“You should pay me protection money,” she said, when I told her she was getting good at shooing my undesirables. Sandra looked rueful at this. She was in a bright-yellow leather jacket that must have cost a bomb. “I’m getting too good at being a fag hag,” she said.
“How can you be too good at it?” I asked, but not really paying attention. I couldn’t free myself of the habit – I still can’t – of staring up and down the bar to see who’s in.
“It can’t be good for me,” she said. “I’ll forget how to behave with ordinary men.”
I pulled a face and shrugged. “See him over there? Don’t look. Pays people to shit in his mouth.”
“No!”
“He does.”
“Have you?”
I shuddered. “Not even for money.”
“God,” she said. “I would.” She turned to look him up and down. He was in a leather waistcoat and trousers. His motorbike helmet stool beside him. “I would shit on him for nothing,”
“I don’t think he’d be interested.”
She blinked. “What’s the difference between male shit and female shit?”
But I didn’t know.
Our Australian pal had met another one. “There’s always one!” he crowed, banging him on the back.
“Speaking of Australians,” Sandra said, “a friend of Tom’s has got an Australian lodger and he’s moving out. The room’s coming up free.” It was a shared house, much nicer than the flat I was in. I’d like it, she said.
I thought of the housing benefit people, when they came to my flat in Thistle Street. They examined it top to bottom, checking everything out. They saw all the baby things and Jep asleep under his blanket and they looked as if they didn’t approve. Did my landlord know I had such a young child in this tiny, noisy flat? I didn’t know, I told them. The housing-benefit people said my flat wasn’t worth fifty pounds a week rent. I said I knew, but that what I was paying. Well, they said, it isn’t worth it. Right, I said. They went and wrote a letter saying they’d give me thirty. I tried to write letters back to them and the landlord, saying it wasn’t right. But I’m not very good at that sort of thing. Writing in to complain. Vince could do all that. He made sure he got his dues. Me, I give in.
The housing-benefit people wrote to my landlord and said I had a tiny child in here, a babe-in-arms. I was scared they’d get the social services in. I’m still scared of that. And when they see Jep they’ll put him in somewhere worse than care. I’ll never see him again.
But...if I never saw him again, any life would be easier, wouldn’t it? My life would be simpler without the child.
I’ve resolved to move, to keep on moving. To keep him and me out of their grasp. I told Sandra this. She’s been keeping her eyes open.
“You know this town’s full of Australians. Especially in the summer. And they’re always moving on. It’s a beautiful flat. You’ll love it. I’ve seen the room. It’s airy and light. It’ll be so much better…for Jep, too.”
I look at Sandra. She stumbles on my son’s name, as if she doesn’t think it’s a proper name.
A fat woman is doing karaoke. She sings ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ in the worst, screechiest voice I have ever heard. She makes herself laugh, hard and long, over the mike as the song goes on. It’s infectious.
“I’d like to go and look at the room,” I tell Sandra. I like feeling like someone’s helping me out with my life, and that’s good. At one time I would have hated anyone interfering. Now it feels like a load off. I’ll go and see this airy room.
On the dance floor of CC’s I’ve seen Cameron, and we’re ignoring each other. End up dancing in each other’s orbits. He’s with a woman called Angie. In her late thirties with short, plum-red hair. She screams up into my face, introducing herself. Cameron passes me a bottle of poppers. His other mate Tommy’s there, in half-drag. He’s wearing thigh-high cream stack-heeled boots. I’m dancing with Cameron, realising that I wouldn’t even talk to the bloke if I met him somewhere quiet.
Soon Cameron goes to stand by the sidelines, with his gin and lager and bottled water, to watch his friend Angie crook an arm around my neck and shout into my ear. “You said your name was Andy? Yes, I wouldn’t forget that. That’s what I called my son. Then they took him away and called him Peter. But I still think of him as my Andy.”
We’re dancing to the Bee Gees and she puts her heart and soul into it. “I remember this!” she grins, flashing her elbows about to clear some room for us.
Cameron was drinking his long vodkas. I forgot how drunk he gets here. How he tried to open up my trousers on the dance floor, then denied it later. He runs around talking to everyone in the place, grinning and endearing himself, never mind if he knows them or not. Once when we stood at the bar here, an old man asked him for a kiss. “Just a peck!” Cameron said, and the old man grabbed him. “That was a real kiss!” Cameron shouted.
The first time he came back to my flat we took a taxi and had to stop so he could fetch chips. Climbing out of the cab he gave the driver a five-pound note and called him a motherfucker. The green shirt he said his gran had given him for Christmas, tied round his waist,
