by Liza Cody
The place looked like a shebeen from the front. It was in a broken down row of buildings and there was music coming from the open door. I drove past and turned the corner.
The kitchen door was old and wooden, but it was covered with locks and bolts. The back street looked as if it needed all the locks and bolts you could throw at it. There were broken windows and doors with kicked in panels and houses I knew without looking were filled with dossers.
But inside the kitchen it smelled of onions and chillis and it wasn’t all that dirty even though they had left a lot of washing up in the sink.
The music was very loud so nobody could have heard me come in. I went over to the door opposite and opened it slowly. The passage was just what I was expecting. It wasn’t lit, but coloured lights spilled through the doors to the bar and dance floor. I saw all the empty bottles and crates stacked to one side. I put the Safeway carrier bag on top of them.
I should have left straight away but I couldn’t resist having a gander through the bar door to see if I could spot Mr Aycliffe.
I pushed the door open just a crack. The music was deafening. At first all I could see was a few people dancing and a few people drinking. And then I noticed that one of the dancers was Calvin. Goldie’s loverboy, the Lord of the Trousers. He was dancing with an absolutely gorgeous lady. She looked totally wigged-out and she was hanging round his neck like a garland of flowers, but you could see from the shape of her and the way other men watched her that she was absolutely gorgeous.
Poor Goldie. It made me want to hang the bleeding snot-gobbler from the light bulb and swing on his feet. I mean, what right did a little turd like that have to mess with a nice woman’s affections? Especially when she was a friend of mine.
Another time I might have steamed in and sorted him out. But now I was under orders to be invisible – although why anyone would pick me for that when I’m one of the most visible women I know, was a mystery. When I thought about it I realised that, of course, it wasn’t me they’d picked. They had picked Kenny. And Kenny, if my experience of not seeing him was anything to go by, was about as visible as the Holy Ghost.
I sneaked a last quick look at Calvin and his luscious lady. If he was a woman, I thought, they’d probably call him a slag. As it was they would call her a slag and him a stud and it just wasn’t fair. All that man-woman stuff really gets up my nose. I’m glad I’m not involved.
Leaving the music and the coloured lights behind I crossed the passage and went back into the kitchen. It was time to make a quick exit. But when I got to the kitchen door I found I couldn’t open it.
I pushed, and I rattled the handle, and I put my shoulder to it but the door was stuck fast.
‘Shit a bus,’ I said out loud. Because if I couldn’t get through the kitchen door I would have to go out through the bar and then everyone would see me – including Calvin who might recognise me from Bermuda Smith’s club. And then Mr Cheng and Auntie Lo would be peeved and perhaps they wouldn’t give me any more work. You have to do what you are told and be reliable or they don’t trust you.
There was one small window, but there were bars across it. The bars wouldn’t budge an inch when I heaved on them. The only hope was the door.
I went back to it and tried again. I hauled up on the handle in case the bottom was jammed. It wasn’t.
I was sweating like live pork in a sauna. I couldn’t understand what was happening. The door had opened so easily when I went in. Everything had gone according to plan. How could such a cock-up happen at the last minute?
It was stupid. It was only a door.
I backed away. Took a run. And hit the door near the lock with a drop-kick. This was a dodgy move. With flying kicks you can land on your arse if you get it wrong. But I heard something splinter.
I picked myself up and tried the handle again. This time it felt looser.
I backed off again and took a longer run. I hit the door perfectly just below the handle. There was a tearing sound of rotten wood splitting, and the door popped open. Thank the Lord for a good pair of boots.
Outside, I closed the door as best I could. And … well … it is hard to describe what happened next. It was like a dream.
You see, I had just found out why the door wouldn’t open, when this thing happened.
The kitchen wall exploded.
It did.
It just flew outwards. One minute it was a wall, and the next minute it was bricks and mortar flying through the air.
The door fell on me.
I remember thinking what a waste of effort it was kicking it open, when it was going to fall over anyway.
