Lady Bag (9 page)

Chapter
14

We All Wear The Mark Of Kev

I
didn’t wake up till Kev knocked the bunk bed over and tipped me out onto the floor.

‘I might of known it was you!’ He blew great gusts of whisky breath in my face, but the hands that grabbed for me smelled of baby powder. I should’ve been thinking of ways to save my life, but instead I thought, He’s got a baby. I forced him to go home last night.

I rolled across the wreckage of the bed and scrambled under the fallen mattress from the top bunk.

He kicked it out of the way and hauled me to my feet by one arm.

My ribs shrieked. I shrieked. Electra started barking. She never barks.

Kev punched me in the guts.

I threw up on his boots.

‘You dirty drunken old slag,’ he bellowed.

I was bent double so I couldn’t see his face; but when his pukey boots advanced on me I howled and pretended to fall over backwards.

I was shrieking, he was bellowing and Electra was barking. The noise filled my head, but even so I heard someone wailing like a gibbon: ‘Stop it. Stop him.’

Then the voice of the ogre thundered, ‘Shut the fuck up, all of you. I’ve called the cops. Can you hear me? THE COPS ARE ON THEIR WAY!’

I stopped shrieking, Kev stopped bellowing and Electra’s bark turned into a whimper. Too-Tall went on wailing. I could see her through the bedroom door. She stood in the middle of the sitting room, making zoo noises. I scurried under the other mattress.

‘Where are my fucking keys?’ Kev yelled quietly.

There was a sudden silence. Then Too-Tall squeaked, ‘I’ve got your keys. Don’t hurt me. I let you in. Josepha said you’d find me somewhere to stay.’

The sound of jangling keys was quickly followed by the sound of fist on face. A body fell onto the worn out carpet. I made myself tiny and flat under the mattress.

Kev said, ‘Stay with the freaks then. You’ll fucking fit in great.’ The door slammed.

I waited a minute and then crept out of the blue room into the living room. Too-Tall was lying flat on her back. Her chin was scarlet and already swelling to the size of a potato.

‘Full house,’ I said, ‘now all three of us have the mark of Kev on us. And now he’s got the key so we won’t be safe here. Great.’

She sniffed a snail-trail of mucus into her long, sad nose and held up one skinny hand. In it was a key.

‘My mate Charlene tried to teach me shoplifting,’ she said, ‘but I was too tall. Sales people kept picking on me. I really wanted to join the army, you see, but they said I had three too many backbones and I was too weak for my height. I’m too tall. Did I say that already?’

‘You might have,’ I said, taking the key. I relocked and bolted the door. I put a sofa cushion under her head and went to the kitchen to make some tea. There was too much of her to move and I needed more painkillers.

I made tea for Electra and Smister too, although I thought he must be dead or gone. No one could’ve slept through that ruckus. But he was lying stretched out on his stomach, one shoe on and one shoe off, still dressed like a glitter ball. I put the tea on the nightstand and turned him over. You’re safer from choking on your own vomit if you’re lying on your front, but I wanted to check if he was still breathing. He groaned and sat up. I put the mug of tea in his hand. ‘Momster,’ he croaked, ‘what time is it?’

‘Six-fifteen,’ I said, because the clock on the cooker still said so. All this looking after other people was doing my head in. I’m responsible for me and Electra. I’m not anyone’s mother, auntie or nan. I don’t do the group thing. Sometimes you see bunches of us homeless dossing down together in benders or cardboard cities. For safety, they say. But if you’re a woman, and you haven’t got a tough boyfriend, sleeping in the middle of a bunch of rat-arsed blokes isn’t what I’d call safe. Even for me. They don’t call them blind drunk for nothing.

I gave Too-Tall her tea. She was fingering her chin and teeth, waiting to see if anything would fall off.

‘It’s your own fault,’ I said. ‘You shouldn’t have let him in. I told you.’

‘And I told you… ’ She squinted up at me. ‘It
was
you, wasn’t it? I don’t like bag ladies.’

The only one who thanked me for her tea was Electra. Dogs are the only people who actually benefit from human kindness and tell you about it. Electra’s tail began its slow arc from left to right and back again.

I stroked her while she lapped from her bowl, and I couldn’t help noticing that meaty dog food and sleeping indoors for a couple of nights had made a difference to her. Her coat felt smoother and my fingers didn’t bump along her knobbly spine the way they had back in Harrison Mews.

