The First Person And Other Stories Part 2

It said: The pound is our rightful heritage. We deserve our heritage. Women shouldn't work if they're going to have babies. Women shouldn't work at all. It's not the natural order of things. And as for gay weddings. Don't make me laugh.

Then it laughed, blondly, beautifully, as if only for me. Its big blue eyes were open and looking straight up at me as if I were the most delightful thing it had ever seen.

I was enchanted. I laughed back.

From nowhere a black cloud crossed the sun over its face, it screwed up its eyes and kicked its legs, waved its one free arm around outside the blanket, its hand clenched in a tiny fist, and began to bawl and wail.

It's hungry, I thought and my hand went down to my shirt and before I knew what I was doing I was unb.u.t.toning, getting myself out, and planning how to ensure the child's later enrolment in one of the area's better secondary schools.

I turned the car around and headed for home. I had decided to keep the beautiful child. I would feed it. I would love it. The neighbours would be amazed that I had hidden a pregnancy from them so well, and everyone would agree that the child was the most beautiful child ever to grace our street. My father would dandle the child on his knee. About time too, he'd say. I thought you were never going to make me a grandfather. Now I can die happy.

The beautiful child's melodious voice, in its pure RP p.r.o.nunciation, the p.r.o.nunciation of a child who has already been to an excellent public school and learned how exactly to speak, broke in on my dream.

Why do women wear white on their wedding day? it asked from the back of the car.

What do you mean? I said.

Why do women wear white on their wedding day? it said again.

Because white signifies purity, I said. Because it signifies To match the stove and the fridge when they get home, the child interrupted. An Englishman, an Irishman, a Chineseman and a Jew are all in an aeroplane flying over the Atlantic.

What? I said.

What's the difference between a p.u.s.s.y and a c.u.n.t? the child said in its innocent pealing voice.

Language! please! I said.

I bought my mother-in-law a chair, but she refused to plug it in, the child said. I wouldn't say my mother-in-law is fat, but we had to stop buying her Malcolm X t-shirts because helicopters kept trying to land on her.

I hadn't heard a fat mother-in-law joke for more than twenty years. I laughed. I couldn't not.

Why did they send premenstrual women into the desert to fight the Iraqis? Because they can retain water for four days. What do you call an Iraqi with a paper bag over his head?

Right, I said. That's it. That's as far as I go.

I braked the car and stopped dead on the inside lane. Cars squealed and roared past us with their drivers leaning on their horns. I switched on the hazard lights. The child sighed.

You're so politically correct, it said behind me charmingly. And you're a terrible driver. How do you make a woman blind? Put a windscreen in front of her.

Ha ha, I said. That's an old one.

I took the B roads and drove to the middle of a dense wood. I opened the back door of the car and bundled the beautiful blond child out. I locked the car. I carried the child for half a mile or so until I found a sheltered spot, where I left it in the tartan blanket under the trees.

I've been here before, you know, the child told me. S'not my first time.

Goodbye, I said. I hope wild animals find you and raise you well.

I drove home.

But all that night I couldn't stop thinking about the helpless child in the woods, in the cold, with nothing to eat and n.o.body knowing it was there. I got up at 4 a.m. and wandered round in my bedroom. Sick with worry, I drove back out to the wood road, stopped the car in exactly the same place and walked the half-mile back into the trees.

There was the child, still there, still wrapped in the tartan travel rug.

You took your time, it said. I'm fine, thanks for asking. I knew you'd be back. You can't resist me.

I put it in the back seat of the car again.

Here we go again. Where to now? the child said.

Guess, I said.

Can we go somewhere with broadband or wifi so I can look up some p.o.r.n? the beautiful child said beautifully.

I drove to the next city and pulled into the first supermarket car park I pa.s.sed. It was 6.45a.m. and it was open.

Ooh, the child said. My first 24-hour Tesco's. I've had an Asda and a Sainsbury's and a Waitrose but I've not been to a Tesco's before.

I pulled the brim of my hat down over my eyes to evade being identifiable on the CCTV and carried the tartan bundle in through the exit when two other people were leaving. The supermarket was very quiet but there was a reasonable number of people shopping. I found a trolley, half-full of good things, French b.u.t.ter, Italian olive oil, a folded new copy of the Guardian Guardian, left standing in the biscuits aisle, and emptied the child into it out of the blanket, slipped its pretty little legs in through the gaps in the child-seat.

There you go, I said. Good luck. All the best. I hope you get what you need.

I know what you need all right, the child whispered after me, but quietly, in case anybody should hear. Psst, it hissed. What do you call a woman with two brain cells? Pregnant! Why were shopping trolleys invented? To teach women to walk on their hind legs!

Then he laughed his charming peal of a pure childish laugh and I slipped away out of the aisle and out of the doors, past the shopgirls cutting open the plastic binding on the morning's new tabloids and arranging them on the newspaper shelves, and out of the supermarket, back to my car, and out of the car park, while all over England the bells rang out in the morning churches and the British birdsong welcomed the new day, G.o.d in his heaven, and all being right with the world.

Present

There were only three people in The Inn: a man at the bar, the barmaid and me. The man was chatting up the barmaid. The barmaid was polishing gla.s.ses. I was waiting for a pub supper I'd ordered half an hour ago. I was allowing myself one double whisky. It was a present to myself.

Have you seen them, covered in all the frost? the man was saying to the barmaid. Don't they look just like magic roofs, don't they look like winter always looked when you were a little child?

The barmaid ignored him. She held the gla.s.s up to the light to see if it was clean. She polished it some more. She held it up again.

