And when the present became too populous you could always look to the skies and their more idealized fortunes. There variety itself was abstract. On the way to work in the morning, the sky looked like heaven. On the way back to the Hostel in the evening, the sky looked like hell. At morning the white beings rode the blue vault in yachts and galleons, showing all their sail, or they smugly sunbathed with their arms tucked behind their heads, in heavenly peace and freedom. Later, and obedient to the iconography of evening, they lost their outlines in the hellish cliff face of the west, forming a steep red fault into the chaotic night.
This was on good days, of course. On bad days Mary felt saddened and battered by the thought of the things she might have done in her life—and anyway the clouds came then, and you couldn’t see the creatures at all.
10
• • •
Good Elf
One morning Mary carried a trayful of heaped plates to the quartet of incredibly old cabbies who always liked to sit by the window near the door. They were nice to her, these old men, they were nice; not bad going, Mary thought, to be nice after forty years of boxed rage. Also to their credit, she supposed, was the fact that they all still looked like men. Women of this age didn’t look like women. Women of this age looked like men: they had given up the ghosts of their femininity. Perhaps life was just extra hard on women, or perhaps being a man was the more natural state, to which women were obliged to revert in the end, despite all their struggles.
It was a good morning. It was payday. Tonight she would go out drinking with the boys. Something else pleased her even more. The previous afternoon she had finally managed to ask the boys if they had any books she could borrow and read. ‘Books?’ they said in startled unison, and Mary thought she had made a mistake. They went on muttering about it all afternoon—’books… books! … books … ‘ But this morning they had come with books, three each, and they said Mary could have them for as long as she liked. Alan had brought her Life at the Top, Kon-Tiki and Management: An Introduction. Russ had brought her Sex in the Cinema, Inside Linda Lovelace and Britt. Tomorrow was Sunday, and she would have time to start reading them.
As Mary did her automatic half-curtsy and began to slide the dishes on to the table, she heard, from behind, ‘Hello, Mary.’
Unable to turn, Mary hesitated. One of the cabbies reached for his plate and said, ‘That’s me, my love.’ Many people called her Mary by now. But she knew who this was.
‘It’s not far enough, Mary,’ he said.
She turned. It was Prince. He was sitting there with his chair leaning backwards against the wall. She noticed again how effortless and alert he was, compared to all these other people, how in control, how in tune, with his newspaper, his cup of coffee, his cigarette.
‘Hello. What’s not far enough?’ said Mary.
‘Me? I didn’t say anything,’ he said.
‘Yes you did. You said it’s not far enough. I heard you.’
‘You’ve got big ears, haven’t you Mary,’ said Prince interestedly.
‘What?’ said Mary, blushing.
‘And you’re nosey too.’
‘Well you’ve got a completely square head.’
‘Don’t be cheeky.’
‘What?’ said Mary, lifting a hand to her face. Her cheek was certainly very warm.
‘You’re all lip, you are.’
‘What?’
‘All mouth.’
‘…Well I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t cry, you fathead.’
‘I’ve got a thin head,’ said Mary.
He laughed and said, ‘Oh boy—I’m going to have a lot of fun with you, I really am.’
‘Mary!’ called Mr Garcia. ‘I say bring the poached egg toast!’
Mary was about to hurry away but Prince reached out and took her by the wrist. Mr Garcia saw him then and said quickly, ‘It’s okay. It’s okay, Mary.’
‘Sit down,’ said Prince. ‘Mary, Mary Lamb—that name kills me.’
‘What do you want from me?’
‘Who you are—that’s the first thing I want to find out. Who are you? Eh? Eh? Are you Amy Hide?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Mary.
‘She was quite a girl, Amy.’
Mary looked down. ‘Oh God, I hope it isn’t true,’ she said.
‘The things she did.’