‘You’re putting on weight,’ I said. I was pleased.

She looked at me reproachfully. ‘I don’t run for my living anymore,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to starve me.’

‘I
never
starved you.’

‘No, but you sometimes forget me.’

‘Who’re you talking to?’ Smister walked in. He’d showered and was wearing a silky pink robe and ostrich feather mules. ‘What’s wrong with Too-Tall? And why’s your bed in bits all over the floor?’

I said, ‘Kev hit TT and he bust my bed
and
probably some more of my precious ribs. But TT thieved the front door key off him so we’ll be safe for a while.’

He sat down on the other kitchen stool and looked crushed. Electra sympathetically licked his shell-pink toenail.

‘You mean he’s gone? Did he leave a message for me?’

‘Are you insane?’ I said. ‘He’s got a wife and a baby.’

‘I may be insane but I’m not stupid. I know he’s straight. That’s how I’m sure I’m a real girl—I only love straight men.’

There was no answer I could think of. Electra and I stared at him.

Smister said, ‘Have you got another white bomber to spare?’

I thought my injuries should take precedence over his need for wall-bangers so I said, ‘Don’t you think you’re taking too many? You could’ve slept through Kev beating me and TT to death. You could’ve slept through him choking the life out of you.’

‘Am I supposed to take sobriety lessons from a sozzled old cow who talks to herself, looks like something out of a locked ward and wears a rotting rag round her noggin? You whiff something awful. If you want me to take you serious, have a shower.’

‘You just want to get your thieving monkey paws on my stuff.’

‘I just want to be able to walk into a room with you in it without having to drench a tissue with
Chloe
and stuff it up my hooter. It’s not asking a lot.’

‘Just pain,’ I said. ‘Soap and water hurt the stitches. I might slip and fall. I can’t get the scarves off. I’m scared of mirrors.’

‘Get over yourself,’ said sinister Mister Sister, the one who’d never managed to keep her fingers out of my stuff since we first met.

‘You even pinched my dog,’ I said, giving him a hard suspicious stare.

‘I never. I found her, lost, on Brompton Road.’

‘That’s true,’ Electra said.

‘Whose side are
you
on?’

‘The side of truth and beauty.’

‘Truth and beauty, my baggy bottom!’

‘What’re you bleating about?’ Smister said. ‘Truth and beauty? You’re a hag and you never tell the truth.’

Electra laid her head on my knee and gave me a look which said, ‘Disengage—you can’t win.’ Her advice is so practical and she looks out for me with such care that I often feel like crying.

Smister said, ‘Hey, come on—all you need is a shower. I’ll sort your hair out for you. Just run the hot water over your head till the rags melt off and use a little of my shampoo. You don’t have to rub hard and you don’t have to look in the mirror.’

I carted all my luggage into the bathroom, where Electra could keep an eye on it. I kept peeking round the shower curtain to make sure no one opened the door. If you’ve tried to shower in as many crap hostels as I have you learn to watch the door like a hawk. You don’t have any advantages when you’re wet and naked. Well,
you
might, but
I
don’t.

Electra went to sleep, and in the end I relaxed enough to let hot water work hot magic. The silk scarves peeled off without taking too much scalp with them, and I used Smister’s shampoo and conditioner because they promised me ‘body and shine’. If there was one thing I needed after my violent encounter with Buzz-cut Kev it was body and shine.

There was a chunk of my head that was prickly with stubble and stitches and mushy with bruises, but I didn’t look into the misty mirror. Not once. Satan created too many ways to make a woman miserable without me helping him by looking in mirrors.

I wore Natalie’s towelling robe which still felt clean and luxurious in spite of the dog hair.

Before I left the bathroom I ran half a bathful of water, added a good dollop of the soap powder I found under the basin, and dumped everything I’d been wearing into the bubbles. If you leave it soaking long enough all you have to do is get in and tread it like grapes. It has the added bonus that you can remove the black stuff from under your toenails—no small achievement for those of us who sleep rough.

Too-Tall was sitting in a saggy armchair looking frail and superior. Without any provocation she said, ‘Seventy-eight percent of rough sleepers are certifiable. It’s true. My social worker said.’

‘And what’s
your
excuse?’ I asked nastily.

