by Liza Cody
‘And then when I went out, y’know, to a club with Li’l Missy, she’d begin to say stuff like, “This house is too crowded”, or “That dog’s making a mess in my garden,” just tellin’ me, y’know, she could pull the plug on us any time she chose. So I cut down on goin’ out. But that didn’t stop the threats. But they weren’t real threats. They were, like, reminders that we were dependent on her.
‘And y’know what you said about you, Li’l Missy and Electra being used as hostages? Well, that’s a gang boss technique too – “Do this or I’ll put your little sister on the streets.” You could stay in the Ambo but I had to make you take the meds she wanted you to take. You could stay an extra coupla nights, but I had to take her to New York. I was always paying out for something. I dunno how it started, and I never saw it comin’.
‘And then, when she didn’t get her way, she chucked us all out a high window. And I never saw that comin’ neither. There never seemed to be anything I could righteously call her on. Nothin’ she couldn’t deny. Never. Until you came along and called her cold and – what’s your word – coercive? I didn’t see it. I always saw her as small and weak. Was I ever wrong about that! Maybe, yeah, it was cos of the sex. But, know it, even that was, y’know, boring.
‘Yeah,’ he said ruefully. ‘And now there’s Alicia, all big and warm, and liking me for myself. And, know it, she’s got a lovely big mouth, not just a thin slash in her face to smear the lipstick on. And a generous ass. Big mouth, big ass – my kinda woman.’
‘Now who’s being sexist?’ I said. But I was feeling better.
‘So how come you could see the coldness and coercion, but I couldn’t?’
‘I wasn’t humping her,’ I said, making him wince. ‘And she… she… ’ She what? And then it came in a lump, like an anvil dropped on my head: ‘I recognised her. She’s my mother. I mean, she reminded me of my mother.’
‘Really?’ he said absently. ‘Tough shit.’
You’ll never know how tough shit was in our house, Mr Lovable Pierre. But Electra had been listening. She pressed her shoulder against my leg, looked up at me and gave that affectionate sound somewhere between a grunt and a whimper.
‘She’s shivering,’ said knows-nothing-sees-nothing Pierre. ‘Let’s go back.’
33
Maybe It’s People Power
By the time we got back to the café, Kaylee had gone.
‘Where were you?’ Li’l Missy was fed up. She eyed my snotty, blood-stained sleeve and tear-stained cheeks. ‘Another “episode”?’ she asked waspishly. ‘No, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know. Kaylee wrote out a slightly less deranged version of what you remember. I forged your signature while our brilliant but prudish legal advisor was having a wee. She’s obsessive-compulsive about the rules. Boring!’
‘I can’t go to a police interview,’ I said.
‘Nor can I,’ she said. ‘I’m going to Bristol whether you’re coming or not. My darling endocrinologist says there’s a really active trans scene there and he’s got a friend who’ll help me out. And I’ve got a mate who’s a drag party organiser. Remember Hot Heather Hott, Pierre? She says there’s loads of work for compères and strippers for hen and stag parties. I could be the belle of the ball in Bristol. You could be too, Pierre.’
I said, ‘He thinks he’s bombproof.’
Li’l Missy said, ‘I think he’s pussy-pulled.’
Pierre said, ‘I think you should both butt out.’
Duke Dissention said, ‘I think you should all go your own ways and let my boys in blue pick you off one at a time.’
Electra said nothing at all. She laid her sweet head on my shoe and went to sleep. I needed a drink. If I left now I could get one and be back at the hostel by suppertime. I was pretty safe there. Not even Pierre, Li’l Missy or Kaylee knew where I was, so they couldn’t sick the cops on me. Kaylee had my statement. What more could anyone ask?
‘Are you brain damaged?’ my mother asked in the sweet, reasonable tone she used to disguise her most hurtful insults.
‘Just an imbecile,’ Satan purred. ‘She’s forgotten she phoned the pervert’s mobile from the hostel landline and the number will be lodged in his phone.’
‘She was always slow,’ my mother agreed. ‘She doesn’t understand modern life at all.’
‘I can get to her any time I want. And so can you, Mother.’
‘And so can the police.’ My mother laughed. ‘The pervert will give her up the moment he’s put under pressure. Safe? With friends like that? She has absolutely no judgement whatsoever.’
