by Stella Duffy
“And gentle?”
Stan’s dad wheezed his emphysemic laugh again.
“Nah, darling, that’s comedy, you see. Irony. He’s a right vicious bastard is Gentle Ben. My Stan likes nothing better than seeing the cops trying to move him on. Says it beats Giant Haystacks any day. I reckon they only send the baby cops out to do it—you know, get them used to the real city, away from their poncing bloody Hendon crap.”
Then he shuffled her out of the office with copies of the white top sheets, Siobhan’s childlike signature scrawled across them.
“I’ve got work to do now, love, business to run, official records to keep. And you’ve got yourself meetings, haven’t you? Best be off then, don’t want to keep Gentle Ben waiting!”
And he slammed the door behind her, nearly choking himself with a great wheeze of delight as he thought about Saz out in the cold and the wind.
Stan’s dad had been right. Trying to get information certainly had cost her. She’d spent thirty quid in pound coins and more precious fivers trying to find someone who could direct her to the red-headed Geordie. She gave up after two hours of walking the streets when her Hansel and Gretel money trail finally led her down to the Embankment and a Glaswegian boy who, hardly more than sixteen himself, carefully pocketed her five pound note and then started screaming at her, “We don’t want any bloody social workers around here, she’s not going home and you can’t force her to, so why don’t you piss off before I make you?”
Saz muttered something about not being a social worker, just being interested in finding the girl, wanting to talk to her and he then launched into an attack on students, doctors and do-gooders, culminating in a raging invective against what must have been his pet hate—”fucking TV researchers”. Reasoning that a fury like his wasn’t likely to dissipate in a hurry, and suddenly only too aware that she was in a deserted and very tight alley, Saz thanked him for his time and backed off as fast as she could. Which was not quite fast enough. Just as she was turning to exit the narrow street, the ranting youth held his breath long enough to take aim with a full can of Red Stripe which smashed into the back of her head. Saz decided against discussing the matter further with him and took off down the street, the unopened can bouncing off the back of her head and rolling down her left calf. All the years of early morning running helped to jolt her jellified legs into action despite the shock of being hit and she didn’t stop until she was back in the relative safety of Charing Cross Road. Shaken and more than a little pissed off that she’d allowed herself to get into a side street for a one-on-one with a kid who had no hope of being either sober or safe, she slipped into the Books Etc Aroma to placate her nerves and the cricket ball sized lump forming on the back of her head with a huge steaming mug of hot chocolate and four large chunks of gooey nougat. Half an hour and another hot chocolate later she was, if not willing, then at least ready to face the fray again.
This time she decided to tackle the big fear face on. If Gentle Ben was such a monster then at least he was a monster who was said to live in the open. She tried Soho Square first. The summer cram of bike riders and office workers who had been lounging all over the grass only a month ago had now gone for another gestation hibernation, the only residents were two gardeners raking leaves and a trio of old drunk men. The least drunk of the three accepted her fiver and sent her to St Anne’s Court where, outside the Mexican restaurant, she found what she assumed to be the dozing mass of Gentle Ben. He was sprawled across three concrete steps, lying on a couple of broken-down cardboard boxes, a pair of filthy shoes and an empty milk carton on its side by his vast left thigh, that morning’s Telegraph spread out across his knees. He opened his eyes as she came to a halt in front of him, looked her up and down and then, barely raising an eyebrow, he indicated the empty piece of step to the right of him and told her, in a faintly accented voice, “Sit down, my dear. You must be exhausted. It’s taken you quite some time to find me, has it not?”
Ben Koserov was a Hungarian-German painter who’d arrived in London in the sixties and liked it enough to stay, even though it now offered him little charm and less hospitality. He was six-foot four without his shoes, immensely wide, with a mane of grey hair and beard. He was also the campest man Saz had ever met. Koserov and Gordon, Stan’s dad, were old friends and sending Saz off in the wrong direction had been Gordon’s idea of a joke.
