Lady Bag

by Liza Cody

  I squirted more red wine into my smashed mouth and tried to think.

  It was Joss and Georgie. Natalie caught them burgling her house so they beat and kicked her to death. They were going to do the same to me because I was a witness but Georgie panicked and ran off.

  I sucked more red out of the turkey baster and tried to get my head around the idea that my friends were killers. Joss always went mental when he thought he was being ripped off. He had, reputedly, kicked a guy half to death and then stuffed him headfirst down a manhole. The guy would’ve drowned in sewage except his beer belly stuck in the hole and three firemen had to rescue him.

  Georgie had better people skills but once you got to know him you discovered that he was sly and annoying.

  They sometimes shared booze and smokes and that counts as friendship in some levels of society. Not for me though. Giving me a few ciggies and a swallow or two of beer did not make up for my teeth, my concussion or my ribs. Plus I was still a witness. They were a real danger to me because I was a danger to them. I could send them down for murder if I ratted on them.

  They’d be locked up for life or at least ten years. Then I’d be safe.

  Except I wouldn’t be. People who rat are never safe on the street. But you know what? Street law’s as mad as a bag of weasels if it’s okay for Joss and Georgie to kick the living shite out of me and Natalie but it’s not okay for me to rat them out for it. I should call the cops. But I’d have to do it anonymously. The Dogs of Law would take me away if I ever told them my real name.

  ‘Not you,’ I whispered to Electra and laid my hand on her tabby-striped haunch. ‘You aren’t a Dog of Law. You’re my one true friend.’

  She opened a twenty-four carat gold eye and said, ‘I’ll be your untrue fiend if you don’t let me sleep. Put that stupid bottle away—you’re not making any sense. Again.’ She sighed a tragically disappointed sigh and settled down with her back to me.

  ‘If I don’t drink I’ll feel hungry,’ I said. ‘And if I don’t talk I’ll feel lonely.’ But she ignored me.

  If we were in the West End now, I thought, someone would give us some money and we’d amble off and share a burger. We’d have a little drink and wander around waiting for the next interesting thing to happen. If it was raining like it is now we’d stop in a doorway, I’d pull out a sheet of polythene and we’d shelter under it, steaming it up with our warm breath. No one would mistake us for soldiers in Belshazzar’s army.

  I wasn’t always alone. Once I had a lover, a mother and a brother. But the lover was Lucifer, the mother died of shame and the brother blamed me. Now Natalie’s brother will blame me for Natalie death. And who knows, maybe I am to blame. It was me who brought Joss and Georgie to her house. I didn’t mean to, but it happened.

  It was all Gram Lucifer Attwood’s fault. I followed him. I couldn’t help myself. I crave the pain of love and loss.

  I watched them walk across the square in front of the National Gallery. I saw the palm of his scentless hand on her back. I saw her flirt, nuzzle and kiss him goodbye. And maybe my scaly-skinned, green-eyed jealousy wanted Natalie dead so that I could have her house, her handbag and her lover. She dripped jasmine oil into his hot bath and lay with her thighs and his thighs woven like silk. She let her breasts caress his knees when she leaned forward to kiss his sculptured mouth. Stealthily, like a sniper. I know she did. She broke my crumbling heart so she had to die.

  If I am Natalie, if I am her, will he love me again? Once upon a time he told me that he would always love me. No matter what. He said this right before the first police interview. And he repeated it just as the trial started.

  I used to be loved. I used to be intelligent. I lay down on the bunk bed.

  With my eyes screwed shut, I fought with my memory which told me I was never loved—I was used; I was never intelligent—I was fooled. I showed him how to steal and he persuaded me to take the fall. I let him do it because I thought that if I gave him no trouble he’d find me more loveable; he’d need me so much it’d be impossible to leave me. I would be his heart and lungs and he wouldn’t be able to live without me.

  I was love’s creature. But it turned out that he was the Devil, a slave to the cruelty and deceit just as I was a slave to him.

  He used to tie me up with a biting clothesline and say, ‘Do you trust me?’ At first I thought he wouldn’t hurt me. Then later I realised that he was teaching me to enjoy pain. A valuable life-lesson as it happened.

