Deborah Levy - Billy and Girl

Louise is lying to her mother for the first time ever. And more lies coming up. It can’t be helped, it really can’t. The Louise tangle. Mr England is going to have to fork out, readies on the table and answer her questions. Cos she likes the brother and sister. She wants to spend time with them. Like the girl said. Have a laugh. But they fucked it. They’d better watch out. Giving her things and trashing Danny. Louise never forgets. Never. Her head is not full of holes like some people. Mrs O’Reilly is stroking Louise’s arm. The one with Mr England’s address on it. Calming her girl. Asking her again if there’s something on her mind?

Merc Madness. Raj has gone berserk. He can’t leave the Merc alone. He’s bribing his brother to look after the shop for him. Raj’s brother is only nine. Can hardly add up. Raj’s family are losing out. The more Merc meddling he does, the more he finds to do. He’s obsessed. Doesn’t care that his brother sold a glass jar of bolognese sauce and two boxes of teabags for twelve pence. Word has got out. Stupid Club has increased its membership. Especially when Raj’s brother is on the till. The new Stupid Club topic is about leaves. How in late autumn, beginning of winter, the leaves from the hedges fall onto the pavement. The refuse collectors aren’t going to take them away, are they? And the man that sweeps the street on Mondays doesn’t sweep the leaves, he just sweeps the litter. He doesn’t see leaves as being litter. That means Stupid Club have to walk over the leaves on their way back from the corner shop. Well, if you’re not looking where you’re going, you can trip over the leaves. If you’re walking your dog to the corner shop, he gets the leaves stuck in his paws, doesn’t he? Before you know it, the house is full of leaves. Indoors has become just like outdoors. What’s the point of having a house if it looks like outdoors? It just takes a bit of rain to exacerbate the situation. Wet leaves are an accident waiting to happen. Easy to slip, break a leg or sprain your ankle, the next thing you know you’re in the hospital using up a bed that someone who needs a bone-marrow transplant could have had if it wasn’t for the local leaf situation.

No wonder Raj’s baby brother wants to get rid of Stupid Club any way he can. He’d give away the entire contents of his dad’s shop just to get them out. They should stop taking their pills and eat more sugar and pork fat. Thing is, they’ve got relatives. The Stupid gene lives on. Raj has given his brother some advice about Stupid Club. What to do when he feels he’s losing a grip on his good upbringing. First thing is to turn all the heating in the shop up full. Try to boil ’em out. But that didn’t work because Stupid Club rallied to the challenge. Put on T-shirts and shorts every time they ventured out to the corner shop. Stood around wiping the sweat off their cheeks, sharing a bottle of water, in this together, enjoying themselves while Raj and his brother suffered the rage of their father when he got his gas bill. So Raj bought his brother a pile of comics and some earplugs. He knows what exposure to Stupid Club is like. He’s got two more suggestions to make and then he must get on with cleaning out the carburettor. One: If their lips move in your direction, just say ‘That’s only right, isn’t it?’ Say it every time. Get them used to the routine. Don’t ever say anything else. Two: He’ll ask their father to contact Amnesty.

Sometimes Billy makes him special pizzas and takes them out, sizzling hot in the baking tin. Raj has been very complimentary about his pizzas, which is good for Billy’s pizza confidence. Raj has worked out that every pizza is worth two pounds fifty. When he delivers his Merc bill to Billy, eventually, he’ll knock off all the pizzas he’s eaten — only fair and square. Could Billy just stick to cheese and tomato?

Billy’s got other plans. What about the work he’s done on Raj? As far as he’s concerned, Raj needs a few parts mending and all.

If Falstaff, a Shakespeare bloke, boasted that he could ‘turn diseases to commodity’, Billy doesn’t see why he shouldn’t use his special gifts to buy him a few things he needs. Pain is his triumph. He’s going to take Raj through the ethics of pain management, teach him how to tightrope-walk above the abyss. Thing is, Raj doesn’t think there is an abyss to tiptoe over. Okay, so Stupid Club is the peril of a small business in the English community, but it’s not like he’s raving. Why then, Billy insists, does Raj think a bloody finger, caught on a bit of metal under the Merc, is a sign of good luck? Is it pain rapture or what? Like the saints who actively seek out pain humiliations of the flesh? No, as far as Billy is concerned, Raj’s bloody finger is a dialogue with the spiritual, a damning of the material world with its vain pleasures. Isn’t that right, Raj? Eh?

Raj just says something about pasting Baywatch stickers onto the Merc when it’s ready.

Truth is, at the moment, Raj would rather chat to Girl. In fact, his father bursts into heaving fits of hilarity every time her name comes up. He recalls the time Girl asked him whether Mars Bars came from Mars.

‘She was just having you on, Dad,’ Raj insists.

‘No.’ His father shakes his head, spluttering into his handkerchief. ‘I’m going to give you some advice, son, lay off the pizzas, they’re giving you a paunch. Eat your mother’s food. Give the car wreck back to them. If you work in the shop every Sunday for a year, I’ll buy you a car with an engine. As for the girl, she’s stark raving bonkers.’ There’s no insanity in the family and he wants to keep it that way.

The English are famous for being mad. Even the beef is mentally unbalanced, hopping about the asylums (listed buildings) singing hey nonnie no. Less frivolously, and at this point his father takes his wife’s hand and squeezes it tight, if he gets wind that his eldest son is getting serious with Crazy Daisy, they’ll find him a wife.

‘But I’m English, Dad, and I’m all right?’ Raj looks a bit nervous now. Worst of all, he’s getting pizza cravings. Wakes up in the middle of the night longing for a Billy Special.

When Girl comes out to ‘help’ Raj, which means lying stretched out on her back on the bonnet while he fiddles with the clutch, his heart beats a bit faster.

He’s forgiven her the chicken-tikka joke. Every Friday something of a tradition has commenced. Girl brings him out a new cocktail, the most recent, presented to him in ‘an old-fashioned glass’. She was extra proud of this one. An Apricot Lady, three parts rum, two parts apricot brandy etc., garnished with an orange slice. It sent his head spinning under the car, his fingers went feeble and he cut his thumb, didn’t he? Hence the blood that Billy found so interesting. Raj saw it as a good-luck omen regarding his future with Girl. Couldn’t say that to the lust object’s brother, could he? Had to listen to the ‘dialogue with the spiritual’ analysis and pretend to take notes.

Girl’s gone apricot mad. Not just Fridays, every week day there’s an apricot theme. Apricot fizz, apricot shake, apricot sour, apricot sparkler. Raj has had to familiarise himself with different kinds of cocktail glasses just to please Girl. A chilled highball glass. A chilled collins glass. A chilled fucking this, a chilled fucking that. It’s a relief to grab a Pepsi from his dad’s shop fridge and glug it extra quick to halt the cocktail thirst rasping his throat, whirling his brain, whacking his thumbs into Merc tin. Raj doesn’t dare put a price on the cocktails. They are either free or priceless. A grey area. Raj is confused. Got to get his younger brother to take a swig after a hard day of Stupid Club tolerance and get his point of view.