That was the dream I was going over.
Cliff says that, during sex, all he ever thinks about is whether he’s doing it right. He says he can’t stop it. And there’s me supposing he’s all easy and unselfconscious. He tells me how he thinks over what we’re doing. Afterwards he narrates it all back to me. I think it’s just an excuse to talk dirty to me.
Bless him.
It rained the whole time they were in Glasgow.
They went to the Versace shop and made each other try things on. Liz always found herself marvelling at Cliffs perfect shape. She liked to show off for him. She marched him into their poky, minimalist dressing rooms, and out again, in a variety of improbable outfits. Clothes just hang off him, she thought. He looks so nonplussed.
A display dummy fell and almost crushed somebody's child while they were there. The mother was off chatting to her friend and, before she knew it, the kid had pulled this metal thing down on himself. Liz managed to pull him away just in time.
The woman looked a bit spacey as she thanked Liz, then Cliff, then Liz again, and she pulled her toddler to her. Cliff dragged Liz out into the street before she gave the woman a piece of her mind.
"Careless people like that,” Liz ranted, “shouldn’t be allowed to have kids.”
He looked glum. “I’m careless.”
In another gay bar for lunch—Cliff was finding them everywhere — they were playing Karen Carpenter’s long-lost solo LP.
“She should have sung a song with Elvis,” Cliff said.
“That would have been something.” Liz looked round. The bar was dark and full of flashing games machines. Karen Carpenter’s voice made Liz feel sad, and vaguely guilty for being hungry and looking through the menu. She was pleased Karen managed a year away from her drippy brother for her own music. At least she had that time away.
"Just think,” said Cliff. “As Elvis was getting fatter and fatter, Karen Carpenter was getting thinner and thinner.”
"Maybe he was eating her.”
“That’s horrible!”
“I wish I hadn’t thought of that.” She shook her head to clear it. "Look, can we go to a normal bar one in a while?”
“What’s wrong with this?”
She sighed. "It’s like the Cantina scene in Star Wars before they farted it up.”
“I thought we were escaping from the straight world.”
"Well, that’s ridiculous. That’s like saying we’re into the universe of anti-matter. Life’s not like that.”
He had BOYZ magazine open on the table, it showed a map dotted with all the queer hotspots. It was an alternative Britain. When they re-entered England tomorrow, as they planned to, it would be according to this map. Heading down the west coast; to Blackpool, then across to Manchester. You could plan your life and never go near the straight world again. Suddenly Liz felt queasy.
“Everything’s about having a good time,” she said thoughtfully.
“Yeah?”
“I mean, it’s what we used to call the nite life. Everything on this map is about the nite life.”
“Don’t sound so disapproving,” he said. “We met in a seedy nightclub, remember.”
“I know, and I wouldn’t be without it, but…you can’t you do at night!” She burst out with this too loudly and the people at the next table looked up.
Then their food came and the next thing was that Liz had a headache because of the dim lights. It could have been any time of the day or night in lighting like that, which is flattering to the over-forties, but it always killed Liz’s eyes.
They set off the next morning. The weather was lifting.
Cliff said, “Anyway, when we get back to England it won’t all be fun and games. We need money. I’ll have to get some work.”
“Doing what?”
"Some kind of labouring thing, I suppose.”
She watched the countryside flash by. They were heading to some gay B&B in Penrith he’d read about.
“I don’t know where all the money’s gone,” he said. “We’ve just been chucking it away.”
"Yes,” she said. Talk of money always filled Liz with dread. Being asked what she did with money was like being asked what she did with time. They both just vanished. That’s how life went by. Best not keep count. She’d never balanced a cheque book or kept a diary in her life.
"You’re very quiet,” Cliff said.
“I was just thinking, I never have anything to show for what I spend.”
He laughed. “That just means you’ve had a good time. You’ve blown it all.”
She smiled. “People are jealous of people like you,” he added. “You don’t worry about blowing it.”
“Everything vanishes,” she said.
When we leave Scotland, more pictures at the border.
A twelve-foot column of rock on a hill marks the change, with the names of the countries it divides chiselled either side. Cliff wants to photo me pointing at the names. This is where we’ve been.
A woman with an accent you can’t pin down is boiling hot dogs and pouring cups of tea in a caravan. She’s got a plastic headscarf on, keeping down her wispy hair, because the wind manages to reach right into her van.
We are about to be served when from behind us a little old man shouts out that he wants two bacon sandwiches, but he's ot queueing in the cold. He’ll wait in his car with his little old wife. Then he sees hes pushed in on us.
"Sorry, honey,” he shouts to me across the car park. "Ladies first.”
Each street on our estate of yellow box houses has a smaller box somewhere in it and these are bungalows for old people. They never look happy. In the street just down from us a car tore through the wall of their bungalow because it was right on the main road and they go mad on that corner. The car screamed through the itchyback bushes and bang: killed the old bloke inside on the spot. He’d been sitting watching daytime TV. Those walls must be held up with nothing.
Do the pensioners inside know the sort of danger