  Sometimes I get cross. Not with him because when all’s said and done he was only being true to his devil nature. No, I get cross with myself—not for being stupid—that too is nature; nor for being fooled—that can’t be helped when you meet someone smarter and more ruthless than you. When I get cross it’s because I was such a wimp, an abject servant of blind, buggering love.

  I took a co-codamol for my ribs, and then another for my head. The last squirt of red laid my temper down to rest. I closed my eyes.

  I woke suddenly and sat up, cracking my head on the upper bunk. That’s how I caught Smister red-handed with his mitts in my handbag. He didn’t even blush. He said, ‘Where’s your effing credit cards, Momster? I’m running out of readies and I got to take a cab back to civilisation.’ He was wearing an off-the-shoulder apricot coloured sateen negligee and his hair was wet and tousled from the shower. Without make-up he looked unbearably young and clean.

  I snatched the bag back.

  ‘Kev!’ he yelled.

  Buzz-cut barged in growling, ‘Where’d I put my fucking keys?’ He saw his high visibility jacket on the floor and stopped dead. ‘She nicked me coat,’ he said plaintively.

  ‘She won’t lend us her credit card.’ Smister sounded just as plaintive.

  ‘Boot her out. She’s more trouble than she’s worth.’ Buzz-cut bent to pick up his jacket. ‘Keep the poxy pooch if you think you can use it. But she fucking goes.’

  ‘I’ve got brain damage,’ I said. ‘I can’t remember any of my PIN numbers. You can’t use my cards without PIN numbers.’

  ‘Good thing you kept them stored in your phone, then, isn’t it?’ Smister smiled, sweet, white and deceiving.

  ‘You stole my phone! I remember now. You steal everything.’

  ‘You stole my coat, and I bet you got my fucking keys.’ Buzz-cut Kev glared at me.

  ‘Did not!’

  ‘I’ve given you a place to doss,’ Smister said, offended. ‘So what if I tap you for a bit of rent? You’re loaded.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean you’re getting any of it.’

  ‘No?’ Smister looked to Kev for support.

  Kev said, ‘What’re you doing here anyway, Natalie Munrow? What you got to hide? That’s what we want to know. Who you hiding from? You ain’t kosher, that’s for sure.’

  I hugged Electra for support. She sniffed my head and wrinkled her nose. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘Brain damage. What am I doing? Why did you bring me here? Who the hell is Belshazzar?’

  Kev loomed over me. ‘Give me my fucking keys and shut the fuck up or I’ll give you the boot myself. Right in the arse.’

  ‘Kev, sweetie,’ Smister said. ‘You told me there’d be no violence.’

  ‘That was before I met her. She made me change my fucking mind.’

  ‘You said you wanted… ’

  ‘Don’t fucking remind me what I wanted, you disgusting… ’ Kev was looking at Smister as if he’d found him on his shoe.

  ‘Disgusting what?’ Smister smiled tauntingly. ‘Poofter?’

  ‘Freak, I said fucking freak.’

  ‘And I say pot, kettle and black.’

  Kev had a fist the size of a cabbage and he walloped Smister on the ear with it. It must’ve hurt like buggry but Smister didn’t yell or fall over. He just looked patient, as if that was what he’d been expecting all along.

  There was a moment’s silence after tha
t because Kev didn’t seem to know what to do next. I was afraid he’d turn on me or Electra so I said, ‘You left your keys by the front door.’

  ‘Why would I do that?’ he snarled. ‘They’re always attached to my belt.’

  I looked at his belt and I looked at his cabbage-sized fist. I didn’t feel like saying anything else. Electra whimpered and went over to nuzzle Smister’s hand.

  ‘Fuck you all,’ Kev said at last. ‘Don’t get comfortable. I know you’re fucking up to something.’ He slammed the door behind him. Only then did Smister sit down on the bed. He rubbed his ear and moaned, ‘Why do I always go for straight men?’

  ‘I do too,’ I said. ‘I’ve had better luck with dogs.’

  ‘Got anymore pain-killers?’

