Scabby Queen

by Kirstin Innes

  ‘Fucking hell.’ He wanted to throw Gemma’s tablet across the room. ‘That’s even worse. That’s – what are they saying there? That I didn’t have no political sensibility until I met a nice older white lady, who showed me how to do it? Impoverished background? Strict Muslim upbringing? My mum’s a fucking chemist! And what’s this ‘considerate of mainstream opinion’ shit? They calling me a fucking, whatsit, Uncle Tom, innit? They basically saying I’m a Paki Uncle Tom?’

  Gemma’s face was crestfallen.

  ‘I thought you’d be pleased. It’s a serious newspaper, taking your politics seriously. “The voice of a disenfranchised generation”, they said. I mean, baby, that’s gold. And, well, you kind of gave him that one.’

  ‘I did what?’

  She flinched. She actually flinched in the bed. I need to get out of here, he thought.

  ‘You said it yourself. Clio helped you find your voice.’

  ‘Fuck it, man. I didn’t mean like that.’

  ‘Read it again, babe. They’re taking her more seriously because of you. Not the other way around. And all these people are going to start listening to her music because of you. We’ve done a beautiful thing for her.’

  We, we, we.

  ‘I need to get some space, Gem. This is all too much now. Don’t – just give me some time, aight?’

  Half an hour later he was back at Calvin’s, the sofa ready to crash on.

  ♠

  Homerton, 2011

  Usual shit autumn weather. Clio had gone up north for her mum’s birthday, had texted to say she was staying an extra couple of days, which was weird because usually she couldn’t get out of Scotland fast enough. He and Gemma had fallen out of a club and into her bed, which had happened quite a bit over the past year, but the lack of Clio and the rain battering the windows meant he had no incentive to leave. They’d spent a whole weekend entangled, only getting up to pee or answer the door to the pizza-delivery guy, her flatmates giggling or tutting outside because they knew who he was, and he’d left the flat with her on Monday morning, kissed her before she descended the steps to the Tube like every other couple on the street, powered himself towards Homerton on the strength of a promise to tell Clio everything and make a fresh start, by sweet, glossy visions of the future life he could have – should have – with young, beautiful, positive Gemma at his side.

  He went to Clio’s bedsit rather than home, let himself in, not expecting her to be back yet. The air smelled bad, of blood or something, a warm harsh rush of it, and he could sense another presence somewhere in there.

  ‘Hello?’

  She didn’t answer, but he could tell she was there. Her battered little wheeled suitcase was open in the hall, the contents spilling out as though ransacked by a burglar. He found her in bed, open eyes peeking over the covers raised to her nose, staring fixedly at the ceiling.

  ‘Hey. Good break?”

  ‘Hi.’ She didn’t look at him. She couldn’t know, he thought. There was no way. She was obviously just in another rough patch. She’d actually been a lot better in the few weeks before she’d left, occasionally clinging to him with an intensity that freaked him out, as it was so unlike her, but mostly smiling, singing even, cooking breakfasts and deferring to him like some weird robot-housewife. Still, these things always came to an end, and how many times had he stayed now, held there by duty and obligation, resenting every cup of tea he had to bring her, because she’d suddenly fallen into a funk? Don’t lose the momentum, man, he’d thought. Much better to rip the plaster off, let her move on. This was no life for either of them anymore. It hadn’t been for years. And didn’t she deserve someone more like herself, someone who could make her properly happy? He was definitely failing at that.

  He walked round to her side of the bed, kneeled down beside her.

  ‘Clee, d’ya wanna sit up or something? Come through and have a cuppa?’

  ‘No, I’m fine here. Thanks.’

  ‘All right. All right. So, where did you go then? This weekend? I thought you hated it at your mum’s.’

  ‘Actually, I checked into a hotel. For a spa. Felt like treating myself.’

  ‘Ah right, good. Good. You need that. Everyone needs that, time to time, yeah? Nice. Nice thing to do. So, you feeling relaxed, yeah.’

  ‘I’ve never been happier.’ Monotone. She rolled over on her side, turned her naked back to him. The smell of blood was stronger as the covers moved; she must be on her period or something.

