Deborah Levy - Billy and Girl

‘Shall I tell you where she is?’ Billy knows that Raj is always interested to know where Girl is.

‘Where?’

‘Doing a Mom check.’

‘What’s a Mom check?’

Billy decides to chew on a Jaffa after all. ‘It’s where she knocks on the door of a house and pretends that any woman who comes to the door is our mother.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Sad.’ Billy guffaws.

‘Why do you say “Mom”? That’s American, isn’t it?’

‘Watching telly. We like American sitcom moms.’

Raj nods, bewildered. It’s quite nice to feel bewildered, makes a change from Stupid Club reading out loud the nutrition information on plastic tubs of margarine.

The A27 is a circular road that goes around London. A three-lane carriageway. The sky is grey and the tarmac is grey. Girl asks the cab driver to stop for a while so she can look at the 1930s houses built on the shore of the highway. Pebble dash. Old-fashioned flowers growing in the front drive. Tall purple gladioli and trimmed bushes of honeysuckle. Latticed windows. A shining car parked in each well-swept drive.

‘Thinking of buying a property then?’ The cab driver smirks behind his hand.

When Girl winds down the window the lever falls off. Foam stuffing oozes out of the back seat. Rusting springs poke into Girl’s hips. ‘Your car’s a fucking lousy pile of shit.’

The driver can’t decide whether she’s a rock star or a psycho. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he says, just to be on the safe side.

‘I won’t.’ Girl suddenly opens the door of the cab and a rush of dust flies into her face.

‘Mad cunt.’ The driver leans towards her trying to keep his hands on the wheel as the door comes off its beaten-up hinges. It drags down on the tarmac and Girl jumps out, skipping between the traffic until she makes it to the other side. The Other Side is important to Girl. She always wants to make it to there.

Girl strides in her silver loafers right up to the driveway of the biggest house in the street and thumps on the door with her fists. Then she rings the bell. While she waits she takes out a pack of menthol cigarettes and lights up. Her face is pale. It always is, but today it is especially pale. Every now and again she bends her knees and peers through the brass letterbox. Girl takes a deep drag of menthol. As far as she’s concerned, menthol is a painkiller. A painkiller with a bit of glamour. She pushes away her peroxide-blond fringe and straightens up. Someone coming. God, she’s so slow. Come on !

‘Hello, Mom,’ Girl says loudly to the middle-aged woman staring at her from behind the door. What a fucking hideous sight.

Dirty pastel-pink fake-fur slippers. Summer dress patterned with faded rosebuds and threadbare red robins. Plump arms covered in a peppermint-green cardigan, most of the buttons missing. Band of gold on the finger of left hand. A fucking thick band of gold. The woman shoves her hands into the pockets of her cardigan and gasps when the fabric crackles, sending little electric shocks into her fingertips. Her mouth is open wide, gaping. Girl observes that Mom’s teeth are white and straight. Well looked after. Landscaped. Cleansed by a hygienist. Filled with white porcelain. Bleached and filed.

‘Who does your teeth, Mom?’ Girl drops her menthol cigarette on the doorstep and stubs it out with the toe of her silver loafer. The woman just stares. She starts shaking her head, very slowly from side to side, her hand rummaging for something in her pocket. A piece of tissue stained with pink lipstick. She brings it to her lips as if to catch something in her mouth, something unpleasant she has chewed and wants to spit out.

‘Billy is quite well but not all that well, thank you, and I am as you see me.’

‘Don’t shout.’ The woman can’t quite bring herself to plead, but her eyes are scanning the neighbours’ windows, sealed off from the busy highway with cream-coloured lace. Girl opens her mouth wide like she’s going to scream the house down.

‘I won’t scream, Mom. I promise. Why would I do a thing like that?’

Something flickers in the woman’s B-movie eyes. Jeeezus. Girl keeps her face blank as she can, but it’s really hard. You’d have to be a serious cultist to appreciate this Mom. It’s like she’s beginning to come to life, some sort of life, a dazed Nembutal life. She’s definitely breathing, that’s for sure. Got an appetite too. A little chocolate biscuit in her pocket. She’s even got a smell. Cologne. Foul swabs of sweetness coming from Mom. Druggy sweetness, dirty fake-fur sweetness, tissues stained with spit and melting chocolate. Little pearls in her ears. Oh God. She’s wringing her hands. Lips trembling.

Girl stares into the bronze dolphin doorknob. ‘Just driving down this way to do a bit of shopping, Mom. Thought I’d call in.’

‘I have no recall,’ the woman says slowly, a slight West Country twang to her dopey voice.

‘Where do you shop then, Mom?’

‘FreezerWorld.’

‘Really. How interesting. And what do you buy there?’

‘Herrings. For my husband.’

‘But what do you buy for yourself, Mom?’

The woman scratches her forehead absent-mindedly. Her cheeks are lightly dusted with powder. Sweet. Mom’s gone. Even though she is standing there breathing, she is gone.

‘I like profiteroles,’ she says eventually.

‘Profiteroles! Dangerous things to eat, aren’t they, Mom? Bite into it and all that cream ooozes out, gets stuck in your nostrils and you can’t breathe, can you, Mom?’

The woman’s pleading eyes. Little beads of sweat gathering in the corners of her faint moustache.

‘Do you have a message for Billy?’

This takes some time to go in. Worm its way into Mom. Layers and layers of Mom. Almost there.

‘It’s his wedding anniversary, is it?’ Mom looks proud of herself.

‘Yeah? Billy’s fifteen, Mom. Do me a favour and call me a minicab.’

The woman suddenly looks more alert. It’s as if she can relate to this request. She nods and shuffles off in her pink fake-fur slippers, deeper and deeper into the thick pile carpets.

A white Mercedes parked nearby has its engine running. Not running, purring. A big white beast licked clean and shiny. Waiting for Girl. Actually waiting for her. Like he’s been there all along, expecting her. An albino lion, muscled and gorgeous. The driver quick as a flash springs out of the Merc and holds the door open for her. ‘Good morning, madam,’ he says, as if they’ve known each other for years. He can just make out bits of his female passenger in the front mirror. First her peroxide hair. Then her cheekbones. Then her mouth.

‘Where do you want to go, madam?’

‘FreezerWorld.’

Girl makes two fists with her hands and thumps them into her eyes. The driver pretends not to notice the tears trickling between her fingers.

‘We want to make your world a better world. That’s why I’m going to tell a secret to everyone in FreezerWorld today. For those of you who like coffee we have a special offer on instant cappuccino . Buy any two items from the DIY section and you get a jar free! Yes, Cherie. Enjoy the taste of the continent in your own home.’

FreezerWorld. Open from 8 am to 8 pm every day. Painted a dirty blood colour outside, but inside it’s cleaner than a hospital. A man’s voice announces bargains of the moment through invisible speakers. Customers carry Plant of the Month out to their cars, a wispy coconut plant. Struggling with it through the parking lots, making room in the boot, loading up their FreezerWorld goods.

Girl prowls the aisles. A desert of lino and weird light. She’s a hunter. Looking for Mom. So many of ’em — moms. Shopping in Arctica. A frozen world. Girl needs a harpoon and an icepick. She needs to wear the skins and furs of the animals that lie packaged in the industrial freezers. And more. Beasts not eaten in England. Sealskins, polar bears and white Arctic fox furs. She needs working dogs for the hunt. Huskies. Crystals of ice caught in their paws. Odours of blood and fear. Weathering the storm without a compass. Looking for Mom. Big fucking girlprints through the snow.