by Liza Cody
‘You stupid fucking bitch,’ she screamed, ‘why don’t you mind your own fucking business?’
‘Don’t you care a baby’s going to die?’ I yelled back at her.
‘You din’t have to use my phone,’ she said. ‘All you done is put me in the shit. Now gimme my stuff back or I’ll call me boyfriend and he’ll sort you out good an’ proper. He’s got a dog, who’ll eat your dog alive.’
‘He’ll have to catch her first,’ I said. But I gave her back the little packet of ease and death. Electra whined. She didn’t like threats and anger. And I don’t like sticking around when the cops are on their way. Blue legs stayed to get high. She was that stupid.
Or maybe she wasn’t. Maybe, if I’d had the chance to get high my own way, I’d have taken it too. But I just couldn’t face more retching and head-aching. Electra walked so close to me I could touch her. Her head was down and her ears were pinned back. She looked as if someone had whipped her.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. Suddenly all the anger that had been focussed on Smister and Pierre shattered into dozens of pieces and settled on Kerri Cropper for being such an incompetent loser, on her mother because all the things a mother could do wrong she’d done, and everything a grandmother could do wrong she’d done too. Everyone seemed to be scared of her, so she was a bully as well. I was angry with the housing authority for providing such a shit-hole for poor people to live in, I was angry with crappy education, and with the Social Services for not intervening to save a child from misery if not death. I was furious with neighbours for caring too little to take a risk.
And me. Ariadne Baguette, I thought, what a stupid name to make up. They’d know it was bogus and then they wouldn’t send the cops or the paramedics. But I couldn’t give my own name, could I? Well, could I? The cops hate me, and I don’t like them a whole lot better. I didn’t want to come to their attention again so soon after leaving Holloway.
By then I’d staggered to the decent part of Shoreditch High Street and felt so sick and angry I almost fainted. I sat down with a bump outside a pastry shop that was just closing. Electra lay down across my legs and went straight to sleep. She wasn’t used to wandering the streets any more. And nor was I. I buried my head in my hands.
Someone tapped me on the shoulder and a voice said, ‘Would you like a drink?’
‘Red wine,’ I said, as automatically as one of Pavlov’s dogs.
He was tall and wore a butcher’s apron. ‘Business is so damn dicey I can’t even afford wine for myself so I’m not going to pay for yours. But I’ve got a couple of croissants left over if you want.’
He brought them on a plate, and he brought sweet black coffee in a paper cup and a bowl of water for Electra.
I thought food would make me heave, but in fact I was ravenous. I wolfed down the pastry except for the mouthful I saved for Electra.
‘I haven’t eaten all day,’ I said to the kind man. ‘Thanks.’
He couldn’t resist saying, ‘Well maybe you should choose what you spend your money on more carefully.’
‘What money?’ I said righteously. ‘I don’t trouble the taxpayer. And I’ll have you know I haven’t had a drink in months. I go to AA.’
‘How’s that working out for you?’ He sounded sceptical.
‘Hard. I’m an alcoholic.’
‘They say the hardest part is admitting it.’
‘It’s the easiest part.’ Which in my case is true – I’ll admit to anything if it’ll get me another croissant. He went one better and brought me more sweet coffee and a slice of chocolate cake. It tasted like the most delicious thing I’d ever eaten, and drove the stench of sex and stairwells out of my nostrils. I almost forgot I’d been fighting with a junkie less than an hour ago. Sometime since then, darkness had fallen and I hadn’t noticed.
The kind man let me feed Electra off one of his plates, but he wasn’t kind enough to let me use his bathroom. He must’ve known I’d have it away with his bog paper, his soap and whatever else wasn’t nailed to the wall.
‘You’re not stupid,’ he said to me. ‘Why can’t you sort yourself out?’
‘I fell in love with the Devil,’ I said. ‘He tore my heart out and threw it down a dirty stairwell. I’ve been searching for it ever since. You’ve no idea how much it hurts.’
‘I see,’ he said, retreating rapidly. ‘Er, well, good luck with that, and with the AA.’ He closed the door behind him and I heard him locking up tight.
