Yvonne touched the gold shoulder bag that lay on the passenger seat next to her; inside it was a bulging envelope full of Euros and she was longing to see her mother’s face when she gave her it. She wanted to show Mam the apartment on the beach complex, to parade through the white rooms with the marble floors and cream furniture, to demonstrate the fridge with the ice-making machine, to adjust the air conditioning to Mam’s taste, to show Mam into the guest room with the en-suite bathroom, to prove to her that Jack was not the only success story in the family. She might be forty-eight but Pedro, her current lover, had told her that she looked at least twenty years younger, and she had to admit that having a tan suited her, as did the Mia Farrow haircut. A man in the check-in queue at Malaga airport had accused her of pushing in and had called her Eurotrash. This was quite a compliment: she had always wanted to be European, ever since she’d heard Edith Piaf sing ‘La Vie en Rose’ and seen Audrey Hepburn sitting on the back of a Vespa in Roman Holiday. She passed the fields of radio masts of the listening station near Daventry, then, looking around at the drivers of the cars she was overtaking, she thought how pasty-faced and ill dressed they and their passengers looked under the sodium lights. The whole of the English population appeared to have let themselves go.
Yvonne remembered the precise moment in 1990 when she let herself go. She’d been upstairs recovering from the flu and had overheard Derek on the phone to one of his mates having a desultory conversation about a second-hand garden shed. She then distinctly heard Derek say, “Well, I’d better ring off now, I’ve gotta go up to the lump in the bed.”
The lump in the bed. His words de-sexed her and made her ashamed. When she was better, she lumped around the house in elasticated clothing that stretched to accommodate her spreading figure. She stopped colouring her hair and tied it back with an elastic band. Her eyebrows went un-plucked, she wore Derek’s socks and the hairs on her legs showed in the gap between her trousers and shoes. She joined the ranks of the other women who had let themselves go—they were everywhere, standing outside the junior-school gate, waiting at bus stops, sitting in outpatient departments.
Mrs Thatcher had saved her from herself. Yvonne had watched her heroine leave Downing Street crying in the back of that limo, a finished woman.
“She’ll let herself go, like me,” Yvonne had thought, but within a few months Maggie was back as beautifully groomed and defiant as ever. Yvonne had been inspired by Maggie’s crazed self-belief and the fact that she could earn £20,000 an hour for the Thatcher Foundation, a charity that apparently promoted capitalism as a force for good. Yvonne had sent a cheque for £10 to the Thatcher Foundation as a gesture of support. She had told this to Jack at a Christmas do at Mam’s house and Jack had laughed, “She won’t be grateful for your pathetic tenner; she’s as hard-bitten as a bar of peanut brittle.”
Yvonne couldn’t stand that Edward Clare, and if she’d been tortured by having bamboo shoved under her fingernails she still couldn’t have told you what he stood for. He talked a lot about the middle way, but middle meant nothing whoever paid big money for a ringside seat to watch a middleweight boxer?
She had never regretted leaving England; she had vowed to do it if Labour got in. It had taken her a few years and now she had done it, unlike Frank Bruno and Paul Daniels who as far as she knew were still here.
She and Derek had always voted Labour—until Mrs Thatcher had exploded on to the scene in all her majesty. There was nobody to touch her. You could understand everything she said, for one thing. She’d cut the unions down to size, hadn’t she? The union at Derek’s factory always used to be causing trouble, agitating for more money and better health and safety. If somebody got their fingers caught in a machine, that was their own stupid fault; Derek had survived with all his fingers present and correct. Mrs Thatcher had swept the old trouble-making unions away, Derek hadn’t minded at all taking his own toilet paper to work; why should his boss pay to wipe Derek’s arse? Maggie had allowed Derek’s firm to buy their sheet steel from India instead of the foundry down the road. OK, the quality wasn’t as good, but it was five times cheaper, five times! And the union could say nothing because the order books were full, and Derek worked overtime in the evenings and at weekends and they eventually bought the council house they’d lived in since they were married, at eighty per cent off the market value.
