I was teaching full time and my writing became my secret nocturnal obsession all over again. Busy in the daytime with everyone else’s books I had to find time to concentrate on my own. I had to pick myself up again in order to reinvent myself and write another book, even though I’d been dumped. I got to it and I wrote a novel that would take place chiefly in the city I had loved and recently left.
I used to think of my first books as a trilogy ending with Could it be Magic? But all these years later I can see that this isn’t quite true. The story went on, telling itself to me, unfolding in different towns and cities, following me both geographically and spiritually wherever I went.
I went from book to book, at more or less the rate of one a year. Some were published, some went by the wayside. I moved from publisher to publisher, trying to find a home that would last. I’ve been called a ‘cult writer.’ That’s what they say when you have a smallish but fervent following. Well, I’ve been called worse.
I’m so happy these early books of mine are being brought out again. I’m happy in the knowledge that they aren’t like anyone else’s novels, ever.
I hope you enjoy this one, and go on to read the rest…
Paul Magrs
Manchester
April 2016.
ONE
In the shop the music they were playing was Pan Pipes II. Elsie loved that CD. ‘Everything I Do, I Do It for You.’ Across the cash desk Judith was leaning conspiratorially, messing up the magazines. Her hair was thick with lacquer and black dye, making Elsie shudder. Elsie believed in keeping yourself natural and nice.
“Number sixteen,” Judith repeated. “The party’s at number sixteen.”
Elsie pulled a face. “I wouldn’t want to go somewhere like that. I don’t know them in that house.”
“Well, you have to go out on New Year’s Eve, Elsie,” Judith insisted. “You can’t stay in and be miserable.” She felt awful saying that, but she’d been talking to someone about this the other day: Elsie needed snapping out of her misery. It was doing her no good.
“Ay, maybe I’ll go out to this party.”
Behind her a queue was forming.
“Good lass!” Judith twinkled through her mascara. “Now, what can I get you?”
Elsie decided she was drinking again. With Tom gone she had free rein. On the shelf behind Judith’s head there was a row of gin bottles and they were the exact green of Christmas. The colour of the worst Christmas Elsie had ever known. It would be splashing out, buying a bottle of gin, even a smallish one, but it was cheaper than going out to a pub. At least going round someone’s house saved you a bit of money that way.
“I’ll have the cheapest bottle in the middle size,” she said, “and four cans of Boddies for our Craig, and forty Benson and Hedges.”
Judith collected them all, loving the clink of the spirits bottles. “Back on the drink then, pet?” she said wickedly.
“It’s New Year’s, isn’t it?” Elsie snapped.
Judith hadn’t meant to sound judgmental. With her man away again, Elsie had nothing left but going back on the drink. They had taken him back into the home on Christmas Eve. He went in with his nervous about once a year. He was crackers, but he kept Elsie off the drink. What with him and her son Craig hanging about with a nasty set, Elsie had her plate full. As far as Judith was concerned, she was welcome to her drink.
“Are you off to this party then?” Elsie asked, softening. “Have you been invited?”
“There’s no invites, pet. It’s all word of mouth. But yeah. Soon as I shut this place, I’m getting me glad rags on. All of Phoenix Court will be round there, I reckon.”
“Maybe I’ll have a look in,” Elsie said. She liked it when the whole street got together. As she paid and packed her shopping bag, she missed the look Judith was giving her. The last party round their way had been at Judith’s house. At that do Elsie was smashed, but she was holier-than-thou about alcohol when Tom was about. That night she had said she wasn’t drunk, she’d been touched by a divine hand. Judith hopes she wouldn’t make a show of herself tonight.
As Elsie bustled out, a spring in her step now as she crossed the scuffed lino, Judith decided that Pan Pipes II was too relaxing for this afternoon. She wanted something boppier in the background, Tina Turner or someone.
With all this frost the Yellowhouses looked almost beige.
Icicles clung to eaves and satellite dishes and, as she cut through Sid Chaplin Drive, Elsie wondered that the vibrations from—where? Outer space? Other satellites?—didn’t shake the icicles off.
It was this time of year on the estates that she loved best. She thought it looked picturesque. The rosehip bushes hemming play parks and car parks were icing-sugared. The dark wooden fences of each garden had frost piped in neat, regular stripes. It wasn’t muddy, either, which meant you could nip across the gaps without getting covered in clarts. The windows in the low-roofed, boxy buildings were warmly lit. She left her own lights on all the time and loved to come back to them. The downstairs windows were pebbled and thick. They made the light inside fuzzy, like a mirage indoors.
For almost two years she had been snug between the phone box and the main road, at the edge of Phoenix Court. She had managed to move away from the old, broken-down flats across town, behind the precinct. It was rough there and she hadn’t been able to sleep because of the bother. Her doctor stepped in when she applied to the council for a transfer. They saw her right in the end and she landed up here, in the
