Lady Bag (10 page)

All in all, it was a good day—if you don’t count Kev walloping me and breaking my bed. After a bottle of red I didn’t count anything, even that. I was just happy to go to sleep happy for once.

Chapter
15

Fire!

I
was dreaming about sitting in the back of a bus with Electra. A famous actor was driving and being very nice to us until he disappeared and left us tearing downhill on a helter-skelter. Electra started barking. ‘Let me out, make it stop.’ She trod on my face and chest.

I opened my eyes and found Electra standing on top of me barking her head off.

Smoke was seeping under the door and creeping across the floor like spilt milk.

I sat bolt upright on my mattress. I looked at the window. We were eight floors up. It was still dark.

I looked at the door. It was the only way out, but there was a fire on the other side of it. Electra and I would have to walk through fire.

I looked at the wine bottle on the floor next to the mattress. It was empty. I couldn’t even drink myself back to sleep and wake up dead.

Electra was shouting at me at the top of her voice. That’s the thing about dogs—they can’t see the advantage in being dead.

I went to the door. The knob wasn’t hot. I grabbed my stuff and Electra’s coat. I opened the door.

The blaze was in the middle of the living-room. It looked like a bonfire made of old sofa cushions. They were piled up and smelled like smouldering tires, snorting out black oily smoke. But the rest, the carpet and curtains, was going up like dry hay.

Too-Tall was running up and down wringing her skeletal hands and crying, ‘Help! Make it stop. I can’t get out.’

I ignored her and dragged Electra and all my stuff into the bathroom.

I turned on the taps. I soaked two t-shirts and Electra’s new coat and put them on her. She was rigid with fright and quaking. ‘Who are you?’ she whimpered, ‘and what’ve you done with my bag lady?’

‘I
am
your bloody bag lady, you idiot. This is
your
fault—you’re forcing me to save your life, which requires speed, decision and will-power.’

I soaked the towelling bathrobe in cold water and put it on. It was very heavy. I stuffed everything that I’d left soaking in soapy water into the wheelie case with the Louis Hooey bag. It was heavy too.

‘What about Smister?’ Electra was peeing with fear, but she still managed to remember Monkey-paws. ‘He’s still sleeping. He’ll die!’

‘That’ll teach him to steal the sleeping pills.’

‘You had me to wake you up. He’s got nobody. You can’t let him die.’

I noticed she wasn’t bullying me about TT. Should I try to save the cretin who started the fire?

I left all the taps running. I opened the bathroom door and rushed out.

Electra stayed where she was.

‘Come
on!
’ I screamed. ‘This is your stupid idea.’

‘I didn’t mean it to get so big,’ Too-Tall sobbed. ‘Usually the fire alarm goes off and then they ’vacuate the whole wing. It’s your fault—you don’t have a fire alarm.’

‘I’m not talking to you.’ I went back and grabbed Electra. ‘Come on,’ I pleaded. ‘Trust me.’

She came; proving once and for all that a bitch in fear of her life will believe anything—even that I am worthy of trust.

The fire, howling and cracking like scarlet ice, cut us off from the door. I rushed us into the big bedroom.

Too-Tall jittered in too and ran straight to the bed where she threw herself into Smister’s narcotic arms, crying, ‘Josepha, save me! She wants me to die.’

Electra barked and licked his face.

I unpacked sopping wet clothes and stuffed them into the cracks around the door. Then I opened the window.

We were eight floors up so the window only opened three inches. My breath was whimpering in my chest. My lungs refused to expel the thick black air. I stood next to three inches of fresh wet oxygen and retched.

TT was shaking Smister like a duster. He said, ‘Fuck off, I’m sleeping.’

‘Fire!’ she shrieked, ‘make it stop.’

‘Phone the firemen,’ he mumbled, ‘and save one for me.’

‘Yes,
phone
!’ she screamed. ‘Phone 999 and WAKE UP.’

He woke up and stared at TT, Electra and me from beneath reluctant eyelids. ‘Fire? Really? Proper fire—not burnt toast?’

‘Save me,’ TT sobbed. ‘Someone always saves me.’

Sinister looked at me as if I was the sensible one. ‘Haven’t you phoned… ?’

‘You stole my fucking phone,’ I snarled between puking and retching.

