Authors: Deborah Levy
‘Keep your pecker up, Mr Tens!’ she screams, knocking back her minibar samples one by one, unscrewing the lids off miniatures and pouring them down her throat. Raj and Girl sing along while Billy claps his hands in time. Should have brought along his guitar. One day he will be as big as Jesus. He’ll save people’s souls and what’s more he’ll do it without a beard.
‘Onward Christian soldiers
marching on to war
dum dum dum da da da.
DUM DUM DUM DA DA DA
DUM DUM DUM DA DA DA …’
Mr Tens is lying flat on his back on Girl’s bed while Billy ties up his hands with one of Mom’s scarves. Yeah. The clothes in Mom’s wardrobe were going to come in useful one day. Billy often takes down the yellow dress, the one with the hem coming down, and sobs into it. A dress so hideous, it was designed for crying in, not partying in, Girl always says. Mr Tens bound like one of his FreezerWorld piglets. Little squeals twisting his lips. Prayers.
Billy sits on Tens’s chest. Got a piece of paper on his lap and he’s writing a note.
MR TENS. YOU ARE GOD’S FREE GIFT TO US, THE SATURDAY BARGAIN. TELL US WHERE OUR MOTHER IS AND WE LET YOU GO
.
Mr Tens shaking his head. Complete incomprehension. Billy’s pen moving across the page again.
IF YOU DON’T TELL US WE’LL CUT YOUR TONGUE OFFFFFF
. To help Tens make up his mind there’s a little drawing of a severed tongue at the bottom of the page. Little drops of blood gushing all over. Raj has nipped out to get some teabags from the shop. They’re all thirsty after Girl’s miniature minibar molotovs.
‘Yeah, Mr Tens,’ Louise suddenly pipes up. She’s been lurking in the room, crouching by the bed. ‘We’ll cut off your head and mince it.’ A knife suddenly springs up between her thumb and fingers. That really makes Tens scream. Girl has to whack her fist into his mouth again. Blood on her fingernails from last time. Jeezuz. The bloke must have gingivitis. Vulnerable gums. Sensitive teeth. He must have to use a toothpaste with
something special in it. Not to mention the toothbrush. Soft bristles. Louise with a knife? Jeeeeeezuz. The girl’s dangerous. A live wire. Billy catches the fear in Girl’s eyes. All they need right now is a Louise explosion.
‘Yeah, Mr Tens.’ Louise stands up. ‘We really will cut your tongue off.’
Billy nods, agreeing with everything Louise says always for ever etc. Rolls up his sleeves. Mr Tens watching. Trembling under the boy Billy. Girl knows she’s got to keep out of this. Louise with a knife? Oh no.
No
no no no. Girl knows they’ve got to be careful with Louise. That’s because Girl knows she’s got to be careful with her secret Louise girl self. Not a knife. Oh no. Not with all that retard rage waiting for expression. She can hear the door slam downstairs. Raj coming in with the tea. Boiling the kettle. Billy doing something clever. Takes the knife off Louise. Sinks it into his wrist on behalf of Louise’s rage. One clean cut.
His mom’s only son, taking a little of Louise’s rage on for her, that’s the sort of person Billy is. Giving the knife back to Louise because that’s the safest thing to do. He prefers working with his own knife anyway. Billy showing every little detail of his butchery to Mr Tens, whose pupils are spreading all over his eyes. Just blackness now. Especially now, because something has happened to Billy. He is sitting on top of Mr Tens just like his dad sat on top of him, five years old, teaching him how to box.
Except Dad has pinned down Billy’s fists. Smacking Billy in the mouth, saying ‘Let’s see your left paw, son.’ Bashing him and holding down his little body at the same time. Billy lets rip on Mr Tens. Whacking his fifteen-year-old fists into Tens’s pale cheekbones. Slicing him with the side of his hand. Jagger jagger jagger. Bouncing on top of his breathing apparatus, bashing him and, worst of all, thinking it through at the same time. Billy’s
fists and Billy’s mind working together. Bruising the pathetic Tens jaw, because he can. There are no safety regulations in this fight, just Billy bashing Dad, cos he’s sitting on top of him and even though Mr Tens is not Dad, he’ll do. Mr Tens trying to get words out of his mouth which is stuffed with Girl’s white-trash fist.
‘Want to say something?’ Girl asks politely.
Tens nodding with his new blackness eyes.
‘Go on then.’
Girl removes her hand. Jeezus. Trust them to pick someone with dental problems. Blood all over her fingers again. Hope he uses a mouthwash tried and tested in laboratories in the industrial UK. Blood from Billy’s cut too. Girl’s not interested in blood at all. She justs wants information from the gulping, stuttering FreezerWorld wizard.
