by Alan Moore
There was no one there. She was all on her own. I tell you, man, you’ve seriously got to watch that. Seriously. She’d been shouting, not just in her head but out loud. It was getting a bit regular with Marla, that was, shouting. Shouting at Miss Pierce, her form teacher from Lings. Shouting at Sharon Mawsley when they were in first year, shouting at her mum, shouting at Keith. Yeah, right. As if. At least it was all people what were real and what she knew, or at least mostly. At least so far. There’d been only once, no, twice, when Marla had been shouting at the Devil, and a lot of people got that all the time. Samantha used to get that. She’d said that for her he was a red cartoon one with a pitchfork, but that’s not the way that Marla saw him.
It had been the middle of the night about three months back, after what had happened to Samantha. She’d not had a proper smoke, ’cause there’d been none about but somebody – who was it? – somebody had given her some pills, fuck knows what, just to get her through. She’d been here in the flat, the same place where she always was, sat up in bed there in the dark having a fag just so that she’d be smoking something. She was staring at her fag end, like you do, and in the dark there it looked like a little face, a little old man’s face with pink cheeks and pink mouth and two black flecks for eyes. The bits of grey and white ash were his hair and eyebrows and his beard. There were two glowing sparks up at the top, bright red so that they looked like horns, a little devil man there on her fag end and it looked like he was grinning. Where the hot coal at the end was burning through the paper from the other side to make his mouth it sort of went up at one side, and Marla had been all, like, Yeah? What are you laughing at, you ugly cunt? And he was like, Who do you think I’m laughing at? I’m laughing at you, ain’t I? Because when you die you’re going to go to hell if you’re not careful.
That had been when Marla laughed at him instead, or snorted at him anyway. Well, what the fuck is hell supposed to be, you ash-faced twat? I’ll tell you, hell for me would just be being stuck in Bath Street here forever, and he’d said, Precisely, and that really fucking freaked her out. Where had she got a word like that? When she was talking to her people in her head they talked like she did, and she’d never said “Precisely” in her life. She’d stubbed him out, she’d squashed his little burning brains out in the ashtray by the bed and then she lay there until morning with it running round her head, the thing he’d said. She didn’t understand it and she didn’t understand why she was letting it get to her like it had. For fuck’s sake, what did he know? He was just a fucking fag end.
When Marla saw him the other time, that had been just a week or two ago, when Keith had told her he was having nothing more to do with her. She’d been here afterwards, been in the bathroom sorting out her mouth, which had looked much worse than it really was. She’d felt that low, though, that she’d thought about the fag-faced little devil and the things he’d said, fucking “Precisely”, all that, and she’d thought about it so much he was in her head like a real person, like Miss Pierce or Sharon Mawsley, and like all her people in her head he had a go at her. It was like he was sitting on the edge there of her little bathtub while she stood above the basin to one side of him and swabbed her chin with Dettol. He weren’t like the little red end off a fag though, this time, even if he sort of had the same face. He was a whole person like her mum or like the shagging tramp she’d thought about. He was all sort of dressed in what was like a monk’s robes or it might have been old rags, and it was either red, or green, or both. He had the curly hair and horns and beard and eyebrows like he’d had when he was made of ashes and, as Marla saw him in her head, he was still grinning at her, laughing when the Dettol stung and made her cry again when she’d only just stopped, only just got herself together.
He was pissing himself, this old Devil, and she’d lost it. She’d completely fucking lost it and she shouted Why don’t you leave me alone? He’d just looked back at her and done a face, taking the piss like, and he’d said it back to her, the same words, in a nasty whiny voice she knew was meant to sound like hers. He’d just said Why don’t you leave me alone, and then she’d just been crying after that and when she’d stopped he’d gone. She hadn’t seen him since, and didn’t want to see him but the other people who’d had demons said they got more regular, not less. He was her nasty fag-end devil prophet and she’d even got a name for him. Ash Moses, that was what she called him. Sometimes when she got that burning smell she often had when she was in the flat, the smell she thought was just her nerves all frying up, she’d laugh and say Ash Moses was about. But that was when she’d got some and was in a good mood and it all seemed funnier.
