Told in her own words and those of her boyfriend, this is the story of Malady Mort, a girl born with a curse that she can’t understand. An inherited condition has given her the terrifying ability to draw energy from any source, be it man-made or naturally occurring. Her touch can literally take the life of another person. But Malady is not a killer, or a monster, just a normal fifteen-year-old who wants the same things as every other teenage girl: friends, love, laughter. Instead, she faces the prospect of life as a fugitive, constantly on the run from the death and misery that are the consequences of her affliction.
In Paul Cake, Malady meets someone she thinks she can love: but Malady’s condition means she can’t allow herself to fall in love. Can she fight the curse that has twisted her life and is growing stronger with every day, or is she destined to spend life alone, unloved, shunned by society? Emotive, dark, heart-wrenching, Malady tells her story with candour and surprising humour as she struggles to come to terms with the dreadful reality of who she is.
* * *
Malady is the first novel by Martin Cater, a former illustrator and occasional scriptwriter, who has previously written for performers as diverse as Rik Mayall, Phil Cornwell and children’s character Hartley Hare. Further novels are currently in preparation. Extracts are available on my other blog pages.
Characters, synopsis and the name Malady Mort are © 2009 Martin Cater
The image of Malady Mort in the page header is by Paul McCaffrey www.coroflot.com/paul_mccaffrey
MALADY
PART ONE: CAKE
ONE
You know Malady Mort. You’ve seen her on the street, or someone like her. Tiny, skinny jeans, long, straight, jet black hair. An Emo if she’s not a Goth. You know the type, there are hundreds of them on every city street. I see them every day. But I don’t see her. I’m still looking, mind. I’ll never stop looking. One day, one of those girls will be Malady Mort, come back to haunt me, or to stop haunting me because that’s what she’s doing right now, turning my head inside out, pushing all my thoughts to one side.
There might be a million other girls out there who look like Malady Mort. But they can’t do the things she can do. You wouldn’t believe the things she can do. I wouldn’t believe them myself if I hadn’t seen them first hand. Weird things, different things, scary stuff like you can’t imagine. Yes, she’s scary is Malady Mort. But I’m still looking for her, if only to prove that I didn’t imagine her. You can’t imagine stuff like that.
Maybe you think you know Malady Mort. Maybe you’ve read what’s already been written about her, the stuff that came out in the papers and on the internet when it all kicked off. If that’s the Malady Mort you know, then you don’t know her at all. I want to tell you about the real Malady, my Malady. I suppose that’s what she was to me. A malady. I’ve still got it bad, you see: a bad case of Malady Mort. I know what you’re going to tell me. There were others who got it worse than I ever did. But they’re not part of my story. I can only tell you what I know. And what I know is this: Malady was good to me. Doesn’t matter what you’ve seen or heard. She was a good kid and she couldn’t do anything about the way she was. That’s why I’m still looking for her. That’s why I’m out here right now, on another city street, speaking all this into one of those memo recorders, watching, waiting in case she comes along. It’s night time and there aren’t many people about. Malady liked the night time. She used to go walking out, when the streets were silent and empty, just her and the streetlights and the stars, the bright-lit empty shop fronts, wet pavements glistening, cars hissing past in ones and twos. It was like that the night I ran into her. Maybe tonight she’ll come by, skipping down the street, tapping every street light that she passes, laughing silently to herself as each one in turn goes out. That’s how it was when I first saw her.
It was late, well past midnight, on a warm evening in summer, and I’d been in town at a gig, a mate of mine’s band, pretty good, and supporting a better-known act at one of the smaller music venues. The place had turned out about twelve and I was trying to decide whether to walk home or go for the bus. It’s all drunks and chavs that time of night, and I was liking the silence, so I decided to walk. There’s something about a town at night, a sense of everything being stored up, waiting to be unleashed again when morning comes, and I liked being out there in the dark, empty streets, just me and my thoughts, music in my head, a new song writing itself, finding its rhythm in my footsteps.
There was rain in the air, but only thin stuff, just a kind of warm mist like you get in the bathroom after you’ve had a hot shower. It was enough to make haloes round the street lights and I was staring at them, thinking they looked kind of cool and mysterious and how they’d make a good photo if I could get my phone to work. The light from one of them was streaming through the branches of a skinny tree and forming all ribbons in the air like the Aurora Borealis or something, so I pulled out my phone and was just about to get the picture when the street light went out. It was one of those moments when you feel like the world is conspiring against you. Typical, I thought.
Then I saw her.
She was skipping across the street a few feet from the streetlight, and in the unexpected darkness she was kind of hard to see, cause she was wearing mostly dark colours. A car came suddenly round the corner, fast, too fast, if there’d been a camera there he’d have got done for certain. The driver couldn’t have seen her and just for a second I thought he’d hit her, because there can only have been inches between them. He roared off into the night – an Audi, it was – and left her standing in the road, giving him the finger. She wasn’t fazed by it at all, cause the next thing she was off again, doing this kind of hop-and-a-skip way of walking that I soon came to recognise. A few paces and she was level with another streetlight, and that’s when I saw her do it for the first time. It was one of those tall city streetlights, on a metal pole, and as she went past, she tapped the pole in a kind of rhythmical way, like she had a tune going through her head. And as she tapped it, the light went out.
It’s a funny thing, but just as it happened, a thought flashed through my mind, I don’t know where it came fromm but the thought was this:
‘She’s making those lights go out.’
I know it sounds crazy, but that’s what I thought. It didn’t even occur to me to wonder exactly how she was putting the lights out, I just knew it was her doing it. I had to make certain, so I started off after her, leaving a good distance between us so she wouldn’t think she was being followed even though she was. And you know what? Next streetlight she came to, the same thing happened. Tap, on the pole, and the light went out. Meanwhile, the ones she’d put out previously were all flickering back to life. Okay, it could have been a coincidence, but three streetlights? Would you think it was a coincidence? So I carried on after her. It just got weirder and weirder. One after another, all these streetlights were going out. Then she got to a pelican crossing. No point in pushing the button cause there was nothing coming. All the same, that’s what she did. But instead of changing to red, the lights on the crossing all went out.
