by Liza Cody
‘That’d be chucking paraffin on a fire at the moment.’ I told him about Connor, Mrs Cropper and the cops.
He looked banjaxxed. ‘That little chicken just keeps on coming home to roost,’ he said.
‘Or roast,’ I said. ‘No one wants him. No one can cope with him.’
‘They were killing him,’ he said. ‘Y’know, at that fucking awful place in Shoreditch. I couldn’t just take a picture and walk.’
‘Yeah, but where’s the follow-up? You left him by himself in this ambulance. How was I to know that when I drove off? What were you going to do – ask Ms Malice to adopt him?’
‘I didn’t know she was going to wig out like she did. I didn’t know you were going to take the dog. She so doesn’t like losing. She laid it all on me – about the nun shit, about Connor, about the dog, about you being the last straw. All your crap. All my crap. Like, she called me a pervert and a deviant. If she thought that, how come she wanted me to sleep in her goddarn pink bed and pay her fucking pink mortgage for her? If she liked me, how come she wanted to change me?’
‘What did you ever see in her?’
‘How the fuck should I know? She came on to me at a hen party at my club. She’d been drinking. She thought I was a bouncer – didn’t know I was a performer. I’d been drinking too, and I guess I thought she was pretty enough for the one time. It just grew from there – step by step. I don’t even like blonde women.’
‘How do you like blonde women who steal dogs and throw abused kids out into the cold?’ I asked.
‘Don’t make me think about it,’ he said with his head down, not meeting my eyes. He shivered suddenly and tried to warm his hands on the meagre primus flame.
‘Are you going to stay here tonight?’
He stared around the Ambo, at the narrow bunk beds, the tiny basin, the primus stove. Smister, Electra and I had lived in it once. But Pierre was bigger than all three of us put together. He looked miserable.
‘Is this what it’s like?’ he asked. ‘Suddenly you got nowhere to call your own? Nowhere to put your stuff. Nowhere to be private?’
‘Pretty much – although usually it isn’t so sudden. Step by tiny step – like hooking up with the wrong kind of troll – and before you know it you’ve got nothing and nowhere. And you aren’t really sure which the crucial step was. At least you have a good job and money. You could go to a hotel for a couple of nights.’
‘Know what?’ he said, flashing me a transforming smile. ‘I like you better on the sauce.’
‘So do I,’ I said. True – I did feel more relaxed with him now that I’d had a couple of glassfuls, and he wasn’t pretending to be a responsible adult who knew what was best for me. As a drag artiste, down on his luck, he was a lot more human. And now he wasn’t smooching Little Miss Perfect and calling her ‘Honeee’ I could stand his company without wanting to puke.
‘Come back to Billy’s with me,’ I offered. ‘There’s a sofa bigger than these two bunks put together. And a downstairs bog and wet room. If you’re quiet he’ll never know you’re there.’
‘He’s a racist. He called me a nig-nog to my face. Can you beat that?’
‘Where the fuck was you?’ Billy yelled. ‘I been calling and calling.’
‘Do you want another beer or what?’
‘Yeah, I want a beer. It’s what I drink in case you hadn’t noticed.’
‘Well in case you didn’t notice, I drink wine,’ I said as I went upstairs with a beer can in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. In my pocket was the second bar of chocolate in case he needed sweetening. My head was beginning to feel very strange, as if the contents were swelling but my cranium was shrinking. My thoughts were being squeezed out through my nose and mouth, bright red like tomato paste from a tube.
‘All quiet now?’ I asked nodding towards the window. He was lying on his bed watching championship snooker.
‘Pity,’ he said. ‘More cops came and took the one with the awesome bazoongas away. She’s a scrapper, that one. They took the screamer too. That was fun. Another cop and I think it was the Witch-Bitch solicitor went inside, and I ain’t heard a peep for the last ten minutes.’
I remembered Arctic Cherry dragging Connor out of her house by his dungaree straps. While I watched, her fingernails turned into icicles – long, sharp and freezing cold.
I took a slurp from my glass to clear my head and closed my eyes. ‘What about my dog? Did you see Electra?’
