The Microcosm Read online

  Critical Acclaim for Maureen Duffy

  ‘Maureen Duffy is one of Britain’s foremost writers’ – Guardian

  ‘The Microcosm succeeds in establishing Miss Duffy as one of the most talented novelists writing today’ – Spectator

  ‘Maureen Duffy is one of the few British writers of fiction of real class’ – Financial Times

  ‘A highly disturbing and original novel’ – Daily Telegraph

  ‘A gifted writer’ – Elizabeth Smart

  ‘The Microcosm is an indubitably serious piece of writing’ – Sunday Times

  ‘Miss Duffy’s book is impressive; it is likely to cause those who have not read her earlier novels to seek them out, and to look forward with real interest to her next’ – Irish Times

  MAUREEN DUFFY

  THE

  MICROCOSM

  for J.G.

  ‘World is crazier and more of it than we think,

  Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion

  A tangerine and spit the pips and feel

  The drunkenness of things being various.’

  Louis MacNeice

  SNOW AND ROSES

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  The Microcosm

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Copyright

  AND I think by now you must be earth, earth or slime. ‘Your water is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead body,’ and we’re three parts water, slime, mucus, snot, excretion, all the things tabooed for us as children with their foretaste of corruption, death. Gone under grass yet not stirring this Spring morning as bulb and tuber poke through the top soil with blunt leaf fingers, resurrecting; the dancing legs rigid in bone, muscles liquid, taut tendons dissolving, only the hair still bright-tipped, grown long and thick, darker at the roots.

  Sometimes I think we’re all dead down here, shadows, a house of shades, echoes of the world above where girls are blown about the streets like flowers on long stalks and young men strut by on turkeycock legs thrusting against the March winds, all a little more dead by your real dying since you’ve come to haunt this place, your laughter jazz-noted, harsh, the dusty floor recoiling under the thudding feet, a glimpse of remembered features in a face in profile, the shock of a turning head. We wait for you to come down the stairs every evening, lifting a hand, a grin; shedding a coat, a scarf; the possibility always there.

  ‘Would you like to see poor, dear Carol before she’s screwed down?’ As if he had said, ‘Bury her forever, compose memory under the waxed features, pad it down in white satin.’ But no one went to see.

  It rained of course. Did you know? Snivel and rain on the mourners’ faces, the words chattered through clenched teeth; a charade but I was atoning for all the other funerals I’d left unattended, the mockeries I’d refused to suffer. And something else too.

  ‘Working on the coroner’s court you sees all sorts. Turn all colours, they do, when they’ve topped theirselves. Gas is pink. You wouldn’t think that would you? And leave ’em long enough they’ll go green.’

  ‘Do you believe in ghosts, Matt? Do you believe when someone’s died suddenly, violently, they come back? I’m scared, going back to that flat alone. Scared I’ll see her. I wouldn’t want to see her like that. Have you ever seen a cat when it’s been run over? It was like that. There was a nurse—she said she was a nurse—with a ring on her little finger; I think she was one of us. I don’t know where she came from, just appeared from nowhere. She stayed with me all the time and I just held onto her hands. But I’ve got to go back. Sandy said she’d come with me, but I said no. I want to be by myself. But I’m scared.’

  At first you’ll see her everywhere, turn and see her standing there. But don’t be afraid. If the dead do walk it’s in their best clothes, upright and smiling though they lie in the gutter in blood, the neck snapped like a flower stalk.

  ‘And there’s no bitterness now. Even though I found out what I did afterwards, reading those letters when I went through her things. I don’t hate anymore, not anyone. I’m glad, glad she had the chance of happiness. You know what I mean, Matt.’

  Betrayal itself is a death and a kind of murder, and all deaths are one’s own. I sit here in the corner, a watcher, a party to murder in my own betrayal.

  ‘Are you happy Matt? Will it last?’

  Faces look down from the brown walls.

  ‘I’m going to do the whole place up. Take down all the pictures, scrap those of people who don’t come down here any more. Been there fifteen years, some of them.’

