“Shall I?” asked Wendy.
Mandy marched up to a bookshop boy, who was writing out last minute name cards with a blue marker. She took it off him and told Wendy to draw the face in the middle of her orange belly. “Space Hoppers had shaggy eyebrows and a kind of whiskery, doggy face.”
A young woman with waxed, fair hair came up, clutching a drink and a stack of books. “Nuala, from Lucifer and Lucifer. I think your story is by far the best.”
“Oh,” said Mandy, cheering up as Wendy drew on her.
“It seems to me that you’re taking risks at the level of language…”
“You mean, no one understands what I’m going on about. That’s nowt new.”
“I was with you every word. I was born in Didsbury,” said Nuala, as if that explained it. “Have you got a novel?”
“Actually,” said Mandy, “It’s in my bag.”
“My boss would like to see it. He sent me here to see you. He’s skiing, but he’s the publisher at Lucifer and Lucifer. Have you got an agent?”
Mandy said that she hadn’t and took the woman’s card and then, with a smile, the woman moved off.
“Taking risks at the level of language,” Mandy laughed.
“Don’t lose your elasticity,” Wendy said.
“What?”
“Don’t let it turn your head.”
Then they were met by a tall, curly-haired man in a black velvet suit. Last year he had published his first novel, which was based on the Fred and Rosemary West case and it had been a fantastic success. Cher and Bob Hoskins were going to be in the movie. “Mandy,” he purred, fag ash all down his velvet lapels. “Fantastic. You are exactly how I imagined you.” Then he too started going on about the risks she took at the level of language. Mandy’s eyes glazed when he went on to bring in what the French Feminists had to say about the language of the pre-oedipal womb. “Christ,” he suddenly muttered, seeing that his agent was trying to attract his attention through the crowd. “There’ll be a call coming in. Cher is apparently shitting herself because she’s just seen photos of Rosemary West and now she’s not too keen on the part. Excuse me.” He squeezed through the crush.
“Prick,” said Mandy after him.
“Oh, boy,” Wendy said.
“Daniel should be here. He used to love talking about things like that. Lulu Iffygay – or someone - was one of his biggies, in the days when he was obsessed with French Feminist criticism. The Speculum of the Other Woman. He said you had to read inside a woman’s body to see what she was on about.”
“The dirty pig.” Wendy got them refills. “You’ve beaten Timon to this, anyway…”
“Timon wouldn’t be interested in all of this.”
“Yeah, but he wants his book to come out. It’s called Pieces of Belinda.”
Mandy loved that. “Shit. Which pieces?”
“He’s fobbing off the publisher. Actually—that’s Lucifer and Lucifer, too. We should have asked that Nuala woman. He’s got a massive advance and they’re knocking up the cover as we speak. Timon and Belinda falling through the stars. But the thing is… he’s gone and lost the only copy of the manuscript he had.” Wendy kept her voice down. “He’s been going frantic.”
“He always was daft.”
“He reckons it’s been nicked.”
Just then the editors started calling everyone to attention.
“Jesus God,” said Mandy. “Now I’ve got to read.”
You could tell she was nervous when she got up in front of everyone. She was the first one, so it was difficult, but as soon as she opened her mouth her voice took over. Her voice had grown strong and evenly-pitched through her winter of muttering to herself, walking all over frozen Lancaster, and reading to the Professor in the night. She wedged her unborn baby above the table, displaying the Space Hopper face, and read her few pages.
“In Blackpool, at drear day. The seabirds shout yes-nay yes-nay, yes-nay. Big sky. Small lights. Jackpot garlands of golden coins. All along the Prom, the girls come. All along the Prom, the boys come. Yes-nay. Yes-nay.”
Mandy’s story went on like this for some time.
“My mother had a monster love. Not monstrous, of the morbid, the decadent, confined to the box. That which rose unbidden. Strong Freudian stuff. Whiff of sulphur, of menses, of that which dare not speak. Yes-nay. Steady, sure as the waves on the shingle. We could hear up in the gods at night. We lived in the cheap seats of our flats at night on the Terrace. My mother fed her youngest child. We stared at her tits as she fed our sister sat on the fat, orange settee.”
When she finished, overrunning her three minutes, we all clapped.
I couldn’t get to Mandy for a while after the readers were done with. People were bending her ear. I was stopped by a woman I recognized. She was still in her black sweatshirt with the unicorn on the front. “Hey?” she said. “Remember me?”
“What are you doing here?”
“I wrote something for the anthology? I wrote ‘Manifesto for the Church of the Silver Unicorn?’ Page four hundred and twelve? They seemed to think it was a fantastic story?”
“Is your ectoplasm friend here?”
“She’s at Church, of course? I got permission to come here? Was that your sister up there reading? She looks like you?”
I nodded.
“I see your alien friends are being very successful? When’s his book coming out?”
“Sweetheart!” It was Serena at my elbow. “I knew it was tonight. We missed the reading. Is your sister here?”
Behind her, I saw Joshua and he was wearing scarlet and green tartan. He’d left his face unshaven again and I grinned. Maybe I felt funny after Colin’s warning about him, but he was so reassuring in the flesh. “Serena got us in,” he said. “She knows everyone.”
I was about to introduce the unicorn woman to them, but Serena had burst out squealing and she was dragging on the arm of the man who had written about Fred and Rosemary West.
“Cher’s pulled out,” he
