Lady Bag (14 page)

Chapter
23

Torpedoed By A Shock Encounter

A
fter a few years, I mean days, spent like that—only going out briefly for food, always picking a different shop, sleeping a lot, I found that my now sticky plum-coloured leisure suit hung on me like old man’s skin. I’d fed everyone except myself because I’d been too queasy to eat.

‘It’s not that, dafty,’ Smister said, sitting up in bed and looking perky for a change. ‘It’s all the wine you’re not drinking. You’d be amazed how many empty calories there are in cheap wine. What does it feel like to be sober after all this time?’

‘Having the DTs does not make me sober.’ I could feel the aching spot in the middle of my chest; if I could stick a knife in it gallons of darkness and liquid, writhing insects would come spewing out.

‘Well at least you’re not babbling about God and Satan.’

‘Well
excuse
me,’ I said, making for the door. ‘I’m going to let Electra back in. At least
someone
appreciates me.’

Electra came in from the yard. Her limp was barely visible, her eyes were bright, her nose was wet, her sides were sleek, but she didn’t talk to me anymore. Instead of saying hello she waved her tail and seemed to smile. Then she went back to bed. Nobody ever believes me when I tell them how lazy greyhounds are.

I took one of Natalie’s zopiclones and lay down too. It was a good thing she’d been addicted to sleepers and painkillers—I don’t know how I’d have lived through the tormented days otherwise. I wondered if her pain and insomnia had been caused by Gram Attwood too. DTs or no, it wasn’t too fanciful to call him Lord Ashmodai. Soon he would appear as an angry landlord and throw us back into the street.

We’d been careful about showing light or being seen, but one day, inevitably, he’d come.

It was a schizophrenic street; the north-east end was posher—they had proper curtains and cars with tax discs. The other end, our end, was for the dirt poor and immigrants. Broken down vans arrived in the night and were unloaded into other vans which vanished by morning. There were flats full of single men. There were women who only came out at night and were whisked away in minicabs. There were women who only came out in the day, swathed from top to toe in shadows. There were old, encrusted Londoners who complained they never heard English spoken anymore.

Sometimes there were fights. Sometimes the cops came and removed, for instance, all the Somalis. But by nightfall their house would be full again, whether with the same Somalis or different ones I couldn’t tell. As far as I could see, we were all dispensable.

I came and went when I thought I wouldn’t be seen. But I got as wet as everyone else and I realised that there were a lot of folk nearby who didn’t want to be seen either. The rain poured down on saint and sinner alike, and everyone complained in a thousand languages.

Smister never went out. I put the kitchen telly in the bedroom. It only received two channels. And I brought home a portable radio I ‘found’. Sometimes he watched the telly and listened to the radio at the same time, as if the combined broadcasts could drown his own thoughts.

Sometimes Electra lay across his lap like an elegant fur rug. They seemed to enjoy each other’s company. It was a wordless, restful friendship, and every now and then I got the impression that I was too noisy and clumsy for them. I thought they blamed me for all their hurts and troubles; and I
was
to blame, especially for Electra’s.

Smister went through all of the anti-depressant pills, and the only way I could tell that he wasn’t suicidally blue was because he hadn’t been neglecting his beauty regime. He cleansed, toned and moisturised religiously, and asked me to bring some honey-coloured hair dye so that he could get rid of the pink and violet streaks. He said they didn’t look classy. He said he didn’t want anyone ever to call him a cheap tart again.

I can confirm that, tart or not, he wasn’t cheap. If I hadn’t had a big man’s raincoat with deep pockets and ten busy fingers to fill them he’d have beggared me. Except, of course, I was a beggar already. I wasn’t a good one anymore—not without Electra—but I managed to hustle a few quid as I shuffled down the road muttering, ‘Could you spare a little change, please, for the bus to the hospital, for a bed at the hostel, for a bowl of soup.’

Most people like a reason to give you money, but sometimes someone will say, ‘I’ll spare you some change if you spare me the story,’ and they pay me to shut up. On the other hand one amazing old bird gave me a fiver because she said I was the first person who’d talked to her all week. I tried to find her again every day after that, but I never did.

Money came hard without Electra. For one thing, money was tight for everyone that drenching summer and no one wants to stop in the rain especially when they’re feeling broke themselves. For another most people don’t see why they should give a grown-up person who’s well enough to walk anything at all—which is why a lot of us sit down to make ourselves took small and vulnerable. You don’t want to be taller than the person you’re asking for money from.

