Crocodiles & Good Intentions

by Liza Cody

‘He was paying her mortgage.’

  ‘In lieu of rent for him, me and Electra,’ Li’l Missy said. ‘So part of it was her fault for getting sent down and not looking after her own dog.’

  ‘Drop it, both of you.’ This obviously was not what Pierre wanted to discuss. Then he softened and said, ‘I took your advice about that damn mortgage, Lady B, and I’m off the hook.’

  ‘Lady B gave you financial advice?’ Kaylee asked, awestruck. ‘And you took it?’

  Pierre leaned over and patted me on the head with his baseball mitt hand. ‘There’s a coupla marbles in there.’ He grinned at me and I grinned back reluctantly.

  I was still furious with him for allowing the Ice Queen to freeze his heart, but he did seem to be regaining some warmth and humour. Maybe it was Alicia. So far she seemed to be a good influence. But how do you trust a guy who’s so easily swayed by the woman he’s bedding? Tell me that.

  But I do respond to approval so I said to Kaylee, ‘If Pierre was paying the mortgage on Icy Pants’ house, can he be accused of breaking and entering? I mean, if he’s sort of legal can’t he give me permission to visit and stand beside him while he opens a shed on the property he’s paying for?’

  ‘Well, she’s claiming she threw him out and he didn’t have permission to return. But if she was still accepting de facto monthly rent from him she should’ve given him a month’s notice in writing.’

  ‘She was, and she didn’t.’ Pierre began to look hopeful.

  ‘Of course I was planning to take up exactly this point both with the police and with Ms Price’s solicitor,’ Kaylee pronounced rather stiffly. ‘But you did leave it very late in the day before you rang me.’

  ‘We’re sorry,’ Li’l Missy said. ‘We couldn’t believe Cherry’d go through with it.’

  ‘But even if I can get Ms Price to drop charges against you there’s still the far more serious matter of Connor Cropper. I need to take detailed statements from all of you.’

  ‘How can anyone think we’d do harm to a little child?’ Li’l Missy asked with his most angelic expression pasted to his face.

  ‘Because he was my creation,’ said the Father of Evil.

  ‘He was forged by cruelty,’ I agreed. ‘And that made him impossible to love.’

  ‘She better not say that to anyone ’cept us,’ Pierre said, withdrawing approval.

  I thought about Kerry Cropper and her druggie co-parent. Had Connor stood a chance? Ever? Was his fate written in his DNA? I thought about my own mother and father. Was I forged by cruelty too? Is that why I too am impossible to love? How much chance did I ever have?

  Electra stirred and nudged my ankle. ‘You’re still alive,’ she whispered sleepily. ‘You still have chances because you can make choices.’

  ‘Hah!’ sneered the Master of Missed Chances. ‘Look at the choices you make! Go on, look.’

  ‘However he was “forged”,’ Kaylee said, ‘a child can never be held responsible for the abuse he suffered – by whomever’s hand.’

  ‘Tell that to my mother,’ I said, and I put my hand up to touch my swollen, aching left ear and to feel the left side of my jaw where the teeth wobbled. ‘She tripped over those enormous feet,’ my mother said to her neighbour. ‘She’s so clumsy.’

  ‘Sit down, please,’ Kaylee said. ‘We weren’t discussing your family.’

  ‘Not everything’s about you,’ Li’l Missy said.

  Nothing was about me. It was all about them. They stuck me in the middle. Why me? My brother was exempt. Why? Because he was a boy and more valuable than a younger sister? Perhaps he couldn’t be dominated or seduced. Or maybe my father didn’t… ? No stop! Where is all this coming from?

  ‘I don’t know,’ Kaylee said. ‘But please just sit down and calm down. We really do need you to attend the meeting with the police at Brent Cross.’

  ‘Do we? Really?’ Li’l Missy asked. ‘She’s so batshit crazy she makes me and Pierre look bad too.’

  ‘Write something,’ Pierre said to Kaylee. ‘Y’know, that sounds like what she’s said about… whatever – the Cropper place, her calling 999, the hospital, being kicked, and knocked over by a bus. Crazy enough to sound like her, but not “batshit”. Li’l Missy, you help. I’m gonna take her for a little walk. We‘ll be back.’

