Sin City (7 page)

I ease up from my chair, go and sprawl on her divan. I feel utterly flaked out, as if I've just lived through that funeral day again, carrying a corpse made of cornflowers and sweet williams. I'm also feeling queasy, the smell of cooking oil seeping through my stomach like greasy fish and chips through newspaper.

“Hey, mind that bedspread, Carole. I only washed it just last week. And look, please don't take this wrong, love, but could you try and phone before you come? I'm really pushed this evening. Once I've had my supper, I've got to have a bath and wash my hair and …”

“Go ahead. Wash it. Wash the fucking bedspread, if you like. I'm not stopping you.”

I'm really hurt. Jan's never turfed me out before just because she needed to tart up. In fact, we always shared the bathroom, dried each other's hair, played our favourite records while we messed about with eye gloss. And why the paranoia about that cheap and tatty bedspread? I suppose she washed it in his honour, plans to lie there with him later, when I've gone. I can see the cosy pair of them, curled up in each other's arms; no room or thought for me. He might own a place himself, invite Jan to live with him, even propose. Jan's the type to marry early, settle down with some boring decent guy, raise her 2.5 children. I'd lose her then, completely. Married friends are different, don't need you any more; share things with their husbands, not with you.

I watch her crack an egg, neat again, the white a perfect circle. My fried eggs tend to run or break, or get little black bits on them. God! I envy her. Even at school, she was form captain, flower monitor, always wore her hat, had loads of eager girlfriends. Maybe it's not a guy at all, but a girl, another room-mate, one who pays the rent this time, shares all the expenses, doesn't let the side down by nicking things, landing up in loony bins. Jan's probably learnt her lesson, found a different sort of friend; some high-powered career girl who needs impressing with clean hair and party food. Hell! She must be really greedy if she plans to polish off that cheesecake. I'm so empty, I can hardly bear to look at it.

I punch Jan's pillow, lean back on it against the wall. All my past is breaking up – first my father and now Jan. I've known her all my life, for heaven's sake. She's part of my whole childhood. Why should I lose her to some odd acquaintance?

“Hey, Jan …”

“Where's the pepper? Damn! I had it here a moment ago.”

“Shall
we
go away – just you and me? In the spring, maybe. Somewhere nice.”

“We can't afford it.”

“If I win, we can.”

“Win?”

“In Las Vegas. They give us these free gambling chips, stacks of them. It's part of the whole deal.”

“Okay, you can take me to Paris and we'll have slap-up meals each day. No more size-five eggs. But on the ferry, please. You know how I hate flying. God! I wouldn't want that journey. Eleven hours, isn't it?”

“Yeah. More, I think.” I close my eyes a moment to block out the orange walls (dying marigolds). “It's odd, you know, that's the one thing Norah's mad about – flying – the only bit she ever mentions, actually. She keeps on asking questions. How high would we fly? Are there windows? Would we see mountains from the sky? She's started watching planes now – and drawing them in Art.”

Jan cuts a piece of bread in half, adds it to the pan, jumps back as it splutters. “I'd like the gambling. You know, just to try it – see a real casino, have a giggle.”

I grin. That's more like the old Jan. Maybe the cheesecake's only homework, part of some new-fangled flower arrangement. Lemon cream poinsettias. “A guy won half a million dollars just last week. I read it in the
Mail
– an ordinary sort of bloke, a house-painter, I think he was, no one special. He lived in Arizona and went to Las Vegas just for one weekend. He'd never gambled in his life before, yet he won the jackpot the Friday he arrived.”

Jan seems quite impressed, even turns round from the pan. I don't let on he lost it all again – and more – was stony broke by Sunday. Frightening really, sums as big as that. Losing them
or
winning, they're still enough to change you totally – not just your life, your self. “Tell you what,” I say. “I'll bet half my chips for you. Whatever I win on yours, I'll bring home and you keep.”

“That's generous, love, but since they're refusing to let you go …”

“I'm going.”

“Oh, Carole, don't be silly. How can you go, when Sister's put her foot down? And there'll be another row if you don't get back there now. It's almost nine, d' you realise?”