  Do it. Just do it.

  ‘Clee. Something I need to tell you, isn’t there.’

  ‘Is there?’

  ‘Yeah. Listen. This ain’t easy. I – I was thinking maybe we need to give it a rest. You and me. I’m not sure we’re really going anywhere. Don’t get me wrong, this has been amazing, and what you’ve given me – I mean, you taught me so much, didn’t you – without you I definitely wouldn’t be the man I am today, but I think – I mean, if we’re being honest, did you ever really see a long-term future? I mean, you and me’s very different people, ain’t we?’

  Clio was silent for a long time, then her voice shuddered out from the covers,

  ‘Who is she, then?’

  ‘Come on, Clio. That ain’t what we’re talking about here.’

  ‘Sounds like it’s exactly what we’re talking about to me.’

  ‘Listen, I’m not gonna lie to you, man. There’s someone else; I’m interested, I’d like to see where it goes, sure thing. But let’s not pretend we ain’t been having problems for years. We ain’t happy, Clio. We ain’t been making each other happy for a while. Long before this. I can’t help you when you like this. You deserve someone who can; someone more mature than I can be.’

  She sat up in the bed with some effort; naked, messy hair, eyes red and tiny. She followed his eye, pulled the cover over her tits.

  ‘So, what, then? What were you expecting me to do here, boyo? Say “I understand” and fade gratefully into the distance, thankful for that one last dose of youthful cock before I shuffled off into the grave? Let’s not get it twisted here – you were the one who chased me. You were the one who kept coming back, kept it going, told me that the age thing didn’t matter. I mean, look at the years I’ve wasted on you. That could have been – oh, never mind.’

  She flopped back down in the bed as though physically exhausted.

  ‘Fuck off, Hamza. Fuck back off to where you came from, you silly little boy.’

  He got up and left and she screamed at his back.

  ‘I hope someone hurts you. I hope someone fucks you over like this. I hope you feel all of this coming back at you, harder and stronger, magnified. I hope I’m there to see it.’

  ‘Fucksake Clio. What, you putting a curse on me or something?’

  She pointed a bloodstained finger at him, made a weird half-laughing noise in her throat.

  ‘Ha! Yeah, why not. I curse you. I curse you to experience all this pain. Five times over. Now get the fuck away from me. Piss off to your child bride or whatever and try to have a happy life. Once you grow the fuck up.’

  Those last words yelled as he ran, actually ran, tripped over her suitcase in the hall and kept on running.

  SAMMI

  2009–11

  In the end, Clio’s newspaper contact – young, hungry, barely able to contain himself over the magnitude of the story that had fallen into his lap – had done all the sleuthing for them. They were helped by a whistleblower: another former police spy who had been embedded in the anti-fascist movement, who came forward after the first allegations broke. He’d been one of Mark’s – Michael’s – colleagues. Through this man’s transcript, she learned that the undercover cops referred to them all, all the people they were spying on, as ‘wearies’. An under-race, dreadlocked and earnest, unwashed and stupid; a different class of person. Maybe not a person at all. That will occur to Sam at nights, when she’s lying there by herself, while Dale’s big body sweats and farts beside her and there’s no one at all to get her o
ut of this. Maybe he didn’t see her as a person. A body, right enough. A sexy body, and a passport into all this. She provided him with legitimacy; a young black girlfriend with impeccable radical credentials. Her nineteen-year-old body gave him cover and pleasure, and the rest didn’t matter, because she wasn’t a person. Not like the people he knew.

  She flashes on to his face, again and again, the face of someone who did not exist. He had only ever been a performance, a sleight of hand and costume. She will imagine this man, this stranger, Michael Carrington, this Oxford-educated former public schoolboy, sneering at them all as he makes his monthly reports, sneering and despising the people he eats and sleeps and builds things with, the people he says he loves.

  ‘“My hope is that by coming forward I’ll be able to shine a spotlight on this gross abuse of police power,” Campbell said. “By being honest about what’s been done to me here, in the United Kingdom, not in a so-called police state – and, let’s be clear, what I experienced was nothing less than state-sanctioned rape—” Are you all right, love?’ Dale put the paper down, stopped reading.

