Mountains of the Moon (26 page)

“I want my mum I want my mum I want my mum.”

Makes me cry cos I don’t want mine. I wonders who to cry. Can’t think of no one so I has to stop. I got stiff and ouch and everything swelled up.

“Catherine?” Miss Julie says. “Do you need anything before I lock? Did you have paracetamol, for the pain?”

I don’t say nothing. I hear her shoes come in and breathing looking down at me. She makes the blanket over my shoulder, tucks it around my neck. Her warm hand presses on mine and she kisses my ear, don’t know how come. The lamp button clicks off. I peek. She reaches tween the bars to pull the top winder shut. Then I see her black shape in the corridor light starting to close the door.

“Miss Julie?” I got a slippery voice, sounds int proper mine.

She stops closing the door and comes back in. Her face is a little bit kind.

“Will they hang me?” I arsts.

She comes down by my bed.

“No, love,” she says. “They don’t hang people any more, especially not little girls.”

“Will I have to go to prison?”

“Not prison. You might stay here. I don’t know, love, maybe for a very long time, until you’ve grown up. You can’t go to prison until you’re eighteen. You should try and make the best of it, Catherine.”

I slow nods my head.

Does a tap dance, sounds good on the changing-room floor. Done it, finished my first proper shift, feel light with tiredness and relief, anything now could blow me way.

It was funny. Nobody knew who I was. Edwardian style sits on me nice and they got my skirts made extra long. I got a chestnut hairpiece from the market all piled up and false eyelashes that come out sideways, not black, conker brown and soft. Wrapround eyes, Moonface calls them. Darren laughed, was ever so proud, said I’d make a beautiful whorehouse. I dealt roulette to Mr. One-Chip most of the afternoon, the Camp Inspector weren’t even watching, scraping varnish off his baby finger with his teef. The last game of blackjack was good with four players and all nine boxes open. No mistakes.

Gwen comes in the changing room.

“I’ve been waiting for you out there, come on,” she says. “We’re going down the Cellar; everyone is going down the Cellar. We’re celebrating.”

“Are we?”

“Yes. End of training. Dealer’s license. Come on.”

Nice of her to suggest it since we don’t get together much and actually
now I’m wide wake with relief. I like it down the Cellar, feel like lying back in my moon and having a drink and watching the nutters go on.

“Let’s drive home first and get some supper, and then come back out in an hour.”

“OK,” I says.

We has cheese on toast and then get ready. I scrub all my makeup off, clean my teef, drag my fringe out with a bit of spit, cuts a lump off here and there.

“Is it too much to ask, a little effort?” Gwen don’t reckon I can wear my jeans and T-shirt to a nightclub.

“You can’t dance in flip-flops” she says.

“Sactly,” I says.

“Why can you do it so spectacularly for work but not now? I don’t understand. I really don’t.” She wuthers case I look bad on her.

Work is different; I has to turn up and be a dealer. I int got dressed up in real life since the Ritzy in Sheffield. Even now it makes me purple. A bloke from a group came over especial to arst me if I was a man or a woman. Niver, I said, I’m a serial killer. Lucky Gwen was gone to the toilet.

“Come on,” she says. “Let’s get there, it’s half past bloody eleven already.” She’s been two hours taming her hair to get the wild effect. I don’t know why she bothers; she always looks like a gasoline sales rep, at the end of a day. Stinks of diesel and Poison perfume.

“Keys?

“Check.”

“Purse?”

“Check. Paper down for the dog?”

“Never mind that—have you got cigarettes?”

“Check.”

“You don’t need the coat, it’s June,” she says. “Nearly June, will be June in a few weeks.”

“Keep it on,” I says.

It int really a nightclub, just Davros has got a bar and a bit of a dance floor down in a cellar and lethal steps. Everyone from the casino treats it like a private lounge, to meet up after work and muck around in. Loads of blokes come down here chasing the casino waitresses and dealers and casino customers come down as well, it makes a joke of the fraternizing rule.

“Been on a sunbed?” Davros arsts me.

“No—spent my day off in the garden.”

I pass me in mirrors at the bottom of the stairs. The ultraviolet lights bring my eyes and teefs and pale broidered cuffs screaming loud into view. And the white bars on my dark cheekbone. Diamond is alive sides my eye. A big crowd has come in behind us. Sees Quentin. He don’t come over, sat on his own. At work the other day he was crying cos he loves her.

“Sulking,” Gwen says.

She always goes to the toilet so I can pay for the first drinks. I wait patient for my turn at the bar; a great oak tree of a bloke is standing in front of me. He looks over his shoulder straight in my face. Turns around to see if I’m real. Case I’m a hologram. Been beamed down. Or something. Gwen comes shoving through.

“Do you know Peter Eden?” she says to me.

Never seen him fore. He looks at me.

“My mate,” she says.

I look up at him, red end of a matchstick stirs around slowly in his lips. I get a cigarette from up my fluted sleeve like magic and he tends to strike the match on his chin. But he’s got a matchbox in his pocket. But now some loud joker is mucking around and falls backward into him.

“Do you mind?” the Oak Tree says. “We’re trying to have a conversation here.”

The Joker grims. Sticks his tongue out. Tips his head. Gwen smirks at the Joker, starts jigging, ready to rumple. I see: Gwen and the Joker.

Oak Tree turns the matchstick with his fingers, winks at me.

“I’m Heath,” the Joker says. He turns his back on the others. This Heath, he’s got my face, got my name, shaking my hand, steering me off, he’s whizzing, great big silver crucifix swinging in one ear. Does I work out?

“I work in the casino,” I says.

