Can't Anyone Help Me?

by Maguire, Toni

  Dave and I had decided that with the coach taking six hours, even though it was cheaper, catching it was risky. I might be stopped once I reached London. Once the school reported that a girl was missing the coach station would be the first place the police would go to make enquiries. I bought a ticket to Manchester, changed there and bought another to London. That’ll throw them off the scent, I thought. They’ll think I’m on my way home and it’ll give me more time to travel without being detected.

  That day, I felt I was having the biggest adventure of my life. I sat in a smoking compartment and sipped coffee. I hadn’t dared to try to buy wine or beer from the bar. Not seeing anyone who looked the least bit interested in me, I lit cigarette after cigarette and placed my headphones on my head. Won’t be long before I’m smoking something a bit more interesting than this, I thought. Then, pressing my forehead against the window, I watched as the train flashed past small towns and villages. It was when we got to the outskirts of London that I began to see just how big it was. Rows and rows of terrace houses and council estates of old brick tenement buildings where I could see washing hanging out on the balconies, then the more modern tower blocks with their high windows and nearby play areas.

  It was early evening when the train drew into Euston and, picking up my bag, I jumped on to the platform ready for the next stage of my adventure.

  As I gave my ticket to the inspector and walked through the barrier, I was oblivious to everyone except Dave, who was standing there with a huge grin on his face. He gave me an enveloping hug, took my bag and led me to the escalators that descended to the Underground.

  I stood on the moving staircase as it took me down and down. I could feel people jostling me, but it was the noise I was conscious of: the roar of the trains, the loudspeaker announcing arrivals, the warning to mind the gap, and the hundreds of commuters rushing to their platforms.

  Once on the crowded train, we had to stand with my bag between Dave’s feet. Hanging on to an overhead strap, I swayed backwards and forwards in time to the train’s movements. I found it hard to keep my balance as it charged through the tunnel before it stopped to let a few people off and still more on.

  We changed from the Northern Line, which Dave told me was the oldest section of the Underground, to the District Line at a station called Embankment. Again we had to stand until we reached Earl’s Court, where Dave was living.

  We walked down Earl’s Court Road, which was full of shops that were still open and restaurants that were already full. I could hear the babble of different languages as I stared around me with something like amazement. I had visited Manchester but only in the daytime. This was the first time I had seen a city during the evening. In the area where my parents lived and the small town where my uncle’s house was, all the shops were closed by five thirty. Apart from those going to the pubs or restaurants, there were very few people on the streets. Not so in Earl’s Court, where the pavements were crowded. There were women dressed in saris, men wearing turbans, olive-skinned people from the Middle East, some in Western clothes, others wearing the long white dishdasha with, incongruously, feet in black lace-up shoes peeping out at the bottom.

  I could see only the eyes and hands of their female companions, who were wearing the hijab – the long, loose garment that hides the body and covers the head. In some cases even their noses were concealed by something that reminded me of a large bird’s beak.

  We turned left into a tree-lined street where there were four-storey houses with flaking stucco façades. Their shabbiness and the rows of bells by the front doors showed that it had been many years since they were one residence.

  ‘Here’s where I live,’ said Dave, pointing to an iron staircase that led down to a basement. Once we were in, he showed me proudly round what seemed to me a small space. My room, which had a door that led out to a tiny back yard, had been freshly painted and on the single bed there was a pretty flowery duvet cover. ‘Tried to make it look nice for you,’ Dave said. I smiled my appreciation.

  There was no sitting room. He explained that rents were high in London, but there were a couple of chairs and an old television on the table in the kitchen so we could sit in there. Apart from that, the only other furniture was a gas stove and a fridge, both of which had seen better days.

  For a moment I thought of my bedroom at my parents’ house, with its fresh paint, my music, those fitted wardrobes full of clothes and, more than anything else, its cleanliness. I forced the thought away. They had sent me to that school, hadn’t they? Wanted rid of me, looked at me with contempt. No, that was not my home any more. As soon as I can earn some money, I thought, I can make this place look more homely.