  ‘I don’t want to hear any more just now, OK?’

  Sam turned up the volume on the telly. It amazed her that it all just seemed to happen, while she sat on the sofa with three days of baby sick on her tracky bottoms, seeing nobody but medical professionals. She’d been unable to produce any milk to feed Elliot. It felt like it had solidified in there, mastitis hitting her like flu. The community midwife put her cold hands on Sam’s concrete-hard breasts, trying to milk her like a cow, but nothing came.

  ‘Not to worry, Mummy. He’s taking the bottle like a lickle champ, isn’t he. Now. Shall we just pop your pants off and see how your perineum’s doing?’

  As she had promised, Clio took most of the press on herself, coming forward as the only witness willing to be named and using the shreds of her old faded fame to draw the headlines around her. The papers let her shine, allowed her to ascend to Madonna-like status; Clio required no contextualizing second name. She saw in newsprint Clio reincarnated as one of the policeman’s ‘many lovers’ in a ‘free love commune’; read a pseudonymed Fran (‘Cecilia’) describing how ‘Officer 1’ had pressured her into experimenting with her sexuality even though she’d protested she was a lesbian.

  It got so bad Sam couldn’t sleep in the same bed as Dale any more. Any tiny noise he made, she started, jumped, spent hours staring at him with her eyes watering onto the pillows, trying to see if his sleeping face gave anything away. She would wait till the baby woke and carry him downstairs for his bottle, lay him in the basket by the sofa and stare at the living-room ceiling. On a good night, she managed three hours’ sleep. The bad nights felt like they were killing her.

  One day she came home, and Dale and her brother were in the living room, a map of Surrey spread out on the coffee table.

  ‘What you doing?’ she asked. They didn’t reply for a bit, and then her brother muttered, you know what we’re doing, Sam.

  ‘We’re going to make that cunt pay, Sam. We’re going to sort this for you.’ Oh Dale, her man, always her man, shaking with the anger of it.

  ‘You won’t do that, love,’ she said. ‘How you going to do that? You’re not a hard man.’

  Sam herself gave testimony only three times. The first was to the lawyer her friend Kevin had found for them when she’d asked him, painting on a glib face – ‘I’ve got these mates who need legal advice. Potentially huge case, ramifications across the entire justice system, but they’ve no money.’ The second time was to Clio’s excited young journalist, who came round to her house when the baby was two weeks old and stayed for hours, through naps and changes, not taking any hints. He phoned her again and again throughout the following months, checking her story, clarifying words and turns of phrase until Dale told him not to bloody call again and hung up.

  The third time was in the small room where the hearing happened, Clio and Spider sitting outside sipping water in plastic cups, waiting for their turns, Avril walking Elliot round and round the corridors, bent over and moving at his toddler snail-pace till her back spasmed. Clio grabbed for her hand as she walked in. Sam did not return the grip.

  It wasn’t how she’d imagined telling her story. She’d hoped to take the stand, put her hand on the Bible and swear to tell the whole truth, clock a girl with Debbie’s high cheekbones, about ten years younger than her in the courtroom, lean and golden and worried. Sammi had wanted to look right at Chief Inspector Michael Carrington, make him see her, and then move her eyes slowly and carefully over the crowd, so that he knew she was telling it all straight to the golden girl, the acknowledged and admitted daughter.

  Instead, she sat at a table, with four other people in the room. The walls were very close; as though they’d been built around the table. Her lawyer, Alex, poured her water from a jug, a stack of glasses awaiting the next four people to file in. It felt like a job interview. The others were all in suits, in grey. One of them told her in official, formal language that the proceedings would be recorded. There were wrapped biscuits, on a plate.

  She’d known it would be like this – Alex had told her – but she’d still dressed carefully, as though for court. As though she was going to see him again. She’d put on lipstick, she’d contoured her cheek fat, pulled out an expensive scarf she’d got from work colleagues for her thirtieth and never worn. She’d positioned it with her granny’s brooch. She wanted to look like a professional woman. Someone who mattered. Someone who you couldn’t sneer at or deny.

