[Phoenix Court 03] - Could It Be Magic? Read online

  When you saw him from a distance, Craig looked fine. A figure of a lad, standing with all the other lads by the red Cortina, drinking their tinnies. In the summer they’d hid a campfire out there and a barbeque. And it looked as if they were having fun. Someone said they were burning the body of a pit-bull that belonged to some other gang of lads. Elsie didn’t think Craig would get involved in anything like that. He loved animals.

  There was all that fuss, though, that August, when it was really hot, when the sweat stood out on you as soon as you went outdoors and everyone got fractious. The old couple in the bungalow by the Forsyths’ house kept complaining about the lads’ loud music from their Starsky and Hutch car. Elsie thought there was blame on all sides. The lads weren’t doing anything so very bad. They were rowdy, but they were just showing off, for each other and for the few lasses who, stringy-looking and snapping gum, would come wandering past to eye the boys up as they took off their shirts and lifted weights and bricks and reddened their muscled bodies in the late sun. The lads were wrong to tell the old couple to haddaway to fuck. The old couple went too far, calling the police out three times and causing an almighty racket. And then, eventually, the storm broke. Elsie knew about these things from living in places rougher than this over the years: when the storm really breaks, it’s the weakest who come off worst.

  The old bloke went a bit doolally with bravado and he ran over to see to their radio himself with the baseball bat he kept in the downstairs toilet. The lads set their pit-bull onto him. His old wife watched, paralysed in their garden, as he was chased by the stubby black dog. It was a devil dog, like they said in the papers. She shook herself out of her shock and tried to unlatch the gate for him. But he’d fallen down dead in the street already. He died of fright. “He was a commando!” the old wife screamed at the lads. She was still screaming it when the paramedics were there and the lads had dragged and hidden their dog away. “He was a commando!” at the top of her voice.

  Elsie watched all this from her upstairs window, in paralysis of her own. After the ambulance went, leaving the lads and their subdued dance music, she saw that Craig had noticed her watching their group. He stood at the back, uninvolved but implicated: the way he’d always been. His shirt was off and he had a broad, gym-toned chest that startled her almost as much as the sudden death in the street. He’s got a proper man’s body, she thought. At nineteen it seemed incongruous on him. As did his limp as he turned and went with the others into the Forsyths’ dark house.

  This afternoon Elsie stood by the red Starsky and Hutch car and paused before going in the Forsyths’ gate. No one round here dared to knock on the Forsyths’ door. All the women she knew thought she was mad, letting her son hang around with their gang. Elsie thought that it was all right, though. The women didn’t understand. They didn’t have grown sons. That Jane, Fran and Nesta would see, when theirs got to an age. You can’t control them. Still, Elsie was relieved that the Forsyth brothers were away in prison. It was one thing hanging out with lads his own age, but she wouldn’t be as happy seeing Craig under the influence of the Forsyth brothers, who must be in their thirties by now. They were in for burglary and the older one, Billy, had bitten off somebody’s ear down the Burn.

  The gate shrieked and clanged on its hinges behind her as she went up the garden path. The yard was in a dreadful state, with its rusted engine parts and old car batteries strewn on oil-blackened grass. Imagine someone tossing a match on that lot! Since the lads took the house over, the place had turned into a slum. They were living out their animal instincts, Elsie thought. She knocked on the kitchen door, wondering what Billy and Desmond Forsyth would say when they came back to the estates and saw all this.

  One of Craig’s mates - Steve, she thought he was called - came to the door. He had one of those home-made cigarettes in his mouth. She could tell it was drugs he had because there was a whiff of Schwarz spices, like her spice rack. Once, up the Sugar Factory, there’d been a craze on grass. They smoked it break-times, when the hooters sounded. Then Alison - what was her surname? Ginger lass from school - crushed her right hand on the production line when she went back to work stoned and Elsie kept off it after that.

