“Someone’s going to get their shins kicked,” he muttered.
“Oh, I’m sorry if...” Wendy didn’t know yet how far she could push the jokes about queens.
“I’m having you on, doll,” he said. “You can call me what you want.”
She liked the way they called each other doll here. The gay boys and girls used the term a lot. In the Scarlet Empress they had flyers and posters for nightclubs with pictures of Barbies and Action Men in drag. She wondering if the doll-calling had anything to do with that, or vice versa.
Call me what you want, Colin said, and looked like he meant it. He felt like her best friend these days and that made her feel guilty for squeezing along some of the others. Wendy was always having to ask the objects of her affection to breathe in and squeeze along. There always had to be room for one more and she was always falling in love, these days.
15
On Leith Walk she found some of her favourite places...
With Uncle Pat she went to the bookies, the cafeterias and the charity shops. She loved to look in the windows of the boutiques that sold material for saris. Gold and green fabric dotted with millions of sequins. Swatches of multi-coloured cloth wrapped on headless dummies. The glitziest of fabrics drapped on those dummies in the dowdiest fashion.
Soon Uncle Pat stopped coming out with her. He spent the days indoors. With each day it was getting hotter and it was too much for him. He was ailing. Wendy asked Aunty Anne about his health, but her aunt brushed aside the suggestion that Pat was getting worse.
Four storeys of flats lay on top of the shops down Leith Walk, so that there was a great concentration of life. There was a lot going on and this made Wendy feel at home. You could see the windows of flat upon flat, with paper lanterns, cheese plants and Chinese wall-hangings on display. When you walked down the street in the morning, there were always bin bags stacked at each lamp post for the bin lorry, and there would always be at least one exhausted three piece suite waiting with its cushions burst apart. It was as if the people here were forever chucking out their old tat and buying new.
She started going with Belinda to the launderette where Belinda always took the Captain’s dirty things in a vast pink wash bag. Belinda propped it in an old pushchair and they walked gently across town. Outside the launderette was a life-sized orange Sooty bear, with a slot in his head, collecting money for the blind. He was chained to the front door and the links were as thick as Wendy’s wrists. Wendy would stare at Sooty as she chatted to Astrid, the German woman who ran the launderette. Belinda got on with her washing. She wouldn’t say a word until her washing was underway.
Until then Wendy was left with Astrid, who fascinated her because she looked like a film star, all dusky skin and bright eyes, and she had no legs. Astrid would be sitting on the bench between two full Ali Baba baskets, shaking out and folding other people’s newly-dried washing. You could smell the static cling on the various clean bits and pieces. Astrid wouldn’t be sitting really, of course, nor kneeling, or squatting. She was propped on the bench: folds of rich, glittering cloth gathered under her, protecting her stumps. To Wendy she looked sufficient to herself, busily folding and it didn’t seem incongruous that there weren’t two legs coming down off the bench from the truck of her body, that her golden sari just tapered away, nothing coming out of it, not even a mermaid’s tail.
Astrid had one of those red dots on her forehead. Like a religious red dot on her forehead. Oh, I’m ignorant, thought Wendy. I should know all about these things. Other cultures. I know nothing. I don’t even know about my own.
She stopped staring at the chained up Sooty and gazed at Astrid once more, who hummed unidentifiable songs as she dealt with skirts, babies’ romper suits, men’s workshirts. Her hair fell in two black plaits that hung down lower than her stumps.
“What has Belinda been telling you this week?” asked Astrid. She looked amused. “She’s always telling someone something.”
Wendy looked from Astrid to Belinda, who was wedging her silver coins into the machines. Maybe everything Belinda said, she said for a joke, or a dare. Maybe she and Astrid were having everyone on.
“She’s been telling me all sorts,” said Wendy, feeling out of her depth. “All of her stories.”
“All her stories,” laughed Astrid, deep in her throat. “Jesus God, not all her stories. The woman is a menace.” She raised her smoky voice. “Have you been corrupting the ears and youthful innocence of this child with your tales? Belinda?”
Belinda barked with laughter. “Of course I haven’t!”
Wendy said, “She told me that the world can be boiled down to two types of people: holograms and replacements. That’s what she said.”
Astrid turned to Wendy. “Did she tell you she thinks her brother is a replacement brother?”
“Oh yes.” Wendy had thought it was a secret.
“You will scare the girl,” said Astrid.
“It wouldn’t harm people to know what’s going on,” said Belinda, gazing at her washing.
“So now you’re in the know,” said Astrid.
They all settled back then to watch Captain Simon’s things go round. Slap slap slap.
Astrid said, “What Belinda hates...can I speak for you on this, Belinda?”
“Go ahead.”
“What Belinda
