Musclebound Read online

  ‘Shows how brain-damaged you are,’ I said.

  ‘You were always such a gark, Eva, and you ain’t improved.’ Phil turned to the strange bloke he was with and said, ‘She always had the hots for Harsh. She thinks he’s a Zen master or something.’

  ‘He ain’t a bad middleweight,’ the bloke said, which made me look at him proper. ‘Cos he couldn’t be as pill-panned as Phil if he said that.

  ‘Boring,’ Phil said. ‘Zen wrestling don’t pull in the punters.’

  ‘Someone got to do it,’ the stranger said. He had screwy hair and toffee-coloured skin. He looked like a heavyweight to me. Usually my natural enemies are heavyweights. That’s what Gruff and Pete are. But this bloke looked like he had more in his crow’s nest than bird droppings. So I said, ‘Who’re you when you’re at home?’

  ‘Keif,’ he said. ‘You?’

  ‘Eva, the great big beaver,’ Phil said. ‘You don’t want to be seen talking to her. She’s crazy.’

  ‘You’re talking to her.’

  ‘I’m bulletproof. I’m a star. I ain’t on probation with the boss like you are.’

  ‘Sod that,’ said Keif. ‘He can tell me work stuff. He can tell me when to show up and where. He can’t tell me who to talk to on a public highway. He ain’t God.’

  ‘He thinks he is,’ Phil said. ‘Same difference. Anyway, I’m telling you. She’s bother. Who’s been showing you the ropes this last month?’

  ‘You have.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So?’ said Keif.

  ‘So you been letting a blue-bummed ape show you round the zoo,’ I said.

  ‘Personal trainer!’ Phil sneered. ‘You couldn’t afford a personal piss-pot.’

  ‘A lot you know,’ I said. ‘I’ve been doing really well lately.’

  ‘See?’ Phil said to Keif. ‘Ditzyland. Pure Ditzyland. She never had two beans to rub together. Anyway it’d take more than Harsh to get her in shape – it’d take a fucking jack hammer. And when she was in shape you shoulda seen the shape – God-fuckin’-zilla looked like Miss World beside her.’

  ‘Yeah?’ I said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘See,’ I said to Keif, ‘some of us do a bit more than dye our hair when we want to get on in the fight game.’

  And with that, I trotted off. I told them, see. I got the last word in. You don’t mouth off to Eva Wylie and get away with it.

  But by the time I got round the next corner I was out of breath and cursing Harsh.

  ‘Fuckin’ toothbrush,’ I said. It was such a let-down. But then, just to prove I couldn’t really lose, I saw a dented white Ford just sitting there. The driver’s side door was so badly aligned that I hardly had to pop the lock. It was just waiting to take me home. Well I couldn’t refuse that, could I?

  And I couldn’t refuse a little drink when I got home either. All right, I know I told Harsh I’d given it up – you don’t have to nag at me – but it was the end of the bottle, see. Waste not, want not. And then I had a couple of tinnies. But then, beer isn’t really booze, is it? Beer’s as weak as gnats’ piss so it doesn’t count, does it? Well, does it?

  But I couldn’t find my toothbrush. I looked everywhere, but it’d went missing. I turned the Static upside down, and then I thought, screw it – it wasn’t even bedtime, and I could buy a whole hundredweight of sodding toothbrushes before then. I could hire someone to clean my teeth for me. I could say, ‘Oi you, number four servant, clean my teeth and be quick about it. I got Harsh coming round for drinkies on the patio and you know what he’s like about scummy gnashers – he’s Pillock from Planet Prat.’ That’s how rich people act, don’t they? You don’t think rich people brush their own teeth, do you? Get over yourself.

  Chapter 6

  It was just after six in the evening. The yard went dead, which reminded me it was time to lock the gate and let the dogs out. So I got up and went to the gate. It was raining and the wind sliced strips off me. I should of worn my padded coat but I couldn’t find it.

  I was fumbling with the chains and padlocks when I saw a little Renault Clio pulled up to the pavement opposite. I didn’t take much notice ‘cos I was cold and wet and I wanted to go back indoors away from the weather. But the padlock kept slipping and I couldn’t seem to get the chain link into the keeper.

