Yet the word was already there. It might as well have been written on each of our foreheads, as we all looked at each other, stuck for the next thing to say. Like in the Rizla game, where everyone writes a famous person’s name on a thin cigarette paper, licks and sticks it on their neighbour’s forehead. You can’t read how you’ve been labelled and, by asking questions, you have to guess.
“I’ll come with you next time, Uncle Pat. Your next scan. What is it, this barium meal? I’ll eat it for you, if you like.”
He smiled.
I let the smells of the launderette waft about me and I heard Belinda’s drowsy voice go on, today describing in fine, wonderfully recalled detail, about the surgical instruments—specialized, gleaming—that had been used on her thirty something years ago. Beside me Astrid gasped and oohed, though she must have heard the story countless times before. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the clean smell of detergent, and of fabric conditioner, rich and pink, sloshed into the tubs by the handy capful. You could smell old fish and chips too, in the rumpled balls of old newspaper under the benches. Astrid had some difficulty picking up after her messier customers.
“A lovely, funny woman.” Belinda was, on request, mistily recalling Marlene. “Rather harsh, of course, and odd. She never looked anything less than immaculate.” She sniffed, rubbing her knees. “Even in her late, bed-ridden years.”
Astrid pitched in. “Even then. That was the only time I ever saw her, in that down-heel Paris apartment and I thought Jesus, that woman is still every inch the superstar.”
I said, “Tell me about the Paris trip.”
“1990,” said Belinda. “Picture the scene. Astrid and I went for a long weekend.”
“We had planned for months,” said Astrid. “Scrimping our pennies together.”
“I was going for a Chanel frock...”
“But that’s a whole other story,” said Astrid.
“The real purpose,” said Belinda, “was to see Marlene again, all those years after we were kidnapped. Five days we were in that strange craft together, high above the icy wastes of the North Pole. She must remember me, I thought, even though were hadn’t been in touch for over twenty-five years. In the five days we shared each other’s company we poured out our hearts to each other. Now, the memory had faded a little at the edges. It seemed to me, by then, like a curious dream.”
Astrid said, “So we presented ourselves at the buzzer downstairs from Ms Dietrich’s apartment. A shabby green door. It wasn’t hard to find. I was like you, Wendy. I thought that Belinda’s story was all film-fan flim-flam and fabrications. So we buzzed...and...”
“We buzzed the intercom,” said Belinda, “and Marlene could hardly say go away, bugger off, don’t disturb me. Not to the woman she’d been held captive with all those years ago. Who’d suffered the same weird indignities.”
What indignities? I was dying to know. Belinda was going to tell me that she’d made love with a man from outer space. I was waiting for it.
Astrid’s marvellous eyes lit up. “The intercom crackled. ‘Oh, it’s you!’ went the voice and, Jesus God! Even on something as mundane as an intercom that voice was suffused with...what is the phrase?”
“Jaded tristesse,” said Belinda.
“And Marlene, I swear, she said: ‘Hullo Belinda...come on up, old girl.’”
Because Astrid was in her chair, they couldn’t take the umpteen, winding, creaking steps. They had to wait instead for the antiquated lift. In the lift Belinda trod on a mouse. The place was a horrible mausoleum, and as they were winched to the top Belinda felt sadness panging in her ample breast. In the hallway at the top, the carpet had lost its pattern and colour.
“Oh, I wish we hadn’t come.”
But Astrid was excited. “Why on earth?”
“Poor Marlene, putting up with us in her twilight years.”
And Belinda thought of her own, lovely spacious flat in the New Town, in Edinburgh: of its perfection, even if it was cluttered by that brother of hers. At that moment she didn’t feel well disposed towards Captain Simon. Wasn’t he, after all, the real reason for this peculiar, peremptory reunion? For Marlene, out of everyone on the planet, would surely believe Belinda when she said that her brother, Captain Simon had been replaced...
Marlene was sitting up in her bed, under a dowdy duvet. An uneaten lunch of clear soup was on a tray to one side, a vase of pink carnations turning brown at the edges stood by it. A Baby Belling was plugged into the wall beside her. She wore an expensive headscarf and dark glasses.
“Belinda! Sit yourself down, girl! Pull up a pew...” Then she glared at Astrid. “Jesus God, that woman has no legs.”
Astrid looked stung and didn’t say anything.
Marlene scrabbled at her bedside table for her ciggies. Lit one. Oh, thought Belinda mournfully. Where were the Black Sobranies of your glory years? And the gold tipped holder and Zippo Noel gave you? She remembered the two of them smoking like schoolgirls in their cell on the weird craft, using up the last few delicious cigarettes (and the oxygen). Watching the lilac smoke unfurl as they wondered what would become of them. “Fame does not matter here,” Marlene had told Belinda. “Up here in the stratosphere we are equals.”
And Belinda’s heart glowed with pride.
The story was interrupted by the man from the place next door. Tom, in his tracksuit bottoms, was one of Astrid’s other regulars. Wendy had already heard about him. At the back of the launderette you could smell the chlorine from the footbaths next door. Wendy had asked Astrid: is there a swimming baths next door? Or in the basement? And she had imagined a subterranean pool, leaf-fronded and tiled in blue and gold and steamed mirrors, the ceilings dappled and crazed with watery reflections. Astrid smiled and explained that next door it was
