Rebuilding Coventry (3 page)

I
jumped off the swing and ran up the hill towards the station. On my way I
passed buildings that were no longer there. An opera house where I’d seen
Cinderella arrive at the ball in a twinkling coach, drawn by four Shetland
ponies wearing plumed head-dresses. A hotel which had a basement bar with pink
lights and was frequented by young men who powdered their noses and were served
drinks by a barman who wore high heels. A tea-shop where old women sat and
caught their breath and sorted their shopping bags before making for the bus. A
pub called the White Swan where, as a child, I had felt drunk just sniffing the
beery smell which escaped whenever the door opened. A baker’s shop where the
proprietor stood in the window icing tiered wedding cakes, proud of her skill
and modestly accepting the compliments of the small crowd that always gathered
outside on the pavement to watch. A pet shop where puppies frisked in too-small
cages. A garage with two petrol pumps on the oil-stained pavements where, after
rain, mad colours appeared for which no adult could ever give a logical
explanation. The hardware shop where kettles and enamel mugs and calendars and
a thousand more things were hung outside to chink and rattle in the slightest
breeze. The drinking club where big men in loud suits used to emerge at four o’clock
in the afternoon, wincing at the daylight.

All
gone. Everything gone. Bulldozed. Flattened and taken away in lorries to a tip.
And nobody tried to stop it because nobody knew the words or the procedure and
anyway they were mesmerized by the word ‘progress’, which was given in
explanation. A road was built in the place of the buildings. The same road
raced around the city, slicing off the river and the parks, forcing the
pedestrians underground into stinking subways where security cameras monitored
their nervous progress.

I
arrived at the top of the hill and stood opposite the station. I looked down on
the little city. The spires of abandoned churches pricked the sky. To my left
was a ‘Sandwich Centre’, to my right a ‘Money Centre’, behind me a ‘Transport
Centre’. All three signs were made of daglo orange plastic and had tipsy black
letters. I turned and looked into the window of the ‘Transport Centre’. A
tired-looking man was sitting behind a counter, speaking into a radio
microphone. A sign above him said in multi-coloured felt-tip:

Notice to Passengers

1.   No
fish and chips in taxis (Also no hot food)

2.   No
spitting in taxis

3.   No
fighting in taxis

4.   No
vomiting in taxis (Else pay £5 and clean up mess, £10 at weekends)

5.   After
midnight £2 deposit to be paid to driver before commencing journey

6.   You
travel at your own risk!

7.   Anyone
leaving taxi without paying full fare will be found and
dealt
with

Rule number seven
frightened me quite a lot because I was planning to evade my train fare by
forcing myself through the ticket barrier if necessary. But when I arrived at
the station I saw that the interior had been modernized. The ticket barrier had
gone. British Rail had kindly removed this obstacle to my escape and the
station now had an ‘open policy’. Anyone could stroll in off the street and
avail themselves of the facilities.

As I
walked along the covered wooden bridge which spanned the railway lines and led
to the various platforms, I heard an announcement that the eighteen
twenty-three from Nottingham would shortly be arriving at platform three. The
train would not be stopping until it reached London St Pancras. The first-class
carriages were at the front of the train, the second-class carriages at the
rear. And the buffet car was conveniently situated somewhere between the two.

Legitimate
travellers came out of the Travellers Fare buffet on platform three, where a
sign exhorted: ‘Grabba Bacon Butty’. The train arrived and I got on it and
stood in a corridor. I lied my way to London St Pancras via a sympathetic ticket
collector.

‘My
husband is working in London. I’ve just had a telephone call to say that he’s
been crushed by a pile of bricks.’

By now
I was sobbing genuine tears of shock. The ticket collector dabbed at my sooty
face with a British Rail paper towel and said, ‘Give me your address, love, and
we’ll say nowt else about it.’ I lied through my tears and gave the address of
the type of house I’d always wanted:

‘The
Hollyhocks’

Rose
Briar Lane

Little
Sleeping

Derbyshire

He wrote it down. Then he
made his way to the buffet car and, following him, I heard snatches of his
conversation. ‘Lovely woman … husband crushed by bricks … intensive
care … cleaning chimney.’