Marla was searching down beside the couch again when she looked at the carriage-clock there on the mantel and saw that she’d been here for more than an hour and half when she’d just meant to pop in on the off chance of some little lick she might have lost. Fuck. If she didn’t get a move on she’d have no chance of the knocking-off time trade, the blokes home for the weekend from the places that they worked in Milton Keynes or London or wherever. It had better be a bigger turn out than she’d seen at dinner time up Regent Square and Sheep Street and round there, ’cause if she didn’t get some money soon she’d, well, she’d stay in. Stay in, read her Di book and her Ripper books and just put up with it, that’s what she’d do. She definitely, definitely wasn’t going out tonight, no way. No way.
She sorted out her make-up best she could but there weren’t much that she could do about her hair. She put the scrapbook and the murder paperbacks inside the bedroom chest of drawers in the clean clothes space, so that she’d remember where they were, then went out through her little kitchen and her back door, into the big concrete gardens of the flats. It wasn’t a bad day, but just the sight of all the gravel paths and shrubs and steps stretching away towards the backs of all the flats there on the far side, or towards the big brick arches near the middle avenue, it always got her down and almost always kicked off the Ash Moses smell, though not today. This was a fucking awful place. She bet there hadn’t ever been a time when everything what happened here weren’t horrible.
One of the girls round there was thirteen and for this last month she’d been the rage with the Somalis, the poor lucky little fucker. Still, that wouldn’t last. She wouldn’t last. Then there was that old spastic bloke what used to live across the middle path on the next block somewhere, mentally handicapped whatever, what had been put out in the community. Next thing, he’s met some geezer in the pub, right, bloke asks himself back, says what a nice place that the mental feller’s got and how he’ll bring some mates of his round, it’ll be a bit of company, yeah? Next thing there’s all these fuckers moving in and taking over, telling this poor cunt they’ll kill him if they’re fucked about and he’s too mental to know any different and besides they might do. Doing gear and putting girls out round there and the handicapped bloke, he’s out living on the street. This was a place, these Bath Street flats, where any rubbish, anybody that the council wanted rid of, nutters, Kosovans, Albanians all that, they could put all the shit here and just wait for it to disappear, go up in smoke like everybody round here seemed to, like Samantha and the other girls, Sue Bennett and Sue Packer and the one what had a gap between her teeth, banjo string cleaner what they called her. Kerry? Kelly? Her what had been found up round Monk’s Pond Street anyway, the blonde one with the teeth. There weren’t nobody killed yet, but some of them had been fucking close. Samantha had been close by all accounts. There weren’t no way what she was going out tonight.
There was her ASBO. That was one good reason what she had for staying home, even without the other stuff, Samantha and all that. The fucking Robertses next door, that’s who she had to blame for that. It was like, three, four months ago when Keith was seeing to it that she got more work. There’d been, what, two or three nights, five nights at the very most when she’d brought punters round the flat. Not even late, only like two o’clock or that, and fucking Wayne and Linda Roberts on their fucking doorstep ev
ery fucking time and banging on at her about the noise, giving it this about their fucking baby, all this with her punters looking on and listening while she got called every cunt under the sun and is it any wonder she’d had a go back? Five fucking times. Six times at most, and then they’d had them put the ASBO on her.
