‘SEEN THAT VIEW?’ – HIS bum chin a day unshaved, pointing at the moors unpeopled, untamed.
Jan cupped her brow in the same dead direction and cracked her chewing gum.
Mr Somerville dropped her hand. She went jellykneed and cold. They were high up or it seemed so to her – touching broken cloud, where the sunbeams began – having left his car somewhere off the Isle of Skye road, where the sheep were, hidden only a mile or so by slow dip and crest.
He kept tramping the invisible trail in his olive kagool without her until she went Oi. The wind carried her shout. Heathers leaned to her, like classroom iron shavings near a magnet.
‘We flattening some grass or what?’ Jan said.
He came back and they did.
And soon Jan felt the peat jolt beneath them, then quake. A ghost had left his grave to help her, to make certain that she didn’t fall again. He was touch-close, but however she turned she couldn’t bring him out from the corner of her sight and so she said nowt and her blood quickened and her breaths found a pattern that had nowt to do with her jointed body which was now corded to time, history’s curled ribbon taking vein after vein. A weird calm took her, even as Somerville rushed her, weighted her, rammed and sank her into restive earth with his clumsy elbows and ink-stamp kisses. Again Jan tried to glimpse this ghost watching – no – reading her. Perhaps she knew his blood and love, as Ghosts of all things that are, some shade of thee. Jan heard this as a voice inside her head and shut her eyes tight to listen to its aftersound. It left her with that rare peace felt on the drift down into a safe kip, the kind she knew as a kid, after being read to sleep by her brother. Some shade of thee. When the ghost called her name it reached her as more echo than voice. She counted four hands. One clean pair dragging her bits; the other rigid and gentle and caked in peat. Fatherly but feminine. Breaching earth to console her. Love had come for her before, once, in a different way, and had done mad things to her then, impossible things, and this was only the same. Her insides did what the peat-soaked hands asked of them and began to churn and ache before Somerville got it done. He could have been shagging himself through all this. But he wasn’t; he was shagging Jan; and Jan remembered and was glad. She knew the ghost knew she was glad. And the hands seemed to both mind and not mind. In the same way Somerville’s prick could be perfect and nowt special, when it was her he was inside.
After, when the ghost’s hands were gone –
and the earth calm
and their clothes pushed to their pits and ankles, Jan clung to Somerville taking his heat. He was shock-white, goosefleshed, his chest thumping through her. Crisp hairs made her nipples itch and she rashed wherever he’d squeezed for too long. Sweat cooled her again once it caught the breeze.
‘Think I swallowed me chuddy,’ she said.
She saw this tickled him, but he pushed away.
Sun-split clouds separated over them. It went warm. The wind fell and they left their brightened bodies uncovered. Jan tittered quietly as he leaked from her but didn’t dare look.
‘What day is it again?’
‘Saturday,’ she said.
‘How can there ever be another Monday?’
‘Must be shit teaching us lot at Poundswick’
‘What’s your dream job?’
‘This. I was a devout girl, me! Never missed Sunday Mass till I turned twelve.’
‘Who corrupted you?’
Jan tried to think of a name or face but nothing came. It was like her mind’s eye needed specs. ‘I remember him saying I’d nice ones for me age.’
‘Good god, Jan. That’s a crime.’
She was teasing him. ‘So’s this.’
‘We sully each other, don’t we?’
‘I’d let you murder me.’ Jan wasn’t even blinking. ‘Not told nobody I’m here. Not even our Kell.’
‘You think I’d get away with it?’ he said.
‘Here? Murder? God, yeah. Sheep don’t grass, d’they?’
Bleats echoed.
‘They graze,’ he said.
‘Div.’
To escape her mouth he aimed that cleft chin at the empty distance. ‘We’ll have a roast, if you fancy it? There’s a pub round here. Weren’t you saying you like lamb?’ He spoke without looking at her, just like the blokes did to their birds in the old films that Bev loved watching hungover; tragic romances that her and Alice sometimes caught the middle of.
Jan said: ‘I can’t have lamb on me plate, can I? They’re hopping about up here.’
