Billy and Girl (10 page)

So Candy’s in the shower. Jonnie’s got to take off his kit, climb in with her and soap her breasts, real slow and sexy. Thing is, Billy English won’t take off his clothes. No matter director and art director saying he can keep his pants on. This boy doesn’t even wear short sleeves. No way. Says in England he showers in his anorak. That’s why it’s waterproof. Director thinks, Let’s get a little experimental. Why not? We’re ahead of schedule. Let him.

Lights. Sound. Action.

Billy English fully clothed gets into the shower with naked Candy. He takes the soap. What does he do? Starts washing his fucking hair. Standing under shower in anorak washing his hair. Inneresting. Only thing is he’s got lines scripted for him by the writer who is sobbing into his script, shouting something about never working again. Never let the writer near the shoot. Big mistake. Jonnie is supposed to say, ‘I’ve been wanting to do this ever since I first saw you in the bar.’ Do what? Wash his hair while naked nubile looks on? I mean, what kind of pervy movie is this?

So now actress playing Candy is going berserk. Wants to call her agent. Says why don’t she wear her skis in the shower? Hell, why not eat a Caesar salad in the shower? Director gets an idea. He’s not giving up on Billy England. Says to Candy, ‘Okay, sweetheart, tell you what. Talk dirty to Jonnie while he soaps his hair in his anorak.’

Okay. Camera’s rolling. Candy narrows her eyes. Voice honey low. ‘Hey, Jonnie. I want you to do things to me.’ She presses her breasts against his anorak. What does Billy do? Billy screams. Got soap in his eyes, hasn’t he?

Director turns to camera. Genuine disbelief. Gestures to Billy. Someone take him away. Hang him. Mince him into mad Heritage British beef patties and feed him to the welfare single mothers and their bastard brats.

Billy informs director that he’s got a pricking pain all over his nerve fibres. He’s not quite sure where the site of his injury is but he’s researching the whole phenomenon and it’s his life’s work. All he knows is that pain is a black box full of mystery and one day he will unpack it for the reading public. The boy feels he has to explain further. The whole crew gather round. Make-up, continuity, gaffers, all-purpose electricians, the extras playing pool in the makeshift bar, the runners and boom-swinger guy who seems to be in some sort of shock because his arm is frozen in midair and he’s muttering something about an aeroplane overhead when he’s not even recording. Every time his eyes graze those of Billy English, he shuts them tight so he doesn’t have to put a face to the whining voice cracking into his head, wasting his time, encouraging the director to go berserk and sack the whole crew while he recasts.

Billy is saying, See, it’s a chronic interdependent kind of pain, a union of what the Greeks call the psyche (mind) and soma (body). He, Billy England, is perfectly aware that he is addicted to his pain. It is his narcotic, and he must give it up and endure cold turkey etc., but before he can do this he will have to find a way of declaring his grief before he can reshape it. Finally, Billy gasps breathlessly, finding an opportune moment to reach for a smoked-salmon bagel from the catering staff, is the director familiar with Freud’s description of cancer of the jaw being like a ‘small island of pain in a sea of indifference’? No? Well, he, Billy, is the small island of English pain in the Hollywood Hills, could someone pass him another bagel pleeeese? No, not salad. No, not egg mayonnaise. Billy England is a neurosurgeon of the mind – he will build stone cities, carve into rocks, build railroads of the mind, but for now his own soul-tissue damage precludes the possibility of being a boy star.

When the director’s jaw actually drops open, culled into silence by this gobbling goofy goy guy ranting in his wet anorak, Billy can see the thousands of dollars of dental work that have been put into the famous director’s teeth and gums. Billy wants that kind of attention too. Not in the dental department, though. No. Billy is not reliable. Girl knows this. Look how he nearly sawed through his wrist to create a small diversion in FreezerWorld? Billy. Gulp.