Fucking ASBOs. What that was, it was so they could keep control of places like the Boroughs without wasting any cash on extra coppers. Just stick every fucker under ASBOs and then let the fucking cameras keep an eye on things. The cameras, that was what you call it, zero fucking tolerance. If anyone shows up on film what’s breaking their conditions, then that’s it, you can just lock them up. Don’t matter if what they’ve done is a proper criminal offence or not. Marla had heard about some woman got an ASBO for sunbathing, right, in her own back yard. What the fuck was that about? Some fucking neighbour cunt, some old cunt who can’t stand to see somebody having a good time, see someone with her baps out, so they fucking, what they do, they fucking get a fucking ASBO took out on you and then they …
Fat Kenny. That was who she’d had the pills off that night when she’d seen Ash Moses the first time, the big bald kid who lived in the flats up on the Mayorhold at the back of Claremont, Beaumont Court there, what they called the Twin Towers. She’d gone round his flat and wanked him off and he’d give her the pills. It was a funny thing, how when there was some little detail what you wanted to remember, if you just stopped trying and forgot about it, it would come to you. She walked across the courtyard to the gateway at one end of the brick arches where she could see it was open and she wouldn’t need a key, because she’d lost hers or she’d put it somewhere and forgotten where. Wearing her little sexy mac what she’d not took off all the while when she was in the house, she walked up by the middle path towards the ramp and told the dog halfway along to fuck off what was laying a big cable.
Stepping off the top end of the ramp and out the little half-walled exit into Castle Street she got a sort of lift from nowhere when the sun come out just for a minute, from behind a cloud. She felt more sort of positive whatever, and she thought that was a good sign, that was like a lucky whatsit. Not charm, but the same thing. It would be all right. She’d find somebody down Horsemarket or in Marefair and then after that, who knows, perhaps things might start looking up in general. If she could get sorted out a bit then Keith might say she could come back with him or, fuck him, there might be somebody else, one of the Kosovans or that, she didn’t care. It was about half four when she walked out from the no-entry at the end of Castle Street and onto Horsemarket. Right then. Let’s see who was about.
There was a lot of traffic, but all going fast and in a hurry to get home, nobody idling along at twenty with an eye out on the curb. Across the busy road she could see the arse-end of Katherine’s Gardens, what the wrinklies round there called ‘Gardens of Rest’, around the back of College Street and that dark-looking church. There were some old girls lived in Bath Street flats, ones who’d been on the batter in the old times and were all, like, in their sixties and that. Marla couldn’t even think what it would be like to be in her thirties. These old dears said as St. Katherine’s Gardens and the top of College Street was where all of the trade got done back in the 1950s and the 1960s, back then during wartime or whenever. Up where College Street met King Street there’d been this one pub called the Criterion and just across the road another called the Mitre. That was where the girls all used to knock about, back then. They’d either do the business in the bushes round in Katherine’s Gardens, or they had this taxi company next to the Mitre what would run them and the punters back down Bath Street, wait outside the flat five minutes for the bloke to finish and then run them both back up the pub. It sounded really nice to Marla, sort of cosy and all friendly. There’d be people round to keep an eye on you.
Of course, in them days the Old Bill were different. What their plan was then, it was to keep all of the different sorts of trouble to a different pub. So all the hippies and the druggies were all off in one pub, all the bikers in another, queers and lezzers up the Wellingborough Road somewhere and all the girls down here, up the top end of College Street. By all accounts it worked quite well, then you got all new coppers coming in with new ideas who probably just wanted to be seen as doing something, and to look good in the papers. They went in and busted all these pubs and scattered everybody everywhere, so now you’d got all of the different sorts of trouble spread through nearly every pub in town. Marla supposed it was a bit like with Afghanistan, when all the terrorists whatever were all in one place until they sent the soldiers in and now they’re fucking everywhere. Fucking result. Marla thought how it must have been when Elsie Boxer and the other old girls from her flats were on the game, back in the 1960s when it was all whatsit, all Dickensian and that. It must have been like really nice.
Elsie had said there used to be a statue just along from the Criterion on the edge of Katherine’s Gardens, that was like this woman with bare tits, holding a fish, but people all the time were fucking with it, putting paint all on its tits and that, then someone broke its head off. After that they probably thought like the people round here shouldn’t have a statue so they moved it off down Delapre, Delapre Abbey where it was all posh and old, over the back of Beckett’s Park what Elsie said they used to call Cow Meadow. Marla thought that was a shame, about the statue. It was fucking typical. Something that’s sexy, yeah? Some woman, or like statue, with the tits and that, there’s always going to be some cunt, some bloke who wants to smash it up. Anything lovely, like Princess Diana or Samantha. Fucking kill it. Fucking knock its head off. That was just the way things were, and it had always been like that. Some fucking people, they’d got no respect for fucking anything.