  That night we wandered round Earl’s Court, ate a curry at a small restaurant and went for a drink in a noisy bar. ‘You sit down,’ Dave told me, guiding me to a dim corner. ‘Don’t want anyone noticing that you look a bit young.’ But no one paid me any attention.

  For the first few weeks, London was fun. I tried to find work, even though Dave had told me he earned enough for both of us. When he saw that I was determined to pay my own way, he suggested I tried some of the takeaway cafés in the area. They might take me on as casual labour and pay cash. But every place I went to wanted papers that showed my National Insurance number.

  A couple of the owners looked at me suspiciously and asked how old I was. That scared me: I was a runaway and surely people must be looking for me. I knew my parents would have been informed that I was missing on the day I’d caught the train to Manchester. They might not want me at home, but that didn’t mean they would be content for me to disappear. And I didn’t want to be found. The police would have been notified, I was sure, and each time I saw a policeman or a panda car, I was nervous. I didn’t know then just how many runaways end up in London and that there was a limit on the amount of police time that could be spent on tracing them.

  ‘Just give them a false name and another address,’ Dave said, when I confessed my fears to him. So, summoning up my courage, I persevered and my days took on a routine. In the mornings I ventured out, looking for work. Once or twice I was given a few hours’ washing-up or clearing tables, but no would give me more than that. Not allowed, they told me, not unless I had that bloody number.

  Dave kept telling me it didn’t matter, but still I felt bad about it.

  In the evenings, arm in arm, we ambled down the streets to a cheap pizza place, a bar or pub. Although it was early April, it was still cold and the lights from the street lamps, cars and buses threw an orange glow over the pavements and shops. However late it was, the streets were never dark.

  I liked that. Dave did ‘business’ from around nine. There was a pub, large, dark and dingy, its walls painted nicotine yellow. Here, hirsute men with tattoos, clad in black leather and chains, surreptitiously passed him money in exchange for small packets.

  There were nights when we went to the many clubs in the area. Sometimes we did not go in, but dived into an alley where packets of white powder were exchanged for money. Once the deal was done those boys, wearing hooded jackets and new Nike trainers, slunk off into the darkness.

  By midnight, Dave’s pocket was bulging with money. ‘Told you it doesn’t matter you not working,’ he said.

  At the clubs, we were ushered in quickly without paying, instead of having to join a long queue. Dave, I soon learnt, knew a lot of people, and when I was looked at curiously, he told them I was his kid sister. ‘Easier that way,’ he said. ‘Stops the questions.’ Afterwards we went back to the flat to smoke thick joints, and at night my sleep was dreamless.

  Saturday nights were different. Then we hailed taxis that reeked of cigarettes and warm leather and went to the West End. Dave explained that on Saturday nights promoters often took over a club and put their own staff and DJs in. Raves, they were called, and they ran for twelve hours.

  I had never seen anything like it – dim lights, red walls, black floor, sweat glistening on the bodies of the whirling, jumping, spinn
ing youngsters with their bottles of water clutched firmly in their hands. The building seemed to vibrate with the mechanical sounds of the music that Dave told me was a combination of house and techno. ‘It’s great,’ he said. ‘You can only listen to it for so long without drugs, so it’s good for business.

  ‘I supply the dealers in here,’ he told me. ‘Safer that way – only they know who I am.’ ‘E’, I learnt, was the name of the pills that were popular at the raves.

  ‘Keeps them awake all night,’ Dave said, but when I asked for one, he categorically refused. ‘Stick to nice mellow dope, Jackie,’ he told me sternly, each time I asked.

  I personally thought he was overdoing the kid-sister bit, but decided to leave it alone.

  Those Saturday nights we were out until the early hours. Then it was back to Earl’s Court, where we consumed a late-night or early-morning greasy hamburger from one of those places that never seemed to shut.

