Playing Out by Paul Magrs (books for 5 year olds to read themselves txt) 📕

Guardian, my Smash Hits. Would people ever believe we were together? You’d fall asleep in your teaching outfit, head lolled back.

Did I tell you about the young bloke who took the place next to you, who sneered at your snoring and smirked my way, allying us against your complacent, momentary repulsiveness? Did I betray you in that moment? Did the cock crow?

He fell asleep himself, just out of York. He wore an old purple tracksuit, full of little bobbles from the wash. There was late-afternoon sun, trapping the air like marmalade in the carriage, making sweat stand on us, slick as confidence.

I watched you both snooze and the bloke in the purple tracksuit got himself a slow, elegant horn on. The thick cotton of his tracksuit caricatured the shape of him and, fascinated, I watched him pulse with the train’s rocking.

Before he shocked himself awake, he drew a lazy hand down to cover it with a touchingly public caress. He was a pretty young bloke; saw me watching when he woke, didn’t mind. He got off a little later.

You slept still and I thought about you, white, and the stale smell of you underneath. A kind of brie and decades’ worth of smoke ground up in your pores. Your body, its smell; how inscrutable it all was to me. I could tell the other bloke a mile off, read him plainly as I could that fabulous cock of his. There was no real need for me to follow him off the train. Though I was tempted. And did I really get fucked off him in the train’s bog? Would I tell you? Is this kid—horror of horrors—his? Are you set on being a dad?

Vive la difference, you said, justifying your love for Donatello’s more boyish David. I use the same to praise your older body. Your flesh hangs heavier and your gestures of privacy are touching in ways youth’s public shows can be. I love you for when you woke on that train and said you had to go to the loo and, too polite to say loo aloud, you nodded in its direction. Was it the same loo I had conceived our child in, minutes before?

‘Fabulous kilt,’ I pluck up and say when he brings my coffee.

‘Uh…’ he begins, and elects to play it safe. ‘It’s just right for this weather.’

For today the grim town steams, below the wide wooden blinds of the cafe. It could be stifling to be anywhere other than here. Pm flicking through Maugham’s Summing Up and it’s portentous, deeply miserable under all the epiphanies. Maugham reminds me—forgive me—a bit of you. Loves the sound of his own epiphanies.

I want to hear this waiter talk.

‘Uh… you’re really engrossed then?’ he says.

I thought he meant with the child!

‘Good book?’

‘Not really.’

‘Uh…’ He’s hovering on these solid wooden boards. Even though the cafe’s empty and we’re mostly inconspicuous, I can feel the humid air is tense with his leg muscles working nervously beneath his skirt, beside me. And me, I’m flopped like a great pregnant lady. Doesn’t he wonder how I can be so fat? Why is he still—is he really? Could he really be chatting me up? I never thought to have another man look my way.

‘Uh… I need something not too intellectual to read on my nights off from here.’

I smile and take a deep breath and start to tell him about Angela Carter. He’s never heard of her before and I tell him that he’s got a treat in store.

It’s mid-morning and the Greek yoghurt’s not been delivered yet. So he says there’s some home-made peach-and-honey ice cream I could have instead. Would that do? I say it sounds wonderful. He brings it and I can feel our baby give a pang at the sweetness.

I leave my things, my jacket, leopard-skin rucksack, Maugham, at the table (a risk, I know) and pop downstairs to the loo. He’s in there, skirt hoisted around his hips in the pissoir in the cellar. He turns for a nonchalant smile.

‘When’s it due?’ he asks as I take my place. He glances down at the hump of our child; I give his cock the once-over.

‘Any day now,’ I say.

‘Do you want a boy or a girl?’

‘I don’t mind. Just so long as it’s healthy and well.’

‘Yeah, sure.’ He nods approvingly.

* * *

Six mornings later he has to ring an ambulance for me and is there at the birth. My mother is due back from the continent the next day and she comes bearing all sorts of baby gifts. The baby has a fine leopard-skin fur. The waiter comes to my hospital bed with real lilies. Life’s looking up. You sent your card and I’m writing this but I don’t reckon I’ll post it.