“I think he thought it might do you a bit of good, sweetie, see how the other half live and all that.”
“Yeah? Well, I must remember to buy Gordon a couple of cartons of Gauloises next time I’m passing duty free. For an education like I’ve had this morning, offering him a stronger carcinogen is the least I can do.”
Koserov agreed that perhaps Gordon had been a little unchivalrous and then intimated there might be a more pleasant place to sit, especially as he knew the restaurant proprietor would be along at any moment and he didn’t like to be any trouble. Koserov put on his mammoth boots, slowly lacing them with swollen fingers, bundled his newspaper and assorted effects into a neat pile and then left them behind the telephone box five yards away. When Saz asked if his things would be safe, he smiled down at her, “Sweetie, I appreciate your concern, but I am Gentle Ben. People know this is my autumn residence. And after all, I am the big hairy scary monster, am I not?”
He led her to a small greasy spoon off Broadwick Street where Saz bought them a late lunch. She had hot toast with more pure melting butter than she’d allowed herself in years and swallowed down the heart-stopping cholesterol with a mug of sweet tea in the hope of calming her still mounting fury at Stan’s dad. Koserov had toast, eggs, chips, beans, three sausages, crispy bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes and fried bread—all rinsed down with a cup of boiling water into which he whisked a teaspoon of salt, a few grains of sugar and a dash of Worcester sauce—”To help with the digestion, my darling.”
Koserov was very helpful. He hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol since 1973, had smoked two joints since then, though he claimed they had no effect on him—”I’m too big for little puffing things like that”—and seemed to have perfect recall of everything that had ever happened to him. In fact, that was Saz’s only problem. The man was a brilliant story teller and, in getting him to stick to the matter in hand, she felt like a parent denying a small child his favourite sweet and forcing him to eat badly cooked Brussels sprouts instead. Koserov didn’t just love to talk, he positively relished the act of placing one word after the other. Eventually he got back to the flowers.
“Yes. Twice I have been given the task of taking the money to Gordon. But other people? Who knows how many your flower sender has tried? Or other couriers. Sometimes the people take the money and keep the flowers for themselves and then your friend the singer does not know that her admirer has sent the flowers today. But I am honourable. A gentleman. And really, twenty pounds to pass on the flowers and the fifty pound fee to Gordon? It is a generous gesture, no?”
“I suppose so. Gordon’s fee seems a bit steep.”
Koserov shrugged, “Needs must. I remember once there was a boy I loved, I was young myself, you understand … we both were, we were children—seventeen, eighteen … I sent him roses. White roses. For purity. His father found them though. Burnt the roses. Burnt my card. I do not think the boy ever knew I had sent them. Or why his father beat him that night.”
Saz nodded sympathetically, trying at the same time to lure him back to the subject at hand, “That’s very sad, really. But, if you don’t mind, this flower sender, does he never check? I mean, how does he know if you actually take the flowers to Gordon?”
Koserov stared at her for a moment and then he burst out laughing. “You have been following many false leads today, no? He? Who is this he? We talking about the flowers for the singing lady in Chalk Farm, yes? They call her blonde one?”
Saz nodded and Koserov continued, “But, my darling, the flowers are not from a man. No no, they are from a girl. A woman. A beautiful woman. I like her—not like that, you un
derstand, not for the fucking—but yes, I do like her. She is very fierce, very strong. She is very angry.”
