All the same you don’t break old habits for the sake of one lucky dip, and when I saw all those plump taxpayers doing their late Christmas shopping on the High Street, I stuck out my hand as usual.
“Got any spare change, please?” I said, as always. “For a cup of tea. For a bed for the night. For a hot meal.”
And as always they coughed up like princes or told me to get myself a job. It was nice that night. I perform best when there’s no pressure, and by the time I’d worked my way down to the station, I’d made a nice little pile. But it doesn’t do to loll around and count your takings in public, so I jumped a tube to Paddington.
My sister has this room in Paddington. She lives in Camberwell with her boyfriend, so this room’s just for business. I don’t trust my sister’s boyfriend, but I do trust my sister, up to a point, which was why I went to her business address. You may meet all sorts of funny blokes there, but you won’t meet her boyfriend, and that suits me. It suits him, too, if you want to know the truth: he doesn’t like me any more than I like him.
When we first came down to the city, Dawn and me, we relied on each other; we didn’t have anyone else to turn to. But after she took up with him and he set her up in business, she didn’t need me like she used to, and we drifted apart.
The trouble with Dawn is she always needs a man. She says she doesn’t feel real without one. Feeling real is important to Dawn so I suppose I shouldn’t criticize. But her men have been nothing but a disappointment. You could say I’m lucky to have an older sister like Dawn: she’s an example to me. I’d rather die than turn out like her.
Still, she is my sister, and we’ve been through a lot together. Especially in this last year when we came down to the city together. And before that, when our mum kicked us out, or rather, kicked Dawn out because of the baby. And after that when Dawn’s boyfriend kicked Dawn out because of the baby.
I have never been hungrier than I was last year trying to look after Dawn. She lost the baby in the end, which was a bit of a relief to me. I don’t know how we would have managed if she’d had it. I don’t think she would have coped very well either. It’s much harder to get a man when you’ve got a little baby to look after.
Anyway, that’s all in the past, and now Dawn has business premises in Paddington.
I waited outside until I was sure she was alone, and then I went up and knocked on the door.
“Crystal!” she said when she opened the door. “What you doing here? You got to be more careful-I might’ve had company.”
“Well, you haven’t,” I said. And she let me in, wrinkling her nose and pulling her kimono tight. I don’t like that kimono-it’s all hot and slippery. Since she got her hair streaked, Dawn has taken to wearing colors that would look all right on a tree in autumn but turn her hard and brassy.
“Gawd,” she said, “you don’t half look clatty. Can’t you get your hair cut? That coat looks like it’s got rats living in it.”
I took the coat off, but she didn’t like the one underneath either.
“What a pong,” she said.
“I had a wash last week,” I told her. “But I would like to use your bathroom.” I wanted somewhere private to look at what I’d got off the dead man.
“You can’t stop around here,” she said, worried. “I got someone coming in half an hour.” She looked at her watch.
I sat in her bathroom and looked at the dead man’s watch. It had Cartier written on the face, and it really was proper gold. Quality, I thought, and felt a bit sad. By rights a man with a watch like that shouldn’t end up in the Trenches without a stitch on. Because that’s how he’d be by now, pale and naked in the moonlight. Nobody would recognize him without his coat and suit and shoes. He’d just look like anyone. We’re into recycling in the Trenches.
To cheer myself up I looked at his wallet, and when I counted up I found I had 743 pounds and 89 pence. And I couldn’t use half of it.
Imagine me trying to change a fifty-pound note! There’s a chance in a million a cat with cream on his whiskers milked a cow, but that’s good odds compared to the chance I’d come by a fifty-quid note honestly. I couldn’t even pop the watch. One look at a watch like that and any honest pawnbroker would turn me in. A dishonest one would rip me off quick as a wink. Either way the watch was no good for me.
I borrowed my sister’s toothbrush and had a fast swipe with her deodorant before I joined her again. You never know when you’re going to find clean water next so it pays to make use of what there is.