I swear I didn’t black out, but when I opened my eyes, both me and the door were in the middle of the road yards away from the kitchen and I couldn’t remember how we got there.
The funny thing was that I did not hear a thing.
I just saw the wall come apart. And the door fell on me. That’s all.
It was like a dream.
It was so weird I actually thought I was dreaming. Really dreaming.
You know those dreams where you have to get home? You must get home but you don’t know the way because you don’t know where you are now.
Well it was like that.
I got up. There was rubble all over the street. There were flames and smoke. There were one or two people moving very slowly.
I walked away. I thought, ‘I’m dreaming about the war.’
I remember seeing a car bent in half. And another one with a table poking through the windscreen.
But I just walked away because I thought I was dreaming about the war and I had to get home. I couldn’t hear anything, so it had to be a dream. Right?
I just sort of floated away. I couldn’t hear anything and I couldn’t feel anything. I couldn’t even feel my feet on the pavement. That is what dreams are like.
There was a woman in the gutter, stark naked and covered in blood. She had bits of glass sticking out of her skin. Her mouth was wide open, as if she was screaming. But I couldn’t hear her so I floated on by.
Because it was a dream, see, a dream about the war, and I had to go home.
Chapter 14
Waking up hurt. There was a ditch with a clay bottom. It was all wet. I was in the ditch. I was all wet and cold.
It was dawn.
I thought, ‘This isn’t home.’
But in a way it was home. Or rather, it was a place I lived in about a year ago. Actually, it was a place I slept in when I was living rough. But they tore it down. They were going to build luxury flats there but the money ran out and all they had done was dig the foundations.
I was lying in the foundations. My head hurt. My teeth hurt. My skin hurt.
My lovely leather jacket was in tatters and I only had half a T-shirt. My jeans were shredded from the crotch down, and one boot was missing.
I sort of remembered what had happened, but only in the way you remember dreams. Bits of it kept slipping away.
But I was in a real ditch. I was real. And I can tell you for free I had a real earache.
‘Chin up, Eva,’ I said out loud.
I heaved myself out of the ditch, and I felt very weak and wobbly. Everything hurt so much I nearly threw up. But I am big and strong and mean and tough – well, I was before that door fell on me – so I started to hobble off home.
Borrowing a car was out because my survival tin was gone and all the bits of wire and things I needed were gone too. So I just hobbled on keeping close to walls and things I could lean on.
It was very embarrassing because bits of me were poking through my clothes and it was dawn and people could see me. Not that there were many people looking. It was too early for that.
I’m used to people staring at me. But usually they stare because I’m big and strong and mean and tough. I’m not used to being stared at when I’m weak and feeble and not dressed properly. It wasn’t nice. I felt sort of naked. Well, if you must know, I was sort of naked. So I hung on to my rags an
d limped as fast as I could.
It all goes to show – basic strength and fitness do count for something. Getting home without falling down or going to sleep every ten steps of the way was something a feebler person just could not have done. But I did it. So stick that up your nose and blow it out your ear. I bet you’ve been having a bit of a giggle at me all this time – a big woman making herself bigger and tougher. Well, let me tell you, I’m never sick, I don’t get headaches, and when I get hurt I can always tough it out. What can you say about yourself? Eh? Go on, how would you manage if you’d been blown half way across a road with a door on top of you?
I know you think I’m stupid. Don’t try to tell me different, because I know, see. And maybe I’d done a stupid thing. All right. But even clever people can do stupid things. You don’t have to be all-round stupid to be conned. Clever people can be fooled too. Hasn’t anyone ever taken you for a sucker? Well okay. I’m not judging you, so don’t you sit there and judge me!
So I got home when ninety-nine people out of a hundred would’ve given up or collapsed. I’m proud of that. I even fed the dogs and penned them. I’m proud of that too. There wasn’t a lot to be proud of that morning but I always try to look on the positive side. Well, you must, mustn’t you, when the negative side is too horrible to think about.
