At the moment, though, I’m still thinking about Andrew’s dad, even though I don’t want to, but talking to him just then, just when the party was reminding us of the seventies and all, well, it seemed sort of right to me. It brought lots of it back in a flash. Mind, faces round here have changed. Even the ones that were here in the seventies, they’ve changed. We’re all a good sight more haggard. Time’s been having its revenges and all our bairns—the bairns who in the seventies were in their polyester Incredible Hulk T-shirts and pigtails and played with Bionic Men and Sindies—they’re all grown up themselves now. And I mean, really, God knows what they’re up to. They don’t tell you owt.
There’s a lot of drink at my party. The whole night comes to me in snatches and bits I don’t recall. At one point I’m drinking out of a paper cup for some bloody reason, and I’m sitting on the stairs with that Peggy, Sam’s mam, and all I can think is, but I never bought any paper cups! The party, Peggy’s saying, dead seriously—and we’re the best of mates by now—the party has run away on its own steam and we must be ready for anything to happen.
Peggy starts some long, daft story about a baby left in her care since last Christmas. She reckons it fell out of the sky in a shower of feathers, but she’s more pissed than I am and, quite honestly, I’m starting to think that everyone at my party is bloody daft or mad. And suddenly there’s Elsie tottering out of the downstairs toilet, pissed as a hatter and clutching a bottle of Pils.
‘Hee hee! I’ve got the Lord in me!’ she screams at us on the stairs and she looks friggin’ manic.
Quick as a flash Peggy yells back, ‘Ay, and I’ve had him in me an’ all and he was crap!’
We piss oursels laughing and Elsie doesn’t get it, which makes it funnier. She staggers down me hallway and falls flat on her face. We cackle a bit longer, waiting for her to get up. Which she doesn’t.
The next thing I remember sees us all sitting round Elsie’s cooling corpse on my Redicut rug in the living room. It’s past midnight and the music’s off now. Like a bloody vigil. Some bugger’s found me emergency candles and everyone’s sitting round Elsie’s body, watching Tom stooped over her. For some reason I’m the only one talking.
‘If we have a power cut,’ I’m saying, ‘one of you buggers is gonna buy me new candies. If I’m caught short in a blackout . .
And then I look at Elsie, along with everyone else.
We all look shattered, in our party clothes. No one looks as white as Elsie. She’s got an even dafter look on her face than usual.
‘I wouldn’t give her the fuckin’ kiss of life. I’d kiss me own arse first.’
Yes, I know. I’m ashamed of it all now and all the lasses have reminded me of the horrible details. Mind, we can still have a laugh about it.
I can see everyone gasping and watching Tom rub Elsie’s hands and breathe warm, foisty air into her face. Honestly, it’s better than the Paul Daniels show and Elsie’s that Debbie Magee, his tart.
Then she’s got a pale-blue glow all around her and she sits up like a fuckin’ zombie.
Whey, I scream liked I’ve never screamed before.
That starts some of the other lasses off, who think I’ve seen something they haven’t seen. Jane’s nearly hysterical by the time Elsie has coughed three times in a row and started to sing in a really high-pitched voice that Ken Dodd song, ‘Happiness’.
‘Happiness. Happiness.
The greatest gift that I possess.
I thank the Lord that I possess the greatest gift and that’s happiness.’
Then she passes out again and Tom cries out at the top of his lungs, ‘Praise the Lord!’
No one round here’s that religious, so no one adds anything to that, only dirty Simon, Sheila’s husband, pipes up, ‘Are we all doing turns then? Cause we’ve got wor karaoke tape we could bring round for yers, if yer like. It’s a fuckin’ hoot.’ So they do and the party’s going on till dawn.
Joanne and Andrew haul me up to bed eventually, while it’s all still going on. Through the floorboards I can hear Jane belting out ‘I Will Survive’ and then ‘Agadoo’ with Nesta and then she comes up with Fran to check on me and I’ve been sick on me dressing table.
Apparently, before I fell asleep, I was crying and saying that I wanted Eric—me bloody boss!—inside me again like he was when I was seventeen and he was twelve.
I’d never say that unless I was paralytic and I reckon I was because I never made it to the shop for work the next morning.
THE FURRIER THE BETTER
How was I to know she was married to the man who owned my lighthouse? Adele will never forgive me, but I had no choice. I was coerced. I was oppressed. But Adele won’t listen to reason. She of all people should sympathise with a pure and simple case of oppression. But still she won’t forgive me for doing what the wife of the man who owned my lighthouse made me do. After all, she neglected to tell me they were her parents.
I wouldn’t care, but it was all Adele’s fault in the first place. She made me go on Kilroy with her for moral support.
That began the sequence of events which culminated in the appearance of furry emerald crocodile skins on the bowed backs of every rich bitch in this country and beyond. Adele holds me responsible for all of it. Because of me she has even more high-street targets for her buckets of pig’s blood.
But let me backtrack. Let me fill you in. I want to savour each fragment of my decline. At the time I was barely sensible. In my current penury
