Ever Dundas - Goblin

I didn’t know this party was for me. I thought it was just another party, like all the others. No one had ever made me cake before and it must have taken a lot to pull together all those rations. I felt sick and pleased all at once.

Everyone cheered and Mad told me to make a wish, and I couldn’t decide. I had a million wishes to make.

‘World peace!’ someone yelled, and it echoed through the room before LK damned them all with, ‘Now who’s a boring fart, eh? All of ye. World peace ferfecksake, we all know she’s gonna wish to be a pirate or some such nonsense, eh ye weecunt?’ They all laughed and yelled ‘Pirate! Pirate!’ as I wished for David back. I figured it was the same difference as wishing to be a pirate because David for certain was a pirate by now and he would make me a pirate and we’d sail the seas together and we’d find treasure and I’d marry a mermaid too. I pictured him in my head but he was fuzzy and black and white, smudged at the edges like the faded photograph I carried. I decided it didn’t matter. He was a pirate now and he’d look different; swarthy and all muscle, wielding a sword. There he was, on his ship, in glorious technicolour.

I blew out the candles and Potato Pete stood up and fell on his face.

London, 1944 – 1945

People always came to the flat, hanging around, drinking, staying the night. I called them the Army Rejects because most of them were from the Freaks and Wonders troupe in the circus days and most of them had deformities. There was old Louise and her dwarf brass band; Betsy, Frank, Holly and Lester. Old Louise’s singing was really something but their musical abilities were what old Louise described as ‘Avant-garde, dahling,’ and everyone else described as a godawful racket.

Then there was Lenny the Giant but I called him Lenny the Spider because his limbs were so long he looked like a spider, especially when he was sat down and he was all legs and arms. And there was Adeline and Ariadne, the beautiful conjoined twins. There was also Maisie. She had growths coming out either side of her neck. Adeline told me that they found Maisie in the street and she would charge people who wanted to touch her growths but when I flipped her a shilling and went and felt them she pushed me off and slapped me. The growths felt all rubbery and she was a snooty bitch so I told everyone she was a faker and that they were just glued on to make herself seem more interesting.

Then there was Adam. We hung around together and I eventually asked him out. He was telling me that when he was in the circus he wrapped his fingers up to make his hands more like flippers and he’d hide his legs and paint his whole body a silvery grey and during his act he would make seal noises and balance a ball on his nose. When he told me about painting his body I thought of him with nothing on but the paint and I went to my room and played with myself as I thought of painting him, stroking him slowly all over. It was after that I asked him if he would go with me, though it was a while before I saw him with nothing on. He was a good kisser and he taught me to play poker. He didn’t have any parents either; they’d sold him to a sideshow in Brighton. The sideshow owners kept him locked in a cage until James rescued him. I heard the story from James, from Mad, from Adam and from anyone else who would tell it. Each time it was different.

‘James broke in at night,’ said old Louise, ‘he was attacked by a monkey and poisoned by a snake but still he saved Flipper Boy, even while he fought off a ten foot giant.’

‘It’s true what old Louise said,’ said Adam. ‘I watched from my cage as he wrestled with that snake. He didn’t have to fight off the giant, though. Lenny was a right softie, he only roared and beat his chest for the show. James had him in the palm of his hand the moment he walked in.’

‘I’d heard about the boy locked up in the cage,’ said James, ‘so I paid the sideshow a visit and paid a hefty price for Adam. Lenny simply followed me, leaving of his own free will. That’s all.’

‘Don’t listen to him,’ said Frank, one of the dwarfs who played the tuba in the brass band. ‘He’s just down-playing it all because he doesn’t want to get caught after stabbing the sideshow proprietor and stealing Adam. It was in all the papers.’

‘James killed a man?’

‘So they say.’

‘Who’s “they”?’

‘The papers. He will have killed plenty more by now, eh, Goblin? But it’s for King and country. God save the King.’

I asked Mad if James had killed a man but she just said, ‘Don’t listen to those gossip-mongers and storytellers, G. There’s nothing controversial here apart from that bastard who locked up Adam.’

There were many stories like that; tales woven by so many different people that no one knew what was true anymore and the tales flowed when the wine flowed. People came and went, an old circus family stayed for months after being bombed out, others just dropped by, sleeping on the couch, in the bath, in the hallway. The circus men who weren’t freaks were drafted. Everyone else worked, even the freaks.

‘No one wanted us before,’ said old Louise. ‘But now there’s a war on they can find work for us. Now there’s a war on we’re worth something.’

‘Not me,’ said Adam. ‘I’m not worth anything.’

No one would give him a job – they just took one look at his hands and turned him away.

‘You are worth something,’ I said, ‘They’re just idiots.’

We retreated to my bedroom where I kicked out Holly and Lester who were sprawled out on my bed having some drunken conversation. Adam lay down on my bed and I curled up next to him, my leg over his, my arm around his waist. I burrowed my head into his neck, smelling and kissing him.

‘You’re my first girlfriend,’ he said. ‘Girls can’t see past these. Not like you.’

I pulled back and looked at him for a moment.

‘Why would I see past them?’ I said.

I kissed him on the lips and pressed myself into him, rubbing myself against his thigh. I flicked my tongue out, like a lizard, tasting him. His tongue met mine and pushed into my mouth.

‘Goblin!’

I jumped, pulling away from Adam.

‘Goblin?’ said Mad. She knocked on the door. ‘You in there? You’ve not done your chores. The kitchen’s a mess.’

I rolled my eyes at Adam and said, ‘I’ll do them later.’

‘You said that yesterday. Now, Goblin.’

‘Okay, okay. I’m coming.’

I kissed Adam and said, ‘There’s never any peace here.’

He came with me and helped with my chores. Old Louise was sat at the kitchen table, drinking beer and singing to herself. Adam and I swayed to the sound of her voice, bumping up against each other, giving each other love-eyes as we tidied and cleaned.

One morning after one of our parties I woke up with my stomach all cramped up and I thought I was dying, but then I bled from between my legs and I knew I was okay. When I felt the wetness I put my hand in my pants and my fingers came away bloody. I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror and smeared the blood across my cheeks like I was a warrior.

I went to my room and tore up an old shirt, stuffing it in my pants. I was worrying about what ma had said about the curse and having babies so I went to find Mad. She was having breakfast in the kitchen with old Louise. I sat down and helped myself to toast. Mad poured me some tea.

‘What’s that on your face?’

‘The curse.’

‘What?’

‘The curse came.’

Mad and Louise looked at each other, eyebrows raised, then laughed. Old Louise had quite the cackle and Lizard King shouted through from the sitting room for her to keep it down.