Lady Bag

by Liza Cody

  So Smister swanned off to club-land and Electra and I trudged back to South Dock High Rise while I could still remember the way. I was shaken and banjaxxed about how the cash point had coughed out money. Did it mean that no one had identified the mews house body as Natalie’s and they thought she’d gone missing and was wandering around with amnesia? Or was it possible that someone had simply forgotten to stop a dead woman’s cards and account? Or was it all a clever trick to catch me out?

  As we emerged, breathless, from the eighth floor stairwell we almost walked into a violent confabulation. Buzz-cut Kev had his back to the door of our flat and he was surrounded by angry people. In front was the bearded man I’d mistaken for an ogre in a white nighty. He was saying, ‘Don’t you read your own fucking jacket, you moron? It says “Security”. You’ve supposed to be protecting us from trash like them, not giving them free board and lodging. Security, my arse!’

  ‘I’ve lived here for twenty-three years,’ an old bird piped up. ‘I’ve never seen the like. Pooh in the lift—syringes every-bloody-where. It’s disgusting.’

  ‘It just ain’t good enough,’ yelled a man with a shaved head, pushing forward belligerently. ‘Do your bleedin’ job!’

  Kev retreated into the flat. Baldy banged on the door with his fist. Kev reappeared almost immediately with a billystick in one hand and a tyre-iron in the other.

  I crouched down beside Electra and made myself as small and still as possible.

  Kev advanced on the residents’ committee. Baldy was the first one to scuttle away. The ogre vanished behind his own door. The old bird stood her ground for about ten seconds, saying, ‘You can’t intimidate me—I survived the Blitz,’ before limping away as fast as she could, leading the rest of the residents in an untidy rout. I couldn’t blame them—Kev followed them down the corridor like a bull chasing picnickers out of his field.

  I remembered the fist-sized bruises on Smister’s body. ‘Quick,’ I whispered to Electra, and we scurried into the flat while his back was turned. He’d left his keys in the lock. I grabbed them as I went past. I shut the door behind us, bolted it, slipped on the chain and wedged a chair under the knob.

  I was shaking like a jelly on a plate. Electra’s tail was between her legs. We looked at each other, horrified. I took her into the kitchen and, moving like an automaton, I stripped the polythene off her, dried her with a tea towel and opened a can of dog food. I’d promised her that I’d see to her first and that I would stay sober. But a woman can only take so much stress in one night. I opened a bottle of red wine and drank deep.

  ‘I kept half a promise,’ I said. ‘It’s better than none.’

  She stared at me with sorrowful eyes.

  The kitchen stank of wet fur, dog food and blocked drains.

  ‘One day,’ she said, ‘you’ll keep a whole promise.’

  The doorknob rattled.

  ‘What have you done?’ she whimpered. ‘He’ll be rageous. He’ll kill us.’

  ‘Maybe he’ll think the door blew shut. He didn’t see us, did he?’

  ‘But he’ll hear us if you keep on blabbing.’

  So I shut up and listened while Kev hit the door three mighty blows. It sounded as if he was running at it head first.

  ‘Can I have a cuddle?’ Electra whispered. We sat under the kitchen table, my arms tight around her. We were both trembling wildly. Her ears were pinned flat against her head.

  ‘Jody?’ Kev bellowed. ‘Stop acting like a disgusting little fag and let me in.’

  ‘Is that Smister’s real name—Jody?’

  ‘Could be it’s one of those boy-girl names he picked for himself.’ Electra’s so wise.

  Kev yelled, ‘Let me in. I’ll give you such a leathering.’

  ‘Not much with the psychology, is he?’ she murmured. I was glad I’d brought the bottle under the table with me.

  ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!’ he screamed. ‘I’ll get a circular saw and cut the door open. Then I’ll cut you open.’

  He kept it up for twenty-five minutes and only stopped when the voice of the ogre threatened to call the cops. The door held and we stayed quiet. He couldn’t be sure that Smister was inside. He couldn’t be sure anyone was. And with any luck we’d stolen the key to the tool room along with all the other keys on the ring, so he wouldn’t be able to make good his threat about the saw.