  This Steve was built up and beefy like the rest of Craig’s gang. His skin was sunbed-tanned the colour of creme caramel. Elsie had tried that on her honeymoon in the big hotel at Scotch Corner. Her husband then, Craig’s natural father, demonstrated how it would wobble like jelly on the plate and drool brown syrup down its sides. If you made a split in its skin with a spoon, it would heal itself seamlessly. This boy’s flesh was precisely that buttery caramel shade, even on New Year’s Eve.

  “Yeah?”

  Elsie rustled her carrier bag. “Is Craig there? I’m his mam.” With this she reasserted her composure and authority. She wouldn’t be outstared by this boy in his singlet and sweat pants. He had bleached hair grown long down his back, like one of the Gladiators. Like Craig himself, Elsie realised. That was what her son was setting out to be. He wanted to be like the Gladiators.

  “He might be upstairs,” Steve said and drew in a deep lungful from his joint. The dark was coming in strong now and, Elsie thought, there was a sparkle in the air. She used to love New Year’s Eve, but these past few years with Tom, he’d dissuaded her from having any fun. “It’s an excuse for the worst forms of licentiousness,” he sneered. He’d used his vocabulary on her. Once he had taught RE at, as he put it, ‘secondary-modern level’. So that had put a stop to seeing in all the new years of recent memory. Tonight, the cold snap and the sudden dark, the weight of drink in her bag and the usual dance music coming out of the house behind Steve, all brought to mind for Elsie the idea that, if she really had a go, she could enjoy herself tonight. She asked Steve for a drag on his home-made ciggie.

  “Fetch him, pet, would you?” she asked. There was an immediate kick from the joint. Her tonsils seemed to swell and the inside of her ears went prickly. “Tell him his mum’s brought him some tinnies.”

  “Oh,” Steve said and turned to go. “Listen — I’m sorry about your feller’s trouble. Craig said something about it.”

  Elsie shrugged and took another sip of that delicious, spicy smoke before giving it back to him. “Just go and fetch Craig,” she said. When he went she stepped woozily inside the kitchen.

  It was as filthy as she expected, though not as bad as some she’d seen. The sink was stacked as high as the taps with dirty glasses and plates and even foil dishes. The kitchen surfaces were atrocious with ashy dog-ends and smears of tomato sauce. That Steve had been making a sandwich for himself right on the side, no plate or chopping board. He might catch anything. Oh, but they’re invulnerable at that age, Elsie thought, and forced herself not to go all mumsy. He was making himself a salad-cream and crisp sandwich. What kind of a meal was that? Elsie was planning to go home and have a microwave balti. Put a lining on her stomach before she started drinking. She would hate to throw up in someone else’s house.

  She felt a pang of self-disgust. It was sharp and took a few moments to quell. Who was she, in her forties, to be planning a night out at someone’s house, and taking precautions, making plans, not to vomit? Wasn’t that sad? To be her age and to be carrying on as if she might well disgrace herself? The thought made her sad. What was saddest, she thought, was that there was no one here for her to be disgraceful with. It was never as bad if you had someone egging you on to go daft and act as though you were middle-aged. You need pals about you, like Fran had Jane, or Judith had Big Sue. When they were all together, they didn’t care if they were acting like kids and making a show. Simon and Sheila were married and they were each other’s best pals. They had a laugh together. At the last Phoenix Court do, round Judith’s, Simon had brought their karaoke machine and it was the life and soul of the party. I should have Tom, Elsie though miserably. Tom should be a laugh. He should be a sport. Look at Sheila and Simon — they were the street’s dirty family, they always had that piddly smell about them. Why should they
always have the nicest time? It was so typical, when Simon had the karaoke machine going, when his fat wife was singing ‘Venus’ and getting everyone to laugh, Elsie was throwing up in the downstairs toilet and Tom was solemnly patting her back and muttering prayers. He told anyone who cared to listen that Elsie was evicting foul spirits.