‘No dog. No pretty girls. Nothing to send to my girlfriends no more.’ The immovable man was an action junkie.
I woke up when he whacked my foot with his walking frame. ‘Oy, boot-face, don’t you fucking go to sleep on me. Did you leave the door open when you came back in? I swear I heard the downstairs bog flush. Go down and see.’
I went downstairs. Pierre was lying on his back on Billy’s brown corduroy sofa. He was wearing a snow-white teddy over silky French knickers and white ankle socks. I don’t know why he looked more adorable than risible, but he did.
I whispered, ‘If he was watching an all singing, all dancing, all screaming reality show you’d be all right. But he isn’t. He’s watching snooker so he can hear every move you make. Don’t flush the loo again.’
‘I’m beat – I forgot.’ Pierre yawned so wide I could see his supper.
I went to the wet room, flushed the loo again and banged the lid of the cistern. Then I took another can of beer from the kitchen and went back upstairs.
I said, ‘When did you last look at your ballcock?’
‘Are you having me on?’
‘That whatsit in your cistern that’s supposed to close was stuck open. That’s what you heard.’
‘Okay,’ he said, seeming to know less about plumbing than I did.
‘Front and back doors are locked.’ I couldn’t remember how many beers I’d carried upstairs and I didn’t know how long it’d be before he’d be pissed enough not to notice any strange noises. ‘Anything I can do for you before I turn in?’
He looked at the clock which said 23.57. He said, ‘I’m not supposed to eat after supper.’
‘Okay,’ I said, as any responsible carer would. But I waited.
He said, ‘My daughter keeps a tub of chocolate ice cream in the freezer. Just a bowlful of that won’t make any fucking difference, will it?’
‘I’m not your jailer,’ I said.
The chocolate ice cream reminded me of the chocolate bar melting in my pocket. I unwrapped it and put it into a small pan over a low heat. I crushed six tabs of diazepam between two spoons and stirred the powder in.
I was just pouring the hot chocolate over the ice cream when Pierre said, ‘Hey, save some of that for me.’ He’d crept up on me in his socks so quietly that I nearly spilt the whole bowl.
‘Shshsh!’ I said. But he ignored me and dug another huge scoop of ice cream into a second bowl.
‘I thought you were asleep.’
‘Even in a coma I can smell chocolate sauce,’ he said cheerfully.
‘Shut up! Billy will hear you.’
‘Billy can kiss my ass,’ he said, ignoring me as usual.
So I poured a dollop of melted chocolate into his bowl.
Good night all.
19
Raising The Dead
Chilly Cherry’s front door was locked. Her back door was locked too. All the windows were shut tight. Electra was inside, I was outside. Alone. I could have wept but I needed to be silent. I crept back to Billy’s house.
Pierre was sprawled on his face on Billy’s sofa. Upstairs, Billy was sprawled on his back in bed. Both were snoring.
I collected the two licked-clean ice cream bowls and took them to the kitchen. I even washed up. I didn’t want to leave any traces.
It was Pierre’s fault. If he hadn’t been so noisy I wouldn’t have had to slip Billy a diazepa
m Mickey. If he hadn’t been so greedy he wouldn’t have nicked half of Billy’s bedtime treat.
I sat on the single bed and wondered how I could dose Chilly Cherry’s cornflakes. Then I’d have no trouble taking Electra back. After all, it was no more than she deserved. She’d stolen my dog and she’d dosed me with Antabuse. She was the reason Connor would probably be given back to Mrs Cruella Cropper.
In fact, I reasoned, she was responsible for Gamma Dora and Misha drugging Connor. If she hadn’t been such a double-dyed troll Pierre and Smister wouldn’t have hidden him in the Ambo. And I wouldn’t have been forced to drive away with Electra while he was in the back. When you come to think about it clearly and logically, everything is Cherry’s fault. Why should she be the only one who wasn’t drugged against her will?
This was the happy thought that nearly sent me to sleep, but the sound of raised voices and a door slamming tugged me back to life.
I ran downstairs and opened the front door. Standing in the cold was Tantie Débris d’Or wearing only a bra and knickers. The wind lifted her curly grey hair and whirled it like a mad mop around her head. She looked stunned and utterly unprotected.