“Do me a favor, Crystal,” she said, when she saw me. “Bugger off before you frighten the horses.”
“Brought you a Christmas present,” I said and handed her the watch.
“You’re barmy, Crystal.” She stared at the watch like it was a spider in her bed. “Who’d you nick this off?”
“I never,” I told her. “I found it.” And it was true because the feller was dead. It wasn’t as if it was his property because there wasn’t a him anymore for it to belong to. When you’re dead you’re gone. And that’s final. Dead men don’t own watches.
Even with a Christmas present, Dawn wouldn’t let me stop for the night. It’s a funny thing, if I hadn’t had 743 pounds, 89 pence in my pocket, I wouldn’t have wanted to. If it had just been the 89 pence, I’d’ve been quite happy sleeping out.
But having things is dangerous. Having things makes you a mark. It’s like being pretty. If you don’t believe me, look at Dawn. She’s pretty and she’s been a mark from the time she was eleven. Being pretty brought her nothing but trouble. She’s always had to have someone to protect her. I’m glad I’m not pretty.
There’s a hospital down the Harrow Road so I went there. I couldn’t decide what to do, so I sat in Casualty till they chucked me out. It’s a pity there aren’t more places you can go and sit in at night to have a quiet think. It’s hard to think on the hoof, and if you are cold or hungry, thinking is not on your mind at all.
It seemed to me, after a while, that the best place to go was where I slept last night. Some might say it was a daft idea to go back to a place that was rousted, but I thought if the police had been there last night, it would be deserted tonight.
Twenty-seven Alma-Tadema Road is a condemned house. They say it’s unsafe. There are holes in the roof and holes in the floors, but it is perfectly safe if you are sober, tread carefully, and don’t light fires. That was what went wrong last night: we had a couple of winos in, and one of them got cold just before daybreak.
When I got there, I saw that they had nailed more boards across the front door and downstairs windows. I could get in, but it would take time. There were still people up and about so, to be on the safe side, I would have to come back later if I wanted more than a few minutes’ kip.
I walked on past and went down to the Embankment. It is quite a long walk, and by the time I got there I was hungry. Actually, I’m hungry all the time. Dawn says she thinks I must have worms and I probably do, but mostly I think it’s just my age. Someone like Bloody Mary does almost as much walking as I do, but she doesn’t seem to need half the fuel. She stopped growing years ago.
There are a lot of women like Bloody Mary, but I mention her because she was the one I picked up on the Embankment that night, huffing and puffing along with her basket on wheels.
“Oh, me poor veins,” she said, and we walked on together. I slowed down a bit so she could keep up.
“There’s a stall open by the Arches,” she said. “Couldn’t half murder a cuppa.”
She used to sing in the streets-walk up and down Oxford Street bellowing “Paper Moon” with her hand held out-but after a bad dose of bronchitis last year her voice went.
At the Arches I got us both a cup of tea and a sausage sandwich.
“Come into money, Crys?” Johnny Pavlova asked. It is his stall and he has a right to ask, because now and then when there’s no one around to see, he gives me a cup free. As he always says, he’s not a charitable institution, but catch him in the righ
t mood and he’ll slip you one like the best of them.
All the same it reminded me to be careful.
“Christmas,” I said. “They were feeling generous down the High Street.”
“Down the High Street?” he said. “You ain’t been on that demolition site, have you? I heard they found this stiff bollock-naked there this evening.”
“Did they?” I said as if I couldn’t care less. “I didn’t hear nothing. I was just working the High Street.”
I went over and sat with Bloody Mary under the Arches. Johnny Pavlova doesn’t like us hanging too close round his stall. He says we put the respectable people off their hot dogs.
“Will you look at that moon,” Bloody Mary said, and she pulled her coats tight.
It was higher in the sky now and smaller, but there was still a good light to see by.
“Where you kipping tonight, Crystal?” she asked. I knew what she meant. A moon like that is a freezing moon this time of year.
