Lady Bag

by Liza Cody

  I had a blinding flash of déjà vu—Electra’s astonishment; my snobbery; something out of place and time.

  And then Smister called me into the saloon bar and my thought vanished while the landlady twirled and showed off her new self.

  She said, ‘You know, your daughter has a very special talent.’

  ‘Um, yes,’ I said, ‘and you look ten years younger.’ It’s always safe to say that, but actually it was nearly true.

  ‘You must both have lunch and a drink on the house,’ Abbie said, beaming.

  Smister was too pleased with himself to argue about me having a drink. We sat at our table near the back door and Smister said, ‘It was like Abbie had been to a fancy-dress shop and said, “Dress me up like a brassy blonde barmaid and don’t spare the push-up bra.” I just told her she had too much class and was too young and pretty to settle for clichés.’

  ‘A very special talent,’ I said, stroking Electra’s ears.

  ‘Oh shut up.’ But he was in too good a mood to mind, and we ate green Thai curry with chips.

  Because I’d had a drink earlier and knew I could have another when I went back to the ambo, I sipped my wine in a ladylike fashion. Electra relaxed and lay down under the table. No one was pressuring me, hassling me or accusing me of anything.

  So I remembered.

  I sat up straight. Electra raised her head, her ears like exclamation marks.

  ‘What?’ said Smister.

  ‘I have to go back to South Kensington.’

  ‘Why? Aren’t they still looking for you there?’

  ‘Make me look more like a man and they’ll never recognise me. Anyway it won’t matter. I can probably prove that Gram killed Natalie.’

  Neither of us wanted to risk me driving the ambo into the middle of London so we took the Central Line to Notting Hill Gate and the Circle to South Kensington. I don’t know why the non-believer wanted to come unless it was because he thought I mightn’t come back and he’d lose his personal chauffeur and litter sweeper. Obviously his heart and mind were with Abbie because he spent the journey giving me a blow-by-blow account of the alchemy by which he transformed her from a stereotype into a pretty woman.

  All he did for me was to get rid of the headscarf and the belt to my raincoat, alter the tilt of my hat and hoik my tracksuit bottoms around till they sat low on my hips and trailed their hems on the wet ground. He spent exactly three minutes on it. That’s all. It was the stupid, time-wasting bit of femininity that interested him—the bit that cost a fortune and was out of style in two weeks.

  ‘Why do you want to be that sort of woman?’ I asked in exasperation.

  ‘I am that sort of woman,’ he said firmly.

  ‘There’s no point to it,’ I said. ‘You’re either a woman or you’re not.’

  ‘You wouldn’t say that if you were forced to grow up acting like a boy while watching your older sister learn to act like a girl. It was when she got to puberty that I finally understood.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It was to make her like honey to the bears. I couldn’t believe it. She was just my snotty, snooty sister but she became something magical to the boys. I thought, “Why doesn’t anyone look at me like that? Why don’t they follow me or try to touch me?” It just wasn’t fair.’

  ‘You were jealous of your sister?’

  ‘No one could be arsed about me,’ he said.

  ‘Except the beastly priest,’ I reminded him.

  ‘But he was a just an old pervert. He wasn’t one of the handsome young guys who hung around Celia. I was so envious of her, I wanted to be her.’

  ‘For the attention?’

  ‘For the desire. I wanted to be wanted like she was wanted. Girls don’t want like boys do. They just want to be wanted.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ I said, thinking about wanting Gram Attwood. ‘What happened to Celia?’

  ‘Last time I saw her she had three babies under six and she was fat as salami.’ He looked down at himself in his sassy short kilt and coloured stockings. Every man in our carriage had scoped him out when we got on the train. He seemed self-satisfied.

  I was annoyed with him so I said, ‘Well maybe babies are the whole point of being wanted. Ever thought of that?’

  ‘Maybe you don’t know sod-all. Ever thought of that? So where are all your babies?’

  ‘Maybe I’m one of nature’s failures.’ I shut up then because I had a lump the size of a watermelon in my throat and I didn’t know if it was for him or for me.