‘How would we get to Bristol?’ I asked Li’l Missy. ‘Can you fix the Ambo?’ I asked Pierre.
‘Dunno,’ they both said.
‘I got it towed to the shop,’ Pierre said. ‘It looks pretty much fucked to me. But I’ll see. You’ll need something. Li’l Missy got homies to crash with; you ain’t.’
‘You got friends there too,’ Li’l Missy said, ‘and a job.’
Pierre sighed. ‘You don’t geddit, Missy. You never get it. I’m not a drag queen. Sure I perform on the circuit, but seriously, pal, I’m a motor mechanic.’
‘You’re way more than that,’ Li’l Missy protested. ‘Okay, Cherry scared you off, and now you’re gun-shy about the whole identity bit cos you got a new shag. But don’t diminish yourself.’
‘See, I got a chance,’ he said, ‘to move on, train for something else. First aid. Paramedic. Ambulances. Alicia thinks I got a talent for it.’
‘You’ve got a chance to be pulled in by the cops,’ Li’l Missy said. And I could see he cared and was scared for Pierre. ‘You’ve got a chance to be all snarled up with the death of an abused kiddy.’
‘You’ve got a chance to be deported.’ I wanted to get my tuppence-worth in too. ‘Illegal immigrant, Pierre, working without a work permit. You know how paranoid everyone is about foreigners. Our Evil Lord’s really scorching the earth with that one.’
‘Okay, okay.’ He hunched up shoulders as if, suddenly, they weighed a ton. ‘I’ll talk to Kaylee and I’ll talk to Alicia. Now let it go.’
‘He thinks he’s the strong one,’ Satan tittered.
‘You think you’re the strong one,’ I said. ‘But you could be the most vulnerable of all.’
‘Hey!’ Li’l Missy protested. ‘He is the strong one.’
‘That’s what Master Misconception wants you to think. He’s trying to pick us all off, one by one.’
‘Here’s what we do,’ said the strong one. ‘We take off back to Billy’s. Yeah, you too, Lady B.’
‘Fuck off,’ I said.
‘Language!’ admonished my mother. ‘Wash your mouth out with soap. What a dirty girl you are! Dirty, dirty, dirty liar!’
I scrambled to my feet. I had to get out – run as far from my mother as I could. What would she say next? What would she remind me of? Accuse me of?
‘Wait,’ Pierre said, grabbing my wrist. ‘We’ll go to a bar first. A small glass of red, yeah? Maybe two, if you’re good.’
‘You’re always doing something I’m going to regret,’ Li’l Missy said. ‘It’s called enabling.’
‘It’s called practical,’ Pierre retorted. ‘Look at her.’
‘Do I have to?’ Li’l Missy shuddered. Pierre took my arm, Li’l Missy took his and we drifted away towards salvation – otherwise known as the King William, only half a mile from Billy’s house. And Troll Territory. Lured by the promise of a glass or two. When will I ever learn?
‘I recognise the smell,’ Electra said, after Pierre had parked the car and we were walking towards Billy’s house in the dusk. ‘I associated it with food and comfort to begin with. But later, I remember, there was a near-death experience involving a lawnmower.’ She shivered delicately. I stooped to adjust her two coats. She was right – the closer we came to Cherry’s house, the lower the temperature dropped.
Leaving the car, we’d been met by a slicing, dicing wind fresh from the Arctic Circle.
I stopped. ‘Why am I doing this?’ I asked Electra.
‘United we stand,’ she said. ‘Divided we’re in serious kak.’
‘I told you,’ Pierre said. ‘I’ve been charging up my old cell phone for you. I forgot to bring it out. You gotta stay in contact with Li’l Missy.’
He’d never even mentioned it. I was about to say so when Electra put in, ‘After the offer of a glass of wine, you stopped listening.’ Which might have been true.
We turned into Polar Price’s road and stopped dead.
There were three police cars and one large van in front of Cherry’s house. Without a word we turned and retreated round the corner. Li’l Missy took his phone out of his tiny bag and thumbed a number. ‘Billy,’ he breathed to Pierre.