A crowd has come with us, all talking at once and laughing. Lot of hugging going on, most of it Heath and he keeps them all going like spinning plates on poles. Could even wear you out. I see Gwen left behind, this int what she had in mind. Or me. I shrug at her and the Joker’s arm falls off the back of my neck.

“Heath, are you going to dance?” a ratty bloke says. “Do that thing with the strobe again.”

Can’t see Gwen now.

“With the strobe, Heath. Go on, Heath.”

“I’ll give it a spin,” he says. “Excuse me a minute.” He passes me his jacket. It’s heavy green leather with red leather sleeves, number 9 stitched on the back. He’s wearing faded jeans and a black T-shirt with cap sleeves. People cheer and gather around and I can’t see for the crowd. The concrete wall tween the dance floor and the bar has got a big crescent moon cut in it. Normally I climb up and lay in the curve of the moon, it’s my spot, can see everything both sides. I take his jacket and go around to climb up in it. So comfortable laid in the curve. Smokes a cigarette with tweezers. Heath sticks his tongue in the DJ’s ear, rifles through the record box looking for something particular.

“Heath! Heath! Heath,” the crowd says.

Don’t know what the music is but it sounds like the sea pulling and crashing. Heath stands in the middle of the floor, seems to pray and bow to the mirrors. DJ puts the strobe light on and this Heath moves. He’s so fine-tuned like someone trained in ballet is, there int no shake or tremble, no limit. He holds perfect arabesques, turning in the strobe like his arms is swinging a heavy sword. He could even be on ice, changing legs as if his hands and feet had blades. The strobe light seems to fix him up and I sees seven turning blades swirling all at once. He lands turning still and those seven swords catch up and come to rest as one. Final he knights the floor. Everyone cheers and claps and bored now gets back on with their own bitching and attempts at dancing.

I’ve still got Heath’s jacket. He jumps up on my moon to rest, with his
hands on his skinny hips and his chest heaving. His skin is so white it’s almost blue, flawless. He’s got a beautiful face in profile, with carved eyelids and an armour nose plate. The big silver crucifix dangling from his ear casts a swinging shadow on the back wall of the club. He’s almost see-through. Few moments I glimpses a peacefulness like still water, fore he starts revving gain, cracks his big swollen knuckles.

“I’m on fire,” he says. “I’m cooking on gas; I’m sweating like a nigger on Election Day, as my old dad used to say. Ah—got cramp,” he says. “I’ve got to stretch it out,” he says. “I have
got to
stop smoking.”

The dance floor is empty so he sits down on it, does the splits by the rivers of Babylon, swivels to face forward, bends flat over his knee. Gwen has been and brushed her hair. She sees Heath down on the dance floor and comes over, starts whipping her hair and swirling devilish around him, smacks pissed into the wall. Heath laughs, so hard like a bastard, gets up to see if she’s OK.

“No sense no feeling,” she says, stunned.

Heath laughs more, runs way with the slapstick theme, ducks planks, makes me laugh so hard I nearly fall out of the moon. Running commentary. He’s such an arsehole but he int having none of Gwen; every time I look at him I finds him looking at me. Sticks his tongue out and tips his head. Joker.

“Forgive me,” he says, “I’m getting overzealous.”

“Who’s Zealous?” I give him his jacket.

Gwen slaps at him.

“You,” she says. But her hand keeps missing. He floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee, int taking his eye off me.

“Come down here at once.” She points back at the floor where he was sitting. Some other clown from a different show takes her up on it, and so she rumples them, stead.

“Vodka?” Heath arsts me.

Davros sees me sitting in my moon, comes to say hello, always does.

“Lap-dancing club,” he says. He’s still trying to find a way for the Cellar to make some money. “I was in one the other night,” he says, “And do you know what? A black girl came and stood on the table, I looked up,
like that, straight up her skirt and she didn’t have any knickers on, just like a ham sandwich, I thought, honest, cunt like a ham sandwich.”

Then the barman calls him and he’s gone.

Heath brings me vodka, strong, double, treble. His arm is around my neck. He smiles at me, like it’s a surprise, it is a surprise, surprises me. I wonder if he’s having a joke. Look around to see if someone has bet him.

Do I want to take my coat off?

No. We stand on the dance floor talking, close so we can hear each other, same height. Karate has made him fit and deadly as he is. He’s been training since he was seven years old and won the European Championship when he was eighteen. Now he’s twenty-four, three years older than me. Started smoking and hasn’t trained for months. He still looks and behaves like a kid but he knows about a lot of things. Clever, I spects. Over his shoulder I see the Oak Tree, watching, leaning gainst the wall by the archway. I grims at him—don’t know how come I’m with Heath, six foot two albino tree frog.

Oak Tree grims back.

I sees through a gap in the crowd that Gwen is hanging off Quentin’s belt, rolling her face in his crotch, keeps looking up to see if I’m looking. Wonder if she’s jealous, it int ever happened fore. Now Davros has got me a drink as well. A wave of tiredness goes over my head. I sway, can’t shake it off. I glug the treble vodka down, hopes the shock will keep me wake. Bwah-ha-ha-ha! When I go to the toilet Gwen follows me in.

“So,” she says, “you’ve finally caught something.”

I shrugs.

“Heath seems to like me, Gwen, I int sure why.”

“Well do you fancy him or not?”

I don’t know.

“Don’t be such a freezer.” She sounds angry, slams a toilet door. “I’m sick of you always sulking around because nobody wants you, and now somebody does, so you might as well just go for it, have some fun. He likes you, what bloody more do you want?”

“He’s ever so funny. Is he a customer at the casino?”

“What has that got to do with anything? Get a couple of drinks down you and get on with it. What is there to lose?”