  So when this soft voice out of the night said, ‘Eva, is that really you?’ I dropped the keys again and said, ‘Fuck off. Can’t you see I’m busy?’

  But I shouldn’t have. No. Because this was the only person in the whole wide world I really, truly wanted to see.

  I said, ‘Fuck off, can’t you see I’m busy?’ and she said, ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt.’

  I picked the keys up and wiped the rain from my eyes.

  She was stood there in a long, slick raincoat with a small umbrella to keep the rain off of her hair. The street lamp behind made it seem like she had diamonds falling on her. And she was looking at me like she’d been waiting a long time. For me.

  She said, ‘Is that really you?’

  And I said, ‘Who?’ And I sat down in the wet ’cos my legs went stringy. And my guts went thin and stringy too, ’cos I knew who it was.

  I said, ‘Simone.’ And I shut my eyes and screwed my eyelids down. I knew, when I opened them, she’d be gone. I knew it was the booze seeing her – not me. Because I used to dream for years that she’d come back out of the night. Sometimes I’d dream that I’d walk into Ma’s gaff and there she’d be, sitting on the sofa. I’d dream she was round the next corner, and if I could only get there quick enough, I’d see her standing, just looking into a shop window. I’d dream she was in a car, going by, and I couldn’t quite see her face through the reflection in the glass.

  The thing that was different, the thing that was wrong, was that when I dreamed her coming out of the night she looked like she did the last time I saw her. That was when she was twelve and I was eleven. I don’t know why. I know she had to grow up like I did. But I always saw her small and pretty. Not a grown-up woman in a long, slick raincoat.

  And the other thing wrong was that when I dreamed her, she was small and I was the London Lassassin. I was in my glory. Famous. Strong. Popular. I was not sitting on my duff in an oily puddle. That was not part of my dream. Shit, no.

  So I opened my eyes. And there on the other side of the gate was this little pair of high-heeled shoes. And above that was Simone with diamonds falling on her umbrella.

  I said, ‘Is it really you?’

  So I let her into the yard. And I forgot to let the dogs out. For the first time in my life I forgot about the dogs.

  In my dream she always said, ‘Eva, is that really you?’ That was in the dream, and that’s what she said. So I knew it was really Simone.

  But the Static was a tip. I hadn’t realised till she went in. And that wasn’t in the dream. In the dream I had everything in place so she could see how well I was doing.

  ‘I was looking for my toothbrush,’ I said.

  ‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘Let me look at you.’

  So she looked at me and I looked at her. There was only torchlight and lamplight, see, because I don’t believe in electricity bills. So I had to look hard. And the more I looked the more I could see the old Simone. But it was queer because it was like this grown-up woman kept stepping in front of my Simone – now you see her, now you don’t. And I kept wanting to push the grown-up woman out the way. ‘Clear off,’ I wanted to say, ‘you’re standing in front of my sister.’

  She hardly came up to my chin. Well, that was OK, she was always smaller than me even though she was a year older. But her face had changed. She used to have a fairy face – great big blue eyes looking out at you from behind silky fine hair. You always saw those eyes first ’cos they were dark and the rest of her face and hair was silvery. The rest of her face was little. And when she was small, her face seemed to say, ‘Help me.’ And I always did. I always looked out for her and took her with me when I bunked off.

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nbsp; But now there was too much colour. The silvery skin was pink on the cheeks. The pale mouth was red. The eyelids and eyelashes were black. The hair was gold. My Simone was still there but she was wearing a grown-up mask, and I couldn’t see what her face was saying.

  ‘Eva,’ she said, ‘you grew so big.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. And I turned away. I turned away because I didn’t know what she was looking for in me after all these years, and I didn’t think she’d like what she was seeing. They called us Beauty and the Beast, even in the old days. And I wasn’t at my best that night. I wanted to be in my prime like I was when I dreamed about this meeting, but I couldn’t find me toothbrush.

  I couldn’t keep still neither. My heart was a spitball on a skillet – jumping, sizzling. There was so much I wanted to say but it all got stuck in my guts – it wouldn’t come up past my gullet.

  It was choking me, so I said, ‘How’d you find me?’

  ‘Mother,’ she said.