That was enough for me. I had to talk to her now, find out how she was doing all this. I’d caught up with her a bit and could see her more clearly. She was wearing a sleeveless top and skinny jeans, with a wide belt and those tiny shoes a bit like ballet pumps that a lot of girls wear. Her hair was long and dead straight, like she’d just had it done, and she was wearing a little crocheted cap. I remembered that cap. She stood there for a minute at the crossing, like she was thinking something to herself, then turned round and caught me off guard, because I was expecting her to just carry on in the same direction she’d been going. Instead, she turned towards me, and smiled, the kind of smile that said she knew I’d been following her all along. She can’t have heard me cause I was wearing Converse boots and they didn’t make a sound on the wet pavements, but I told myself she’d probably got some sixth sense. If I’d known then what I know now, I’d have added a seventh sense and probably an eighth sense for good measure. That’s how weird Malady Mort was. Or is. Believe me, she’s still out there somewhere.
So she was just standing there at the crossing, almost as if she was waiting for me, and sort of checking me out the way girls sometimes do. I couldn’t turn round, cause that would have looked even more suspicious, so I just kept on walking towards her, wondering what, if anything, I was going to say to her.
In the end it was quite dull. “Are you okay?” That’s the best I could come up with. I was thinking about the car, you understand, and how it had nearly hit her. She’d already forgotten about it, cause she gave me a kind of strange look with her head held on one side.
“Yes,” she said, in this kind of questioning tone. “What makes you ask?”
“That bloke nearly hit you back there.”
“Oh, him. He was an idiot.”
“He almost took you out.”
“Oh, I don’t let people like him take me out,” she replied. There was something interesting in the way she said it, like she’d picked up on those words and was twisting them round into a kind of invitation. Her eyes were big and bright, the kind of eyes I couldn’t do anything but stare at. There was a sort of intensity about her, and something else that I couldn’t quite pin down at the time, a feeling of there being something in the air, a kind of tingle, like electricity. If I noticed it at all, I expect I thought it was just nerves.
Normally, I’d have come straight back with a smart reply like: ‘what kind of people do you allow to take you out’ or something, but tonight I just stood there, mesmerised by those eyes, and that electric tingle in the air. I glanced up at the streetlights. “I think there’s something wrong here,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“The streetlights.” I pointed up at the nearest one, which was almost over our heads. “They keep going out. Haven’t you noticed?”
She laughed. “Oh that’s nothing.”
“The crossing as well,” I said, indicating the pedestrian lights. Of course, they’d come on again by this time. “Didn’t you see? The lights all went out when you pressed the button.”
“Isn’t that what they’re supposed to do?”
“Not like that they aren’t.”
“Oh.” She looked at the pelican crossing, then at me. “Well, I shouldn’t worry about it if I were you.”
“Tell me how you’re doing it.”
She shook her head like she didn’t understand. “Doing what?”
“Putting those lights out.”
“I haven’t put any lights out.”
I stared at her. She was a bit weird, I thought, but weird in a way that kind of appealed to me. There seemed something slightly theatrical about her, and I’d already noticed her voice, which was different from the other girls round here. I couldn’t place the accent, not that she had one to speak of. If anything, she sounded almost posh. “Where are you going, then?” she asked. “Apart from following me, of course.”
I sighed inwardly. I didn’t realise I’d been that obvious. “Home,” I said. “How about you?”
“Oh, I’m not going anywhere. I never am.”
“Okay,” I said, playing along with her. “So where are you not going, then?”
She threw a hand in the air – another theatrical gesture, I thought. “Oh, who can tell? Swaziland? The Algarve? B&Q? London?” Her eyes flickered sideways. “I could go anywhere. Only I’m liking it round here just now.” She started walking, so I fell in beside her, just sort of natural, and she seemed okay with that.
A lone figure wenr past on the opposite pavement and Malady - whose name I had yet to discover - looked round at me. “I wonder who that was,” she said, turning and staring after the stranger. I shrugged, but the sight of this bloke had obviously started her off on something. “Don’t you want to know?” she went on. “I might run after him and ask.”
“You might wish you hadn’t,” I said in a cautioning tone of voice.
“I might regret it if I don’t. Think who I might have missed out on. He could turn out to be my future husband, you never can tell.”
I conceded that she had a point. But she didn’t run after the stranger. She’d found one already. “I like walking at night,” she went on. “I always find myself thinking about the other people I see on the streets. I do this thing where I’ll spot someone passing by and make up a story about them, imagine where they live and what their life’s like. Night is the best time, because there’s hardly anybody about and when you do see someone, you find yourself wondering why they’re out there, wandering the streets at that hour. Like that man who went by just then. Where’s he going, where has he come from? Has he just had a row with his girlfriend and walked out into the night?”
“I suppose he might just be coming back from the pub,” I said
“Oh, you can tell the ones who’ve been out drinking,” she went on. “But sometimes you see other people, people who look so lost and confused I almost want to go over and give them a hug, or at least ask them who they are.”
“Is that what you do then?” I asked. “Waltz around the streets at night talking to strangers?”
“I don’t waltz,” she said, theatrically, “I glide.” And she sashayed along the pavement in front of me like a chorus girl.
“Seriously, though, it’s not a great idea is it? You could run into some very dodgy types.”
“Yeeeesss,” she said, looking up at me with this kind of cute coy look on her face. “Perhaps I already have.”
“Well, you don’t know, do you? I could be anybody.”
“Go on then, be somebody,” she said, laughing.
“How about myself?”