This turned him; he got nose-to-nose, his blond stubble grating her chin. ‘The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. That could be your first book. It’s about a vegetarian.’
‘Is she dead rich and gorgeous?’
‘He’s an angry, desperate individual, putting the world to rights.’
‘I’ll leave it, ta.’
‘There’s hope yet for Jan Dodds.’
Peat fingermarks scored her arms and she slapped herself clean, picked soil from her hair. ‘Cheeky fuck. I’ve changed me mind; I’m having lamb.’ Behind her shoulders she had what looked like handprints. Twisting to see better, she pulled her skin and gapped her top. They covered her back in wing-shape stamps; the closed fingers pointed to her waist. ‘Oi, seen this?’
But he was checking himself. He jumped up, scared and shy. ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Shit.’ Spotless hands worrying his bloodied prick.
Jan said: ‘But am not due on. Not for a fortnight.’ She stood and stepped out of stirrup leggings to escape the blue knickers. She bled them as she did it. Reversed them to mop clots trickling her thighs, then snuck them browned and fetid into the pocket of his other kagool – hers for the day.
He patted his own. Licked a hankie to wipe.
Jan moved a crush of pink bog roll from her bra to pack her crotch. There wasn’t enough. She dug for more squares but had lost them. All this made him sick. She wanted him repulsed at the smell and sight of her. She showed him her shame in case he thought she had none. But he was too busy hiding his from her, not knowing which way to stand as he scrubbed off her stain.
Jan decided then that she was his forever. He’d have to bury her on the moors if he wanted rid of her.
‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Shit. Shit.’
Jan could corner grown men on hinterland. Laugh the wind strong. Her eyes ran as she danced her leggings half up; their faded chevrons had been her mam’s once, or maybe Alice’s.
For this Mr Somerville looked – her arse out when she pounced. Jan caught his neck to laugh into his damp white face and cat-rub his weekend stubble and to have him. . .
. . .hold doors for her on the way in. ‘How’s that brother of yours getting on?’
‘Ta. Good, yeah. Our uncle Mac’s sorted him a job.’
‘Your “uncle Mac”?’
This was between mottled pub glass as he bought her a ten-pack of Embassy Regal from a clapped-out vendor that shook to life. Jan hadn’t asked, hadn’t waited to be asked – just gestured for the dearest brand:
‘I’ve not met him yet but, apparently, right, he proper fancies me mam.’
Mr Somerville reached with her for the dropped pack, then shied from her blood-rusty fingers.
She daubed his hand. ‘Can read you like a book, you know.’
This was true. But she had convinced herself that it wasn’t. And being convinced that it wasn’t was what allowed her to say it to him smiling like a threat.
Her reeking taking fingers. Jan looked up. He tried to arrange his face for her. But he could not get it right.
‘Ta,’ she said, louder.
In she stepped, skenning the busy pub. Stone floors, wooden beams; Tetley’s mats and dead pint pots ran the nook where day showed the dust. On cream walls hung painted owls and hares. Jan clocked rucksacks, purses, handbags, which chairs and stools wore coats. The fruit machines were off. A tan sausage dog kipped leashed below a round table with a smoking ashtray.
‘What’s the job?’ Somerville rustled behind her, jagging his kagool zip.
Old birds with cauliflower perms glanced at them, still gabbing at their bald husbands – necking bitter, spooning fruit crumble, pie and mash.
‘The job? Oh, yeah. Think they’re robbing some jewellers in town, but no one tells us owt. . . Back in a sec. Mine’s cider.’
Hearing this fixed his zip.
Jan hovered by the bar hatch, then moved to grab a lady’s brown bag from under her stool. Rhino-arse, kinked straw hair, a queen of the hilltop run to fat. This one nattered away, her shrapnel ready-stacked on the bar. A stool along, an old timer nursing a short-stem glass ate a tangerine from a tissue. An ancient barmaid, sweating in a raspberry smock, pulled pints. She reminded Jan of her Nana Dodds. Tits like punctured netballs. Even a thin gold crucifix with Lord Jesus on a garrotte chain.