♦
The Prime Minister was surprised at how normal-looking the crack-heads were. He had expected overt signs of depravity and evidence of moral turpitude.
The nurse said she was in court next week accused of stealing from the bedside lockers of the patients in her care; her only worry was finding enough crack in prison to satisfy her habit.
Jack said, “From what I’ve heard you’ll have no problem; it’s easier to get crack inside than it is to get an aspirin from the prison doctor.”
The doorman said he didn’t know for how much longer he could hang on to his job; he owed money all over the town and gangsters kept coming to where he worked, threatening to shoot his kneecaps off. It was Friday night and he should be on the door of the Starlight room and he’d left his wife at home with no money and three kids to feed. He’d ordered her never to open the door to anybody at any time; the Yardies had started to punish druggy debtors by throwing acid around and he couldn’t stand it if his wife’s pretty face was ruined, he couldn’t live with a scarred-up woman.
The Prime Minister said, “Why don’t you go to the police?”
This cheered everybody up and made them laugh.
The Prime Minister looked around and waited for somebody to explain the joke.
The car salesman was mostly incoherent and the Prime Minister had to strain to understand that his habit was costing him more than he earned; he had spent the £11,000 earmarked for his wedding and honeymoon on crack. His fiancée was unaware that he had a habit and she wouldn’t know until the morning of the wedding when the hire car failed to turn up to take her to the church that hadn’t been booked.
The Prime Minister said, “Have you tried drugs counselling?”
The nurse said, “There’s only one place in the country and there’s a six-month waiting list.” She then said to Jack…“Kick that bastard awake, I need another hit.”
They all turned to look at James, who lay on the floor dreaming.
The Prime Minister said, “He looks dead.”
Jack felt his pulse and said, “No, he’s alive. Pity.”
The Prime Minister asked them all, “Why have you done this to yourselves?”
The girl living in the probation hostel said, “I dunno, when I was a little kid, just learned to walk, I drunk bleach from the bottle, I dunno why I did that either. I was at a house an’ James was there an’ we was, like, seeing who could drink the most tequila without passing out, an’ I won, an’ James showed us these pretty little rocks, that was the first time. In the morning I wake up and, like, I’m happy, and then, like, I remember. I gotta go out first thing and I’ve gotta suck a bloke’s dick or frighten a stranger to get me some money, an’ it’s hard work, I can’t never relax, I always gotta be thinking an’ planning an’ I’m dodging people all the time. My mum is after me ‘cause I had her rent for crack and I’m, like, hassled the whole time, there’s some streets I can’t walk down and places I can’t go. The police know me; they drive by in their cars and shout out of the window that I’m too ugly to turn a trick. They call me Crack Alice. I run away to Nottingham but I got beat up bad, an’ I come back on the train without a ticket and, like, the guy what collects the tickets showed me no respect, so I pushed him, only pushed him, and they said it was assault, but it weren’t—like, ask anybody in this town, I wouldn’t hurt a fly, not unless it hurt me first. I despise that ticket collector; I’ve got nothing but despisal for him.”
The ex-tyre-fitter said angrily, “I didn’t come here to talk. I want the lights out, the music on and another rolley and more ice; I’ve paid for it and I want it. I borrowed the money from a
loan company. I’ve consolidated my debts; I’ve just got the one debt now and with the compound interest I’ll be paying them back until I’m sixty-five.” He started to laugh. “But they’ll never get their fucking money; I’ll be long dead by then.”
The Prime Minister said to him, “Citizens’ Advice Bureau runs debt clinics where you’ll get sensible, practical advice.”
The nurse said, “Either I get another rock or I want my money back.”
♦
Norma had filled her suitcase with her prettiest things; there were a lot of sequins and three evening bags but very few warm comfortable clothes. Jack heard her dragging the suitcase down the stairs and ran to help her.