  ‘You’re going to get slaughtered again?’

  ‘Why not? You already did.’

  ‘I had an early start and I used my own money. Plus I’ve got a good excuse.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Smister said, ‘brain damage. You said. Well, now I got an excuse too.’ He drew his blond and lavender hair away from the side of his face and showed me his swollen ear. Then he pulled the negligee aside and displayed cabbage-sized bruises all over his back and torso.

  He said, ‘If he isn’t big enough and mean enough he can’t protect me, can he?’

  ‘But he’s who you need protection from.’

  ‘If it doesn’t hurt, it isn’t love.’

  I know that sounds perverted, but the moment he said it, in spite of the fact that he was a boy, he felt like my sister. So I rummaged in my bag and found him some co-codamol.

  ‘You love him then?’ I passed him the nearly finished bottle of wine to wash the pills down. His bruises reminded mine to come knocking so I took some pills too.

  ‘He’s a pig,’ Smister said, ‘but he’s sort of what a man should be. I know I’m sick, but look—he’s given me a home. I’m safe from every one else. That’s what real men do.’

  ‘I’ll make us a cup of tea,’ I said, because I couldn’t bear to listen to him anymore. He could’ve been my son, or daughter, if I’d met someone when I was young.

  I filled the kettle and Electra came in behind me. She said, ‘You should be nicer to the kid. It’s not his fault.’

  ‘I’m making him tea, aren’t I? How nice do you want me to be? Do you really want to go to work for him in Kensington?’

  ‘My leg hurts. I want to rest. I want you to protect me. You can’t help me when you’re smashed.’

  ‘I need a little drink to help me cope… ’

  ‘Then have a little drink but don’t get absolutely stonkers. You’re useless when you… ’

  Smister said, ‘Who you talking to?’

  ‘My dog. Her leg’s hurting and it’s pouring with rain. She shouldn’t go out again today. You shouldn’t either.’

  ‘It’s alright for you. You’ve got credit cards. You can go out and buy a bottle of this and that. You’ve got fancy doctor’s prescriptions. What about me? How’m I going to get by?’

  ‘Same way you always did before you met me,’ I said, because that’s what I was going to do once he’d blown out of my life—an occurrence I was looking forward to if he didn’t stop whinging about Natalie’s credit cards.

  ‘I need an operation,’ he said, staring at me with naked want in his eyes.

  ‘I thought you said you needed a ticket.’ I turned away from him and his eyes.

  ‘I do—to Brazil. It’s where they do the operation. Or Casablanca. I haven’t decided yet. How come you remember the ticket but you’re blank about your PIN numbers? Don’t say “Brain damage,” I’m so fed up of you saying that.’

  He could be my little boy… with a serious need to self-mutilate. My eye ached and I poured boiling water into brown stained mugs. Electra moved closer so I made her some milky tea too. Dog experts say you shouldn’t, but they don’t know her.

  I met Gram at a swanky hotel where my bank was having its annual awards dinner. He was working with the hotel hospitality team. He was wearing a snow white shirt with a black bow tie and looked unbearably young among the bankers, bank managers, wives and husbands. It’s an important bank and we’d snagged a minor royal as guest of honour. Everyone was dressed to the nines and over-excited.

  I don’t know what Gram had done wrong but he was receiving a bollocking from a banker. He was blushing and utterly humiliated. I took the banker a fresh glass of champagne and pointed out that the guest of honour had arrived, thus saving Gram’s pride from more pummelling. He said I was the only decent human being he’d met since starting work at the hotel. He told me he’d been in his third year at the London School of Economics when his parents died in an air accident. He’d had to give up his degree to find paid work until the insurance claim was sorted out. He was brave and uncomplaining.

  I wanted to help. I did help. Look what happens when young men want my help. Just look. And learn.

  I gave Smister his mug of tea. He said, ‘Why are you crying?’

  ‘My eye hurts.’

  He looked carefully at the stitches round my eye and touched the swelling with his thumb. His touch was like a hovering butterfly. My eye abruptly stopped hurting but the tears continued to pour out. I had not been touched unprofessionally by man, woman or child for nearly four years. Unless of course you count a kicking.