Jan hopped for attention, miming desperate. The bag jangled inside her borrowed kagool.
The barmaid raised a boiled-beef arm.
Down bar, up step, first door on right.
*
Two tens and four fivers replaced her bra tissue, plus a real lighter – gold and heavy, like her brother’s. Her canvas shoe squeaked on the bog-seat in the clean lit stall, the laces grass-dyed and mudded. Having hitched one leg to insert a tampon she poked the bag for spares and surfaced: keys, Ray-Bans, small tubs of tutty and fancy creams, the dagger glint of a metal nail file and a scabby mint tin keeping needle and thread. Jan footed the bag behind the U-bend and flushed her mess. She scrubbed those hands pink under the taps, then preened in front of the mirror tile – without wrecking, without improving.
Somerville was gangling over the pub phone at the bar when she came out, watching for her while he used it, twisted at the waist. Over-smiling he waved her to an end table laid with two Aspalls, hers a half. She went and waited, scraping the ashtray off the next one. He whispered into the receiver, his eyes crumpled at Jan. She opened her new pack, sparked up with her new lighter. Sometimes he nodded instead of talking, as if whoever it was on the other end could see him. Waxy, mithered. Sideburns sweated dark. More than a day since he’d shaved and she could tell now he was one of those blokes whose beards didn’t match his head. He rang off and took the stool which had his coat. His hideous weekend shirt (colour of sick; big enough for two) she loved. It’d lost a middle button on the moor. Jan’s mark. Jan’s doing. He was looking half-lost too, half-sly – like he might just let her cop off with him, if she went for it; let her taste him deeper than mouths reached, into odd places where time stopped like hearts. Any moment they might put on a show for these sad bastards. Give them a treat and a fright.
But then she felt daft when she tried holding his hand across the table – hers raw and stainless now – his beyond reach.
‘Lamb roast, I’m having,’ she said at the menu chalk. ‘You gunna be taking me out again, then?’
‘I’d like to. Do you want that?’
‘I do, yeah.’
‘You know, your eye’s a bit better. . . It’s good for you, this, to be able to get away, I mean. Isn’t it?’
The phone rang.
Drilling elbows into the table he turned enough to see the phone which got left to ring. He scrambled his hair, relieved, and looked up again at the menu, blinking. ‘Was that true before, about your brother?’
‘Yeah, course. Why?’
‘Why tell me?’ He held her arm then, but it was more to keep her from smoking. ‘You’re not mithered if he gets himself locked up again? Or worse?’
‘But that’s how he is now.’
‘What’d happen if I met him?’
Jan properly cackled. ‘Oi, he’d smell us on you. You’d be buried in the morning.’ Jan took quick pulls then talked the smoke: ‘Me mam, right, she used to say when we was kids that our Kell was the only lad what had female intuition.’
‘I don’t understand.’
Jan raked ash with her dog-end. ‘When he’s not tryna get in trouble he’s dead soft. He’s lovely.’
‘To you?’
‘He was.’
‘Is he upset you didn’t visit him?’
‘Me mam went loads. But me nana never let us see him in there.’
‘Sounds like you’ll have another chance to soon.’ Somerville seemed to shrink the longer they sat there; his questioning and listening robotic. Jan realised she’d no clue if he was smug or scared or what; or how she felt about this brick wall, having missed it go up. But he had brought her there; they had spent a night and a day together (a record). She was eating his weekend whole and still he wasn’t sick of her. Sharing a sit-down meal, plenty miles from Wythie, somewhere green and nice, and just for the fuck of it. When he glanced at her tits it made his words trip their feet on their way out the door. And Jan was happy again and went for his hand again and she got it and kept it. On the table.
He made the same hmph sound that did for a laugh when he was tired in front of the class by final lesson.
‘His bird keeps finishing with him. Zuley. She’s absolute gorgeous. I was there for it yesterday. He said to me after that he wasn’t even bothered and he was going out robbing, but I reckon he went to hers, to sort it out.’
‘Do you want him out robbing?’