I tried to be quiet, going into the Static, but I was stumbling around like a blind camel in a bowling-alley.
Goldie came out of the bedroom tangled and tousled and rubbing her eyes. I remember seeing the little telly on the floor where I’d left it before going out to find a battery to run it off. It seemed a long, long time ago.
I said, ‘I’ll find another battery tomorrow.’ And then I was sitting on the floor with Goldie holding my hand, making little cooing sounds. My face was all wet.
‘Don’t cry,’ Goldie was saying, ‘don’t cry.’
And I said, ‘Fuck off. I never cry.’
She said, ‘You just never came back. You went out to get a battery and you didn’t come back. I’ve been worried sick.’
And she said, ‘I’ll make some tea.’ And, ‘Don’t move, I’ll help.’
And she brought a bowl of warm water, soap and a towel. And although I could only hear out of one ear I began to feel ever so much better.
You just can’t imagine how bloody terrific, magic, it is to have a friend when you’re in lumber. Just try it, and you’ll see.
Goldie was wonderful – just like a mother, really. Someone’s mother – not mine of course – I should be so lucky. She cleaned up all the burns and scrapes I never knew I’d got and dabbed on antiseptic cream, and put me to bed in the bed she’d just got out of. Well, it was my own bed, actually, but it smelled of her so it seemed like her bed.
I said, ‘I’ve done a terrible thing.’
‘Sleep,’ she said.
‘No – I think I’ve killed a load of people.’
‘What?’ she said. ‘Don’t be silly.’
‘It was a bomb. I put it there.’
She looked at me, and one eyebrow went up.
‘Sleep,’ she said. ‘Tell me about it later. It won’t seem so bad when you wake up.’
She thought I was raving. I was quite glad, because I didn’t want to tell her about Calvin. For all I knew Calvin had been blown to smithereens like everything else in the shebeen, and I didn’t want to tell her.
And I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I didn’t want to go to sleep because I was afraid I might have dreams, but my lids kept acting like cat-flaps.
Of course there were dreams, but I kept on top of them. I’d see those bricks floating silently out of that kitchen wall and I’d say to myself, ‘Hey-up, it’s a dream,’ and then I’d come half awake. Not properly awake – I couldn’t quite manage that – but just enough to stop those bricks. Then I would hear voices – Goldie’s voice, men’s voices – and I struggled to open my eyes. But I couldn’t, and I’d sink back into the bricks and the burning.
Hours later, I woke up. It was afternoon and there were voices coming from the main room.
I squinted through a crack in the door because I always like to see who is there before going into company. Goldie was by herself watching telly.
I said, ‘Where did you get the battery?’
‘Didn’t need a battery,’ she said. ‘I’m using mains electricity.’
‘Cocking Caspar!’ I said. ‘I told you about that! Do you want to beggar me?’
‘Don’t shout at me. It won’t cost you a penny. I got one of the guys in the yard to hook us up to the mains, and he did this awfully clever thing with a piece of cable. He’s by-passed the meter. So we can have all the power we need and no electricity bill.’
‘You talked to the blokes in the yard? You’re stupid. Know what? You’re really stupid. Now what happens if the polizei come back? The only reason you got away with it last time was because I lied for you and the blokes didn’t know you were here.’
‘Don’t shout at me!’ Goldie shouted. She stood up. She had her hands on her hips and she looked really spitty. ‘I can’t live here and not be seen for eight hours a day. I can’t live here and not talk to a soul except for you. I feel like a hostage or something. And this business of heating every drop of water and not being able to have a shower even though there’s a perfectly good one in the bathroom – well, it may be all right for you but it isn’t for me. It’s primitive, if you must know.’
‘Fuck off then,’ I said. ‘If I’m too primitive for you, why don’t you fuck off out of it?’
‘Okay!’ she said. ‘I will. If you want me to go I’ll go.’
‘Go on then!’
‘I will.’
‘What you waiting for?’