  ‘It was nicer in those days: afternoon tea and a piano. D’you remember, Billy? He was a marvellous pianist my dear. He could really play. Not all this stomp, stomp you get today. Then when we went again it was full of youngsters in Teddy-boy suits, and a screaming juke-box. Billy was in the forces and I was on hush-hush work for the admiralty. You looked marvellous in uniform B. We hardly ever go there now.’

  ‘Such a waste! All those kids about seventeen; some of them very attractive too. I look around and think what a waste.’

  Why don’t the scars show? Faces can be too young. Am I getting old? Who’ll love me when I’m old? Don’t listen to the mirrors, reflecting eyes set in the painted walls, glimpse of a half-face, flicker of twisting limbs. The mirrors multiply death.

  It’s early yet. Cy behind the bar, lean knife form in clinical white coat, light glinting on grey hair harsh as a scouring pad, polishes glasses detached, the ash falling in the washing-up water. First-comer feeds the squatting juke-box through its slit, pursed lips, the coins dropping into the metal paunch, hiccuping through the steel intestines to belch thick chords into the unmoving air. The floor lies empty, flat on its back under the muted lights. Three shapes huddle in separate corners, dragging deep with every pull, hands turning glasses slowly, eyes not seeing water seep through liquor like green smoke or smooth alcohol climb the steep tumbler walls; drowned.

  Is it different? No, not different; yet not the same. What do you see through my eyes? The features are different but the masks are the same. Who’s that in the slim-boy jeans, kicking the fire into flame with a black boot. I don’t remember. Look closely. She loved you too.

  ‘You’re lucky Matt. You’re different from the rest of us. You’re true.’

  ‘Am I so different?’

  You recognise the voices? Did I say that? Look again. They’re coming.

  Come down the stairs slowly, adjusting your mask; a nod at the bottom for madame. Push through into the cloakroom and unwind the wrappings that hid you in the world outside. Turn to the mirror.

  ‘Who are you in my eyes?’

  ‘I am the captain with pipe and blazer.’

  ‘I am the rake. I’ll stab you to the heart with my pointed shoes and cut your pretty throat on the blades of my sleek trousers.’

  ‘I am the boy next door.’

  ‘I’m beautiful. Say I’m beautiful.’

  ‘I loved my mother. Mother?’

  ‘I love myself.’

  It’s Jill isn’t it? She’s changed. Perhaps.

  ‘You’re early. I didn’t expect you so early. All alone?’

  ‘Rae’s not well; been in bed all day. I’m off the hook this evening.’

  ‘You missed a good night last night. Have a drink.’

  I watch her cross the floor to the bar, sauntering bravely, invisible in a careless cloak. You still love her. Of course. I know what you mean. Yes, I thought you’d understand. And Rae? That’s different. Yes, I see that too.

  They’re coming faster now, individual ones and twos clotting into groups, too many to push past the desk at once, tumbling down the stain like a waterfall; banging of car doors, the stuttered diesel tick-
over of taxis, dying whine of a scooter. March winds playing a crazy game whirled them up from bed-sitters and flatlets all over the city, hurried them through the dark streets and sucked them in at the door, down the stairway funnel into the gut of the earth.

  ‘Are you a member? Are you dead?’

  They press in through the cloakroom door, helmeted, hooded, fly-fronts hidden under duffle-coats, too many now for the mirror to question, eager for music, comfort of close humanity, the quick release of a hand cupping a glass.

  ‘Shall we do this one?’ The record is spinning a web of remembered sounds that unites present and past, binding the room and all its separate elements in a mesh of memory. We move out onto the floor. I take her loosely in my arms and we begin to turn gently with a hesitant swaying step like a fading carousel, the other couples rising and falling around us. ‘Not much talent here tonight.’

  ‘There’s your beatnik over by the bar.’