We crossed the road and wandered into a side street to find a deep-set doorway where we could finish our sleep. I needed rest.
If a doorway is neglected enough to shelter a woman and her dog it is also a place where lazy drunk men will go to pee. I know this. I’ve lived on the streets for years and recognise all the smells of witless humanity. The risk I take in a dark doorway like this is that the next drunk will be a blind drunk who’ll pee all over me, or a violent one who’ll beat me up for being in his way.
Also, I was nervous because I’d been banged up inside, protected by the thick walls that imprisoned me, softened by a bed and removed from myself by medications. Inside you’re reshaped by rules, and the rules are shaped by the educated folk who know how everyone should behave. When the rules fail, these wise folk lobotomise you with chemicals and brain anaesthetics. What a waste of money – I can do a similar job far more pleasantly and cheaply with the bottle of red wine they won’t let me drink.
In the end I slept restlessly and dreamed I was back inside, in the prison kitchen. It was my job to feed the hungry, but the kitchen was rank with rotting meat, human excrement and maggots so I had to clean it first. But the task was too big, and the starving children started to cry.
I opened my eyes and listened to a clock strike eleven. Electra stirred and stretched. I put my arms around her and for a moment we warmed each other’s bones. Then we got up, shook ourselves and left.
‘Should I go back there?’ I asked Electra. ‘To the stairwell and the letterbox? Should I find out if anyone came to save Connor?’
I knew she’d say I should. She’s kind to all living things and an example to us all.
‘What if the blue-legged girl told Mrs Cropper about us? What if the man who doesn’t like black babies doesn’t like bag ladies and their dogs either?’
She gave me a look that whispered, ‘No one likes bag ladies but everyone likes me.’
‘Then we’ll go home, I promise.’
‘What home?’
‘Oh fuck,’ I said, because I noticed she was limping. She used to race before she was overtaken by younger dogs and her trainer threw her on the scrap-heap to die. Now she has arthritis, poor old bitch, and she’d been leading the soft life with Smister, Pierre and Cherry.
The streets around the flat where Connor Cropper lived were patrolled by roaming gangs of boys who reminded me of wolf packs marking and guarding their territory. Inside their perimeter, on the rough ground which surrounded the block, were shadowy groups of kids. In spite of the cold they sat or stood in rings, quiet as ghosts, warming their fingers on the chilly blue flames of their phone screens while they texted other ghosts elsewhere or nowhere. All I could hear was the cockroach rustle of fingernails on plastic and the odd colourless beep in reply. Occasionally the silence was broken by a shriek, a cry, a dog barking, a raucous laugh.
I thought we could pass unnoticed, but the frost-scorched earth of midnight belonged to teenagers alert for aliens. A pinched blue face would turn towards me, an elbow dug into neighbouring ribs. I was marked as an invader and word passed through the flickering blue ether.
At the bottom of the stairwell six or seven boys waited. From behind them, a thin girly voice said, ‘That’s her I was saying about – and her dog.’
My good deed for the day ended when I turned and fled. I let Electra go because, even arthritic, she can still run fast enough to escape a kicking from spot
ty kids.
I can’t.
I stumbled across the wasteland, my shoelaces flapping and my backpack thumping its ragged rhythm on my spine.
They chucked me from one to another like a basketball until I fell down. Then I curled around my soft parts and let my backpack be my shell.
It’s all a game I thought. I am the Devil’s ball. His underage minions are having a kick-around. The Devil threw me into play and now I must roll or fly through the air, subject to the laws of force and inertia as applied to my arse by the toe of a trainer.
A woman of age and experience becomes a kids’ plaything. Until death, I thought, because sometimes, on a whim, kids do decide to rid the world of someone homeless and helpless. ‘Do it,’ hisses King Worm ‘It’s fun. She’s dirty, old and a waste of space. Who’ll notice? Get your kicks – my kingdom is your Route 66. You are my players, on my team – have a ball, there are no rules to this game.’
