Telling Lies to Alice by Laura Wilson

and his mouth started working, and then he said, ‘What do you want to join that lot for? It’s all . . . all . . . ram, jam, and buggery! ’ He meant rum, bum, and concertina. I’ve never forgotten that—ram, jam, and buggery . . . it sounds like what would happen if the Women’s Institute gave the homemade wine a thrashing . . .”
    “What did he do, your dad?”
    “He used to do cleaning at an industrial chemists’ . . . they used a lot of phosphorus, and they gave you more money if you’d work with it, because it was dangerous. If you don’t keep phosphorus underwater it bursts into flames, and they had to deal with it when it was out of the water. All the workers had to wet their hair and clothes before they started, and when they finished work they had to shower and change into other things. My dad was mad about cowboy films—God knows why, I shouldn’t think the old boy had ever ridden a horse in his life, let alone kissed one—but if they had a western at the Rialto he’d move heaven and earth to go and see it.
    “One night they had a Tom Mix, but the problem was, it started at six o’clock, and he couldn’t think of any way to get there on time so in the end he decided to skip the shower and jump on his bike just as he was, with the clothes still wet. So he pedalled like hell and got there just in time and found a place smack in the middle of the front row where he always sat because he had bad eyesight, you see. So he watched the film and of course all the time his clothes were drying out. . . . Well, the climax of this thing had Tom Mix behind the boulder, one arm round the girl, blasting away, and the redskins chucking these burning arrows at him . . . you can probably guess what happened next. Dad’s clothes were covered in little flakes of phosphorus, and they started to ignite—not all at once, but more like matches, flaring up . . . They’d positioned the camera so the Indians appeared to be hurling these fire-arrows straight at the audience, and that was the point when Dad’s arm burst into flames. Of course the audience thought the film had come alive, everyone screamed and there was a stampede out of the cinema, with Dad running after them shouting for water. Some parts of his clothes were still damp enough to be all right, but different bits of his jacket and trousers kept igniting as they dried out, and all these people just took one look at him and—I don’t know if they thought it was witchcraft or something, but they all scarpered. . . . Eventually he got to a butcher’s shop and the man was flinging pails of water at him, but it wasn’t enough. In the end, the butcher went and called the chemist: ‘We’ve got a man here keeps bursting into flames, can you come and put him out?’ ”
    There was a pause, and I was sitting there with my hand up to my mouth, and then Lenny said, “You’ve got that disbelieving look on your face again . . .”
    “No, no, it’s not that . . . but . . . your dad, didn’t he get burnt?”
    Lenny frowned. “Do you know, I don’t think anyone’s ever asked me that before. They usually just take it as a funny story and leave it at that.”
    “Sorry . . . but—did he? Get burnt?”
    “Yes, his arms. He was all right, though. They patched him up . . . don’t look so worried, Bunny Alice. Tell you what, why don’t we go back to my place and forget all about it?”
    So that’s what we did. It was lovely. Not quite as exciting as the first time, slower, but in some ways it was even better. Lenny kissed me right down the middle of my stomach, and then he said, “Now I’m going to find out . . . exactly what it takes . . . to make you blush.” No one ever did that to me before, and it was wonderful.
    Afterwards I was hungry so we went down to the kitchen. I made sardines on toast and Lenny found some champagne in the fridge so we took it all back up to bed and had it there. We were licking our fingers—well, licking each other’s fingers