Falling in love again, never wanted to, what’s a girl to do
, sang Dionne then in her already cracked voice, can’t help it. Beverley remembered then how when they had gone to the pictures
when they were young, and had left Baby Alice in Jesus’ care, and happened to go to the thirties’ film
The Blue Angel
because there was nothing else on, Dionne had said, ‘That’s what I want to be, that’s how I want to live.’ Dionne had made
Marlene Dietrich her idol, rejoicing as she did to see the old man in love humiliated, made to crow like a cock to prove his
love, then spurned. Beverley had been rather appalled, but Dionne had slapped her on the wrist for being so provincial. It
was the only quarrel they had ever had. As well Dionne had not had sons, Beverley had thought then, she would have given them
a terrible time. Just as well she had plants instead.
When Beverley came to stay her kehua chose the kowhai bush on which to hang amongst familiar yellow seedpods, naturally enough.
They do so long for home; who of us doesn’t, the living and the properly dead, the unborn and the undead, all of us, whatever
mode we’re in, spirit or flesh? And of course Beverley, moved by some childhood recollection, once took a seedling from Dionne’s
patio home in Paris to Robinsdale, wrapped in damp newspaper, with some wet earth still clinging to its roots.
On the day little Beverley ran one-two, one-two from the red death kitchen to Rita, the kowhai had been in yellow pod, and
the whole dusty road alight with gold. Death is often accompanied by beauty: nature celebrates the passing by making the sunset
more glorious, the moon more mysterious – or perhaps it’s just that in the presence of death the senses become more acute,
and shock makes time seem to change its pace.
Beverley has limped to the bathroom and back – she is more mobile than she lets on – and done her face; not much make-up,
it can make matters worse at her age, changed her wrap to a silky one by Natori and fluffed up her hair. She is really grateful
that Scarlet washed it for her this morning, and hopes the girl is getting on all right. Beverley even gets to the front door
and puts it on the snib for easy entry before getting back on her sofa, looking as delightful as anyone of nearly eighty can.
How old is Gerry? Sixty-seven? Well, she has the house and a life; he hasn’t. Will she turn him away, or will she forgive
him for Fiona and take him in? She’ll see what she feels like when he gets here.
And then the doorbell rings and she calls, ‘Come in,’ and a man enters who is not Gerry. He approaches cautiously and politely,
stretching out his hand. It is shaking with emotion. He is long and lanky and in his mid-thirties, has a domed forehead and
for a moment Beverley is reminded of her stepfather and possibly, probably, father. Taller, rangier and quicker moving, but
still Arthur.
‘Are you my grandmother?’ he asks. ‘Mrs Fletzner, née McLean?’
‘You must be Alice’s Luke?’ she enquires, cool as a cucumber.
Run, run, run,
rattle the kehua in the kowhai tree.
Cucumber sandwiches equals knife, equals blood on the sand.
But Beverley can’t run; bad knee.
‘That was quick,’ she says. ‘I’ve only just got to hear about you. But that’s Alice for you, she never tells you the important
things.’
‘I’m glad she’s called Alice,’ he says. ‘A pretty name. She said she’d be at this address tomorrow. The kids and I are staying
around the corner, isn’t that a coincidence? I just had to be sure. I don’t want her to get away. She could change her mind.’
He has a New Zealand accent.
‘Quite a coincidence,’ Beverley says coolly. ‘But I don’t think she’ll change her mind. My daughter is a very consistent kind
of person. Why don’t you go back to them now and come again tomorrow at the time she arranged. I may say without consulting
me.’
‘I have three children,’ he says, unabashed, as he leaves. ‘That’s three more great-grandchildren for you; aren’t you pleased?’
The whanau are gathering. The clans are coming home. Their energy is restoring Beverley. It is just as well because when the
phone goes yet again as she undresses for bed it is Lola on the other end, and she will need every scrap of strength she has,
both morally and physically.
Lola is weeping on the other end of the phone. Beverley is accustomed to her whining, moaning, yelling, sniggering, jeering,
reproaching and snarling, but she has never heard Lola actually crying, let alone in terror and panic, as she is now. Beverley
has reared innumerable children but has never heard anything quite like this. She is at once alert.
‘Geegee,’ pleads Lola. It is her childhood name for Beverley, short for great-grandmother. ‘Please come, I can’t get through
to anyone. Please, quickly. I’m frightened.’