Smister said, ‘You never buy us anything green to eat.’ We were chomping on the egg dish he called Momster’s Mess. I’d even stolen salt and pepper shakers from a nearby caff to make it more palatable, but he was an ungrateful little sod.

‘Electra doesn’t like vegetables,’ I said.

‘What’re we going to do?’ he asked in exactly the same tone of voice.

‘I’ll buy you a fucking cabbage,’ I said because I’d never actually told him that I pinched everything.

‘We can’t just wait to be evicted,’ he said. ‘We need another plan.’

I don’t do plans. Planning is like admitting you have a future.

‘Have you got a driving licence?’ he went on, with the persistence of the truly stupid.

‘Have
you?
’

‘They wouldn’t let me take the test. They said I didn’t fill in the form properly. You know that bit where they ask if you’re a man or a woman—M or F? Well, I couldn’t write M. I just couldn’t.’

Electra gave him a look that said, ‘You shouldn’t have to.’ I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: she really is a nicer bitch than I am.

He went on, ‘What I mean is, can you drive? You do know all sorts of stuff your average bag lady doesn’t.’

‘Hey! What’s an
average
bag lady?’

‘If I find us a car can you remember how to drive it?’

‘Why do we need a car?’

‘We got to get around.’

‘Why?’

‘We’re going to get tossed. You said so yourself. I can’t show my face. I can’t find us a roof. But if we had a car… ’

‘Where’m
I
gonna get a car, poop for brains? It isn’t exactly a pair of tweezers and a magnifying mirror.’ That had been his latest lady-fying requirement. Didn’t he know that there’s a kind of nobility if you’re caught nicking food to feed your family, but none at all if you’re nabbed while stealing tweezers?

‘You haven’t answered. Can you drive?’

Once I’d had a blue five-door Vauxhall Astra and I used to take Mother to the shopping centre every weekend. We went to Falmouth for two weeks in August to be near my brother. Gram Attwood wanted a sexy little vintage Austin Healey Sprite but I couldn’t afford it.

‘I had a car once,’ I said, ‘a long time ago in another life.’

‘Great,’ he said. ‘So
you’ll
be legal even if the wheels aren’t. You didn’t lose your licence, did you? Drunk in charge? Anything like that?’

‘What does it matter? We aren’t getting a car.’

‘And I want you to find me a phone, Momster—something disposable. But black and silver would be nice.’

‘See what I’m dealing with?’ I said to Electra. But she just smiled at me indulgently.

‘Don’t talk to her,’ Smister said. ‘She’s only a dog. Besides, if she could talk back she’d beg us to get wheels—to save her poor paws and her arthritis.’

‘Electra doesn’t beg; she’s too dignified.’

‘Well I’m not. Momster,
please
. Find me a phone and I’ll find us wheels.’

So I shuffled off to Chelsea where I was a long way from Cadmus Road. I took a phone from an obnoxious young man who was so busy boasting to his mates about how much his new flat cost his father that he didn’t notice me sliding his phone out of his pocket. He was too stupid to realise how many people with nothing there are on the street these days, and that it’s both insensitive and risky to advertise wealth.

Smister said, ‘That’s way cool. Pity I can’t keep it.’ He was still traumatised by what Jerry-cop did to him, but he was losing the sour, sickly smell. Youth and chocolate were beginning to reclaim him.

‘Go away,’ he said. ‘I’ll be phoning my friend and I don’t want you listening in.’

‘Well if he’s a total loser like… ’

‘You promised you’d never talk about Kev or Too-Tall… ’ He gave me his hurt kitten look. Then he relented. ‘I met Pierre in the clubs. He’s on the Diana Ross circuit but he works in a garage by day. He knows I’m saving for the operation, so he’s bound to want to talk about it, and if you were listening you’d go all righteous.’

‘I do not go all righteous.’

‘Well mopey then. Or weepy. And I really wish you wouldn’t. It’s my body and my decision.’

In a huff, I put Electra’s coat on her, tied a salmon pink scarf round her neck and we went out.

It was a long time since she and I had been out together but we fell into step with each other as if we’d never been apart and I realised how lonely it was on the street without her. In spite of the rain she was enjoying herself too—sniffing at walls and lamp-posts, shaking herself so that water drops flew off her ears like a halo.

People hurried home from work without noticing us. I avoided the chemist shop where we’d first seen the mean guy in the cowboy hat, and Fulham Broadway Station where he’d attacked us. But we asked for change from people waiting for busses because they couldn’t walk away without losing their places in the queue. With Electra by my side I earned more money than abuse.

