Deborah Levy - Billy and Girl

Girl disappearing into the faded teddy-bear wallpaper, shrinking from Louise’s gaze, dazzled by its loopy intensity, burying her head in the faint outline of one of the pastel-coloured teddies’ big swollen belly. A stomach just like an infant’s, but smooth, without a navel where the cord was cut at birth, knotted and bleeding, a little stump to be powdered.

Crying into the bear’s small round ears, wetting the paper with her Girl tears, spontaneous catastrophic tears which she will have to give up one day and replace with stoic adult tears, like she will have to give up this bedroom and her plastic bubble bath creatures and soaps in the shape of hippos and dolphins.

‘You and me and the clothes and that—’ Louise pointing her knife in Girl’s direction — ‘what’s it all for?’

Girl says, ‘You were just girlmeat when I first saw you. Packing peas in your sad shoes. Girlmeat, no label, no frills. EEC: thaw before cooking. What a disgusting sight. I made you into a better brand of Louise to cheer myself up.’

‘Yeah?’ FreezerWorld Louise pretending she’s thinking about this, tapping the knife against her teeth. In a minute she’s going to smash the blade right through Girl’s head. ‘Wetard Wetard Wetard Wetard.’ Louise makes her way towards Girl, half screaming, half whispering, ‘Wetard Wetard Wetard Wetard, I’m a WEeeeTAaaaaRD,’ stretching her lips to make ‘WEEEEEEEeeeeetAAAAAaaaaaard’ last for ever, slamming her knife into one of the wallpaper teddies, ripping out its awed round eyes. ‘Weetaaaard weetaaaard weetaaaard weetaaaard weetaaaard weetaaaard weetaaaard weetaaaard weetaaaard weetaaaard.’ Squeaking her voice, ‘Weetaaaaaard weeeeeetard weeeeeeeeeeeeetard weeeeeeeeeeeetard,’ carving at the wallpaper, scratching LOUISE in the plaster with the point of her knife. Stumbling towards the dressing table, slashing at the child princess’s furniture bought by Dad when Girl was seven, an old-fashioned one with a mirror and little drawers. Secret places to hide a girl diary, under the pink polka-dot girl socks with Girl’s secret name sewn inside, ‘Louise’ looped in blood-red daisy stitch.

Girl knows that Louise wants to carve her secret name into her girl flesh, coming at her to brand the first L into her cheek. The Louise snarl-up. Is that what it takes to give up Girl? Blood? Billy gives his note to Raj. Gesturing him to read it out loud. Raj licking his lips, which feel like bone. Heart pounding under the new shirt at the sight of his girlfriend sobbing and FreezerWorld Louise becoming the thing she was called, showing them just how good she can do retard.

TO GIRLS EVERY WHERE. RAJ AND BILLY ARE THE GODS OF LOVE AND LAGER. WE ARE READY TO ENJOY LIFE WITH GIRLS. THE MALE CITIZENS OF TWENTY FIRST. GOOD LOOKING, GOT THE WORDS, WELL HUNG, WILL riSK proMotioN pROSPECTS to DEFEND the righTS of GIRLS WE LOVE. WE ARE fUtURE MAN. DEaTH TO OLD KIND OF DAD PRINCE—

Mr Tens interrupts Raj. He’s even plucked up enough courage to shout and whirl his bow tie. ‘Shut up, Billy! You’re giving me a fucking migraine.’

Louise folds her arms, knife lose in her hand. ‘Yeah. Shut the fuck up, Billy! I was having a conversation with your sister. ’Snot me who’s girlmeat, you stoopid cunt, why dyuthink I ran away then? Start taking notes, Billy … Go on … Fuck you, Billy, let’s see that pen move or I’ll kill your sister.’

Billy does what he’s told.

