January 2016
By Stewart Mott
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THE NATIVES ARE RESTLESS
“Come on, they’ll be here in a minute. Shift your arse.”
Mandy shifted as instructed, the ripe globe pulling her replica shirt uncomfortably taut.
“Get off my case, you fat fuck.”
“Look who’s talking,” Jimmy scoffed. “You’re the one who looks like a beached whale.”
“Yeah, and this time next week I’ll be thin again. You’ll still be a fat fuck.”
Jimmy kissed her tenderly on the cheek. He took her arm just as someone knocked at the door.
“Christsake …”
Jimmy scratched his own ample tum and opened the door.
“James Marshall?”
The woman was half Jimmy’s size, but exuded a physical threat that he found oddly intimidating.
“Yep.”
“We’ve come for the house keys. Are you all ready to go?”
Her tone was not unkind, but to Jimmy and Mandy it sounded like a big ‘fuck you’.
“Tell her I’m coming.”
Mandy lifted herself up for the first time since breakfast and stubbed out a fag she’d barely touched. She smudged ash into the carpet under her right Reebok.
The council woman stood patiently aside as Jimmy carted the last few boxes into the boot of his car.
“Do you do this every day?”
Mandy inspected the woman for the faintest emotional response.
“Not every day, no.”
“Do you enjoy it?”
“Enjoy is hardly the right word.”
“What is the right word, then?”
The woman sought the answer in tiny rotted ravines in the doorframe. After a moment that seemed far longer than it was, Jimmy returned from the car and dropped the keys into the council woman’s palm.
“Well, Merry Christmas. Come on, slapper.”
He eased his wife across the threshold and left the council woman to lock up their home of the last three years.
“Merry Christmas”, she said mostly to herself.
Jimmy and Mandy climbed into the car, dug out their seatbelts and let out a huge, simultaneous sigh. Mandy looked at Jimmy and chuckled. It wasn’t appropriate but she couldn’t help herself.
“So where to now?”
“I was hoping you might tell me.”
Mandy took Jimmy’s hand, squeezed it tight and then rested it on the handbrake.
Jimmy had drunk in the hotel bar before, when the manager of the local Wetherspoons had barred him. Still, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to find it sober. Luckily Mandy was the one with the sense of direction. It had come in handy since the satnav got ‘borrowed’ by their next-door neighbour, Alec.
“Fucking Alec”, said Jimmy.
“No thanks”, said Mandy.
“We’ve been round this poxy roundabout three times now.”
“Third time lucky then, ain’t it?”
Mandy pointed through the rain-shocked windscreen. The Holiday Inn materialised between wiper strokes. Tutting to his heart’s content, Jimmy pulled into the car park.
Mandy climbed out of the car and stopped to steady the momentum of her bump.
“Come on, we’re going to get fucking soaked!”
“They’ll have towels.” Mandy rubbed her cheek with her middle finger in Jimmy’s direction.
Jimmy rolled his eyes, lifted the lid of the boot and smiled behind it. What can you bloody do, eh?
They stood in the hotel’s chairless vestibule, Mandy tapping her feet in time to the muzak.
“What is that?”
“What’s what?”
“The music.”
“Who gives a shit?”
The irritation in Jimmy’s voice made him pronounce the final T. The receptionist chose that moment to return to the desk.
“I’m ever so sorry, I’m afraid we’re full up until Saturday night.”
The friendliness in her voice was seventy per cent genuine, thirty per cent corporate.
Jimmy bit his tongue to stop from saying ‘fuck’. Mandy seized the initiative.
“Nothing at all? Are you sure, sweetheart? It’s just I’m overdue,” she patted her belly conspiratorially, “and we can’t go to the hospital until my water’s broke.”
The receptionist blinked twice.
“I know, rules eh?”
“I’m afraid your only chance is if we get a cancellation between now and tomorrow morning. And that’s not very likely this time of year.”
Jimmy clasped his finger and thumb over his eyeballs, “So there’s nothing at all? Not even a sofa in a back room somewhere? We wouldn’t get in the way, honest.”
The receptionist shook her head firmly.
“Afraid not. It’s the insurance, you see.”
Jimmy gripped the counter until it creaked. Mandy pulled his forearm as if to release a fulcrum.
“Thanks anyway, love. Merry Christmas.” Her greeting visibly punctured the receptionist’s professional veneer.
The car’s two front doors closed in unison, but the difference in force was palpable. Jimmy sat in silence for a second and a half before pounding the car horn twice and alerting the entire grounds to his dismay. Mandy pulled chewing gum from her teeth and twisted it around her finger.
“Fucking steering wheel. They’re all bastards.”
“Don’t take the piss, darlin’. I’m not in the mood.”
“I can see that. The whole hotel can see that.”
A dozen sex workers and travelling salespeople were indeed peering out of their windows. Mandy adjusted her position in the passenger seat.
“So what next?”
“Golden Fleece. They’ve got a spare room upstairs.”
“How do you know that?”
“Remember when you were staying with your mum last June?”
“Yeah.”
“Well I didn’t make the bed before you came back. I never slept in it.”
Mandy snorted a tiny laugh.
“I should have guessed.”