  ‘You don’t know what it’s like,’ he muttered, ‘wanting to be wanted and not being an object of desire.’

  Don’t I though? I was thinking again about wanting Gram Attwood, of doing anything to keep him. He asked me to steal, so I stole. I wondered what I would’ve done if he’d asked me to undergo mutilating surgery to hold his attention. But I didn’t want to compare my tragedy to Smister’s. We didn’t talk again till South Kensington.

  Chapter 34

  Smister Takes A Stupid Risk

  I wished now we’d brought the ambo.

  I kept thinking about the half bottle of red I’d stashed behind the driver’s seat. If I could have a sneaky sip of that, I thought, my hands wouldn’t be shaking as we walked from South Kensington Station to Harrison Road. I wished it was raining so that I could hide under an umbrella. But Smister, being a real girl, skipped along at my side tossing her blonde hair and attracting attention and responding to it. She had Electra on a leash made from a vintage silver disco scarf. Electra looked rather fetching in sparkly silver but she’d stopped talking to me when my hands had started to shake—just when I needed her most.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind living here,’ Smister said, surveying the entrance to the mews.

  ‘See that house down the end with the yellow door?’ I pointed. ‘Well I’m going down there to look at the… ’ Suddenly I noticed that I wasn’t the only one with the shakes. Electra’s ears were flat against her skull, her tail had disappeared under her belly and she was shivering like a stripper in an east wind. She hadn’t forgotten.

  ‘Stay here,’ I told her and Smister.

  I hadn’t forgotten either. I thought I had, but when I watched Electra sniffing the life-sized plastic fawns in the flower bed outside the pub it came back to me. I knew I’d watched her before—sniffing at a little stone lion perched on the edge of a rustic stone water trough outside a mews house with a yellow door.

  I walked slowly down the cobbles, and yes, the water trough was there, but the lion wasn’t. There were pale marks where paws had rested, telling me that I hadn’t imagined it. But where was it now?

  ‘What’s up, Momster?’ Smister said, sneaking up behind me quietly enough to make me jump.

  ‘There used to be a stone lion here, and I know exactly who took it. It was the Devil. He smashed Natalie’s head into a pulp with it and then hid it in a plastic bag under his kitchen sink in Acton.’

  ‘Oh for fuck sake!’ Smister brushed past me and knocked sharply on the yellow door. Electra and I clung together, backing away towards the shelter of hanging clematis. I couldn’t believe he’d take such a stupid risk. Natalie’s brother had seen us on TV.

  The door opened slowly and a man peered out. He was bald and bespectacled.

  Smister said, ‘I’m looking for my friend Natalie… ’

  The man started to close the door. He didn’t seem to recognise Smister at all.

  ‘Hey?’ Smister cocked his head to one side and the door stopped moving.

  The man said, ‘My sister’s dead. You can’t be much of a friend or you’d know that.’

  ‘But… ’ Smister took a step back in shock. ‘But she was supposed to come to Dublin for a long weekend. She never showed up and I haven’t been able to get in touch since.’

  ‘Dublin?’

  ‘They were going to stay w
ith me.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘Nat wanted me to meet her new boyfriend.’

  ‘You’d better come in,’ the man said, opening the door to Smister who was drooping with shock and sorrow. I heard him say, ‘This is terrible, terrible news,’ as he stepped into the house with the yellow door.

  ‘Is he a total moron?’ I asked Electra. ‘I know he’s changed his whole image but… ’ Electra said nothing. She gave me a pleading, unhappy look and I hurried both of us out of the mews. I was very unhappy too but, given that we’d had gorgeous Smister standing squarely in front of us, I didn’t think Brother Munrow had noticed Electra and me at all.

  We sat down on the steps to one of the big houses in Harrison Road which had a view of the entrance to the mews.

  After five minutes the front door opened and a young woman in an apron appeared. She shook a broom at us and said, ‘Shoo. Missus gone call police. You go now.’

  Missus never talks to us herself, and nor would I if I had a maid to do it for me.

