Flying High
I flopped into the saggy loose-covered seat and clipped on my belt. I was leaving. I’d said my goodbyes, had my banquets, drunk my toasts to mutual friendship and was now free to be a tourist with the rest of them. We soared into the sky, and the city, still grey in summer brightness with patches of dusty green where there were parks, receded.
I didn’t look back.
Martin would be waiting in Peking and after a lot of hanging about waiting for bags to appear, I spotted him beyond the barrier and waved. I was more glad to see him than I thought I would be. I felt a bit like a soldier coming home after an arduous campaign. I had survived. I was comforted by his familiar brown tweed jacket and looked forward to his tobacco smell.
Emerging from behind him was a man that looked exactly like Liang. He had much shorter hair and was wearing a rather baggy Western-style suit. It was Liang – I recognized the tie I had bought him at the Friendship Store. Why was he here? How could he have known I would be on this plane? I was too noticeable to hide myself. I would have to brazen it out.
‘Hello,’ I said, smiling.
‘Hello, darling,’ Martin said, leaning forward to peck my cheek. ‘It’s lovely to see you.’
I looked away from him to see what had happened to Liang. He was standing there next to Martin, the same grin on his face as when we had first met so many months before.
‘How are you, Miss Alison? It’s a pleasure to see you.’
He was like a stranger.
‘Mr Liang, my painting teacher. Mr Roberts, a friend from England.’
They greeted each other formally, Martin towering like a bear a foot over Liang and leaning slightly to reach his outstretched hand. I noticed Liang’s dirty fingernails. Then Liang’s grin changed focus and became a distant stare, his eyes seeking someone in the crowd.
‘Excuse me, I’m meeting my wife. We’re being briefed for our trip to the States.’
And Liang wandered off into the throng. A few minutes later he emerged carrying suitcases, baskets, nylon holdalls and string bags, followed by the doll in the pink silk jacket. She was exquisite: three inches shorter than Liang, carrying the beaming child.
He did not bring her over to be introduced, but as they walked away he looked smugly over his shoulder at me, as if he was carrying away the spoils of the campaign.
THE SPIRIT OF THE TIMES
Jude Jones
Jude Jones is a native of Hampshire and studied singing at the Guildhall School of Music. An assortment of careers followed, including opera, music-theatre, archaeology, stage-management, acting, busking, script-writing and an unsuccessful attempt at shop assisting. In the eighties, she was artistic director, actress and writer for a small-scale touring theatre company based in the East Midlands. Now equipped with two small sons, she is back in Hampshire where she started out and is completing her third unpublished novel.
THE SPIRIT OF THE TIMES
My mum never knows when I skive now since I met the old girl up at Hob’s Lane. Makes me laugh the things I get to do these days and mostly everyone leaves me be which is dead ace. I’d say bugger them all but I ain’t allowed to. The old girl stop me from swearing, see? Though I does when she ain’t around.
You have to go past the old mill to get to Hob’s Lane. It ain’t a proper road though. It’s a kind of track with this stream by it and you get the cars go along it every now and then but only if they’re coming up to the cottages there. It’s a ‘No Through Road’ and it don’t even go where it was supposed to go now they built the big motorway past it. No Through is right. There’s this high fence at the end and then you turns and has to go back so the folks what walk their dogs there goes mainly round by the woods now and leave the Hob to me.
The old girl told me her name once but it was funny. I mean it weren’t the kind of old-fashioned name your mum might have or your gran even. So I lets it go. I calls her Missis and she calls me Nipper and that’s OK. We don’t like fuss, me and her.
We does chatting mostly. She knows how to gab, she does. Not that she’s particular lonesome for all she lives in the water. She got her mates same as me. I know most of them. There’s Foreman, he’s a slippery old sod. Pretends he’s a fish. And Longman, he’s the big oak. Then there’s Ringman and I tell you about him in a bit. The old girl says he’s shy. I ain’t seen Littleman yet. Littleman’s whatsit – invisible.