I
stopped crying when a woman in an overall plonked a cardboard carton of sweet
tea in front of me and said, ‘Don’t worry, love. My husband had a central
heating pipe go through him once, but he plays snooker twice a week now.’

With or
without the pipe? I wondered and laughed.

The
woman looked nervously around the carriage and said, ‘You’d better come in the
kitchen.’

For the
rest of the journey I sat on an upturned bread crate and sobbed while the
buffet bar staff served, toasted, microwaved and bickered in the hot, confined
space around me. To please them I swallowed two aspirins, washed down with a
British Rail miniature of brandy.

It was
dark when I stumbled and fell off the train at St Pancras Station. I lay on my
back on the platform and saw my first dark London sky through the mottled glass
of the high-spanning arched roof. Eager hands helped me to my feet but I didn’t
stop to thank them. I was off and running into London.

Right
or left? Left. I ran down dirty steps. An illuminated sign ahead said: ‘King’s
Cross’. I stood at a crossing. A traffic light ordered red buses and black
taxis to stop for me. I crossed and went into the station. I needed to go to
the lavatory urgently. I looked frantically for a sign; it was there. The
friendly symbol of an armless woman in a triangular frock.

I ran
down the steps towards a bad smell. A turnstile. A notice: 10p. I didn’t have
10p. My bladder was bursting. A disgruntled black woman looked up from her
knitting. She was the attendant. Her eyes slid over my dirty clothes, my black
hands and face.

‘Can
you let me through, please? I must go to the toilet.’

‘Ten
pee,’ the woman said. She didn’t smile. ‘I haven’t got ten pee,’ I said.

A queue
had built up behind me. A little girl was crying. Her legs were slapped; she
cried louder. I moved aside to let the irritable mother of the little girl
through. This woman had two large suitcases, a shoulder-bag and a crying child
to squeeze through the turnstile.

The
attendant watched as the woman juggled her burdens. The backs of the little
girl’s legs were marked with her mother’s palm-prints. The harassed mother passed
through into the tiled paradise. Her little daughter’s pathetic crying echoed
and was then muffled, as a cubicle door was slammed shut.

I asked
again, ‘Please let me in.’

The
attendant got to her feet. I sensed that rage was never far from her and it was
present now. ‘You go away, you bad woman. You can’t get nothin’ for nothin’.
You gotta pay like all the people. I ain’t havin’ you in here with your meths
and your drugs and your nastiness.’

She
barred my way with her massive body. She was the Keeper of the Turnstile. The
Controller of Bladders. The Director of Bowels. To enter her kingdom I needed a
magical piece of silver.

‘What
can I do?’ I asked her. ‘Where can I go?’

‘That’s
your problem,’ she answered. ‘S’your fault for livin’ like you does.’

She
thought I was a tramp. So did the women coming in and out of the turnstile.
They were looking at my dirty clothes and skin. They avoided touching me with
fastidious care. I went back up the steps to the station concourse. I saw other
badly dressed dirty women; they had terrible teeth and flapping shoes. They
were sitting on the floor passing a sherry bottle between them. There were
three of them. I approached them and asked them for ten pence … ‘for the
toilet’.

‘Now I ain’t
‘eard that one before,’ said the eldest of the three.

‘I’m
desperate to go,’ I said and danced a little jig on the marble floor.

‘Go
round the back, then,’ said a purple-faced Scotswoman. ‘Dinna waste money on pissin’
and shittin’. Tha’s just throwin’ yer money away.’

‘Round
the back?’

The
eldest got unsteadily to her feet. ‘She means the hotel. Nip in the hotel …
the Northern. Wait till the receptionist has turned her back and just nip in.’

‘It’s
lovely in there,’ said the youngest, wiping her mouth. ‘I ‘ad a wash in there
last week. They’ve got flowered soap and a real towel. I did me feet ‘fore I
got chucked out.’