  We moved further down the street. I didn’t really know what to do. Suppose Missus actually did call the cops? What would she tell them? That I was a man or a woman? That she’d seen me before? In the mews? In the paper? On telly?

  I’d got what I came for—I hadn’t dreamed the lion; it had been there, and now it wasn’t. I couldn’t risk attracting attention by waiting for Smister anywhere near the house.

  Electra and I went to wait at South Kensington Station. But first I bought a small bottle of wine from the same shop where Joss and I bought the beer—how long ago?

  ‘What the hell does he think he’s doing?’ I asked as soon as my hands stopped shaking and my heart lay down to rest.

  Electra sighed. ‘Trying to help.’

  ‘Help? He’s put us all in danger by going into that house.’

  ‘And you can’t wait to hear what he has to say when he comes out. Put the bottle away.’

  She’s so righteous. I stuffed the bottle into my raincoat pocket.

  We went to a public loo. It was the one I went to that terrible day with Joss. I remembered weeping at my reflection. Now, when I looked in the mirror, what I saw was in some ways better, in some ways worse. Then my hair had been a mop of wire wool escaping from a beanie, and my skin was rough and purple with veins. I was huge and hulking in layers of clothing, and bent from the weight of worldly goods on my back. Now, I was sleeker and smoother but I had on my face two visible jagged scars, still healing, and I didn’t dare open my mouth because of the broken teeth.

  Electra, on the other hand, was as beautiful as ever: no bags under her eyes, no scars or wrinkles. ‘Of course,’ she murmured, standing on her hind paws and waiting for me to turn on the tap so that she could drink. ‘It’s humans who screw up. Dogs are blameless. We all go to heaven.’

  ‘There’s no such place.’

  ‘There is for dogs.’

  It was drizzling again so we waited by the photo booth inside the station. When people started to look at us we went inside the photo booth to hide, until, abruptly, someone tore the curtain aside and a woman with a large pink face pushed her head in.

  ‘I was right—it’s you,’ she crowed. She was wearing a brown felt hat and a raincoat. ‘Jolly good show. Never forget a face.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ I stammered, ‘I don’t think… ’

  ‘Not you,’ she snapped. ‘Her. The heroine of the burning tower block. I saw it on TV. You, as I recall, merely vomited. She saved lives. I’d like to award her a prize.’

  ‘She’d love that,’ I said hopefully.

  ‘What’s her favourite charity?’

  ‘Me.’

  ‘Don’t be more obtuse than you can help,’ the woman said. ‘Where did you find her?’

  ‘Battersea Dogs Home. She’s a rescue… ’

  ‘I can see what she is—and, frankly, I’d like to rescue her from you. In lieu of that, however, I’ll donate one hundred pounds to the Battersea Dogs Home.’

  ‘I’m sure she’ll be jolly grateful,’ I said, ‘but a little lunch would go down well too.’

  ‘Liquid lunch, I’ve no doubt,’ the woman said, thrusting her nose close to my mouth and sniffing noisily. ‘I thought so. If you weren’t already three sheets to the wind you’d know that it’s supper time. Lunch was hours ago.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said humbly. ‘We must’ve missed that.’

  ‘Here’s what I’ll do—I’ll put some coins in the slot, I want a photo of the heroine. What’s her name?’

  ‘Electra.’

  ‘Ah, revenge. Good name. But I don’t want you in the picture. Think you can manage that?’

  ‘What do you think?’ I asked Electra. ‘I mean she’s rude but… ’

  ‘She seems to like me,’ Electra said.

  ‘Everyone likes you if they’ve got a single brain in their heads.’

  ‘Absolutely true,’ the rude woman said. ‘Well?’

  To tell you the truth I don’t really mind rude women like her. They look you straight in the eye while they insult the shit out of you. Better that than the miserable bastards who won’t even look at you.

  So Electra had her passport photo taken in her silky, spangled scarf. She looked elegant and gentle, and her eyes shone. So lovely, in fact, that the rude lady gave us two pounds for a can of dog food. What a philanthropist! But I’d bet you any money that she was as good as her word and donated a ton to the Dogs Home.