I was just about to accost a new bus queue when Electra stiffened, tugging at the salmon pink scarf. I looked down. Her tail was tight between her legs and the hair on the back of her neck lifted in a stubbly ruff. I spun round.

‘Thought it was you,’ Georgie said, stepping up so close I could smell the burgers he’d had for tea, while Joss crowded us on the other side.

Chapter
24

Threats, Thieves And Pierre

J
oss twisted my arm behind my back.

‘Don’t yell,’ Georgie said. ‘We don’t want to hurt you—we only want to talk.’

‘Then tell Joss to let go. I haven’t got over the last time you didn’t want to hurt me.’

‘That was a mistake,’ Georgie said. ‘Joss was freaked out.’

‘There was a fucking dead fucking body in there,’ Joss said. ‘I knew you’d fucking think I topped her. I figured you wouldn’t say nothing if you was dead too.’

‘Ow-ow-ow,’ I said.

‘Don’t yell!’

‘Then stop hurting me.’

‘That’s logical, I suppose,’ Georgie said, and Joss let go of my arm.

I crouched down beside Electra and smoothed the panicking hair on the back of her head.

‘And then,’ Joss said, as if he’d never been interrupted, ‘Georgie here said maybe you fucking did it.’

‘Did what?’ I straightened up and we moved into a shop doorway.

‘Killed the dead body—aren’t you fucking listening, cloth ears?’

A wave of rage started at my ankles and rolled up my legs till it hit me in the guts. ‘
I’m
not the violent one here.
I
don’t kick dogs or friends in the ribs and break their teeth and give them concussion and amnesia.
I
don’t beat up business rivals and stuff them down manholes. And I don’t have the brass neck to track you down and accuse you of… ’ But the sentence was never going to end well, so I said, lamely, ‘How did you find me anyway?’

‘The Lone Ranger said he seen you round here.’ Georgie had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘What’s the matter with you? Yorking on telly, making a freak show of yourself when everyone including the law’s looking for you.’

‘What did you do with the fucking dosh?’

‘What dosh? I’m cadging off bus queues cos I’m an eccentric millionaire, right?’ I was trying desperately to remember what I’d told the ‘Lone Ranger’, the mean guy in the cowboy hat. Electra licked my hand.

‘Electra nearly died in that fire,’ I said, gratefully stroking her head. ‘The vet’s bills were horrendous. And Josepha took the rest.’

‘And how come you never mentioned you had a fucking daughter?’

‘She lied. Everyone lies on telly. Don’t you know that by now?’ I couldn’t go far wrong by appealing to Joss’s paranoia.

‘So that blonde bint lied about them taking up a collection for you, people fucking phoning in, an’ all?’

‘Bingo! You don’t think anyone gives a toss about the likes of us, do you?’

‘Fucking A right!’ Joss said, and Georgie rolled a skinny cigarette, lit it and passed it round. The smoke hit my virgin throat like sandpaper but it seemed as if we were nearly friends again.

Then Joss said, ‘What about the dead fucking body? If I didn’t kill her and you didn’t kill her, who did? She didn’t fucking kill herself, did she? No one batters themselves to death.’

‘I don’t know. I was too busy dealing with you battering
me
to death.’

‘Stop whinging,’ Georgie said, handing me the roll-up again. ‘You’re all right now, aren’t you?’

‘Well, don’t blame me for thinking Joss did it—two women smashed up the same way, at the same time, in the same place.’

‘She was fucking dead before we got there.’ Joss squinted at me angrily. His mucky beard smelled of alcohol and hot dogs. ‘I didn’t even need to bust the door in. I think she was dead before the first time I saw you there. Remember? You was already outside that ritzy little house. That’s why I thought
you
done it.’

‘So you just wandered in, found her dead and then stole from her?’

‘He thought you were on to something,’ Georgie explained. ‘He thought you wasn’t sharing.’

‘You know what I fucking do to people who don’t share?’

‘Yeah,’ I said.

Georgie was giving me the crafty eye. He said, ‘So did you tell the filth about us being there?’

‘Did
you
?’

We all stared at each other. Joss broke first. ‘Know what, you arseholed wrinkly old moo? We could of. We could of made a few quid turning you up. People been asking.’

‘Who?’

‘Dunno,’ Georgie said. ‘Word comes down the line—you know how it goes. We thought it must’ve been the cops cos we kept hearing from people who think we’re your friends, and they pretend they’re your friends too. Only we know for a fact you don’t got no friends except that poxy dog. And another fact is they’re the sort as would grass you up for a jar of marmalade.’

