by Liza Cody
And then the trouble started.
Ma came storming into the sitting-room with her hair all over her face and nothing on. She went behind the sofa.
He came in, still pulling up his zip, with no shirt to hide his tattoos.
Ma said, ‘You must’ve left it in the club, you must’ve dropped it in the club, you must’ve…’
But he wasn’t quite that stupid. He said, ‘I didn’t drop nothing nowhere. Gi’ss it back, slag.’
‘In the car then. On the stairs…’
‘Shut it!’
‘I’ll help you look …’
He reached over the sofa and grabbed her wrist giving it a nasty twist.
‘Bastard,’ Ma screeched.
‘You thieving mare!’ he said and balled up his left fist.
I caught him by the hair with one hand and the seat of his strides with the other. I set my feet the way I do in the ring and then yanked and lifted at the same time.
He flew away from Ma and landed on his backside by the door.
Ma got pulled over the back of the sofa and fell in a heap on the cushions. The sofa tipped over.
She had obviously stuffed the bastard’s wallet under one of the cushions, because, with the sofa on its side and the cushions all over the floor, I could see it clearly.
Ma could too, because she shut up screeching and sat on it.
I felt great.
The git on the floor said, ‘Who the fuck’re you?’
‘On your bike, mister.’
He started to get up. But I kicked his arm and he went over again.
He didn’t want to fight. Which was a pity because I really felt like it. He got out of the room sort of slithering on his arse. In the passage he scrambled to his feet and was out the front door like a hound out of the traps.
I went to the bedroom, took up the rest of his clothes and went after him.
He was shivering in the wind on the walkway. Tattoos aren’t much good at keeping out the cold.
He said, ‘She pinched my wad.’
‘You heard her,’ I said. ‘You dropped it. Now move it before I go down and jump on your motor.’
You can always beat a man by threatening his car.
He picked up his clothes and went away.
When I got back in, Ma was still all of a heap on the floor. She’d found a bottle somewhere and was tipping the contents down her throat.
She said, ‘He hurt my arm. He really hurt my arm.’ Whining like a little kid.
I said, ‘Get some clothes on.’
I was pumped up, but I didn’t like the fact that Ma was all undressed. She looked so weak and wobbly.
‘Get dressed,’ I repeated.
‘My arm hurts,’ she said, sucking the neck of her bottle. ‘I think I’ll go down the doctor’s.’ She just sat there.
I decided to leave, but as soon as I got outside and slammed the door I remembered about Simone’s old address. I knocked and waited. Then I knocked again.
‘What?’ Ma yelled from behind the door.
‘That family,’ I yelled back. ‘The ones that fostered Simone. Where do they live?’
‘You’re a pain in the bum,’ she said through the letter box. ‘You know what? You’re a right pain in the bum.’
I waited, thinking that just this once she might do something for me. But nothing happened. So I went away.
Men have been hitting Ma ever since I can remember. Not that I blame them. Sometimes I feel like hitting her myself.
What I can’t understand is why she never did anything about it.
All you have to do is go to the gym and get a bit stronger. If you are strong, men won’t take liberties.
Nobody hits me any more – not unless I’m paid for it.
I hope Simone is strong. If anyone needs to be strong it’s a pretty girl.
Of course, I was born with an advantage. I was born big. But big, in itself, isn’t much use. Everybody knows big weak people.
No. Take a tip from me – if you want respect in this world – get rid of the wobbly bits.
Chapter 6
I spent the next couple of hours at the gym lifting weights.
Harsh uses Sam’s gym too, only, that day he was still in cabbage country.
The best way to get out of a mood is to train hard. But it’s easier to train if you’re in company. Alone, you get bored and start skipping reps, and before you know it you stop checking your body position. If you stop that, you’re in danger of lifting wrong and you could injure yourself.
Anyway, that day I had the place to myself, and time dragged, but I took a proper shower afterwards and washed my hair.
I used the phone to call the promoters and found they’d booked me to fight at the weekend. More lovely dosh.