‘Wah wah wwwant ta ta heelp …’
‘Ey? Spit it out, Mr Tens.’ Louise leers in his face.
‘Waaaaaaant to heeelp.’
The bedroom door flings open. Raj carrying a tray. Five mugs of tea. Grinning on account of telling a Stupid Club member to repatriate himself to another local corner shop.
‘I made one for him.’ Raj cocks his head (Billy notices that Raj has found time to brush his hair) towards the bruised and squirming Tens. Raj is deeply shocked at the sight of Mr Tens. There’s a new texture in his voice, a no-go zone. Raj is going to exit if they don’t get a grip. ‘Leave him alone.’
Girl nods obligingly, but she’s ready to slam her fist back into the gingivitis man all the same.
‘Wah wah wwwant to help the dddumb boy.’ At last! Tens has made a sentence. Everyone’s laughing except Billy. Hey, Mr Tens, you really have a way with words that will make you friends and influence people. The Dumb Boy.
‘Go on, then. How you gonna make him talk?’ Girl prods
the hostage while Louise takes her teaspoon, dips it into the tea and feeds it to Mr Tens like soup. That’s what her mother did for her. When she was cold, all snot and filth and no sleep.
‘I’m a bb bah bah bbbit of a healer.’ Is Tens trying to save his penis? What, for Mr Tens? For FreezerWorld? For FreezerWoman?
‘Do it then. Heal the wounded.’ Raj is acting cool but he’s also sincere. A little bit of Raj believes Mr Tens’s healing claim. You got to believe and then lose it, don’t you? Or get sad and then find faith? That’s how life on earth works. You make a judgement and then you correct it. Raj wants to hear his friend Billy whine again.
‘La la la look at the space between mah mah mah my eyebrows, Bahbbilly.’
Billy sitting on Mr Tens the bruised breathless healer. All his boy weight pressing down on the man. Complete concentration. This is a tremulous moment in the life of Billy England. He wants a bigger audience. Girl, Louise, Raj. That’s only three. Billy wants some noughts at the end of that number. Choosing the spot between the eyebrows. Focus there. Beam in his pain biography to that place. Send it to Mr Tens unadulterated. Don’t clean it up. Send it dirty like it is. Breathe in and shoot out a pain laser that contains everything Billy England is, right between the healer’s eyes.
Go
.
Raj finds his knuckles are in his mouth. Girl is chewing the ends of her hair. Louise sipping her tea. Billy is completely still and silent but Mr Tens is writhing. Sweat dripping from his eyebrows into his bleeding mouth. Gasping. ‘GahGahGah …’
Time for Louise to spoon more tea into her boss’s mouth. After all, he does pay her her wages in a little brown envelope every Friday. Mustn’t upset him too much.
‘Gah gah gah.’
Girl is getting restless. ‘Come on, Mr Tens. You’re the one supposed to make my brother talk. Not doing so well yourself.’
Mr Tens suddenly sits bolt upright, throwing Billy off him, warm sugary tea dribbling out of his trembling lips. ‘Gah gah ded!’ he howls. ‘Gah ded.’
Billy scrambling to get up. Thrown onto his stomach, caught in the fringe of the rug in Girl’s room. A caveboy struggling with faith, the elements and the shame of beating Mr Tens. He thought he was above that. What with his books and scholarship. Trying to find his pen and paper.
Raj is genuinely worried. ‘Why did you have to go and do that to the man?’ he whispers, taking a pencil from his jeans pocket, nervous when his friend grabs it and starts writing furiously, all the while Louise stroking Mr Tens’s forehead. It’s like her boss is in labour. Gah Gah ded contractions every minute. Crying out.
RAJ I AM
T
h
E
ON
ly
HEALER IN THIS ROOM. UNDERSTAND?
Raj reading the Billy note, nodding just to be on the safe side but he doesn’t have comprehension of anything any more. Billy crossing out stuff, writing more. Girl can’t be bothered to wait for her brother.
‘Look, Mr Tens. You make announcements in FreezerWorld, don’t you?’
Vigorous nodding from the gibbering hostage.
‘Right. One of the announcements said, “Louise call Grand-Dad. If his horse hasn’t come home he might be ill.”’
Tens choking now, but still nodding.
‘Who gave you that note to announce, Mr Tens?’
Louise pouring tea into her boss’s mouth. He’s stopped shaking. In fact his pale face is begining to tan. Some kind of sunlight whispering through Tens, despite the choking and howling. He is a man who has been penetrated by a fifteen-year-old boy.
