Lady Bag

by Liza Cody

  Natalie stayed on her side of the road and we stayed on ours. She was in no hurry, but she walked purposefully. Her posture was terrific—confidence oozed from every pore. I walked like that once; before I started carrying my home on my back and a dirty great void where my heart should be.

  ‘Look at her,’ I said. ‘She’s got everything.’

  ‘She’s meeting someone. She’s checking her watch every thirty seconds.’

  ‘It’s a diamond watch. I bought Gram a Rolex so I couldn’t afford anything like that for myself.’

  ‘He’s gone up in the world since then.’

  ‘It’s not like you to be cruel.’

  ‘It’s not cruelty,’ Electra said. ‘It’s reality.’

  Just before Kensington Gardens there’s a stone and glass swank house called Kensington Palace Hotel. Natalie walked up to the entrance and a man in white gloves and a top hat held the door open for her.

  We stopped.

  ‘We need Smister,’ Electra said. ‘He could go in. We can’t.’

  ‘We dumped Smister.’

  ‘What do you mean, “We”?’

  ‘Anyway, he’ll have gone off with his best friend Pierre. He doesn’t need us. We don’t belong in the same world.’

  ‘You’re an idiot. What do you want to do? Hang around till Natalie comes out? There’s nowhere to wait.’

  ‘We could sit in the park.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Electra said, and we wove our way through screeching, honking traffic to Kensington Gardens. Electra had a lovely roam on the grass and I had a lie down on a bench. But I couldn’t see the hotel entrance so it was a waste of time. It was getting dark and I needed to witness Gram with Natalie once more so that I could remember my hatred and rage.

  Without rage I would never be able to contemplate revenge.

  ‘Anger never goes unpunished,’ Electra warned, nosing round my bench. ‘Well, yours doesn’t. Give it up. Go and find Smister.’

  But I didn’t listen. I trailed up and down outside the hotel until she stopped talking to me and my back started to ache like a rotten tooth. I didn’t see Gram Attwood, or Natalie Munrow again, but I did see a matching pair of cops striding purposefully in our direction.

  ‘Oh fuck,’ I said and we took off at top speed. I thought I was heading back to the squat, but somewhere along the way night fell and we got lost. Did I mention that Electra has a very poor sense of direction?

  We ended up hidden behind some rubbish skips. I wrapped us both in the blankets I’d swiped from the squat. It started to rain again but we were protected by some overhanging planks and polythene so we should have been quite comfortable. Electra sighed a lot. When did she get too good for this life? She should know better than to get used to a bed.

  Chapter 28

  I Become An Ambulance Driver

  In the morning I couldn’t quite shift the crust gluing my eyelids closed. I fed Electra and let her drink from a puddle. My back was the shape of a coat hanger and my chest squealed like a nest of rats. I set off to find a caff. I knew I’d recover once I got warm and fed. A café owner can be surprisingly generous when he wants you to move away from his door so I had a day-old sausage roll and a cardboard cup of weak tea for breakfast.

  Even so it took me nearly two hours to find Cadmus Road. I was cold and wet when I arrived but I still circled the area keeping my eyes peeled for cops or cowboys. The road was busy with people leaving for work and reluctant school-aged kids weighed down, like me, by their backpacks. No one seemed to notice Electra and me sliding stealthily into the squat.

  The musty old basement smelled of shower gel, body lotion and hairspray. Smister was alone, curled on his side with one hand under his cheek. He looked so young and smelled so clean that I couldn’t bear to wake him. Electra jumped onto one of the broke-back beds. I lay beside her and within two minutes we were asleep.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ His voice was high with indignation, but he handed me a mug of hot coffee. ‘You’ve been sleeping in a garbage bin. Admit it. I won’t speak to you till you’ve had a shower.’ He stormed back to the kitchen, his heels chattering like angry jackdaws, leaving a trail of perfume so strong it was visible. Electra sneezed and jumped off the bed to follow him, her tail waving gently.