Money worked where the weights failed that afternoon so I was in a much better mood when I showed up at Mr Cheng’s restaurant at six o’clock.
The Beijing Garden used to be called the Peking Garden, but for some reason Mr Cheng changed it last year. The restaurant wasn’t properly open when I got there, but it wasn’t properly closed either. It was hardly ever closed because of all Mr Cheng’s friends and relations and the gambling they do upstairs.
I was wearing my black leather jacket. Mr Cheng liked me to wear that jacket – he said it made me look like a gangster. It would have cost an arm and a leg, that jacket, if I’d paid for it.
Mr Cheng was in his shirtsleeves when I arrived. He was leaning on his counter punching his calculator and figuring things out. He is very clever with numbers. I think he likes them better than food or people.
He said, ‘Lil job fewva.’
He meant, ‘Little job for you Eva.’ But he spoke so quickly I needed a second to translate.
‘Colleckarntie,’ he said.
Right, I thought – collect Auntie. That was easy enough.
‘Later,’ he went on, ‘go tabnatroe fackountue.’
‘What?’
He looked up. ‘Wassamatter Eva? Defforsome’ing? I said, Later, go to Abernathy Road. There’s an account due. I want you to collect.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘OK, Mr Cheng, will do.’
He held out his hand. ‘Key,’ he said.
‘Where?’
‘Fristree.’
Which meant the Rover was in the Frith Street car park. I took the key and left. Mr Cheng talks too much.
I liked the Rover. It was big and black and people paid attention to it. And it made a change for me to drive a car with the owner’s permission.
All the same, I wasn’t quite legal, I’m never quite legal if you must know. The fact is that I don’t have a driving licence. I’m a good driver and I never had an accident, but I never bothered with a licence. I would have to take the test. It would mean filling in forms and getting my name in the official computer. I wouldn’t like that.
By rights, I should have told Mr Cheng about the licence. But he didn’t ask, did he? And what they don’t ask, I don’t tell.
All he asked was, ‘Drive, Eva?’ Actually he said, ‘Dry fever!’
And I said, ‘Yes,’ and that was that.
Mr Cheng asked me to drive for him because he wanted to talk business in the car on the way to the airport. It must have been dodgy business because he wanted someone who couldn’t speak Chinese. I know as much about Chinese as he knows about wrestling so we suited perfectly.
I liked the Rover on the motorway. It felt dignified.
Driving across town to the Edgware Road after six o’clock was a different matter. It was all stop-go-stop. I think sometimes that London is choking to death.
Auntie Lo lived in a big block of flats. There was a porter, and the lift worked, and no one sprayed pictures of private parts on the lobby walls.
The porter wouldn’t let me in until he’d phoned up to Auntie Lo although he knew me well.
I have never been inside Auntie Lo’s flat. The procedure is – I go up, ring her bell and wait. She looks at me through the spyhole, puts the c
hain on the door, says, ‘That you, Eva?’ through the crack. When she is absolutely sure it is me she comes tittuping out on her four-inch heels with her handbag clutched to her chest.
Auntie Lo is sixty-five if she’s a day, but she always wears the most teenage shoes you ever saw. In other ways, from her little wool coat to her huge plastic handbag, she is Mr Cheng’s Auntie. But those shoes!
She is a bit of a joker too – except it’s always the same joke. And that evening was like every other time.
She said, ‘When you getting married, Eva?’ And burst into little huffs of laughter.
I said, ‘Can’t find a man big enough, Mrs Lo.’ And waited while she locked all four locks on her door.
When she was ready we went down in the lift together, and she said, ‘One of these days I write home – get you a big Chinese man.’ And she huff-huff-huffed all the way to the ground floor.
I like Auntie Lo. She is a fixer. If anyone at the Beijing Garden has a problem, the standard response is, ‘Ask Auntie Lo,’ or if it’s Mr Cheng talking, ‘Ar skanti.’
On the way back to the restaurant we picked up two men. They were both a lot younger than Auntie Lo and they were waiting on the corner of Cabal Street.
