Lady Bag

by Liza Cody

Smister turned over and mumbled, ‘Either way, he made me feel special.’

  ‘Not good enough,’ I said and turned my back on him. I think if I could’ve been bothered to feel them his ears would’ve been hotter than Electra’s.

  Chapter 20

  The Doggy Who Burnt Her Toes

  I had a shower in the morning—if it was the morning—and persuaded Electra to have one too. Both of us were smoke-damaged and we used Smister’s shampoo to loosen the grey greasy grime and send it in dark spirals down the plughole. I dried us both off on thin brown blankets.

  She was moving stiffly, but she was hungry. I fed her half what she usually ate with lots of clean water. I do look after her, I really do. She eats before me and when there’s no wine to be found she drinks before me too. She’s quite wrong when she says I forget about her.

  Smister had pinched some pills and about ten quid. But as I’d gone back to my old habit of stashing money in my clothes I wasn’t broke this morning. My hands were shaking and I badly needed to stock up on the red, but I didn’t feel as awful as I’d expected.

  I packed a couple of the thin blankets in my backpack, and then Electra and I waited behind the front door till we thought no one was watching. We sidled out into the street. I was coming back but I wanted to be ready in case of emergencies. I wouldn’t be ready without a first aid kit, a polythene sheet and a bedroll.

  But at the first shop I came to I remembered other stuff like mouthwash, Alto Rica coffee, milk and cornflakes for Smister because he couldn’t start the day without coffee and cornflakes.

  I thought, I’ll buy this crap for him and I’ll share it, but when it’s gone, I’ll be gone too. By that time Electra will be better and we can lose ourselves on the street again. I won’t allow him to corrupt us with soft living and wanting things.

  And as Electra still wasn’t well, I bought the kind of dog food that prolongs the active life of a pedigree. Because she is a pedigree greyhound from a line that goes back to Henry the Eighth or whichever arsehole started racing dogs for sport.

  I bought the first aid kit from a proper chemist. It was expensive because it had a pair of scissors in the box. Outside the shop, I spread one of the brown blankets on the pavement and started to bandage Electra’s legs and paws. There were plenty of poor to middling people who are fond of sick animals. For once it wasn’t raining. Rain is death to generosity.

  While I was bandaging Electra I was sneaking mouthfuls of red to steady my hands. After about forty minutes I’d collected five pounds, seventy-two pence and I was feeling almost normal.

  ‘Thank you,’ Electra said. ‘You can stop now. I’m beginning to feel like an Egyptian mummy.’

  ‘Never mind that,’ I said, ‘you’re sick. You need good food and plenty of rest.’

  ‘And you need to stop drinking before you spend every penny on more red and get completely hammered.’

  ‘But this is how we live.’ It was true. We live one day, one hour at a time. If we have money, we eat and drink. We don’t save money for a rainy day because all days are rainy. She should understand this.

  ‘I do,’ she said, ‘believe me. But that was before life got so dangerous.’

  But I didn’t feel in danger. I felt we were where we belonged and that in my fedora and raincoat I was as anonymous as an old chip packet blowing in the wind.

  But she was right and I was wrong. Old chip packets don’t appear on morning TV with their dogs. Old chip packets don’t throw up on glamorous TV presenters’ shoes. People who didn’t wish me well were looking for me.

  A little girl said, ‘That’s the doggy from off the telly.’ She dragged her mother over to us.

  The mother said, ‘Did the poor dog burn her feet? Here let me give you something for the vet’s bills. I know what that’s like. We had to have our Tommy put down last year. He wasn’t eating on account of his bad teeth and we couldn’t afford to get treatment for him.’ She gave me one pound, twenty-three pence.

  The little girl, who was petting Electra, said to anyone who looked even two percent interested, ‘This is the doggy who burnt her toes.’ She was a cute little pixie in a scarlet plastic raincoat so she drummed up quite a bit of business for us. A hurt dog and a cuddly little Tweety-pie are a killer combination. She petted Electra with her sticky hand. Electra glanced at me nervously. It started to rain again. I packed away all the lovely coin the beautiful people gave us. I took one more swig and packed the bottle away too.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Pixie-pie lamented as her mum tried to hurry her away. ‘The doggie’s bandages are getting wet.’

