But kids keep turning up. They’ve run away from children’s homes or from families where they’ve had three stepfathers or, like Jonathan, from brothels. Several kids have only one kidney, after being kidnapped and operated on by body terrorists. The toughest ones don’t stay. Rosa left very soon; she’s squatting in a house at Crystal Palace. Kevin’s five now; he lives with us part of the time. Rosa often comes to see us, and last time she came, Wednesday I think it was, she read us a story in a tabloid newspaper headed URBAN MYTH? It said gangs of feral children roam London, organized by an evil, ancient, blind hag from a labyrinth under Mayfair. Something ought to be done about it, the article said. But nothing has been done. We’re still here.
All these kids have been through some kind of hell, but Jonathan is the most badly damaged. He’s fourteen, so battered by the outside world he thinks this place is wonderful. When Jonathan was six his mum, who was drowning in debt, sold him into ‘adoption’ – actually a children’s brothel in Tooting, where for five years he was so viciously sexually abused that now he refuses to take his clothes off, even when he’s asleep and shakes whenever he has to talk to an adult male. When he was eleven the brothel was raided by the police and Jonathan was put in a home where the abuse, he says, was almost as bad and the food worse. Six months ago he found his way to us. Mum usually says this place is only for children, because there’s not much space, but I don’t think she’ll ever be able to throw Jonathan out. He does more than any of us, makes me feel lazy. When he first came to live with us Mum asked what Jonathan looked like, and I said, ‘Like a broken angel.’ He’s really fit, tall and slim with coppery skin and green eyes with thick lashes and gorgeous curly black hair – wish I had his looks. But he’s frightened of everybody, and he jumps about six feet if you touch him, and he’s always screaming in the middle of the night.
Jonathan organizes the children into begging gangs, like Rosa used to, and leads them all over London. Mum doesn’t exist as far as the authorities are concerned, so she can’t claim any kind of benefit. The children’s daily explosion on to the streets of the city feeds and clothes us all and keeps us in camping lamps, candles and paraffin. Each morning Jonathan rounds them up like a sheepdog, about forty kids, although there are only thirty-six bunks. A few extra kids always manage to sneak in and sleep on the floor. Jonathan’s nervous voice becomes more confident as he bosses the younger children, reminding them which streets and areas of the park they have to cover and what time they’re to meet him at McDonald’s. I know Jonathan needs to pretend to be a kid again, to hide in this gang of kids.
But I don’t want to any more. Kevin sits beside me and watches me watch Mum. It’s like living in a school, only it’s always break and the kids never go home. They’re fighting over a bag of crisps, screaming for the attention of the only teacher, who happens to be my mother. Can’t remember the last time I had a proper conversation with Mum. Even in the middle of the night there’s always a kid who’s sick and another one banging on the door, crying to be let in. God, I hate kids. I’m glad I’m not one any more, and I’m never going to have any.
‘Shut it, Kevin. I told you. She’ll be here some time today.’
‘Will she bring me a present?’
‘I dunno, do I? I expect so.’ Rosa usually stops at Hamleys to shoplift an expensive toy.
Fifteen already, and I never meet any good-looking blokes. All these runaways, running to my mother, but what about me? Where do I run to? It’s awful having a saint for a parent, specially when everyone thinks she’s my great-grandma. I hate it when other grown-ups tell me she’s wonderful. She’s got two kids on her lap and another wound around her neck.
I go over to the communal clothes and hunt through the stale smelly heap of musty jumpers, jeans and T-shirts, pulling at them angrily. I hate these clothes that belong to everybody and are loved by nobody. I remember the fitted wardrobe in my old bedroom, the ironed dresses, skirts, jackets and coats, shelves neatly stacked with underwear, jumpers and tops, dozens of pairs of shoes poised on the touchline at the bottom, as if they were about to dance off. Finally my fingers touch the slippery Lycra of a swimming costume. It’s a lurid pink, as far as I can tell – colours never look the same down here – and it looks too small, but it’ll stretch. I roll it up into a sausage, stuff it into the front of my dungarees and try to slip out of the door, which is supposed to be locked but is usually left open during the day.
