by Liza Cody
‘Of course you don’t.’ Electra shook her head until her ears flapped against her skull. ‘So get bladdered and forget all about him. Forget about Kerri Cropper and her misery. Tell yourself she’d probably get over it by tea time. Then you can live with yourself, can’t you? You’re bottom of the heap so no one needs help or sympathy but you.’
‘Why are you so harsh all of a sudden?’ I put the empty pint pot on the ground between us and squatted down taking her face between my chilly hands. She yawned her meaty dog yawn and sat down too, looking at me with her serious dog gaze. When a dog looks straight into your eyes like that there is nothing to feel except completely understood. It’s quite a scary feeling unless you are a saint, which manifestly I am not. And it would be absolutely excruciating to be so totally understood if you weren’t so totally accepted as well. And for all her criticism and harsh words, I never felt Electra wanted to change an inch of me. Social engineering wasn’t her game, nor was breaking down and reconstructing people for her own purposes. That is a human characteristic – they practice it in prisons. And bourgeois houses.
I said, ‘The effects of this pint of cider won’t last forever. Then you’ll stop talking to me and I won’t know what to do.’
‘How dumb are you? No one needs a dog to tell them what to do.’
‘Except me,’ I said humbly.
She leaned forward to give me a big wet kiss on the mouth and then she shut up. I knew it – a pint of cider was insufficient. I wanted to weep. We’d been apart for so long. And she’d become more Cherry’s friend than mine. Cherry just snuck in and took her. I had no say in the matter. I didn’t know I was losing her because no one told me. And now she was here, all she had to say was that I was an alcoholic and a liar. Not like her new friend, Miss Self-Righteous, who didn’t keep drink in the house and who knew with absolute certainty how a dog should be treated and how everyone else should behave – just like a prison officer.
And now Electra was judging me by Miss Perfect’s standards and finding me lacking.
‘I’m not who she thinks I am,’ I said to my silent friend. ‘She doesn’t understand me at all, and nor will you if you take her word for it.’ I stood up and a dizzy wave hit me so hard that I staggered.
‘From now on,’ I said, ‘I will prove I’m not what Miss Goody-goody thinks I am.’
I clutched the Help The Aged tin to my unloved chest and left the shelter of the doorway. I thought I’d fall down. I thought I’d honk. I thought I’d go to sleep, like a horse, on my huge feet. But they kept me upright and I staggered back to the Texaco shop, cursing my luck and my unfaithful friend.
‘Where you been?’ Gamma Dora shouted. ‘I thought you’d ran out on us.’
‘I borrowed this,’ I said to Mr Singh putting the charity tin back on his counter. It was stuffed so full of money that it barely rattled any more. ‘Are you watching this?’ I asked Electra. ‘You were wrong for once. Admit it.’
Of course she didn’t reply, but Mr Singh stared at the charity tin in disbelief. He weighed it first in one hand, then in the other. ‘What I’m supposed to do with this? I can’t be taking money from charity, isn’t it?’
‘Well, I bleeding can,’ Gamma Dora said, snatching it away from him. ‘One charity’s as good as another, if you ask me. And speaking as one of ’em, the firkin’ Aged won’t mind if some of their bunce goes to the young for a change.’ She fumbled in her bucket-sized bag and produced a kitchen knife which she used to lever the tin open.
Little old ladies, if you ask me, shouldn’t be so blatantly handy with enormous knives. Jimmy Singh, who looked to begin with as if he was going to argue, wisely folded his arms and kept his mouth shut while watching her count.
‘I’ll be smoked and kippered!’ she said, looking at me for the first time without contempt. ‘Quite the little money-maker, ain’tcher?’
‘It’s the habit,’ I said. ‘I mean, the calling.’
But she wasn’t listening. She was on the phone to her daughter. She said, ‘How you doing with little Stinky? Is he? Well that’s good. What’ve you got to complain about? Sleep’s good – it’s the only time they behave their firkin’ selves.
‘Oy, cloth ears,’ she said to me. ‘Yeah, you. Who’s the Sisters of Sweet Charity?’
‘Pardon me?’ I spoke with all the dignity I could muster. But my heart hit my boots with a thud. Could Pierre and Smister have been that stupid?