♦
Yvonne turned off at Junction 21 and navigated a series of dual carriageways and several roundabouts the size of small offshore islands. She passed the single-storey, windowless buildings where things were made or warehoused, and the out-of-town shopping centres where identical shops sold identical goods and where a constant wind blew across the flat landscape. She drove by the multiplex cinema and its surrounding franchise restaurants where badly cooked processed food was sold to customers who lacked the confidence to complain, until she reached the mean single carriageway ring road which had cut established communities in half.
It had been good to hear Jack’s voice on the phone; he was straight but Yvonne liked that about her brother. Whenever she was faced with a difficult decision or a moral conundrum she would ask herself, “What would Jack do?”
Soon she was driving past familiar landmarks on the edge of her old estate. The only good thing about the place where she’d been brought up was that it was only a mile and a half from the M1 and was easy to get away from. She slowed down and looked at the engineering factory where Derek, her estranged husband, had worked since leaving school at fifteen. He’d been as good as chained to a machine in there for eight hours a day, five and a half days a week. He’d earned a certificate for good time-keeping—he’d hung it on the wall in the kitchen of the house they had lived in together—but however hard he’d worked they’d still been poor. Not hungry or cold poor, but always having to be careful poor. There had only ever been the one week in the caravan at St Leonard’s-on-Sea, never two. They hadn’t been able to work out why they had not been able to save for their old age, or buy a car. In the end she had come to loathe him for being the first worker on the factory floor in the morning and the last to leave it at night.
♦
Yvonne and Ali drew up outside Norma’s house at the same time, blinding each other with their headlights. They walked up the path almost together. Yvonne said to Ali, “Who called a taxi?”
Ali said, “I’m not just a taxi. I’m private hire, innit.”
Jack opened the door to them. When he saw his sister he was amazed once again at the ability of women to transform themselves. It was as though the Yvonne on the doorstep had stepped out of the pod of the old Yvonne—she was younger-looking, sleeker, and the blurred outlines of the old Yvonne had been rubbed away, leaving a sharper, more angular woman.
He sent Ali through to the kitchen and detained his sister in the hall. Yvonne took the news reasonably calmly from Jack that her mother was now hostessing a crack house and was in love with a nineteen-year-old dealer called James, and that James and six other druggies were presently sitting around in the front room either coming down from the effects of crack or urgently wanting more.
Yvonne had once come home from school to find an escaped prisoner called Kevin O’Dwyer eating spaghetti hoops in front of the television. That evening she had watched the prisoner’s delight when he was the top item on the regional news. A police spokesperson had said that the public must not approach him. O’Dwyer had rolled a joint and passed it to Norma, saying, “You’re a true friend to the friendless, Norma; you’ll receive your reward in Heaven.”
Yvonne had almost been proud of her mother’s Christian charity, but had been relieved when O’Dwyer had been caught on his way to early-morning Mass and returned to prison.
On going through to the kitchen Yvonne was introduced to the Prime Minister. She said, “You must get sick of people telling you that you look amazingly like that prat Edward Clare.”
Jack said, “The Prime Minister’s not a prat, Vonnie, he’s a decent bloke who’s worked like a dog and he just made the mistake of trying to run a country without having any politics.”
The Prime Minister looked at Jack almost gratefully.
Norma said to Yvonne, “Where’s my money, you thieving bitch?”
Yvonne took the envelope out of her bag and threw it on to the kitchen table; 38,400 Euros spilled out.
“It’s Monopoly money,” said Norma.
“It’s the Euro,” said the Prime Minister.
Ali said, “I had a German bloke tried to pay me in Euros. I drove him round to the police station but they told me they’d do me for wasting police time. So I had to take ‘em and change ‘em at a bank, innit.”
Jack said, “How did you make that much money, Vonnie?”
“It’s my women-empowering-women scheme,” she said. “I get two women at a time to put in £3,000, and each of them get two other women to put in the same, and them two get another two, and them two get two more and so it goes on.”
