Christopher Brookmyre (9 page)

When Jane was a girl, it felt like the greatest treat when there was a James Bond film on TV on a Sunday night, an epic adventure that made school the next day seem a long way off. The Sixties ones were best, with Connery, but even
OHMSS
was a fantastic escape. It didn't matter about Lazenby because, unlike her brothers, she wasn't watching them for James Bond. She was watching them because they were like a two-and-a-half-hour holiday, a tour of enticing locations and a vicarious glimpse of a lifestyle that was a world apart. Scuba-diving in the tropics, skiing in Switzerland, chateaus, mansions and hotels. One day, Jane Bell had always dreamed, she would go to a casino on the French Riviera, dressed in something you'd get lifted for in Glasgow, and she'd arrive there in a convertible classic sports car. It wasn't a yearning for riches, for money (although, as her mother used to say, it came in handy when you were paying for the messages); it was a yearning to prove she could be that woman, who could wear that dress, drive that car and walk into that casino. And Jane Bell could have been that woman, she was sure, but she wasn't Jane Bell any more. She had become Jane Fleming, and Jane Fleming ken't the score.

Jane got pregnant when she was nineteen. She'd wanted a lot more from life than even her Riviera fantasies before that happened. It was just before the third-term exams in her first year at Glasgow Tech, two generations and a lifetime ago. She was studying engineering, one of very few females doing so at the time, but having grown up in a house with three older brothers, she was used to the ratio and all that went with it. They were exciting days, and not just for the usual reasons of adolescent liberation. The cultural insurgence that was Punk was well under way, and with it a sense that nothing couldn't be changed; everything was finally up for grabs in an ailing and long-stagnant society. The meek acceptance that everything was in the clutches of an older generation and a higher caste was being noisily trashed. That's what the purple Roneo-copied fanzines said, anyway. Almost everyone she knew was

'starting a band', even if for many the declaration of intent was as important a statement as any music they may or may not ever get around to playing. Jane wasn't much of a rebel. She got on well with her parents, for a start. They were kind to her and she liked to please them in return, liked to see them happy with her, their one little girl after three rowdy boys. She liked pleasing them as she liked pleasing people in general, hideously uncool as that was to admit. She'd been brought up to endeavour to do what was right, whether that be working hard at school to get good results or going the messages for old Mrs Dolan next door. John Lydon would have had her ceremonially thrown out of that SPOTS gig if he'd had any idea of what was in his midst. Jane wasn't out to change the underlying social order. She was just intoxicated by the energy of it all, of youth fearless and unfettered. She cropped her hair short and dyed it blue. She mutilated this old red tartan frock of her auntie's to make a two-part tabard and mini-skirt affair. The top half was barely held together down the sides by safety pins and hairy string, while the bottom provided minimal cover but maximum contrast against her preferred Day-Glo green tights. She still had a photo somewhere. She looked shocking, awful, ghastly. But in a truly magnificent way.

There was a comic song around that time, the B-side of Andy Cameron's doom-tempting World Cup single, called
I Want to Be a Punk Rocker but Ma
Mammy Wullnae Let Me
. Jane guessed that could well have been her, had it not been that her mammy did let her. Her mum had already been through a few pointless losing battles with her eldest brother, Billy, over long hair, a skinhead, long hair again, flares, platforms and Slade gigs. If Jane had stopped going the messages for Mrs Dolan or tidying her bedroom of a Saturday morning, that would have caused more censure and concern. She feared she was, in the words of another song of the time, a part-time punk, but in that she was hardly alone. It being Glasgow, a familiar cry around the family hearth of a Saturday afternoon would have been: 'Haw Maw, gaunny iron ma bondage troosers fur the night, pleeeease.' It wasn't about changing the world; it was about being nineteen.

She called herself Blue Bell, in reference to her hair. She and her pals all had these punk names for themselves. Suzi Spiteful, Tina Toxic, Corpse-Boy, Venom, Bloodclot. She remembered two old punters behind them on a bus into town one night, listening with growing amusement at their names.