  ‘They’re like shoes,’ I assured her. ‘When the flood hits us and all the little fishes come to nibble her dying toes, she will be saved.’

  The little girl burst into tears. Her mum caught her hand and dragged her away, giving me a look I would have to scrub off later with holy water.

  When we staggered home Smister was still in bed, curled up in his blanket. I wanted to tell him about my success so I shook him awake.

  ‘Fuck off,’ he said ‘I’m sick.’

  ‘No you’re not. I got you coffee and cornflakes. You smell horrible.’ It was my turn to criticize. He was always telling me I needed a shower. ‘Go away,’ he mumbled. ‘I’m hurt and sick, and it’s all your fault.’

  Everything’s always my fault. I climbed onto Electra’s bed and went to sleep. I’d been out earning a living so I’d deserved it.

  Smister didn’t get up the next morning either. I brought him coffee and cornflakes in bed. He didn’t even sit up to eat and drink. He just lay on his side and spilled as much as he put into his mouth.

  ‘Are you Lady Muck?’ I said. ‘What did your last servant die of?’

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ Smister said in his weakest little girl voice.

  ‘You know who I am.’ I was quite upset by the question so I took a trip to the kitchen for a slurp of wine.

  When I got back, Smister said, ‘You aren’t who it says on your credit card.’

  ‘You nicked my card again?’

  ‘It was never your card.’

  ‘Then whose pocket did you steal it from? You’re a thief and a fruit fly.’ I stormed out, pausing only to grab a bottle from the fridge.

  Electra said, ‘Maybe you should’ve stayed and listened.’

  But I wanted to go back to the spot where we’d done well before so I didn’t listen to her either and we hurried through the rain to the chemist shop. She was limping and didn’t seem very happy, but I knew she’d feel better when I’d bought us some goodies.

  Just as I was about to open my bag to get out the blanket and the bandages I smelled the thick layered scent the homeless carry with them on a rainy day. I looked up because I knew then that I’d strayed onto someone else’s patch. A pair of granite eyes looked straight into my eyes and out the other side.

  I didn’t recognise him, but the hair on the back of my head stirred in a cold whisper of warning.

  Hiding under umbrella and fedora, I shuffled off as fast as I could. Electra kept up in spite of her poor legs. She was spooked too. At the corner we looked back and saw him watching us, a looming shadow of a tattered man in the rusty remains of a leather cowboy hat.

  We hurried on. At the next corner I turned again and he was still behind us. He didn’t seem to be walking. He was just there.

  I wanted to run to the student house and lock a proper door against him. But Electra wouldn’t let me. ‘You don’t want him to know where you sleep,’ she panted. ‘You can’t lead him to Smister.’

  Ahead, I saw Fulham Broadway Station. And that’s where he caught me.

  Well, it wasn’t me he caught—it was Electra.

  The tattered man in the cowboy hat wrenched her scarf out of my hand. He doubled it and pulled it tight around her throat, choking her till her eyes bulged.

  ‘No!’ I cri
ed.

  ‘Yes,’ he snarled. ‘Gimme what you got or the bitch dies.’

  ‘Heugh!’ Electra coughed.

  ‘What have I got?’

  ‘Gelt. Hundreds. I saw you get it on the telly. And you got the brass neck to be out on the cadge again today.’

  ‘But I haven’t got any left.’

  ‘Bollocks.’

  ‘My… my daughter got most of it, and I had to pay the rest to the vet.’

  ‘You’re lying, you arseholed old sow.’

  ‘Look at my dog. She’s sick. Animal doctors cost an arm and a leg.’

  ‘Heugh!’ said Electra.

  ‘Fuck you,’ he said, twisting the scarf even tighter. ‘Gimme what you got. That’s my pitch you were going to steal. There’s rent to pay, you thieving bitchwhore.’

  There was a torn magazine on the floor by my feet. I bent quickly and picked it up. I was completely fed up with being frightened of big blokes. I rolled the magazine into a tight cylinder. Electra was hanging from his hand as if by a noose. He shouldn’t have done that.

  I stepped up close to him and stabbed him in the Adam’s apple with the rolled up magazine while screaming, ‘Fuck off!’ into his face.