The man gestured towards the pub's front window.

Go out and look at it. Just have a look at it, look at it on the roofs, the man said. Don't they look exactly like what winter was like when you were small? Like a white came over everything by magic, like a giant magician waved his hand and a white frost came down over everything.

You don't half talk a load of w.a.n.k, the woman behind the bar said.

Her saying this made me laugh so suddenly that I choked on the drink I was taking. They both looked round. I coughed, turned away slightly towards the fire and went on looking at my paper like I was reading it.

I heard them shift their attention back towards each other.

It's Paula, isn't it? he said.

She said nothing.

It's definitely Paula, he said. I remember. I asked you before. Remember? I was here, I was in this very pub about six weeks ago. Remember?

She held another gla.s.s up and looked at it.

Well, I remember you, he said.

She put it down and picked up another. She held it up between her and the light.

So if you don't like Christmas and so on, Paula, he said. If you don't think it's a magic time from our childhoods and so on. Well, why'd you bother to decorate the pub, then? Why'd you bother to spray the snowy stuff on the door and the windows? Why'd you make the place look like snow off Christmas cards? It's only November. It's not even December.

It's not my pub, the woman said. I don't get to choose when Christmas begins and ends.

The whisky I'd choked on had gone down the wrong way and had formed a burning gutter along the inside of my windpipe. I ignored it. I read my paper. It was about how the Gulf Stream was being eroded at an almighty rate. Soon it would be as cold as Canada here in the winter. Soon the snow would be six feet high every winter and winters would last from October till April.

Magic roofs, the woman said. Christ. See the house with the Alfa Romeo outside it?

The man went to the door and opened it.

I can't see an Alfa Romeo from here, he said.

The third along car from the left, she said without raising her voice.

I saw some cars, but I'll take your word for it that one's an Alfa, he said coming back in.

They call him the German in the village, she said. His name's German-sounding. He never comes in here. He hit black ice round the Ranger Bend with his two sons in the car two years ago and the son that was in the front seat died. The car hasn't moved from outside that house since it came back from the garage with a new side on it. He walks to work, he walks out his gate and past it every day. We all go past it every day. It's filthy. It needs a good clean, just from sitting there in the weather. He had a German-sounding name and all, the son, I mean. He was eleven or twelve. He never came in here before it, the father I mean, the German, and he never comes in now. And the house next to his. That's where the girl lives who's in debt because of the pyramid.

Egypt? the man said.

Scheme, the woman said. Not to tell tales or nothing but I was at Asda and I heard her telling someone on her mobile that she had a dream.

The man leaned on the bar.

You're a dream, Paula, he said.

This is her dream, the woman said. Would you believe it. An angora jumper she'd bought on her credit card, listen to this, upped and left home because it was unhappy living with her. Then the jumper phoned her from the airport but because it couldn't speak, because jumpers can't, can they, she didn't know what it was trying to say.

An angry jumper? the man said.

No, an angora jumper, she said. It's a kind of wool, a warm expensive kind. And the house next to that. His daughter's a druggie. Whenever she comes back to the village he won't let her in the front door. First she throws stones at the living room window. Then the old bloke calls the police. The house next to that. Divorced. He had an affair. She got custody. He's a nice guy. He works in the city. She's a teacher. She's got a Cinquecento.

She held up a gla.s.s, examined it against the light.

The house next to them, she said.

Uh huh? he said.

That's my house, she said.

You're not married, are you, Paula? the man said.

You are, the woman said. I can tell a mile off.

I'm not married, the man said. I'm as single as the day is long.

This time of year you'll be less single, then, she said.

You what? he said.

The days being shorter and all, the woman said.

What you laughing at? the man said. What you looking at?

He was talking to me. I pretended I hadn't heard or understood.

What's she think she's looking at? the man said.

Won't be long, the woman called over to me. Sorry to keep you waiting.

No worries, I said. It's fine.

She went through the door at the back. Have you not thawed out the scampi? she was shouting as she went.

The man stared at me. There was quite a lot of hostility in his stare. I could feel it without me even looking back properly. When the woman came through from the kitchen and put down in front of me, like a firm promise that I would definitely be fed, condiments, and a knife and fork both neatly wrapped in a napkin, he shouted over at me from his place at the bar.

You agree with me. Don't you? agree with me. Don't you? You You think it looks just like magic, he said. Like a magician off a TV programme when we were kids just, you know, waved his hand in the sky over all our home towns and down came the whiteness. think it looks just like magic, he said. Like a magician off a TV programme when we were kids just, you know, waved his hand in the sky over all our home towns and down came the whiteness.

He started to come over; he looked like he might actually punch me if I said I disagreed. But when he reached the table I could see he was less drunk than he seemed. It was almost as if he was pretending to be more drunk than he was. He sat down on the stool across the table from me. He wasn't much older than me. His face was crumpled, like a piece of wrapping that someone has tried to squeeze in their fist into as small a ball as possible.

I looked down at my knife and fork wrapped in the napkin. There were little cartoon sprigs of holly all over the napkin.

The man picked the HP sauce bottle up out of the arrangement of salt and pepper and mustard and vinegar sachets and sauce bottles in front of me.

You know what the H and the P stand for on a bottle of HP? he said.

Houses of Parliament, I said.

His face fell. He looked truly disappointed that I knew. I pointed to the picture on the bottle's label. I shrugged.

You're not from round here, he said. Didn't think so, he said. Something about your shape of face. Don't get me wrong, he said. It's a nice shape of face. I'm from fifty miles from here, he said. Originally, I mean. What you drinking, then? he said.