“Okay, okay, I'm off. But you just wait and see. I intend to get those chips down on the table, make my fortune – and yours – buy us a Mayfair mansion with a florist shop attached. Just keep your fingers crossed.”

“I can't eat with them crossed.”

I cross my own, collect my bag and jacket, rattle down the stairs, out into the dark. It's raining still, and cold. I unwrap Norah's damp pink mushroom package, bite into the pastry. It's cold as well, wet-cold. No cream rosettes, no fancy ruffs, but at least it fills the hole, was given as a love-offering.

“Thanks, Norah. You're a pal.” I'm speaking to her flan, to a flabby chunk of mushroom. “We're going, you and me, whatever Sister says. We're winners, right? So nobody can stop us.”

We're flying. Carole said so. It doesn't feel like flying. I'm strapped into a seat. I can't see out at all. I'm in the middle of a middle row. Carole is on one side and a fat man on the other. Carole says we're late.

I was very disappointed in the airport. You couldn't see the planes. I had expected hundreds of them with great shining silver wings. But there were only crowds of people and shops and stairs and everybody pushing. There weren't even any windows in the airport. We walked miles along a corridor and still didn't see a plane.

Then we turned a corner and went down a step and through a door and a lady in a uniform said good morning and our seats were on the left, further down. That was the plane. We were on it already, and hadn't even seen it. It didn't have wings. It was more like the coach we take to Littlehampton, but much much bigger, with rows and rows of seats stretching back for ever. We kept on walking, past all these heads and heads, and then Carole said “This is us” and we climbed in past the fat man and it was really quite a squash.

We had to be strapped in. I said I'd rather not, but the lady in uniform did the strap up for me, so tight that it was hurting. In a coach, you can always see outside; always see the driver, even talk to him. Here, there isn't any driver, and the windows are quite tiny and very far away.

We sat there a long time, not moving, and they played nice music and then a man's voice boomed out of the ceiling. I couldn't understand the voice, but Carole said they were doing some repair. That made me really frightened, especially when two ladies in uniform stood in the aisles and started putting on masks, horrid things like gas masks in the War. She said we'd have masks as well. They'd drop down from above our seats and we'd have to pull them on, right across our nose and mouth, with the elastic strap pulled tight.

I hate things over my face. They choked me in a mask like that when I had all my top teeth out. When I woke up again, my face had gone a different shape and I couldn't speak or eat. No one ever told me you wore masks in aeroplanes. I was so afraid, I could hardly breathe at all, and I missed what they said next.

It was something about vests. The lady said to unfold our vest and slip it over our head. But my vest was on already, underneath my dress. I checked it to make sure. When I looked up again, the ladies both had jackets on, funny-looking yellow ones with tubes and whistles hanging from them, and strings to do them up.

“As you leave the aircraft, inflate your vest by pulling down sharply on …”

“Why do we have to leave?” I whispered. “We've only just got on.”

Carole didn't answer. She was watching the two ladies who were holding up their seat cushions, explaining how to take them off the seats. I tugged at mine, but Carole said, “Not now, you nut. Only if we crash into the sea.”

“Crash?”

“Yeah. We float on them like rafts.”

Another lady was coming down the aisle. I stopped her, clutched her arm. “Yes, I
will
get out,” I told her. “Right away.”

She said Ssh, she'd help me later, but later never came. There was only a load roar, a really deafening noise which went right through your whole body, and then you lost your body, so you thought that you were dead, and then Carole said “We're up” and that was flying.

I've always wanted to fly. I was clumsy as a child, and fat, the biggest girl in my infant school. I knew I'd be more beautiful with wings. We did a school play once; a Nativity, they called it. The prettiest girl was Mary and the cleverest boy was Joseph. I wanted to be an Angel, but they made me be a Tree. Angels fly.