Last chance saloon, thinks Beverley, that’s me. In the background she can hear discordant music – ‘post-technobitch’, she
supposes; confined to her bed as she has been, she has been much
charmed and educated by YouTube – and desultory singing and shouting in the background. At least Lola is with people. Lola’s
voice, as she croaks to be heard, is both slurred and over-modulated; God knows what Lola has been taking, to pull her down
or perk her up or both at the same time, or quite what level of existence she is inhabiting. There is so much on the market.
Whatever it is, thinks Beverley, it can kill you. Pray God it is legal so someone will call an ambulance.
‘Where exactly are you?’ she asks.
‘Down the steps,’ says Lola, ‘you know where. I keep passing out and my hands have gone funny. Look.’
‘I can’t see your hands,’ says Beverley. ‘You’re on the phone. Pull yourself together and call an ambulance.’
‘I can’t do that, they’ll kill me,’ says Lola.
Beverley hears the clatter as Lola’s mobile falls to the floor and then there is only the sound of the music and random shouts
and squeals, which could be pleasure or rage or both. And then there is no more speech from Lola.
Now as it happens Beverley does know what Lola means by ‘down the steps’, though Lola is pushing it to suppose that Beverley
would. Beverley fund-raises for a charity called Young Sympathy, whose mission is to train young people in empathy for unfortunates.
To this end school parties set up stalls in deprived areas to hand out advice leaflets, cups of tea and slices of cake to
anyone in need of help. Lola’s school, as a result of a certain amount of string-pulling by both Beverley and Cynara, supported
the initiative: in return participating pupils received certificates which could be mentioned in CVs.
Beverley, coming to visit with a PR team to take photographs for the Young Sympathy newsletter, and finding Lola slicing cake
and pouring cups of tea for those who seemed to be her friends, stayed on to help. The street friends were young and excitable,
dressed eccentrically, colourfully and barely decently, à la Lady Gaga. Their gender was indeterminate, but those who had
breasts showed them. Lack of money did not seem to be their problem, but they clearly liked the cake. Lola’s charitable school
friends, a well-behaved and virtuous lot, were evidently much impressed by Lola and her social circle.
Lola found the presence of her great-grandmother embarrassing, to the extent of introducing Beverley as her grandmother (‘I
used to call her Gee for Gran,’ she went as far as saying), though she was polite enough and allowed herself to be helped
pouring tea. Beverley asked her if her friends lived in a commune, and Lola nodded to a basement café called Down the Steps.
The streets had once been residential but were now a curious mix of bazaars, shops, houses, tattoo parlours, travel agencies
for less familiar foreign parts, and banks of unknown provenance.
‘Live and partly live,’ Lola said. ‘Let’s just say we hang out down there.’
And she went back to cutting slices of chocolate cake. Beverley had wondered at the time if she should say something to Cynara
and decided there was little point. She would only lose what scraps of good opinion Lola had for her. She knew at the time
it was a betrayal of principle, that what renders the old ineffective is their desire for the good opinion of the young, but
she remained quiet.
Now here she was at an advanced age, barely able to walk and faced with Lola in evident need of rescue. Nor was there any
time for thought, or time to ask for help. No time to direct an ambulance to a street she knew by sight but not by name, no
will to ask the police: her past had put her outside the normal law-abiding
community. In this Lola was her kith and kin. No matter how dire the circumstances, the theory ran, never trust the police.
The kehua were in her ears, loud and imperative.
Run, Beverley, run.
Beverley ran. She pulled her clothes back on, found her purse and ran. Had she not done this a dozen times in her extreme
youth, in the Jesus days she hoped she had forgotten. Pulled her clothes back on, grabbed her purse and run, from whatever
danger threatened, sometimes less than she supposed, no doubt, sometimes more. Death, pain, humiliation of one kind of another.
Girls were so trusting now for all they were so easy.
She found running easier than she thought. It hurt, but it worked. The body did what you told it to. She had been too protective
of it, she could see. She got down to the crossroads and saw the yellow light of a taxi coming. She hailed it. It stopped.
She directed it to Lola’s school. The driver was local; she was lucky: he knew where the school was. He knew where the high
street she described was. She took him to the corner and paid him off and waited until he disappeared. It was precious minutes
wasted but she did not want to be traced. She was not sure why, but she remembered the lessons of the revolutionary days.