  He even buttoned up my coat for me – like a good father when his daughter’s hands are too cold and clumsy to do it for herself. We took Electra. I love Li’l Missy Smister, but the last time she had charge of my gorgeous greyhound he didn’t protect her – the opposite in fact. I may be crazy but that doesn’t mean I make the same mistake twice.

  ‘Quite,’ agreed Milord, ‘you make it fifty times. Or you create brand new ones.’

  ‘Don’t be so goddam hard on yourself,’ Pierre said, as we slipped and slithered over patches of compacted snow. ‘And don’t be so goddam hard on Li’l Missy neither. Sure, she ain’t great under pressure. But who is? I reckon we all lost a piece of our souls over Cherry and Connor.’

  ‘I did.’ I nodded vehemently. ‘I couldn’t cope. I was so sorry for myself just about all the time, I couldn’t even feel sorry for him.’

  ‘And now he’s dead,’ crowed the Collector of Skulls.

  ‘And now he’s dead.’ Pierre shook his head ruefully. ‘We fucked up. It’s that simple. Same with Cherry – I fucked up. Connor paid. You paid. Electra paid. But what am I gonna do? Spend the rest of my life beating myself up?’

  ‘That’d be a start,’ I said, because that was what Satan was saying to me as he dug his bony fingers into my heart.

  ‘What Alicia says,’ Pierre began as if he hadn’t heard me – which he probably hadn’t because it’s the logical consequence of not listening. ‘She says it’s what you do next that counts.’

  Maybe what I could do next might be to have a proper big drink and forget all the dreadful crap I’d done, and all the good I hadn’t done, and all the damage that had been done to me. I know what works.

  There was a prowling monster of a memory trying to escape, trying to fight its way out of the back of my mind. I didn’t want it. I wanted to get rid of it the way I’d managed to get rid of abused Baby Connor. I’d left Connor for the last time, crying in a wrecked car. I turned my back and walked away. Could anything be as bad as that? But there was something. Buried under the rubble in the ruined back left-hand corner of my mind, something was trying to claw its way up to the light.

  ‘Let me remind you,’ murmured the Lord of Lost Memory. ‘You were seven years-old, and… ’

  ‘Shut up, shut up, shut up.’ I covered my ears, and started to run.

  ‘Slow down,’ Pierre said, clamping his dinner plate hand round my arm. ‘You can’t run away. It won’t work, know it. What if you fell on the ice and broke a leg? What would happen to Electra?’

  ‘You’d give her to Madam Absolute Zero of Antarctica. She’d be chained up in a shed. She could be dead now, Pierre, of hypothermia, all because you chose to hump Frieda Frigidaire. All because I went to the lockup. All because I fell in love with the Caliph of Contempt. And Connor? What happened to him? Found at the bottom of those filthy concrete stairs. All because poor Gorilla Crapper had bareback sex with her Demon Drug Lord

  ‘What you saying, girl?’ Pierre shrugged impatiently. ‘That bad stuff happens when you pick your lovers wrong? Well, no shit! Lovers don’t come with reviews tattooed to their butts. You gotta suck it and see. Then move on if you don’t like the taste.’

  ‘Like you did?’ I cried.

  ‘Why’re you so obsessy ’bout this? Why don’t you just move on?’

  We glared at each other in mutual misunderstanding.

  Pierre pointed his huge forefinger straight between my eyes. ‘What Alicia says is, “You try, you fail, you start again.” Why can’t you do that?’

  ‘Because I’ve got a memory,’ I yelled at him. ‘I’
ve got voices whispering in my head.’

  ‘So why do they only whisper about crap and hellfire? And why do you fuckin’ listen to them?’

  ‘I don’t whisper about crap and hellfire,’ Electra retorted huffily, turning away from an interesting bollard.

  ‘You’re right – you don’t.’ I stopped and crouched, taking her beautiful slim face in my hands. ‘You always try to put me straight.’ I looked up at Pierre. ‘Maybe Alicia’s your Electra. If so, you’re a very lucky guy.’

  ‘I dunno how she’d feel, you comparing her to a bitch.’ His face relaxed into a rueful grin.

  ‘Proud,’ I said.

  ‘At least I don’t have to be sauced to talk to her. See, Lady B, we got a problem. If you stick around you’ll be back in the slammer by Tuesday. Kaylee seems to think we need your story. But I dunno – could be I learned something – like, it ain’t right to sacrifice you and your pooch for my safety.’