‘I have a physical disability. I’m not a bag lady. I’m in sheltered accommodation.’

‘And I’m what they call a sofa surfer,’ Smister said. ‘I’m homeless but I always have a roof over my head. I’m saving up, see.’

‘Oh right. How much did you save last night?’ I couldn’t seem to help myself. I needed a drink.

‘She saved
me
,’ Too-Tall said, turning her weepy wet eyes towards him. ‘They were picking on me outside Casualty on Goodge Street.’

‘Not Goodge Street,’ Smister said wearily.

‘They were trying to take my prescription off of me. But I need those pills. They stop me getting over-excited.’

‘And who’s got them now?’

‘Well Josepha has.’ Too-Tall gazed adoringly at Smister. Her expression made me want to retch. I opened my mouth to put her straight.

‘Momster,’ Smister said, sounding a warning note, ‘do you want me to do your hair or not?’

‘A makeover!’ Too-Tall clapped her bony hands and stared at us expectantly. She adored Smister. Electra adored Smister. I was missing something.

Or was I? Jody, Josepha, Sister, Smister—some people have too many identities and it never bodes well. Whatever you called him, he was up to something. He was using me, Electra and Too-Tall, and if I hadn’t needed a drink and a haircut I might have confronted him about it. As for names, I have one or two myself. I don’t use the name I was born with—the one they arrested and convicted even though the cops got it wrongish. Mostly I’m known by a description which amounts to ‘that barmy old bat with the dog.’ I quite like it. It relieves me of the responsibility of being anyone else.

Smister couldn’t make me over. All he could do was to cut and layer my hair so it curled and softened the outlines of my smashed face. He did something clever with a clean scarf, so I looked less like a badly sewn quilt. All I wanted was to seem a little more normal and that was what Smister did for me.

Of course he wanted something in return. ‘Breakfast?’ he suggested hopefully. ‘I usually charge fifty quid for one of my cuts, but from you, Momster, I’ll just take a full English breakfast.’

Actually it was well past tea time when we shambled out into the rain. Fortunately South London is the kingdom of the all-day-breakfast and we found a Greek Cypriot caff half a mile away. Smister put away sausages, bacon, eggs, tomatoes, beans and fried bread with great splats of ketchup and brown sauce. He looked like a doll but he ate like a trucker. Too-Tall had spaghetti hoops on toast with chips. I made do with sausages for Electra and scrambled eggs for my sorry teeth. We drank tea the colour of conkers.

We were a weird bunch. We all bore the mark of Kev, but apart from that we had nothing in common. Smister would have nothing to do with me if he didn’t want to steal my dog, my pills and my money. TT thought she was better than me and never tired of pointing it out to Smister. She wanted to whisper with him behind my back as if they were twelve-year-old schoolgirls. I had no idea what Smister wanted with TT unless it was her medication and her benefit money.

Scrambled eggs and tea woke me out of my cosmic daze long enough to ask myself why Kev, employed as security for South Dock High Rise, allowed us to squat in one of the flats he was supposed to be guarding.

Kev fancied Smister in a sick, punitive way. But he wouldn’t allow him to import riff-raff like TT and me unless there was a profit in it for him. But why should I care about what someone wanted with me when I was living for free in a horribly costly city?

I was sleeping on a dry mattress and Natalie was paying for the scrambled eggs. Surely I’d be stupid to question gifts like those. I perked up and started to enjoy myself until I realised that it meant I was beginning to sober up and my ribs were screeching again. I should be drinking wine, not tea. I got up to put the matter right.

‘Oy!’ said Smister. ‘Where you off to?’

‘What’s it to you?’

‘Oh let her go,’ TT said eagerly.

He ignored her. ‘I thought you said we were going to find a cash point.’

‘Electra needs dog food.’

‘And you need booze.’

‘We don’t need
her
,’ TT said.

‘I’ve got to find a pet shop for Electra’s coat.’

‘We could all go.’

‘Or we could light a fire and sing songs, just you and me,’ TT said.

‘There’s no poxy fireplace,’ Smister pointed out, and in the end we all went to find a pet shop as I knew we would. We also stopped at a cash point. I don’t know why I bothered resisting Smister. He always got his way. It’s what young, pretty people do. But Electra wore a proper coat home in the never-ending rain. It was green with blue straps, waterproof and lined. She looked lovely in it.