‘She heard on local radio that a kiddie was abducted by the Sisters of Sweet Charity.’
They were that stupid. It was Smister’s idea of a joke.
‘I’ve never heard of them,’ I said, furrowing my brow.
‘Sweet Charity, perhaps a musical, innit?’ Mr Singh said.
‘No firkin’ shit on a shoe nail it’s a frigging musical!’ said Gamma Dora glaring at me. ‘And who’re you, when you’re at home?’
‘Me?’
‘Yeah, you, Sister Poop-for-brains.’
‘I say, steady on. Holy orders, innit?’
‘Holy orders, my wrinkly old aunt! Who are you really?’
‘Angela Mary,’ I said, because it’s always best to incorporate a little truth in your whoppers. It’s easier to remember and it makes you feel better.
The names my mother gave me were Angela and May. It’s the cops who think I’m Angela Mary. On the street I’m known as Lady Bag or The Mad Old Bat with a Dog. But I didn’t think that’d impress Gamma Dora much. So I said, ‘Sister Angela Mary from the Order of the Poor Franciscans. St Francis loved the animals, and that’s why we rescue dogs too.’ I looked at Electra, but she was lying exhausted on the floor at my feet. I wished I could lie down beside her.
Gamma Dora’s grizzly eyebrows were twitching in disbelief so I hurried on, ‘We have a special interest in racing dogs that’re past their prime. Did you know that they’re killed and then fed to the other dogs in the same kennel?’ I don’t think the last bit can possibly be true but it sounded suitably brutal.
‘Do you abduct them like you do with kiddies?’
‘They’re bought or donated,’ I said firmly.
‘I hope little boy not bought or donated,’ Mr Singh said.
‘Sometimes, if the need is great enough, we’re asked to take a child into respite care until a proper home can be found. It’s true that we’re better equipped to look after dogs.’
Gamma Dora’s laugh, fittingly, was like a mastiff’s bark. She yelled into her phone, ‘Don’t wake the stinky little bugger up. Keep him overnight. There’s enough dosh in the kitty to choke a camel. Don’t effing worry about it. The “nun” won’t give us any bovver.’
She divided the charity cash in half and then she halved one of the halves. The one quarter went back in the tin on Mr Singh’s counter. The three quarters went into her tote-bag. Then she pounced on the shelves like a jackal on a carcass. She took sweets, fizzy drinks and pies as well as items more suitable for a young child, like disposable nappies, milk, bread and bananas. At the counter she bought several packs of cigarettes and rolling tobacco.
That was too much. I said, ‘The money was for Connor.’
‘And them as gotta look after him,’ she said giving me the glare that made me understand what had been in front of my face since I first met her – Gamma Dora had been in prison at some time in her life. Not only that – I would’ve bet the farm on her being a member of the Hard Corps. You can’t mistake the challenge in that glare. It shrieks, ‘So what’re you going to do about it, wussy-face? You strong enough for a dust-up with the likes of me?’
In chokey I always wilted in front of that glare. Tonight was no different – I wilted.
9
Connor In Care
‘Electra needs water,’ I told Gamma Dora.
She took no notice. So I went to Jimmy Singh who was conferring fast and foreign with his behind-the-counter assistant. He poi
nted me to the toilets at the back.
I said, ‘Where have they taken Connor?’
He raised a hand to make me wait.
I turned back to Gamma Dora. I said, ‘You just told your daughter to keep Connor for the night. Where?’
‘What’sit to you?’
‘Well, actually, he’s supposed to be in my care, not your daughter’s.’
‘Actually, Sister Diddloe, he’s supposed to be in a friggin’ convent being looked after by people who know how. Not in the back of a cold van, filthy and screaming for food, which is where you firkin’ had him. You gonner begrudge the poor little bastard a bit of food and comfort?’
‘No but… ’
‘No but what?’
I drew myself up and held the rude rood in both hands. ‘Just who’s abducting whom, Mrs Dora? I only asked where Connor was taken. I’m the person who’s supposed to be responsible for him. Poor, yes; unlucky, yes; but irresponsible, no.’
‘Better late than never, innit?’ Mr Singh put in cheerfully.