  After a few minutes of silence we began to feel safe again. I finished off the bottle and then we tiptoed to the blue room and went to bed.

  ‘Good old ogre,’ I said, but Electra was already curled up in the wheelie case, snoring gently.

  I dreamed I was locked in the little mews house with the yellow door. There was a huge lizard-like creature thrashing around outside trying to get in. Electra was crying. I thought she was afraid of the lizard, but it turned out she was trying to warn me about the nest of giant snakes that were waiting for me in the bedroom. There were monsters inside as well as out.

  I woke up slowly and painfully. Electra was whining and pawing at me. Someone was knocking at the front door. For a moment I was petrified; but she showed no fear at all. Then Smister’s voice said, ‘Kev, Kev, let me in. I didn’t mean to stop out all night, but I found you another one. I was only thinking of you.’

  I pulled the chair away from the knob, unbolted, unlocked and opened up. He stood there, mascara halfway down his cheeks. His Wedgewood blue eyes were heavy and bloodshot.

  ‘Momster,’ he said uncertainly. ‘What you doing up already? You stink. Don’t you ever shower? Where’s Kev?’

  Electra pushed past us both and went out into the corridor for her morning wee. ‘About Kev,’ I said.

  ‘Meet Too-Tall Tina,’ he said. ‘Too-Tall, this is Momster.’

  ‘I don’t like bag-ladies,’ said Too-Tall Tina.

  ‘And I don’t like bean poles,’ I said, stretching my neck to look up into eyes the colour of army camouflage.

  ‘Girls, girls,’ Smister said. ‘Don’t worry; I’m sure Kev will sort you out with places of your own. There are plenty to choose from.’

  ‘About Kev,’ I said.

  ‘Later.’ Smister began to weave towards the big bedroom. ‘If I don’t lie down I’ll fall down.’

  Too-Tall was the size of a giant skinny basketball player. She drooped like a cut flower in a dry vase and she held a black plastic handbag at breast height. She was Smister’s friend so I couldn’t be sure that she really was a she. But what bloke would want to look like a woman who looked like her?

  I went to the door to find Electra. I needed to lock us in safe again.

  Too-Tall said, ‘Where’s Kev?’

  ‘Lucky for you—he isn’t at home. You don’t want to meet him, and you don’t want to stay here either.’

  ‘Josepha said Kev’d look after me. Josepha says he’s the best boyfriend in the world. He may be a bit rough but he knows how to look after a girl.’

  ‘With his fists,’ I said, thinking, Hallelujah, I’ve met someone stupider and less observant than me.

  ‘Josepha said you’d say that. She said you’re jealous.’

  I turned and gave her a full frontal of my stitches, bruises and broken teeth. ‘Would you be jealous of this?’

  Too-Tall leaned forward and stared at me through narrowed eyes. Maybe she wasn’t unobservant; maybe she was just very short-sighted.

  I said, ‘Why do you think I’ve locked us in and barricaded the door? He’s an animal.’

  She looked away, and sat down on the broken backed sofa with her handbag on her lap as though she was having tea with a vicar. ‘I get picked on too,’ she said blinking her weak khaki eyes rapidly and twisting a coat button. Her coat was sopping wet. She smelled of cough linctus.

  Electra came back in. She ignored Too-Tall completely and went to the kitchen. I shut the door, bolted it in two places and shoved the chair under
the knob. ‘Take off your coat,’ I said, ‘you can sleep on the sofa.’

  The clock on the cooker said it was six-fifteen in the morning. I went back to bed.

  Chapter 14

  We All Wear The Mark Of Kev

  I didn’t wake up till Kev knocked the bunk bed over and tipped me out onto the floor.

  ‘I might of known it was you!’ He blew great gusts of whisky breath in my face, but the hands that grabbed for me smelled of baby powder. I should’ve been thinking of ways to save my life, but instead I thought, He’s got a baby. I forced him to go home last night.

  I rolled across the wreckage of the bed and scrambled under the fallen mattress from the top bunk.

  He kicked it out of the way and hauled me to my feet by one arm.

  My ribs shrieked. I shrieked. Electra started barking. She never barks.

