by Simon Brett
She missed the reassurance of the fur as she stepped briskly towards the Underground station. It was getting very wintry now. The edges of the pavements, not yet trodden away by early commuters, bore a salt-like crust of frost. As she passed their noisome cardboard fortresses under the railway arches, she felt a surge of pity for the newspaper-swaddled dossers who lay asleep on the cold pavements of London.
Truffler Mason was waiting for her. She had never seen him before in the flesh, but had no difficulty in knowing who he was. His great height and the long, sagging lines of his face – almost as if he had been made of candle-wax and melted – fitted perfectly with the doleful voice.
‘Play it whatever way you want,’ he said. ‘I’ll come with you and talk to him if you need support.’
‘I think I’ll probably be better off on my own,’ said Mrs Pargeter with delicate tact. ‘Don’t want to frighten him off or anything.’
‘OK, up to you. I’ll stay in sight, though, just in case you need any help.’
‘Why should I need any help?’ she asked innocently.
‘Don’t know how he’s going to react to being approached, do you?’
‘No, I suppose not.’
‘Nor how the others are going to react.’
‘Others?’
‘Yes.’
‘What others?’
‘Well, there are quite a lot of them, aren’t there?’
‘Quite a lot of who?’ Mrs Pargeter looked puzzled. ‘I’m sorry, Truffler, I’m not really with you . . .’
He pointed gloomily across the road. ‘Look, over there. That’s where he is.’
Mrs Pargeter followed the line of his finger, and saw the row of human jetsam she had passed only moments before. ‘You mean, the dossers . . . ? Rod Cotton is over there . . . with the dossers . . . ?’
Truffler Mason nodded. ‘Fourth one from the right.’
‘Good heavens,’ said Mrs Pargeter.
The smell, a compound of old sweat, urine and stale alcohol, grew almost insupportably strong as she approached the line of padded bodies. The one that Truffler Mason, now protectively watching her from the other side of the road, had pointed out, lay on top of three opened-out cardboard boxes. Under its coverlet of newspapers, the body was wrapped in an old greatcoat, once navy blue, but now faded to grey. From inside this, more newspaper, extra protection against the cold, spilled out. Stiffly-matted hair straying from under a woollen hat was all that could be seen of the head; its face was pushed into a pillow of a grubby padded carrier-bag.
The odorous cocoon gave no signs of life.
With caution, Mrs Pargeter reached forward an elegantly booted foot and touched one of the stained trainers that emerged from the bottom of the greatcoat.
There was no reaction.
She tried again, this time giving the body’s foot a firmer shove.
The third time, it worked. The pile of rags and newspaper twitched alive with remarkable speed. Suddenly it was sitting upright.
A haunted face glared at Mrs Pargeter. It was lined with grime, circled by greasy hair and scrubby beard. The gummy eyes lurked suspiciously in deep recesses.
But, through the disguise of suffering and deprivation, it was undoubtedly the face that Mrs Pargeter had seen in a photograph frame on the mantelpiece when she had first visited ‘Acapulco’, Smithy’s Loam.
The dosser was Rod Cotton.
29
‘It’s all right. I’ll move on,’ said the dosser in instant reaction to his awakening.
His voice had not quite lost its educated origins, but had become slurred into a kind of anonymous, classless growl.
‘I’m not moving you on,’ said Mrs Pargeter. ‘I want to talk to you.’
‘Bloody do-gooders,’ the voice complained. ‘Why can’t you leave us alone? Things are bad enough without you rubbing our bloody faces in it.’
‘I’m not a do-gooder. As I say, I just want to talk to you.’
‘Oh yes. Talk, talk, talk – maybe give me a cup of bloody awful soup – and then suddenly the talk’ll get round to God, won’t it? Well, don’t bother. Just leave me to go back to sleep. God’s irrelevant – got nothing to do with anything. If there was a God, he wouldn’t let people end up like this, would he?’ His right arm waved vaguely to encompass the other muffled bodies beside him. Mrs Pargeter noticed that the wrist was enclosed in a grubby plaster cast. He turned his face away from her and buried it back into his carrier-bag pillow.
Mrs Pargeter reached into her Burberry pocket. ‘I’ve got something for you.’