  ‘What about Li’l Missy?’

  ‘Nother story.’

  ‘Run,’ advised my Ignoble Lord. ‘He’s going to ask you to sacrifice yourself for Li’l Missy.’

  ‘See, I think Kaylee’s right – in the long run that forensic shit’s going to get us off the hook: Connor was tortured long time. It couldn’ta been us. But, what with Cherry putting the boot in, you’ve been set up for a take-down. Li’l Missy too. So, gettit, I’m saying you two should blow till they arrest Mrs C and her boyfriend. Cos you’re right, they’ll iron you out just for being you. And Li’l Missy, she can’t afford too much looking at neither.’

  ‘Yeah but,’ I began, ‘what about your work permit? Madam Jaws’n’Claws just happened to mention that to the cops. You won’t stand up to scrutiny either. The Baron of Betrayal seduced you into trusting Prissy Pricey with dangerous information. Her words will ramify. The past stains the present and the future with its blood.’

  ‘Shee-it.’

  ‘Alicia says move on, okay, but where to? Back to the States? Deported?’

  ‘I’ll talk to Kaylee. She can find me an immigration lawyer.’

  ‘Danger. The love weevil crawled into her heart. It’s begun feasting.’

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘Are you blind? Kaylee’s soft on you. Handle with care.’

  ‘Now you’re flipping out for real.’

  I stared into his kindly, unseeing eyes.

  ‘Gimme a break,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t you notice anything except what you want to see? You don’t want Miss Malice to be malicious so you don’t notice her spite and manipulations. You don’t want poor Kaylee at all except as a useful lawyer so you don’t notice her as a woman, how she’s feeling about you. Sometimes I could slap you, Pierre.’

  ‘What you raving about, woman? All I’m saying is you and Li’l Missy should do a flit. I’m trying to take care of business for you. It really don’t need to be that complicated.’

  ‘And I’m saying maybe we all should do a flit.’

  ‘I can’t leave London just now. I’m starting that paramedic course in a coupla weeks.’

  ‘You’ve just moved from one woman to another without even coming up for air. One day Cherrynobyl slings you and your gowns and wigs out into the rain, but by the early hours of the very next morning you’ve fallen hook, line and sinker for the first woman to cross your path. You don’t think that’s going to make Ms Nuclear Fallout just a tiny bit vengeful towards you?’

  ‘I can handle Cherry.’

  ‘You are the most self-deluding twommit I ever met.’

  We stared at each other again and then, without speaking, continued slowly and carefully along the frozen, nearly deserted street. Walking soothed me. Pierre stuck his huge hands in his pockets, hunching his shoulders, trying to bury his ears in his gorgeous scarf. His Alicia scarf. He might as well bury his head.

  What can it possibly be like to be so lovable? Every day of my life has taught me what it’s like not to be.

  ‘It’s got sod-all to do with love,’ I told Electra, tortured by envy. ‘A woman wants a boyfriend. She doesn’t care who. A man wants a fuck. He doesn’t care who.’

  ‘But Pierre is lovable,’ she told me.

  Pierre just stared at me and said, ‘I never knew you were so sexist or so cynical.’

  Misquoting my Mean Master, I said, ‘I’m an equal opportunities sexist cynic. But Electra’s right, you are quite lovable.’

  ‘Well, all right,’ he said. ‘Got that cleared up, then.’

  ‘But are you loving?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said with easy confidence. He certainly thought he knew the right answer.

  ‘Did you love Cherry?’ There was no right answer to that one, and he knew it. He looked stumped.

  Eventually he said, ‘There isn’t just one sort of love.’

  I gave him a contemptuous glare and let him stew. We walked. I waited.

  Then he said, exasperated, ‘Wha’d’ya want me to say? If I say “no” I’m a bastard, and if I say “yes” I’m a jerk.’

  ‘Why do you need my approval?’ I asked. ‘I’m batshit crazy, remember? Why did you need Cherry’s approval? She’s mean-spirited, spiteful and predatory.’

  ‘Why’re you so goddam stuck on that? We got a whole nother situation – Connor, Connor’s lying sow of a grandma, and the cops.’