  Kev punched me in the guts.

  I threw up on his boots.

  ‘You dirty drunken old slag,’ he bellowed.

  I was bent double so I couldn’t see his face; but when his pukey boots advanced on me I howled and pretended to fall over backwards.

  I was shrieking, he was bellowing and Electra was barking. The noise filled my head, but even so I heard someone wailing like a gibbon: ‘Stop it. Stop him.’

  Then the voice of the ogre thundered, ‘Shut the fuck up, all of you. I’ve called the cops. Can you hear me? THE COPS ARE ON THEIR WAY!’

  I stopped shrieking, Kev stopped bellowing and Electra’s bark turned into a whimper. Too-Tall went on wailing. I could see her through the bedroom door. She stood in the middle of the sitting room, making zoo noises. I scurried under the other mattress.

  ‘Where are my fucking keys?’ Kev yelled quietly.

  There was a sudden silence. Then Too-Tall squeaked, ‘I’ve got your keys. Don’t hurt me. I let you in. Josepha said you’d find me somewhere to stay.’

  The sound of jangling keys was quickly followed by the sound of fist on face. A body fell onto the worn out carpet. I made myself tiny and flat under the mattress.

  Kev said, ‘Stay with the freaks then. You’ll fucking fit in great.’ The door slammed.

  I waited a minute and then crept out of the blue room into the living room. Too-Tall was lying flat on her back. Her chin was scarlet and already swelling to the size of a potato.

  ‘Full house,’ I said, ‘now all three of us have the mark of Kev on us. And now he’s got the key so we won’t be safe here. Great.’

  She sniffed a snail-trail of mucus into her long, sad nose and held up one skinny hand. In it was a key.

  ‘My mate Charlene tried to teach me shoplifting,’ she said, ‘but I was too tall. Sales people kept picking on me. I really wanted to join the army, you see, but they said I had three too many backbones and I was too weak for my height. I’m too tall. Did I say that already?’

  ‘You might have,’ I said, taking the key. I relocked and bolted the door. I put a sofa cushion under her head and went to the kitchen to make some tea. There was too much of her to move and I needed more painkillers.

  I made tea for Electra and Smister too, although I thought he must be dead or gone. No one could’ve slept through that ruckus. But he was lying stretched out on his stomach, one shoe on and one shoe off, still dressed like a glitter ball. I put the tea on the nightstand and turned him over. You’re safer from choking on your own vomit if you’re lying on your front, but I wanted to check if he was still breathing. He groaned and sat up. I put the mug of tea in his hand. ‘Momster,’ he croaked, ‘what time is it?’

  ‘Six-fifteen,’ I said, because the clock on the cooker still said so. All this looking after other people was doing my head in. I’m responsible for me and Electra. I’m not anyone’s mother, auntie or nan. I don’t do the group thing. Sometimes you see bunches of us homeless dossing down together in benders or cardboard cities. For safety, they say. But if you’re a woman, and you haven’t got a tough boyfriend, sleeping in the middle of a bunch of rat-arsed blokes isn’t what I’d call safe. Even for me. They don’t call them blind drunk for nothing.

  I gave Too-Tall her tea. She was fingering her chin and teeth, waiting to see if anything would fall off.

  ‘It’s your own fault,’ I said. ‘You shouldn’t have let him in. I told you.’

  ‘And I told you… ’ She squinted up at me. ‘It was you, wasn’t it? I don’t like bag ladies.’

  The only one who thanked me for her tea was Electra. Dogs are the only people who actually benefit from human kindness and tell you about it. Electra’s tail began its slow arc from left to right and back again.

  I stroked her while she lapped from her bowl, and I couldn’t help noticing that meaty dog food and sleeping indoors for a couple of nights had made a difference to her. Her coat felt smoother and my fingers didn’t bump along her knobbly spine the way they had back in Harrison Mews.

  ‘You’re putting on weight,’ I said. I was pleased.

  She looked at me reproachfully. ‘I don’t run for my living anymore,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to starve me.’

  ‘I never starved you.’

  ‘No, but you sometimes forget me.’