  I sat up to drink my coffee. Smister had made it strong, with milk and five sugars—just the way I like it. My back was being stabbed by rusty knives, my hips felt bruised and my neck sounded like broken glass. Pavement isn’t the world’s softest bed but it never hurt me like this before. Maybe I’d twisted into a weird position. Or maybe I needed a proper bedroll instead of a couple of thin blankets.

  ‘Or maybe at your age, you need to sleep on a mattress, dim-wattage,’ Smister said. ‘Or maybe you need to stop bingeing and falling down instead of falling asleep. But while you’re clean I’ll cut your hair. Pierre’s right—you look like a total lunatic.’

  I was headachy and surly. ‘I saved your scrawny little neck yesterday only you were too dumb to notice. The cops took me in.’

  ‘They never!’

  ‘They did. And it was all because I was leading them away from you.’ I avoided Electra’s reproachful eyes.

  ‘Did they hurt you? Was it… the same ones? Were they looking for me?’ He turned so pale his lips looked blue.

  I relented. ‘It’s not all about you. This was about who killed Natalie Munrow. Oh crap!’ Because I suddenly remembered the cops were setting me up for Natalie’s murder. I was the easiest target within a hundred miles. No wonder they didn’t want to believe she was still alive. If they’d believed me, they would have to re-identify the body they had in their morgue. They might have to do a little work, instead of extracting the confession of a bag lady to do the job for them.

  ‘You’re paranoid,’ Smister said, snipping away at my wet hair.

  ‘I’m serious. I’m in a lot of trouble and I’m scared. If they catch me, will you adopt Electra? I couldn’t stand it if she was locked up too.’

  ‘They’re not going to catch you.’

  ‘They were in this street. They took me to Earls Court nick. They’re trying to pin Natalie’s death on me. And they found me not fifty yards from our front door. You’d just come home and Pierre turned up in an ambulance.’

  ‘Oh crap,’ he said.

  ‘Smister?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I fell off the wagon yesterday.’

  ‘You didn’t fall—you jumped from a great height—with enthusiasm.’

  ‘But you were… ’

  ‘Taking risks? Stealing? Get over it. You kept me alive the last two weeks. You stole and begged to feed me. But I don’t care how hard you try you’ll never make enough to buy an ambulance.’

  ‘You bought an ambulance?’

  ‘It’s got beds and cupboards, and there’s a water tank and heater the hippies put in. It won’t go above 27mph but it’s got four months left on the road tax. And Pierre threw in a new battery.’

  ‘But where will you go?’

  ‘We, you soppy old fruit bat. I can’t drive. And don’t start snivelling again. Hold still. If you’re going to drive you’ll have to look less like a soak or you’ll be breath-tested every two minutes. The point is not to attract attention.’

  That’s how I became an ambulance driver.

  Chapter 29

  I Drive Back To Where I Started

  Why couldn’t he have allowed me one little drink before throwing me into London traffic? I was a nervous wreck, driving an ambulance in the pouring rain after not driving at all for nearly five years. He has no pity. He’s too young to feel pity.

  The traffic was horrible so no one was going faster than 27mph, and that gave me time to get to know the cumbersome beast I was driving. The ambo groaned in first gear, squealed in second and wallowed round corners like a drunken camel. It smelled of weed
and patchouli oil. Cute little rainbows, moons and stars were sticking to the dashboard. Smister tried to pick them off with lacquered fingernails.

  But the windscreen wipers worked and we were warm and dry. Electra curled up between us and slept contentedly.

  I said, ‘I want to go back to South Dock High Rise.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I want to find out what happened to Too-Tall.’

  ‘Well, I don’t,’ Smister said. ‘Why can’t you forget about her? You got the contrariest damn memory in the whole world. Why can’t you remember useful stuff like what happened the day Natalie died instead of something glum and useless?’ He turned the radio on. It seemed to be stuck on KissFM and he could hardly hear it because of the squealing engine. ‘We’re running away, remember?’

  Stuck on North End Road I switched off the engine because I couldn’t stand the noise anymore. I said, ‘I followed Natalie to a posh hotel. You could’ve gone in after her but you weren’t there.’

