“I’ve got my car,” said Billy. “I’ll drive you.”
He had a purple Volkswagen Beetle with posters for his own show stuck on the back windows. They stopped first at an all-night bakers for crumpets and cake. Uncle Pat rapped on the red door and they were let into a steamy, noisy room with trays lined with greasy paper left out on every surface. “I’ve come for crumpet.”
“Hey, Billy Franks,” said the skinny baker. “I’m coming to see you tomorrow night. I’m bringing ma wife.”
“I can’t do anything for her,” Billy smiled. “Have you tried the vet?”
They drove across town, Wendy holding the warm parcels from the bakery.
“You’ve done well for yourself, Pat,” said Billy, gazing round at the quiet flat. “How did you end up with the big house? I’m the famous one.”
“I don’t own the whole house, exactly,” said Pat. He was pouring them whisky. No sign of the others.
“It’s nice, though. I’m still living out of my suitcase.”
Pat had wanted to bring him back to the busy kitchen, to meet the others. He supposed he wanted Billy to entertain them some more. Or he wanted Billy to see the folk he had around him now. Maybe this was best. A quiet drink. He washed down his painkillers with Glemorangie.
“How long do those things take to work?” asked Billy.
“It’s immediate,” said Pat. “Magic pills.”
“I had a magic pill to cure my impotence.” Billy looked at them expectantly.
“It’s a joke, right?” asked Wendy.
“No, not really. I made it up. I do that lately. I start the joke without knowing what the end will be. It scares the pants off me when I do that on stage. Everyone looking at you.”
He tried again. “I knew a man who took a magic pill to cure his impotence.” Billy looked thoughtful. Then he brightened. “His wife couldn’t swallow it.”
Uncle Pat laughed.
In the very early hours of that morning I made what the old, showbizzy gentleman called a ‘gift of my splendidness’ to him. I took him to bed.
Now look, this is the older Wendy talking to you, and it’s many years since Billy Franks died, garnering a few, smutty nostalgic columns in the Sunday papers, dead of pills, booze, neglect and a fat purple heart on a jumbo jet. Floored by the altitude, he choked out his last, a few years past the turn of the century. Floored by the air hostess, he would have chuckled, winking madly.
I made him a gift of my splendidness back in 1997 when Uncle Pat had seen himself groggily off to bed and we watched him from the kitchen table, Billy sitting with hiccups in a director’s chair, too slewed, it seemed, even to move. He’d been tight for hours, he said, on sheer adrenalin.
I really was splendid in those days, I suppose. I always had large breasts with very small nipples and the old fellas especially loved them. Nipples pink as Belinda’s sugar mice. While still in the kitchen I let the old comic pull my dress off, all the way over my head, untwist my bra and hold my breasts in his crab hands. I remembered then that I’d wanted work-hard, old hands on my body. I wanted to feel that. My clean white skin shook in his hands and he was tender. He listened and waited on that pulse. “It’s like holding a very young bird,” he said. “New hatched. About to fledge.”
Like my mam I always liked a man who could make me laugh. He did so all the way to my room. I made my decision and he asked very nicely. I took him in my hands and led him down the creaky boards before he was tempted to start begging. I could see, I could feel his dauntless old pecker pushing out against his pants. I pushed one of his hands into the front of my knickers, loving the snag of his unclipped nails on my hair while he dabbled at me, with increasing confidence. His hand came out buttery and warm.
I must have been prescient at that tender
age or I knew what was
coming or I jumped on the first
chance I saw but for weeks
I’d been telling myself
I want a dirty old man
who’ll cover my whiteness
with dirty old kisses
who’ll rove over my slimness
with floppy old skin
I’ll turn him on:
Soothe his wrinkled brow
straighten out his arms and legs
cool his cheeks
inflame his weakened lungs
let him shuffle about me
indulge me
let him Lolita me
Too old to be Lolita, even then.
His body was crazed with lines, and endless mapwork. Only his thin penis wasn’t like an old man’s.
“A comic’s vital tool,” he whispered, fitting it into me, talking more to himself. “The butt of all his jokes.” I’d had to pump it delicately to keep him hard. Till the end was wet and pink like a kitten’s nose.
We slept in a hug that almost crushed the life out of me. I marvelled at the different textures of our skins. The variousness of his: emery board, elephant hide, richest vellum. I, meanwhile, was tight and replete.
He was the man I once told you about. The man who giggled when he came. He climaxed and roared with laughter, shaking the bed, the pictures on the wall.
In the morning he was gone, leaving a smell of whisky, cigarettes, of basil, crushed into the sheets and my skin.
In Colin’s room that night, he and David held still, listening.
“That noise,” said David.
“Someone else in this flat is fucking,” Colin smirked.
David lay to cover him. He buried them in covers. “December tomorrow.”
David stared at Colin. He’d come so far. At first he would close his eyes when Colin kissed him, as if taking medicine. He’d relaxed since then. Things to get used to: beard burn, stubble burn, the double volume of sperm in the bed. The towels kept handy for afterwards. Looks from the others, at first, in the hallway. Loving the noise of Colin. Hearing another man’s voice in the dark.