I crouched down next to Electra. ‘What do I believe?’ I whispered to her. ‘I’ve spent weeks thinking Joss was a killer.’

‘For fuck’s sake!’ Joss looked ready to kick my head in again so I stood up quickly.

‘Gimme an answer or I really will do you this time.’

‘I haven’t talked to the cops,’ I said. ‘Would I be here if I had? Would
you?
’

‘Cos you know what I’d do if you talked?’

‘Same as you did when I hadn’t?’

‘Too fucking right.’ He bristled and flexed his shoulders.

I sat down with a bump and buried my face in Electra’s neck. Joss was insane, paranoid and violent. I used to be quite pleased to see him. I used to think he was nearly normal.

‘Now turn out your fucking pockets,’ he snarled.

So I gave him the seven pounds 86p I’d collected that afternoon. What was I going to do—fight both of them?

‘Sorry,’ Georgie said, ‘but you did make us come all this way three days in a row to find you. You owe us the bus fare at least.’

They stole my Trilby hat as well, but they left me the umbrella so maybe they were budding humanitarians after all.

After they’d gone I stayed sitting with Electra in the doorway for a long time. If I’d got up then I would’ve gone to the nearest offie for a couple of litres of red. A body can only stand so much threat and insanity without comfort. A few swallows of red would stop my guts from churning and my brain from twitching. A couple more and maybe Electra would talk to me again and tell me what to do. I might even be able to sleep without pills.

I hate being on the wagon. It’s very bad for my nerves.

Perhaps it’s better for my memory though. I began to remember that Joss didn’t cause all my injuries. Some of them happened when I fell over in the bath. Someone screamed and I fell over. What on earth was I doing having a bath in a stranger’s house with a dead body in the living room?

If you’ve never been completely wankered you probably won’t have to ask yourself a question like that. And not be able to answer it.

I remembered seeing Gram Attwood with a woman. He caught a cab to Harrison Mews. She went to the theatre. The next day I saw the same woman leave the house in Harrison Mews. It was the same woman. I’m sure it was. And it stands to reason she was Natalie Munrow.

Then I went off for a beer with Joss, and later there were guinea pigs, chocolate biscuits, and a little kid who called me Big Foot. That happened. Didn’t it?

I was sleepy when I got back to Harrison Mews so I don’t know what happened until Georgie came running out of the yellow door with bags full of stolen stuff. Then Joss gave me a terrible kicking.

Some time before that, Natalie came back to her house and got herself beaten to death. I screwed my eyes tight shut and tried to see her leaving the house. I remembered her looking back because she’d left Gram in bed. Gram would have been there. He’d have been gorgeous and sleepy. He never got up early. She brought him coffee with cream, and muesli with slices of banana. Afterwards he went back to sleep. That’s what happened because that’s how Gram liked it, and what he liked he made happen.

Don’t tell me I’m wrong. I know I’m right. I was there: I sliced the banana. I squeezed his luxuriating thigh before I left for work. And sometimes I rushed back at lunchtime to see if he wanted a nice sandwich. Or even me.

Was that when he killed me?

‘Was it?’ I asked Electra, but she blinked and sneezed at me so I knew I should take her back to Cadmus Road before she caught another chill.

Luckily there wasn’t an off-license on the way home. Because, I can’t promise I’d have had the strength to pass it by. I was still shaking from the memory of Joss’s staring, bonkers eyes as he said, ‘If you blabber I’ll mash your skull into your stinking brain. You won’t have any face left at all. And your brain will be all scrambled up with egg shells and fag ends. Bye-bye.’

Bye-bye? Maybe the scariest part was Joss thinking he could finish off a threat like that with a harmless ‘Bye-bye’.

Joss batters people. That’s how he is. He breaks eggs but there are no omelettes. He’s the logical suspect. Except he isn’t logical, and nor am I. I used to be, and then when my heart died my brain went on the sick list too.

If it wasn’t Joss and it wasn’t me who killed Natalie, that left the one I used to call Gram Attwood—otherwise known as Lucifer, the Devil, Satan and Ashmodai.

Except he isn’t interested in death. He may kill your heart, your mind and your spirit, but he leaves your body alive to feel the pain. Pain is his gift—even in bed when, hurt and degraded, you still want him. In the end you crave the hurt and humiliation because it’s the only time he touches you. You have no other proof of his love.

Or has he changed and added death to his repertoire? I can’t believe that: death is sometimes merciful and Gram is not.

