‘KEEPING WELL?’

‘It’s you,’ Carol said. ‘From the bleeding bus.’

‘I know,’ Vern said, softly. And his smile went to his eyes.

‘You still think you’re funny.’ Carol preened, see-sawing her weight on a warm leatherette stool.

This was spring ’69, in the function room of the Posthouse Hotel up Palatine Road. A filthy night to strand a preening tart not far from her own estate, with packs of Burton-suited jokers and louts who daren’t speak her name. So, Carol bought her own drink at the bar and the next.

Black leafy trees roared opposite. A gale gave the flooded carpark a tide. There was no one with whom to share a cab or cadge a lift or catch a bus to brave town after a couple of rounds. This washout had cut them all off. The place was easy with itself, under a white spell which had them making do without fuss. Men watched her with a brief and regular intensity that burned the back of her neck. But the spell let them snub her. They could sooner prey on a regular bit than risk life and limb over Mrs Sefton Dodds. Therein, young Vern, nursing a bottle of milk stout like an Irish washerwoman, bought her a glass of Blue Nun with half a crown and let the dreary barmaid keep sixpence.

‘Oi,’ Carol said. ‘Do I look as daft in here as you do?’

‘Dafter, I should think.’ His local accent bared, not leaned in to or sweetened. ‘By that I mean there’s no obvious reason for someone like you to be here on her own. Unlike meself. And a mystery like that can vex the average member of my sex. One relying on a daub of Brylcreem to get his leg over. Then again. There might well be summat going on here that I just don’t know about. . .’

Tie-less, dainty and daft in a pilled-wool, elbow-patched suit. Clown-sized shoes of rained suede. Weak hands Carol wanted to trap inside hers, the fingertips quick with life, touching her bare arm so briefly so gently, while he worded her, that she couldn’t focus until he’d kissed her.

Knowing plain proximity as vertigo.

Swaying blissfully on her stool, then heels.

Poor Vern, watching her watching him: ‘You reckon I’m radio rental, don’t you?’

Lucky Carol had enough calcium in her bones to walk him to a table while he carried their drinks and then asked her to dance to that Archies song, then Love Affair’s new one, then ‘The Israelites’.

If he’d just been a soft clod, a queer, a penny policy man. Instead he smelled and sounded like no feller she’d ever been near. At a glance his student’s beard was trimmed but up close it went patchy and scruffy. Carol reached for it, cupped his cheek, which had another gobful of useless words. In vain she searched for hints of other men she had known.

They surfaced half an hour later, tangled up in the dimmest loudest corner, more drinks untouched, themselves unjudged between seated trios of gabbing sylphs with matching fringes, all five years or so younger than Carol, who at twenty-seven felt of a different species, with her hemlines and T-straps stuck in ’62.

By now the place swung and bounced and poured inside like out.

Unstitched at the gob Carol and Vern began to readjust to the room with a bacchanal calm, lazily wondering what had locked them in time again, returned them to this present to which they did not belong and were not above or below but simply outside, both their hearts blinking together and out of sync with the healthy – theirs just sick enough to make life rub harder. God drew lives on shifting tracing paper. These were two halves of an unjoinable circle. With God she saw this place; its night sea of proud souls sticking to one another with drink and sweat, and each swanning deific in finest gladrags. . .

‘Must be a full moon,’ Vern said.

‘What we must look like.’

‘Like royalty in exile. Carol, you a hard drinker or do you find it easy?’

The room had fogged with Woodbines and became a crazed miniature disco hall. Couples dancing to Clodagh Rodgers’ ‘Come Back and Shake Me’ looked like Kings Hall wrestlers. Waltzer lights spiralled patterns across backsides and necklines and the closed air continued to thicken till it had the unforced feel of some secret den in town that Minnie might have dragged her to, those Jamaican all-nighters, where white lads were chased out or barred.

‘I’m celebrating,’ Carol said, finally.

‘On your own?’ Vern said.

‘That’s what I’m here to celebrate.’

‘To Carol then, who’s on her own. And doomed to glow.’

She was draped on him, wagging her head, giggling in disbelief, then kissing his talking mouth: ‘Just shut up. It’s you what’s bloody doomed now, you daft sod, and it’s thanks to me.’

‘That was good of you.’

The music had changed.

The singer sings of a love-haunted house. . .

Carol picked at his loose button threads, bloodletting, sharing heat.

. . .of ghostfeet forever climbing the stairs.

