if I’ve signed myself up with the doctors here.

  I had an appointment straight away. They’ve
had it all done up and Dr Jones’s office is a cosy orange. An atmosphere of slightly overdone toast which lulls you (well, me, at any rate), and he had me up on the bench starkers in minutes giving me the once-over. Those cool utensils.

  We talked about depression. Pills will sap me and he says he’s loath to do that just yet. Shit. So I’m thrown back on my own resources and he clapped his fat hands with glee to hear me resolve that I would somehow pull my own self together. He asked about you and I said there’d be no counting on you.

  ‘Have you ever thought of doing harm to yourself?’ he asked solemnly and I almost laughed. The cleaner nosed in to empty his bins. Crumpled yellow papers and dead syringes. He looked at me expectantly while she fussed on.

  All I could say was, ‘No more than any other incipient artist and homosexual living in Newton Aycliffe.’

  So we closed with a chuckle and he promised to see me soon.

  I still didn’t have any proper answers. I went straight to the gym to work off my frustrations. There I take special advice about how much iron I ought to be pumping. In my condition. I don’t want to hurt the baby.

  Your smart flat—which you encouraged me to think of as our smart flat—was crammed with plastic flowers.

  In this house I have real flowers. Here I wait for the opera queen back from the continent, periodically dusting the furniture’s blank patches which I can feel ache for Venetian glass. Do I hear the chinking and chiming of approaching maternal baggage?

  You had pink tulips and ice-blue arum lilies. I can see you even now picking up the lot, stem by stem, stomping from vase to vase, then dumping them all in the kitchen sink, giving them a good slosh of washing-up liquid.