Kevin wants to follow me, but I scream at him, ‘I never want to see another bloody kid in my life!’ So he joins the group around Mum. She’s trying to organize breakfast, the usual stale biscuits and muffins donated by local cafés when they’re past their sell-by dates. Sometimes the food makes us all ill, but that’s better than starving. For Mum’s hundredth birthday party, two years ago, a big hotel in Park Lane gave us a box of rancid profiteroles and a crate of overripe melons.
I grab an almond croissant, break off the greenish bit and pick my way through the debris of mattresses, sleeping-bags and discarded clothes to the door. Then I run off up the tunnels before the screaming kids can follow me. I want to run through the park, dart in and out of the shops. Perhaps I’ll sneak into a hotel and have a free bath or shower in an empty room when nobody’s looking. Don’t know what they’d do to me if they caught me. Anyway I can take care of myself: Finn, that mugger in the park, that drunken businessman who tried to rape me in an underground car park last month – I don’t really understand how it happens. I’m scared I’ll kill someone one day.
I run through the underground labyrinth, passing cardboard boxes and tents and concrete patches neatly furnished with tables and chairs found in skips. Everybody I pass knows me; they all nod or say a few words. Me and Mum have been down here longer than anybody. People don’t exactly move, but they are moved on or disappear to visit relations or join squats. These are my people. They might fight and drink and take drugs, but they look out for each other; they’re tolerant because they’ve seen it all. They despise the nerds who live and work up there, in what they sneeringly call the ‘real world’, where money and cars and mortgages and jobs rule the idiots who imagine they are free.
Maybe they hate all that because they’ve never had it. It’s different for me. When Mum tells me stories about our life, the point’s supposed to be that she was right to throw it all away and come down here. And because I love her and she’s a good storyteller I used to want to believe her. But what’s so great about being poor and smelly and hungry and cold like us? Whatever she says now, we were perfectly happy in that house. She was young and beautiful then, and Dad was rich and good-looking and our house was like something out of a movie. If that was hell and this is heaven, then it’s all gone pear-shaped.
I push open the metal door that leads to the pedestrian subway under Marble Arch. On the ramp that leads up towards the park I stand in a patch of sun and hold my face up to it, closing my eyes. The sun wakes up my skin as I sniff the grass, traffic fumes, hot dogs and dog shit. I inhale the heat and cool spray from the fountains above and stretch out my arms. Then I’m off again, darting up to Speakers’ Corner where the nutters, many of them my friends, are ranting.
I look around for someone to finance my afternoon. A lot of kids my age and younger give blow jobs to dirty old sods for cash. Yuck. I do want a boyfriend, only he’s got to be young and beautiful and rich. Mum’s told me stories about adoring men who used to hang around outside the theatre when she was young, waiting to take her out to dinner in expensive restaurants. One of them would do very nicely.
I go up to a well-dressed tourist of about forty who’s taking photos of a Muslim fundamentalist loudly demanding Sharia law for England. Best smile. ‘Excuse me, my wallet has been stolen. Would you mind lending me five pounds so I can get home? I wouldn’t normally dare to ask, but you look so kind. If you give me your address I’ll return it to you, of course.’
‘Are you student?’ he asks with a German accent.
‘I’m an art student
actually. But I’m an orphan, and I have to work in a restaurant every night to support myself. I live in Barnet, miles away.’ He shrugs and hands me a ten-pound note and his business card with an address in Frankfurt. ‘That’s very kind of you. I’ll send you the money next week. Goodbye, and thanks.’ Rosa’s training. Tell them what they want to hear, never tell the truth if a lie will do; men are a softer touch than women. If I had another tenner I could take some food back for the others this evening.
I’ll still be in time to catch the morning rush-hour crowds pouring through Marble Arch Station. I buy a can of Coke to moisten my throat and stand near the main exit. I feel like singing that Spice Girls hit I heard in the Virgin shop yesterday, but that won’t melt any hearts or loosen any wallets, so I gaze soulfully ahead and sing it again and again – cheesy but good for business – ‘Let me take you by the hand / And lead you through the streets of London …’
Some of them ignore me; others mutter ‘Fucking scrounger!’ or ‘Why don’t you get yourself a job?’ A middle-aged prat in a suit hovers near me, licking his lips nervously, staring at my tight T-shirt like he’s never seen tits before. I glare at him, and he slinks off. About a quarter of the punters throw ten- and fifty-pence pieces and even one-pound coins into the baseball cap at my feet. A guy in a grey suit smiles at me and throws down a foil-wrapped pack of sandwiches.