My mum used to bawl me out when I went up the Hob but she’s quieter now because we done the change.
When I first seen the Missis I thought it was some bored old wrinkly what topped herself in the stream. I went close to look because I ain’t never seen no corpse. Then she sits up, like she was finishing off a sunbathe and I wet me knickers. ’Course she ain’t real old. Not underneath. Not like my mum.
‘What them chaps doing over there?’
‘They’re building the new motorway, Missis.’
‘A road? They’re building a bloody road near my stream?’
‘Yeah. Why you lying in the water?’
‘A bloody road! If that don’t beat all!’
‘I thought you was dead.’
‘Well, I ain’t. A bleeding road! You know how noisy them things are?’
‘Yeah. You’ll get rheumatics, sitting in there. My gran has rheumatics every time she goes out in the rain.’
‘Your gran’s a wanker, Nipper, and no mistake. Why’d they build here? Why can’t they go and mess up some other place?’
‘My mum says it’ll make getting over to Langley real quick.’
‘Your mum’s a wanker. Why’d she want to go to Langley to start off with? Bloody awful town.’
‘Everyone’s a wanker to you, Missis. I reckons as you’re a wanker yourself.’
‘You hold your tongue, smart arse. And don’t swear. ’S’not becoming in a young girl.’
‘You swear. You’re swearing like buggery.’
‘I’m allowed. You’re not. You hear me?’
‘Why?’
‘’Cause I says so.’
‘I’m fourteen. I’m big enough to swear now. And smoke. My mum don’t mind.’
‘Your mum ain’t brought you up right. What’s your dad say?’
‘’E don’t say bloody nothing, do he? I ain’t got no dad.’
‘Don’t bleeding swear, girl. I told you once and I won’t tell you again.’
‘What’ll you do if I does?’
‘This.’
‘… Oh! … Christ almighty, Missis, how’d you do that?’
‘With practice, Nipper. I had lots of practice.’
‘Could you show me how to do it?’
‘Might. Depends.’
I got ordinary mates too, like I said. Not as many as when I was a kid but that’s sort of how things go, ain’t it? I got this bloke, Ian. He’s leaving school soon but he ain’t training for anything except thieving. No jobs round here, see?
I let him do it to me once when we was out down the Rec. I makes him get a thing, you know, a condom thing, because of the HIVs and he didn’t know how to put it on. So I done it for him.
It was quite nice but it hurt a bit.
My best mate is Marie. I took her down Hob’s a couple of times but the old girl didn’t show up. Marie said I was a nutter and I got cross. Then the silly bitch told her mum about what I said about the old girl. Marie didn’t say what her mum said back. I was real narked so I stole her trainers and slashed them with my Stanley. She keep her mouth shut now.
I didn’t tell Ian about the Hob. Ian thinks he’s tough. He’d think I was soft and I ain’t. I told Dixey though. Dix is my mum’s mate when they ain’t slagging each other off. She lives two doors down with her brats. Dix is all right. She just nods and says, ‘What, the old cow’s still up Hob’s Lane?’ and carries on frying chips. She don’t know nothing about Foreman and Longman though, so I scored there.
My mum give me some grief. Shit, she was a pain. Always going on about what time I come home at night just because some silly little prat has got herself done in over on the Park estate. She wanted me to be a nurse! A nurse, I ask you! And tight. God, tight as a duck’s arse. Mind you, I don’t have to bother with that lot nowadays. The old girl saw to it. She’s got some sense, I’ll give her that.
Mind you, the Missis come over mean when I tell her I seen Foreman down in the square drinking with the alkies. She tells me to hold my tongue and gives me a shiv when I cheeks her. I don’t mind though. I’m going to learn how to do it back. Stands to reason, don’t it? Like we was saying in Community Studies last term, it’s everybody for theirselves, ain’t it? Because there ain’t nothing else to do. Nobody else cares about you but you. That’s what the old boss, that Thatcher woman said and I agrees. The Missis calls it survival of the fittest which is what she said she’d done. Yeah, well, I’m pretty fit. And I don’t take no crap.
