Life Games by Jay Merill
Beach cafe with a humdrum feel. Sky through the window shows low-lying cloud. Lacklustre afternoon, sense of the everyday.
Mel is at the counter. She is evasive, humble. There's that kind of hunted look to her which says she expects to see derision in the eyes of others. All this, the way she is in the world. She carries her daily trials and agonies on her shoulders. It shows. Her body curves forward. But she knows too that things could be worse. She's never persecuted only mocked. So at least she can keep on going. Her fingers quiver as she places a glass of fizzy lemon on her tray. Only a little spills. Mel goes through the doors to one of the outside tables. She sips at her drink, lets her eyes close. Sees a mental picture of herself: a modest woman clutching the arm of her seat. Soothed somewhat by wave-sound her mood shapes itself to the repeated ebb and flow. You can lose yourself in a rhythm like that, she thinks.
The sun, now free from cloudiness, shimmers in the sky. Mel leans back, her face held upwards. She's mutating. Like an actor who's almost ready to enter the character she is about to play. All the groundwork is done and she has thought herself into the moment. Now, it’s a matter of letting go. The sun pours onto her upturned face, as though to draw her out of herself. A long golden interval. Secret possibilities thrum, flow upwards to the surface. Yes and no, yes and no, yes and.... Yes.
Then here's Zara saying, ‘Wake up, wake up’ to her sister as her boy Alfie runs round the table. Round and round the table many times he goes, banging with his fist. It’s the sauce bottle he’s engaging with, not either of the humans, the sauce bottle which isn’t really ketchup although they might think it is. The secret glass terminal of the Space Station blinks at him with its labelled face. A winking crease, smudge of red. These are signals. He glances at his mother and aunt briefly. They’ve seen nothing. He’s satisfied, bangs harder. Has to make sure he’ll make significant contact with H.Q. It also serves as a warning to alien invaders. They're lurking everywhere. Alfie knows that. ‘Keep off,’ he yells followed by the loudest bang yet. His mother winces. ‘Stop that,’ she says to him, and though he’s learned by now not to expect that much of her, he’s just slightly horrified. How can she know so little?
‘Hello darling.’ Mel's voice is smooth, carrying suggestions of luxury which tell of a pampered life. She opens her eyes to only half, becoming the sophisticated older sister, the one initiated into the elevated realm of womanhood with a capital W – all the mystique of it. Zara herself, and Kate the third sister, revolve timelessly round the cusp of pubescence. This is the life game in which the three of them are happy to collude, though Zara and Kate are well into their thirties and both married with children.
The three sisters have remained close through their collective myths and fantasies, each one gratified by the parts she plays in all their joint performances. Mel, as the eldest, has the role of chief myth maker. She unfailingly establishes the mood of their meetings with a deft magical touch. Mel who brings them glamour and a taste of freedom. Zara and Kate feel deliciously giddy. Intoxicated with lack of responsibility. Becoming young and light-hearted they laugh, quarrel, get forgetful. They’re spontaneous, sulky, slightly crazy. More than a touch on the wild side. Oh it feels so good. It seems to the three of them that when they get together they can at last be truly themselves. What they are at other times is not one fraction as real.
Mel's now in the persona of an early film star, experimenting with lofty silver-screen irritability. ‘Alfie dear, Alfie dear,’ she calls out to her sister’s boy. She hangs on to the ie a touch and then repeats, ‘Alfie dear,’ rolling her tongue right round his name this time then pausing to see how he’s taking it. ‘Do stop that banging, do,’ she says at last affectedly, her lips forming a moue. Alfie ignores her of course and continues his salutation of the sauce bottle label. She's only his mad auntie. Zara though has caught up on this sense of the glitzy and, a little self-consciously at first, enters into the aura of the fantasy. It makes her see Alfie afresh. He's no longer a tiresome brat but this awesome transformed being. A movie child prodigy worshipped by millions. Now he's provoked the superstar and gained a mention. She glows with a mother’s pride. And the noise of his hand on the table top also seems extraordinary, far removed from the commonplace. It might become part of history consecrated in a bestselling memoir, who knows. She sighs comfortably, feeling better than she has done all week. Less tired, altogether less bored.
‘It’s great to see you Mel,’ she goes, her voice a trill, enthusiasm for the part lifting it an octave.