Jan had gulped her cider before his second sip. She went for another fag but put it back.
‘Is he a good little gangster then, your Kelly?’
‘Kell? Nah, he’s no good.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Cos. They were all shit, wasn’t they? Me granddad, me dad, now our Kell. They must’ve been. They was always getting sent down. But then you get some round Wythie what are scared stiff, right? Dead careful with their manners, like in case me dad’s still about. Some reckon he is. And me nana, she proper loves that. Good manners.’
‘Is it the same with your mother?’
‘Are we having our dinner or what? Told you. She’s not all there, me mam. She’s just shit at life.’ Jan grinned all this, full watt.
‘I see.’ Somerville blinked and sipped. ‘You’re a funny one, Jan.’
‘Oh, I know. It’s cos, right, I live in a fucking madhouse.’
‘No. It’s because you can explain yourself. Most of us can’t do that. Can’t or won’t.’
‘Fuck off.’ Jan went short with hunger, then clapped her knees hard under the table. Wanting to bruise.
‘So, it’s your nana who likes a villain in the family?’
‘That’s what too much church’ll do to you.’
‘Do you remember much? Your dad and granddad?’
‘Our Kell does. He was – hang on – fourteen, right, when it happened. I were six.’
‘And that explains him.’
She mimicked his tired non-laugh.
‘What would you like me to do? I want to help you, Jan, if I can. What do you want?’
‘Told you. I want lamb.’
Again the pub’s phone rang.
‘Somebody best be getting home!’ croaked the old barmaid.
‘You.’ Another lady’s voice, another end of the pub. ‘You pinched my bag.’
The words flew at Jan. Kinked straw hair flapped closer and closer until it shadowed their table and Jan smelled honey shampoo:
‘What’s that in your hand then?’ Jan said, giving her words extra grain.
‘You took it and left it in the toilets.’
‘Did I fuck.’
‘Don’t you dare speak like that. That’s my bloody lighter, that is.’
‘Not touched it.’
‘Common sort, aren’t you, love? Ay, this thieving tart’s a bit young for you, isn’t she?’
‘Have I took her bag? Tell her. Go on. Tell her.’
Mr Somerville stayed mute and only cringed at the table and their shadows.
A tide crashed on Jan’s face. Blinded by the splash, she leapt up and coughed from shock. It washed cold – ice and orange. Her top clung to her. She still had on his spare kagool, unzipped. She screamed and kicked and spat and missed and his spotless hands held her away and yanked her outside.
Jan wound the passenger window down to blow-dry her hair. Stickiness whipped her face. Her split-ends tasted of vodka. ‘I need me another bath,’ she said.
‘You think you can get away with anything, don’t you?’ Mr Somerville had to shout.
‘Bit like you.’
He wedged his arm around her and she let him pull her close till he needed to reach the gearstick. Her skin was glue. But he let her stain him now as he drove them townward.
Soon roadside houses went from stone to brick. She tried the radio and without having to fiddle found summat good: Loose Ends’ ‘Magic Touch’, a track Alice had loved as much as Kell, though both would have denied it for different reasons. But not her, not Jan.
*
His blonde lady was back. She looked even older than in the photos from his wallet. Bigger too. No red lippy, no round specs just a blue clip to keep her lank hair set – showing off a small square ear and its big square stud. The head turning as if from a bad smell as the eyes stayed on Jan. Her bronze cheeks were massive; the late afternoon peached her and sliced his bedsit, their mess. In stripy pastels the lady waited neatly on his unmade bed, a set of keys in a blood-threaded fist. When Jan didn’t come any further into the room the lady stood to better see her. A pleated skirt and tucked blouse hung immaculate, not a crease. She ignored Mr Somerville even when he crossed the carpet to touch her arm and gently prised the flat keys from her. She let him, sooner than take her eyes off Jan.
‘Go home,’ he said, now standing with his blonde lady – not that she’d noticed. The lady was tranced by her. Too choked to talk or strike but her body coiled – maybe about to do summat with that fist before knowing it; her peached face blanching but not blank.