‘Real fire?’ He got out of bed, his silly silky gown swirling around him. It would flare and be gone like swan’s feathers in white heat.

A coiled worm of thick smoky phlegm exploded from my throat. I yelled, ‘Don’t go near that door!’

‘What?’

‘Just don’t open the door. Phone, phone!’

At last he seemed to hear me. He found the phone and punched in the numbers.

TT wheezed and wailed. She smelled of charred cushions.

Behind the blistering door the living room cracked, howled and exploded like fireworks. ‘Where the fuck are we?’ Smister said, smoke and sleepers sloshing in his brain.

For a panicking moment I thought I was running out of things I once knew. Then, ‘South Dock High Rise.’ I croaked. ‘Eighth floor.’

‘
Hurry
!’ TT screamed. The lights went out.

‘I
told
you,’ Smister shouted at the phone, ‘Three women and a dog not three men and a girl.
Hurry. Please
. The lights have blown.’ He hadn’t forgotten he was a girl, and he hadn’t forgotten Electra either. I grabbed for his hand and dragged him towards the three small inches of wet oxygen.

‘He says we should lie down. He says there’s less smoke on the floor.’

I didn’t want to leave my three inches of life, but the cold air followed us down and settled with us on the gritty carpet.

At last, I thought, I can go back to sleep. If someone saves Electra, Smister will look after her, and she can look after him. I’ve performed my last act of hope. I’m done.

Done, I thought, like a cake in the oven; like a piece of meat cooked through. A smoky black giggle escaped—because I would be done,
exactly
like meat cooked through. Would I smell of lamb, beef, pork or venison? Would there be anyone left to make the gravy?

Chapter
16

I Do A Deal With The Devil

T
here’s a deep sea diver staring at me through huge goggles.

I try to tell him to fuck off but he has his glass hand clamped over my torn up mouth.

Deep sea diver with a burning sun in the sky above his head. There’s something wrong.

I’m lifted bodily out of the burning sun into the cold wet ocean. This isn’t right.

I dash the glass hand away from my mouth and yell. ‘Electra, she can’t swim.’

‘Alright, I got the dog.’

A deep sea diver steps off the diving board into the life raft with Electra limp in his arms. She says, ‘You saved me, big boy. Hold me in your hard hairy arms.’ And a fireman says, ‘Steady on, girl, I’m a married man.’

I turn my head and see Smister nestled in the arms of a big sooty uniform. He’s wearing one of Natalie Munrow’s wet t-shirts over his night gown. His face is dirty, his blond hair’s tousled, but he still looks fetching.

Electra sprawls dead at my side. I wrench off my oxygen mask and push it over her snout. I lean on her and force her chest to move. On the other side of the boat someone’s doing the same thing with Too-Tall Tina.

‘Stop that.’ The fireman tries to take the mask back but I’m crying so hard and trying so hard I scarcely notice him.

Smister says, ‘Leave her alone. She wouldn’t want to live without that dog anyway.’

He’s clutching my Louis Thing bag in one hand and a fireman’s arm in the other. Now I know why Electra liked him so much. He may be a rotten little thief but he understands.

She asked me to save her and I failed. I’m alive and so are Smister and TT because
Electra
wanted to live. She saved us all and now she’s dead. If I could sacrifice any one of us to bring her back I would.

The fireman forces the mask out of my hand and covers my nose and mouth. It smells of sweet dog and sour soot.

Another fireman says, ‘We’ve gotta get down—I’m losing her.’

But I’d already lost her. In a spasm of grief and fear I turn to Smister—but he is snuggling in his fireman’s arms and looking at TT. It is TT who is being lost. Take
her
, I plead silently. Take her.

The boat jerks, sways and begins to drop.

Electra spasms. She sits up. She licks my face. I hug her till she squeaks. She licks the salt and charred lashes from my sore eyes. I’m weeping so much I can’t see her. I just hold on. Because I didn’t save her; she saved me. It’s always been that way round.

And I made a bargain with someone—probably Satan: Electra lives only because TT dies. I am killing TT. It is my decision. I am guilty. But my best friend is here and I can’t feel anything but glad.

The cold wet dawn smacks my face, and the warm wet dog in my arms rears up on her hind legs to look over the edge of the juddering bucket we’re riding.

A fireman tells me to sit down but I want to look too.