‘Responsible?’ Gamma Dora said. ‘Don’t make me choke. You’ve driving a child, falling around loose, in the back of an un-firkin’-roadworthy vehicle with nothing but a dog’s toy to chew on, and you call yourself responsible?’
‘The ambulance used to be roadworthy.’
‘And I used to be an eighteen-year-old beauty,’ Mrs Dora said – which more or less killed the discussion. But she punished her hi-tech phone severely by punching it with granite thumbs and yelling, ‘Lance, get your arse over here – me and Mother firkin’ Inferior need a ride.’
It seemed to my wayward brain only seconds before enormous Lance turned up outside the Texaco shop in his Range Rover. He had to lift his gamma into the front seat and I had to lift Electra into the back seat because some cars are simply too tall for human and canine use. Then, ceremoniously, he drove us a hundred yards round the corner to a block of council flats. It was very nearly as ugly as Castle Cropper but better maintained – at least the lift worked and the smell of urine wasn’t quite acid enough to make my eyes water.
But Mama Misha’s flat was a revelation. She had the best and biggest of everything. A wall-mounted 50-inch screen dominated a small living room stuffed with man-sized leather furniture. Shelves groaned under Royal memorabilia and hundreds of china figurines. Curtains and wallpaper were jungles of warring fruit and flowers. The shag pile was deep enough to lose your shoes in. On top of that, she had three fat corgis clamouring for attention. They were called Diana, Wills and Harry, and were spoken to with cooing affection.
‘Come with me,’ Misha said.
I followed her into a bedroom, leaving Electra cornered by the three corgis. Connor was fast asleep in the smallest of three small beds. He was still clinging for dear life to the squeaky chicken but at rest he looked almost human.
‘I put a couple of spoonfuls of cough syrup in his food,’ she told me, ‘and a tot of rum in his juice. He was so worked up he could hardly eat for screaming, let alone sleep. Know what? I don’t care if the Sisters of Sweet Charity did bleeding abduct him. He needs abducting. He’s got cigarette burns on his hands and feet, where he ain’t bruised, did you know that?’
I shook my head. Looking down at the toasty brown face with its clouds of bruises around the ears and eyes, I almost failed to notice that his head had been shaved.
Misha saw me noticing and said, ‘He was crawling with nits and lice. He wouldn’t let me wash his hair or comb them out so I had to shave him after he went to sleep. I couldn’t bleeding let him put that head on pillows my grandkids use, now could I?’
I shook my head. Shaved and drugged, pacified with alcohol and chocolate, Connor was probably having the best night of his sorry life. Who was I to criticise? But it did make me wonder what the Sisters of Sweet Charity, aka Pierre and Smister, thought they were doing. They’d said they were going to take pictures of him through the letterbox and embarrass the Social Services into taking action. That, for them, seemed like a sensible plan. What made them change their minds? If indeed they had functioning minds to change.
‘You probably don’t approve of the rum,’ Misha said.
‘I approve of anything that that gets him through the night,’ I told her.
‘I know nuns don’t bleedin’ drink.’
‘Yes we do,’ I said, glad to tell the truth. ‘Red wine. May I use your bathroom?’ I was hoping she hadn’t used up all the cough syrup on Connor.
She pointed me to the bathroom which just about contained a wall-to-wall plus-sized bath and, oh miracle, a huge, fully stocked medicine cabinet. I was able to slurp on cough syrup and stash an unopened package of diazepam down my cleavage as well as having a wee and a wash. Both of which were sorely needed. In the enormous top-lit mirror I looked exhausted, bedraggled and demented. I hid the joke Jesus and straightened my wimple, pulling it a bit further forward so that my face was more in shadow. There wasn’t much else I could do except rinse my mouth and teeth with Misha’s excruciatingly painful mouthwash.
In the kitchen I found Electra, Diana, Wills and Harry tucking into giant portions of the best dogfood money could buy.
Electra looked up at me and said with her mouth full, ‘If you ask them nicely, do you think they’d abduct me too?’
‘No one’s abducting anyone,’ I said firmly.
‘I should think firkin’ not,’ Gamma Dora said. ‘I told you, my Misha knows more about looking after kiddies and dogs than all you holy firkin’ rollers will in ten lifetimes. What did you think – we were running a paedophile ring?’