Jan tottered forward instead of back, then overcorrected herself. She palmed cool wall. Slowly her fingers travelled the wallpaper, towards the window, as if to crawl behind the curtains.
‘Patrick, who is she?’ – the lady’s voice bright and mild.
‘Patrick?’ Jan whispered.
‘Go home, Jan,’ he said, stroking the lady’s arm, soothing her out of her trance or maybe keeping her in it. ‘Now.’
‘Jan?’ the lady whispered, then turned her head fast to note him standing with her, holding her arm. ‘Patrick, why is she crying? Why is she crying?’
Together they looked at Jan like they wanted the answer.
‘You’ve been to bed, haven’t you, with this little girl?’
Over and over Jan shook her head for no – which hurried her cleansing tears – ‘He’s give us extra lessons, that’s all, so I didn’t fall behind. Tell her. Go on’ – fat childish tears she couldn’t stop.
‘He’s lending us a book. A book about the jungle. Tell her!’
Mr Somerville spun and crouched by the other side of the bed and toppled a tower of books to take the one he wanted.
He came to Jan. He snatched her hand off the wall, pressed the book into it, into her.
A paperback orange and white. A waddling penguin on the cover.
‘Penguins don’t live in the jungle,’ Kell said, petting her crusty hair. She stretched out on him, sharing her made bed (her room less of a tip; their mam had been in while they were out), Jan’s horrid legs straight and bare inside his, her blobby nose under his square chin. She hoped his fag would drop ash on her tongue, her forehead.
‘It’s not about penguins,’ Jan said, hoarse.
‘Was kidding.’
‘It’s about a vegetarian.’
‘What can they eat in the jungle?’
‘Prick.’
‘Slag.’
He lifted her sticky head off his chest to slide out from under her but didn’t.
‘Love you.’
‘How’d you feel?’
‘Got a banging headache.’
He rocked her tighter. Her tired bones, stinging.
She hushed: ‘We both been dumped, haven’t we?’
‘You have. Got a shag last night, me. It’s back on.’
‘Knew it. That Zuley’s too good for you, Kell.’
‘I know.’
‘Good.’
For the first hour he had asked her nowt much and understood more than Jan knew how to say, either to him or herself. This she knew. He was patient with her again, like when she’d been a tiny terror only he could appease.
On their street he had heard her trot, then seen her winded and burning, heading for their gate, where he was, and she had seen his arms unfolding to catch her and take her in the house. Their arrivals concurrent. He’d just been dropped off by some great big tashed bloke who peered at her through the big windshield. She cleaned her eyes on Kell’s Lacoste to get a better look. The bloke old enough to be this Uncle Mac – wondering at her ugly sweaty gasping tears. He didn’t get out, didn’t ask her Kell what was up, just peered at them till Kell, clocking he hadn’t gone, turned and waved him off; and then the bloke gave her one last hard stare before his car squealed and sped.
Ten minutes of attention and Kell stopped her bawling; he said Look and she looked, expecting him to speak, only for him to be at her room window. Jan kneed the bed, her elbows on the inner sill, too exhausted to stand with him. Out there was next door’s Linda – Gene’s and Joey’s mam – stripping off prancing in the road, slathered with tutty, her rollers in. Soon their whole street and the next over were cheering her and her ancient once-white girdle. It was only their own mam who wasn’t out; and Jan sensed her doings through the wall. Gene was down there, by a grey van open-doored opposite, which she mistook at first for the Marco Rea ice-cream van. He kept calling Mam! Mam! But Linda took no notice. Linda was living for herself. Not her audience. Two hopeless bearded fellers in coats holding out green blankets, skidded and dived to catch her. A Juliet Bravo waited with them in her cap and uniform, but no jam butty was parked on their street. Jan leaned to check farther down the kerb. Linda flashed and vamped good-as-naked whenever she got enough distance between them and her.
Kell sparked up and leaned over the sill, his fag tip nearly kissing the glass. Jan wondered where she’d left that packet of Embassys. He blew the first drag to the ceiling. ‘Bloody hell. And we think Mam’s off her rocker.’