  I bet you never thought a gossip magazine was a deadly weapon. It’s true that it won’t wound you or make you bleed. But, rolled up, a magazine is as strong as a stick. It won’t bend. If you attack throat, eyes or droopy man bits you can do a lot of damage.

  His mouth opened like a barn door. Nothing came out except a guttural rasp. But he didn’t fuck off so I kneed him in the groin.

  The tattered man grabbed for his throat with one hand and his nuts with the other, letting go of Electra’s scarf as he doubled over. She sprinted away into the rain.

  ‘Electra, wait,’ I yelled. But she ran out into the traffic. Her bandages trailed behind her, turning grubby and soggy. She may be old, but she’s still a greyhound and much faster than me. I only caught up with her because a bandage snagged on a supermarket cart. She panicked, struggling to escape, pulling the cart towards her as she tried to get away. I was trembling too, but with elation. I’d been threatened by a violent bloke—but I won, I won, I won. Chalk that up to the archetypal victim!

  ‘Electra,’ I said, ‘calm down. We got away. We’re alright.’

  She hardly heard me. She was so scared that the look in her eyes hurt my heart and made me ashamed. She’d been cruelly treated because she was my friend.

  I gathered her up in my arms and held her till she stopped struggling. This is why I’m glad I don’t have a real daughter. Your enemies can get at you through the people you love.

  Chapter 21

  Smister’s Dreadful Story

  Electra drank a lot of water and went straight to bed. She wasn’t hungry. She just looked at me with those grateful amber eyes, and I thought, What’s she got to be grateful for? Because all I’d done was rescue her from the mess I’d made for her in the first place.

  ‘It’s for emergencies only,’ I promised as I put the rest of the red into the fridge with the milk.

  Five minutes later Smister shuffled out of the mouldy shower, clean and without make-up. He looked dejected and cowed; a girlish boy who’d been hurt or humiliated. I was surprised—pain and humiliation were usually what turned him on.

  Eventually he said, ‘I’m sorry I took your card but I needed to score something I could take to Lou’s Club to deal, or share, so that I wouldn’t look like some sad loser who’d lost everything in a fire. I can look wistful and winsome, but not like a loser.’

  He looked utterly like a loser, so I said, ‘Go on,’ and sat down opposite him.

  ‘So I used your cash card because the candy-man only takes cash. But the ATM swallowed the card and there was no cash. So either you’ve gone over your limit or you ain’t Natalie Munrow.’

  What game was he playing now? He’d read the Evening Standard so he knew I wasn’t Natalie Munrow. Did he want to take the moral high-ground because he’d stolen something that wasn’t mine?

  I said, ‘What were you going to buy with all that stolen cash?’

  ‘Does it matter? Get your head out of a bottle just for once and try to understand.’ He gave me his wounded fawn look and went on, ‘I was shook up so I went for a coffee nearby. Cos I wasn’t sure they’d let me into Lou’s if I wasn’t carrying. Real people go to that club, Momster, like barristers and surgeons. Why would they let me in?’

  ‘Because you’re young and pretty?’

  He couldn’t meet my eyes. Then he said, ‘I’m trash. I’m the slum bum boy when I’m at Lou’s.’

  ‘Don’t go there then.’

  ‘But they give me presents and take me to parties. And like I said, there are surgeons.’

  ‘Oh Smister… ’

  ‘Don’t start that again. You aren’t listening. Listen. I was sitting there having a mocha when two guys in suits walk up. And suddenly it’s like—“You were observed attempting to obtain money from the ATM on Shaftsbury Avenue, we’re the Fraud Squad, what you got to say for yourself, you cheap tart, and don’t even bother talking cos we ain’t gonna believe you anyway.”

  ‘Cheap tart! I was wearing my Donna Karan. So they want to look in my bag, and I’m, like, “you need a warrant,” and they’re all, “Don’t be a stupid little cow, the more trouble you give us now the worse it’ll be for you later.” And, “Come with us, we’ll show you what rights you got.”