‘I had to make sure.’
‘Course you bleeding did.’ Mama Misha handed Gamma Dora a pint of gin and tonic. Lance wandered in and was handed a chilled can of lager. She gave me a mug of tea. I could’ve killed her.
‘So I’m keeping the poor little sod till morning,’ she went on. ‘Thanks for all the supplies, by the by. He’ll need everything he can get. I know you’re in holy orders or what-bleedin’-ever, but I got to say something – I hope I’m shot in the effing head if I don’t. You can’t give the little sucker back to the family. No way. No how. Not bleedin’ ever.’
Right then and there I decided to leave Connor with Gamma Dora, Mama Misha, Tony and Lance. There was no way on earth I could look after him. And how insane would it be to leave him with Pierre or Smister? Self-righteous Cherry would give him straight back to his owners.
‘Hold on there,’ Electra said, leaving her empty bowl and resting her head against my thigh. ‘You can’t abandon him with strangers.’
‘I’m a stranger to him too. He doesn’t know me. He doesn’t even know his mother.’
‘So how come he ends up in the back of your van?’ Lance asked.
I stroked Electra’s head, and said, ‘Hush.’ She always confuses people when we’re in company.
‘What do you mean he doesn’t know his own bleedin’ mother?’ Misha asked.
‘She’s in prison.’ I spoke directly to Gamma Dora because I thought she’d understand me perfectly. ‘Connor was left with his mum’s mum. But this grandma has a boyfriend who apparently doesn’t like mixed-race babies.’
‘A grandmother did that to him?’ Lance said, horrified.
‘Fuck that,’ Gamma Dora said on behalf of grandmothers and great-grandmothers everywhere. ‘Still, I s’pose you’re never too old to make a twat of yourself over some bastard bloke.’
‘S’pose not,’ Misha said, almost laughing.
‘But I’m the only one suffers from my mistakes,’ Gamma Dora went on. ‘I never ever firkin’ took it out on none of you lot.’
‘You’re too young to remember Uncle Carbuncle,’ Misha said to Lance.
‘So let’s firkin’ leave it that way,’ Gamma Dora shouted. ‘Lance, phone your brother. The sooner we can get the effing Sister on the road the sooner we can get back to normal.’
I got up. ‘Before you ask,’ I said, ‘I’m going to walk my dog. She’s eaten two meals tonight.’
‘Good idea,’ Misha said. ‘You can take my three while you’re at it.’
‘But… ’ I said
But there was no arguing and before I could formulate a cogent protest I was given two blue leather leads and a pink one. The three corgis wore little harnesses and little fleecy coats. Electra stared at them, astonished. All she was wearing was a pretty silver-grey silk scarf with blue and violet flowers on it – courtesy of Smister of course.
I walked my canine charges, with many stops on the way, back to the garage. The Ambo sat next to the air dispenser like a squatter in suburbia. Neither Jimmy Singh nor Tony was there. The woman behind the counter in the shop claimed to know nothing and understand even less. But she pointed to a sign which said ‘No Dogs Allowed’ and sternly declaimed in perfect North London, ‘No four dogs allowed on premises, innit.’
‘But you sell dogfood,’ I protested.
‘Only to human beans,’ she said flatly.
Defeated, I went to the Ambo. There was still no battery where a battery should be.
The back smelled comfortably of Tony’s Golden Virginia. I lifted Wills, Harry and Diana in and they crowded into Electra’s bed and fell asleep. Electra didn’t mind. She hopped onto the bunk and lay down too.
I found my old backpack, two pairs of track bottoms and some scraggly old t-shirts and sweaters. Then I took a diazepam and sat down next to Electra.
‘Wake up,’ I said. ‘What shall I wear?’ She’s a girl dog so she should know these things.
‘Be quiet,’ she said. ‘The Royal Ones are trying to sleep.’
‘They’re council house dogs.’
‘They come from a long line of Welsh Queens and Sorcerers. They are what they are, not where they live.’
‘Same as you, then.’
‘Same as you too – only I don’t see much of a pedigree or a lot of magic when I look your way.’ She sniffed my fingertips for the scent of royalty and shook her head.