‘Don’t want any of your bloody leaflets,’ the heap of clothes mumbled.
‘I think you might want this.’ She turned the top, breaking the seal on one of the half-bottles of whisky.
The dosser turned instantly at this familiar sound and squinted up at her. She held out the open bottle towards him. With a quick look round to see that none of his neighbours were watching, he seized it and took a long swallow. Then another. And another.
Mrs Pargeter held her hand out. ‘That’s enough for the moment.’
‘No.’ He cradled the bottle to his chest.
She kept her hand outstretched. ‘Yes. You talk to me, you tell me what I want to know, and you can have the rest.’
‘I can have the rest now. I’ve got it,’ he said childishly, still clutching the bottle to him.
‘Yes, you can have that,’ Mrs Pargeter agreed, ‘but you can’t have the second bottle.’
‘Second bottle?’
She half-lifted it out of her other Burberry pocket. The dosser took a long swig from the bottle he held and looked furtively thoughtful. ‘Why do you want to talk?’
‘I just do.’ She lifted the second bottle fully out of her pocket and saw his eyes fix on it. ‘Come on, get up and talk.’
He hesitated only for a moment, then shambled upright. He had difficulty straightening his body after its night on the cold pavement, and flinched with muscular pain as he pulled the packed newspaper out of his greatcoat. ‘Not talk here,’ he said cunningly. ‘Don’t want the others to see.’
He took another long, surreptitious swallow from his bottle, then, with elaborate precaution, hid it in his coat pocket. ‘Where d’you want to talk?’
‘There’s a café over there. Do you want to go in? I’ll buy you some breakfast.’
He grimaced. ‘Not food. Can’t eat food early in the morning. Can’t eat it much any time. Over-rated stuff, food.’
‘Shall we go through there?’ Mrs Pargeter pointed to the gates into Embankment Gardens.
He nodded. ‘You give me the other bottle?’
‘When we’ve talked, yes.’
She felt safer with him walking ahead of her. As he started off, she glanced across the road to Truffler Mason. She gestured with her head towards the gardens. He gave an almost imperceptible nod, and started moving in the same direction himself.
Mrs Pargeter followed the malodorous figure ahead of her in disbelief. She knew Rod Cotton to be in his early forties, and yet the figure ahead shambled like something out of a geriatric ward. What could have happened in six months to reduce a resident of Smithy’s Loam to this?
He hobbled to the nearest bench inside the gates, and slumped on to it. A smartly overcoated man with a bowler hat, already sitting there, registered the tramp’s approach, and moved briskly away to the other end of the gardens.
Mrs Pargeter sat down, as close to her quarry as her tolerance of his acrid smell allowed. He took the bottle out of his pocket, transferred it to his plastered hand and, again with a precautionary look around, unscrewed it and took another drink. Only about a quarter of the contents remained. He looked at her greedily. ‘The other bottle.’
Mrs Pargeter retained her cool. ‘When we’ve talked . . .’ she said firmly, and then, timing it carefully, added the isolated monosyllable, ‘. . . Rod.’
Only a flicker of recognition crossed his face. ‘Who’s Rod?’ he asked.
‘You are.’
‘No.’
‘You are Rod Cotton.’
He shook his head slowly, as if suddenly it had become very heavy. ‘No, I’m no one. I don’t exist,’ he said, slurring more than ever.
‘You are Rod Cotton,’ Mrs Pargeter persisted. ‘I know you are.’
A pathetic cunning came into his eyes. ‘Who was Rod Cotton?’
‘Rod Cotton was a man in his early forties, married to Theresa, living at “Acapulco”, Smithy’s Loam. Until six months ago, he was a Sales Director with C, Q, F & S.’
He gave a twisted smile. ‘I don’t look like a Sales Director of anything, do I?’
‘No, you don’t now, but—’
‘I don’t look like anything. And do you know why? The answer’s because I’m not anything. I have no money, no home, no wife, nothing.’
Yet again Mrs Pargeter asserted quietly, ‘You are Rod Cotton.’
Another slow shake of the head. ‘There is no Rod Cotton. The Rod Cotton you describe was rich, successful. There’s no Rod Cotton to fit that description now.’