When I’m singing like this I always hope I’ll see my dad. Five years now I’ve been looking for him all over London. I don’t know where he went after he left Phillimore Gardens. He’ll walk around that corner wearing a blue silk shirt the same colour as his eyes, with Johnny on a lead. And Johnny will recognize me, and Dad will fall down on his knees and I’ll tell him to get up and forgive him and Johnny will lick me with his stinky tongue and I’ll lead them back to Mum and we’ll get a taxi back to our old house and Rosa and the others will come and visit us and I’ll become an MP like Auntie Annette and I’ll make the government build proper houses for everyone. Only he never does come.
Just when my throat’s beginning to hurt I see a policeman barging over to demand to see my busking licence, so I pick up my takings and dart through the tunnels back to the park.
I unwrap the sandwiches. Ham salad on granary bread – not bad. Then I count the coins in my baseball cap: nine pounds sixty-five, enough to buy chips and chicken nuggets to take back to the bunker later, and I’ve still got dosh to spend on myself. I buy another Coke at a kiosk and sit on the grass with my picnic, wallowing in London. Later I’ll buy an ice cream and window-shop all over Oxford Street and Bond Street. I won’t have to sneak into a hotel for a bath now, I can pay to go for a swim at the Serpentine lido and have a shower and a hair wash afterwards. Then I’ll go and read in the library until it closes at seven. It’s not education exactly. I just read whatever takes my fancy: newspapers, novels, art books, poetry. Happy, I lie on my back on the grass, my eyes shut, the sunlight filtering through my lashes.
‘Hiya, darling.’ Talk about a weird couple. I stare up at Mum and Rosa arm in arm, and it’s Beauty and the Beast. Please put me down like an old dog when I get to forty. Rosa glows with health – you’d think she was all innocent if you didn’t know her – and Mum looks like an old witch who’s come creeping out of the shadows to turn her into a frog. If Rosa were a frog she’d set up a business selling slime to the other frogs. Rosa’s a real looker now; must have another rich bloke after her. She’s got her red hair done in little curls, really short and glossy, and she’s wearing this awesome dress I saw in the window of a shop in Bond Street, two hundred squids, creamy linen with little red-and-black flowers all over it. Mum’s taller than Rosa, her scraggy white hair’s pulled back into a bun and her chalk-white face is almost transparent. I don’t often see her in daylight. Her black jumper and long black skirt are full of holes and loose threads, and she’s got bare feet in huge leather lace-up shoes. I’m so scared she’ll die on me. She looks bloodless, and when I stand up and hug them both I notice she smells of ancient damp.
Rosa takes an atomizer of perfume out of her bag and squirts her. ‘Thought your mum needed a bit of air.’
I can feel Mum’s bones through her clothes. I try to make a joke of it. ‘There’s not much meat on you, is there? If you were ninety years younger you could be a model.’
‘I thought I’d just sit here in the sun and listen to some Bach,’ Mum says. She sits on a bench with the Walkman I nicked for her birthday, and me and Rosa fuss around her, bring her a cappuccino and a cinnamon Danish. We all sit on the bench in a row, munching and talking, and Rosa does her big-sister act. ‘You want to watch it, Abbie. It’s crack city round here.’
‘I can look after myself.’
‘Any hard drugs down in that bunker and I’ll murderate you. Kevin gone off with the others then?’
‘They left about half an hour ago. You might still be able to catch them up.’
‘Why don’t you go with them any more?’
‘I’m too old. I don’t want to spend all my time with a bunch of screaming kids.’
‘Guess what. I’m getting married again Saturday.’
‘Who is it this time?’
‘Some old Algerian geezer, Omar’s uncle. Needs the passport. Two thousand squids in cash, and I don’t even have to spend the night with him.’
