Craig stood up and brushed off his jeans. “Apparently you can’t tell a century plant is a century plant until it grows suddenly, hugely, and flowers like that. Until it bursts the roof.” He laughed at me, but not nastily. “That’s like you puffs. The way you suddenly come out.”
I thought, God — he’s not going to tell me something, is he? But then, no, that would be too silly. Of course I’d thought of making a move on him. Of testing him out. But you can’t, can you? He was straight, but being such a sport. Dancing at CC’s, out all the time with me. He was game, old Craig.
We went back to the orchid house.
“You feel so safe here,” I said. “The temperature will never drop.”
He stared at the lilies. It was funny. He’s no queer, perhaps, but I’ve still got him spending afternoons looking at flowers. This hulking, muscle-building brute. “Imagine if the wind got in. The frozen north.”
I said, “I’m living the life of Riley, but it’s not always a laugh, you know.”
He seemed to sag down. He looked older suddenly. “Better than my life. I get a shag and it makes my year.”
“Is that what Penny was? Just a shag?”
He colours, because for a second he’s forgotten that I’m more Penny’s friend than his. “You know what I mean.”
“Yeah.” I sit down beside him.
“I don’t think there’s much in me and Penny.”
“No?” I hold back from saying anything about this.
He changes the subject. “I’m jealous of you, Andy. You’ve got it all. I came expecting your life to be a disaster. You make yourself sound like a fuck-up. Penny makes it sound like you’ve messed it all up —”
“Cheers!”
“But you’ve got everything I want! You’ve even got a bairn...”
“I’ve even got a bairn.”
He looks at me seriously. “I don’t know where or how you got him. I don’t know why he is the way he is. I don’t pretend to understand any of your life, Andy. But look at you. Sorted! You’re a father, for God’s sake! How does that make you feel? What’s that like?”
I shake my head.
“It’s like…” He hunts out his ciggies. “I can believe in your life because of the weird shit I’ve had in my life recently. Last year I’d never have given you the time of day.”
I almost say something trite about how we all change. I bite my tongue. If he gets irritated he could punch me one. He’s got a temper, this one. But I’ve also seen him work, measured and patient, that day he fixed our telly by taking it all to pieces. Breaking it into the smallest possible pieces. He’s doing that with my life, his life, he’s working his way round his own thoughts very carefully.
“You’re so selfish!” he says at last. “You’ve not let anyone hold you back! There’s no one at home you feel guilty about! How can you be so selfish? How can I get to be like that?”
Hallowe’en on Leith Walk. There’s me, scared of everything. Waiting at the bus stop, leaning on a lamppost, and it’s humming in my ear. The whole thing throbs with energy. It’s got me swaying on the spot.
The wind is picking up. It takes one of the bin bags piled at the kerb and flings it into the middle of the road.
Waiting to cause an accident. Traffic streams past. It never stops down here.
I’m waiting for the C3 across town. Stupid time to be out. Back in Aycliffe I wouldn’t be out on Hallowe’en. When we were kids we used to run about everywhere, dressed in bin bags, banging on doors. A mate of mine crapped on someone’s front path when they wouldn’t give us Hallowe’en money.
Pub crawlers go past in gangs. One whole load dressed up. The women are all witches, one is a nun. The men find it harder, thinking up what to be on Hallowe’en. This one’s decided to be a punk. They shout at me, some of the women waving. I don’t know how to take that sometimes. People find it very easy to include me, to bring me in. They call me mate, pat my back, talk to me in queues, in shops, in bars. I’m pliable.
Dressing up. I should have my leopard spots on. Better than any make-up.
Some bloke goes past in an anorak, fetches the rubbish off the road. So there won’t be an accident.
An old man goes zipping by in a disabled dodgem car. He careers all over the path, minding the dog shit. So his wheels won’t track it into his front hall. He pulls up outside a closed toy shop and stares at the model spaceships. An Indian woman passes him, tinkling with golden hoops and pulling a child. She’s looking in the charity-shop windows.
When the bus comes, everyone on it is drunk. Young men dressed to go out, in leather jackets, hair plastered back with wax. Women done up a bit tarty for a night out. We get underway, pulling through the fish-and-kebab part of town. All the grey fairy-tale buildings of Waverley, lit blue from beneath.
We let on a dirty man and his dog on a string. The dog’s matted pelt is the same colour as his owner’s hair. The Bridges. South Clerk Street. This city is filthy. I am sunk into its dirt. It is everywhere and I am included.
TWENTY-THREE
It was a long coming back. It was as if she was on a cruise liner, waving to the shore from the deck.
The decks of the QE2 like tiers of a wedding cake.
Where was her groom?
Everyone came out to meet her.
Which day would she arrive?
Phoenix Court kept to the usual visiting rota. Everyone
wondered if they would be the one to see her wake.
Fran thought