This, Mrs Pargeter reckoned, was as near as she was going to get to an admission of identity. ‘Do you still call yourself Rod?’ she asked gently.
There was a snort of laughter. ‘I don’t call myself anything. I am no one, so I have no name. When the police move me on, I have no name. When I go into the hostels, I have no name.’ He waved his plastered arm. ‘When I fall and end up in hospital, I have no name.’
The bottle was once again at his lips, and this time the contents were drained completely. A little trickled down the side of his chin and a panicked hand moved up to save this last dreg. He reached his hands out towards Mrs Pargeter. ‘The other bottle.’
‘No. Not until you’ve told me what I want to know.’
He slumped back, disgruntled, against the bench.
‘Look, you are Rod Cotton, aren’t you?’
‘Give me the bottle and I’ll be Marlene Dietrich, if you like,’ he replied with a cracked laugh.
‘I want to know two things, Rod . . .’
‘Oh yes.’
‘The first is – what’s happened to you in the last six months?’
‘What’s happened to who?’ he asked deviously.
‘What’s happened to Rod Cotton?’
‘Ah, him.’ He spoke as if referring to some mythical figure from another civilisation. ‘What’s happened to him?’ He paused, trying to reassemble his scrambled thoughts. Then he launched into a rambling explanation.
‘What happened to him was that he couldn’t cope with failure. I think. He never failed . . . or so I heard. He passed exams, he got jobs, he was offered other jobs, he made money . . . He didn’t fail . . .’
The rambling petered out. Mrs Pargeter filled the silence. ‘So, when he lost his job, he didn’t know how to set about looking for another one . . . ?’
‘He knew how . . .’ The tramp halted. ‘He knew how, but he couldn’t . . .’
‘You mean mentally he couldn’t? He couldn’t adjust his mind to the idea?’
The wild head nodded slowly. ‘He waited. He had a little money, the redundancy money . . . He thought something would happen. He couldn’t go out and tell people. He couldn’t admit . . .’
‘He couldn’t admit that he’d failed?’ She got no reaction to that. ‘Which was why he invented the new job, the job up North?’
There was no direct reaction to this question, either, but the tramp suddenly started out on another monologue, as if broaching a new subject.
‘He stayed around at home for a while, waiting for it all to be all right, waiting for the phone to ring with the new offer, new job . . . He passed the time with drink, with drugs . . . the phone didn’t ring. He went away, just to get away. Went to hotels, nice hotels . . . flash the Gold Card, pay for the hotels . . . Then the hotels don’t take the Gold Card. Redundancy money running out. Smaller hotels . . . nastier hotels . . . Bed and breakfast . . . But,’ he said suddenly, as if quoting something he found very funny, ‘you don’t need bed, you don’t need breakfast. To find yourself, you have to get away from material things . . .’
‘Is that what Theresa said?’ asked Mrs Pargeter gently.
He didn’t confirm this, but let out a grunt of laughter. ‘Somebody said it, certainly. What they didn’t say, though, was that to lose yourself, you have to get rid of material things, too. Rod Cotton . . . if that’s the name of the person you’re talking about? . . . he got rid of material things. Got rid of bed, got rid of breakfast. Don’t need a bed.’ He turned the empty whisky bottle eloquently upside-down. ‘Don’t need much for breakfast.’
Again he reached towards her for the second bottle. Mrs Pargeter shook her head firmly.
He hunched his shoulders and sank back into his greatcoat. ‘It doesn’t take long,’ he mumbled. ‘Doesn’t take long to get back to a state of . . .’ He fumbled for the word. ‘. . . a state of nature? A state of nothing, a state of not being. It’s all just a sort of shell. Money . . . Gold Card . . . job . . . jacuzzi . . . take it away and there’s nothing in the middle . . . Oh yes, you build up a network of money, of greed, but when you slip through the network . . . you go into free fall . . . free fall . . .’
The mental effort of this long speech seemed to have exhausted him. Or maybe it was the half-bottle of scotch. He mumbled incomprehensibly. Then the mumbling triggered a deep, deep cough, which shook his fragile frame.
After the spasm he looked vaguely at Mrs Pargeter, as if seeing her for the first time. ‘What do you want?’ he asked blankly.