‘I, I want forgiveness.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Sorry?’ ‘
‘Yes:
He laughed again. ‘I can’t get enough of this,’ he said. ‘But let’s be serious for a while. I’m in a hell of a position actually. And so are you. You be straight with me and I’ll be straight with you. Let’s get our story straight. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ said Mary.
‘Now. Some people have been working on the assumption that Amy Hide came to a sticky end.’
‘Did she?’
‘Apparently very sticky, yes. Mind you, she was cruising for a bruising all along. And yet, and yet—here you still are.’
‘If it’s me.’
‘If it’s you.’ He took a piece of paper from the inside pocket of his overcoat. ‘I’ve got something for you, an address.
‘Home, perhaps,’ he said, and stood up. Cigarette smoke came like spectral tusks from his nostrils. ‘Why don’t you go and find out, Mary?’ he said.
Mary looked down at the address—Mr and Mrs Hide and where they lived.
‘Be in touch,’ he said.
Mary watched him amble out into the street. A black car swooped down and he got into it. ‘He knows about me,’ Mary murmured as she walked up the vault of the crowded café.
‘Is the feeling of self-loavin I can’t bear. Inna mornins. Used again. I’m just a bloody pushover, I am. I’m just bloody anybody’s—providing they’re film stars, I’m a cinch. Open me eyes, and there’ll be Mia or Lisa or Bo or Elke, Nasstassia, Sigourney, Imogen, or Julie or Tuesday or Cheryl or Meryl. Hah! It’s not my mind they’re after—I know that, mate, don’t worry! Take you now, Mary—’
‘Ah fuck off, Russ,’ drawled Alan. They had both got much worse at talking over the last half-hour.
‘No, come on. This is serious. Mary. You see someone like me, dirty great unk like me, the tight T-shirt and the jeans and all, all the equipment. It says only one thing to you now dunnit? S, E, X. Come on, it does dunnit?’
‘Russ,’ said Alan.
‘Is true! Admit it, goo on. Here all right darlin, here’s to you. Your good elf.’
‘Yeah cheers,’ said Alan, raising his glass.
‘Tell you what, girl,’ said Russ, ‘you really livened the place up, you have. Strew. The one we had before was a right dog. A right old poodle.’
‘No,’ said Alan, ‘strew. That’s right.’
‘No,’ said Russ, ‘you have.’
‘No,’ said Alan, ‘this is it.’
Til tell you what and all. The voice on her. She talks like a fuckin princess, she does.’
‘Strew. Like a fuckin duchess, mate.’
‘Like a fuckin empress mate! She does. I could listen to her all day and all night. Here’s to you Mary! Your good elf!’
You see? she wanted to say. I’m good—I am.
Mary looked round the public house. Though only mildly furious in its pattern of exchange, the room was as crowded and cacophonous as the place she remembered from her second day—when she had been with Sharon, and with Jock and Trev. But how much less loud and various things seemed to her now. Oh, it was still interesting all right, interesting, interesting: did you see the way that woman looked up from her evening paper and towards the stained window with a ragged gasp, or the way that man tried to suppress a beam of love at his patient dog, lying under the table with its nose on its paws? Yes, but it’s not enough to fill my thoughts, even here with friends, spending money earned from time sold. She thought, I’m becoming like other people. I’m getting fear and letting the present dim.
• • •
But it had to happen, Mary.
Life is made of fear. Some people eat fear soup three times a day. Some people eat fear soup all the meals there are. I eat it sometimes. When they bring me fear soup to eat, I try not to eat it, I try to send it back. But sometimes I’m too afraid to and have to eat it anyway.
Don’t eat fear soup. Send it back.
Some people have fear but some have confidence instead. Which do you have? You’re not confident, I know that. I know that, because actually no one has confidence. The most confident men and women you know—they haven’t got confidence. No one has. Everyone has fear instead. (Unless they have that third thing, which men call madness.)
They fear they are a secret which other people will one day discover. They fear they are a joke which other people will one day see, which other people will one day get.