Bucket Nut (12 page)

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 and 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-boyfriend 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.

But this time I wanted to talk. It was too big to keep to myself.

Also I wanted someone to understand why I was going to wring Auntie Lo's plump little neck like a dirty dish rag. And why I was going to lob bricks through the Beijing Garden window and duff up
Mr Cheng till he looked like Chicken Chop Suey. I wanted Goldie to know why I was going to do these things. I didn't want her to think I was mean with no reason.

‘Eva!' Goldie said suddenly.

‘What?'

‘What are you doing? You'll cut your hand.'

I looked down and saw that somehow I had broken the handle off my mug.

‘Don't know me own strength,' I said. But it had me worried. How do you do a thing like that without knowing you've done it?

‘Go back to bed,' she said. ‘You look dreadful.'

Just then her friend Rob came tap-tapping at the door and she went to answer it. I realised that the men were leaving for the night and soon I would have to lock up and let the dogs out.

I heard Goldie say, ‘Just a minute, I'll get my coat.'

She came back saying, ‘He's here. Will you be all right, Eva? I won't be gone long.'

I was feeling so rough I didn't even answer.

‘I'll be back soon, honestly,' she said, shrugging on her jacket.

I mean, how could she? If she was worried enough to ask me how I felt shouldn't she be worried enough to stop in with me?

So I said nothing, and she went out with that bumdrop, Rob, from the yard. All for a few units of free electricity. Power on the cheap. Shocking! Ha-bloody-ha.

I turned off the light and sat in the dark watching telly, not thinking.

It was on the local news.

It really did look like old films of the war.

The newsreader was saying, ‘An explosion in the early hours of this morning in a North London drinking club … the emergency services searching through the rubble … it is still not known how many … the police have issued an appeal for anyone in the vicinity of Harrow Road at approximately 3 a.m. this morning …'

I was so amazed I stood up to watch. You'll think I'm bleeding daft but it seemed more real on telly. I expect it was the lights – it was all
so clear and bright on the bricks and beams and glass. When I was there the dust hadn't settled. There had been loads of dust and smoke and I suppose that was what made it seem like a dream.

I just stood there gawping. There was hardly a wall left standing. That whole shebeen was a heap of bricks and burnt timber. The only people you could see were firemen in their yellow helmets. I was half expecting to see the screaming woman and I was glad she was gone. I didn't want to see her again. Because she would look more real on telly too, and she was bad enough in a dream.

I turned the telly off and went to find my jacket. It wasn't there, and then I remembered that it was ruined too. So I unearthed the old padded one I used to wear before I got into leather. I put it on and went out.