“Is he?” she’d said, surprised. “Bob Fox? I always wanted a relative.”
“Blimey, Emmie,” Morris said, “is she simple, or what?”
That night, when they got home, Morris crept in with them; the others, his friends, seemed to have melted away, somewhere in Bedfordshire between Junctions 9 and 10. To check for them, she lifted the carpet in the boot of the car, peered into the cold metal well; no one was there, and when she dragged out her case she found it was no heavier than it had been when she packed it. So far so good. To keep them out permanently—that would be another matter. Once inside she was solicitous to Colette, recommending a hot bath and the
“If it’s on,” Colette said. All she could summon up was funeral coverage. “For God’s sake. I wish they’d give it a rest. They’ve buried her now. She’s not going to get up again.” She slumped on the sofa with a bowl of breakfast cereal. “We ought to get a satellite dish.”
“We can when we move.”
“Or cable. Whatever.”
She’s resilient, Al thought, as she climbed the stairs—or maybe she’s just forgetful? At the stop back in Leicestershire, Colette had turned the shade of porridge, when it was broken to her about the menagerie riding in the back seat of the car. But now she was her usual self, carping away, always with some petty grievance. You couldn’t say her colour had come back, because she never had any colour; but when she was frightened, Al had noticed, she sucked her lips inwards so that they seemed almost to disappear; at the same time, her eyes seemed to shrink back in her skull, so you noticed their pink rims even more.
In her own room, Al sank down onto the bed. Hers was the master bedroom; Colette, when she moved in, had squeezed into what even the estate agent, when he’d sold the flat to Al, had the grace to describe as a
Al sighed; she stretched her cramped limbs, checking out her body for spirit aches and pains. Some entity was tweaking her left knee, some desolate soul was trying to hold her hand; not now, kids, she said, give me a break. I need, she thought, to give Colette more of a stake in life. Get her name on the house deeds. Give her more reason to stick around, so she’s less inclined to take off in a sulk or on a whim, or under the pressure of unnatural events. For we all have our limits; though she’s brave—brave with the true-blue staunchness of those who lack imagination.
I could, she thought, go downstairs and tell her face-to-face how much I appreciate her; I could, as it were, pin a medal on her: Order of Diana (deceased). She levered herself upright. But her resolution failed. No, she thought; as soon as I see her she’ll irritate me, sitting sideways with her legs flung over the arm of the chair, swinging her feet in her little beige ankle socks. Why doesn’t she get slippers? You can get quite acceptable kinds of slippers these days. Moccasins, something like that. Then there will be a bowl half full of milk on the floor by her chair, with a few malted flakes bobbing in it. Why does she drop her spoon into the bowl when she decides she’s finished, so that driblets of milk shoot out onto the carpet? And why should such small things work one up to an extreme level of agitation? Before I lived with Colette, she thought, I supposed I was easy to live with, I thought I would be happy if people didn’t actually vomit on the carpet, or bring home friends who did. I thought it was quite good to have a carpet, even. I thought of myself as quite a placid person. Probably I was mistaken.
She took the tape recorder out of its bag and set it up on her bedside table. She kept the volume low, whizzing the tape backward to find last night.
MORRIS: Run out for five Woodbine, would you? Thanks Bob, you’re a scholar and a gentleman. (
AITKENSIDE: Cheese an’ onion? Christ, I ’ad that once, it was at the races, remember that time we went up to Redcar?
MORRIS: Ooh, yer, do I? And Pikey had his motorbike with the sidecar? Redcar, sidecar, we was laughing about that?
AITKENSIDE: Bloody crucified me, that pie. Repeating on me for three bloody weeks.
MORRIS: ’Ere, Dean, they don’t make pies like that these days. I remember Pikey Pete, he kept saying, fanks, Donnie, fanks for the memory. Oh, he were a right laugh! ’Ere, Bob, are you going for them fags?
AITKENSIDE: They don’t make Woodbine no more.
MORRIS: What, they don’t make Woodies? Why not? Why don’t they?
AITKENSIDE: And you can’t buy five. You’ve got to buy ten these days.
MORRIS: What, buy ten, and not even Woodies?
BOY’S VOICE: Where’ve you been, Uncle Morris?
MORRIS: Dead. That’s where I bloody been.
BOY’S VOICE: Have we got to stay dead, Uncle Morris?
MORRIS: Well, it’s up to you, Dean lad, if you can find some way to bloody recycle yourself you get on and do it, san-fairy-ann, no skin off my blooming nose. If you’ve got the contacts, you bloody use ’em. I give a hundred pounds, one hundred nicker in notes to a bloke I met that said he could get me restarted. I said to him, I don’t want borning in bloody wogland, you hear what I’m saying, I don’t want to come back as some nig, and he swore he could get me born in Brighton—or Hove which is near as dammit—born in Brighton and free, white, and twenty-one. Well, not twenty-one, but nar what I mean. And I thought, not bad, Brighton’s near the course, and when I’m a tiddler I’ll be getting the sea air and all, grow up strong and healthy, besides I always had mates in Brighton, show me the bloke wiv no mates in Brighton and I’ll show you a tosser. Anyway, he took my readies and he scarpered. Left me high and dry, dead.
Alison switched off the tape. It’s so humiliating, she thought, so crushing and shameful to have Morris in your life and to have lived with him all these years. She put her arms across her body, rocked herself gently. Brighton—well, naturally. Brighton and Hove. The sea air, the horse racing. If only she’d thought about it earlier. That was why he was trying to get inside Mandy, back at the hotel. That was why he kept her up all night, pawing and pulling at her—not because he wanted sex, but because he was plotting to be born, to be carried inside some unknowing hostess … the filthy, dirty little sneak. She could imagine him, in Mandy’s hotel room, whining, slobbering, abasing himself by crawling across the carpet, slithering towards her on his chin with his pitiful haunches in the air: born me, born me! Dear God, it didn’t bear thinking about.
And clearly—at least it was clear to her now—it wouldn’t be the first time Morris had tried it on. She well remembered Mandy’s pregnancy test, was it last year? She’d been on the phone that very night, I was feeling strange, Al, really queasy, well I don’t know what made me but I went out to the chemist, I tested my wee and the