‘Sometimes you got to make a run for it, dontcha? Weeeeeeetard weeeeeeetard … write it Billy, write Weeeeeeetard Weeetard weeetard for ever and ever write it for ever and ever weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetard write it in your book, Billy, weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetard, she’s com-ing to get you, weeeetard’s coming to get you, here comes weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetard.’ She makes her way towards Girl, whose dirty blond ponytail is falling out of the plastic heart grip, same as the one she bought Louise, tripping over a child’s pair of blue plastic sandals neatly lined up under the dressing table that has been ruined for ever. ‘I knew who you was before you even clapped eyes on me,’ FreezerWorld Louise is whispering now. Measuring her words. Making the brother and sister lean forward to hear her. She takes out a little pot of lip gloss with a picture of a kiwi fruit on the lid. Dips her chewed-up finger into the green balm and smears it on her lips. ‘Seen photos of you at Mrs O’Reilly’s. And you , Billy fucking England.’

She pauses, screwing up her eyes, little flesh furrows on her see-thru skin.

‘Mrs O’Reilly’s in FreezerWorld tonight.’ Louise throws the knife on the floor.

‘Thing is, I don’t think your mother wants to see you.’

The Merc is a nerve bomb. Nerve atoms jumping into the purple velveteen seats. Working their way into Merc metal and glass.

Billy, Mr Tens and Louise in the back. Raj and Girl in the front. Billy and Louise both holding knives where healer Tens can see them.

No cocktails this time. Raj keeping his eye on the road. He feels Merc weirdness seeping into his hands from the steering wheel. Mrs O’Reilly? Hasn’t he met her? The woman who came to see the car. Fingering the upholstery, as if she knew every curve of the metal beneath it. Walking around the Merc wreck like it was a house she used to live in. He looks at his watch.

‘Five to eleven.’ Raj doesn’t know why he said this. I mean, who wants to know?

North London streets. A few kebab shops open. Dry cleaners offering a special price on duvets. Blokes with cans sitting in shop doorways. Crap shops like Raj’s father’s crap shop. Shops selling nylon mittens, outsize brassieres, crap bath mats, dog biscuits shaped like baby boots and bones, crap carpet shops and crap betting shops. The crap chemists and their bored indifferent pharmacists frowning over prescriptions all year round, handing out pills and syrups to citizens with symptoms. The crap shop on the left that sells yams and plantains, right next to the crap shop that sells crap curtains and wallpaper for all the English houses and conversions and flats. What kind of life is he, Raj, going to make for himself? Yeah, it’s true he likes a kebab sometimes. Maybe one day he’ll buy the family dog a stinking baby’s-boot bone with Xtra iron in it. Maybe one day he’ll buy a bath mat from one of the crap shops. Many a time he’s swallowed cough elixir bought from a crap chemist. Sipping the pink stuff from a five-ml plastic spoon.

Silence from Master England. Got nothing to say. Funny sort of a doctor he’s turned out to be. Goes dumb just when Raj actually needs his words for a change. Look at the teenage quack biting his tongue, sitting there motionless, dead still, like there’s a killer wasp hovering above his head. Just his little knife and pain index, going through it in his head, A to Z.

Girl’s got other things on her mind. ‘Front or back entrance?’

‘Back,’ Mr Tens, hostage, a man who lost his God faith with one Billy glare, replies happily and calmly. He’s enjoying the ride.

FreezerWorld at night. Everything is milky blue. Ivory and pearl. A world without stars. The Frozen World. Rumbling of fridges across the ice fields. Dome of white sky. Long solitary journeys across the frozen ocean aisles. Mr Tens. An Arctic Marco Polo who knows the cartography of FreezerWorld with his eyes shut.

Raj feels the cold freeze the marrow of his bones. It’s as if he can hear a seal barking in the distance, which is far away, a confusion of whites and greys. Musk oxen and hares disappearing into the snow. Somewhere, near the frozen-fish section, the ivory-white head of a polar bear searches for her cubs. Raj knows that she is Billy and Girl’s mother. Grey tongue. Purple mouth. White teeth. Hissing as she prowls the ice fields. The ice bear, creature of the Arctic edges, listening out for clues.