And to me he said, ‘Fool. Do you think you matter? Are your age, experiences, and memories of any consequence whatsoever? Are they even true? You are nothing but a figment of my imagination, you have no existence except what I allow you and I will play with you for as long as it pleases me.’
‘Thud, thud, thud,’ said the expensive trainers. You’ve got to listen to the trainers – they really do know what they’re talking about.
But rain stopped play, and little Miss Blue-legs said, ‘Why should I give a dry fuck what happens to my sister’s bastard baby? Who do you think gave me my first rocks? My own fucking half-sister and her arsehole boyfriend, that’s who.’ And away they ran so as not to get their Nikes wet.
After a while I sat up and said, ‘Well at least they didn’t pretend to be my friends.’ Because red wine would have eased my pain but my so-called friends had made certain I would suffer every bruise, torn muscle and jarred bone without relief. They’d left me no escape from misery, or from King Worm laughing and saying, ‘Well, that was fun. You still love me, don’t you? You wouldn’t begrudge a little pleasure to someone you love, would you?’
At this point I realised I’d lost my teeth and I scrabbled around on hands and knees till I found them. I rinsed them in the driving rain, and then stumbled blindly onward, looking for Electra.
Of course I couldn’t find her, but somewhere along the way she found me. Then we walked. We trudged slowly and persistently away from the Cropper circle of Hell, mile after mile, putting as much distance behind us as we could. My mind was a circle of Hell too, or more accurately a wheel that spun endlessly, getting nowhere.
What had I done? A favour for a con? What had Kerri actually asked me to do? I couldn’t remember. It was something about trying to persuade her mum not to let the social workers take her son away. Now there’s a laugh. So I peeked through a letter box and saw a child – naked, crying, bruised and starving – and what did I do? I tried to call in the authorities; the same authorities I loathe and fear. ‘And why did I do that?’ I asked Electra. But Electra limped along by my side without replying. So I had to answer myself. ‘Because I have no power to change anything for a starving child,’ I said out loud.
‘Or a dog,’ she would’ve said if only I could hear her.
Walking is a comfort to me – the slow rhythm quiets the noise in my head. The Devil’s laughter is fainter when I’m on the move. But it isn’t any comfort to Electra’s arthritic joints. I comfort myself by torturing my friend.
I was glad that I could still walk. Several months ago I was kicked by someone, a rough sleeper like me, who knew the value of a good stout pair of ex-army boots. My plastic teeth are his gift, as are the scars and the crack in my skull that lets the night in. Adidas and Nike can’t compete.
We found some pita and salad in a bin outside a kebab shop, and further on, some half nibbled fish and chips. It kept us going. Every now and then I found a nook or cranny to shelter in and then Electra would flop onto my legs and promptly fall asleep. I could rest my aching back, but I couldn’t sleep.
I found a child’s plastic raincoat in a bag outside a charity shop. I dried Electra and rubbed her down with a man’s sweater before draping the raincoat over her back. An extra large hoody fitted me and joined the layers under my jacket. My thanks go to you impatient people who clear out your wardrobes but can’t wait for a charity shop to open. There are folk all over London looking for garments to clothe themselves and their children who can’t afford even charity shop prices. I am a member of the tribe who lives on your surplus.
The pulping rubbish in the rain outside a pizza place brought me back to Connor and the old neighbour woman posting a slice through the letterbox whenever her fat husband left any.
I thought about Kerri, Gorilla Crapper, and tried to remember what she was like last time I saw her. It wasn’t a pretty memory. Three screws subdued her and dragged her away, naked, blue with cold and bruises from the tiles. She wasn’t starving though, at least not for food. She ate everything she could get her greedy hands on. Her naked flesh, roughly treated, jubbled, gobbled, and sagged. I think once she told me she was nineteen years-old, but the excess lard made her look forty.
She was howling with rage and despair because I had just begun to suggest that Connor might be better off with the Social Services than in the tender loving care of her mother. Now that I’d seen him for myself and met Kerri’s half-sister I was wondering how far the disease of poverty, ignorance and neglect had spread. Was he already infected beyond cure? Would he just starve to death and save everyone the bother of doing anything except locking up one more incompetent woman? Would the Social Services do a better job than Grandma Cropper? You’d hope so, wouldn’t you?