I stare down into a sea of light. We are going to land on the surface of the sun.

‘Effing Eleanor,’ the fireman says. ‘We’re all going to be reality telly stars.’

It’s true. The surface of the sun is really the glare of spotlights. Some belong to the fire crew, but most belong to film crews.

‘Where?’ Smister cries, standing up. ‘Does my hair look a mess? I can’t be seen like this.’ He rummages in my bag till he finds the little gold compact and a comb.

‘Sit the fuck down,’ roars my fireman. Smister and I obey, but Electra stands tall until our bucket comes to a halt. I’m so proud of her I would cry if my eyes weren’t too sore to wipe.

Chapter
17

Exposure

W
e were celebrities. People clapped and cheered as we climbed down from our giant cherry picker machine. Smister tossed his blond hair as if he was on a red carpet. The fireman who got the most praise was the one who carried Electra down to dry land, because it looked as if he had saved a helpless dog from a burning building. But
I
knew who had saved who.

Then I noticed a little group of South Dock High Rise residents—including the ogre in his white nighty and the little old bird who survived World War Two. They were muttering and booing at the back of the excited crowd. As I watched, I saw a cop go over to talk to them.

Medics aren’t nearly as judgemental as cops. They gave us huge lungsful of oxygen, irrigated our eyes and wiped our faces before letting the cops talk to us.

I thought it might be time to creep away into the grey wet dawn. But Smister had other ideas. He never let go of his fireman’s hand even when the medics were working on him. ‘Craig,’ he sighed, still husky from the smoke. ‘Don’t leave me. I’m frightened. I owe you… everything.’

‘Don’t you worry,’ Craig said tenderly. ‘These people will look after you.’

Smister was turned on by the men who made him feel safe. I wondered how often Craig beat up on his wife.

I should have crept away without him, but the hand that wasn’t occupied with Craig still gripped my bag, and, with half of London’s media watching, it didn’t seem the right time for a dingdong catfight.

A lady with a scarlet raincoat and a black umbrella loomed over me and said, ‘We’d like to interview the dog and the hero who saved her on GMGB TV. We can transport them in a car straight over there.’

Scarlet and black, I thought, looking at her coat and brolly—the Devil’s colours. What if Gram Attwood saw us on TV? Maybe he didn’t have to; maybe he knew where I was all along and sent Too-Tall Tina to light the fire that would burn us for eternity.

Smister piped up. ‘Can’t you see my mum’s sick and confused? I’ll bring Electra.’

‘That’s her name? Electra?’

A medic said, ‘Do you mind? Nobody’s going on telly without they’ve been checked out at Casualty first.’

A cop said, ‘And nobody’s going on telly without they talk to the police first and answer a few questions.’ He’d crept up on us without our noticing.

I wrapped both arms around Electra and croaked, ‘Nobody’s taking my dog anywhere.’

‘You need treatment,’ the medic said. ‘Your lungs sound terrible and if that ain’t enough, it looks as if you’ve been in some sort of accident.’

‘I’ll need all your names,’ the cop said, and the lady in the Devil’s colours took out her notebook too.

Before I could stop him, Smister said, ‘I’m Josepha Munrow and this is my mum.’

‘And the tall lady over there?’

Smister and I turned our heads and watched Too-Tall being loaded onto the second ambulance. They hadn’t covered her face, but I’d made my bargain with Satan so I wasn’t allowed to hope.

‘Tina,’ I said.

‘Tina what?’

I shook my head.

‘She was suffering from facial injuries like you two. Care to comment?’

Smister bowed his head and held Craig’s hand to his cheek. Craig looked as if the penny was just dropping—maybe he could feel Smister’s stubble. Maybe he was about to be associated with something a little too twisted. He withdrew his hand and stood up.

‘Craig?’ Smister’s voice was quavering with sorrow and understanding.

‘Gotta get back to work,’ Craig said. ‘Be lucky now.’ He strode manfully away.

I reached over and touched Smister’s sooty young hand. He sighed and said, ‘Maybe if I’d had a shower, or if I’d been wearing my black teddy set.’

I patted his monkey paw sympathetically, and because he was in love and not paying attention I grabbed my bag back.

