She breathed deeply, smelling the strange river smell. She liked working by the river, plenty of dark corners, very few passers-by at night. She didn’t like getting into cars — not after that last time, no fucking way — plenty of quiet places by the river and there was always Margo’s room — extra fiver to Margo — no problem. You get in a car they can lock the door — like that last time. Fucking hell. She paused and lit a cigarette, looking across the river to Wapping on the other side. A boat had gone by and the lights were dancing on the diminishing wake. Lights were pretty, she thought, like someone pulling them on rubber strings, always bouncing back…She unzipped her boot and slid her money in under her instep, zipped it up again, and headed up Southwark Park Road towards The Shaft.
When she saw him she thought at first he must be a junkie or a drunko, lying under the stair by the car park, half his clothes off. She wandered over, cautiously. He ‘was wearing a shirt, underpants and socks — and there was a smear of blood on his forehead. He was moaning, trying to sit up. She walked a bit closer.
“Oi. You all right?”
“Help. Help me…”
His voice was different, like on the telly, not from The Shaft, surely? She took her lighter from her bag and clicked it on. He had a beard and drops of blood were trickling from a kind of pattern on his forehead. Like a grill mark on a hamburger, she thought. She knew what it was, now, from the reinforced cleated front of a trainer: three bars and the blurred indentation of a logo. He been jumped, this guy.
“You been jumped,” she said. “They take you clothes?”
“I assume so.”
Mhouse didn’t understand.
“You what?”
So he said, “Yes, they did.”
“Where you live,” she asked, “what unit?”
“I don’t live here. I live in Chelsea.”
Chelsea, Mhouse thought…My lucky time, my lucky tonight.
“Wait here,” she said, “don’t move, I help you to home.” She gestured to the man, shooing him back, encouraging him to move further under the shelter of the stairs and watched him huddle up in the darkness, folding his white, bare knees with his arms. She walked quickly across the parched grass of the wide quad formed by the stern rectangle of The Shaft’s many blocks, heading for her unit, and ran up the two flights of stairs to her flat. She looked in on Ly-on, but he was still fast asleep, spark out, and then rummaged in a cardboard box searching for some trousers that would fit the guy who had been jumped. Tall geezer, big man.
On her way back she called Mohammed on her mobile. Got one, Mo. You be at South Bermondsey Gate, five minute. Then she picked up speed, trotting back to find him, praying he hadn’t wandered off somewhere. He was still there in exactly the same position; he looked up as she whistled. She handed him the pair of cropped cotton cargo pants and a pair of flip-flops.
“Best I got,” she said. Then she offered him a cigarette but he didn’t want one. So she lit up herself, watching him pull on the trousers slowly, wincing. He took off his socks, stuffed them in the thigh pockets of the cargo pants and slipped on the flip-flops.
“You come with me, I take you to Chelsea.”
Mhouse led the man down the side of The Shaft — no one was about — to the South Bermondsey Gate where Mohammed was waiting in his Primera.
“You got any money?” she asked the man. “Cash?”
“They took everything — my mobile, my shoes, my credit cards, jacket, trousers, even my tie…”
“No problem — we’ll get sorted.”
She opened the rear door and helped him in — he was very stiff after his battering, she knew what it was like — then she slid in the front with Mohammed, who was trying to keep a broad smile off his face, unsuccessfully. She gave him a cigarette and he put it in his shirt pocket.
“Where we go?” he said.
“Chelsea. Where you live in Chelsea?” she asked the man.
“Just drop me at Chelsea Bridge Road, right by the bridge on the Embankment. That’ll be fine.”
“I take you Parliament Square,” Mohammed said. “You tell me after.”
They headed off through the dark city, Mhouse glancing back at him from time to time to see how he was coping. He kept dabbing with his fingers at the imprinted shallow cuts on his forehead, looking at the smear of blood on his fingertips.
“What happened?” she asked. “You remember anything?”
“I was walking down the street — I was lost, I was looking for the Tube and then I felt this incredible blow on my back. I heard nothing.”
“Blow?”
“As if I’d been hit by a car on my back. I fell to the ground and then something hit my head. I don’t know — maybe I hit my head on the ground.”
“No. They do like a drop-kick to your back — you know? Two feet. Bam. Then another bloke kick you head when you fall down. You never hear nothing.”
“It’s very kind of you to take me back,” the man said. “I’m most grateful.”
“You English?”
“Yes — why?”
“I thought you maybe come from foreign — like asylum.”
“No, I’m English…I was born and bred in Bristol.”
“Where’s that then? London?”
“No, to the west, about 100 miles from here.”
“Right.” Mhouse smiled. “What’s your name?”
“Adam. What’s yours?”
“Mhouse.”
She showed him the inside of her right arm: tattooed there, clumsily, unprofessionally, were the words ‘MHOUSE LY-ON’.
“I’ll be for ever in your debt, Mhouse — my good Samaritan.”
“Samaritan. I know that. I don’t pass by. I do it for the Lord.” Mhouse stared at him: Adam — young guy, nice-looking guy. The way he talk — like a book, like Bishop Yemi. He talk like that. What was this Adam doing round The Shaft at night? Asking for trouble and he got it. She turned and looked out of the window at the changing cityscape rolling by. They were all quiet in the car for a while.
“Good driving, Mo,” she said.
“I drive good, man,” Mohammed said.
When they got to Parliament Square, Adam directed Mohammed on towards Lambeth Bridge and the Embankment. Mhouse looked out of the window at the river — she found it hard to imagine it was the same river she worked beside at Rotherhithe, it looked different here. Mhouse closed her eyes, tired. Maybe she’d let Lyon sleep until morning: she could smoke some chagga, yeah, call Mr-Quality-He-Delivers and smoke some chagga and sleep well, have breakfast with Ly-on.
“Here is Chelsea Bridge,” Mohammed said.
“Just go through the lights,” the Adam-man said. “This is close enough.”
Mohammed pulled up and put his flashers on. A few cars whizzed by, it was getting late, quieter. Mhouse looking out of the window. Just trees behind pointed railings on both sides. She opened the door and stepped out on to the pavement. The Adam-man followed, awkwardly, stiffening up. Mohammed stayed behind the wheel, engine running.
“It’s incredibly kind of you—” Adam began.
“Where you live?” she said, interrupting, suddenly cautious. “Where you house, where you flat?”
She took in his rueful smile, unaware of the ironies clustering around her innocent question. He gestured behind him at the triangular patch of waste ground between the roadway and the river.
“Actually, I live there,” he said, still pointing. “I don’t have a home at the moment.”