An upstairs window opened and a man poked his head out. In a posh voice he called down, ‘Mrs Price will give half your clothes to your nephew and the other half to your niece. They can bring them to you when they leave this house. Otherwise, I’m afraid, you’ll just have to shiver.’
‘Oh how spiteful,’ I said, my nipples cramping in sympathy. Poor Tantie.
‘Hilarious!’ whispered the Torturer. ‘You should wake Billy. He’d love this.’
But the man-mountain was unshakably unwakable. So I rummaged in his chest of drawers and found a duvet-sized woolly jumper in the vile orange and brown colours of Halloween. I rolled it into as tight a ball as I could and then threw it out of Billy’s bedroom window. Immediately after throwing I ducked behind the curtains. If she saw me she’d want to come in. He was already harbouring one uninvited guest and I didn’t think I could get away with a second.
Besides, apart from stealing a few odd hours of sleep I calculated that I might’ve been awake for two or three days – not enough sleep to engage in a conversation with a distraught Frenchwoman. Besides, with Pierre on the sofa there was nowhere left for her to lie down.
I crept back to the little bed in the spare room.
‘Coward,’ hissed Satan. ‘You’re too chicken to take her in out of the cold.’
‘Am not,’ I said, laying my grateful head on the pillow. ‘I want her to ring Cherry’s bell and knock on her doors and windows all night long. I just don’t want her to freeze to death in the process.’
‘Liar, liar, pants on fire,’ chanted the Über Lord of Lies. ‘You’re scared of Cherry. You’re afraid that if she knows you’re next door she’ll run off somewhere with Electra and you’ll never find her again.’
‘I bet I know why she wants an old greyhound,’ I said. ‘She wants her because she’s my old greyhound. She hates me.’
‘Don’t give yourself so much credit. It isn’t about you. You don’t actually count at all. It’s about her war with Pierre.’
‘What war?’
‘Her campaign to turn him into the sort of boyfriend she deserves – the one her friends and family would approve of and envy – the one who has no commitments other than to her. So first she makes herself indispensable by persuading him to move in with her. Then she gives his friend, Smister, a place to stay. Smister brings Electra who he’s caring for while you’re doing time. Now she has power, because she can force him to do her will by threatening to hurt his friends.’
‘But I’m not a friend.’
‘You’re a commitment. Smister’s the friend. Electra’s a pawn in the game. The prize is Pierre’s throat bared in total surrender. When he’s betrayed Smister, turned his back on you, taken Electra back to the dog’s home or had her put down, then she’ll know she’s won. Game, set and match.’
‘That’s insane. That’s destroying everything she says she loves. Is she really that calculating?’
‘You tell me. Why have you been fighting her? It isn’t just because she’s laid claim to your dog, is it? You can’t win, you know. She’s one of mine.’
‘I thought you wanted me to be one of yours.’
‘I crave your obedience almost as much as you crave my love.’
‘Never – not while you’re craving Cherry Price. Piss off and let me sleep.’
‘You could be dead tomorrow. What then? If there’s no god, and if I don’t claim you, where will you go?’
‘To the dogs.’
‘And what fun that will be,’ he hooted, ‘when my daughter Cherry has all the dogs.’
‘I need to sleep.’
‘You need to answer the door, or even drugged Billy will wake up and kick you out.’
I dragged myself back from the jaws of blessed silence to hear persistent rapping on the front door. The wet snorts coming from Billy’s room accompanied me downstairs. I opened the door to find Tantie, smothered in the hideous jumper, dancing barefoot on the doorstep.
‘Cold,’ she said unnecessarily. Her nose was running and her teeth clicked.
I had to let her in, didn’t I? And I had to sit her down in the kitchen and give her a mug of hot tea and a bowl of Billy’s chicken and noodles. I wanted to ask why Zach and Sylvie hadn’t come out with the rest of her clothes but my sleeping tongue couldn’t wrap itself around the right words.
‘I sleep ’ere?’ she said, when she’d finished the soup but was still gripping the hot tea mug between blue and white hands.