Mandy stayed in the car this time. The rain had turned to snow and her back was giving her the arsehole. The snow hadn’t begun to settle, but the eerie quiet allowed her to think clearly. If this didn’t work, they were pretty much fucked. But then again, there was always the car. Jimmy had been known to complain when she left the heating on full blast, so there was probably no prospect of them freezing to death.
The other option was the nuclear one. Alec had a spare room. He was immensely proud of the conversion job he’d done on his garage. Mandy had it found it very comfortable that time about nine months ago. Jimmy had worked late mainly to avoid sorting things out after they’d had the mother of all rows. She’d told Alec from the very start that this was going to be a revenge fuck, nothing more, so don’t get weird afterwards. To his credit, Alec had gone right back to being the chat-over-the-fence, beer-and-footy next-door neighbour they’d treasured during their three years in Aylmer Road. Satnav notwithstanding, of course.
Mandy studied her bump as though mere concentration would reveal the mystery of who had donated the particular sperm or sperms involved in the chain reaction of her pregnancy. She hadn’t got round to telling Jimmy any of this. The right moment, that nebulous beast, had never presented itself. Looking at Jimmy’s magenta face as he shouldered his way out of Golden Fleece door, she wondered if it ever would.
“Any good?”
“His fucking mother-in-law’s staying for Christmas.”
“And she’s taken over the spare room?”
“She’s taken over the whole pub, by the sounds of it.”
Jimmy stamped a light brush of snow from his shoe, ‘cunt’ing as he went.
“So what do you reckon?”
“Well I’m not having my son born in a fucking Cortina!”
“There’s a BMW over the road. We could break into that.”
“I don’t know why you think this is all so fucking amusing. Do you want to try and stretch out on that backseat?”
“Ooh, thought you’d never ask!” Mandy flicked Jimmy’s ear. “But I’m in the third trimester, you dirty sod.”
Jimmy rammed the key in the ignition and fired up the motor with as much frustration as he could channel into it.
“Are you going to drive the whole way there like that? ‘Cause we’ll probably crash and then all our problems’ll be gone.”
“Drive where? We’ve got nowhere to fucking go! Your mum’s in Norfolk, my dad’s in Shropshire, and we ain’t got enough petrol to get past fucking Romford anyway!”
“We’ll just have to go back.”
“Back where?”
“To Alec’s.”
Jimmy looked out of the window as though someone had called to him.
“Oh yeah, I hadn’t thought of that. Have you been sitting on that idea the whole time?”
“Well, let’s just say I had it in the bank, just in case.”
“You could have told me! I wouldn’t have got stressed if I’d known.”
Mandy’s face and voice competed for incredulity.
“Well, not as stressed. Do you think he’ll be up for it?”
“Course he will. He’s still got our satnav, so he owes us one anyway.”
“That’s true.”
“And besides …”
Mandy watched a snowflake disintegrate down the window.
“What?”
“No, nothing.”
“No, go on – what?”
Mandy looked into her husband’s eyes. They did that surprisingly seldom for most people’s idea of a married couple. It was the nature of their life together that there were always distractions, other things to engage their attention, leaving little time for the really important stuff.
“Turn the engine off.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
Jimmy complied.
“I got to tell you something. And you’re not going to like it.”
“Are you sure you want to tell me when I’m in this mood?”
“I don’t think it makes any difference.”
Jimmy turned his body as far towards his wife as the cramped vehicle allowed.
“Me and Alec …”
In the pause Mandy meant for breaking the news gently, Jimmy’s face loosened. He saw it all. He didn’t know the details yet, but he didn’t need to. In a moment he conjured every glance they’d shared, every time she’d squeezed Alec’s thigh or laughed a bit too loudly at one of his jokes. It didn’t take the combined skills of Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple and Batman to piece this one together.
Jimmy smiled. Mandy wasn’t expecting that.
“Is he your free pass, then?”
Mandy smiled, too. She couldn’t help it. The gravity of the situation lost some of its pull as she remembered those drunken nights when they’d batted celebrity names back and forth – well you can snog Brad Pitt but you can’t shag him, well you can get oral off Scarlett Johansson but no kissing on the lips.
“Aren’t you angry?”
“Of course I’m fucking angry.”
He didn’t sound it.
“I’m just so fucking tired.”
Mandy gently stroked Jimmy’s temple. She practically had to dislocate her shoulder just to do that.
“Tired of what?”
“Everything.”
“Maybe we should go outside and freeze to death, then.”
“Really?”
“Well, it’s either ice cold or Alec’s.”
Jimmy laughed at Mandy’s obscure movie joke, more for it being inappropriate than funny. He faced forward, stretching out his arms until his elbows touched the windscreen.
“He has done his garage up a treat.”
Jimmy rubbed his eyes again. He looked at Mandy, then at her tummy. He reached over and tickled it, leaving tiny tear stains.
“Get your seatbelt on.”
“You all right?”
Jimmy blew air through a cat’s-arse mouth.
“Does he know?”
“I’m not a hundred per cent sure myself, that’s the trouble.”
Jimmy turned the ignition key.
“Oh well. In two thousand years who’s going to care?”
He dropped the handbrake and glided away from the kerb. Mandy barely felt the car move.
The Insightful People 