  ‘Who?’ I said.

  ‘Our mother,’ she said.

  ‘Ma?’ I couldn’t understand her using the word mother for Ma.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I’ve been overseas for quite a while, and when I came back I wanted to get in touch. My other mother knew where she was – you know, sent her photos and things.’

  Another huge subject for conversation. I couldn’t deal with it. Her other mother. Why had she let them adopt her? Why had she changed her name? One time I thought she betrayed me by doing that. But she was only a little kid then, and I don’t s’pose she was given any selection, so I forgave her. Almost. I couldn’t think about it.

  ‘I’m a wrestler,’ I said.

  ‘A wrestler?’ she said. I couldn’t see if the face behind the mask was saying ‘wow’ or ‘shit’.

  ‘Din’t Ma say?’

  ‘It was as much as I could do to get your address out of her,’ she said. ‘She isn’t very helpful, is she?’

  ‘Helpful!’ Something went off bang in my chest and I found myself sitting on the floor again. ‘I’ve been on at her for years,’ I said. ‘Years. Fuckin’ years. I knew she knew where you were. But would she tell me? She’d rather stuff a hungry rat in her knickers. Don’t call her Mother. She ain’t a mother.’

  ‘Oh, Eva,’ she said. ‘Never mind.’ She handed me some tissues. ‘We’re together now,’ she said.

  Together, she said. It nearly crashed me. I blew my nose.

  ‘Let’s not spoil it by talking about Ma,’ she said. ‘Let’s go out for a drink. Let’s celebrate.’

  That was the right thing to say. I couldn’t wait to get out of the Static, out of the yard. It all looked like a pit full of garbage now she was here. And besides I was thirsty – I needed something to steady me nerves.

  She found my padded jacket. There was something sad about that – for one thing I always thought, when we found each other again, it’d be me helping her, not her sorting me out. And for another, I wish it’d been me lovely leather jacket, the one with all the biker fringes and metal I lost somewhere. That jacket made me look the business, not like I’d been made in Taiwan.

  Outside the rain came like bullets that nearly took our heads off and we ran all the way up Mandala Street to the Fir Tree. It was only when we got there I remembered she had a car. But she just shook the rain out of her hair and laughed. ‘I was so excited I forgot,’ she said. ‘Remember how I used to be scared of storms when we were little? Remember how we used to get under the bed? You weren’t scared though.’

  ‘Nah,’ I said. ‘I like thunder and lightning.’ I do. I did. I like a lot of banging and crashing. And in them days I liked it even more. Ma couldn’t score when the weather was really filthy, and we wouldn’t wake up to find some scraggy tart-raker reeling around in a string vest with a fag hanging out of his gob. Or hear those sounds we didn’t want to hear. But I didn’t want to think about that.

  ‘Weren’t you ever scared of anything?’ she asked. ‘I can’t remember you ever being scared.’

  And that made me feel big and strong again. Because Simone was remembering me right. Well, nearly. ‘Cos even if I was scared I’d of died before I showed it. If you showed it you got mashed. There was one kid – and this was the first time we got sent away, so we was very little – well, this one kid, he had the horrors about elastic bands. Don’t ask me why – it’s the weirdest thing to get the horrors about. Elastic bands, can you credit it? What’s wrong with elastic bands? But this one kid, he’d just get the shakes if he even saw one through a window. And he was too thick to pretend, so all the other kids … Well, you get the picture. He’d find elastic bands in his pockets, in his bed, even in his dinner. When he couldn’t take it no more, he ran away. But they brought him back. ‘Cos it was a place of safety, see, and they always bring you back. Joke, huh?

  So they brought him back and it looked like all the other kids had saved up every fuckin’ elastic band they could lay their sticky paws on.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Simone said. ‘You’ve gone all grim.’

  ‘Nuffin,’ I said. ‘I was just thinking about that kid who was scared of elastic bands. I wonder what happened to him.’

  ‘You know what happened to him,’ Simone said. ‘You saw what happened to him. He hanged himself from a coat peg in the cloakroom. We all saw. With a belt. And all the big kids laughed and said it should’ve been an elastic belt. But it was leather.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ I said. But I couldn’t remember. You’d think I’d remember a thing like that. But I never.