  Waiting in the Forsyth’s kitchen and catching sight of her own startled, blushing face in the cracked mirror, Elsie found herself thinking, I’m glad he’s in care tonight. He’s like an old fart. He’s like my dad. I’m glad he’s in the mansion on the hill outside Spennymoor. With deer in the snowy grounds and lovely walks. I’m glad he’s in a bed next to a man who thinks he’s Jesus. If he was here he’d only hold me back.

  When she saw her face it was red with shame and the warmth of the kitchen. Look at all my lines, she thought dismally. They weren’t even wrinkles, they were grooves. And I’ve warts, she thought: two of them, with wispy hairs. I look like a witch. The old image of a witch we had when we were kids. I’ve grown up to be an old witchy witch without realising it. And I’ve got a husband who’s mad because he’s disappointed and a son with a foot that will never get better. If I’m a witch, they’ll all say I’ve put Curses on them. I spoiled Craig’s foot because I didn’t take him down the doctors’. I thought they would take it off. I didn’t want them taking bits off his beautiful young body. It feels mine as much as his.

  She could still think back to how they talked about his tied umbilical cord dropping off, days after delivery. Nineteen years ago, now. That withered end of skin, she thought, with sudden, peculiar clarity, is a piece of both of us. Whose is it, though? And maybe it’s best that it dries up and dies and gets chucked away and then we won’t need to decide where one of us ends and the other begins.

  Footsteps upstairs. Her son was up there with who knew how many other lads and maybe lasses of his own age. It was like an adventure to them, having the run of this place, doing just what they wanted. Elsie looked at herself again. Her hair had been auburn once and now it was threaded with silver. Tom called it salt-and-pepper hair and she liked that. There was more of the salt than ever these days and he was the one putting it there. Her pepper was thinning out. I’m losing my spice! she thought. Today she had her hair in bunches. I look like I’m pretending to be a child! What am I doing that for?

  Then Craig was coming into the kitchen, in his tracksuit. “Mam?”

  When Craig wasn’t home on Christmas Eve, he said it was because he’d been down the gym till closing and then he went straight to the Forsyths’ house. They were having a Christmas party. “Didn’t you even think,” Elsie said, crying, on Boxing Day, “that your poor old mother would want to you on Christmas Eve?”

  Haplessly he shrugged. “I knew you would see me on Christmas morning. I knew I was coming home then. I thought that would be enough, Mam.”

  She relented then, as she always did, content that he was doing his best, that he meant what he said. She had made him squirm with guilt just enough. He deserved the guilt, a part of it, she thought, because of everything she had gone through on Christmas Eve.

  On the Thursday before Christmas, Torn had taken himself off to his bed. They had separate rooms now, which suited them both, because she found his religious’ paraphernalia gloomy and he had announced, quite calmly, in April, that the sins of the flesh disgusted him. He added that, even if they had been married, he still wouldn’t want to sleep with her.

  That suited Elsie, too. In her younger years she had been — what did they call it in the papers? Highly sexed. Her drive was high, that was it — but now she could take it or leave it.

  Years ago, at the Sugar Factory, Elaine Francis once told her that you couldn’t be too picky. Take what you can get. If you have standards that are too high, then you don’t get any fun. You can’t hang about waiting for Burt Reynolds. Old Elaine was crazy about Burt Reynolds. Take what you can, she cackled — she was like another mam to Elsie, a mother on the same production line — and you have yourself a nice time. Fellers are just fellers. One’s as good as the next. You don’t have to stick with them if you don’t want. Give them a test drive! Give them a whirl!

  So Elsie hadn’t been too picky. You couldn’t, in this life. Not in a town like Newton Aycliffe. Mind, she loved her town and, as the seventies went on, she found she loved the fellers here, too. Their bluff, slightly sour wit. Their pliable features and sometimes bulky Yorkshiremen’s bodies. Or the stocky, proud forms of the fellers from Teesside. The allure and dark glamour of the broad Geordies, coming south. She was an expert.