Or did he love Natalie more than he loved me? Did he kill her to spare her years of pain and madness? Whereas with me, his indifference was so manifest that he couldn’t even be bothered to come to court or prison and watch me suffer.

I turned my face up to the streaming dark sky and let the rain irrigate my tear ducts. Electra whimpered.

‘Okay, sweetheart,’ I said, and we took the last few steps to our home.

Music greeted me as I walked down to the basement. It was a song called ‘Tainted Love’ and it fitted my mood so perfectly that I almost forgot that Smister only ever listened to talk radio.

I stopped on the stairs, but Electra went ahead confidently, her tail waving a gracious hello. I followed with more caution.

Smister, now honey-blond and funky in red, was dancing with a tall bald guy in overalls. He had black almond-shaped eyes, skin smooth as polished wood, and forearms like Popeye’s.

‘This is Pierre,’ Smister said, all dimples.

‘Hi,’ Pierre said, holding out a hand the size of a hubcap. ‘I hear you’ve been looking after our girl here.’

‘Isn’t he just gorgeous?’ Smister said. ‘He’s from Detroit, you know.’ He was glowing, relaxed and slightly stoned. I couldn’t see any wine, but the heavy scent of blow was making Electra sneeze. At least I hoped it was the weed and not a chill.

I dried her off. The temperature of her ears was normal and her eyes were clear.

There were plates on the tiny table with brown cake crumbs on them. Pierre caught me looking and said, ‘My girlfriend sent brownies, but we got the munchies… sorry.’

Smister said, ‘Something happened. What happened, Momster?’

I looked at Pierre.

Smister said, ‘Don’t worry about him, he’s solid.’

I sighed. ‘The guys who broke my face—they found me. I was going to bring us back some fish and chips, but they took all my money.’

‘Fuck the fish,’ Smister said, pulling up a chair for me to sit on. ‘Are you okay?’ He turned to the smooth wooden man in overalls, ‘They killed her friend and then kicked her brain into cake-mix so she can’t remember anything properly. Also she was heavy on the sauce, but she gave it up a few days ago. It hasn’t made much of an improvement that I can see. Except she doesn’t do her God and Satan piece so often—that used to be quite annoying.’

‘Going cold-turkey screws with your body chemistry,’ Pierre said. ‘It’s hard. You should maybe cut her some slack.’

‘Isn’t he the cutest?’ Smister said. ‘You should see him do “Can’t Hurry Love”. I swear there isn’t a dry seat in the house.’

‘It’s the transforming power of a big wig.’ Pierre dipped his shiny dome modestly, and I thought, at least he told Smister he has a girlfriend. I was prepared to like him, but there were too many confusing sexual signals wafting around. I’m a beat up old broad and easily confused these days.

‘Did they hurt you?’ Smister pulled the other chair close. Pierre sat down and Smister sat on his knee looking small and fragile.

‘See, that’s what makes me wonder if I got it all wrong,’ I burst out. ‘They twisted my arm and thieved my money, but that’s like shaking hands for them. If Joss actually killed Natalie, and he went to all the trouble of tracking me down, he would’ve killed me too; no argument.’

‘Then why did he bother?’

‘Cos he wanted to know if I’d grassed him up to the cops. And also everyone who saw us on TV told him I was in the money. Everyone wants a piece.’

‘But how did he know where to find you?’

‘Remember I told you about a mean bugger in a cowboy hat at Fulham Broadway Station? Well
he
told them.’ I could see that he didn’t remember—he’d been so whipped by his own woes he hadn’t even listened to mine.

Nevertheless he said, ‘This is why we need transport. We should never have gone on TV. It’s brought us nothing but trouble. I thought it’d open up the world of show-biz but all the wrong people were watching. We need to be able to change location quickly. We got more enemies than a debt collector.’

Pierre was eyeing my lopsided haircut with disbelief.

I was embarrassed. I said, ‘Georgie stole my hat.’

‘You surely do need something to escape in. Good thing there’s no lightning around—you’d be struck by that too.’

‘You
do
understand.’ Smister kissed the top of Pierre’s perfect scalp and wiped the lipstick off with his wrist. ‘I
knew
you would.’

Pierre brushed Smister off his lap as if he were a week-old kitten. He stood up. ‘Tell you why I’m doin’ this, girlfriend. It’s because you’ve finally wised up about those assholes you always fall for. See, you got a blind spot for abusive guys and I can’t help you till you wanna help yourself.’

That explained something: Pierre was far too kind to be Smister’s latest hump. He went on, ‘I got something you could be interested in. Give me till tomorrow evening. And in the meantime do something about your friend’s hair.’