And now Alfie's run off to the café with cash for a coke and crisps, realistically aware of just how necessary these rations are to keep strength up. Because of the Alien Battles; because of the deeds of heroism he’ll be performing in them. Zara, now he’s gone, finds greater confidence to diversify. ‘It’s really amazing to be here,’ she drawls quite Hollywoodesque, and with a juvenile lisp. Zara's only too happy to swap into the role of ingenue, and with Alfie out of earshot it’s easier to manage the shift. After supplying the funds for his treats she flings her purse back casually into her basket of shiny straw which she always bears to the beach like a prop.
By now, Mel's reclining posily on her seat of white plastic. Eyes heavy lidded, hazy, content. Zara, pert and preening to no one in particular, has hitched her swathing skirt to the thigh. ‘Here’s Kate,’ she announces, glancing up at the footpath as a hollow shouldered woman with two small children trundles down it waving with a drooping hand. There's a scrawny look to Kate that makes her appear older than she is.
Mel wafts her own hand through the air lightly, acknowledging the arrival in her laid back film star way and Zara makes a teenage sort of movement with her arm as greeting, calling out ‘Katie’ in a girlish voice as though they’re still in high school at most. Kate, draws on the youthful mood and manages a half giggle. When it subsides she’s left tired and distraught, aware that the whining and wailing of the children has started up again and they’re entangling with her feet.
‘Let me get some tea,’ Mel proposes after kisses. The little ones are already placated with sweets from Zara's basket. She holds up her hand with final authority when Zara and Kate make their little refusal that she should be the one to pay. ‘No, no,’ she insists in her best doing the honours voice, ‘You keep the table,’ playing the game you do with youngsters that it’s an equal thing. Though they and you know it isn’t. Her voice is a hum of self-love.
Back at the café counter Mel is effusive over cakes, haughty in her complaint about a streak of lipstick on a cup rim. Full of the sense of her charisma. Unintimidated by smirks. She notices when they happen but her only emotional response is pity. For their crass mundanity, their impoverished outlook. Mel is a different woman from the one who bought the fizzy lemon earlier. She simply smiles at their inability to see her for what she is, not quite ignoring them but unwilling to let them get her down.
‘Call the dear child for his chocolate muffin,' she instructs Zara at the table. And she holds up the stainless steel teapot with attitude. It isn’t silver but never mind is what she’s telling everyone. As though to say it’s fun to be informal sometimes and come to the beach with ordinary folk. She shields her eyes with her free hand, scanning the sands for Alfie. ‘Oh, ha ha, here he is,’ she chuckles, her voice benevolent. She smiles to the surrounding tables as if everybody sitting there is an appreciative audience. ‘Go and wash your hands with Mother.’ She speaks with tender gravity impressing Alfie with solemn feeling so that, without meaning to, he does what he is told and forgets his heroic labours. He also forgets to stick his tongue out at her. Zara ushers him towards the loos. She, gracious, he, mild and unprotesting. Sway of the moment.
‘Darling I don’t know what you can be thinking of,’ Mel declaims grandly. To Kate and the hypothetical audience. She’s referring to Kate’s ongoing marital troubles as though they’re some tv sitcom in which Kate chooses to perform. ‘Well, I never liked him, he’s simply not good enough for you. My love,’ she goes. ‘There are PLenty more fish in the sea.’ Such dramatic emphasis on the PL makes Kate start to lighten up. She can’t help but titter; her depression eases off.
‘I tried to warn you but you’re a stubborn girl.’
These words make Kate feel even better, suggesting she has some spirit in her after all.
‘So divorce and be damned.’
Mel's voice at a shriller pitch, comes out as censorious. It startles Alfie, now back from the washroom. There’s a cushion of cream on the corner of the table which he wants to lick up or lift off with his finger. But he can’t. It’s plopped from his mad-auntie’s cake and somehow he’s afraid of it.
‘Oh those sweet children,’ Mel says of little Ken and Millie, Kate’s four and six year olds who are currently squabbling over a packet of peanuts. Her voice is now all honeyed sentimentality. Alfie bets to himself he could swipe the cream unnoticed. But no, too late, Mel's begun to turn herself into the role of chief consultant in a big scary hospital. No messing, no mess to be tolerated. She immediately sweeps the cream and all stray crumbs from the tabletop with a brisk swish of the hand. The three sisters love this. There are resonances here of Doctors and Nurses, a game which they used to play as children. Mel's drawn herself up to satisfy her part’s stringent requirements. A formidable stance. Kate and Zara sit mute, like shy young patients propped up in hospital beds. No responsibility for anything now, all out of their hands. It’s a liberation.