  ‘Who the hell was that?’ Smister had been standing in the shadows watching. ‘You gave her your photo. Are you crazy? You’re wanted by the cops.’

  ‘Who’s calling who crazy? Who walked into Natalie Munrow’s house with her angry vengeous brother? Who’s also wanted by the cops for using her stolen credit card? You’re not crazy, you’re fucking insane.’

  ‘Have you been drinking again? Momster, you promised.’

  ‘You’re too trusting,’ Electra said, waving her tail at him and nudging his hand with her nose.

  We went through the barrier and down to the platform without speaking to each other. I really must get myself together, I thought, and leave him. He doesn’t understand me at all and he’s hopelessly needy and meddlesome. Also he has to have four walls around him and they don’t come cheap. Whereas Electra and I can live on nothing at all. I’ll go soon. I’ve given him too many chances already and it’s not like he’s at all grateful.

  Chapter 35

  A Quarrel On A train

  ‘Are you going to listen?’ Smister said, ‘or are you totally bladdered? Cos I’m not going to waste my breath telling you something you won’t remember.’

  ‘I’m not bladdered.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Electra said. She was leaning against my legs. She doesn’t like the underground—it’s too rickety and rackety.

  ‘And you can shut up too,’ I said. ‘I just had a few gulps to stop my hands shaking. It’s very hard to give up just like that. I need a little something.’

  ‘Talk to me,’ Smister said. ‘Don’t just mumble in her ear. I know what Pierre said. I agree, you do need something, but you mustn’t sneak behind my back. We’ve got to help each other.’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed—I’m not necking pills anymore. Well maybe one or two to help me sleep.’

  ‘Of course I’ve noticed,’ I said.

  ‘Liar,’ Electra murmured.

  ‘I just didn’t want to jinx you.’

  ‘Very bleeding thoughtful.’ Smister didn’t seem to believe me either but he went on, ‘Still, I suppose it is easier when I have Abbie’s makeover to think about, or your problems.’

  ‘They’re your problems too. You profited from Natalie’s death. You got caught with the stolen credit card.’

  ‘Oh for fuck’s sake!’ Smister exploded. ‘Do you want to know wha
t I found out or not? Honest, you’d make a marine weep, so you would. Is it any wonder I needed all those happy pills? Have you got anything left in that bottle you’re not quite hiding in your pocket?’

  So we shared what was left and calmed down even though a busybody pointed out that it was illegal to booze on the train. After that we were both in a friendlier mood and Smister told me about Edward Munrow.

  ‘Pervy old sod,’ he said. ‘He spent all the time leching my legs and boobs. He’s that sort—fingers you with his eyes but doesn’t have the nerve to make a move.’

  ‘Don’t knock it—it’s what got you through the door.’

  ‘Are you stone blind? It was when I mentioned Nat’s “new friend”. That’s what got him jumping. And you know what else you’re completely wrong about? He and his two kids cop for her whole estate and her life insurance. No one else, not Graham or Chantelle, gets a look in.’

  ‘And you know that because… ?’

  ‘I asked him if there was any little thing, an ornament or a photo, I could take away to remember her by. And he gave me a load of twaddle about safeguarding her nephews’ inheritance. Tight old bugger. He said only the family was mentioned in her will. Not even Chantelle, who was her best mate apparently. He’s met Chantelle—he called her a high-flyer; said she and Nat were like “peas in a pod”.’

  ‘They looked alike?’

  ‘Well, you saw them together.’

  ‘Sort of, but… ’

  ‘You were guttered. I saw a photo. They didn’t actually look alike—it was more that they had the same hairdresser, went shopping together and developed the same sense of style.’

  ‘And fancied the same man.’

  ‘Edward didn’t know anything about that. No one did. The police asked everyone if there was a boyfriend—because the boyfriend’s always a suspect, right? But even Chantelle claimed she didn’t know of anyone.’

  ‘Well, she would, wouldn’t she? She’s lying.’