“Depends how interesting you are.” She skipped a few steps ahead, turned and stood in my way. “So tell me, what do you do?”
“As little as I can get away with.”
She shook her head and gave me a disapproving look. “That’s not a very interesting answer. Tell me something interesting that you do.”
“Okay,” I told her. “I write songs.”
“He writes songs!” she cried. “There you are, that’s interesting! Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
“I don’t go round shouting about it.”
“Well you ought to or nobody will hear you.” She stood aside and waved me past like a policeman directing traffic. “What songs do you write?” she asked, coming alongside again. “Any that I’ve heard of?”
I laughed. “’Fraid not.”
“Why haven’t I heard of them?”
“Because they don’t get played on the radio.”
“I don’t listen to the radio.”
“They don’t get played anywhere,” I told her. “Apart from out on the streets when I’m busking, or at a few gigs.”
Her eyes widened when I mentioned the busking. “So you’re a street person too, are you?”
“Only in my spare time. The rest of the time I’m a graphic designer.”
“Oh, I don’t want to hear about that,” she said, shaking her head. “That sounds far too boring. Tell me about your songs instead. Better still, sing one to me. I’m a poet, did you know that? You sing me one of your songs and I’ll tell you if it’s any good.”
“What, here, in the middle of the street?”
“That’s what buskers do, isn’t it?”
“Not in the middle of the night. It tends to work best when there are people passing by. Then they throw you money, if you’re lucky.”
“I’d throw you some money,” she said, turning out her pockets, “but I have none. So you’ll have to sing for nothing. Or for love,” she added with what I thought was a knowing look in her eye.
“If you want to hear me singing, get yourself into town tomorrow. I was planning on going down with the guitar.”
“Where will I find you?”
“Depends. Try one of the arcades off New Street.”
She nodded and stared at the floor, with a cute little smile forming on her face. “I might just do that.”
“So you’re a poet, then?” I said, suspecting a wind-up.
“Well, not a real one, obviously. I mean, I’m not T.S. Eliot or anything like that. But I write poems, sometimes, about the people I see, and the way I feel.”
I was beginning to think she was a bit mad, and as a songwriter I should know better, but I always hear alarm bells when people tell me they write poetry. Especially when they’re strange little girls who can do tricks with streetlights. “So recite me one of your poems,” I said.
“Throw some money at me and I’ll think about it.”
I found a pound coin in my pocket and held it up. “That’s got to be worth a verse or two.”
She looked at the coin in mock dismay. “Is that all you think I’m worth?”
“I haven’t heard your poems yet.”
“No,” she said, like a child that’s hugging a secret to itself.
“Well go on, then.” I waved the coin in front of her. “There’s more where that came from. You just start reciting until I’ve had a pound’s worth, then I’ll put some more money in the slot.”
“I’m not a parking meter you know,” she said, giggling. Then, quite suddenly, she put on a serious face. “Actually, I’d better not. It might make me cry. My poems are rather sad, you see. They’re mostly about me and my life.”
“You don’t look sad,” I told her.
“I’m not when I meet someone I like. But I suppose my life is sad.”
“Sounds like you’re going to tell me about it.”
She stopped and looked up at me – there was quite a difference in our heights, cause I’m over six foot and she can’t have been much more than five three in her little flat shoes – and just for a second, I thought I could see something else in those eyes, something more than just sadness, a kind of empty loneliness, a void, oblivion even/
Then turned and with an engimatic little smile, stepped off the pavement. “Enjoy the rest of your life, won’t you!” she called back to me.
“You’re going now, are you?”
“No, you are!” I couldn’t tell if her tone was mocking or serious.A couple of dancing steps took her out to the centre of the deserted roadway.
“You never told me your name!” I called after her.
“Neither did you!”
“Oh well, that makes us even I suppose. Next time, eh?”
“Yes, next time.” She sighed and stared at the sky. “There’ll always be a next time.”
So I let her go. Just like that, didn’t make any attempt to go after her or anything. I watched as she skipped along the road, darkening the street lamps as she went. Maybe she was doing it as a challenge, defying me to go after her and get her to explain what it was all about. But I didn’t. I just stood there and watched as she danced off down the empty roadway.
What was she, drunk, on drugs or just naturally out of her mind? I suppose I could have gone after her, but I kind of liked things the way they were. She’d left me with a good feeling, a sort of positive charge – maybe it was that electricity in the air around her. Maybe that was what was wrong with those streetlights. Well, it may have been wrong but it felt all right to me. She was still there in my mind as I walked back home, like I’d been staring at her too long and she’d burned herself into my retinas.
I knew I was going to see her again. I was right.
TWO
Look, this isn’t really my story, it’s hers and I’m not going to do a spoiler here. One day, Malady’s going to tell her own story in her own words. Maybe, somewhere, she’s writing it already, like I’m writing this, sort of synchronicity if you know what I’m on about. I just had to write my side of it, you see, while it’s still clear in my mind and I can remember the details. One day, they’ll fade and my story will be lost forever. What am I on about? My story? It’s our story, and this is just my take on it. I expect it all looked different from where she was standing.
I know I’m only a very small part of Malady’s story. Small, but, I’d like to think, important. I’m still here to tell the tale, which tells you something, if you already know about Malady Mort. And if you don’t, then let me tell you what I know. Let me tell you the story of our first day together.
Looking back, it’s hard to believe that our time together was only a matter of weeks. Weeks, that’s all, though they were weeks that seemed to soak through into the past and the future so that now it’s impossible to remember a time when I didn’t know a person called Malady Mort. I can’t hear the word malady any more without hearing it as her name. I’m changed, you see. Not just me, my whole world. That’s the effect she has on you.
How can I explain this?
Have you ever sat reading a paperback in the rain and tried to dry it out afterwards? Or dropped a book in the bath? You can get the pages dry again, but you can never make them lie flat like they used to. That’s what Malady did to me. Sorry, that’s the songwriter in me coming out (and he does need to be allowed out every now and then). Malady made my life a paperback in the rain. And I can never get ot back the way it used to be.
