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.’
But I’ve always had a horror of being taken for a tart. Perhaps I went too far the other way: I have often been mistaken for a teacher in my plaid skirts, twin sets and flat shoes. I am a very methodical woman, which is why I keep a set of old clothes for when I sweep the chimney, once a year. These clothes were certainly not intended to be worn in London. I was wearing one of Derek’s old Tortoise Society sweatshirts, which was screen-printed with a picture of a smiling tortoise, a pair of pale blue polyester bell-bottom trousers and black plimsolls. I was covered in soot. My fingernails were black half moons. If I had seen myself coming I would have crossed the road to avoid me. I wanted to turn myself inside out, like a reversible jumper I once had. I was painfully cold. Icy draughts blew up the sleeves and down the neck of my baggy sweatshirt and played around my chest and back. I moaned with each gust of wind and there was no reaching for a warm sweater, no coat hanging on the back of the door, no fire to crouch in front of when I got home. I had no home.
I hope you’ll believe that normally I am a fastidiously clean woman. I bathe every day, which is considered eccentric behaviour amongst my friends and relations. Ordinarily I would never leave the house without first cleaning my fingernails and making sure that my anorak hood was straight. So my instinct now was to keep my filthy self hidden away in the dark. But darkness is cold, so once again I was pulled towards the illusion of warmth given by the lights of King’s Cross Station.
The three women were still sitting on the floor. They were now singing a maudlin Irish song, something about a lovelorn butcher boy who hanged himself on his wedding day. I would have liked to join them and ask if they’d got a spare coat I could borrow; but I knew that their singing would soon attract the attention of the authorities. In the city where I lived I have often seen buskers bullied away from shop doorways by policemen; once, even, a violinist playing Mozart, the height of musical respectability. So I kept away from the group and walked around the station looking for dropped coins.
Envy is a destructive emotion but I envied everyone I saw that night. I envied them their coats, sweaters, shoes, boots, handbags, money, chips, cups of tea, clean skin and clear consciences. I envied them the beds they would sleep in, the front doors they would open, the cigarettes they would smoke. I’ve never had time for people such as my husband, who constantly indulge themselves in self-pity. But I have to confess that, as I stood and watched the people purposefully walking about the station, I felt very sorry for myself indeed.
It was now eleven o’clock. Drunks in dinner jackets joined the queues for the trains. A pretty girl met a pretty man off a train from Scotland. They said ‘I love you’ to each other. The girl was more enthusiastic than the man. An old woman with a shaking disease pulled a too-heavy suitcase towards the taxi rank. A skinhead with a spider tattooed on his neck ran athletically for a train and caught it, leaving shock waves of public alarm behind him. ‘Only muggers run, ‘said a man to his wife.
The automatic doors opened and a pair of policemen walked through. I stood behind a pillar and watched them stop the song about the suicidal Irish butcher. The three chaotic women stood up unsteadily and fussed over their slithering mountain of plastic bags. Eventually they moved on and out into the wet night. The policemen watched them go, then they strolled around the station, looking for minor infringements of the law.
I, who had infringed the law in the most major way possible, moved around the station to avoid them. Blue lights flashed outside and more policemen poured through the entrances. Some of them were trying to control wild-eyed Alsatian dogs which were straining on short choke chains. They looked as though they hated humanity and constantly lurched towards innocent passers-by, barking. One dog, called Baskerville by his handler, was in such a frenzy that it had to be choked into silence, watched, at a distance, by censorious British animal lovers. There was an announcement on the loudspeakers:
‘The nine-thirty football special from Leeds has now arrived. Members of the public are asked to keep clear and assist the police in their duties. British Rail apologizes to members of the bona fide public for any inconvenience they may suffer as a result of football fans passing through this station.’