  Over my shoulder I see a child’s lost face above black sweater and tights through the haze. ‘She drinks too much.’ Once, at a party, I kissed her. She was barefoot and we danced an improvised Apache step together while the room drew back to watch. I saw her smiling to herself as she tried to follow the patterns my feet traced on the floorboards. Afterwards, in the kitchen, I kissed her, reaching deep down in her mouth for the live, soft tongue. The next time I saw her in the house of shades she was drunk and crying. We danced together, this time a formal step hemmed in by others.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ She shook her head, dark eyes overspilling tears. I held her closer, the full warmth of her puppy flesh drawn to me, her breasts firm against my body. ‘Why’s she crying?’

  ‘She’s lonely.’

  ‘She’s a nice kid.’

  ‘That’s what they all say. You ought to do something about it.’

  ‘I’m a married man.’

  ‘Oh shit that!’

  The violence of her friend’s reply shocked me. Now I looked for her guiltily every time, wondering if I should ask her to dance, if she’d found anyone to ease the ache, shifting my vague intuition of responsibility onto some mythical lover.

  Beside us a couple are already lost, eyes closed, his mouth against her neck, arms binding each other tight and who can say whether it’s the prelude to a one-night stand, a brief affair or a years-old marriage. I no longer judge. Her hands are round his neck, fingers tangle in his hair, hips move against each other. For this interlude two undistinguished people appear beautiful in tragic masks.

  You’ve changed too. Are you still there? When you remember me.

  Yes, I’ve changed. We’re older, all of us. Matthew, the boy with the book, the word, glad tidings, good spell, where’s he now? Become like everyone else, part of the darkness, a shade.

  Do you remember the last time we joked together, two butch boys strolling in the sun by the summer-slack river? I promised you a stick of Blackpool rock. Did you know then that you too would suddenly grow older?

  I knew. And then you went out and died and left me to carry on down into the dark alone.

  Mine was a different dark, thicker, earth filling the eyes.

  I’m sorry, for a moment I forgot.

  It was lonely at first, lying in the rain beside the railway lines, hearing the trains fly by, after the flowers faded among the straight dead. Once or twice I made my way here but they were all strange faces, no one I knew to talk to.

  And now we’re all here.

  No, not all. There are still some to come. But they’re coming. Wait and see.

  The wind is blowing stronger through the hidden places of the city, gathering them in, filling their veins with its restlessness, intimation of Spring, the urge to dance, break hearts with a look, flex stiff muscles in the attitudes of youth, in Notting Hill Gate among the chocolate faces and fashionable writers, beside the creek at Barking, among the bright brick boxes of Suburbiton.

  ‘There’s Judy.’

  ‘I’m not speaking to her.’

  Brilliant, sad, surrounded by a whirl of satellites who are drawn closer or spin pale, disconsolate moons away on the fringe of light as her eyes flash negative or positive, she passes to the bar. They revolve anxiously, hovering to see who will be summoned for their sun’s warmth this chill evening while the rest are left to reflect in each other’s eyes or slip away into the shadows by the wall. Her mask is immaculate, meticulously built up touch by touch before the mirror; the whole day dedicated to dressing the window, the dummy on which this flawless jewel, no longer flesh and hair but enamel and paste, will be mounted. The hands betray, coarse and red-skinned like a chicken’s wattles.

  ‘You’re opting out?’

  ‘What’s the use? She’s a fool. I told her so. The years are slipping, I said. The autumn of our lives.’

  ‘You must have been drunk to come up with anything as trite as that.’

  ‘I was. But it shook her.’

  ‘Why waste your time? She’ll still be coming down here in another ten years, a bit more anxious, with a new bunch of adolescents clustering round her like a thirties movie queen. The rest will either have had her or passed her over. Where’s the point?’

  ‘It’s alright for you.’

  ‘She gets her kicks out of scenes not sex. Life’s too short for that kind of masochism.’

  ‘But then we’re not all obsessed by sex like you. There are other things.’

  ‘What’s gone wrong with you today?’

  ‘Me? Think I’ll go and dance with that little blonde over there, the one I picked up on Thursday.’

  ‘You do that.’ She pushes through the packed bodies, twitching and posturing on the floor. I stand watching, eyes glazing, wondering why I’m here.