‘No,’ I slurred firmly. ‘Not my house.’
‘But you ask?’
‘No. He’s sleeping. I’ll try to find you some socks.’
I fumbled my way back upstairs and opened the top drawer of Billy’s chest of drawers. Socks in the top, right? Wrong. Pornography – a collection of magazines entitled ‘Doctor Butt‘n’Boob’ – was stored where innocent socks should nestle.
‘’Orrible,’ chattered Tantie who had crept up behind me in bare feet. ‘What is wrong wis zis man?’
She had noticed what I’d missed. Billy’s regular snorts were now infrequent and irregular. The man-mountain was turning into a blue whale.
Have you ever tried to turn a forty stone man from his back to the recovery position? Even with me pulling and Tantie pushing he didn’t budge an inch.
Tantie slapped his face, trying to rouse him. I tried cardiac massage but couldn’t find where he’d hidden his heart under fold upon fold of resistant flesh. Nor could I find his phone. Probably he’d gone to sleep lying on it. Every move I made was to the tune of rhythmic demonic laughter. Mr Beau Mangles was dancing a jig just out of sight.
‘Shut up, shut up, shut up,’ I yelled and ran down the stairs to wake nineteen stone Pierre.
‘Wake up, wake up, wake up,’ I yelled, pummelling his back until he groaned and shook me off.
‘Wha?’
‘Get up, get up, get up,’ I yelled. ‘It’s Billy – he’s dying.’
‘Wha?’ His tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth but I found his phone which he’d left tidily on top of his folded clothes.
‘Ring for an ambulance,’ I shouted into his sleep-deafened ear. ‘I don’t know the address.’
He rang while struggling into his jeans. Pushed, pulled and protesting he climbed upstairs.
‘Wha?’ he asked when he saw Tantie holding Billy’s nose and attempting mouth to mouth resuscitation.
‘What have you done?’ he asked.
And suddenly I began to realise that Billy wasn’t the only one in danger.
‘Nothing,’ I said, ‘I swear. What could I have done?’
‘You’ll have to tell the paramedics when they come,’ he said. He was looking at a small bottle and a couple of p
ackets on Billy’s night stand and checking out the number of empty beer cans. My wine glass was still on the window sill from when we’d been watching next door’s drama. Worst of all I still had the diazepam stuffed down my bra.
‘Help him,’ I said, pushing Tantie out of the way. She’d exhausted herself but at least, I thought, she was no longer cold.
Pierre’s huge hands on Billy’s body were reduced to normal size. Nevertheless he shoved them rhythmically into Billy’s chest.
‘Wake the fuck up, you racist asshole,’ he muttered as he continued to work. ‘Guy calls me a nig-nog and what to I do? I save his goddam worthless life for him.’
‘Mon dieu!’ Tantie cried. ‘Ees ze big nun, n’est ce pas?’
‘Dunno what you’re talking about,’ I said, trying to sidle out of the room.
‘Where you going?’ Pierre said. ‘Move the fuckin’ pillows – they’re in the way.’
‘Flush the pills down the pan,’ whispered the Devil. ‘Get rid of the evidence.’
‘I’m trying,’ I said, snatching the pillows off the bed.
Tantie was reclining on the sofa still breathing hard. She said, ‘And you are ze uzzer, is true?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Stay here!’ Pierre shouted. ‘You’re not crapping out on me now.’
‘I just want a pee,’ I said.
‘Not you – him. We’re losing him.’
‘I’ll go down and wait for the ambulance.’
‘You’re going nowhere,’ he panted.
‘I go,’ Tantie said. She opened Billy’s cupboard and selected a full length fleecy dressing gown and a pair of sheepskin slippers before going downstairs.
‘We’re busted,’ I said. ‘She knows.’
‘Not my problem,’ Pierre said, pounding on Billy’s chest.
‘How soon they forget,’ said the Lord of Long Memories. ‘She can, now she knows you were a nun, put you together with Connor – kidnapping a kiddie – et cetera. Not a small matter, like manslaughter.’
‘What manslaughter?’
‘Only if he dies,’ Pierre said. ‘You better pray he doesn’t. I need a rest. Come here.’