‘And they’ll ask: which of these should we kill?
In that noonday heat there’ll be a hush round the harbour
As they ask which has got to die.
And you’ll hear me as I softly answer: the lot!’
‘Pirate Jenny’ – Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill,
‘The Threepenny Opera’
Pirate Jenny. It’s a game I play. A game in which I choose who gets it and who doesn’t. It passes the time.
I’m sitting in the Rendez with my mother and her friends. Everyone calls it that. Rendez – short for the Rendezvous. Trying hard to be French: worn wooden tables, big mirrors, pot au feu on the chalked-up menu. The mirrors are the real thing, not repro. I spend a lot of time looking into them, so I should know. They make the place look darker, more mysterious; they make people look glamorous. They might not reflect reality but they’re good for picking out victims.
My mother meets her friends here to drink wine and gossip. I don’t usually come with her, but tonight I couldn’t get out of it. She’s done something for me, so now I have to do something for her. Quid pro quo. She’s been with me to the new school I’ve got to attend. We’ve been to see the Principal: Armani suit, fancies himself. Fancies me, too, from the way he’s checking me out. And my mother. Bit of a sleazebag, then. Just a preliminary chat, see if we like each other. Cue: hearty laugh as his eyes switch from her legs to my cleavage.
‘I have to have a drink after that.’ She gives a mock shudder when we’re out of his office. ‘Let’s go to the Rendez.’ She says it like it’s an original and new idea. ‘My friends are dying to see you.’
That’s what she says, although it’s not true. Her friends have no interest in me. She really wants me here because I can drive, so she can drink as much as she likes.
My stepbrother is here, too. We picked him up from his after-school club. I’m sipping a Diet Coke. He’s working his way through a big bowl of chips. We don’t speak to each other and Mother and her friends ignore us. She’s got lots of friends. Networking, she calls it, and she’s good at it.
All her friends are on my list.
They hardly register my presence. They get on with the everlasting conversation about how crap their lives are, or their jobs, or their husbands, or their boyfriends, or any combination or lack of the above. That’s all they ever talk about. My mother is sitting in profile. She chats, laughing and smiling, or nods with her head on one side in listening mode. Every now and again she twists to check herself out in the mirror and sees me there.
Mirror, mirror on the wall. . .
Not you, Mother dear. Not any more.
I catch her look: jealousy mixed with admiration. I’m also here as her appendage. She’s been toting me about since I was tiny – I was a cute-looking child. She likes to show me off to her friends. Not so much recently. She’s beginning to feel the competition. But I’m not looking at her, or even at myself. I’m looking at the two boys. The dark one is Jamie Maguire. Martha’s brother. I don’t know the other one but I’ve seen him around. Jamie isn’t bad in a dull kind of way. He’s wearing a blue pullover and jeans, like his mum still buys his clothes. I think that’s rather sweet. The waitress arrives with their coffee. I know her, too. Jesse. The blond begins flirting with her, looking up through his long lashes. Jesse smiles back, indulgent, but she isn’t having any. She’s more interested in Jamie, but the blond guy can’t see it. He’s not used to girls saying ‘no’. He looks like an Abercrombie and Fitch model. The jeans aren’t cheap, the rest of his outfit is High Street, but well put together. Tatty tennis shoes strictly model’s own. He rakes a hand through his dirty blond hair. It won’t be long before he checks himself in the mirror. There he goes, quick look to see that his hair’s OK. Boys like him are obsessed with themselves. More than girls. Narcissism repels me. He goes on my list.
Jamie doesn’t. I like a plain canvas.
He glances up, too, as if he senses my thought and he’s not looking at himself, he’s looking at me. Not for the first time, either, I’ve been noticing him, noticing me. The blond shifts his gaze ever so slightly, to check out what his friend is checking out, and then they are both staring. My mother catches them and thinks they are looking at her. She would, wouldn’t she? She kind of simpers and I think that she is going to wink, or wave, tip her drink, or do something equally embarrassing. I should be colouring, but I never blush. I just look away.
There are girls outside the window. I know a few of them. The tall blonde peels off and comes in to join Jamie and his friend. Our Jamie looks pissed off. She doesn’t look too pleased to see him, either.
I’d have liked to have watched them longer, I like watching people, but Roland has finished his chips and has started to complain. Roland, Rollo, the kid really lives up to his name. He puts up with all kinds of shit at school because of it, but he’s OK. He’s not on my list.
The friends are set to make a night of it. My mother would love to stay, but knows she can’t. Her smile slips for a moment. There is a flicker of annoyance and resentment before she says, ‘Of course, sweetie. Time to go, anyway.’
We get up to go and pay at the counter. My mother blows kisses and mouthes ‘Call me’, little finger and thumb extended towards her ear, but her friends have turned away to carry on their conversation. It’s as though we have already left.
We wait while she orders stuff from the deli counter. Jamie is behind me; standing close, too close. I can feel his breath on my neck, but I don’t move away. He’s improved since I last saw him. Even though I know him, I blank him. He doesn’t say anything, either. That’s how it is in this town.
A weird thing has just happened. I opened a drawer to put my notebook back, and there’s my pack of tarot cards. I didn’t notice them before. I didn’t even think they were in that drawer. I don’t believe in any of that stuff any more. All that divination crap belongs to my goth/emo phase. That was all just kids’ stuff. I’m into something much bigger now, swapped astrology for agitprop, but I used to be deeply into that kind of shit. I liked all the paraphernalia, the charts, the runes, the tarot, the crystal.
My favourite thing was the planchette. I got it on a junk stall. Victorian, carved out of ebony. It is shaped like a heart and runs on three little casters. At the pointed end, there is a place to fix a pencil. So much better than a Ouija board but not enormous fun on your own. That’s one of the reasons I started the Circle. We used to meet at my house, paint our fingernails black, apply weird make-up, dye our hair indigo and dabble in the occult while listening to Bikini Kill, Beth Ditto, Free Kitten and Lady Gaga before anyone else liked her.
The Circle didn’t last long, though.
She will peak and she will pine . . .
Those spells I found on the Internet were so cheesy. Never thought for a moment that they would actually work. You can get spells for almost everything. Martha’s spots and hair loss were a laugh, no more than she deserved, but Louise Simpson on life support? That scared the shit out of them. The Circle broke up after that. I was getting bored with it, anyway. At the moment when the spells we were weaving actually seemed to be working, I ceased believing. Ironic that. But then, that’s how I am.
Occult paraphernalia, leached of their power, become mere knick-knacks. The planchette sits on my desk now – just an interesting objet. The rune stones look pretty on the windowsill. And the tarot? Doesn’t everybody own a pack of tarot cards?
I take them out of my drawer. I have to admit that I still feel a bit of a tug. A little thrill.
I cut, shuffle, cut again. Just for old time’s sake. I find him there. The Fool. It doesn’t mean bozo, just someone innocent but wise at the same time. The Creative Dreamer. It’s him. Got to be. I feel some of the old excitement stirring inside me.
He was in my mind, I’d just been writing about him, so I would see him, wouldn’t I? That’s how it works.
I cut again. The Knave of Swords. The Berserker. The archetypal warrior. That’s interesting. Now I’ve got the two of them. Jamie and his brother. I’m curious so I cut again. Queen of Swords reversed: devious, underhand, expert in the use of half-truths and slander. That has to be Martha.