  She wasn’t choosy, but she knew what she liked. Tom in his declining years — he’d never see fifty again — was a sight. He barely had a body to speak of, he was so thin. He dyed his hair the black of Kiwi boot polish and slicked it down with old-fashioned Brylcreem. It smelled of the fifties, of her uncles. He wore old suits. When he took to his bed, as he did at irregular intervals in the year, he’d pull the counterpane over his head and ignore her, when she tried to be nice. He wouldn’t get up to eat, to wash or to dress. He hardly got up to go to the toilet. As the days of not eating went by, he had to do that less and less and so he stayed under there, but he started to smell ripe and horrible. Elsie didn’t even like to go in and check on him. The blinds were down and the room was a dusky pink. It smelled like Walter Wilson’s cheese and deli counter used to smell, when everyone complained about it. On Christmas Eve he looked worse than ever. He’d been there three days and Elsie started to panic. Wasn’t three days without eating fatal? Wasn’t it the longest a human being could last?

  “Tom?” she begged from the doorway. “Tom, I’m worried about you.”

  Slowly he rolled over to look at her. It was as if he could hardly be bothered even to do that much. His face was black with uncut beard.

  Oh no, a small, rational, still sexy part of her mind thought to itself, I couldn’t fancy him any more. I mean, I’m not choosy, but he’s bloody awful.

  “Leave me alone,” he said.

  Elsie hurried out and, all the while, she was cursing Craig for not being there. If Craig was there and they had a car, they could bundle Tom inside, smother his protests, and get him to casualty. Surely that’s what normal people did? Of course, she thought, we can’t do that. Instead, we have to have a terrible emergency. Tom has to die, or end up back in the loony bin.

  She went outside and made a decision.

  Elsie went straight to the most reliable person she knew. Fran lived opposite her, across the kids’ play park. She was having tea on Christmas Eve with her husband Frank and her four kids.

  “He’s doing it again, Fran,” Elsie heard herself saying, in one breathless rush.

  “Oh, he’s not, is he?” Fran was the same age as Elsie. She knew everyone’s business and kept it to herself. “On Christmas Eve, too! That’s awful.” Then she snapped into action. “Frank, look after the bairns. I’m off over the way to see what I can do.”

  Frank had a can of lager halfway to his mouth. “But it’s Christmas-time! The Santa van will be coming round in half an hour! We have to take the kids out to see Santa!”

  Round the pine table the kids started to make a fuss, worried about missing Santa when he came in his van to their street. Fran silenced them with a look.

  “I’ll be back well before Santa comes. Now, Elsie, let’s see how your Tom’s doing.”

  Frank gave his can a sceptical slurp as the women left. He’s got a point, Fran thought, following Elsie across the park, I do let myself get too involved. She shuddered at the thought of what she might see when she reached Elsie’s house.

  All she saw, though, was a dirty old bloke lying in bed, too miserable to talk or acknowledge her. They stood at the foot of the bed.

  “He used to look so dignified,” Elsie said. “Didn’t he?”

  “Ay, he did,” Fran said. She’d always thought Tom had a shifty look about him, but she wasn’t about to say.

  “He’d hate it if he thought we were loo
king at him like this.”

  She’s talking like he’s dead, Fran thought, fascinated. Then she saw that, to Elsie, he was as good as dead. She had written him off, not in a callous or underhanded way, but as if some pressing circumstance had made their love or enjoyment of each other impossible now.

  Elsie said, “We’ll have to phone and they’ll take him away again, won’t they?”

  Fran nodded. “I reckon so.”

  “I thought he’d be all right this time. We both did. We banked on it at one point. But look at him!”

  “Do you want me to phone?”

  “I worry that they notch it up. Like, three times caught and then you’re out. Like rounders or cricket. Do you think they’ll keep him in for good?’

  “Don’t worry about that now,” Fran said. “We’ll just get the doctor in first.”

  “Will they come out at Christmas?”

  “We can try.” Fran was heading back into the hallway, glad to be away from the smell of unwashed body.

  “I want them to say he’s no good,” Elsie was saying fiercely to herself. “Really, I want them to keep him in for good.” She looked at his face and realise that he might have heard her.