'Whaur's Biffo?'

one asked the other.

'Is that Biffo next tae Korky and

Gnasher?'

She saw The Clash, The Damned, The Buzzcocks, and of course SPOTS -

Sex Pistols On Tour Secretly - this last via a very drunken six-hour transit-van trip to Middlesbrough. Casinos and sports cars weren't high on her wish list at that time, any more than a newbuild in EK with a husband and a baby. But guess what?

For someone with dreams of distinguishing herself, of living a life that was remarkable, was there any greater failure, anything more embarrassing, then ending up a cliche? There were various ways of relating the tale, slants and spins that could be put upon the details, but the most important facts didn't change: she got pregnant, had to drop out of college and was railroaded by her circumstances into marrying the guy. The only way she could have topped that would have been if the fateful encounter had been her first time, but it wasn't. It was just her first time with Tom and her first time without a condom. Tom was a friend of her brother Steven, who knew him from the College of Building and Printing. He was twenty-one but seemed older, certainly more mature. He'd gone to college at seventeen so by twenty-one had graduated and was working in his first job as a surveyor. He had disposable income and his own car, which would have made him an attractive prospect even if he wasn't good-looking, but he was, albeit in a rather serious way. He wasn't a punk (a real waste given that Flem was a ready-made nickname), but he did seem to like the music and could afford to buy more of the records than Jane or her crowd. He came along to a few gigs and discos, dressed in drainpipes and a leather jacket, but could hardly go the full bhoona, with hair and piercings, he explained, because he still had to turn up to places in a suit on Monday morning. Jane suspected Tom would never have been going the full bhoona anyway, but didn't particularly mind. Going out with him, she felt she was getting the best of both worlds. She had her punk pals to be daft, outrageous and generally irresponsible with, and, on the other hand, she had a sensible and mature boyfriend, with prospects and money in his pocket, who made her feel grown up in a way every young woman enjoyed. His serious side was a welcome contrast with her other crowd, and it actually felt quite flattering that someone like that didn't see her as a silly wee lassie. What he did see, she wasn't so sure of, but she didn't give it much thought. At that age, you don't ask these things of yourself. You just go out until it stops being fun. When you're truly young, you feel like the present is forever. That's why you don't see the future careering towards you like a runaway eighteen-wheeler.

Before going out with Tom, Jane had sex with two boyfriends plus two one-night stands, both times drunken 'friend-sex' encounters with guys in the punk crowd. The punk scene had been derided as sexless and John Lydon's withering remark about 'two minutes of squelching noises' was often quoted in support, but only, Jane suspected, by green-eyed chroniclers on the outside looking in. Sexless? Take adolescents in ripped clothes, add music and liberal doses of cheap alcohol. What do you think you're going to get? The tabloid reporters with their hackneyed seaside-postcard idea of what constituted sexy couldn't get their heads around the fact that they weren't dressing to attract the opposite sex. They were - girls and guys - dressing to express themselves, and as far as she was concerned, nothing was sexier than that. Sex at that age felt like another youthful freedom, another new area for exploration, for expression, for
fun
. Meaningless? Maybe. Serious? Never. Then along came Tom and it suddenly became a psychological minefield, each minor advance in how far she could tempt him to go followed by a ghastly spectacle of guilt and self-recrimination.

Jane's family were nominal Prods but actually not religious. Perhaps if they had been, she'd have known a little better what she was dealing with, before Catholicism notched up another pyrrhic victory by punishing ordinary human behaviour.