  On Sundays we slept late before making breakfast. Then, as I lolled around in an oversized T-shirt drinking coffee, I could hear the squeals of children playing and music – rap, pop or even the background jingle of commercials – coming from other flats and smell the aroma of different foods, curry, frying fish and others I didn’t recognize, that wafted through my window. By summer I felt I belonged to this place where people from faraway countries and different parts of Britain had, for whatever reason, made their home.

  45

  Dave and I went to bed together just once. How can I describe that time? It was – well, what can I say? Sweet. His body was smooth, his chest free of hair. His legs entwined with mine while his hands stroked me gently; warm hands that made me feel safe. I still remember kissing his neck, that soft place just behind his ear. But he never got an erection.

  ‘Dave, it doesn’t matter,’ I said and, truthfully, it didn’t. ‘It’s just nice to be held.’

  But he, of course, saw it as a failure, and refused to try again.

  When it was cold, as English summers often are, we would walk under a leaden sky, oblivious to either wind or rain, my hand tucked into his pocket, his fingers over mine. When we went for a drink I would sit as close to him as I could and, in the midst of other people, my head would rest on his shoulder.

  When I went to bed he would kiss me on the cheek and say goodnight, and when he thought I was asleep I would hear him leave. He believed he had fooled me, but I knew every time.

  There were mornings when he couldn’t meet my eyes and I would chatter brightly so as not to face him with his deception.

  Oh, I wanted him to stay in, to come to my bedroom again. I wanted it to be all right.

  ‘You loved him?’ my therapist asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I loved him. He was the only man I ever did love.’

  Then there was the night he came back very drunk and his stumbling around the flat woke me. I got out of bed, walked into his room and turned the light on.

  He put his hand up to shield his eyes from the sudden glow, stood there swaying slightly, and I saw he was crying. ‘Dave, where have you been?’ I asked. Afterwards I thought it was strange that I asked that, not what the matter was. I reached up to his shoulders, pressed them slightly till he finally sank down on the bed. Then I saw the blood. Splashes of it were all over his T-shirt, and when I lifted his hand, I saw the knuckles were raw. There were scratches on his face, a bruise by his eye and I knew something bad had happened.

  He told me then where he went at night.

  It was to the bars, the ones where leather-clad men with hot, hungry eyes went in search of sex. There would be a dark back room where they went with partners they wouldn’t have recognized in the light. They were not men who wanted to share a drink and talk before going back to a flat and calling what happened next lovemaking, as though that was possible with someone unknown. They wanted nameless sex in the dark with complete strangers.

  ‘There was a boy in the bar,’ he said. ‘He was different. He didn’t want to go to the back room, he wanted to talk. He had blond hair and the most amazing green eyes. Nicky, he said his name was. I went with him, went back to his flat.’

  ‘And?’ I asked.

  ‘We fucked. He said it was special for him. That I was different and that he wanted to see me again. I wanted him to stop talking, to just let me leave, but he tried to stop me and then it happened.’

  ‘What, Dave?’ I asked. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I hit him. It was seeing that pleading look on his face that did it. He was beautiful and I wanted to hurt him. To take away that look of innocence. How could I – how could I have let him do what my father did to me, Jackie? How could I have enjoyed it? I hurt him,’ he said, ‘broke his nose, worse maybe, and I left him there.’

  I put my arms round Dave and held him as he sobbed for the boy Nicky and the boy he himself had once been.

  I was only fifteen but I felt old, so old. I wanted to tell him that everything would be all right, but I knew that nothing was going to be all right again. Instead I made him take his shoes off and get on to the bed. Then I lay beside him. I pressed myself close against his body until my breath mingled with his. Our eyes held each other’s until he reached over and turned off the light. That night in patches of silence, in wordless darkness, we spoke to each other without uttering a sound, of pain, bewilderment and hurt.

  As the dark of night gave way to the violet shadows of dawn, we fell asleep. He was heavy against my arm but I didn’t move. I wanted his weight pressed against me and his breath on my face. I wanted to be the first thing he saw when he woke.