The next day was Saturday, and my funds were at an all-time low. The weather was good so I thought I’d head into town and try to earn a bit of cash busking, like I’d hinted at to Malady last night. I do that now and then, in between hiring my services out as a Mac operator. Photoshop, Dreamweaver, InDesign, all that stuff. Officially, that was my role in society: graphic designer. Nothing to get worked up about, is it? Unofficially, I was a songwriter, a busking hobo with fantasies of freedom and travel, an imaginary lifestyle that had me cast as a sort of latter-day Bob Dylan, and God knows we could have used another Dylan just then. Intelligent music had dried up, replaced by corporate, career bands who might just as well have worn business suits for all the integrity they possessed. You know the guilty men, I don’t have to name names, but they left me cold, they were just players.
I’d found my usual pitch in one of the less well frequented arcades in town, basically a little tunnel leading off New Street towards a shopping square at the back of Corporation Street. Did I mention we’re in Birmingham, here? Not cool enough, is it? I suppose if I didn’t mention any names, you could imagine this story taking place in London, Manchester, maybe even another country. You pick your own city, and put us right there in it. Cities are all alike, even Brum, you’d be surprised to hear (unless you come from there and if you are, you’re probably celebrating the fact that someone’s picked your city as the setting for a story. Well, it happened here, I didn’t choose Birmingham, I’m just reporting the facts.
Actually, Birmingham’s a bit more cosmopolitan than most people give us credit for. We even hosted the G-something summit back in nineteen ninety whatever (hey, research!) and Bill Clinton was photographed enjoying a pint at a bar on the cool new canalside development at the back of what used to be old, run-down Broad Street. I don’t remember any of this, of course, but my dad’s a great one for reminding anyone that ever tries to put Brum down (and with Brum, you don’t have to try too hard).
So, there I was in my arcade, running through my busker’s repertoire, which consisted of a few well-known songs to catch people’s attention, interspersed with some of my own, and sort of half-hoping that the mystery girl from last night, the streetlight girl would come by.
And then, suddenly, there she was, like I’d conjured her up just by thinking about her. It was the hat I noticed first. Sometimes, when you’re busking, people stop and listen and I try not to look at them directly because when you do, this weird thing happens: it’s as if everything else around you melts away and you’re doing a one-on-one with the other person, like you’re performing to them and nobody else. That sometimes freaks people out and they move on, so I try and avoid eye contact when that happens. It had happened just now: I was aware of a girl hanging around on the other side of the arcade, and something gave me the idea that she’d stopped to listen. I suppose she could just have been texting a mate or waiting for someone, but for whatever reason I felt she was lingering there because of me and I didn’t want to scare her away by grinning at her. I could just see her out of the corner of my eye, and that was when I clocked the hat. I remember that moment, because I suddenly forgot where I was in the song and put my fingers down on the wrong chord.
The minute I knew it was her, I switched into a different song, a new song, a song so new I barely knew the words. I’d started writing it last night (that’s when I seem to get most of my ideas, late at night, like there are spare dreams floating around looking for a head to latch onto). Last night’s song just came to me as I was walking home, and it had been inspired by something Malady – the still nameless Malady – had said to me during our conversation, her thing about the people you see walking at night. That was what I’d called the song, The People You See Walking at Night, and I’d written a couple of verses, so I thought I’d try them out on her.
Somehow, I got through it. As I looked round, I could see the girl was leaving, but slowly, as though hoping I would say something. No way was I going to let her get away from me twice. So I called out after her. Obviously, I didn’t know her name, so I called her by the first thing that came into my head.
“It’s you again, isn’t it? The street light girl. From last night, remember?”
She paused and turned round. “You’re here, then. I’d throw you some money but I still have none. What do you think that last song was worth? 2p? 5p?”
“You can have that one on me,” I said. “You’re partly responsible for it in any case.”
“Me? How am I responsible?” She looked intrigued, so I told her about how I’d got the idea for the song after meeting her last night.
“Maybe you planted it in my mind,” I said.
She looked strangely thoughtful. “Yes, maybe I did.”
I took my guitar off and put it carefully down in its case.
“You did that like you were putting a baby back in its cot,” she said.
“She is my baby,” I replied, my mind racing. Keep her talking, say something, anything, no matter how inane, just don’t let her get away.
I didn’t.
What I did do was ensnare her with a coffee. She didn’t drink coffee, but she accepted my invitation all the same. New Street was thick with coffee shops and we chose one at the top end, near the fountains. Or rather I did. Something told me she was a stranger in our great city. She was paler than I remembered, but the last time I’d seen her had been under the flat, monochrome orange of sodium street lights. Now, for the first time, I could see her for what she really was, the skin almost marble-white, the huge eyes, eyes dark yet dazzling, shaded by heavy lashes, set beneath dark, expressive eyebrows. Her hair was jet black, with only just the faintest hint of brown, and her lips were a deep shade of pink.
Time we were introduced. I’m Cake, by the way, Paul Cake, but just Cake to my friends (and you’re reading this, so you can include yourself in their number). It may not be the coolest name ever, but it’s different, and in a world where too many people are falling over themselves to be cool, look cool or sound cool, I’ll go with different. So I’m Cake. And she was Malady.
Yes. I know. Since when was that a name? I think I might even have said that to her when she told me. No, I’m remembering this wrong, she didn’t tell me, she made me guess. I decided to leave the introductions til we were in the coffee shop, and after getting over the hurdle of my being called Cake (which I set up rather nicely while we were standing at the counter in front of a display of pastries), I asked her what it was she signed on the dotted line. This got me a blank look, so I made it more obvious. “Your name. You haven’t told me your name.
