And yet...I don’t like softening blows. I hate prolepsis. Like nibbling as you’re cooking. Means you’re not hungry afterwards.
And watch out when I go third person! It’s still me, still all me! To me it’s just like looking in a mirror and trying my hair a new way...doing something different with my hair my eyes my face...But believe it or not...I’m fairly consistent. I am! I am!
Soon it became a game to take Wendy out. The two oldest sisters did it for a laugh. The town about them was so familiar by now that it held no terrors. They could fettle anything. They could jab a single, slender finger and tell anyone to go and swivel. They were sluttish and shrewd and their tights were sheer on the long, long legs they’d taken from their mother. Their mother had blue, pulpy veins coming up at the backs of her legs, especially at the backs of her knees. But the legs of her two eldest daughters, Mandy and Linda, were practically flawless. Up and down the promenade they clicked in unison, in stilletos, drawing the glances of lads and women outside the arcades, the pubs, the late night cafes. Up the promenade following the shabby illuminations and the music that went with them was Motown, all different songs, coming jumbled up from pub doorways.
Mandy and Linda brought Wendy out. Sixteen. She’s of an age to get out and have some fun, they told their mother.
“I don’t know,” their mother said. “She’s very young for her age.”
Mandy, the eldest, tossed her headful of marmalade curls. “You’ve kept her soft. You’ve kept her too babyish.”
“Well, I still don’t know.”
All this as Wendy sat with them at the tea table, fiddling with crumbs on the gingham cloth. She walked her fingers on the blue and white centimetre squares. She closed her eyes and walked her fingers. If both fingers rested on blue, then she’d go out with her sisters. If both landed on white, she’d be staying in. If she had one on white and the other on blue, then she’d go out and walk right into her True Love. She’d never have to go out again. Life would come easy after that.
So this is how it was to be part of the crowd. She thought they would be more aggressive. It came as a surprise to her, that people stepped aside to let her past. She thought you’d have to fight to find your way. But Wendy knew she had it easier because her sisters went first, cutting a swathe.
They stopped outside of the waxworks. Here there was a glass box the size of a phone booth. Inside it rested a puppet clown, life-sized, his bald white head pressed against the glass.
Mandy told Linda to put ten pee in the rusty metal slot. ‘Watch this,’ she told Wendy.
The clown shook himself alive and they drew back.
He waggled those white hands like landed fish. He threw back his head and roared with horrible laughter. He belly-laughed fit to burst and it echoed inside the glass cabinet, crackly like something on the telly. The clown’s face was rigid, with his scarlet lips shiny like boiled sweets, drawn back and his teeth poking out. His plastic tongue waggled as he guffawed, thrashing about, stotting himself deliberately off the glass.
A crowd gathered to see the hilarious clown.
“It’s awful,” Wendy tried to tell her sisters. The laughing went on forever. The tape in his head must be on a loop, she thought. You could hear the thing hiccup when it started again.
Wooo—whoooo—woooo
A woman beside Mandy went funny when she saw the clown. Throwing back her own head she screamed and screamed and grabbed Mandy’s forearms. She laughed and gabbled in her face, right up close. Mandy jumped back and shook her off. The old woman kept ranting like the gift of tongues: It’s funny, isn’t it? Tell me it’s funny as well. Others around were joining in. It was infectious and jolly, wasn’t it? It was meant for fun. It was meant for joining in.
Mandy was cross now, and led her sisters away. It was dark and time to go for supper. She wanted to sit on a high stool at a chrome-plated bar and eat fish and chips, swinging her legs and watching out the window at who went past.
“What did you think of that clown?” asked Linda, the plumper, middle sister. She was in a skinny rib top which did nothing for her. It had horizontal bands of orange and purple.
“I hated that clown,” was all Wendy could say. “It was like something out of a bad dream.”
“You,” Mandy sniffed. “You never think anything’s funny.”
“That’s not true!” Wendy cried. “I like a good laugh!”
If there was one thing their mother had taught them, it was that laughter was the best medicine. Their mother had forgotten her own best lesson. These days she hardly even cracked a smile. She was in tonight, ironing. She had a pile hip-deep, she said, and what would they all be wearing next week, if she didn’t do it? Wendy said they’d all do their own, but their mother wouldn’t hear of it. She knew her two eldest wouldn’t dream of helping out. She’d brought them up spoilt. They wouldn’t do a thing around the flat. No, tonight their mother was indoors with an Ali Baba basket full of laundry and the telly on. Tonight was the final of ‘Opportunity Knocks.’
She wondered about her girls, out on the town. These were busy nights on the promenade. All sorts of people were abroad. But her girls had to learn to get out. She’d never wanted her daughters to be the type to hold themselves back. And she was sure she could trust Mandy and Linda to look after the little one.