‘Big party tonight,’ Auntie Lo said. And then as the two men got into the back of the Rover, she sniffed and said, ‘Not big enough for you, Eva?’
‘Not nearly.’
‘Huff-huff-huff!’
Mr Cheng came out onto the pavement outside the Beijing Garden. He had put on his black jacket to help Auntie out of the car. With Auntie safely inside, he came back and handed me another key.
He said, ‘Tay Kastra.’ Which meant he did not want his precious Rover to go to Notting Hill Gate.
He also gave me a plain white envelope.
‘Seesmee,’ he said.
I parked the Rover and, as per instruction, took the Astra.
Mr Cheng’s instructions may be a bit weird, but they are always precise. And if I follow them precisely – collect Auntie, see Smith, bring back the money – he will pay me precisely. There won’t be any, ‘Nice one, Eva, I’ll owe you.’ He won’t even thank me. But it will be cash on the nail, and maybe more work next week.
You know where you are with Mr Cheng. What you won’t know is what he’s up to, or what he’s thinking. And that suits me.
Bermuda Smith runs a cellar club – music, dancing, drink and food. A bit of everything. He books good bands.
White people go for the music and atmosphere but they aren’t very comfortable.
The polizei go for the drugs.
Mr Cheng won’t go there at all. He won’t even let his Rover go.
I don’t know what his business is with Bermuda Smith but whenever I turn up with a plain white envelope, which is about once every couple of months, Bermuda Smith gives me a carrier bag in return.
The carrier bag is always sealed with duct tape so I can’t tell you what’s inside. I think it’s a lot of money.
Now you might think that I am well-placed to make a very big score here. But you would think wrong. And I will tell you for why. The first time I did a pick-up for Mr Cheng he had me followed. And the package I picked up was a dummy. I know, because he showed me. He didn’t say anything. He just examined the package with a magnifying glass to see if I’d slit it with a razor blade. Then he opened it. It was full of cut-up newspaper. And a small incendiary device. It made me sweat just thinking about it.
Later, Auntie Lo said, ‘To frighten the monkey, first let him see you kill the chicken.’ She said it was Mr Cheng’s philosophy of life.
Mr Cheng is a man who knows how to get respect.
It was too early for action at the club. Things don’t really get going till after ten. But a few people were drinking at the bar or waiting for food. I went through to Bermuda Smith’s office.
They say Bermuda Smith eats dog flesh to make himself fierce.
They say he has four wives.
He looks like a wire coat-hanger. If he wants muscle he has to pay for it. He has plenty of gold – in his teeth.
‘Hey, Eva!’ he said. ‘What’s new?’
He pretends to be very friendly with me because of Mr Cheng.
I gave him the envelope and he stared at it.
‘It’s that time again,’ he said. Then he brightened up. ‘Hey, Eva, heard this one? What’s the difference between a rabid dog and a woman with PMS?’
‘Dunno, Mr Smith,’ I said.
‘Lipstick!’ He cackled and then he shut his mouth like a clamp and said, ‘Wait at the bar, Eva. Have yourself a drink.’
‘I haven’t got all day,’ I said. I can be a bit snotty in a polite sort of way when I’m acting for Mr Cheng.
‘Be cool,’ he said. Then he scowled and pointed his finger at my belly button. ‘You tell Cheng,’ he said, ‘you tell him I’m still taking pressure. I want action. You tell him. Now go.’
I went to the bar wishing that one day Bermuda Smith would invite me to wait in his office. His office is stuffed with toys – train sets, cars, fire engines, teddy bears – even dolls. They say he is making up for lost time.
The barman poured me a beer without asking what I wanted. While I drank I watched the band setting up on the platform at the other end of the cellar. It looked like an Ego Band. You know, black singer, black musicians and three white backing vocalists. They come the other way round too. I don’t know why, but it always looks like a wank to me.
Anyway, there I was, watching the three white women trying to test their microphone, while the men plugged in the backline. I was minding my own business but I began to notice I was attracting attention.
This is not unusual. I am a very visible person. But it is annoying.
