He came floating into the kitchen and Mandy punctured his sails. She looked at his shiny dancing shoes and said, ‘You only wear them so you can look down when you’re doing the waltz and see our mam’s knickers.
How mortified he was. How mortified we all were.
Then Mam came in, looking all dolled up, and she saw how we were. Mandy looked smug. Then we saw how she had written in the steam on the glass kitchen door that our mam was in love with the dapper man. Words to that effect. It made them even more nervous of each other.
Other times he came Mandy would lay out our father’s photos on the mantlepiece, and leave out things that had belonged to him, all about the place. His old slippers by his chair. As if we were expecting him to wander back in. We weren’t, but the dapper man took fright and never came back to call on Mam.
Poor Mandy.
People who are cross all their lives worry me. I’m waiting for them to go off with a bang. Mandy would shriek and veins would bulge out on her temples.
Once she got me down on the floor and kicked me, in the stomach, in the face, wearing her good new shoes. We weren’t kids then. I was sixteen. There’s a nasty streak in her. Even I—her closest relative—would say that about her.
Mam once said: “You know, don’t you, that you’ll never be as closely related to anyone as you are to each other. Not even to me.” She looked along the line of us, proudly. “You virtually are each other. There’s all the same stuff in you.”
She wanted us to look after each other and do well.
She tried to instill that in us, as if she knew she wouldn’t be around to see how we’d turn out. She could see it all coming.
Mandy used to laugh at our mother for her fear, but some people can feel a cool shadow on their heart. They know how things will end up. They know they haven’t got long. She was like this, I think.
She tried not to fret, but she let it out just enough to make Mandy rebel against her cautions and scruples.
Mandy brought danger home.
But secretly I think our mother enjoyed the marvellous creature her eldest daughter had become.
“When I was your age, I’d never have dared...” And our mother would laugh. She’d learned to laugh again at our exploits. Not just Mandy’s, mine as well. Because sometimes - now and then - I had my moments, too.
I wish our mother could see how we’ve all turned out.
That seems the most important thing now.
That’s all I wanted to say.
Back to Wendy.
They told me it wasn’t really going on the fair if you didn’t go on something that scared you. Me, I liked the animal house and the hall of distorting mirrors.
In the hall of distorting mirrors we came out as each other. Mandy laughed to see herself looking dumpy and short. She could afford to laugh, it was so far from the truth. Linda went tall and straight as Cher. She was the only one of us to improve herself. My head went down to a pinhead, my boobs swelled up and my hips were a mile wide. That was the funniest thing all night.
We came out and queued for my favourite...pink candyfloss! And that was when my sisters decided it was time to test out my bravery. Or to teach me bravery, I suppose was the idea. Anyway, they dragged me across the other side of the Pleasure Beach, to a roller coaster that was built of iron and sun-bleached wood. Its expanse rolled for pointless miles, sheer into the night. The ground about it shook with pressure, and all I could smell as we waited in line was tar.
They took me on the roller coaster because they said it was
easy. When you went on it, it wasn’t like you had to do anything. You sat down, made yourself comfortable. You pulled the chipped metal bar down in front of you and that would hold you in. It felt slack and heavy and I had no faith in it. I sat in front of my sisters, and they sat side by side. We climbed aboard on a flat stretch where you could make believe this was a toy train, a normal train. You could pretend you weren’t about to climb and climb and climb...
I hated most the going up. Slow grinding to the top of the world...
Closing my hands on the rail and closing my eyes
On the first dropping away.
On the first one I could see the beach, the full sweep of it,
and bugger me if the Golden Mile isn’t curved after all,
and not a straight line at all.
A mile away, the pointy tower tried to plunge itself into my heart,
On the drops and slow ascents there was all the time in the world
for the beetliness of cars
the antiness of pleasure-seekers below
and what shocked me most
was how I jumped out of my seat
the whole way I hardly sat down.
Climbing on, Mandy and Linda had told me
the worst thing you can do is
raise both hands above your head...
You’d be sucked out,
protective bar or no
protective bar.
By gravity, by air pressure, by magic,
and you’d plummet,
spectacularly...
You’d be in smithereens,
Linda said.
You’d meet the train again as it grimly looped the loop
You’d drop on your pals, and kill them as well
And I knew
I just knew
In the seat behind
my sisters were waving both their arms in the air
they didn’t care
They sang at the tops of their voices for as long as they could,
and then they started screaming for joy.
Almost straight away afterwards they wanted to go on the Mad Mouse. But first they laughed