Just then, Brainy Brian came slithering in beside us so I didn’t have to answer. He was coughing his lungs out as usual, and he didn’t say anything for a while. I think he’s dying. You can’t cough like that and live long. He used to go to college in Edinburgh, but then he started taking drugs and he failed all his exams. He did all right down here in the city because to begin with he was very pretty. But druggies don’t keep their looks any longer than they keep their promises. Now he’s got a face like a violin and ulcers all over his arms and legs.
When he recovered his breath he said, “Share your tea, Crystal?”
We’d already finished ours so we didn’t say anything for a while. But Brian was so sorry-looking, in the end I went to get another two, one for him and one for Bloody Mary. While they were sucking it up I slipped away.
“Watch yourself, Crys,” Johnny Pavlova said as I went by. He gave me a funny look.
The first thing you do when you break into a house is find another way out. A good house has to have more than one way out because you don’t want to go running like the clappers to get out the same door the Law is coming in.
The house on Alma-Tadema Road has a kitchen door through to the garden. I loosened the boards on that before lying down to sleep. I also made sure I had the snakeskin wallet safe.
I had made the right decision: there was no one but me there. A heap of damp ashes marked the spot where the winos had lit their fire, and they blew in little eddies from the draught. Otherwise nothing stirred.
I went over the house collecting all the paper and rags I could find to build myself a nest, then I curled up in it and shut my eyes.
Nighttime is not the best time for me. It’s when I can’t keep busy and in control of my thoughts that bad memories and dreams burst out of my brain. It’s hard to keep cheerful alone in the dark, so I need to be very, very tired before I’ll lie down and close my eyes. Sometimes I say things over and over in my head until I get to sleep-things like the words of a song or a poem I learned at school-over and over so there’s no spare room in my brain for the bad stuff.
That night I must have been very tired because I only got part of the way through “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” when I dropped off. Dawn used to play that song all the time when we were still living at home. She played it so often it used to drive me up the wall. But it is songs like that, songs I didn’t even know I’d learned the words to, that help me through the night nowadays.
The next thing I knew someone was coughing. I opened my eyes but it was still dark, and there was this cough, cough, cough coming my way. Brainy Brian, I thought, and relaxed a bit. It’s something you have to watch out for-people coming up on you when you’re alone in the dark.
“It’s cold,” he said when he found me. “It’s hard, hard cold out there.” He crawled into my nest. I was quite warm and I didn’t want to leave but I knew his coughing would keep me awake,
“Give us a cuddle, Crystal,” he said. “I got to get warm.”
“Shove off,” I said. His hands remind me of a fork. Some people do it to keep warm. Not me. I’ve seen too much and I want to die innocent.
He started coughing again. Then he said, “You got any dosh, Crystal?”
“Enough for a tea in the morning,” I said. I really did not want to go. It was one of my better nests and it didn’t seem fair to give it up to Brian.
“They’re looking for you,” he said. “Someone saw you in the Trenches.”
“Not me,” I said. “Who saw me?”
“You know that little kid?” he said. “Marvin, I think he’s called. Well, they hurt him bad. He said he saw you.”
“Who wants to know?” I sat up.
“Lay down,” he said, “I got to get warm.” He grabbed me and pulled me down, but he didn’t start anything so I kept still.
After a while he said, “Johnny Pavlova says you got dosh. They asked him too.”
I waited till he finished coughing. Then I said, “Who’s asking? The Law?”
“Not them,” he said. He knew something, I thought. And then I thought, he talked to Johnny Pavlova, he’s talked to Marvin, and Marvin saw me in the Trenches. Maybe Brian talked to whoever is looking for me.
I said, “Did they send you, Brian? Did they send you to find me?”
He doubled over, coughing. Later he said, “You don’t understand, Crystal. I got to get some money. I lost my fixings, and I haven’t scored for days.”