Billy and Girl are Mom-and-Dad pain bonkers. FreezerWorld lucre. They counted their stolen loot again. Minicabs came and went through the night. Girl has some distant memory of being Empress of Minicab Empire. But the infrastructure had gone. Bombed itself into oblivion. Call another cab. She punched in the numbers, dazed and shivering. Practising her big smile. Wiping it off again. Arranging words in some kind of order, not knowing what they meant. Bad-tempered drivers banged on the door and left cursing without a fare. Eventually the minicab office banned all calls from number 24 Harkham Road. Billy and Girl can’t even drag themselves to bed, never mind into an aeroplane full of potential Mom-check material.

Counting the notes, skipping numbers to avoid the catastrophe of counting in sequence. Girl saying, ‘It’s a respectable cash haul, Billy.’ Big smile on. Big smile off. ‘It’s a respectable cash haul, Billy.’ On. Off. Billy waving his bandaged arm, whining. Wanting haddock. Moaning for haddock.
Haddock
? What the fuck is haddock? It’s a fish, isn’t it? Is it? Nothing is certain any more. California? You grind it with glass, don’t you? Chat shows? That’s one of seventeen words for snow, isn’t it? The doorbell ringing. Another aborted cab. Counting the money over and over.

Six hundred pounds.

Not exactly a mega robbery. Not exactly. If they’re lucky, it’s two cheap fares from a bucket shop. Plane diverted via nine destinations, having to endure the company of cheery sunseekers spilling airline boeuf stroganoff over their hideous T-shirts. Girl dressed in her Jackie Onassis outfit. Shades and a little red suit with white trimming. No tights, just her silver loafers. Complaining bitterly to the stewardesses about the lack of cocktail know-how. Doing her nut when she asks for a bloody Mary and the air hostess hands her a miniature Smirnoff and a can of tomato juice. Screaming for real service. Demanding half a teaspoonful of horseradish, tabasco sauce and a lime wedge in her fucking bloody Mary. Billy howling, biting the cushions when she changes her mind and insists on a Bosom Caresser. Five parts brandy, two parts madeira, etc. Girl might look like Jackie and Billy does his best to act presidential, but they’re not exactly set up for idle luxury once they arrive in California, are they? Only Grand-Dad’s envelope of cash, and that’s not predictable if he hasn’t had much luck on the horses. No. Unless they luck out and get spotted immediately? Like at the airport, showing their visas to immigration. A Pain Agent behind them. Her big blond hair gleaming with the latest monkey-gland sheen spray. Yards of fingernails painted orange. Tapping them against her perfect teeth. Sussing them out. Converting their English pain potential into US dollars. Pain Agent’s best catch yet! Whispering into her mobile. ‘Al, I jus’ hauled in the biggest tuna the Golden State’s ever clapped eyes on. Buy a new freezer, I’m draggin ’em home.’ Not exactly.

Six hundred miserable English pounds.

FreezerWorld let them down. The Basket People let them down. Louise let them down. The Express till to nowhere. A robbery to nowhere.

The morning after, Girl cleaned the skirting boards and Billy swept the kitchen floor. Billy scrunched up newspaper, soaked it in meths and scrubbed every window in the house. Girl washed down the sofa, armchair and curtains. Billy collected every odd sock he ever owned and rinsed them in biological. Girl took all her bras out of the drawer and soaked them in bleach. Billy undid his bandage and gawped at his stitches. Girl trimmed her fringe and then burnt the blond ends in an ashtray. Neither of them answered the telephone. The answermachine whirled and clicked and the voice droned on and on. Always the same voice. Girl rubbed suntan oil into her cheeks and lay on the carpet reading a thriller. Billy sliced one mushroom for ninety minutes. Girl washed the suntan oil off her cheeks. Billy put his bandage back on. Six hours and four messages later, Girl pressed the play button. Yes. Definitely the same voice on all the messages. Girl searched for Pause, and then she called Billy. As soon as he saw his sister’s face he knew he shouldn’t have rushed slicing that mushroom. Sat himself down on the most comfy armchair, crossed his legs, fiddled with the laces on his red trainers, asked his sister whether she wanted to rub more suntan oil into her face before she pressed Play? No, but she has just spotted a speck of dust on the woodwork and would he mind if she takes a moment to dampen a J Cloth and remove it? Of course not. And while she’s in the kitchen looking for the J Cloths, would she be so kind as to put a lid on the dish with the sliced mushroom inside it? With pleasure. In fact, she’ll clean out the fridge while she’s there to make room for the dish with the mushroom in it. Perhaps while she’s doing that, Billy could take the gold bands off the butts in the ashtray and save them to make a Christmas card with? What a good idea. Why doesn’t he make a little box to save the gold bands in?