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Nothing, nothing, nothing.’
She pushed past me into the bedroom and started clattering around with all her carrier bags.
I looked around the main room. It was warm. The fire glowed. There was tea in the pot. The telly mumbled away in the corner.
Goldie came to the doorway. She said, ‘Can I borrow one of your sports bags?’
“Course,’ I said. I went over and put my hands round the warm teapot. ‘What’s mine is yours. You know that.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry about the electricity. But you were so cut up and bruised. I thought you might benefit from a nice hot shower. I thought you’d be pleased.’
She’d done it for me! I poured the tea into two mugs and handed her one. We sat down side by side on the sofa.
‘Who did you talk to in the yard?’ I asked.
‘His name is Rob,’ she said. But it didn’t mean sod all to me. I didn’t know any of their names.
‘So long as it wasn’t Mr Gambon,’ I said.
‘Oh no. Rob says he’s a mean git.’
‘Too right.’
‘Listen Eva,’ she said. ‘I told Rob the bailiffs were after me. For tax evasion. And you were helping out. He understood completely.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘He was very sympathetic.’
‘I bet.’
‘He was! He won’t tell anyone. Honestly.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘And when is he taking you out “for a drink”?’
She sipped her tea like a lady and looked at me over the rim of her mug.
‘Tonight?’ I asked.
‘What could I do?’
‘Kick him in the nob,’ I said. ‘Nothing. Everybody got to pay the rent. You pay your way, I’ll pay mine.’
‘He’s got to get home to his wife. I won’t be gone long,’ she said.
We looked at each other. She laughed. I didn’t feel like laughing.
‘Don’t let’s argue,’ Goldie said.
‘We ain’t arguing. We both know the score.’ But I wasn’t sure that she did know the score. Not the way I know it.
‘Tell me what happened last night?’ she asked. She settled back in the sofa all curled up like a kitten. How do you tell a kitten you just blasted her ex-boyfrie
nd to buggery? Go on, you tell me.
‘What happened?’ she asked again. ‘This morning you were babbling about a bomb or something.’
‘Did I say that? There was an explosion. I was all shook up.’
‘You can say that again,’ she said seriously. ‘You looked like a corpse.’
‘I still can’t hear out of my left ear hole,’ I said. It was true. I could hear everything she said because she was sitting on my right. But my left ear had gone dead. It was like having water in it, only worse.
‘There was an explosion!’ she said, amazed.
‘Gas main,’ I said. ‘I can’t quite remember but it must’ve been a gas main.’
She sat there waiting for me to go on, but I didn’t know how.
After a bit she said, ‘You left here at about midnight. You said you were going to find a battery. You came home at seven in the morning looking like leukaemia on two legs. What happened in between? Seven hours, Eva. You must remember something.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I must’ve slept in that ditch but I don’t remember how I got there. It’s hard to think. I’ve got a toothache.’
‘And that’s another thing, Eva. You said you were going to the dentist yesterday. But you didn’t.’
‘What are you – the polizei?’ I was a bit narked.
‘Oh Eva!’ she said, looking hurt. ‘I was worried sick about you. You might’ve been killed. I just want to know what’s going on.’
‘Nothing’s going on. It was one cock-up after another.’ I told her about forgetting to go and see Mr Cheng. I told her about him sending Kenny. I told her about me taking Kenny to St Thomas’s. But I was a bit careful what I said. I didn’t want her to think I was some sort of villain, because I’m not. Not really. Things just happen.
What I said was that Kenny had collapsed on the street – which he had. I didn’t want her to know that I’d sort of helped him collapse.
She said I must be accident prone, and I agreed with her. All the same it was funny how much I wanted to tell her the real story. I wanted to get it off my chest. It was funny, because never in all my life have I actually wanted to tell someone something I was ashamed of. Well you don’t, do you? If you do something dodgy you keep it to yourself. Otherwise people can dob off on you. You’re in someone else’s power if you talk too much.