  ‘Stop blaming me. I don’t understand—if she’s still alive how come I was nicked for using a dead woman’s plastic?’

  ‘Because Gram battered Natalie’s friend to death so that she’d be unrecognisable. They convinced everyone that the friend is Natalie and Natalie’s the friend. The classic switch. Natalie took out loads of insurance on her own life which she and the Devil want to collect. Or maybe Natalie made the friend the beneficiary of the policy.’

  ‘Or maybe your old mate Gram was married to Natalie so he’d benefit automatically.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What did I say? Don’t go! You can’t leave me in the middle of a traffic jam!’

  ‘You have no pity,’ I yelled. ‘You’re too young and you want to torture me as well as yourself.’

  ‘Shut up.’ He grabbed my arm like he was drowning in a rough sea. ‘Please stay. I’ve got a little red wine in my handbag.’

  ‘How little?’

  ‘Enough for a pick-me-up.’

  So I stayed and had a mouthful of red which settled my nerves and steadied my hands on the wheel.

  When he saw I was alright again, he said, ‘One day you’re going to tell me why you call this guy the Devil and what he did to you.’

  ‘No I’m not,’ I said and I meant it. I didn’t want to reveal my shame and humiliation to someone so young and pretty—so without pity. Besides, he wouldn’t be interested in a story that didn’t revolve around beatings and mutilation of body parts.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, without the grace to hide his relief. ‘But we have to find Natalie or the Devil—what’s his name when he’s off duty?’

  ‘Gram Attwood. You can’t find him—he finds you.’

  ‘Short for Graham? I’ll start with the phone book.’

  I snorted. ‘You can’t just look up Satan in the phone book. He manifests himself when he has plans for you, but not otherwise.’

  ‘You never actually tried to find him, did you?’

  ‘I don’t have to—evil is all around, all the time. You should know—you’re the one who was tortured with a screwdriver.’ I stopped talking to him till we found ourselves facing west on Western Avenue near Wormwood Scrubs Prison.

  Then I realised we were on our way to East Acton where I used to live with my mother.

  I panicked.

  I wanted to turn round but there was too much traffic.

  I wanted to stop because I couldn’t breathe.

  The ambulance smelled of hot metal and battery acid. How many people had died in it and been dragged away to hell?

  Electra stroked my hand with the top of her head.

  ‘Breathe,’ Smister said. ‘What the fuck was that about?’

  The ambo was in a pub car park and I had no idea how it got there. We raced through the pelting rain. I could only move because we were running towards red wine.

  Smister left us at a table in a dark corner at the back. I tried to dry Electra with my scarf and the sleeves of my leisure suit. She sat close to me with her head on my thigh, protecting me from the waiting waking nightmares.

  Smister came back with two glasses of wine but he wouldn’t give it to me till I’d drunk some water and had a wash in the cloakroom.

  ‘It’s the last you’re drinking till we’ve stopped driving.’

  ‘Then you drive,’ I said. But he ignored me and read a phone book instead.

  After a minute he looked at me curiously. ‘What made you come here?’

  I didn’t know. ‘Maybe it’s because I’ve forgotten how to turn right—across the traffic.’

  ‘Bollocks.’

  ‘You don’t know how intimidating it is. You can’t drive.’ But after a mouthful of wine I admitted, ‘I used to live near here with my mum. She’s dead now.’

  ‘Is that right?’ he said, ‘because there’s a Mr G S Attwood living at 17 Milton Way. Does that ring a bell?’

  I died from the pain. Graham Stephen Attwood was still living in my house.

  My mother died and has no grave. I died and have no home. But Gram Satan Ashmodai de Ville is living in my house.

  This is the house that he ‘sold’ to pay my legal fees and bury my mother. Except my lawyer is still unpaid, and my mother was kept in the morgue until there were enough other unclaimed bodies to make it worth while for the council to dig a big hole somewhere.

  This happened because, stupid shameful old bag that I am, I appointed the Lord of Vermin as my legal representative here on earth with unlimited power of attorney.

  Smister was crushing my hand and pinching my arm at the same time. ‘You’re making a scene. Shut up.’