Girl presses Play. The same message, four times. Dad’s voice in their front room. Speaking to them. Dad leaving a message for his kiddies.

THIS IS A MESSAGE FOR WILLIAM AND LOUISE ENGLAND.
I THINK YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN A CAR I HAVE TO SELL
YOU. MY PHONE NUMBER IS
0115 676767.

WILLIAM AND LOUISE, I CALLED EARLIER WITH A CONTACT
NUMBER. I KEENLY ADVISE YOU TO TELEPHONE ME.

YES, I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK TO BILLY AND LOUISE. MY NUMBER IS
0115 676767.

BILLY AND GIRL. THIS WON’T BE MY LAST MESSAGE.
AS I SAID, I HAVE A CAR YOU MIGHT LIKE. I HAVE REASON TO
BELIEVE YOU HAVE SOME MONEY TO BUY IT WITH.

‘Call him, Girl.’

Billy’s gone blue like he does when he’s painwalking. Trailing his mind across a landscape of soft ash. It’s warm where he is. Warm and chalky. White birds hover above, flapping their wings, making wind for the ash to rise and scatter.

Billy is naked. Rolling in the ash. A small boy. Face down, rolling over and over, blue skin covered in ash, like talcum powder, fifteen years old, perfect and tiny. Rolling the pain out of his baby fifteen-year boy body, fifteen summers and winters.

‘I can’t.’ Girl punches her blond head, eyes shut, lips shut.

‘We must.’ Billy is nearly home from his walk. The blue is leaking out of his face. He takes a breath, wants to sound weary and assured. ‘We must. I’ll tell you why.’

‘Why?’

‘Mom.’

‘He doesn’t know where she is.’

‘He might.’

‘I can’t.’

‘I will then.’

Billy stands up. Walks to the telephone. Cradles it under his chin. 0115 676767. Waits. Thinks about all the mushrooms in the world that need to be sliced. His sister can see the blue creeping back into his fingers. Painwalking again. Someone’s interrupted his stroll. Up to his waist in ash. Saying something.

‘Hello. This is William.’

Pause.

‘When?’

‘Ten o’clock?’

Pause.

‘Ten o’clock.’

Billy puts down the phone. The important thing is not to look at Girl. Look at the telephone cord instead.

Girl says, ‘What happened in the pauses, Billy?’

Billy counting every whirl in the spiral of white cord. It could be the intestine of a small animal. Something that scampers in the woods and hides in trees.

‘Dad says he saw an artist’s impression of us in the papers. Wants to reassure us it isn’t very good. Nothing like us. But he’s our daddy and dads know.’

Girl cheers up. ‘Oh, really? An artist has done a drawing? That’s fantastic, Billy! We’re famous! I wonder who decribed us to the artist? Some basket person, I reckon. Probably the one with the ginger eyes. He saw us in
ginger
!’

Billy wants to give the plastic cord a little saucer of milk. Anything to distract himself from the terror scraping at his throat. Terror to do with Girl.

‘Thing to do,’ he begins, pushing down the fear coming at him from somewhere forgotten, ‘is to go and see a film now.’

‘Yeah.’ Girl nods.

‘Cos we got to leave for Nottingham early tomorrow.’

‘Yeah.’ Girl nods again, freaking her brother out.

‘We got to be there by ten o’clock.’ Billy knows he’s got to leave the room.
Now
. He’s beginning to tremble. Not because of Dad. Because of Girl. Because of what Dad told him about Girl in the pauses.