  ‘Where’s Rae, then?’

  ‘Hullo, gorgeous!’

  ‘Hullo, sexy; not wearing your leather pants tonight. I love a feel of them leather pants.’

  ‘She’s terrible Jonnie. I don’t know how you manage her.’

  ‘I don’t mate. She wears me out.’

  ‘When you going to tell me the name of your tailor?’

  ‘Like it?’

  I finger the smooth dark suiting. ‘Nice tie too.’

  ‘Bought me that for Christmas, didn’t you, darling? We went over her mum’s last week and she give me these socks and all. She’s lovely, her mum.’

  ‘I hate my dad. I never speak to him now since I left home. I go when I know he won’t be there. He knows I go sometimes and give me mum a few bob, but he never asks after me and that’s how I want it.’

  ‘Does your mum know about you?’

  ‘I dunno. Sometimes I think she does but she don’t say. Sometimes I think she still don’t know about things like that. I know when the kids called me a les at school and I come running home to ask her what it meant she never knew. She said it was just another sort of nickname and not to take any notice. Funny, ent it, cos my brother’s the same.’

  ‘Does he know?’

  ‘Yeah, I think so, cos I asked him once if he had any old cravats for Jonnie and when he come down from looking in his drawer he said no he hadn’t but here’s a couple of ties. I felt meself go a bit red but I never said nothing and we’ve never mentioned it since.’

  ‘How do you know he is then?’

  ‘Oh he’s always liked boys. I remember one he was going with when he was in the army. This boy was so feminine you’d have thought he was a girl if you just looked quick. Georgie was ever so upset when he left him; just sat about the house when he came home on leave.’

  ‘Does he live at home now?’

  ‘No, none of us does except my little brother, he’s thirteen. My dad don’t hit him like he did the rest of us and he don’t hit mum so much neither. He’s an angel, my little brother. Does all the shopping and two paper rounds and gives all the money to mum. I think more of him than of anyone else in the world except Jonnie and mum. Even dad can’t fault him, that’s why he can’t hit him.’

  ‘Can I borrow your wif
e for a dance, Jonnie?’

  ‘Take her mate and the best of luck.’

  Sadie shimmies and shimmers in watered silk, the iridescent folds flowing round her, all womanflesh, young girl showering red sparklets of liquid fire as she dances.

  ‘And I said to him, “No, I’m not like that,” because I didn’t want to believe it. I was ashamed. “I’ll prove it,” I said. “Come on.” But I was shaking like a leaf even before we got to his room and he turned round and looked at me and then he said, “It wouldn’t be any good.” I reckon that’s the worst thing a man can do to you, put it inside. It’s cruel.’

  ‘Sometimes when we get to bed she turns to me and she’s all keen, you know. But I’m tired. I been at work all day and I want to sleep.’

  As I dance with Sadie I feel the thoughts throbbing between them like singing telegraph poles on a summer’s day as you lie in the warm, prickly grass beside a dusty road; a memory from childhood.

  ‘See that black butch? She can’t half dance.’

  ‘Could you fancy her?’

  ‘No, not really. They’re different from us somehow. Some girls like them though. I think they’re smashing dancers.’

  Africa glistens and stamps by the juke-box in cowboy boots and check sweatshirt, by slavey out of Haarlem, heavy muscled, flake white eyes highlighting the oiled dark skin.

  ‘How can you be more subject; black woman in a white man’s world?’

  The slim nervous boy from Ceylon flutters his Demarara hands, his eyes two moist Greek olives under thick lashes. A temple dancer from Siam, poised head flowering from a gold lamé calyx, sandals of gold wire, silvery finger-and toenails, sways cat-eyed against a deep blue sari bordered with silver.

  ‘They say she’s butch, that Indian.’

  ‘You wouldn’t think they’d be like it too.’

  ‘Oh, the Indians have been at it longer than most. All those harems. They had to pass the time somehow while waiting for a turn with the old man.’

  ‘I wouldn’t fancy that. Don’t you go getting any ideas, Jonnie. One’s enough for you.’