“Oh, me poor veins,” she said, and we walked on together. I slowed down a bit so she could keep up.
“There’s a stall open by the Arches,” she said. “Couldn’t half murder a cuppa.”
She used to sing in the streets-walk up and down Oxford Street bellowing “Paper Moon” with her hand held out-but after a bad dose of bronchitis last year her voice went.
At the Arches I got us both a cup of tea and a sausage sandwich.
“Come into money, Crys?” Johnny Pavlova asked. It is his stall and he has a right to ask, because now and then when there’s no one around to see, he gives me a cup free. As he always says, he’s not a charitable institution, but catch him in the right mood and he’ll slip you one like the best of them.
All the same it reminded me to be careful.
“Christmas,” I said. “They were feeling generous down the High Street.”
“Down the High Street?” he said. “You ain’t been on that demolition site, have you? I heard they found this stiff bollock-naked there this evening.”
“Did they?” I said as if I couldn’t care less. “I didn’t hear nothing. I was just working the High Street.”
I went over and sat with Bloody Mary under the Arches. Johnny Pavlova doesn’t like us hanging too close round his stall. He says we put the respectable people off their hot dogs.
“Will you look at that moon,” Bloody Mary said, and she pulled her coats tight.
It was higher in the sky now and smaller, but there was still a good light to see by.
“Where you kipping tonight, Crystal?” she asked. I knew what she meant. A moon like that is a freezing moon this time of year.
Just then, Brainy Brian came slithering in beside us so I didn’t have to answer. He was coughing his lungs out as usual, and he didn’t say anything for a while. I think he’s dying. You can’t cough like that and live long. He used to go to college in Edinburgh, but then he started taking drugs and he failed all his exams. He did all right down here in the city because to begin with he was very pretty. But druggies don’t keep their looks any longer than they keep their promises. Now he’s got a face like a violin and ulcers all over his arms and legs.
When he recovered his breath he said, “Share your tea, Crystal?”
We’d already finished ours so we didn’t say anything for a while. But Brian was so sorry-looking, in the end I went to get another two, one for him and one for Bloody Mary. While they were sucking it up I slipped away.
“Watch yourself, Crys,” Johnny Pavlova said as I went by. He gave me a funny look.
The first thing you do when you break into a house is find another way out. A good house has to have more than one way out because you don’t want to go running like the clappers to get out the same door the Law is coming in.
The house on Alma-Tadema Road has a kitchen door through to the garden. I loosened the boards on that before lying down to sleep. I also made sure I had the snakeskin wallet safe.
I had made the right decision: there was no one but me there. A heap of damp ashes marked the spot where the winos had lit their fire, and they blew in little eddies from the draught. Otherwise nothing stirred.
I went over the house collecting all the paper and rags I could find to build myself a nest, then I curled up in it and shut my eyes.
Nighttime is not the best time for me. It’s when I can’t keep busy and in control of my thoughts that bad memories and dreams burst out of my brain. It’s hard to keep cheerful alone in the dark, so I need to be very, very tired before I’ll lie down and close my eyes. Sometimes I say things over and over in my head until I get to sleep-things like the words of a song or a poem I learned at school-over and over so there’s no spare room in my brain for the bad stuff.
That night I must have been very tired because I only got part of the way through “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” when I dropped off. Dawn used to play that song all the time when we were still living at home. She played it so often it used to drive me up the wall. But it is songs like that, songs I didn’t even know I’d learned the words to, that help me through the night nowadays.
The next thing I knew someone was coughing. I opened my eyes but it was still dark, and there was this cough, cough, cough coming my way. Brainy Brian, I thought, and relaxed a bit. It’s something you have to watch out for-people coming up on you when you’re alone in the dark.
“It’s cold,” he said when he found me. “It’s hard, hard cold out there.” He crawled into my nest. I was quite warm and I didn’t want to leave but I knew his coughing would keep me awake,
“Give us a cuddle, Crystal,” he said. “I got to get warm.”
“Shove off,” I said. His hands remind me of a fork. Some people do it to keep warm. Not me. I’ve seen too much and I want to die innocent.
He started coughing again. Then he said, “You got any dosh, Crystal?”
“Enough for a tea in the morning,” I said. I really did not want to go. It was one of my better nests and it didn’t seem fair to give it up to Brian.
“They’re looking for you,” he said. “Someone saw you in the Trenches.”
“Not me,” I said. “Who saw me?”
“You know that little kid?” he said. “Marvin, I think he’s called. Well, they hurt him bad. He said he saw you.”
“Who wants to know?” I sat up.
“Lay down,” he said, “I got to get warm.” He grabbed me and pulled me down, but he didn’t start anything so I kept still.
After a while he said, “Johnny Pavlova says you got dosh. They asked him too.”
I waited till he finished coughing. Then I said, “Who’s asking? The Law?”
“Not them,” he said. He knew something, I thought. And then I thought, he talked to Johnny Pavlova, he’s talked to Marvin, and Marvin saw me in the Trenches. Maybe Brian talked to whoever is looking for me.
I said, “Did they send you, Brian? Did they send you to find me?”
He doubled over, coughing. Later he said, “You don’t understand, Crystal. I got to get some money. I lost my fixings, and I haven’t scored for days.”
So that was that. I left him and went out the kitchen way. Brian was right-it was hard cold outside. And I was right, too-having things makes you a mark. I dumped the snake-skin wallet in the garden before I climbed over the fence. And then I climbed right back and picked it up again. Dumping the wallet wouldn’t stop anyone looking for me. Not having it would be no protection. Marvin didn’t have it and he got hurt. I wondered why they picked on Marvin to clobber. Perhaps he got the dead man’s shoes, or his coat. Perhaps they saw a little kid in a big thick coat and they recognized the coat.
No one ever looked for me before. There was no one interested. I thought maybe I should run away-somewhere up north, or maybe to the West Country. But when I ran away the first time, it was me and Dawn together. And it was difficult because we didn’t know the city. It took us ages to get sorted.
I thought about it walking down the road. The moon had gone and the sky had that dirty look it gets just before day. My nose was runny from the cold and I was hungry, so I went to the Kashmir takeaway. The Kashmir is a good one because it has a bin not twenty paces away. What happens is that when the pubs close a lot of folks want an Indian takeaway, but because they’ve been drinking they order too much and chuck what’s left over in this bin. I’ve had breakfast there many times. The great thing about a Kashmir breakfast is that although the food is cold by the time you get it, the spices are still hot, and it warms you up no end. From this point of view Indian food is the best in the city.
I felt much more cheerful after breakfast, and I found a lighted shopwindow with a doorway to sit in. It was there I had a proper look at the wallet. Before, at Dawn’s business premises, I only counted the money and redistributed it in the pockets of my coats. Now I studied the credit cards, library cards, and business stuff.