  He left me. He was frightened the police would look for him, frightened of what he had done but, more than anything, frightened of himself.

  ‘Go home, Jackie,’ he said, when I begged him to take me with him. ‘Don’t you see what I am?’

  But I only saw Dave, the boy I loved.

  ‘You’re not safe with me any longer.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘Because.’ His hand ran through my hair, wound some strands around it and tightened. ‘I seem to want to hurt whoever loves me.’ I felt the strength of his fingers.

  He gave me money, enough to take me back to my parents. ‘They’ll look after you,’ he said. ‘You’re not bad like me, just fucked up a bit. Tell them you need help, tell them the truth. But go back.’

  I said I would, not because I meant it but because I wanted to please him.

  He left that day and my heart broke. That was when I wanted to cry, to shake with sobs and be soaked with anguish, but even then I was still unable to shed a tear. Instead I burnt myself. I used candles and the lighter, bit down hard on my lip till the blood poured between my teeth, cut underneath my foot, but nothing stilled my inner pain.

  ‘Did you hear from him again?’ asked my therapist.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I did, but not until the end of the next part of my story.’

  ‘And you saw him again?’

  ‘Just once,’ I said.

  When the landlord realized I was in the flat on my own, he told me that I had to get out. I knew that Dave had paid a deposit and, again summoning up my courage, I asked for it.

  ‘It’s not yours, is it, girlie?’ he said, and laughed in my face. ‘When Dave comes and asks, I’ll give it to him. Less damages, of course,’ he added, looking round the flat with a sneer. I knew that he knew that that was not going to happen.

  He stood over me while I threw into my bag as many of my possessions as would fit into it. Then he put his hand out for the key. I did not know that he was breaking the law by making me leave in that manner. Even if I had, I would have been too scared to protest, so I just left.

  I had the money Dave had given me, which I thought would buy me time. I tried the YWCA. It was full. I went to a small bed-and-breakfast where the manager, seeing my youth and that the only luggage I had was a scruffy duffel bag, demanded money up front. It was too much, more than I could afford. I said I’d come back later and, clutching my bag, I
wandered into the streets. I knew that trying to find a room was hopeless: however much makeup I plastered on, however hard I tried to look confident, no landlord would rent to me. Not only did I not have proof that I was old enough to live away from home, I did not have enough funds to pay a month’s rent plus a deposit.

  I must have walked miles that day – walked until I reached an area where there was only one doorbell on the large houses. Then I passed red-brick mansion blocks of flats and eventually came to Harrods, the huge department store. After gazing at the magnificent window displays, I continued walking towards the West End. I went with little purpose and no plan of what I was going to do next. Before I knew it, I was in Piccadilly Circus. It was then, knowing I had become one of them, that I really saw the homeless.

  Some were huddled in sleeping-bags, for the chill of autumn was in the air, with a cap or a piece of cardboard lying in front of them as they begged for money.

  A girl, not much older than me, dressed in a thin denim jacket and patched jeans, crouched in a doorway. Long, greasy hair partially obscured a pallid face as, with eyes cast down, her shaking fingers rolled a thin cigarette. A few coins lay on a plastic plate beside her, to give further encouragement to passers-by. Without looking up, she repeated over and over her refrain, ‘Spare any change,’ to every pair of legs she saw.

  ‘Help with food for my dog,’ was the next plaintive request from a youth wearing a khaki combat jacket and army-style boots. His faithful friend, a placid brindled Lurcher, whose large head rested on outstretched paws, lay on a grubby blanket by his master’s side, paying little heed to his surroundings.

  Prancing on the pavement inches away from them, a small white dog, wearing a diamanté leather collar and a doggy ‘designer’ sheepskin jacket, stopped, cocked one leg against a nearby lamp post, then continued walking. His owner, a woman in her early twenties, her long, streaked blonde hair flying and high-heeled boots clicking, clutched his lead tighter in her gloved hand and looked straight ahead.