  ‘Smister,’ I said as clearly as I knew how, ‘I need a drink.’ I leaned across the table and took his glass which was half full. Before he could protest I tipped it down my throat and felt the warmth surge from my guts to my poor cracked heart that let the icy wind blow in and freeze me to death. Smister got up, walked away and left me.

  I poured water into the palm of my hand and gave Electra a drink.

  ‘You should’ve known you’d end up back in East Acton,’ she whispered. ‘It’s Karma.’

  ‘You know I don’t believe in predestination.’

  ‘Well I do,’ she said simply. ‘My life was written in my blood. I was bred to be fast. But every career ends in failure.’

  ‘But your failure shouldn’t mean your death.’

  ‘It didn’t. You were my second chance.’

  ‘And you were mine.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. I’m a dog.’

  ‘You’re still my salvation.’

  ‘You can’t find salvation in a dog or a bottle. It’s in your own hands.’

  ‘No it isn’t.’

  ‘Scares you, doesn’t it?’ She raised her muzzle to the ceiling and gave an imperious sniff. ‘You might have to think properly and start taking responsibility instead of going, “Oh it’s not my fault—I was weak and feeble and I loved too much.” And then finding a bottle of red and getting twatted again.’

  ‘That’s just vulgar.’

  Smister said, ‘Why are you telling your dog off in public, making scenes? You’re lucky I’ve got an honours degree in charm and diplomacy.’

  ‘Who’s to charm?’

  ‘The landlady, sponge brain. She’s allowing us to park up here till tomorrow. I told her my “mum” had a nasty turn and needs a good sleep.’

  ‘Why do I always have to be your mother?’

  ‘If you were anything less than a mother everyone would wonder why I didn’t dump you. But if you’re my mum I get points for loyalty even when you’re trollied off your tits.’

  ‘Why don’t you dump me?’

  ‘I already told you.’ Sinister sighed loudly and turned his pretty eyes up to the ceiling.

  I wouldn’t miss him telling me something crucial lik
e that, would I? Half the time he complains cos I remember things. Now he’s taunting me cos I don’t.

  ‘You’re going for a lie-down,’ he said, with his evil charm. ‘I’ll find you one of your sleepers. But I don’t want another squawk out of you till you’re sober.’

  I lay down on one of the bunks in the ambo. It was a lot softer than the pavement and better for my skeleton than the broke-back beds. Smister fed me sleep from the palm of his hand.

  When I woke up it was because I heard the Devil calling. Smister and Electra were gone.

  Chapter 30

  Called By The Devil

  Smister left me with only a bottle of water. What am I supposed to do with that? Water’s no good for anything but washing.

  Rain drilled holes through the ambo roof and into my skull. My poor brain winced and shuddered but the bastard hadn’t left me so much as one mouldy aspirin. I put on my coat and hat and snuck out into the dark wet night.

  There were no lights on in the pub so it must’ve been well after closing time. But I knew where to go—the Devil was calling me home.

  The High Street was grim, shuttered and half familiar. At one end Sherrie’s Nail Bar had been turned into a Halal butcher and at the other a fancy French patisserie had replaced Ron’s Electrical, but it too was up for sale or rent. Claire’s Hair, where my mother went for her wash and set and her bi-weekly top-up of bilious gossip, was still there.

  At the Pizza Place you turn right and walk to the end of a residential street. Turn right again and the first turning you’ll see is Milton Way. My mother’s house, my house, Casa Ashmodai, is a hundred yards up on the left. It is semi-detached and a low wall divides its front garden from the garden of its conjoined twin on the other side. Its face is ruddy with Edwardian bricks. A concrete path runs round the detached side to a gate which protects the tiny back garden and kitchen door.

  My mother and I kept the gate locked except once a week when it was opened for the purpose of expelling rubbish bins. When Gram moved in I became less concerned with security. Evil no longer lurked outside, trying to get in. It now had a key of its own and was sitting with its feet up on the coffee table waiting for dinner. I called it Darling. My mother took to her bed. I took to crime. Gram took everything.