  She had known he wouldn’t be there. But some bit of her thought he would want to come. Knowing it was happening. Knowing she would be testifying that day. Wouldn’t he at least want to reason with her, give her some – any – sort of explanation?

  No, it seemed, he didn’t. But he would hear this testimony, wouldn’t he? Mark or Michael, he would need to know every single thing that was being said. That sort of vanity, that wasn’t the kind of thing you could fake, shrug on and off for the sake of playing a character. So she spoke to the recorder, to them all, through them all to him, imagining that worried, radiant blonde daughter, sunlight from the window pooling in a halo round her head.

  ‘I remember it was the first night we had a party in the squat,’ she said. ‘I’d been up on the roof. It must have been about six in the morning. The party had died down – there was a lot of people sleeping in heaps, in the living room, in the bath. There was a party still raging in the free-shop space, but the power had run out so there was no more music. I could hear noises coming from the office, where we ran the magazine from, so I went along to investigate. There was Mark – sorry, there was Chief Inspector Carrington. He was naked, and he’d got this girl bent over the layout desk. He was fucking her in the arsehole – I’m sorry. He was – sodomizing – her? The look on his face, I’ve always remembered it. This expression of wild joy, like he couldn’t believe his life. Like something feral. He was utterly and totally happy. His hands were on the small of her back, pushing her down, and he was staring at his own coc— penis going in and out.’

  Mark’s daughter, she’d imagined, would shudder, cry out, hide her face in her hands at this point.

  ‘In and out. In and out. Fast. I remember thinking it must have hurt her. Anyway, eventually he saw me, and he reached out an arm to me. He called me his Nubian princess and asked me to come and join them. I took a couple of steps into the room, and then I recognized the girl. She was part of this group of schoolgirls who had been hanging around the place. She wasn’t an activist, or anything, she wasn’t in with us. Fucking this girl wasn’t going to get him any more sort of credibility or bolster his position in any way.

  ‘I went over, and he put his hand up my top and kissed me, bent me down beside this girl. I could see her face then – she looked totally out of it, drugs or something. Something. I was speaking to her, saying, here, babe, you OK? I mean, I was just nineteen then, when me and Mark – sorry, Inspector Carrington – were together,
but this girl must’ve been even younger than that. Sixteen, maybe? Younger? I was worried. Mark didn’t seem to care, he was busy pulling my skirt up. I said, Mark, you’ve got to stop, this girl needs her bed, man. And he was like, no, she’s fine, aren’t you? And she said yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Fuck off. So I thought, fair enough, if the girl’s consented. But I didn’t want anything to do with that scene after that, so I left them to it. He got straight back into her, sawing away. And I think about that now, knowing what I know, and I think, he must have been really dedicated to his role, Chief Inspector Carrington must have been, to go that deep under cover. I imagine it was a real hardship for him, having to have anal sex with drugged-up teenage girls at parties when he’d much rather have been home with his wife and children.’

  She had planned saying this for weeks, lying awake in the dark on the sofa while Elliot murmured in his sleep. The golden daughter would have been crying now, and she would have looked from her to Chief Inspector Michael Carrington, whose face would have turned a chalky grey. She would have looked him right in the eye. A ripple would have gone around the courtroom as she paused for effect.

  Instead, the questioning continued, soberly, none of the people in the room seeming to feel the impact of what she’d said. He’d hear it, though, wouldn’t he? He’d read the transcripts. He’d demand to. He’d hear his actions read back to him and he’d have to admit – even to himself. Surely.

  Forty minutes later she was back outside, the door shut behind her and the dank smell of the squat in her mouth. There was red hair rising all around her and a sharp blast of perfume as Clio pulled her in for a hug.

  ‘You brave girl. You brave, brave girl. How are you feeling? You’ve done so well. Honestly. You’ve done the right thing.’

  ‘Your mum had to take the little fella out, matey,’ said Spider, standing up and endeavouring to support the hug without touching either of them. ‘E was kicking off something chronic. Got some lungs on him, eh? Well, you’ll have heard that.’