Anyway here’s how I first went up the Ridge.
The old girl says one day she’s off on her travels, yeah? Could have knocked me over – I was gobsmacked. I never seen her walk about much, see? Most of the time she sits around in her stream like it was a chair in front of the telly. Every now and again she’ll come and squat down besides me on the bank and wave at the cars when they goes past. But I never seen her walk about before. So I says, ‘Where you going then?’
‘Why? You want to come along, Nipper?’ she says.
I caught the old bus and got off at Yalderton. Stupid bloody place – not even a shop. Mainly farmhouses and snotty kids riding horses. I walked up the big hill like she said and threshed around in the wood at the top for a bit. Full of sodding stingers it was. And wet and muddy in spite of it being late June and dry everywhere else.
She was halfway down the other side under this great yew tree sitting in a kind of pond thing like it was her own personal swimming pool. I suppose there must’ve been a spring coming out up above somewhere. Mind you, I wasn’t going to mess my tights up finding out. Too many spiky trees around. Too many bloody bushes. I was cut to pieces, you can believe it. When I comes down to her I sees the old tree she’s underneath is all hung up with bits of rag and scraps of cloth like it’s some kind of mad washing line. Dead weird it looked.
She was making a kind of singing, droning noise too when I comes down. It had words to it. They goes:
‘Dance, Ringman, dance,
Dance, my good men, every one,
For Ringman, he can dance alone,
Ringman, he can dance alone.’
Out of her barrel, I thinks. Always was loopy but gone and ripped her hairnet now.
‘You been doing your washing, Missis?’
‘What? Quiet, kiddo, or I’ll smash you good.’
‘You finished singing yet?’
‘Yeah, I finished now.’
‘What you doing up here?’
‘Visiting.’
‘Who you visiting? I don’t see no one.’
‘See that stone there?’
‘What, the big one?’
‘That’s Ringman.’
‘That’s Ringman? Where is he then?’
‘Told you before, girl. He’s shy.’
‘He won’t come out like Longman does, you mean?’
‘Might do.’
‘Them blokes, Longman and Foreman. They ghosts?’
‘Ghosts? Nah, Nipper. They’re real. Same as you and me. They ain’t dead, you know.’
‘What’s Ringman doing in that stone?’
‘Waiting.’
‘What’s he waiting for?’
‘Tonight.’
‘What’s happening tonight?’
‘Depends.’
‘Oh, come off it, Missis. Tell us. I ain’t come all this way in that stupid bus just to fuck about.’
‘You watch your language, girl. Or …’
‘Or what, then?’
‘Or Ringman might decide he don’t like you, after all.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘He’s good looking, Ringman is. A sight better looking’n that wanker Ian you mess with.’
‘So what?’
‘If you was to play your cards right Ringman might make you his girl.’
‘What if I don’t want to be his girl?’
‘I reckon you will. Oh yes, Nipper, there ain’t much doubt about that.’
‘What’s he like?’
‘Oh, he’s nice, Ringman is. And he’s good. Very, very good.’
My mum made one hell of a stink when I didn’t come back that night. There were pigs out all over the place looking for me. God, the fuss they made. Where was I? Who did I talk to. Did I get raped?
Raped! Took most of my cool, but I kept a straight face. I mean, who’d tell the fuzz about the old girl and the bloke? Bloody fascists, the lot of them. And my mum, she raved so much I reckoned it was funny-farm time for her. Tried to ground me, she did. Locks me up in my room. But I got to go to the bathroom now and then, ain’t I? And when I goes, it ain’t my fault if the window’s just above the extension roof. And it sure ain’t my fault if I just tests it to see if I can climb down. Which I done nice and quick. Then I borrows old Dixey’s bike and cycled the six mile up to Yalderton Ridge for another visit with the bloke.
It was all them social bloody workers what made me do it. If she’d have left them out I might have let her be. But she always had to be in charge, did my mum. I suppose I didn’t mind when I was a kid but now I tells her I’m a grown woman she just laughs at me. And I won’t have that.