‘You should ask what’s going rate for a room upstairs. Go on. You can have the young barmaid on me. I’ve plenty money.’

‘Keep it. I’d still come up sodding short.’

‘Let her be judge of that.’

‘Will she go for me?’

‘She might.’

‘If she’s a curious cat. A cat with a lovely coat – one that must have cost five of these suits. Be a shame to leave it on the bleeding bus because some blathering idiot was talking your head off. I mean, whoever heard of a self-skinning cat?’

Carol went weak, delight shaking her body like a wasted muscle. ‘OK. OK.’

His light hid her and hid them together from others in sight and talk and thought. Unhurriedly beneath the table Carol misbehaved. Changing hands five times to stave off cramp (down to his size), Carol seized the power to shorten his breath, to speed his sickly rose of a heart; if only she could think of summat lewd enough to do to say to be, then he might run away, saved. Throughout this attention Vern finally went quiet and looked at her twice, innocently, the rest of the time his face aglow in profile, like he was in front of holy fire. She studied his mouth while it was bookmarked. His twitching lips were fuller than hers, wetted and coloured by hers. And she talked now, telling him. It took some telling. She knew he was listening but she did not let herself believe it until she had brought him over the line. This final rush of weakness. They tightened together. Panting gently. She sensed her hip hurting him, over-insisting. With it done, Carol proudly returned the dead drink glass to the table into which she had spent him. Poor Vern. His night made. His fate sealed. And still quiet. He hadn’t finished listening.

 

‘Don’t be worrying,’ Vern whispered. ‘Worries only wake him.’

‘We’re dead.’

‘Then we might as well live.’

‘For God’s sake.’

‘Well, if you can’t get rid of it, and you can’t get rid of me, what’s there to do?’

Sheer curtains had his bedroom dusky and lush. Through them day poured in like cider, onto his yellow books and green plants. The dense air smelled baked, fertile. There’d been a bushy red cat called Macavity but she had slipped out during Carol’s second night over – months back now – leaving Vern, and his rooms above the sad café, for good.

‘We’re dead,’ Carol whispered, so as not to wake Kelly – naked and crushed between them after his Wednesday bath. Combed hair grown out, a smidge damp on Vern’s pillow. The milk of his eyes showed dreams. Happiness flowed through her when she touched his cherub belly, rising:

‘They’ve put your husband away,’ Vern whispered. ‘He can’t touch him. He can’t touch you. And they’ll always be putting him away. Which is good of them. Now. As for your inlaws –’

‘I can’t get round them,’ she said. ‘They’ll soon get word of this.’

‘Carol.’

‘You’ve got no living left to do.’

‘And there’s nobody I’d rather not live it with than you.’

‘We sound mad, don’t we? I sound bloody wigged.’

Vern shushed her, checking on Kelly.

‘Makes a bloody change, that. You telling me shush.’ Carol touched her son’s smooth skittle legs and rested her palm on that hot fed belly, rising, falling. ‘We best be getting back. His nana has to see him. We’ve not been round for a fortnight and she knows I don’t go confession no more. They don’t like it. She rings up and I don’t answer. They don’t like it. You know what Sefton give his mam, don’t you, before he got sent down? A key. A key to the house.’

‘Stay,’ Vern said.

‘Stop asking,’ she said.

‘Then live here. I’ll wash, you’ll iron. We’ll both make the bed.’

‘God help us.’

‘I’ll quit the library gig, get me a job at Dunlop or Craven.’

‘Would that be a few bob a week more or less?’

‘I’ll pawn these books.’

‘Don’t you dare.’

Kelly stirred. His happiness flowed through them both.

‘OK,’ Carol whispered. ‘OK.’

 

‘Our child.’

‘Yes, love?’

‘Vern, we won’t have it baptised, will we?’

‘Course not.’

They lay as one, folded in Vern’s bathtub in steaming dark. From behind he rinsed off her makeup with his hands. Pruned fingers read her face, her thoughts – left trails of sensation down both. She was panting gently. She heard herself panting gently and counted breaths like a mad woman. She knew he was counting them too. He was listening to her go mad. He shaped himself around her. He clutched her breasts flat to keep her sick heart inside her chest. She was panting Kelly. Kelly. Kelly. Kelly. Me little boy. They took him and they won’t give him back. They’ll keep him safe till Sefton gets out. They couldn’t let another man raise his son. They knew this time I’d run. They waited for me to run.

‘Vern. . .?’

‘I’m here.’

‘Then help me.’