We waited. ‘Billy’s sweet on Li’l Missy,’ Pierre whispered. ‘Know what – that twisted bastard gives perverts and racists a bad name. I can’t stand the guy, and he can’t stand me. The only reason he’s letting me stay is… ’ and he jerked his thumb at Li’l Missy who was talking in excited girly tones into his phone. ‘You won’t believe how hard it is to find a decent place to rent in London these days.’ He must’ve caught my expression, because he added, ‘Sorry, I got succotash for brains.’
Li’l Missy blacked out his screen and said, ‘We got to get to Billy’s. He says they’re knocking down Cherry’s shed and digging up her garden. We’ve so-o got to see this.’
‘Digging up her… ?’ Pierre was astonished. ‘The cops? I thought that was just, like, slander. What the hell are they looking for?’
‘It’s what everyone’s been saying about her ex-husband’s kid.’
‘But that’s just rumour.’ Pierre rubbed his face. ‘The neighbours must be making it up outa spite. I dunno why the cops’d take it serious.’
The neighbours were shivering in a tight little group on the other side of the road. It was too cold for the kind of street party they’d enjoyed before. It was too cold for us as well. We walked the long way round to Billy’s house.
‘Was she even married?’ Pierre asked no one in particular. I could see he was disturbed by how little he knew about the woman into whose frosty fist he’d placed all our fates.
How little we know about those we fall for. I knew nothing about my cruel Lord’s cruel son when I gave him my heart, body and bank details. Nothing but that he was younger and lovelier than a woman like me could ever have deserved. And the extraordinary heart-stopping fact that he saw something special in me. Of course everything I thought I knew was brutally contradicted. There will always be a part of me which recognises that I got what my mother’s dirty, stupid, clumsy daughter had coming.
I touched Pierre’s arm sympathetically. But Pierre was securely lovable – up to a point. He said, ‘And even if she was married to the guy, he’s still alive, isn’t he? And the mother. Their boy couldn’t just go missing and be killed without anyone making a fuss.’
‘The guy was sectioned,’ I said. ‘He’s in a secure wing somewhere.’
‘What about the kid’s mom?’
‘Dunno,’ I said. ‘Billy didn’t say. But your Miss Permafrost stole her husband and her home. So maybe she went crazy too and topped herself. Or took to crime and ended up in chokey with no one but a cruel abusive stepmother, who shall be nameless, to look after her little boy.’
‘We ain’t talking about Connor here,’ Pierre reminded me gently.
Suddenly I remembered Connor’s mum, Kerrilla Cropper, in jail, unprotected from the Hard Corps of women who taunted and belittled her for her shape and illiteracy. Had someone told her about her little boy? The last time I saw her she was naked, blue with cold, crazy with rage and grief, being dragged away to solitary. I’d cheered her on even though she’d left me to clear up the mess she made by blocking all the bogs with her clothes.
Connor’s mother – probably deemed, by whoever thought they knew best, to be inadequate to look after him. Whereas it was they who were inadequate to make decisions on her behalf. They knew worst. Look what happened! Go on, just look, if you dare.
‘Look at what, wackadoodle?’ Li’l Missy asked.
‘Hush,’ said Electra.
‘We’re nearly there.’ Pierre picked up the pace. ‘Keep it together till we know what’s going down.’
Miraculously we did keep it together and managed to enter Billy’s house unseen.
We tiptoed through to the kitchen and straight out the back door, picking up three kitchen chairs as we went to spy over the garden fence.
The shed, Electra’s prison, had been taken down and was propped like a flat-pack against the fence. The police had begun to erect a tent over the concrete plinth while a man in white coveralls was breaking it up with a road drill. They seemed to have complete access to the garden both from the house and from the side gate. There was no sign of Cherry or her lawyer.
It was too cold to stay outside so we moved back into the kitchen – where we found Tantie heating up what looked like a pan full of boeuf bourguignon.
‘You’re still here,’ I said in surprise. She kissed me on both cheeks by way of reply. She seemed so pleased to see me that I gulped back a sob of gratitude. No one except Electra was ever pleased to see me.
‘Ticket ’ome, two weeks,’ she said. ‘I cook for ’orrible Billy. I sleep warm.’
I sniffed the rich stew. ‘You cook beautifully,’ I said.
‘Of course,’ she said, with a disdainful glance at the mountains of canned food on Billy’s shelves.
Pierre said, ‘I can’t believe the cops’re taking this serious. Cherry may be stone cold-hearted but she never actually killed no one.’