  What I remembered was going to her dormitory in the dead of night and saying, ‘I want to go home.’ And her saying, ‘You can’t.’ But I made her get up and come with me. That was the first time we bunked off together. But they brought us back. It didn’t stop me trying again, though. And again. And again.

  I went to the bar to get the drinks in – a white wine spritzer, whatever that was, for her, a pint for me. But I knocked back a shot of dark rum while I was there – for me nerves, see, and for the cold.

  ‘Oh, Eva,’ she said, when I got back to the table. ‘You’ve got to tell me everything. I feel very …’

  Very what? Very out of it? Drowning in yesterdays? Angry about the time we lost – the time they took away? Scared? No, not scared. That ain’t me – I ain’t never scared. But the little round table between us looked like the North Pole. Like it was a million miles of ice over a million miles of deep dark water and I didn’t know if I could drag her back across it to where we started. I wanted her back. Well, I had her back but it was like waving to her across the ice, waving to her across the time they took her away. I wanted her back like we was then, sharing a bed in a thunderstorm, creeping out of a back door, just us two against the world, the universe.

  My tongue was a blob of foam rubber in my mouth.

  ‘Pardon?’ she said.

  ‘Nuffin,’ I said. ‘I’m a wrestler now. I’m the biggest and best on the circuit. I got a personal trainer and everything. You ought to come an’ see me some time. I’ll get you ringside seats. The promoter’s a friend of mine. He’ll treat you like royalty when he knows you’re my sister. Nuffin’s too much bother for my sister.’

  ‘I’d love to come,’ she said. ‘Of course I would. Oh, Eva, don’t get so excited. Of course I’ll come. It’s all right. It’s all right, really.’

  ‘’Course it’s all right,’ I said. ‘It’s just… it’s just I made something of meself, Simone. I did.’

  ‘Of course you did,’ she said. ‘And I’m proud of you.’

  There. She said it. What I wanted to hear. ‘I’m proud of you.’ Just like that.

  ‘You want another one of those whatsits?’ I said, and I went back to the bar.

  This time it was the landlord’s missus serving. I chucked back another dark rum, and she said, ‘You want to watch that, Eva. You make a scene like you did last week and you’re out of here. I mean it. My old man’s keeping an eye on you.’

  ‘What scene?’ I said.
‘Your old man can keep his eye on the noodles growing out your arse for all I care.’

  ‘Don’t be so bleedin’ lippy, Eva. I got more time for you than most round here. If I hadn’t, you’d of been barred months ago.’

  ‘You can’t bar me,’ I said. ‘My money’s as good as anyone else’s.’

  ‘An’ that’s another thing,’ she said, ‘where …?’

  But I didn’t want to hear her other thing. There’s always another thing from those dried-up old quackers, always, always another thing.

  When I got back to the table I found my seat taken by the bloke who sells china in the market. He was putting the move on Simone. Which was no more than you’d expect, but it narked me, and I said, ‘Fuck off, arse-sniffer. Time for old men like you to go home to the wife.’

  He said, ‘Where didja find a sister like this, Eva?’

  I said, ‘Hit the road, humpity-back.’ But I was quite chuffed actually, because Simone had owned up to me. If she’d of taken after our ma she’d never of done that. Ma never owns up to me if she can help it.

  ‘Men,’ Simone said after he’d slid away. ‘Always want something.’

  ‘Are you married?’ I asked. I don’t know where that came from. Fancy not knowing if your own sister’s wed.

  ‘Well …’ she said, and I held my breath. I didn’t want her to be wed. I did not.

  ‘I was,’ she said, ‘but it didn’t work.’

  That was a relief, I can tell you. I didn’t want to get her back just to find out she was someone else’s. She didn’t ask me if I was married.

  ‘It only lasted a couple of months,’ she said.

  ‘What happened?’ I said.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘It was a mistake. I’m not cut out for keeping house.’

  ‘What are you cut out for?’ It was so weird. When we was together I wouldn’t of had to ask. She was cut out for something big. Everyone liked her. She could of been anything except maybe a brain surgeon – we was neither of us much good at schoolwork.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I tried a lot of things. But it was hard, though. My other family …’