‘I’m here.’

‘I want to die.’

‘I know.’

‘Help me die.’

No panting. No tap drip. The bathwater even as ink.

‘We’ll get Kelly,’ Vern said, ‘and bring him here and raise him here and love him here. We’ll do that, me and you. He’s yours, isn’t he? They’re not allowed to just take him. They can’t stop you.’

‘Yes, they fucking well can.’

‘There are laws, Carol.’

The law’s no good to me. Laws won’t stop our Jim or our Sefton or any of that lot. They do what they please. You see, I just bore them that son. Kelly’s theirs not mine. And I’ll never see me child again unless I run back to that old house and put on that old frock and wait for our Sefton to come home and. . . Vern, Vern, they was waiting there yesterday, you know? Bloody Nedra. She had the new priest with her. They was just there on me settee with a brew each when we got in. Father says to me, Mrs Dodds, what do you have to say for yourself? And I says, I’ve nowt to say to you, Father. Well, Nedra, she chucked that brew on the floor, didn’t she? And she slapped me twice right across the face. That’s one for her and one for her Sefton. She’d been upstairs and unpacked me bags. They tried taking Kelly there and then, but I wouldn’t let her have him.

‘Today’ – Carol panting again – ‘Today we was leaving Civic. Me and Kelly. I had him here, right? On this side, just here. He’d been good as gold. He was tired but he wanted to walk. He was sucking toffees. About the only thing that stopped him singing that tiger song you taught him. And then. And then I see the car. It stops us on Simonsway. Broad day, this is. Dinnertime. Out steps Jim.’

‘Was Mac there?’ Vern asked.

‘He drove. He didn’t get out.’

‘Tomorrow’ – Vern’s arms crossed her and rocked her – ‘I want you to ring Mac from the call box. If you get Minne just keep ringing till he answers.’

‘Our Sefton won’t know about you. They won’t tell him owt till they’ve seen you and found where you’re living.’

Vern reached to top up the hot water but she stopped his hand. He was still listening to her head, still reading the words inside her. They lay silent.

Then Carol asked: ‘. . .Tell us what you did this evening in night school?’

He rocked her more, the tub lapping. ‘I got there early tonight. There was a room change. Nobody told me; I wouldn’t’ve. So, what did I do? Well, I sat where I normally sat, only this time I drew for an hour on draughtsman’s paper with a compass and ruler. And this teacher with a Kaiser tash, whoever he was, came round and said I was really coming on. . .’

Her giggles splashed them cold.

Panting again ceilingward –

until Vern’s floral bath tiles became readable top down in the pale dark, their grubby petals and stalks arranged for her like blasphemous verse.

 

On the Thursday she met Mac at the Posthouse Hotel up Palatine Road where no sooner had he entered the bar alone, gone noon, a half hour late, a rock mass in a broad pond-green suit, she emptied herself of all she had rehearsed, neglecting her careful greeting, and instead hid nowt. Without a ghost of pride Carol uncrossed her legs and spilled forward, rinsed of sex and colour, her lipstick dry, her whole body parcelled and perfumed and numb, and even before she was fully standing she had in blank sincerity asked him how he wanted her.

He reeked of drink. His mansion of speckled hair was just-combed and he had a News of the World trapped under his arm. He waited for her to sit again, then sank a leatherette. Mac looked to her like a sullen sculpture, chipped and pigeonshat, features worn off, eyes fixed low in dazed solemnity.

A tubby wax-skinned barman, about thirty-odd, quit polishing glasses and approached their table with a squeaky cake trolley. Mac’s name caught in his throat like he hadn’t spoken all morning. He was Irish. He circled them pouring black tea as he winked at Carol as he talked at Mac – masking obsequiousness in a fantasy of familiarity to which Mac never gave up an inch, refusing to look up until the Irishman, searching Carol’s face for help and finding none, packed up the trolley and left.

‘Does Jim know you’re here?’ Carol said.

‘No,’ he said. ‘No.’

Carol covered the grooveless pulp of his knuckles.

‘There’s nowt I can do,’ he said.

‘Please give us back me son before Sefton gets out.’

‘You know well as I do there’s no getting round Jim.’

He wanted nowt to do with words. He was afraid of them and afraid of her and afraid to have to refuse her. Carol knew then there wasn’t a chance he’d take her up on her offer while Jim was alive. He drew no satisfaction from seeing her beg.