  ‘Maybe you should get your dog to lick your eye. They say a dog’s tongue heals.’

  Electra was slurping tea from a cereal bowl. She looked up, surprised. I could feel exactly the same expression on my own face. Smister started to laugh.

  Chapter 13

  Money, Violence And A New Flatmate

  We all slept till evening. Buzz-cut Kev did not come back. At eleven we went out to find a cash point. Smister wore a cerise waterproof poncho with a matching umbrella. He wound a fresh checked scarf around my bedraggled silk turban. Electra wore a polythene bag with holes cut out for her head and legs. It was still dumping buckets out of the sky.

  All this reminded me of the surveillance cameras that protect cash machines. I didn’t want to say anything in case it tipped Smister off about my lack of identity. I had the credit cards which I wouldn’t let him touch and he wouldn’t tell me my personal security numbers. It was a matter of trust.

  Usually when someone like me is at a cash point, it’s when I’m sitting on the pavement, begging. Or it was before a young banker-wanker said, ‘Are you out of your tiny mind? These machines only dispense tens and twenties. Do you really think I’m going to give you one of those?’

  I said, ‘But while you’ve got your wallet open you might spare a little… ’

  ‘Change? The reason I’m here is because I’m out of money. Are you mentally challenged as well as socially deficient? This is the worst place to beg. How much have people given you in the last hour?’

  I had to admit no one had given me anything.

  ‘Except me.’ He looked smug enough to slap. ‘I’m giving you advice: take your mangy dog and fuck off elsewhere.’

  I associate cash points with humiliation.

  This time I had a card but no confidence. I didn’t know what would happen. But I stuck the card in and covered the slot with my hand in case Smister tried to pinch it when—or if—the machine gave it back.

  Smister hipped me out of his way and covered the keypad so I couldn’t read the numbers. I noticed that he tilted the cerise umbrella to shield us, not from the rain, but from CCTV.

  ‘You’ve done this before,’ I said.

  ‘So have you.’

  I was about to contradict him hotly when I remembered I was supposed to be Natalie. So I said, ‘Of course,’ in what I hoped was a lofty manner. ‘It is my card, after all.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ he said, ‘and it’s your PIN number you can’t remember, stored in your fancy phone which you don’t know how to use.
So you won’t mind if I give this camera a good look at your beautiful face, will you?’

  ‘I don’t think you understand head injuries,’ I said, trying to disguise my quaking voice.

  ‘I’ve been a rent boy,’ he said simply. ‘Now I’m a trannie. Of course I understand head injuries.’

  I felt queasy, but, unbelievably, the machine gave me back the card and a few seconds later it whirred and spat five hundred quid at us. I was really glad I hadn’t broken down and confessed everything. I’d been tempted after what he said about being a rent boy. But having a tragic life does not necessarily make you a trustworthy person. I know about that all too well.

  When the money came out and he had it in his hand he gave me a very queer look indeed. Well, it was a queer situation—he didn’t believe me, but the machine did.

  I said, ‘If you ever want to do that again you’ll give me my half; right now.’

  ‘Wait.’ He turned us round without showing our faces to the camera and we tottered off like two skunked old women. In the back streets where there were no shops, cash points, or anything else that needed the protection of Mammon’s eye, we divvied up the cash and Smister mumbled, ‘Thanks.’

  I said nothing because I was still trembly. I would never have thought of the umbrella so I’d probably have funked it at the last moment if I’d been on my own. I needed a drink. Electra looked up at me and I ran my thumb over her wet forehead. ‘It’s alright,’ I whispered, ‘Don’t be scared.’

  Smister said, ‘What’s to be scared of? You’re legit, aren’t you?’

  ‘I was talking to Electra—she’s gone all trembly.’

  ‘If you say so,’ he said, with the indifference of youth. ‘You don’t happen to have one of those big white tabs on you?’ I rummaged in the bag and gave him one. I was tempted to take one myself but there was a pleading look in Electra’s eyes that said, ‘Please take me home and dry me off or I’ll be paralysed by arthritis before morning.’