Saz noted his detailed physical description of the woman and then paid for their meal. She offered fifty quid to Koserov, who took ten, telling her that his wait this morning had been immensely enjoyable, as had his lunch, and he couldn’t possibly charge her so much. They parted back at St Anne’s Court where Koserov bowed to Saz and told her to stop by any time for tea—as long as she brought it herself. Saz then wandered slowly to the tube, walked home from the station and ran herself the longest, hottest bath she could. While she waited for the water to cool she examined the swollen lump on the back of her head, relieved to see that it had receded a little and that although it felt vast to her, it wasn’t something Molly would necessarily notice, at least not without running her fingers through her hair and Saz felt sure she could at least keep Molly’s hands off one part of her anatomy. As Saz lay in the bath and attempted to regain some feeling in her frozen fingertips and toes, she counted the cost of the day. The cash wasn’t hers anyway, being part of the expenses Siobhan would have to pay her later. She was freezing cold and did have a runny nose, but that would pass and she knew that the sinus trouble was due more to the coke of the night before than the mellow fruitfulness of the season. She had a dreadful headache, part dregs of a hangover and larger part can of Red Stripe on the back of the head. And she’d stupidly put herself in a dangerous position without backup and without support. That was the worst bit. Her own stupidity. On the other hand, she now had a clear description of the flower sender. Who obviously wasn’t Kevin. At least not directly. Finally, having informed Koserov she’d be out of the country for the next ten days, she’d extracted a promise from him that the next time he was approached by a tall, well-built woman with perfectly cut jet black hair and a bunch of yellow roses, he’d call Carrie on her mobile and endeavour to follow the woman for as long as he could. As subtly as possible. On balance, Saz felt that the day had come out with her just about on top. Though she had an uneasy feeling that she should maybe be a little more concerned about the alley situation and then, when she heard the key turn in the lock and Molly call her name, and noted that her heart didn’t quite make the leap at her voice that it was expected to make, she knew that she also needed to be concerned about the feelings-for-Siobhan situation. Those feelings, however, could wait for twenty-four hours and Los Angeles. For now she was content to hide under the lukewarm water, easing her aching muscles and ignoring her uncertain conscience.
TWENTY-THREE
With her LA flight leaving Heathrow at 3.30 that afternoon, Saz decided she might as well put the day to good use. She had been for her morning run as usual, though not for as long as before the tedious period of her recuperation. It had taken Molly hours of persuasion after the fire to convince Saz that she couldn’t run quite so hard and fast as she had before the burns. Her tightened skin and the scarring, especially on her upper legs, meant that she had to try various other forms of exercise to nudge her body back to the realm of peak condition she had come to expect. Days of swimming (and then plastering her legs and stomach with industrial strength moisturizer) were followed by new classes in yoga. Saz happily took to the swimming; after forty or fifty lengths she could emerge with some of the endorphin rush she had been used to getting from her morning run. The yoga was less successful. She stuck it out for ten weeks until the end of class lecture on “Breathing For The New Millennium” meant that she decided she’d rather suffer pulled burn scars than go through one more cat stretch ever again. Two weeks later, when her specialist gave her permission to return to running, she’d done so with unadulterated elation. After three months of working up to speed, Saz eventually returned to a slower but regular four miles in the early hours of every morning, her limbs gradually becoming her own as some scars faded to nothingness and others settled into being the new body that she was beginning to acknowledge as her own.
By eight-thirty Saz had finished her run, showered, special scar-moisturized, dressed, packed and was making a phone call to Carrie. Since their messy break up four years earlier Carrie had eventually become Saz’s friend, her tenant and, on occasion, a part-time, cash-hungry, freelance employee.
“I know it’s early to wake you …”
“Damn right it is, Saz. Better be good.”
“Come looking with me today?”
“Clothes, gifts or business?”
“Business. But it’s in town, so you can make it all that girl-shit too if you get a move on.”
“Only if you give me cash today. I’m broke.”
Saz, cradling the cordless phone between her ear and left shoulder, grabbed her alarm clock and threw it in her bag, “When aren’t you ever broke?”
“When I’ve just been visiting granny-bitch-queen-from-hell.”
“I really think you ought to view your visits to granny as a time to commune with the wisdom of the elderly, not make a fast buck.”
“You only think that because you don’t have any slobbering aged relatives of your own to put up with. Anyway, this is different broke. I’m taking Blair to Prague …”
“With no money?”
“Close. I’m taking Blair to Prague because the guy I’ve been life modelling for has this cousin with a travel agency …”
“Of course he does.”