Hidden behind a pile of luggage I could see the train as it pulled in with its cargo of young men. They were waving red and white scarves out of the carriage windows. They were singing, “Ere we go, ‘ere we go, ‘ere we go.’ The sound crackled around the station. There was enough electric power in their combined voices to run a fleet of milk floats. As the train stopped, the policemen ran and stood two to each carriage door. The Alsatians seemed not to like the colours red and white; they leapt at the open carriage windows, as if their teeth were aching for football supporters’ flesh. Baskerville was head-butting the carriage in frustrated frenzy. All down the train, carriage windows were slammed shut. The singing stopped. The dogs were out of control. The bona fide public corralled themselves into corners of the station, away from the dog handlers who strained and shouted, ‘Sit! Sit!’ and choked the dogs into uneasy submission. Baskerville was the last to quieten down; his eyes were rolling around in his crazy head. He yipped and yapped and scooted his powerful haunches along the platform towards the train. He was sitting, but only just.
A police inspector ordered the carriage doors to be opened. Then he spoke through a mechanized loud hailer to the young men. ‘Once on the platform you must line up in fours, and wait until everyone is off the train. You will then be escorted from the station to the Underground. Anyone trying to leave the station unescorted will be arrested and charged with …’ The inspector broke off, a note of uncertainty had crept into his voice.
A foolhardy youth wearing a primrose-coloured sweater shouted, ‘Charged wiv what … ?’ Baskerville was brought through the crowd to answer the youth’s question. When everyone was assembled on the platform and the train had been checked for damage, the youths, dogs and policemen began their sullen procession.
A youth said, ‘I don’t wanna go on the Underground. I only live round the corner.’ A policeman pushed him back into the ranks.
Where have I seen a similar sight? I think hard and remember. It was All Our Yesterdays on television. People from the ghetto were being rounded up and taken somewhere. A policeman is looking at me from across the concourse. I blush under my soot, look at my nonexistent watch, remember an appointment and walk out of the station and back into London.
Outside there is a little hut full of newspapers and pornographic magazines. I look at the headlines: ‘HOMELESS — NEW SHOCK’. I riffle quickly through the pages. Nothing about me murdering a man earlier in the day. The newspaper seller says, ‘If you ain’t buyin’ get your dirty hands off that paper.’ I say I am sorry and cross the road with a crowd of other people, grateful for the accidental shelter of their umbrellas. The rain is dark and spiky; within a few minutes I am saturated. Bubbles froth along the rubber edging of my plimsolls. There is no point in trying to avoid the puddles, so I walk through them. I don’t know what to do with my hands. There they are, jiggling away at my sides, carrying nothing, holding nothing, pushing nothing. I try crossing my arms but it feels wrong, all right for standing at my back door and taking the night air, but out of place in London in the
rain after midnight. Hands on hips? … No … too suggestive. Hands behind back? … Ludicrous … looks like I’m being satirical about the Royal Family. So I let them hang down and after a while I forget them and am comfortable. This is how men walk.
A sign tells me that I’m in the London Borough of Camden, a place I’ve never heard of. I look around and on the opposite side of the road I see a storybook castle with turrets and spires and many-arched windows. Is it Westminster Abbey? Is the River Thames around the next corner? Then I see a sign on the beautiful building says: ‘St Pancras Station’ and I feel foolish. Is Buckingham Palace nearby? Where is Piccadilly Circus? I think about my children. How will they cope when they find out their mother is a murderess? I want an anorak, a cigarette, a cup of tea, an umbrella, a bar of soap and a chair. I walk on. The buildings are swirling over my head. I cannot encompass them; they are too many, they are too high. They are built of yellow, dirty brick, when I am used to red brick. They are not friendly buildings, they are too important: headquarters and official residences, and further on shops with impossible, unthinkable prices.
I am frightened of London, I want to go home. My feet are numb, I don’t know where to go, or which street to turn down. I want to rewind my life on a video machine and wake up yesterday morning. I can’t cry; my heart is frozen inside me. There is no question of giving myself up to the police. What I have done is wicked and I shall be punished; but I shall punish myself.. There is no need for the law to intervene in what is now a private matter.
4 Excitement in Badger’s Copse Close
Greta was standing at the stove, stirring tinned rice pudding, when Maureen crashed through the kitchen door; coming from darkness into sudden fluorescent light.