“No, you’re right, I haven’t,” she said, pushing up the sports cap on her water bottle (she only drank water, so she told me).
“Am I supposed to guess then, or what?” I said.
“You’d never guess.”
“Is that a challenge?”
“No,” she replied, “it’s a fact. You will never guess my name.”
“Must be a weird one,” I said, looking her up and down.
“Like Cake, you mean.”
“Yeah. Only weirder.”
“Well, I’ll put you out of your misery,” she said, “or we’ll be here all day.”
“That’s it,” I cried, ‘that’s your name, isn’t it? Misery. Like the Stephen King book, right? Go on, tell me I’m right.”
She nodded to herself. “You’re surprisingly warm.”
“Must be the coffee.”
“Go on, get warmer.”
I grinned. “You’re not serious? Misery, is that really it?”
“Right letter, and not a million miles away in the sense of the word, either.”
“Maudlin? That’s a name isn’t it, a surname.”
“Not Maudlin. But you’re close.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Really? Morose, Moribund, Malaise, Malady…” I knew immediately when I’d hit on the right one. Her eyes just widened and she giggled delightedly, just like a kid playing a guessing game. Not that I believed her at first. But there was something so completely genuine about her that, well, she managed to convince me. Even now, three months later, as I sit writing this, I’m not sure if that really was her name, and if it was, she never got round to explaining it. Looking back, I guess she might just have heard the word as it came out and decided she liked the sound of it. So maybe I’d supplied her with a ready made alter ego. I wouldn’t put that past her. Or maybe she really was Malady. Anyway, I believed her at the time, and I still want to. She was just so Malady, you see. At first, it didn’t fit at all, but after we’d spent a few hours together and I’d had a chance to let the word ferment in my brain, I realised I’d got used to it. The more you think about it, the more you can hear it as a name, and the less you think about its proper meaning. Here, you try it:
Malady, Malady, Malady, Malady, Malady…
That’s what I was doing, all that day, at the back of my mind, turning that word, that name, over and over until it fit the girl herself. So she was – or she became – Malady. Later, she gained a surname, probably from the same kind of guessing game. Malady Mort. Alliteration, just like you’d expect from a poet. So, was it real or made up, that name ? It was hard to tell. Just like the girl herself.
That was really the start of it, this thing that we had between us. You can call it a relationship, if you want to, but to me it was more like an understanding. You see, there were things about this relationship that made it different from any other I’d ever had. Complicated stuff. But that’s for Malady to tell you, and not me. Back on that mad Saturday I had no idea what was coming, and to me, Malady Mort, even with her weird name, was just another normal girl. A bit crazy, but that’s normal to a guy like me. So we hung out in town together, going over all that first date stuff that you have to get out of the way, the form-filling stuff as I think of it. Where d’you live, what music d’you like, have you got any brothers, sisters, pets, weird diseases, you know the kind of thing. As it turned out, I seemed to be the one giving out most of the information, because Malady managed to divert all my questions about her home and her family.
I gave her a brief account of my home life. I still think of it as home, even though I’ve been moved out these last three years. Home means a small, neat 1930s detached out in the desirable leafy suburbs of Sutton Coldfield. Home means my mum and my sister, who have evolved into a sort of double act, with my sister like a mini-me of my mum.
“Just them?” Malady asked. “No dad?”
“Nah, he died a few years back.”
“Oh,” She went quiet for a moment. We were passing an apartment block that had been converted out of an old office building, and Malady gazed up at it in wonder. “I love looking in windows,” she said, suddenly, “especially at night when people have got the lights on and the curtains open and you can see right into their living rooms. Old people’s houses are the best, because they’ve always got strange old things in them. I don’t mean antiques, just old stuff, stuff that’s not cool any more. Sometimes they look so sad, with their funny old furniture and ornaments, things that the people who live there probably don’t notice any more, stuff they bought years ago or got given as birthday presents, wedding presents, even.”
“Is that what your home’s like?”
“I’ve lived in a few places that were like that.”
“What about now?”
“Oh, you wouldn’t want to know.”
“Cardboard box is it? Up an alley somewhere?”
“I slept in a skip once,” she told me, with total conviction. “I suppose that’s like a mobile home to someone like me.”
“And what kind of someone are you, Malady Mort?”
She gave me a sudden look, the kind of look you can feel, a look that cut right through me, and just for a second I sensed that aching emptiness beneath those to-die-for eyes. “I’m the kind of someone you probably don’t want to know,” she said, looking away again.
The moment passed, like a cloud across the sun, but I knew I’d seen a glimpse of the depths that lay hidden beneath the playful madness that was Malady Mort. And the madness just went on and on. By mid afternoon I was starting to feel hungry and suggested we find somewhere to eat. Malady looked as if the idea had never occurred to her in her life.
“Well, you can if you like,” she said. “But don’t bother on my account.”
“I wasn’t actually,” I said, in a joking voice.
“Well good!” she retorted, in the same voice.
“Aren’t you hungry?”
“Never,” she replied. “That’s something you should know about me. I am never hungry.”
“This is going to be a cheap day out, then.”
“You mean you’re not going to buy me any presents, then?” she asked, pulling a pouting face like a spoiled child.
“Ah, so that’s what you’re after is it?”
“Well, I can’t think of any other reason for going out with boys.”
“Are you quite sure about that?”
“No. But I still want presents.”
“Okay,” I said. “What presents do you want?”
“Surprise ones,” she said, in a little-girly sort of voice. “Presents are only any good if they’re surprises.”
We walked on through the town, keeping up this idiotic conversation, just silly talk, her doing all these comic character voices and me just trying to keep up with her. I caught sight of a little restaurant that I thought would be exactly the sort of place Malady would go for, whether she was hungry or not. It had a cool, bohemian sort of vibe, and the food was strictly veggie. I’d been playing with the idea of becoming a veggie for ages without ever going the whole hog (which is a rotten joke, and one worthy of Malady herself) and there was something about the look of Malady that suggested she might be a vegetarian. She seemed kind of small, pale and undernourished. Get her under some mediterranean sun, I thought, and get some mediterranean food inside her. At that moment, all things seemed possible. Even the impossible seemed possible. I hardly imagined how true that would prove to be.