Tom wouldn't accede to her request, even couched in his own words, to wear a condom 'in case things go too far'. His otherwise cautious and sensible rationality was obliterated by a combination of primitive superstition and plain old denial. The logic ran thus: the big beardy punter in the sky forbade contraception, and wearing a johnny 'just in case' would only make going too far that bit easier. This part she couldn't argue with; indeed was counting on to get him past this stupidity. His counter-logic, however, was that not wearing a condom would therefore constitute an insurmountable deterrent. In the words of the wee schoolboy, upon being told by his teacher that there was no example in the English language of a double positive expressing a negative, 'Aye, right.' When religion attempted to play the immovable object to human sexuality's unstoppable force, there could only ever be one result. The A word loomed large in her head, filed under Easy Way Out. Toxic Tina's older sister had had one. She could get it done before anyone found out. But 'before anyone found out' was always going to be a short window of opportunity, and it proved not to be one she was decisive enough to take. The catch-22 was that aborting was something she could only go through with before anyone close to her found out, but she couldn't go through with it before talking to someone close to her. She wasn't the most politicised student, but she knew where she stood on a woman's right to choose: she'd signed the petitions, been to the meetings, worn the badge, and she'd do the same today. But at that most lonely and vulnerable time, her squeamishness at the thought of something growing inside her was topped only by her squeamishness at the thought of somebody taking it out.

Her parents were as supportive as she could have possibly hoped, and in that respect she knew she'd been extremely fortunate. Matters were discussed openly and pragmatically, but she still got the sense that summit meetings had been taking place above her head. Marriage, therefore, was more arrived at by consent than proposed. There was no going down on one knee and, then at least, no ring. Tom offered because he was dutiful, responsible and caring, and because he believed it was the right thing to do. There was also the fact that his parents would rather see him burned at the stake than be father to an illegitimate child - and a Proddy one at that - but her own mum and dad made it clear to all that it would be Jane's decision and hers alone. She was so, so young. Marriage was for proper grown-ups, not kids like her. But then so was motherhood. Tom was decent, attractive, had a good job, money in the bank and she knew he'd look after her. What more could she ask for, in her circumstances? It wasn't how she'd pictured this moment in her life, but it wasn't the end of the world; just the end of
a
world and the beginning of a new one.

Fast-forward three years and it was a far better world than she could have imagined. She had two lovely children, Ross then Michelle, fourteen months apart (she had her tubes tied after the latter given that Tom still wouldn't countenance any form of birth control), a nice house, holidays abroad, even her own car, Tom's promotion earning him a company one. A glimpse at how her old pals were doing showed her where she could have been had she finished her studies, and it looked like she had been the one who struck it lucky. It was the early Eighties, Thatcher was in power, nobody had a job and everyone was skint, still living like students in bedsits or in many cases back with their folks.

On the whole, she knew she had it good; but though she had few complaints, that didn't mean she was without regrets. There wasn't much prospect of a career, for one. Even once the kids were both school-age, the hours between dropping them off and picking them up were rapidly filled with shopping, cleaning, ironing and cooking, leaving no scope for anything other than part-time work. It was something she accepted, but never entirely made her peace with. She enjoyed being a mum and she loved her kids, but from time to time felt this guilty admission that she still wanted something more. Not something else, just something more. Was that such a heresy, to admit that your love for your family wasn't sufficiently all-consuming as to extinguish all other desires? Did it mean she wasn't cut out for this? And did any other mothers feel this way too? None that were owning up to it, but that didn't mean she was alone.

As the years passed, though, she found herself rationalising many of her own dreams away, and having dreams for her kids instead. These proved no less a source of frustration, but at least helped her see how daft some of her own notions had always been. Sports cars and casinos were just a wee girl's fantasy, but they had endured in her mind as icons that had come to represent another self she could yet aspire to be. They symbolised her belief that she was still young, that she could still do something more with her life, one day. Going back to college, for instance. That was meant to be the big new beginning. She had no inclination to resume her original studies, instead deciding that someone who had read as many books as she ought to have a crack at English Literature. She applied to Glasgow Uni and received an offer conditional upon topping up her qualifications, including an improved and more up-to-date Higher English. This meant a year of night classes, which was no hardship as it regularly got her out of the house and away from halfman-half-armchair and the relentless tyranny of Sky Sports. Having waited this long to restart her life, what was another year? Well, another year was time enough for Michelle, who'd graduated from Strathclyde in Pharmacy and was working at the Royal Infirmary, to meet Doctor Right, marry him and conceive their first child.