I thought maybe the old girl could do something about it. And I thought right. Mind you, the old girl give me one hell of a time joshing me but I sticks to my guns.
‘How’d you like it,’ I says, ‘if you had some prying old cow asking you questions night and day about everything you does and getting a pack of half-arsed women coming around too? Bloody nosy bl—idiots. Would I like to change school? Am I happy? Happy? ’Course I’m ruddy happy long as they leave me alone.’
The old girl had a little brood and she says she’ll fix it for me. Which she done.
I got to roar each time I think about it. She got made up as one of them social workers, see? She come visiting my mum. They shuts theirselves in the kitchen and I hears Mum making her a brew and later they comes out and the old girl goes off. Didn’t even look at me, she didn’t, but she grab my hand niftyish and squeezes it and I knows she’s pulled a stunt.
Mum went all pale after that like she’d had the spunk taken out of her and she stop fussing and telling me off and trying to keep me home. It was as easy as peasy. It was wicked. Excellent.
Dixey come round next day. ‘What’s the matter with Lynda?’ she asks me. ‘Why’s she gone so quiet?’
‘Dunno. Got a cold, probably,’ I says.
Dix give me a nasty look and I gives her one back. And that worked too. She goes off like a little white mouse and don’t even give me no grief for cheeking her while she’s going.
It was more or less the same the rest of term. What’s more I got bloody good at cycling.
In August Mum says Uncle Mick’s gived her some dosh and she wants to go to Majorca with Dix and her brats. I says that’s well OK by me just as long as I don’t have to go. And that was OK with them. So I nicked Dix’s tent and went up to the Ridge. I was there all August with the bloke and he weren’t shy at all.
In September he goes back to sleep so I comes down again and gets back in harness. I don’t mind school too much, see? They learnt to treat me right now. In fact, I got school taped.
‘What you done to all them creeps, Missis?’
‘What creeps?’
‘All them folks at school and my Mum and Dixey. All them people.’
‘I ain’t done nothing to them.’
‘You must’ve. They don’t mind what I do. They don’t even mind me thieving and smashing things.’
‘I ain’t done nothing to them. I done something to you.’
‘What you done, then?’
‘That’d be telling, Nipper. You just be grateful I done it.’
‘It ain’t wrong, is it, what you done?’
‘You slimy little squirt! I never heard such hypocrisy in all my born. You really take the cake, you do! You beat the rest of them hands down.’
‘What you mean? What rest of them?’
‘You think you’re the only little tart I’ve ever talked to?’
‘Yeah, I did … You ever talked to Dixey Foster?’
‘Might have. Yeah, I remember. Snotty so and so she was. She weren’t no good.’
‘No good for what?’
‘No good for nothing.’
‘What about me, then? I’m good, am I?’
‘Ringman says you are.’
‘How long’s Ringman going to kip for?’
‘You missing it? I could get you some more, you know.’
‘He woken up then?’
‘Not Ringman. Someone else.’
‘Who?’
‘Longman’s good at it. He’s even better than Ringman.’
‘I don’t fancy Longman though.’
‘Oh, you will, love, you will.’
*
In October I missed my third period and I got dead worried. I went to see the old girl and she thought it was a right joke, she did. I goes on about an abortion but she really let rip. I’d got to have the kid according to her. Abortions wasn’t right. I told her it was all right for her to say that. She wasn’t in the club.
She took me to see Longman. He was down by the copse over near the motorway works. He wanted to touch me but I told him to bugger off. He weren’t nothing like as smashing as Ringman. I wasn’t having him but the old girl said he knew how to fix it so it wouldn’t show until it was time to get the bloody thing out and if I did it with him she might look after the brat herself when it come. So I let him and after that I didn’t mind what he looked like just so’s he didn’t stop.
The old girl was a soft touch then so I got her to show me how to do the shiv.