I wish we could get up. We've been sitting here two hours, and we haven't had our dinner yet. Dinner's at twelve sharp in the hospital. Sometimes five past, but never later. It's nearly five past two now and there's not a sign of it. We didn't have any breakfast. Carole said not to because we'd have coffee and doughnuts at the airport. But we spent all the time queuing at a desk and after that we queued again, upstairs, and a woman touched my body, ran her hands all over it, up and down, so she could feel my stocking tops and vest straps. Even at the hospital, they never do that. The doctor examines you when you first come in, but only with his stethoscope. He doesn't use his hands. I think he's scared of germs.

We did have the champagne. A soldier brought it in a pail. It was cold and mostly bubbles. I was feeling cold already and would rather have had hot tea, but he said there wasn't any. We have tea in the hospital at six o'clock each morning, and three in the afternoon. And you can have it before bedtime instead of Ovaltine. Or any time at all down in the canteen, if you've got the money for it.

We didn't have to pay for the champagne. That was free. Once we get to Las Vegas, everything is free. Las Vegas means the meadows. I like that name. I've got a book on it, a guide book from the library. I've only reached page twelve. It became a town because it was the only place with water. The mules used to stop there to drink, and eat the grass. A mule is half a horse, Sister said. I hope we see the mules.

I'd like to ride a horse. It would feel a bit like flying, proper flying. That voice in the ceiling told us we were flying at six hundred miles an hour, but I think he got it wrong. We're hardly moving, just sitting like we do all day at Beechgrove. And everybody's smoking, just the same as there. Carole's on her second pack already. She's nervous, I can tell. She's listening to the radio. She brought her own, but they wouldn't let her use it. The plane one's hidden in the seat and you have to wear headphones so you can't hear other things. I said “Carole” once or twice, but she didn't seem to notice. Perhaps she didn't want to. The nurses are like that, pretending they are deaf.

The bubbles from the champagne keep exploding in my stomach. I need some food to settle them. I've read the menu five times over. The food is very special and has long names. You can choose between something something chicken and something in French.

I think I'll have the chicken. At least it's English and I know what chicken is. They've even got a picture of it on the cover of the menu, a whole roast chicken with a bowl of fruit beside it, so full it's spilling out – apples, cherries, grapes and some fruits I've never seen. The grapes are huge and black and seem to shine. I've only eaten grapes once and they were green and tiny. Someone's son had brought them in as a present for his mother, but she had passed away a week or more before, and he didn't even know. Nurse Clarke was going to eat them, but an older Irish nurse said it was unlucky to eat corpses' food, so she gave them to us patients. She was right about the bad luck. Two days after that, they told us we were moving.

We had turkey yesterday. Yesterday was Christmas. I couldn't enjoy it because I was so scared about this trip.

I can smell the dinner now. It's coming down the aisle. Two ladies with a shining silver trolley, handing out the trays. Imagine dinner when you're flying. It must be special if it takes so long to cook. No one else seems hungry. The man beside me is asleep.

“Beef or chicken, Madam?”

“Er … chicken.” No one calls me Madam. It didn't say beef on the menu. I'd have had it if I'd known. The chicken looks pale and rather ill, not golden-brown at all. I thought we'd get a whole one like the picture, or at least a large piece with a bone. There's just two tiny slices in a greyish gravy, two small white potatoes and a teaspoonful of peas. They couldn't fit more on because the plate's so small. It's not a plate, but the sort of plastic dish you put your soap in.

Carole's asked for beef. It doesn't look French, but more like the stew we have on Tuesdays, except there's less of it.

I touch her arm again. “We haven't got a first course.” I was looking forward to it. It was written on the menu, four long words I couldn't quite spell out. I've never had a first course. There's only meat and pudding in the hospital.

“Yes, we have, silly.” Carole points to another plastic dish. It's wrapped in that see-through stuff the doctor keeps his dressings in. There's lettuce at the bottom, just a tiny bit with one slice of tomato. I think I'll still be hungry.

“Where's the pudding?”

“There.”

“That's a cake.”

“No, it's not, it's pudding. Strudel Viennese.”

I don't know what she means. And I can't see any fruit, not even just an apple. Perhaps they got the picture wrong.