‘Coventry has killed Gerald Fox!’
‘Coventry?’
‘Yes!’
‘Killed?’
‘Yes!’
‘Gerald Fox?’
‘YES!’
‘Coventry has killed Gerald Fox?’
‘YES!’
An explosion of enjoyment filled the kitchen. The two women, trembling and shocked, but also excited and happy, began to talk. Coventry’s life was examined for previous displays of aggression. Greta remembered the time that Coventry had spoken to her sharply once.
Greta had remarked that Derek didn’t deserve Coventry who, in Greta’s opinion, was younger, better-looking, nicer and far more interesting and intelligent than Derek.
Coventry had replied, very irritably, that Derek had married her when she was an ignorant teenager who was in and out of work, living in her parents’ house and having to obey her parents’ rules. Derek, however, was twenty-six, well established, in a job with prospects and already had his name on the council house waiting list.
To this, Greta said, ‘Big deal!’ Coventry had run out of Greta’s house and slammed the front door. Disappointing, in that it lacked drama perhaps, but worth two minutes in the telling. The two women felt important and were conscious of their high status in these dramatic events; after all, they were Coventry’s best friends.
They moved into the living-room and watched as official vehicles came to a halt outside the Foxes’ house. Greta did a count: three ambulances; five police cars; one white police van; a fire engine (had Coventry turned to arson as well?); three plain cars carrying six plain men; and a rocky little Citroën containing one gaudily dressed social worker. The street had seen nothing like it since a wedding reception had turned nasty and temporarily stopped the traffic while the men of both families slogged it out. Greta and Maureen went outside and joined the throng of neighbours standing behind the plastic ribbon of the police barricade. Every now and again all the heads turned to look at the Dakins’s house, where the murderess’s husband was expected home from work.
5 I Meet Mr Periwinkle
It is two o’clock in the morning. I am sitting outside the London Foot Hospital in a place called Fitzroy Square. I can’t walk another step, but the rain has stopped and my clothes have dried on me. I am grateful for such small mercies. To my delight I found three strong elastic bands inside the doorway. One I used to fasten my damp hair into a pony-tail, the other two I used to wrap around the superfluous folds of flapping cloth at my ankles. Bell-bottoms were the ultimate extreme of flares. I have only worn them once outside the house before and then a high wind blew up and billowed the surplus cloth. From the knees down I looked like a galleon in full sail. Derek was pleased when they were relegated to chimney-sweeping wear. He hates unconventional clothing. It unsettles him.
Before I went to sleep I wiped my hands and face with wet leaves from the square. I was desperate to get rid of the soot. Two nurses swaddled in warm cloaks passed me. They looked on curiously as I scrunched the leaves over my face. As they walked past me I heard one say, ‘I like the smell of autumn leaves as much as anybody, but sticking them up your nose is going too far.’ The other said, ‘That reminds me, I’m starting my psychiatric training next month.’
The wet leaves made no impression on the soot. Looking in a lamplit puddle I saw a dusky face staring back at me. I was reminded of the Black and White Minstrels, their horrible winking and grimacing and strutting around with canes and top hats. They were a firm favourite of Derek’s. He wrote to the BBC when the show was taken off. I remember one phrase in his letter, ‘Clean family entertainment.’ He signed himself: ‘Derek A. Dakin’.
My head lolls forward; am I asleep? I don’t know, hard to tell, my brain is tired. My eyes drop shut… . The sun is shining. I am warm. An old man with mutton-chop whiskers and kindly eyes is holding out his hands. ‘Come, my dear,’ he says. He pulls me to my feet. ‘I’m Mr Periwinkle,’ he says. ‘Breakfast is ready.’ He crosses the square and indicates that I am to follow him. We stop outside a tall house. ‘I live here with my invalid daughter, Emily,’ the old man explains. The front door is opened by Les Dawson wearing a pantomime cook’s costume. Les smirks as I squeeze by him in the narrow hall. Mr Periwinkle shows me into a room at the back of the house. Sunshine floods in, bleaching the colours of the furniture and decorations. Mr Periwinkle says, ‘Emily, we have a guest for breakfast.’