She stood there for a minute, sizing up her prospects. Looking uphill to her left there was the Mayorhold, somewhere else that Elsie said had used to be all right, a sort of village square thing, where there was just like this junction now. That could be a good patch for trade, or had been in the past at any rate, but only after it got dark and not around this time of day. Her best bet was downhill towards the traffic lights down at the bottom, on the corner there where Gold Street and Horsemarket joined with Horseshoe Street and Marefair. She’d get any trade coming up Marefair from the station, then there was whatever business might be passing by the other way, down Horsemarket and Horseshoe Street to Peter’s Way and out of town. Plus, right, there was the ibis, where they pulled the Barclaycard place down in Marefair. People off from home in a hotel, you never knew. Shoving her hands into the pockets of her little PVC mac, she walked down the hill.
Down at the bottom Marla went over Horsemarket to the Gold Street side there where the pizza place is, then crossed Gold Street to the corner where it joined with Horseshoe Street, then stood there while she lit a fag. That was the only good thing with all these no smoking laws. You got so many women worked in offices whatever who got made to go outside for fag breaks that if you were standing smoking on a corner these days, looking dodgy, no one automatically assumed that you was on the game or none of that. She watched the crowd, the people filing to and fro over the zebra crossings, coming back from work or home to make their kids’ teas. Marla wondered what was in their heads and bet it was like really fucking boring stuff like fucking football fucking telly shit, not like all what she thought about, all fucking wonderful and all imagination and all that, like anybody else would think of gluing Princess Di down on the sun. Watching her crowd for any possibles she let herself go off onto a daydream, thinking about who she’d like to have come up to her if she could have like anybody, any man.
He wouldn’t be a big bloke, and he wouldn’t be all blokey. Not a gay, but pretty. A bit girly, how he looked not how he acted. Nice eyes. Nice eyelashes and all that and really fucking fit, wiry and like he’d be dead good at dancing and dead good in bed. Black curly hair and he’s like got this little beard … no, no, this little moustache … and he’d be GSOH like in the adverts, a good sense of hum
our what could make her laugh a bit ’cause she’d not had a laugh in fucking months. He’d be GSOH but not N/S. And he’d be white. No special reason, he just would be. He’d be standing here, right on this corner with her and he’d chat her up, he’d flirt a bit, he wouldn’t just ask how much for a blowjob. He’d be fluttering his eyes and making little jokes and looking at her like they both knew where all this was going, looking really dirty in a real way, not like on a DVD. Oh, fucking hell. Marla was giving herself fizzy knickers. She pulled harder on her fag and stared down at the ground. This bloke, this bloke so fucking fit you wouldn’t even charge him, right? You’d fucking pay for it. This bloke, she’d take him up her flat and on the way there he’d be kissing her, he’d kiss her on the neck and maybe he’d feel round her bum and she’d say not to but he’d just look up at her, right? He’d look up from under his eyelashes like a little boy and he’d say something really fucking funny and she’d let him just do anything, man. Anything. When they got round the flats he’d probably steer her up against her flat’s door, right there in the hallway, and he’d have his hand down on her pubes and they’d be kissing, she’d be saying no, oh fucking hell, just let me open the front door.
And then the Robertses would have her put in prison.
She heard All Saints’ clock up at the top of Gold Street strike for the three-quarter hour, quarter to five, and ground her fag out underneath her shoe. She gave the passing crowd another once-over, but there was fuck all there. Some really pretty white girl with red hair who had this fucking gorgeous baby in one of them slings goes round the front. Yeah, nice one, darling. Nice tits. Fucking good for you, yeah? Probably you don’t even deserve that baby, probably you’ll fuck her up and she’ll grow up wishing you’d never had her, that she’d died when she was little and still happy, ’cause that’s what you feel like. That’s what fucking happens. That’s what fucking happens all the time.