Deborah Levy - Billy and Girl

Mind you, Billy and Girl really appreciate his work. Billy calls Raj the Michelangelo of Merc. It’s an art treasure, the pizza boy swoons. ‘I’ve lost my equilibrium, I’m scared of falling, it’s a sightseeing rapture, I want to write postcards to people I don’t know describing it. A beauty catastrophe, better than Venice, my Merc pain inheritance.’

Girl is much cooler. ‘Yeah, Raj, it’s getting there.’ Where is there? Raj wants to know. Girl brought another blonde to look at it. Give her opinion. Louise.

Louise is wonderful. Two blondes in a day. She wears these far-out orange ankle boots. Louise reckons the Merc is nearly there too. Gave him a blow job on the back seat. Aaaah. This is the life. Don’t ever tell Girl. It’s a secret for ever. He wasn’t asking for it. She just did it. Touching him in the dark with the smell of petrol between them. Made a feast of him. Not just peckish, Louise was starving. Aaah. Life is good. Next morning he wiped the seat with apricot creme cleaning fluid, to keep up with the apricot theme Girl had introduced into his lifestyle. It’s Girl he wants, but she’s not offering and he’s not pushing. Her lips. ‘Kiss me soon but not now’ lips. There to be kissed but she doesn’t know how to ask and he’s not agitating. Anyway he has to keep his Girl feelings secret from his family. Especially since they all seem to have become involved in the car, and make lame excuses to visit him while he’s working on it. Which is most of the time. Merc Madness.

His uncle has offered to re-upholster the seats with the purple velveteen reject sample from his factory. Not to be outdone, his auntie has given him a number of air fresheners in the shape of apples and pears and Christmas trees to hang from the mirror. What with the Baywatch stickers and the tastes and opinions of three owners, plus Raj’s family putting their oar in on a regular basis, it’s going to be one hell of a crowded car. If Raj can pull it off, he’s going to build a minibar in the back for Girl.

Someone else has come to see the car and Raj doesn’t know how he feels about it. His first identifiable feeling was fear. Louise’s mother came to see the car and Raj’s voice came out a bit too high when she introduced herself. She appeared the day after Louise gave him the first blow job he’d ever had. Mrs O’Reilly. Rajindra. When he uttered his name he visibly shook. Sex repercussions about to happen. He hadn’t even asked for it, Louise had made the suggestion and he thought it was quite a good one. Perhaps he should scarper into the shop on the pretext of taking over from his little brother on the till? But Mrs O’Reilly made him stay with her gentle womanly manner. Introduced herself with a little smile and looked interested when he showed her round the Merc and all his improvements. Yes, she thought purple velveteen would ‘give a lovely feeling’ to the car, thanked him politely for taking time out to show her his craftmanship, thank you very much and she has to rush because she’s off to fetch her daughter from work. She and Louise are going to the pictures. Yes, she wouldn’t mind a couple of pies from Raj’s father’s shop because her girl might be peckish after a hard day at work. Louise has an insatiable appetite. Raj muttering something about the weather, a bit rainy if she knows what he means, ushering her into the shop, instructing her to push through Stupid Club towards the fridge, waving goodbye.

After she left, Raj felt a sudden stabbing pain in his abdomen. It just came over him from nowhere. Mrs O’Reilly saying goodbye. It was a difficult and perplexing moment, the burden of some kind of affliction weighing her down, shining through her cheerfulness, something so sad that even Stupid Club went silent for a few seconds. That was a real first. The thing Stupid Club hates most is silence. Whenever silence seems inevitable, Stupid Club have been known to move as one unit towards a packet of Hula Hoops and read out loud all the ingredients listed on the back, provoking an intense discussion on the virtues of starch salt.

Raj suddenly wants to have access to a multiplicity of understandings. He feels that his youth has been exposed to personal anguish and transgression and that in some odd way he has grown up. He even feels sad on behalf of Stupid Club. That night he went to bed early, took a couple of aspirins and dreamt of black rain gushing from his eyes. In the morning he’d forgotten all about it, ate his cornflakes and left the house whistling.

Louise made sure she scrubbed Mr England’s address off her arm before she visited him. She copied it onto a scrap of paper which she immediately lost. Big panic. Sleepless nights. Packing the FreezerWorld fridges like a robo with fear fever programmed into its inners. What if her mother finds it? Well, so what if her mother finds it? Louise has a special understanding with her mother. Never to lie to her. Louise has broken faith and she feels bad inside. The bad feeling is like a thin silver needle in her flesh, it hurts every time she moves. Yesterday she couldn’t go into work and her mother had to phone Mr Tens.

‘Is there something worrying you, Louise?’

Louise shaking her head, letting her mother, who is perched on the side of her bed, brush out the tangles in her hair, stroking her cheeks, fussing over her. It is very important to her mother that Louise is all right. The agreement is that if Louise is not all right, she’ll tell her mother, who will do everything she can to make her all right. More than all right. Everything that her mother can control in the world, to do with Louise, she will. Every detour from what she knows, every journey to the turbulent geography of her daughter’s inner life she has to make, every astonishing nightmare she has to understand as if it is her own, this is her project for whatever is left of her motherly life.

She wants the pain in Louise to settle. Her image for it is like the fake snow in those paperweights with Christmas scenes inside them. It is very important that Louise is not shaken. Louise’s body contains multiple pain pathways. It is entirely necessary for her face to appear to be impassive and emotionless. Start feeling a little at a time. That’s what her mother says to her. Eat the elephant in bite-sized mouthfuls.

Louise and her mother chewing the elephant, gargling with Tizer afterwards.

Mr England. Louise was clever, she found him with only the dimmest memory of his address. Danny drove her all the way there. Took the day off work and crawled up and down one particular street in Nottingham. Louise pointed to the door she thought was more than likely the entrance to Mr England’s castle. Despite the fear fever that had set in, she always knew she would find him. Told Danny to wait in the car, she would be about forty minutes at the most.

Danny wasn’t worried cos he had the local newspaper with him. Danny is crazy for the Lonely Hearts section of any publication. Likes to read how people describe what they want. ‘Sartre seeks De Beauvoir: a mentally elegant and clear-eyed mature woman for gentle cultural activities.’ Yeah? Not exactly. Not for him. He’s not a Lonely Heart anyway, it’s just recreation. He’s got Louise and she takes up all his time. Completely out of it. But he loves her. Most of the time. He told her mother so. ‘I love your girl, Mrs O’Reilly. What a fucking dream queen but she’s got to me.’ All of them looking after her. Mr Tens the Christian. Got God in a big way, has Mr Tens. Plays golf with the Christian Sportsman Club. All of them looking out for Louise. After Mrs O’Reilly explained to them how she found her adopted daughter. Runaway teenage grief mess. Snot and tears and a little pink lipstick hidden in her Chinese silk purse. Mrs O’Reilly loves Louise and so does Danny the dog prince. He loves fucking her and she loves fucking him.