“Wendy love, you’ve gone green!”
“She can’t even open her mouth!”
I wanted to sit upstairs in the Wild West cafe opposite the Mad Mouse while they had their go on it. It was a smaller ride than the roller coaster, but it was even more hair-raising. From what I could see, anyway. Its drops were harder and its corners joltier. They got into a carriage the size of a mini and knocked themselves blissfully sick on something that looked as solid as a bag of four-ply wool. Their car had mouse ears and a tail that flapped behind, shedding sparks.
I went to the cigarette machine. I was clumsy getting the cellophane off a pack of Embassy Milds. I didn’t really smoke usually. They tasted harsh.
Mandy and Linda came to collect me.
“She doesn’t look well.”
“She shouldn’t have come on with us, if she knew she was going to take bad.” This was Mandy, who would only indulge you so far, and then she would turn.
“I haven’t taken bad,” I said, tossing away my fag ends and standing. My left leg felt a bit numb down one side, on the hip and ankle. I thought it would fade as I followed my sisters back through the Pleasure Beach. I thought it was from the way I’d been sitting on the ride.
Awkward. I was awkward. I ached, and I could still hear the rumble and shriek of the rails.
THREE
How do I account for laughter? Where do I begin? It’s the hardest thing to write about, after love.
I knew a man—and don’t let this go any further—who would laugh like a drain whenever he came. He didn’t think it funny, the wrench and splash as he let go his load. It was just his natural response. Like a tickle. Like something had caught his fancy just right. I loved to hear him howl like that, and rock his whole body and curl up like a clam, and go so vulnerable, the very instant after stretching his furthest, pushing it hardest.
Such a relief. Such a release.
If I wanted to write about laughter, well then I’d be stuck.
You can tell a funny story in written words. But written words can be hi-jacked by just about anyone. Anyone can read them in a new tone of voice and kill them stone dead.
Just because something is funny now, doesn’t mean it always will be. In Victorian times death was the funniest thing around. It had them rolling in the aisles. Now we laugh about sex, about sauce, and death is taboo. How shocking they would find us, how shocking we find them.
See? I’m back to sex. Why do I link laughter with sex?
When our mother and father were together and still making love, it was my mother’s laughter we heard through the wall. Even above the jouncing of bedsprings, the plaintive grunts of our labouring dad. Of course we all three had our ears pressed up to the wallpaper. Above the radio dramatics of their humdrum copulation we’d get our mother’s raucous laughter. Sometimes derisory, other times complicitous, always full throttle. With her laughter she would egg his fucking on.
Timon, the boy who worked in the fish shop on the Golden Mile, he told me that he wanted to write the funniest stories in the world.
“But what’s funny?” I shrugged, slumped at his bar, sounding jaded as only the daughter of a great laugher can sound.
“Anything’s funny,” he smiled, shyly almost, prodding the fish in the hot yellow fat. “‘Almost anything’s funny.” Then he told me the story of the rival fish shops, one of whom had taken revenge by tossing a dead cat into the other’s deep fat fryer. The dead cat contaminated everything and put them out of business. I gave a hollow laugh and saw that Timon’s humour was the type that relished others’ misfortunes.
Then I pictured the dead, battered cat chasing dead, battered fish under gallons of oil.
“Tell me about your mother,” Timon would say again, because I had him intrigued. I shrugged.
It was about this time our mother was taken ill. I wandered out of a night to escape the density of air at home. Everyone sat round waiting. I was the youngest: I had to pretend I didn’t know what we were waiting for. Mostly I slipped out into the world my sisters had been preparing me for. I went to see Timon in the fish shop on the Golden Mile. He was a writer. His head was full of all the funny stories he would tell, given half a chance.
“You see all the world come by this place,” he’d say. “I could tell you a thing or two.” When I asked him to tell me, he’d shake his head. “You’ll have to get a bit older, honey.”
I never told my sisters I had a new friend. I had a new friend black as the sea when the illuminations come on. I had a new friend who knew funny, dirty stories and wanted a chance to write them down.
I told him about my family. About my eldest sister and her interest in him. He snorted. “Girls like that always want to know.”
“And do you...have a big one?”
“This from a child!” he exclaimed in mock horror. Then he smiled. “Like a horse,” and he gave the counter a brisk wipe down. “But don’t go telling your sister.” He glinted mischievously. “She’s a bit brassy, isn’t she?”
And I gasped, never having heard anyone criticize the way our Mandy looked, or the way she went on.
“The one I really want to know about,” said Timon in a slack moment near midnight, leaning across the counter and ruffling up the pile of ready newspaper. “Who I really want to know about, is your mother...one of the greatest laughers in the world.” He said it like she was famous, appreciating that, to me at sixteen, that’s exactly what she was.
Once she said, laughter is my gift to you. I can’t give you much