The cop rapped his pen against his notebook. ‘I’m waiting. What’ve you got to say about the facial injuries, and I need to know… ’

‘You’ll have to wait a bit longer, mate,’ the medic said. ‘I’m taking these two to Casualty.’

‘Listen to me.’ The cop bent down and waved a cold blunt finger in the medic’s face. ‘We got a fire—probably started deliberately; we got a woman at death’s door; we got these two here who know something but ain’t telling me doodly-doo. And now, in case my shift ain’t been perfect enough already, we got you—obstructing the course of justice. Care to comment?’

‘They need urgent treatment.’ The medic was young. He looked to his partner for support, but she suddenly got very busy bagging up dirty swabs.

‘If I miss my breakfast,’ the cop said, sensing his own dominance, ‘the breakfast I’ve been wanting since an hour ago when I got this poxy shout—they won’t be the only ones needing urgent treatment.’ His cold blunt finger smelled of nicotine and his uniform smelled of boiled eggs. He scared me the way cops always do.

‘Five minutes,’ the medic said, sulking. ‘But I’m putting in a complaint. In writing.’

‘You do that, Sunshine.’ The cop turned his back on the medics and focussed his pencil-point eyes on Smister and me. ‘Names?’ he said.

‘I don’t feel well,’ I said. I could hear my voice wheezing and wheedling like it did on the street. I was silently begging Smister to shut up.

He said, ‘My mum’s been in a car wreck and doesn’t remember too much.’

‘Names?’ the cop repeated. ‘The quicker you tell me, the quicker you can go to the hospital.’

‘I told you—I’m Josepha Munrow and this is my mum, Mrs Munrow. We didn’t really know Tina except we saw her in Casualty when Mum was in for her head. Tina said she was scared her boyfriend was going to kill her so we got sorry for her and went back to her place for the night.’

‘Which Casualty?’

‘UCH.’ University College Hospital is north of the river and outside the cop’s patch.

‘So out of the kindness of your bleedin’ hearts you go spend the night with an anonymous stranger cos she’s in danger of her life? Am I hearing you right?’

‘We locked him out. We didn’t think he’d, y’know, do anything in front of witnesses. But we were wrong. And now look at us—beat up and lost everything.’

‘What’s the boyfriend’s name?’

‘I don’t think Tina ever told us.’ It was Smister’s turn to silently plead with me to shut up.

‘Kev,’ I said, coughing up black slugs of painful phlegm. ‘Kev, short for Kevin. I don’t know his last name, but he wore a security jacket and I think he worked for the management.’

‘And if you locked him out, how come he got close enough to beat you up?’

‘We were asleep. Tina let him in. She was scared to death of him but she still loved him and he could wrap her round his little finger. Even after he nearly slaughtered, er, Josepha and me.’

‘You think he started the fire?’ He was a smart cop—he was going to do all my work for me. And he was nearly right: in an odd way Kev
was
responsible for the fire.

I said, ‘Ask him yourself.’ I pointed to the edge of the crowd where a guy in a high visibility jacket was standing, drinking tea from the back of a van with some of the South Dock residents.

‘That’s not him,’ Smister said. And then he caught on: ‘Oh silly me—course it’s him.’

The cop said, ‘Don’t go anywhere. We ain’t finished yet.’ We watched him hurry away muttering into his walkie-talkie.

I woke Electra up and dragged myself stiffly to my feet. My joints felt like they had broken crockery in them. I’d coughed so much I thought I’d broken
all
my ribs and perforated a lung or two. But I had to go or the cop would come back and bust me for sure. Then they’d abduct Electra. Because this was serious. It wasn’t just Vagrancy or Drunk and Disorderly or me being a Public Nuisance. This was Arson and Death. Huge subjects that made my poor brain tremble.

‘Hey,’ the medic said. ‘We haven’t finished. You’ve got to go to hospital.’

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Thanks ever so much for all your help, but I got to find food and water for my dog.’

‘About time,’ Electra said. ‘I’m parched. I was clinically dead, you know.’

‘Yeah, we got to go,’ Smister said. ‘She won’t be parted from her dog.’

The medic decided not to argue anymore. He was fed up but he gave us bottled water and told us that it wasn’t only Electra who needed plenty to drink. I looked at the bottles and shuddered. It wasn’t water I needed for my poor trembling brain. I just wanted to be somewhere quiet with Electra and a couple of bottles for company.