Carrie ignored Saz’s sarcasm and continued, “And if I do six more free sittings for his class, that’s the rest of this term, he’ll get me a deal on three nights in Prague, central city hotel, flights, B&B, all for one hundred and fifty quid.”
“Each?”
“Both. It’s a bloody good deal. And I’ve already borrowed the fifty from Blair …”
“For her own surprise?”
“She thinks it’s for the rent.”
“Not such a bad idea.”
“I know you’re a very patient landlady, Saz. So if I come out with you today …”
“And I pay you a hundred quid.”
“Cash. Then we’ll all be happy, won’t we?”
Saz wasn’t altogether certain that Carrie’s services were quite worth one hundred; she’d been thinking more along the lines of fifty herself, but Carrie had been very helpful to her in the past and even though the rent was always late, it did come eventually—usually with a bunch of flowers or a good book. More often than not those flowers were stolen from the park down the road or the book was shoplifted, but they were gifts all the same.
Saz and Carrie headed down Charing Cross Road, chatting up street people as they went. Carrie was much better at it than Saz. For a start, she was just a far better liar. Depending on who they were talking to, she put on a variety of accents from London posh to Midwest American and told people they were looking for the Geordie girl for a selection of reasons from being a sister, cousin, aunt, to believing she might have bought a winning lottery ticket from their shop in Tottenham Court Road and finally, in desperation, claiming that they had a reward for the girl who had fought off a bunch of muggers when Carrie was getting out of a taxi in Russell Square the night before.
Words weren’t necessary, however, when Carrie and Saz entered the gardens by the Embankment. Sitting on a damp bench underneath a tree of soggy brown leaves was the boy who’d created the lump on the back of Saz’s head with his well-aimed lager can and lying along the bench, her head in his lap, was a small thin girl with cropped bright red hair, ripped jeans, extremely old trainers—very likely the object of their search. Saz was just whispering to Carrie about the pair when the young guy looked up. He had obviously not grown any more trusting in the past twenty-four hours and within seconds he was on his feet. Whatever he thought Saz and Carrie were after, he evidently guessed it involved both himself and his girlfriend as he tugged her up and tried to pull her along behind him. Despite his efforts, however, the cheap alcohol or drug combination that had probably got her through the night before meant that her reactions were nowhere near as fast as his and, after calling h
er name, shaking her several times and slapping her once, he gave up and she flopped back down on the bench. He took off away from Saz and Carrie down towards Waterloo Bridge. Carrie, who’d turned red when she saw him slap the girl, had started to follow him, fury rising in her fists but Saz held her back.
“Don’t, Carrie. He was just looking out for her.”
“By smacking her around the face?”
“Wake her up, get her away from scary old us.”
“Have you forgotten how you got that bump on your head?”
“No. But he was trying to protect her then too. He obviously thinks I’m out to hurt her.”
“You’re not the one punching her in the face. Or the one who’s just run away.”
Saz shook her head. “Neither’s he. Don’t look, but he’s still there, about a hundred yards up. On the left.”
“So let’s try and get something out of this chick before he comes back with a six pack ready for bowling practice.”
Getting sense out of the thin girl, breath strong with alcohol and eyes glazed with substances somewhat stronger, took a while. Carrie managed to get her sitting up and then despatched Saz to the McDonalds on the Strand for “a couple of burgers—sane fish ones if possible”, two apple pies and a full sugar strength Coke, in the hope that charging up her blood sugar level might also charge up a few brain cells. The girl revived enough at the smell of food to open her eyes fully, run grubby hands down her over-large jumper by way of a wash and wolf down the burgers one after the other without a pause. She drank the whole container of Coke and then burnt her mouth on the first of the apple pies. All before she’d said thank you. Which she did, after wiping her mouth very politely on the tiny paper napkin and speaking, to Saz’s surprise, with only the faintest trace of a Newcastle accent. The girl sneered when she saw Saz’s puzzled look at Carrie over her head.