  ‘Because, Pierre, we’re all in big bother. But you’re going to send Li’l Missy and me away to safety and sacrifice yourself. What for? So you can have sex with a woman you only just met? Look at the shit you got us all in because you had sex with Miss Perfect Ice Storm for no better reason than she “put out.” You think your shag-life affects only you, huh? But there have been consequences. To Li’l Missy, to me, to Electra. And Connor. Connor’s dead because… ’

  ‘Connor’s dead cos everyone fucked up. Everyone.’

  ‘Yeah, I know, but take Cruella out of the picture, Pierre. Replace her with someone kind, who cared more for kids than carpets.’

  ‘Like Alicia? Are you saying there’d of been a different scene? That’s crazy for sure. You can’t just rewrite history.’

  ‘You could,’ I said, beginning to cry.

  Pierre said, ‘Why are you so stuck and obsessive?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He was right: Cherry was a worm caught in my brain, eating me up, till nothing existed but her smug, self-righteous smile. I wanted Pierre to make her un-happen for me as easily as he had for himself. Yes, I wanted him to rewrite history for me.

  Because if my father hadn’t done what he did and my mother hadn’t caught him – us… me – I would have been a completely different person. Wouldn’t I? Well, wouldn’t I? It wasn’t all written in the stars by Satan’s hand. Was it?

  ‘Wasn’t it?’ the Lord of All Shame asked. ‘Do you really think that what I write can be un-written?’

  ‘Don’t cry,’ Pierre said, walking closer to me so that our elbows bumped. ‘You did your best.’

  ‘No I didn’t.’ And I realised that I still wasn’t. Because I wasn’t crying for Connor as Pierre thought – I was crying for myself. Why? Why was the wrecking-ball of memory crashing into me now, and demolishing my already uninhabitable house? Now – when someone else deserved my tears far more than I did.

  ‘Oh goody,’ said Mr Mnemonic. ‘Keep it up. Between us we can show them what batshit crazy really looks like. You were a dirty girl and an evil child. Just like Connor. Your shoes didn’t shine, you had grime under your fingernails.’

  I pulled my glove off. There were filthy little crescents under my fingernails.

  ‘See? You haven’t changed a lick.’

  ‘Stop that!’ Pierre shouted. He bent, hauled me to my feet and tried to brush the snow off my hands. ‘Put your gloves back on. If you wanna wash your filthy mitts, use soap and hot water.’ He rubbed my hands fiercely against his coat. ‘You’
ll give yourself frostbite. What freakin’ good will that do anyone?’

  ‘I didn’t do anything,’ I wept.

  ‘None of us did anything.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything,’ I said when my mother hit my face so hard my teeth wobbled. I have hardly any teeth at all now. Did she knock them all out? So long ago.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ Pierre said, ‘any more than it’s anybody else’s.’

  ‘Remember,’ whispered Mr Memory McNasty. ‘It’s all there, waiting.’

  ‘This is not what it looks like,’ my father said when the light, shockingly, went on in my mean little bedroom.

  ‘You and me weren’t even in the house when the cops came and took Connor away.’

  ‘But I watched.’ And I watched my father walk out of the house forever with his clumsy suitcase banging against his legs. He didn’t cry or scream. ‘Don’t tell your mother,’ he said. He always said that. And I didn’t. But I should have told somebody. Not her. Oh no. Never her. She grabbed Connor by the straps of his dungarees and threw him out like garbage to be beaten, burnt and chucked down the stairwell. Like, yes, garbage.

  ‘Stop,’ Pierre shouted, grabbing my hands again. ‘What’re you doing? How’s hitting yourself in the face gonna undo any shitty thing?’ He wiped the blood off my nose with the collar of my anorak.

  He didn’t understand at all, but he seemed to sense that I needed something from him. So he said, ‘Okay, yeah, I never loved Cherry. She was kinda boring. But she, yeah, put out, and she had a house. It seemed like a good idea at the time – somewhere for Li’l Missy and Electra to stay. A pull-in for the Ambo. It wasn’t meant to be forever. Or important. Or that “love” shit. And I thought… I can get outa this whenever I want. But I couldn’t. Everything turned into a fuckin’ negotiation, a battle.

  ‘She was, oh I dunno, like a gang boss exacting tribute. But in little steps. Like I asked for a cuppa coffee, I got a cuppa coffee. But I had to do the dishes. And after I did the dishes just once, I had to do them every fuckin’ night. It was my job from then on. So I stopped asking for coffee. But the dishes were still my job. Like the freakin’ mortgage.