‘Maybe it’s people power,’ Li’l Missy said. ‘Maybe too many people kicked off too big a buzz. Maybe the media got involved. It’s all PR and numbers with the police these days.’
‘Where’s my supper?’ Billy yelled down the stairs. ‘I want my supper and I want Missy to bring it. I heard you come in.’
‘If my hands were big enough I’d like to strangle him. If I could even find his neck. I know it’s somewhere under his ears but… ’ Li’l Missy took the tray Tantie was holding out to her and waited while she filled a tall glass with lager. Reluctantly she took Billy’s supper upstairs.
I could smell red wine in the boeuf bourguignon. Maybe there was some left.
‘Maybe there’s some beef left too,’ said Electra, whose nose was a hundred times more sensitive than mine, and whose priorities were quite different. She padded purposefully towards the waste bin. Tantie anticipated her and liberated all the beef trimmings plus a couple of chunks of the gorgeous-smelling stew.
Would I be invited to supper? Having put up a fight against coming to Billy’s house in the first place, I now didn’t want to leave unfed, go back to Juliet House where I’d have to protect my plate from thieves and sleep in a coffin-sized pod smaller than my cell in chokey. Apart from Billy himself, everyone I loved was in Billy’s house.
‘Before you go,’ Pierre said, ‘I’m giving you my old phone. I’ve set it up for you. Li’l Missy and my numbers are on speed dial and I’ll show you how to use it. All you gotta do is keep it charged. We can’t have you swanning around free-range.’ He went away to the living room and came back with a little gadget and the charger.
‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘If it isn’t stolen by the end of the week, chances are I’ll sell it for booze.’
‘Fat chance,’ Li’l Missy said, coming back with an empty tray and looking at it with contempt. ‘Even a lobotomized thief wouldn’t rob a moby that old, and you couldn’t sell it in a third world slum. If you want to get rid of it you’ll have to drop it off a motorway bridge.’
‘Hey!’ Pierre protested. ‘It ain’t pretty, but it works.’ Ignoring Missy, he showed me how to call his n
umber on the dainty gizmo that seemed to be too small for my swollen, neglected thumbs. While he was doing that, I noticed that Tantie was setting places for five at the kitchen table. Surely one of those places could be mine. I tried to concentrate on what Pierre was saying but his voice seemed to be drowned out by the rumbling of my stomach. I was saved when he leaped up to open the front door to Alicia.
I heard her voice from the hall saying, ‘What’s going on next door?’ but I couldn’t hear his reply because it sounded as if he was kissing her and trying to talk at the same time.
She came into the kitchen sniffing the air and giving Tantie an enthusiastic thumbs up. ‘Hello,’ she said to me, accepting and unsurprised. The room vibrated with affection. Electra woke from her beef-induced doze and went over to be included.
Li’l Missy said. ‘They’ve finished putting the tent up – you can’t see anything except light. Oh hi, Ali. Has Pierre told you what’s going on? Billy says he wants you to go up and listen to his chest after supper. He’s been leaning out of an open window, spying on next door, and he thinks he’s caught pneumonia.’ I could see that Alicia too was paying rent for Pierre. She sighed, grinned, and said, ‘Okay,’ in a resigned, humorous tone.
Tantie put the pan on the table with a ladle so we could all help ourselves. She’d made a big bowl of mashed potato too. Nobody questioned my presence.
‘Friends,’ Electra murmured softly, and yawned. ‘Relax. Don’t spoil it.’
So I sat and ate with my friends. A commonplace, banal sentence, but an almost unique event in my experience. Pierre and Alicia sat so close they seemed to be joined at ankle, knee, thigh, hip, elbow and shoulder. Sometimes Alicia ate left-handed so they could twine fingers under the table. I’d never had a love like that – love that wasn’t wrecked by my fear of losing it, love that wasn’t destroyed by pretence and manipulation. I swallowed fragrant gravy and sour jealousy in equal measure. I had prayed for years for a powerful, simple, equal love to rescue me from my mother’s blame-filled house. Instead my Demon Daddy Lord sent me a snake whose name was Perfidy – well, Graham, actually – and broke me into smithereens. I haven’t found all the pieces yet. They could be anywhere, even under your toenails.