Penetrated by revelation. He can only describe it (and he will, if he lives to make another FreezerWorld broadcast) as a rock cracking under an immense lonely sky. Between the two halves of rock is just space. Tens has entered that space. Emptied of God belief but fattened with belief all the same. A mortal man touched, literally, with the pain of a mortal boy. The boy is the carrier of the pain, but Tens knows that it is a paincrowd that touched him. Mothers and fathers and goverment policies and vitamin lack and self-taught languages and menthol inhalings. There was even an Alsatian dog present in the pain glare that blitzed him between the eyes and nudged God out of his solar system. Recipes and technologies and highway codes. He has been penetrated by castration theories and pain ash, lager longing and boy autonomy insistence; there is even a road in Nottingham grazing Tens’s third-eye space, plus pepperoni-pizza enlightenment and silver loafers and sentiment leaking, crashing into each other. Tens is fighting through a Looney Tune vortex with ‘That’s all folks’ flashing on and off, soundbites from Freud and Darwin and Jackie Collins. Tens is a changed man. Godless but full up all the same.
‘Yes.’ Mr Tens speaks with clarity and confidence. ‘Someone did give me a note to read.’ He looks at Louise and smiles gently. ‘Mrs O’Reilly.’
Girl kicks the bed. ‘Who the fuck is Mrs O’Reilly?’
It’s Louise’s turn now. Plaiting her blond hair. Sitting close to Mr Tens. ‘My mother.’
‘That’s right, Louise.’ Mr Tens has found his voice again.
‘Don’t talk to me like that.’ Louise pounces on her boss. Tearing at his little bow tie like it’s his intestines.
‘How do you want me to talk to you, Louise?’ The hostage man floundering again. Finding his way and then losing it almost immediately.
‘I work for my shit money. There’s plenty more shit out there for me to get up in the morning for so don’t come on like you’re giving me free air miles, Captain fucking Tens!’
‘Mrs O’Reilly?’ Girl has changed tactics. She’s threatening Louise. ‘Come on, who is she?’
‘Mrs O’Reilly took Louise in,’ Tens explains. Yes. He’s been missing his FreezerWorld Broadcasting. Mr Tens has become addicted to an audience. Even here, when he should be somewhere else, somewhere safer, more familiar, he’s pleased to have knowledge he can share. Somewhere inside, he knows he’s going to be all right. ‘Louise ran away from home and Mrs O’Reilly was kind enough to take her in.’
Louise has made two perfect plaits out of her blondness. Pinning them up with her new plastic heart hair slides. Her horror eyes flirt with Girl. Nearly there. One more tug with the hairgrip. ‘She got me the job at FreezerWorld.’
Billy is putting on his jacket. Tying up his trainer laces. Pulling a comb through his hair. Wrapping his shirt sleeve tight over his new cut. Nothing serious. Preparing himself. He looks at Girl and she nods. Pale and cold.
‘Get
up
!’ She yanks Mr Tens off the bed. ‘Take us to Mrs O’Reilly, then. Get up now!’
Raj is already dangling the Merc keys, ready to drive Girl and Billy anywhere they want to go. He wants the Englands to be happy and safe. He wants them to be all right. And Louise too. Thing is, Louise and Tens have some weird complicity. They’re like a sort of family. Hating and loving each other.
‘My mother works nights sometimes.’ Louise says meekly, but her eyes are snared with Girl. Taunting her.
That’s just too much for Girl. She doesn’t care what Raj thinks of her any more. She leaps on Louise. Wrestles her to the floor. Pulls her hair and punches her face. Billy holding off Mr Tens who wants to rescue Louise princess. No fucking way,
Mr Tens. Girl is a princess too. Billy knows that. He always tells his sister so. Forget this Evil thing. That’s for Stupid Club. That’s for medievalists on buses all over the city. In their mixed fibres and High Street shoes shouting Evil Evil Evil cos it’s easier than shouting Pain Pain Pain. Fifteen minutes of medieval fame. Girl is a princess too. A princess for the twenty-first.
‘Where is she where is she
where is she
?’ Girl scrunches Louise’s cheeks in her hands, pulling them apart, biting her. Girl teeth marks in Louise. Girl yanking out Louise hair, Girl nails stuck in Louise flesh, but Louise won’t so much as flinch. Not even a tear. Louise, Princess of FreezerWorld. Packing peas for ever. 4 Ever. That’s how the Louise story goes. She did not live happily for ever after. She lived happily 4 ever after. Louise pulls out her knife.
‘Come and get me then, Louise,’ she whispers to Girl. Calling her Louise for the first time. ‘Come and fucking get me. I saw you stalking me. Following me home. Finding excuses to stare at me at work … what do you want to
do
with me then, Louise?’
Louise. A princess for the twenty-first, armed and alert. Threats spilling from her soft cupid lips, rage in her white girl curves and dainty bitten off nails.
‘Calling me stunted. Calling me retard. Calling my boyfriend a dog. Come and get me then.’