Below them, behind the shared privets, Nana Dodds gripped little Joey.
Kell creaked the latch and the street talked:
‘Bloody mad bint.’
‘Think of her poor kiddies.’
‘She’s gone.’
‘Shake them, love.’
‘Show this smug lot what’s what.’
The two blokes finally grabbed her and their van bundled her away. Neighbours booed, clapped, then stayed out discussing what they’d seen. Nana Dodds called Gene in and put Joey on her hip.
Jan heard them come inside. The front door shutting, then locking. . .
‘So,’ Kell said now, resting her. ‘Who’s this such-a-show what’s finished with you? Which knobhead round here are we talking about?’
‘Zuley didn’t tell you?’
He rocked her again and she put an ear to his belly and imagined she were lost at sea or safe at the bottom of a well. ‘Kell? Will you read to us for a bit? Go on.’
He stroked her head. He broke the back of Somerville’s book and began in the middle. ‘“Naturally, the aspect of prison life was changed for. . . Jurgis. . . by the arrival of a cell mate. He could not turn his face to the wall and sulk, he had to speak when spoken to; nor could he. . .”’
When Jan woke it was still light out but the sun had gone over and she switched on her table lamp to feel less alone since there was no trace of her brother on her pillow – just orange-juice smell and makeup sweat. Then she crossed the landing to wash up and plugged the sink ready to shampoo her hair and while waiting for the bowl to fill she pissed and changed her tampon and returned to her room. She found Mr Somerville’s book while searching the floor for summat clean to wear. Jan opened it on the first page.
For Patrick –
Upon receiving his new post at Poundswick High School: now their very necessary Mr Somerville.
Good luck, my love. I’ll make sure you stay off the drink.
*knickers & kisses*
Malorie
Jan binned the book and went and stood at the top of the stairs and shouted Kell.
‘He went back out,’ her nana crowed from the kitchen. ‘Are you having your tea or not? Be dry as a bone.’
Then, the thing giggled like a sprite from behind her mam’s door; and her mam hushed it, pacing with it; Jan heard the floorboard clicks.
In a mad rush Jan washed her hair and came downstairs with it wet.
Gene and Joey were in the front room for Kenny Everett.
Nana sighed at her, then gloved a plate out the oven, then waited for Jan to sit at the vacant table before serving it. She was stooping and mithered, her brow spiky with thought.
Jan slapped the HP bottle to coat her warmed-over mash before ganneting the lot as Nana Dodds pulled a chair and heaved into it, fat knees turned to the radio, which was on so quiet Jan had taken the hymns to be kids playing out on the next street over – white noise carried in with the breeze. Her nana crossed her forehead with a flannel from her apron pocket, and tutted at this world. One of Aunty Eunice’s old postcards from the mantel was picture-up on the table. Some river in America. Jan read the name of the city – Trenton – then coastered her brew with it until her nana saw the tea ring.
‘What’s gunna happen to Linda?’ Jan asked, chewing.
Staring off, her nana wittered: ‘What that poor woman’s gone through, they’ve no idea.’
‘Does this mean we’re taking in Gene and Joey?’
‘Aye. For now.’
Jan scraped knife and fork while her nana drifted, listening to her hymns.
‘I met Uncle Mac today, Nana. Out there. Before Linda had her turn.’
‘Your granddad loved Mac. Your dad did and all.’
Jan held her brew. ‘Is our kid out with him tonight?’
‘Think Kelly’s out with his coloured lass again. Said he mightn’t be home till Monday.’ Now she was watching Jan drink. ‘Why’s your hair wet? Always bloody washing it and washing it.’
‘Where’s me uncle Mac live then?’
‘Town. He’s stopping with Rodney Westlake. Up on Monton Street, he said.’
‘Rodney who?’
‘Oh, your granddad did love Rodney. Notsamuch your dad, mind.’ Her nana cupped one knee to stand. ‘Where’s your mam putting your towels?’
Jan stepped out through the backdoor, no coat, with a pinched quid and caught the bus to town.