I’m as bad as Smister and Pierre. I’d stuck my interfering nose in. I didn’t do what Kerri asked. I thought I could do better. But I bungled it and probably no one came to help. I couldn’t even find that out. All I discovered was that outsiders who stuck their noses in were violently discouraged. I couldn’t help. I had no power – not even to influence the people who do have power.
‘That’s what I brought you here to show you,’ the Devil giggled in my ear. ‘You knew it already but you forgot it applies to you too. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Don’t try to change the results of my games. I choose carefully those I mean to torture. And I demand their love and respect. Good deeds, good intentions never saved anyone – they just prolong the agony. Can’t you feel it – the pity, the writhing guilt in your gut, frustration and self-hatred? Ooh you do know how to give me pleasure. Mmm-mm.’
‘Stop it,’ I yelled, scattering the pre-dawn urban seagulls that were tearing apart a black rubbish bag and spilling its guts all over the pavement. That’s me, I thought, a bag of rubbish pouring out my poisoned insides.
Electra nudged my hand with her wet nose, reminding me that I did have a friend whose life I could improve. Then I knew I had to go back to Cherry’s house, if she’d have me. I’d take my pills – well, some of them – and try to be deaf to King Worm. Because King Worm was killing me from the inside.
5
A Really Bad Idea
‘We so did not poison you,’ Smister squawked. His sleek hi and lo-lighted bob trembled with sincerity. ‘We’re just giving you what the doctor prescribed, and you’re throwing it back in our faces.’
‘I wish I could,’ I muttered.
Pierre sat in his armchair like Buddha on an altar. Electra lay flat out under the coffee table, fast asleep.
‘Antabuse,’ I said, the way a judge might’ve said ‘murder’. ‘You didn’t tell me.’
‘Never heard of it. We just wouldn’t do a thing like that.’
‘Yeah we would.’ Pierre stretched his neck one way and then the other till it clicked. ‘We’re busted, Li’l Missy, might as well fess up.’
‘Well. It wasn’t my idea.’
‘Kinda was,’ Pierre said. He turned to me. ‘As you know, when yo
u… er, went away, Li’l Missy here had nowhere to go, and she can’t drive. So we moved the ambulance. She was supposed to live in it, but she gets lonely so Cherry said she could use the spare room.’
‘It’s you that’s the problem, not me,’ Smister cut in. ‘Who’d want an alcoholic lunatic hanging around? Trouble was, Cherry went all righteous over the alcoholic lunatic’s dog.’
‘Animal lover,’ Pierre said proudly, ‘sweet as a cherry pie. But I screwed up royally telling the cops I was your AA sponsor.’
‘That was for Visiting Orders.’ Smissy sniffed.
‘Not that either of you ever bothered to visit.’ I was still aggrieved.
‘I’m a wanted woman,’ Smister said, ‘I bet there are posters.’
‘Anyway.’ Pierre’s voice went up a notch. ‘Keeping you off the sauce was a condition of you coming here. And you coming here became a condition of your early release.’
‘Early? Seemed like eternity to me.’
‘Listen,’ Smister said, ‘I’ve grown since you’ve been away.’
‘Yeah?’
‘And I’ve changed, I don’t go out to the clubs… ’
‘Much,’ Pierre cut in.
‘And I don’t go pulling. I’m true to my darling endocrinologist.’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Pierre!’ Smister squeaked. ‘Why are you dumping on my love-buzz? You know I’m trying to be purer. And she… ’ He jerked his thumb in my direction. ‘She’s dragging me back down.’
‘I’m dragging you down? You’ve no idea what you’ve done to me in the last forty-eight hours, have you? If Connor Cropper dies it’ll be your fault, you and your interfering. If I could’ve had a little drink I wouldn’t have gone there. But I couldn’t. And I was sick – too sick to cope. So I stuffed up.’