“It’s pyramid selling,” said Jack.
“The Department of Trade and Industry are looking into it,” said the Prime Minister. “They’ve been flooded with complaints from women who have lost their savings.”
“I operate in Marbella where people have got a bob or two,” said Yvonne.
“Like me,” said Norma. “I gave her £3,000.”
“And I’ve brung you back £24,000,” shouted Yvonne.
Jack said, “Vonnie, you don’t get anything for nothing in this world.”
“But you’re wrong there,” said Yvonne. “Some people do get something for nothing. Bankers do, an’ it all works so long as everybody believes. It’s like when we went to see Peter Pan, Jack, we all had to clap our ‘ands real loud to prove we believed in fairies, well, that’s how business operates, including mine. You just have to hope that not everybody asks for their money back at the same time. And people don’t, they’re all too busy clapping ‘cause they want to believe and they love Tinkerbell.”
Jack said, “I was never taken to see Peter Pan.”
Yvonne said, “No, you’re right, it was Stuart.”
The Prime Minister said, “Is everybody guaranteed to win then, Yvonne?”
“Sooner or later,” she said. “Why, are you interested in investing?”
Ali said, “I wouldn’t mind a few more details.”
Yvonne snapped, “It’s women only. As soon as men get involved it turns nasty and there’s trouble.”
“Anyway, Mam,” she continued, “I want you to come and live with me in Spain. I saw the Leicester Mercury in Marbella—one of my clients gets it posted out to her—and I nearly dropped dead when I seen your picture on the front page all battered and bruised, so you’re coming back with me.”
“What about Pete?” said Norma. “He can’t fly, can he?”
Yvonne had never been a bird- or animal-lover and admired the Spanish authority’s indifference to them. “I’ll buy you a bigger, more colourful bird, one with more life about it,” she said. “And we’ll keep it in a three-tiered cage on the terrace.”
Norma said, looking at Peter, “No, I can’t leave Pete. He’s stuck by me through thick and thin so I’ll have to stick by him.”
The Prime Minister said, “Norma, y’know, I think that’s, y’know, rather heartening.”
Jack said reluctantly, “I’ll look after Pete, Mam.”
Ali said, “My kids would love a bird.”
The Prime Minister said, “I’d gladly give it a home.”
Norma said angrily, “But it’s me Pete loves.” She talked to Peter directly: “I’m your mam, aren’t I, Pete.”
Jack said, “Mam, go and get your passport, y
ou’re going to Marbella for two weeks tomorrow with our Vonnie while I sort everything out here. Pete will be famous. He’ll be the first budgie to live in Downing Street, though not the first bird-brain, of course.”
There was a commotion in the hall and Jack went to investigate. James was pushing the guests out of the front door, throwing their shoes and clothes after them. The carpet salesman was already walking along the pavement barefoot; the nurse was picking up the contents of her handbag. James seemed to be under the impression that they were government agents. He came into the kitchen and opened the drawer of the kitchen table. When he saw that the tobacco tin was missing he accused Norma of using all of the crack herself. Yvonne started to speak but Jack shot her a warning glance and with a great effort she remained silent, though she went and stood behind her mother and put her arms protectively around Norma’s shoulders.
Jack saw that the Prime Minister was also afraid and did the same for him.
Ali was used to the company of crackheads; a significant part of his work was taking them to and from various houses in search of the stuff They hardly ever questioned the fare and didn’t mind when he told them that he would have to leave the meter running while they conducted their business. He knew what it was like to be addicted—he used to smoke fifty Bensons a day and had once walked three miles to an all-night garage when his car was off the road. He was used to the rubbish they talked.
James said, “You must give me what is mine; I am the Lord, the Almighty.”
When nobody moved or spoke he reached up and took down the cream-cracker tin and took out the little gun and put it to the side of the Prime Minister’s head, knocking his wig off The Prime Minister’s hair seemed to have become remarkably grey in only one week.
Ali lied and said, “I knew it was you from day one.”