‘It’s more a matter of what you want,’ she answered, drawing the second half-bottle of whisky out of her raincoat pocket.
His eyes registered the familiar shape and he reached for it. Mrs Pargeter put it back out of sight. ‘I want to talk about Theresa . . .’
The name triggered no reaction at all.
‘When did you last see Theresa?’
He shrugged, uncomprehending. The semi-lucid phase had passed; he was now drifting, outside time and reality.
‘Do you know how long it is since you left Smithy’s Loam?’
‘Left where?’ The shaggy head shook slowly. ‘Left . . . ? I don’t know . . .’
‘Your home. Where you had a wife,’ Mrs Pargeter prompted.
‘Had a wife . . .’ This sparked some recollection for him. ‘Had a wife, yes. Married.’ He nodded. ‘Married a long time ago . . .’
‘How long?’
This question was too hard. ‘Years . . . ?’ he hazarded blearily. ‘Five . . . ten years . . . ?’
It sounded genuine. Mrs Pargeter could not believe that this human wreck was capable of acting its bewilderment. Nor, come to that, could she believe that it had been capable of executing the carefully planned murder of Theresa Cotton.
But she had to check, had to get something more positive. ‘Two and a half weeks ago, the Monday of the week before last,’ she began firmly, ‘where were you?’
He looked at her as if she had suddenly started speaking in a foreign language. ‘Huh?’
‘Did you go to Smithy’s Loam two and a half weeks ago?’
He turned his head in slow confusion. ‘I don’t know. I was here . . . I think. I’m always here. Always round here . . . always round about . . . When I’m not in prison . . . Or hospital . . . ‘He tapped his grubby plaster. ‘Hospital . . .’
‘When did you break your arm?’ Mrs Pargeter asked.
‘Broke it. Broken . . . my arm. Then . . . I don’t know . . . Fell down . . .’ His eyes focused for a split-second. ‘Where’s the bottle?’
‘In a moment.’ Mrs Pargeter signalled to Truffler Mason, who was seated on a bench a few yards away, maintaining his surveillance over the top of a newspaper. He nodded, taking in the instruction. Casually, he reached into his pocket for a Polaroid camera, rose to his feet and ambled past the two on the opposite bench. As he came level, he took a close-up photograph of the tramp beside Mrs Pargeter. Rod Cotton gave no si
gn of having noticed what had happened. He seemed to have sunk into a kind of coma.
‘When have you got to go back to the hospital?’ Mrs Pargeter asked.
He looked at her blankly.
‘For your arm . . . ?’
He did not appear to understand this, either. Mrs Pargeter tried more questions, but all of them were met by the same vacant incomprehension. His eyelids were heavy. He looked as if he were about to doze off.
Mrs Pargeter knew she wouldn’t get much more out of him. She beckoned Truffler Mason across. ‘Did you get a decent shot?’
He showed her the picture, and she nodded. ‘Better go now, I think.’
She hesitated for a moment, and then withdrew the second whisky bottle from her pocket. She looked down at the comatose wreck of humanity beside her. ‘Do you think I should give it to him? I said I would.’
Truffler shrugged. ‘Don’t think it’ll make much difference. He doesn’t look long for this world, anyway.’
‘No . . .’ Still she hesitated.
‘It’d give him a happy hour or two,’ said Truffler.
She nodded and, still uncertain, held the bottle out.
The engrimed hands instantly reached across and snatched it away. The metal top was unscrewed in one movement and a heavy slug of whisky poured through the discoloured lips. Then the bottle was closed and tucked safely into the greatcoat.
Rod Cotton’s shadowed eyes looked up at her pitifully. ‘Have you got any money?’
‘If I gave you money, you’d only spend it on more drink.’
He shook his head. ‘Not drink,’ he said childishly. ‘Not drink.’
‘Food . . . ?’
‘Not drink,’ he asserted once again.
Mrs Pargeter looked for advice to Truffler Mason, but all she got was another shrug. She’d have to make up her own mind.
And she wasn’t the sort of women to resist the pathetic appeal in Rod Cotton’s eyes. Impulsively, she unclasped her handbag, reached into her purse and pulled out a fifty-pound note. Then she added another and held them out to the sad figure on the bench.