Leave no trail. Not that anyone else ever remembered. And look where it had led Marcus. To a drunken death stumbling down
a railway line. And where had her longer life led her? Standing outside the closed door of some low-life slum café with voices
in her head, having to go in to face whatever her family, fate and the new society thrust at her? Was she not she too old
for this kind of thing? Was there no one left capable of taking over?
She went down the three concrete steps which led to the front door. Light seeped from cracks beneath it and around it. She
could hear the same nerve-grating music that had come through on Lola’s
mobile. Why were the young so desperate that only unmelodic music appealed? She stopped to recover. She had managed to hop
out of the cab onto one leg okay, but when she was going down the steps she could not work out which of her legs was the burden-carrying
one, made a mistake and paid for it in pain. She hoped she was doing it no permanent damage but oddly enough thought she probably
was not.
The door was made of reinforced glass and looked as if it belonged to a warehouse, not a café. It appeared locked but when
she pushed it opened. There was a rushing smell of alcohol, piss and smoke mixed, which took her aback. And then a mob of
young people barged her aside to get up the steps and away. They seemed anxious to be off. They were very noisy, and gave
little yelps of panic and confusion, which seemed to add up to ‘Let’s get out of here.’ There was a flurry of young skinny
limbs, bright colours, strange clothes, thigh-high boots, feather boas, pale faces, mad eyes and platinum hair tortured into
strange peaked heights. When they had gone Beverley went on into what seemed as much a barn as a café or a bar. Such light
as there was came from candles still fluttering on the tables. There seemed no one in charge – there is usually someone who
safely extinguishes flames when everyone else has gone – but no. There was a lot of litter and broken glass and spilled drink
on the ground; and the odd used condom and broken syringe. Whatever had happened had frightened even a clientèle accustomed
to this kind of thing.
There were two people in the room. One was Lola, lying slumped over a table, semi-naked; a little form which seemed to have
so little substance she could have been painted and not in real life at all. Too thin, too pale arms; little pathetic breasts.
It was odd, Beverley thought, to think how much destructive energy could emanate from
so small an entity. She was not dead, as Beverley had at first feared; she was making little snoring moans.
Beverley sat Lola up – she was half conscious – opened her mouth and thrust her fingers down her throat. Lola retched and
vomited over Beverley. Not enough, but it would help. The other person in the room was unconscious, lying on the floor next
to where Lola sat. He too was making little moaning sounds, little plaintive demands on the world. He was in his mid-forties,
solid, saturnine, prosperous and thuggishly good-looking. His nails were well manicured, his shirt and suit expensive, his
shoes handmade, and he was naked between socks and shirt. Beverley thought the socks were probably cashmere. His parts were
large. Erect and in action they would have been impressive, but now lay limply. They seemed almost too large for Lola, and
though she could not see Lola as an innocent victim, Beverley felt a maternal jab of rage on her behalf. Misbegotten though
Lola might be, living evidence of Beverley’s failure to be a proper person, a proper mother, she was family.
The man lay in a welter of £20 notes, which had fallen from his hand as he lost consciousness. Beverley kicked him with her
sensible shoe, forgetting the pain it would cause her, and, feeling it, blamed him for inflicting it. She felt thoroughly
disengaged from what she was seeing and doing. She seemed to have no context for her thoughts and actions. There were urgent
voices in her head but she had no idea what they were saying. The mass of feather boas which had brushed by her face as the
crowd left seemed to have some sort of repetitive quality: she kept seeing them when they weren’t there. Her thoughts seemed
to be coming in sequence; first this, then that, quite orderly though without an underlay of emotion, as she realised her
thoughts normally were.
The man had clearly collapsed suddenly, and it was perhaps his collapse that had triggered the departure of the other guests.
More was going on than they had bargained for. Perhaps he was the drug supplier. He was dressed as one. Only dealers did not
usually take drugs themselves; they were too sensible. Perhaps the drugs supplied had been doctored, perhaps he had simply
taken too much. OD’d, like Lola. Perhaps the fumes of whatever was in the air were affecting her. The music changed; a flapping
sound mixed with the beat: the lyrics seemed to be directed at her.
Kill, Beverley kill.
This was what song lyrics were all about these days, kill, fuck, rape, steal, rejoice: the Devil’s song.