Meanwhile, Alfie's making thought contact with the residents of Alpha Centauri by concentrating hard on the sauce bottle lid. Despite appearances, this lid is actually a highly sensitive receptor. He scowled a bit when auntie mopped up the residue of the cream blob with a tissue plucked from his mum’s basket but he’s not too involved now. Got other things on his mind. Taking in that auntie Mel's in the sort of mood where she’s likely to snap your head off, he skips away from them. No more fun to be had here. He’s going to scour the beach for signs of an invasion.
As he leaves he makes a threatening grimace at a smiley-faced boy sitting with his mum and dad at the next cafe table. Alfie suspects this kid. Might look innocent, it’s just a disguise. A dangerous infiltrator, he’s willing to bet. In a while Mel says, ‘I think we should have a walk by the sea.’ She’s all patrician loftiness now, voice imperious, eyes remote. Ken and Millie had been squealing to gain Kate’s attention but Mel's upstaged them. They sit staring at their auntie. She’s hard for them to make out. What’s happening is that Mel is now starring in a screen version of the life of Elizabeth the First. Kate and Zara, well-practised at these swift transitions, have responded quickly.
To be sure, it wasn’t immediately clear to them who Mel was pretending to be. Was she the Pharaoh’s daughter discovering Moses in the Bulrushes, or Cleopatra at Actium? Both of these parts required some kind of water in the location, for which the sea was perfect. But no, Elizabeth, they soon decided as they took in Mel's tight ironic smile. For the Pharaoh’s daughter she always did a fixed mummified expression, whereas she gave Cleopatra a lascivious swing to the hips. And of course both those two had to have foreign accents in order to be convincing. In any case their own parts are essentially the same so they start being animated handmaidens even before the question is quite resolved. With Elizabeth it’s necessary to show a bit more tact, that’s all. So the two of them stand back respectfully with Ken and Millie who‘ve been roped in as extras for the entourage. Awed by the moment they hold their mother’s hand allowing the Queen to pass in front of them. The whole party moves off in state to the beach.
They drift along on the firm flat part of the sand as evening falls; gaze out to the wine-dark sea. Mel, the eldest, short and piggy pink, cerise even, from being too long in the sun. Right now she has this look about her of being about to burst from her very skimpy beach-dress. But this only emphasises her queenly defiance of things in general. She isn't fazed. Kate, the youngest, brittle as a sunburnt twig, hovers in awkwardly cut shorts of deeply unflattering blue. She has a nervous and twitchy stare. This mirrors the role she's undertaken. There's nothing personal. It doesn't say anything about who she is. Zara the sister midway between the two, is confined to the neck in her shroud of a dress all shapelessness and gloom. Vacant and placid face, eyes of boredom, body gone to slack. But she's being a handmaid. These traits don't reflect on her. This after all, is a transformation. An enchantment. Who could ask for more?
Moving further into the realm of myth they now cast themselves as the Hesperides, the two younger sisters stretching their resources to cope with this temporary elevation to equal status with Mel. They’re managing, for the sake of the production. Divine Grace is what they’re hoping to portray. Not so hard as it might seem, because what they do in the end is simply imitate the expression on Mel's own face. It's their nearest hope. She’s looking ethereal to say the least.
Seeing the adults are entirely distracted, little Millie and Ken finish up their own day as Laa Laa and Tinky Winky with an unrestrained water fight in the shallows. Anyway, who can tell them off for fighting when it’s not them really doing it, only the tv characters they're depicting?
Stealing an apple from his mother's basket to make up for not getting the cream, Alfie runs off down the beach to the Space Station. His mum and the aunties are standing motionless, their arms held out to the sea. They’re impressive. So that Alfie, who’s zapped them on sight with his ray gun, feels remorse and lasers them on impulse into holograms.
*
Water’s edge with the sun going down. Sky now peach now faded gold. Magic evening, sense of the sublime.
………………..
Jay Merill has two short story collections, 'Astral Bodies' and God of the Pigeons'. Further work is forthcoming or published by Bare Fiction Magazine, The Blue Nib, The London Magazine, The Lonely Crowd, The Manchester Review, The Quietus, Storgy, Streetcake Magazine, Unthology 10 and The Willesden Herald Anthology, 11.
Twitter: @JayMerill