I pointed out this restaurant and suggested we go in. Malady looked at me with a puzzled face. “Whatever for?” (This was her ‘posh lady’ voice.)
“Er…actually, I thought it was a bit of a no-brainer.”
“Oh, for luncheon, you mean? Is one experiencing the pangs of hunger?”
“One is.”
“Suit yerself, then,” she replied, switching to a broad cockney accent.
I guessed that once she was in there and saw some of the stuff they had out, she’d soon change her mind about eating. But I hadn’t reckoned with the phenomenon that was Malady Mort. She gazed at the trays of broccoli bake and mushroom stroganoff as if they were some exotic artworks. “They look very pretty,” she remarked. “Which one are you going to have?”
“I thought I’d try homity pie.”
“Well, it sounds cute, whatever it is.”
“Sure you won’t have any?”
“Yes. I mean, no thanks, in answer to your question.”
“How about a drink?”
She sighed. “Oh, well, just to please you, then. I’ll have a nice cup of tea. That’s what people say, isn’t it? A nice cup of tea. A naice cup of tea! And make sure it’s hot. I want it so hot it hurts.”
We found a table and sat down. Malady watched as I ate the pie, which came with a mound of multi-coloured salad. I had to stop her from picking bits out of it and examining them. In a lot of ways, she was starting to resemble a little girl who had never grown up. “Just stop it, will you!” I said, pretending to sound annoyed. She sat with her hands pressed round her tea cup and beamed at me with an utterly vacant look on her face. “You,” I said, swallowing with some difficulty, “are demented.”
“Does it show?” she said, in a mock-sorrowful voice.
“It’s like having dinner with a five-year-old.”
“Am I showing you up?” She put a hand out to grab a cherry tomato off my plate and I aimed my fork at it.
“You wouldn’t dare!” she laughed.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah!” She grabbed the tomato and put it in her mouth. A second later she popped it out again and put it back on my plate.
“That’s disgusting!”
“It’s only been in my mouth,” she said, pouting at me. “There’s no foreign matter or anything unclean in there, you know. I’m very particular about things like that.”
“That’s nice to know.”
For a few minutes she allowed me to get on with my dinner. I noticed she didn’t seem to be drinking her tea and had pushed her cup aside. “Isn’t the tea any good?”
“It’s gone cold,” she said, reaching for the metal teapot and placing a hand against it. “That’s entropy for you. The second law of thermodynamics.”
“Now you’re getting technical.”
“Well, we have to get technical sooner or later,” she replied. “And if we’re getting technical, then I think the second law of thermodynamics is a good place to start. You need to understand that if you’re going to understand me.”
“Oh, no one could ever understand you,” I said. “Never mind the laws of physics, you’re a law unto yourself.”
She put her head on one side and gave me something like a cross between a mocking grin and a look of genuine affection. “My dear,” she said, in her posh lady voice, “you’ll never know how utterly true your last remark was. And is. And ever more shalt be.”
Well, I told myself, you asked for this, and now you’re getting it full on. The Madness of Malady Mort. They could make a film with a title like that. They could make a film about her. Somebody should. The world needs to know about Malady Mort. And I mean the real story, not something made up by a newspaper editor. Well, you’re only going to get that from one person, and it’s not me.
The day went on forever. It’s still going on now, because I can close my eyes and get right back there, remembering bits of our conversation I thought I’d forgotten. I’d not bothered to look at the time since our meeting in the arcade. I’d given up wearing a watch and had started relying on my phone to tell the time of day. It’s a funny thing: you never stop to think how many times in a day you look at your watch. It becomes a habit, automatic. I went round wearing a watch every day for years, right through school. Then, one day, I just stopped, or rather, my watch did, and as I couldn’t afford a new battery, I just made do without it.
It was kind of weird what happened that day. Time sort of expanded. I’d think to myself ‘it feels like about half past two’ then pull out my phone and realise it was only twelve thirty. It was the same all that day, and every time it worked in my favour. The afternoon seemed endless. Well, it was, cause it was summertime, but even for a summer day it just seemed to stretch out forever. These days, if anyone asks me for a piece of random good advice, I’ll say to them ‘stop wearing a watch.’ And live longer. Well, it seems longer. Who knows, maybe it is. The universe is a stranger place than any of us realise. And I should know. I’ve seen some of that strangeness first hand.
That’s how it was that first day with Malady. Time, I mean. It must have been twelve thirty, quarter to one when I saw her, and by the time we came out of the coffee shop I reckoned it to be after two. It felt like we’d been together for hours rather than minutes. But the clock on the town hall stood at ten past one. It felt as if we’d gained time from somewhere.
Time plays tricks on us, I reckon. When you’re waiting for something important to happen, it takes its time, stretching out like elastic until the days feel like weeks. Then when something good is going on, time just runs right through your fingers, hours become minutes, days are gone in the blink of an eye. Yet with Malady, it seemed to work the other way. There I was, with a cool new girlfriend (that’s what I was thinking, at least) and having a laugh together, and it’s at moments like that when time usually goes into hyper-drive. Yet time had slowed right down. Maybe it was another of her tricks.
I had no idea who she was or where she’d come from, where she lived, where she went to school, nothing. All I knew was her name. I think I liked the idea of her being a mystery, so I didn’t ask too many questions. Malady would tell me everything when she felt like it. I just wasn’t prepared for what she did tell me in the end.