Of course, what I want and what I get are two different countries, thousands of miles apart.

Smister was trailing round after me like a lost puppy. Except it wasn’t me he was trailing, it was the crappy handbag. And there was the woman with the red coat and black umbrella who was whispering to him about appearance fees and a ‘substantial
per diem
.’

Worst of all, we had to pass by the group of residents which included the ogre in his nighty and the WW2 veteran who had been joined by righteous Nan and her hard hoodie granddaughter.

‘Got what you wanted then?’ the little old woman shrieked.

Nan, like wrath in a waterproof, folded her arms and barred our path. ‘How much they pay you, eh? What’s the going rate for making poor folk homeless?’

‘Smoke-damage,’ boomed the ogre. ‘I hope you’re happy.’

‘You done what the Nazis couldn’t—put me out on the street.’

‘Losers,’ said the hard hoodie, and spat at us.

This was why Electra, Smister and I accepted a lift in Carmel’s car. I felt like rats were gnawing at my guts because I was too sober now to avoid the truth. Kev wasn’t just letting social outcasts like Electra, me and TT stay in empty flats. No. He wanted us there. He used Smister to recruit us: the weird, the ugly, and the damaged, addicted rubbish from London’s lovely gutters, all to make life unbearable for poor but respectable council tenants. The Corruptor wanted to refurbish and reprice the property as luxury river view apartments.

I was garbage from the gutter. I was dirty and drunk and I let my dog pee and poop in the corridor and the lift. Who would want to live next door to me?

I sank down in the back seat of Carmel’s car so that no one outside could see me. Nan was right all along—I was an agent of the fat Corruptor.

That’s what happens when you let yourself want stuff. All I wanted was a roof over our heads cos it was raining so hard. But I became a player in some other bastard’s game. Nobody bothered to explain or give me any choice. Why? Because I was garbage from the gutter and I don’t rate any choice. I was there to be used like bog paper and flushed away when I’d served my purpose. When the developers moved in and wiped away ordinary folk’s homes, painted fancy desirable residences over the top and sold them to the sad aspirationals who couldn’t afford them without huge loans, I would be back in the sewers under London, because that was my place in the economic life of our beautiful capital city.

This is a cautionary tale for people who can’t control their anger, who have no opportunity to take their pills or have a little drink to calm themselves down. Listen and remember, or one day you might find yourself, a charred wreck, ranting to a camera about social injustice when all the interviewer wants to hear is a story about a heroic dog and the brave firemen.

It began well enough: the studio people had collected more than a hundred pounds to help us out. And the GMGB viewers, who’d seen our early morning rescue and watched Electra standing tall, looking over the edge of our cherry picker, had rung in and pledged a staggering amount to ‘help our little family start again.’ Bless them all.

My lovely daughter ‘Josepha’ somehow managed to grab a wash and makeup session in the ladies’ room. She looked gamine, tousled and oh so very helpless. Electra looked beautiful, noble and hungry. They didn’t interview us on the red sofa in the main studio because we were too dirty. We were in a small anteroom where the chairs were institutional and blue. Carmel sat next to us and said, ‘Those of you who earlier witnessed our exclusive footage of our guests’ dramatic rescue from a burning block of flats must’ve wondered about the fate of the family involved. Well, I’m happy to tell you that Mrs Munrow, Josepha Munrow and Electra are all safe and well here at the GMGB studio. Welcome, all of you.’

‘Don’t forget Tina,’ Smister said in his helpless and breathless guise. ‘Mum and me, we’re praying for her recovery.’

‘As are we all, I’m sure,’ responded Carmel, who didn’t know Tina from a sack of frogs. ‘Tina, our thoughts and prayers are with you.’

It was right then that I started to hate Carmel; not just for her immaculately tailored attitude or her golden feathers, but because she too was using us like bog paper to line her golden nest. Tina’s death and the homeless from the eighth floor were simply conveniences to get her and her career noticed. But mainly I hated her because we weren’t allowed to park our sooty arses on the sacred scarlet sofa.

‘And this,’ Carmel piped excitedly, ‘is Electra, the heroine of the hour.’

‘We owe our lives to Electra,’ my sweet young daughter said. ‘She raised the alarm and woke mum, she even tried to open the window in my room so we could breathe. She’s the best dog in the world.’