And then at half past seven there’s a knock at the door I recognise. Bang bang bloody bang. Just when, ordinarily, I’d be settling down happily to Coronation Street. You’d think they were doing it for badness. Someone I don’t even recognise is opening the back door to them. By now the house is heaving with invited and uninvited company and Elsie and Tom shuffle in looking mortified.
“Is it somebody’s birthday?” asks Elsie when they eventually find me.
“Get some cake and some drinking in,” is all I say and scarper elsewhere, leaving them to it. Someone’s blowing one of them party kazoos and streamers have appeared from bloody nowhere. Honestly, round here they don’t need any excuse to get arseholed.
“Mam, it’s the phone!” Andrew tugging on me arm. “The police are asking us to quieten down.”
“Tell them to haddaway and shite. They never get on to the Forsyths over the road when they’re up all night ravin’ and stuff. They can bugger off.”
Andrew looked sick at this. He hates confrontations, even over the phone, bless him. He’s never been one to stand up for his rights. I grab the receiver off him.
“Is it the desk sergeant you’ve been talking to?”
Glumly he nods.
“Right.” Andrew winces just before I yell into the phone. “I don’t care who’s phoned in to complain, you toerag, but you can fuck off! It’s only ’cause you’re not invited.” And I slam the phone down. I had to shout louder even than I meant to, because of all the noise of the party. Good! Deafen the bastard.
Andrew looks scandalised. “Mam!” Behind him Tom is returning from the toilet, and he looks sick. “Mam, you can’t...”
“Ah, shurrup, man, Andrew. It’s only yer dad.”
“But Mam, he was tellin us—the neighbours have been phonin’ to complain.”
“But all the neighbours are here now.”
“Except the Forsyths.”
“They’d never...!”
But I’d not put owt past the Forsyths. Last month one of them was up for biting off someone’s ear.
At the moment, though, I’m still thinking about Andrew’s dad, even though I don’t want to, but talking to him just then, just when the party was reminding us of the seventies and all, well, it seemed sort of right to me. It brought lots of it back in a flash. Mind, faces round here have changed. Even the ones that were here in the seventies, they’ve changed. We’re all a good sight more haggard. Time’s been having it’s revenges and all our bairns—the bairns who in the seventies were in their polyester Incredible Hulk T-shirts and pigtails and played with Bionic Men and Sindies—they’re all grown up themselves now. And I mean, really, God knows what they’re up to. They don’t tell you owt.
There’s a lot of drink at my party. The whole night comes to me in snatches and bits I don’t recall. At one point I’m drinking out of a paper cup for some bloody reason, and I’m sitting on the stairs with that Peggy, Sam’s mam, and all I can think is, but I never bought any paper cups! The party, Peggy’s saying, dead seriously—and we’re the best of mates by now—the party has run away on its own steam and we must be ready for anything to happen.
Peggy starts some long, daft story about a baby left in her care since last Christmas. She reckons it fell out of the sky in a shower of feathers, but she’s more pissed than I am and, quite honestly, I’m starting to think that everyone at my party is bloody daft or mad. And suddenly there’s Elsie tottering out of the downstairs toilet, pissed as a hatter and clutching a bottle of Pils.
“Hee hee! I’ve got the Lord in me!” she screams at us on the stairs and she looks friggin’ manic.
Quick as a flash Peggy yells back, “Ay, and I’ve had him in me an’ all and he was crap.”
We piss oursels laughing and Elsie doesn’t get it, which makes it funnier. She staggers down me hallway and falls flat on her face. We cackle a bit longer, waiting for her to get up. Which she doesn’t.
The next thing I remember sees us all sitting round Elsie’s cooling corpse on my Redicut rug in the living room. It’s past midnight and the music’s now off. Like a bloody vigil. Some bugger’s found me emergency candles and everyone’s sitting round Elsie’s body, watching Tom stooped over her. For some reason I’m the only one talking.
“If we have a power cut,” I’m saying, “one of you buggers is gonna buy me new candles. If I’m caught short in a blackout...”
And then I look at Elsie, along with everyone else.
We all look shattered, in our party clothes. No one looks as white as Elsie. She’s got an even dafter look on her face than usual.
“I wouldn’t give her the fuckin’ kiss of life. I’d kiss me own arse first.”
Yes, I know. I’m ashamed of it all now and all the lasses have reminded me of the horrible details. Mind, we can still have a laugh about it.
I can see everyone gasping and watching as Tom rubs Elsie’s hands and breathes warm, foisty air into her face. Honestly, it’s better than the Paul Daniels show and Elsie’s that Debbie Magee, his tart.
Then she’s got a pale-blue glow all around her and she sits up like a fuckin’ zombie.
Whey, I scream like I‘ve never screamed before.
That starts some of the other lasses off, who think I’ve seen something they haven’t seen. Jane’s nearly hysterical by the time Elsie has coughed three times in a row and started to sing in a really high-pitched voice that chorus from that Ken Dodd song about happiness being the greatest gift that he possesses.
Then she passes out again and Tom cries out at the top of his lungs, “Praise the Lord!”
No one round here’s that religious, so no one adds anything to that, only