At first, we didn’t really do anything apart from hang out together. Sometimes you don’t have to be actually doing stuff to have a good time with someone. We were together all day that Saturday, just laughing at stuff, walking aimlessly around town, looking at things, seeing everything in a new and different light. We stayed out right into the evening. It was like neither of us knew how to bring this thing to an end and we were both afraid that if we parted now, we’d somehow break the spell and never be able to get it back. We got on like we’d known each other for years instead of just a matter of hours.
“Where are you going now, then?” I asked her as we walked aimlessly through the streets in the early evening.
“I don’t know. I’m just going where you’re going.”
“That’s funny, because I thought I was just going where you’re going.”
“If we were an equation, we’d cancel each other out.” Another typical Malady utterance.
I tried to interest her in a plan that had been forming in my mind. A curry, somewhere in Sparkbrook, where the Baltis are cheap and very good, followed by… well, just more talking, drinks someplace, anything. She wasn’t sold on it, and insisted on sticking to her story about never eating, but she seemed happy to go along just for the entertainment of seeing me eat. She had nothing herself. And nothing happened between us. Well, I guess I was setting us up for that by suggesting a curry, a sort of natural deterrent to romance, I suppose. Anyway, it was cool. I could wait. Malady would come to me when she was ready, I told myself.
What I wasn’t expecting was what she told me in that restauarant. But that’s her story and she can tell it better than I ever could. Wild stuff. I went along with it, thinking it must all be some crazy fantasy she was making up off the top of her head, or something she’d borrowed from a film or a book, because that’s where it belonged, a story like that.
Listening to her, I found myself wondering if this was all just some lucid dream, because what she was talking about related back to the thing with the streetlights, from last night, and an idea that had suggested itself to me that she was somehow making it happen herself. Well, if you’ve read those stories in the Sunday tabloids, the so-called exclusives from people who claim to have known her, then you’ll have heard all that stuff already, second or third hand. I got it from Malady herself, and my story’s not for sale to any tablod hack. I tried to keep up with her growing weirdness by explaining a few of my own ideas about life, and time, and how we experience it, stuff that I don’t usually get out in front of my mates, and you needn’t worry, I’m not going to go into it all here.
All the while we were in that restaurant, I was aware of time slipping away from us. They had a clock on the wall, right where I could see it, so my time-expansion trick had stopped working. There was only so long I could prolong the meal, especially as Malady wasn’t even eating, and by half nine we were back on the pavement, and this time it looked as if the day was finally coming to an end, because she looked up at me and said:
“I suppose we should say goodnight now.”
The way she said the words was strangely comical, quite low and in a kind of deadly earnest, the way people used to speak in the creaky old movies that my mum and my sister get all weepy over on rainy autumn afternoons. Part of it was the effect of her voice, which was - well, I suppose cultured is the best way of describing it. I wouldn’t call her posh, because she didn’t come over that way, but she sounded like one of those brainiac girls you see sometimes on University Challenge (also watched by my mum and my sister, only without the Kleenex).
“Got somewhere to go now, have you?” I said. It was a bit pointed, and I immediately regretted saying it because it sounded sort of hurt which is a bad impression to make when you’ve only just met someone. Sometimes you just can’t help yourself. And she’d as good as told me she was going nowhere right at the start: “I’m not going anywhere. I never am.” I remembered her exact words. Now she was making excuses to say goodnight. Not that she needed an excuse. We’d spent all day together, and I couldn’t expect to have an endless monopoly on her time. Whatever she might have told me, she must have somewhere to go, someone waiting for her, a parent, flatmate, dare I say it maybe even a boyfriend. These things have happened.
Malady looked up at me with those to-die-for eyes and I knew, I just knew that there was no way on earth, no way in the whole solar system, no way in the universe that I could let this girl get away from me now. “I just thought maybe you had somewhere to go yourself,” she said, in this tiny voice. For the first time since I’d met her she sounded unsure of herself.
“We’ve all got somewhere to go,” I said. Well, it made sense to me. Of course, I didn’t know then. How could I have known?
“Yes,” said Malady, with a sigh in her voice. “We all have, haven’t we.” This last part had a sort of bitter edge to it, as though she was trying to be sarcastic but couldn’t quite pull it off.
An awkward indecision took hold of us, almost like it had come down from the sky in a big bubble that wouldn’t let us go without bursting it and spoiling the whole mood of madness and wonder that had kept us going this far. “I’ve enjoyed it,” I said. “Thanks for sharing the delights of Brum on a Saturday with me.”
“It was a pleasure,” she said, trying to avoid the awkwardness of the moment by putting a note of mock pomposity into her voice.
“We should do it again.”
“Yes.”
My turn. And I couldn’t think what I was supposed to say next. I felt like an actor who’s forgotten his lines, or rather, an actor who’s standing in the spotlight waiting while the writer tries desperately to come up with something for him to say.
“There’s going to be more than this, isn’t there?” That was it. My line, the line that the scriptwriter in my head had given me to say, the make or break line, because if she shook her head or turned away, it would mean the end of everything and today would be a one-off. Tomorrow she would be gone. I’d come close enough to losing her when I let her walk away last night. This time, I had to make sure.
This is what she said to me.
* * *
Okay, so I’ve left you dangling. A few more lines, then you’ll know. I just want you to know how it felt. Time was playing tricks again, and the few seconds, half a minute at the most that she kept me waiting just felt like eternity ticking away inside my brain. “She’s going to say no,” a little inner voice was telling me, that failure voice you get now and then that tries to talk you out of having a good time and doing interesting things with your life. “Forget it,” the voice says, “you’ll make a fool of yourself. Nothing will come of it. Don’t take the risk.” Don’t listen to that voice, I say, ‘cause he’s usually wrong.
He was wrong this time. After several eternities had gone by – long enough for the whole history of life on earth to have happened at least twice: we’re talking geological time here – after this unbearable expanse of time, Malady finally spoke. What I’d said to her was: ‘there’s going to be more than this, isn’t there?’