I practised on everybody. My mum, Dix, the brats at school, creeps in the street. I got the Head. I even got Ian’s dudes one time when they was feeling the mean Fridays and was all tanked up. I got them real good and nowadays they don’t call me those names no more.
When it was Christmas I asked my mum for everything I could think of. Make-up, clothes, Nike trainers, a Walkman, a music centre with a CD player, you name it I wanted it and she come up sweet. Don’t know where she found the juice to pay for all them things because you don’t get big money working at the Co-op but I wasn’t going to argue. Dixey give me lots too. Best Christmas I ever had and I made Mum let Longman stay nights with me. Up to then we’d been doing it outside but I never did enjoy getting my arse frozen off, though he didn’t seem to mind the frigging frost. She didn’t say much about Longman being there, except on Christmas Day when she bawled a bit when we stayed in bed. But then, she was getting proper grey round the gills. I reckoned she weren’t long for this world, see?
I stopped going down the Hob when the weather turned nasty. I ain’t good in the rain and after Christmas Longman just stayed in with us, fiddling with my CD and screwing me and that was like all I wanted. Besides the old girl had shown me how to do the shiv so sod her, I thought.
Past the New Year though, that bugger Longman ups and leaves. One minute he was listening to some old Motown crap of Mum’s on the music centre – the next he’s halfway down the garden path. I went after him yelling but he just gets over the fence into the field next door and disappears. I swears fit to bust. Who cares about the odd swear? The old girl ain’t there.
Sneaky bastard, that Longman. After all I done for him!
I waits for him to come back that night but he didn’t and I got mad. So I went round town doing the shiv to any creep what asked for it. Then I met some geyser coming out a pub and I let him do it to me round the back. He weren’t much cop but he give me a tenner and that paid for a few drinks.
Up at the Ridge there weren’t no sign of Ringman neither and I laddered my best tights climbing about round them bastard bushes looking for him.
‘There ain’t nothing for it,’ I says to myself, ‘I’ll have to go and see the old girl.’
But you wouldn’t credit it, when I goes up Hob’s she taken a bloody powder too.
I got right moody that January, see?
‘Missis! Where you been?’
‘Around, girl. Where you been?’
‘Looking for you.’
‘You’re a bare-faced liar, Nipper. I hope you passed a merry Christmas.’
‘Yeah, it was great. Look, where the hell’s Longman?’
‘He had to go.’
‘Where? When’s he coming back?’
‘Stone me, I never seen a girl so desperate for sex as you, love. Proper little nymphomaniac, you is.’
‘Oh shut it, Missis. Just tell me where Longman’s hiding out.’
‘Don’t you tell me to shut it, Nipper. You try and remember I don’t take no cheek.’
‘I ain’t frightened of you, Missis. I knows what I knows. I can hurt you too now.’
‘Oh no, dear. No, no, no. You can’t pull no tricks on me. I ain’t made quite the same as other folks and you never knows what I might do next if you was to try it, hey? It don’t make sense to make me mad, do it?’
‘Nah, well, all right. Just as long as you tell me where Longman is.’
‘Ah yes, Longman. Well, Nipper, Longman’s having his kip.’
‘Like Ringman?’
‘Yeah, just like Ringman. But don’t you fret. They’ll wake up in time.’
‘In time for what?’
‘For the baby, sweetheart. For the birth. And afterwards.’
‘But what about … ?’
‘I can arrange that too, girl. I arranged the rest, didn’t I? Look at you! No unsightly lump. No morning sickness. No backaches. No funny cravings. A fifteen-year-old sylph, you is. And so pretty. It’d make Foreman’s heart melt to look at you.’
‘Foreman! I ain’t going with Foreman!’
‘Foreman’s better even than Longman.’
‘Oh, come on, Missis. Foreman’s a nasty old sod. I seen him down the square, evenings. He’s dirty and he smells. The lads throw their cans at him when he’s pissed. I seen him throw up all over the bus shelter. He’s well out of order.’
‘Never judge by the outside, Nipper. If I’d have judged by your outside you would never have got where you is now.’
‘What d’you mean?’