  ‘They seemed straight, so we went and sat in their car in an underground car park, and for a while it was okay cos I just said I’d found the card on the ground next to the ATM. And they were saying, “If you’re telling the truth, no worries, pretty little thing like you.” But then it’s, “How did you know the PlN number?” So I say, “It was written on the card.” And they say, “We’ll recover the card so we’ll know if you’ve lying.” And I say, “It was in ink, it came off in the rain.”

  ‘Momster, they were so freaky—one minute it’s, “I could really fancy a little doll like you,” and then it’s, “C’mon, we know you stole the card off of a dead body.” Dead body, Momster? I never saw a dead body in my whole life.’

  ‘Too-Tall,’ I said. ‘You saw Too-Tall.’

  ‘She wasn’t dead. Don’t say that.’

  He suddenly slumped and laid his head on the table as if he was going to sleep. I thought I’d leave him like that because there was an ache in the pit of my stomach that only a slurp of red comfort could fill. But he said, ‘Don’t go Momster. You gotta tell me, did all that good stuff come off of a dead woman?’

  I tried to pretend I couldn’t remember. ‘I don’t know. There was a dead woman but I never saw her, and one time I thought she was me. I know some of the blood was mine.’ I didn’t want to lie, but I was afraid he’d done a deal with the Fraud Squad cops.

  ‘You said you were Natalie Munrow.’

  ‘No I didn’t. Everyone in the hospital told me I was her—even the WPC with fair hair and no arse to speak of. She gave me the house keys. And that handbag.’

  ‘So you thought you were her?’

  ‘I couldn’t remember anything. When I went back to the mews house my keys fitted her door, but my feet didn’t fit in her shoes. And then I saw you with Electra, and I knew who she was. It’s the only thing I’m totally sure of.’

  Smister ran his pearl-tipped fingers through his hair, trying to understand.

  I said, ‘How did you get away from the Fraud Squad? Did they charge you? Are you going to turn me in?’

  He was so young and transparent I almost believed he wasn’t going to make up a story.

  ‘I’d never turn you in.’ There wasn’t a flick of the sweet blue eyes. He shifted uncomfortably though. ‘But you were seen on telly pretending to be Natalie Munrow.’

  ‘No I wasn’t. You pretended to be Josepha Munrow, and you said I was yo
ur mum.’

  ‘You’ve got a cracking good memory for someone with amnesia,’ he muttered into his coffee. ‘The way you drink—it’s amazing you can remember your own name.’

  ‘But I can’t.’ What did he think I was? Simple? He was a thief and a liar. I should never forget that for a moment.

  He said, almost in a whisper, ‘They tricked me. They’d seen us on the telly. They knew about Natalie Munrow and me calling myself Josepha. They knew right from the start that I was lying about the card and the PIN number. They were playing with me, Momster; they were catching me in lie after lie till there was nowhere to hide.’

  I was beginning to feel sorry for him. ‘Then what?’

  ‘Then Jerry, the big one, said, “We got you good. We got you wriggling on a hook like a pretty little fish.” He was walking his fingers up my leg while he was talking. The other one was breathing heavy and sniggering. And then Jerry said, “Wriggle on this!” And he stuck his fingers up… you know… ’ Smister paused and chewed some colour into his lower lip. He took a deep breath and went on, ‘But of course he found a bit more than he’d expected. Some of them get very cruel when they think you’ve made a fool of them. They had a torch and a screwdriver in the glove compartment… ’

  I couldn’t say a word; I could only stare at him.

  He stared back at me, waiting for me to ask. But I couldn’t. So I shared the only comfort I could. I took the bottle of red out of the fridge and gave it to him.

  He glugged it down and said, ‘Why’re you snivelling, Momster? No one raped you with a torch and a screwdriver.’

  ‘Shut up,’ I yelled. ‘Shut up, shut up!’

  I ran out of the kitchen. I was going to fetch Electra and leave forever. But she had weepy eyes too, so I took some of the packets of co-codamol and zopiclone and put them on the table in front of Smister. He let them lie. ‘They gave me something strong at St Stephens—enough for a week—and antibiotics for three weeks. I’ve got my own prescription.’

  ‘How did you get away?’ I asked in the end. Because, God help me, even though I was crying for him, I was still wondering how much he’d betrayed me. If he hadn’t done it for money, maybe he’d done it for mercy.