I looked down the bar and saw two white guys staring at me and talking to each other behind their hands. They saw that I had clocked them, but they didn’t stop.
It makes me a bit spitty when people stare.
‘It’s five quid a look,’ I said. ‘Or go home and watch telly. I’m not the entertainment.’
That usually does one of two things – either they get embarrassed or they get narky themselves. Doesn’t bother me which.
This time neither of those two things happened. The bloke who was staring the hardest got off his stool and came over. He took out his wallet and handed me a five pound note.
I thought I’d call his bluff, so I snatched the fiver and turned back to my drink without saying a word. He just stood there looking. Well, he’d paid for it so I suppose he was entitled. I was still narked, all the same.
After a while he said, ‘Five quid an hour.’
‘Get stuffed,’ I said.
‘No, seriously.’
‘Get stuffed seriously,’ I said. I didn’t even look at him. He had a poncy accent. You can handle the middle classes quite easily by being a bit nasty. They aren’t used to nasty.
This one wasn’t put off. He said, ‘I mean it.’
I said, ‘Are you still here?’ And gave him my best fuck-off look. It should have blown him away.
‘I’m a sculptor,’ he said.
‘You’re a tosser.’
‘That too,’ he said quite cheerfully. Say what you will about the middle classes – they know how to take an insult. Used to it, I suppose.
He went on, ‘Look, I’m not joking. I’m a sculptor. All I’m interested in is form. Don’t you know you’d make an absolutely splendid model?’
That really got up my nose.
I said, ‘Don’t you know you’d make an absolutely splendid corpse?’
He laughed.
What a sodding nerve!
‘I know your sort,’ I said, and stuck my fist up close to his mouth. ‘Go on, have a laugh! Just do it somewhere else. I’ll give you five seconds to get out of my face. After that you can kiss your teeth goodbye.’
He stepped back then, and looked a bit upset.
At that moment one of the backing singers came up to the bar and ordered a bra
ndy and soda. She was stunning to look at – all hair and teeth.
I said, ‘If you want a model, ask her. Maybe she’ll believe you. Meantime why don’t you crawl back under the bog seat where you belong.’
The ‘sculptor’ slunk away and rejoined his mate at the other end of the bar.
The backing singer gave me a vague smile and said, ‘That’s right, you tell him.’ She had a poncy accent too.
The barman gave her the brandy and soda. She drank it in one go. It made her look less vague.
‘I despise men,’ she said in her cut-glass voice, and weaved her way back to the band.
I was so aggravated by what had happened that I left my beer and went to stand in the shadows near the fire exit. I don’t mind people making fun of me so long as I get the chance to hit back. But I did not want to start anything while on business for Mr Cheng, because, sure as eggs is eggs, he would hear about it.
So I stood in the shadows and seethed.
Another thing which annoyed me was what I’d said – I told the ‘sculptor’ he could ‘kiss his teeth goodbye.’ I mean, how the freaking hell do you kiss your own teeth goodbye? It made me look like a pronk. He was probably having a giggle about it with his mate. I wished I could go and sort him out.
I was still brooding when Harry Richards came up with Bermuda Smith’s carrier bag.
Harry used to be a light heavyweight boxer. But that was years ago. When I first came across him he was at the end of his second career as a heavyweight wrestler. He used to fight in a red mask because he had such a round, placid face no one could believe he was up to no good.
In those days I wasn’t in the ring myself. I just followed the tour around helping with crowd-control and picking up the finer points of the game.
Harry is old – over fifty anyway – but he still trains now and then. He hasn’t quite gone to seed. Certainly he still looks useful enough to work as one of Bermuda Smith’s bouncers.
‘Yo, Eva,’ he said. He gave me the bag which was all done up with duct tape as usual. ‘You look like you spittin’ tintacks.’
‘I’m in a mood, Harry,’ I said.
‘Yeah?’ he said. ‘You want to come back later and help out?’
‘How?’
‘New band. Big crowd comin’ in. Could be trouble, so we gettin’ in extra help tonight. You want a gig?’