I now
had to concentrate totally on keeping my bladder under control. I walked
quickly round to the back of the station, past the lines of waiting taxis,
until I saw the hotel. I hurried up the steps. I looked through the glass
doors. Many people in uniforms were lounging around the reception desk. I could
not wait. I walked through the doors and turned right. I saw a sign: ‘GENTLEMEN’.
I walked towards it. I heard a shout behind me, a young voice … female… ‘Can I help you?’

I didn’t
look back. I pushed into the door marked ‘GENTLEMEN’. The smell was like
another, invisible, door to be pushed through. A young man was standing at the
urinal; his eyes widened and he turned his body away when he saw me. He
splashed his white shoes. ‘Wrong place,’ he said.

I
crashed a cubicle door open … empty. I tore at my clothes and sat down. The
relief was immediate, my body relaxed … I was floating. When every last drop
was drained from my body I stood up and tucked my clothes about me. Glancing
down, I saw a pair of white shoes at the bottom of the door. I stood very
still, waiting for the shoes to move. Eventually the young man said: ‘Are you
coming out, then?’

I didn’t
speak. I didn’t move. I waited. Water dripped, the smell intensified, I could
hear his breath. He lit a cigarette. There was a commotion outside the door and
a crowd of loud, masculine voices entered. White Shoes moved away.

‘There’s
a woman in there,’ he said excitedly.

There
was rumbling laughter, then a knock on the cubicle door. ‘Anybody there?’

I didn’t
speak… . Anything I said could only be ridiculous.

‘Are
you all right, love?’ A Midlands accent like my own, but overlaid with drink
and laughter. ‘If you’re feeling poorly, I’ll come in there ‘n help you. I’ve gorra
cistificate for First Aid.’

His
shoes were tightly laced, black and reassuring, with polished uppers and badly
replaced soles and heels. When I didn’t reply he spoke again. ‘Come out and
have a drink with us, duck.’

Another
pair of shoes appeared at the bottom of the door. Grey, tasselled slip-ons. ‘Come
on, Arthur, there’s no time for a drink. We’ll miss the train. She’s bound to
be a slag anyway, in’t she?’

Arthur
said sadly, ‘I’ve known some bleddy lovely slags in my time. First gel I went
with wurra slag. You could ‘ave a laugh with a slag.

You
knew where you were in them days. Course it’s different now —unless you’ve gorra
condom on yer, even a slag don’t wanna know yer. So, where does it leave yer?
Yer
forced
to go to Soho and look for a pro. And
she
wants fifty quid
for a bit 0’ light relief! How can
I
afford fifty quid? Who
can,
‘part
from bleddy stockbrokers and suchlike? Bleddy London. You’ve gorra be a soddin’
millionaire to live ‘ere. Two pound a pint! Three pound fifty for a fry-up in a
caff! An’ the price of an ‘otel room! Well, ‘s’no wonder folks’re sleepin’ on
the bleddy pavements. I tell you, I wunt live in London if you stuck diamonds
up me bum.’

White
Shoes said: ‘They’re
all
slags … women, every bloody one of ‘em,
when it comes down to it … wherever they live.’

Arthur
said, dangerously:
‘My Wife Is A Woman.’

White
Shoes went on, oblivious to the threat in Arthur’s voice, ‘So was my ex-wife
but
she
ran off, din’t she? With a spade.’

‘Keen
gardener, was she?’ said Arthur.

White
Shoes continued, ‘Your wife could be getting out of somebody’s bed right now… as I’m speaking…’

But
White Shoes spoke no more. It sounded as though his throat was being squeezed.
I watched the assorted shoes scuffling about and listened to the parliamentary
sound of men fighting. Then, when I judged that they had moved far enough away
from my cubicle door, I flung it open and ran out of the lavatory. As I sped
past them I got a quick impression of Arthur squeezing White Shoe’s face into a
gargoyle shape.

It was summer inside the
hotel but outside it was a cold autumn. As I walked back towards the main road
I began to feel self-conscious about my appearance. I have always dressed carefully,
choosing clothes that played down my figure. With my looks I can’t afford to
wear anything too noticeable. My daughter Mary once said, ‘You must be the only
woman in the world who hasn’t had her ears pierced.’