Outside the clouds opened. The table polish went blinding. A few Ringway Airport pilots sipping halves and coffees rustled their papers. Then Mac remembered his and opened it back-to-front over their table. She lost his boxer’s hand. Carol peered over at one pilot’s uniform – a bad stain on the chest showing now in the clean sun. Mac looked with her. He looked at the pilots as if they were policemen.

She had too much power over Mac to use it.

He turned a page, tightening. Like he had a sneeze stuck there behind his nose:

‘I’ve been checking on him, Carol, every day. He asks after you. You being his mam. The little man asks after his dad and all. He doesn’t even know summat’s up. Jim would never harm the lad. Carol, no one could.’

‘Where do you tell him I am?’

‘When the lad asks I say we’re looking for you. He says very good. Then he asks if you’re at Uncle Vern’s. The other day he tried showing us where this Uncle Vern lives, but he’d forgot the way.’

Carol smiled, just glad to be listening. She gave Mac another place and another time, recalling what she had rehearsed. Then she left him with the paper. The Irishman waved.

 

Between aisles between books. Inside Portland stone and bricks as red as home. Under the bright cupola and its arcade arches. One two three four students milling. Microfiche this way. Half a dozen pensioners desked and huddled, coats on in late August. Directory pages turning like rips. Her Cuban heels sounding, then her gait a toppling rush almost a run almost tiptoeing out of her pointed shoes almost turning one ankle then the other. Onwards. Sounding. Vern green-pullovered at the photocharger. He straightened to nod her in the right direction and watch her go through into the children’s library.

There he was: seven years old, her having missed a birthday, reading a book in neat silence at a small centre table. His hair weeks longer, combed. His legs were very still, his feet dangling with his right shoelace untied; it grazed the floor.

Minnie sitting, shapely, a painted hand resting on Carol’s son’s shoulder. Minnie’s nose high and the eyes away and reading too: a shiny compact held like an examiner’s stopwatch. Its glass turned her face into a jewel of twitching light.

Kelly finished the last page and looked for more words and then up at his mam and said nowt, only swung his feet.

‘Get your coat on, love,’ Carol said and when he looked to Minnie Carol bent to help.

But Minnie’s hug caught her and Minnie’s trap opened like a snake’s. Her clothes reeked of Park Drives. She’d dyed her do a wine colour and stood inches taller than Carol that day. Fuller and finer. Looking younger while older. Wasp-figured in her mustard pencil skirt. Minnie’s grip was bruising now, scalding; it moved to her elbow.

‘Where’s Mac?’ Carol said, her voice dry; Minnie’s skipped like glass breaking over solid floor:

‘Jim’s got the poor lump tied up on a job decking some bugger. Don’t you worry. Jim don’t know a thing.’ Eyebrows up; teeth again. ‘Kelly. Here she is, see. Here’s your mam. And isn’t she looking dead pretty for you?’ Kelly was reading his book again from the start, his legs swinging beneath the table as Minnie kissed his crown. ‘Show your pretty mam what we had for our dinner. Go on.’ Kelly shut the flaked pages and pointed to the cover word Moonshine. ‘Aye. We had a quick one in Turner’s Vaults, didn’t we, lovey?’ Those eyes sinful and wise. ‘Oh, he was dead good. A sip of Double Diamond and he had a kip in the snug, me gabbing away to me girlfriends on their lunch hour. Ay, Carol, did you know the Sinking Ship had shut? We had some nights in there, us, ay? Dancing away to Prince Buster, ‘Al Capone’. Chik-chika-chik-chika. . . It was Jewish lightning, they reckon. Shame we’d not been for donkey’s. . . God, you smell nice, or’s that me? . . .And who’s this? Well, well. You’ll be Uncle Vern—’ And Carol knew then that their meeting meant he couldn’t work here another minute. Not now Minnie had seen him. What Minnie knew soon would Jim, soon would Sefton. ‘Nice meeting you, love. Ooh, why, you’re a first-class ticket, aren’t you just! I’ll bet a fiver yours is a face what’s been on that University Challenge. Hope you take care of this one. She’s not half been through the wars with that bastard husband of hers. Brute’s been locked up God knows how many times. Mind you, she can get wild with the best of them, so you best watch it or you never know. Still. The poor cow deserves a softie like you to look after her while she’s got some good years left on her. Just a shame you’re not rich yet, ay? Right. Ta-ra then, kid. Remember what your Aunty Minnie’s been learning you, won’t you, lovey. There’s a good lad. Carol, don’t you dare say ta-ra. Now just mind how you go.’