‘Rosa, that’s bigamy, or is it trigamy? They’ll catch you and put you in prison.’
‘Can’t catch me. I’m the gingerbread woman.’
‘What happened to your last husband?’
‘I left him, innit?’ Rosa laughs, a big warm laugh that carries you along with it. What I like about Rosa is she never gives up. ‘Tell you what, though, I’m going to save for the deposit on a house, with cable TV and a dishwasher and a shower and central heating and that. And you and me and Kevin and your mum’s going to live life to the Reilly till she dies, poor old blind bat.’
‘What about all these other kids?’
‘We’ll squeeze the little buggers in somehow. Get you in on this marriage scam soon as you’re eighteen.’
‘I don’t want to marry some horrible old man.’
‘Nah, we won’t then. Tell you what, next time I get married I’ll pay for you to have singing lessons. You’ve got a gorgeous voice and you’re really pretty. You’ll do all right, Abbie, love. And my Kevin’s not stupid neither, although he’s about as much use as a chocolate teapot.’
‘He’s only five.’
‘Don’t they take a long time growing up, though?’
‘Not long enough,’ Mum says sadly, and I realize she’s been listening to us instead of Bach. ‘Still, come to think of it, I didn’t have much childhood either.’
‘Abbie says you was stunning when you was young. Ain’t ya ever going to change that skirt?’
‘It doesn’t matter what I look like now. But I do worry about you, Abbie. There’s no point in nagging you all the time and cross-examining you – what can I do, after all? – but you’re so young and gentle and London’s such a dangerous place.’
‘Gentle? Your Abbie?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She might talk posh and look cute, but she’s well able to look after herself. I wouldn’t want to mess with your Abbie. The karate kid, Finn used to call her.’
‘Karate?’
‘One of them martian arts. Once, years ago when Kevin was a baby and we was all living in Eileen’s dungeons, we was in the park after a good day, sharing out our dosh, when this big guy comes up and pulls a knife on us. I was ready to hand it over and run, but your gentle little daughter, she just stares at him – doesn’t even touch him, honest – and this six-foot bloke backs away, looking absolutely terrified. This bloody great knife he’s been pointing at us is pointing at him. Thought he was gonna commit hurry-curry right there on the grass.’
‘Did he?’
‘Dunno. Didn’t look. Couldn’t get away fast enough. But she’s no wet lettuce.’
‘You never told me that, Abbie.’
‘Thought you’d be frightened.’
‘I am.’
‘Look, darling, worrying about Abbie ain’t worth a spit on a grave. You look after yourself. You look like something Dracula’s cat brought in.’
‘I’m scared to go out since that article appeared. What if there are policemen or journalists looking for me?’
‘Don’t you worry, love. If anyone bothers you I’ll sort them out. I’ll do my classy voice and say we’re just on our way to Harrods and you’re my grandmama. One of them rich eccentric old bags. I should be so lucky. Tell you what, though, I did go through Harrods on the way over here. Bloody amazing, innit?’
‘I haven’t been there for years.’
‘Shall we go there now? Oh, I forgot, you can’t see. Well, there’s mountains of toys, about five thousand different sorts of teddies and the most gorgeous dolls you ever saw. I’d love to get them all for my Kevin. Downstairs, there’s every kind of food in the world. I’d get fat as a pig, me, if I could shop there every day.’
‘I hope you didn’t nick anything.’
‘Couldn’t, could I? They’ve got security blokes with eyes in the backs of their heads. Cameras everywhere. Nearly picked up a sugar daddy in the perfume department, only his fucking wife turns up.’
Time Bites
So I’m one of them now, a hairless monkey. I wonder if those women who made such a fool of me really were the original Mothers poor old Faust was so frightened of. Sibyl was distinctly menacing that day, not a benignly listening shrink after all but a shape-shifter.
I can feel my own shape shifting, and this time it’s final. How exciting to think that if I fall under a lorry tomorrow that will be it. Of course, I can’t be sure, it’s not as if I have a certificate of mortality. Yet I do feel different. Weaker, more emotional and irrational. I must have been longing for death for years to be so titillated by the prospect now. I spend hours gazing at myself in the mirror.
Loving Mephistopeles Page 30