What she said was: “Yes.”
That’s it. Just ‘yes.’ I know, you were probably expecting something bigger, just like I was. But at that moment, yes was good enough for me. What that yes implied, of course, was another matter entirely. But it would do to be going on with, and to keep my spirits afloat until I got to see her again. And when was that going to be? That’s what I had to find out now. I knew I couldn’t leave her without making some kind of arrangement to meet up again.
I smiled at her. “So. I’ll see you, then.”
“Oh yes, you’ll see me.” Malady gave a little sigh that could have meant anything. Contentment, regret, uncertainty, maybe all three and more besides that I couldn’t think of. She did a kind of pirouette, balancing on tiptoe, which looked so inappropriate that I almost laughed out loud. I managed to stop myself, but I think she would have appreciated it if I had. Malady never took herself seriously. She stared into the sky for a moment, and rolled her eyes.
“Like, er, when?” I asked. Don’t push too hard, I told myself.
“Who knows. But you’ll see me. And as to where I’ll be between now and then, that’s for me to know and you not to think about. Okay?”
“Okay.” Whatever that meant, I could see I’d just have to go along with it. Still, I’d got what I wanted. A promise to meet up again, however vague. There was no point pushing for any more, not yet.
We walked on to the next corner. “Which way are you going now?” she asked.
“Doesn’t matter.”
She looked at me expectantly. “I’m glad we met.”
“That’s good.”
“I wasn’t expecting it. It’s always better that way, don’t you think?”
“Yeah.”
“So then. I’ll see you, okay?”
“Yes, you’ll see me. If you want to.”
“I want to.” She stared at the floor, hands behind her back, laughing softly to herself.
“Come on, I’ll walk you to the bus stop.”
Well, she had to get home somehow, and how was I supposed to know? It was while we were standing there that I realised we’d reached the point where I reckoned I should do something to seal the deal between us. You know, kiss her. That’s a difficult one, but I’m not going to explain why (assuming you even need me to explain).
Okay, you need to know this much.
Malady Mort doesn’t do physical contact. She’d told me earlier on, probably when she saw there was a danger of something like that happening. And I respected her feelings, so I was cool with it. In a strange way I was enjoying the idea of knowing we had all that part still to come. What is it that some people say about anticipating something being better than the thing itself? That’s the only way I can explain it. Back then that’s still what I thought. Of course, I didn’t know the full story, not even after everything she’d told me in the restaurant. I just knew we had to get past this barrier somehow or other, at least acknowledge what should have been happening, even if it wasn’t. “So, what do we do now?” I ventured, or words to that effect. She shook her head. A strange, awkward silence had got hold of us, our first ‘difficult silence.’
That’s when she told me.
“I’ve got nowhere to go.” That’s what she said. And that, as far as I could see, didn’t leave me with much of an option. Well, what would you have done? Leave her there on the street in an unfamiliar town? No, me neither.
So I took her home. It wasn’t far.
And we spent the night together. Separately, no touching, nothing. Just think of her as one of the guys, I told myself. Well, I tried. And maybe Malady tried to think of me as one of her girl friends. Either way, we got through it. Me on the sofa, her in my bed. I insisted.
At first I thought it might be easiest if we sat up all night, just talking about stuff. I made tea and ‘night-toast’ (a concept I explained to Malady rather too fully) and played her some of my songs on an old tape. She seemed to like it. Then I turned the conversation back to what she’d been telling me earlier, in the curry house. I had to see her do that thing with the street lamps again. She seemed reluctant at first, and thinking about it, she’d had plenty of opportunity to give me a demonstration while we were walking back to the flat.
Malady thought for a bit, then agreed. She led me out into the street, in her bare feet. That, she explained, was part of the secret. “Good contact,” she called it. She skipped over the wet pavement to the nearest lamp post, flinging her arms around it like it was a long lost lover. The lamp went out. Along with every other light on the street.
I’d been right all along, right from the first minute I saw her. But by that time, I already knew. What I didn’t know about was the other stuff, the stuff the papers have all written about. And I’m not going there, because, for me, none of that ever happened. All I know is what I saw, and what I saw, on that night and on other nights was enough to convince me that Malady Mort was beyond extraordinary. She was unique.
I mean she is unique.
I don’t want to think of her in the past tense. That’s the trouble with telling stories, you see. You’re dealing in the past, and I’m not clever enough to write one of those narratives that feels like it’s all taking place right here and now, probably because I’m too aware that it’s not, too afraid that my time with Malady is all behind me.
I still want to think that there’s a future somewhere, however impossible it might seem. It’s Christmas in a few days, and in a strange way, that seems like my last hope of hearing from her. She knows where I live, she’s got the address, she’s got my phone number, I made sure of all that. For God’s sake, I’ve even taken to walking the streets at night, just in case she’s out there.
I haven’t set eyes on Malady Mort since July. Just twenty six days had gone by since we’d met and I was thinking we had, if not years, then at least a good few months ahead of us. Wrong. A single afternoon, that’s all it took. Just one afternoon of madness and destruction. Then I knew it was all over. How could I ever have believed there could be a future with Malady the way she was? Maybe I’m only writing this now because I’ve finally acknowledged it. She isn’t coming back. Where she is now, God only knows, and I can’t torture myself any longer thinking about it.
There’s a lot more I haven’t told you, the good times, and the weird times we had together during those few weeks. Maybe I will tell it, some day. Maybe Malady’s already telling it to someone else, wherever she is.
I only know that…
Shit.
Sorry, the phone just went off in my pocket. Text alert: ‘Message from Frank Tasker’. What does he want? Probably just wishing me Happy Christmas and would I like to buy another guitar (Frank’s the guy who sold me my big Gibson acoustic, the one I’d taken out busking that first Saturday). Look, I’m just going to check this and then…
Oh God.
It’s her.
It’s from her.
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