  ‘Who’re you talking to?’ Smister walked in. He’d showered and was wearing a silky pink robe and ostrich feather mules. ‘What’s wrong with Too-Tall? And why’s your bed in bits all over the floor?’

  I said, ‘Kev hit TT and he bust my bed and probably some more of my precious ribs. But TT thieved the front door key off him so we’ll be safe for a while.’

  He sat down on the other kitchen stool and looked crushed. Electra sympathetically licked his shell-pink toenail.

  ‘You mean he’s gone? Did he leave a message for me?’

  ‘Are you insane?’ I said. ‘He’s got a wife and a baby.’

  ‘I may be insane but I’m not stupid. I know he’s straight. That’s how I’m sure I’m a real girl—I only love straight men.’

  There was no answer I could think of. Electra and I stared at him.

  Smister said, ‘Have you got another white bomber to spare?’

  I thought my injuries should take precedence over his need for wall-bangers so I said, ‘Don’t you think you’re taking too many? You could’ve slept through Kev beating me and TT to death. You could’ve slept through him choking the life out of you.’

  ‘Am I supposed to take sobriety lessons from a sozzled old cow who talks to herself, looks like something out of a locked ward and wears a rotting rag round her noggin? You whiff something awful. If you want me to take you serious, have a shower.’

  ‘You just want to get your thieving monkey paws on my stuff.’

  ‘I just want to be able to walk into a room with you in it without having to drench a tissue with Chloe and stuff it up my hooter. It’s not asking a lot.’

  ‘Just pain,’ I said. ‘Soap and water hurt the stitches. I might slip and fall. I can’t get the scarves off. I’m scared of mirrors.’

  ‘Get over yourself,’ said sinister Mister Sister, the one who’d never managed to keep her fingers out of my stuff since we first met.

  ‘You even pinched my dog,’ I said, giving him a hard suspicious stare.

  ‘I never. I found her, lost, on Brompton Road.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Electra said.

  ‘Whose side are you on?’

  ‘The side of truth and beauty.’

  ‘Truth and beauty, my baggy bottom!’

  ‘What’re you bleating about?’ Smister said. ‘Truth and beauty? You’re a hag and you never tell the truth.’

  Electra laid her head on my knee and gave me a look which said, ‘Disengage—you can’t win.’ Her advice is so practical and she looks out for me with such care that I often feel like crying.

  Smister said, ‘Hey, come on—all you need is a shower. I’ll sort your hair out for you. Just ru
n the hot water over your head till the rags melt off and use a little of my shampoo. You don’t have to rub hard and you don’t have to look in the mirror.’

  I carted all my luggage into the bathroom, where Electra could keep an eye on it. I kept peeking round the shower curtain to make sure no one opened the door. If you’ve tried to shower in as many crap hostels as I have you learn to watch the door like a hawk. You don’t have any advantages when you’re wet and naked. Well, you might, but I don’t.

  Electra went to sleep, and in the end I relaxed enough to let hot water work hot magic. The silk scarves peeled off without taking too much scalp with them, and I used Smister’s shampoo and conditioner because they promised me ‘body and shine’. If there was one thing I needed after my violent encounter with Buzz-cut Kev it was body and shine.

  There was a chunk of my head that was prickly with stubble and stitches and mushy with bruises, but I didn’t look into the misty mirror. Not once. Satan created too many ways to make a woman miserable without me helping him by looking in mirrors.

  I wore Natalie’s towelling robe which still felt clean and luxurious in spite of the dog hair.

  Before I left the bathroom I ran half a bathful of water, added a good dollop of the soap powder I found under the basin, and dumped everything I’d been wearing into the bubbles. If you leave it soaking long enough all you have to do is get in and tread it like grapes. It has the added bonus that you can remove the black stuff from under your toenails—no small achievement for those of us who sleep rough.

  Too-Tall was sitting in a saggy armchair looking frail and superior. Without any provocation she said, ‘Seventy-eight percent of rough sleepers are certifiable. It’s true. My social worker said.’

  ‘And what’s your excuse?’ I asked nastily.

  ‘I have a physical disability. I’m not a bag lady. I’m in sheltered accommodation.’