So that was that. I left him and went out the kitchen way. Brian was right-it was hard cold outside. And I was right, too-having things makes you a mark. I dumped the snake-skin wallet in the garden before I climbed over the fence. And then I climbed right back and picked it up again. Dumping the wallet wouldn’t stop anyone looking for me. Not having it would be no protection. Marvin didn’t have it and he got hurt. I wondered why they picked on Marvin to clobber. Perhaps he got the dead man’s shoes, or his coat. Perhaps they saw a little kid in a big thick coat and they recognized the coat.
No one ever looked for me before. There was no one interested. I thought maybe I should run away-somewhere up north, or maybe to the West Country. But when I ran away the first time, it was me and Dawn together. And it was difficult because we didn’t know the city. It took us ages to get sorted.
I thought about it walking down the road. The moon had gone and the sky had that dirty look it gets just before day. My nose was runny from the cold and I was hungry, so I went to the Kashmir takeaway. The Kashmir is a good one because it has a bin not twenty paces away. What happens is that when the pubs close a lot of folks want an Indian takeaway, but because they’ve been drinking they order too much and chuck what’s left over in this bin. I’ve had breakfast there many times. The great thing about a Kashmir breakfast is that although the food is cold by the time you get it, the spices are still hot, and it warms you up no end. From this point of view Indian food is the best in the city.
I felt much more cheerful after breakfast, and I found a lighted shopwindow with a doorway to sit in. It was there I had a proper look at the wallet. Before, at Dawn’s business premises, I only counted the money and redistributed it in the pockets of my coats. Now I studied the credit cards, library cards, and business stuff.
These are not things I am normally interested in. I can’t use them. But this time, it seemed to me, the only way out of trouble was to give them back. The dead man in the Trenches might be dead but he was still dangerous.
His name was Philip Walker-Jones. He belonged to a diners club, a bridge club, and a chess club. He had two business cards-Data Services Ltd. and Safe Systems Plc. He was managing director twice over, which seemed quite clever because both companies had the same address in Southwark Road. Southwark Road is not far from where I found him. Maybe he walked out of his office and died on the way to the station. But that didn’t explain what he was doing in the Trenches. Nobody like him goes in the Trenches.
I thought about Philip Walker-Jones sitting in the moonlight against the broken brickwork. He had
looked as if he’d just sat down for a bit of a breather. But he wasn’t resting. He was dead. There wasn’t a mark on him that I could see. It didn’t look as if anyone had bumped him-he was just sitting there in all his finery. Quite dignified, really.
Little Marvin would have been there watching like I was, and probably a few others too-waiting to see if it was safe to take a dip. We were wrong, weren’t we?
I didn’t want to go back too close to the Trenches, but if I was going to give the wallet back I had to. It was too early yet for public transport so I started walking. A good breakfast does wonders for the brain, so while I was walking I went on thinking.
I didn’t know anything about data and systems except that they sounded like something to do with computers, but I do know that dining, bridge, and chess are all things you do sitting down. Philip Walker-Jones didn’t have any cards saying he belonged to a squash club or a swimming club, and if he spent all that time sitting down, maybe he wasn’t very fit. If he wasn’t very fit, and he started to run suddenly, he could have had a heart attack.
It was a satisfying bit of thinking that took me down to the river without really noticing. Crossing over, it occurred to me that computers, bridge, and chess were things that really brainy people did, and in my experience brainy people all wear glasses and don’t run around much. A really brainy man would not go running into the Trenches after dark, unless he was being chased. A scared, unfit man running in the Trenches would have no bother getting a heart attack. Easy.
The wind off the river was sharp and cold, but it wasn’t the only thing making me shiver. Because if Philip Walker-Jones had a reason to be scared to death, so did I.
Give the rotten wallet back, I thought, and do it double quick Say, “Here’s your money, now leave me be.” And then do a runner, I’m good at that.
I stopped for a pint of milk to fuel up. And I went through my pockets to find some of the fifty-pound notes, which I stuffed back in the wallet to make it look better.
A Woman’s Eye Page 2