I hadn’t noticed the wheelchair in the corner or its occupant. Emily wheels herself towards me. Her little face is pale under her lace cap and brown ringlets. She lisps, ‘I saw you sleeping in the doorway last night. Were you dweadfully cold?’
I answer, ‘Upon my life I was most fearfully cold, Miss Periwinkle.’
‘I told Papa as soon as I was dwessed, didn’t I, Pa? I said, “It is our Cwistian duty to help that poor unfortunate. You must get weady at once and invite her to share our bweakfast.” Didn’t I, Papa?’
Mr Periwinkle kisses the tips of his daughter’s white fingers. ‘My little gal has not long to live,’ he confesses in an undertone. ‘But ain’t she just the most perfect angel you ever saw?’
Les Dawson brings in every breakfast food I’d ever heard of. I gorge myself on porridge and boiled eggs and toast and kidneys and kedgeree and bacon and sausages. I eat six slices of toast and drink five cups of scalding coffee. Emily nibbles on an arrowroot biscuit and sips on a thimble-sized cup of warm milk. Mr Periwinkle’s eyes twinkle at the end of the table as he watches me eat. Then he gets up and pokes the fire and invites me to sit by the hearth and tell my story. When I am seated opposite him I say, ‘There are two things you should know about me immediately. The first is that I am beautiful.’
‘Indeed you are, ma’am.’
‘The second is that yesterday I killed a man called Gerald Fox.’
‘Are you informing me that you are a murderer?’ says Mr Periwinkle, whose eyes have stopped twinkling. ‘In that case, Dawson, throw her out!’
As I am falling down the steps Les Dawson’s face looms over me. He is saying something about his mother-in-law… .
It was getting light. A dustbin lorry was making its way around the square. Birds were flapping about in group panic; time to start walking. The dustbin lorry ground up. Tw
o men walked briskly to the pile of black rubbish bags next to me. They both wore gloves and orange overalls. One was wearing horn-rimmed spectacles, the other a Russian fur hat. Spectacles shouted, ‘You’ll have to move, so’s we can get to them bags, lady.’
Russian Hat bellowed, ‘We’ve left you till last. Normally we start at the Foot Hospital. S’unusual for us to finish ‘ere, ain’t it, Spog?’
Spog adjusted his glasses and said, ‘Un’eardov. But we could see you needed your sleep.’
I said, ‘I’ve got cramp in both legs, I can’t move yet.
‘I ain’t surprised,’ Spog shouted over the grinding mechanism of the lorry. ‘Stuck in a bleedin’ doorway all night. ‘S a wonder you ain’t been interfered wiv’ an’ all. Some blokes ain’t fussy, you know. They’ll go with anyfing, even dossers.’
‘Can you help me up?’ I asked.
‘No we can’t,’ said Russian Hat. ‘We ain’t allowed to touch the public; ‘specially women, case they go complainin’ to somebody.’
The driver got out of the cab, a fat man with an Elvis Presley haircut and a string tie. He walked over to us with a showbiz swagger, as though he were appearing twice nightly at Caesar’s Palace. His voice was flat and hard. ‘Get out the way,’ he ordered. I was frightened of him. So were Spog and his mate. I tipped onto my side and pulled myself onto the pavement. My dead legs trailed behind me. Fat Man picked the rubbish bags up with one hand and slung them into the back of the lorry. He nodded the other two men back to work, then came back to where I was lying, rubbing my legs and feet back to life. He spoke from lips that looked like two pink slugs.
‘If I was Prime Minister, I’d pass a law that gave the Council the right to throw you, an’ your sort, into the back of my lorry. You’re rubbish. I’d have the dossers, the winos, the dope ‘eads, the whores, the glue sniffers, the pakis, the chinks, the darkies, the whole bleedin’ lot of you pulled to bits. Bones broke, heads off, mixed up by the mincer at the back of my motor. An’ you know what? I’d work for nothin’, ‘cos I’d be doin’ it for my country. You’re rubbish! Fuck off out of it!’