Bucket Nut Read online

  I would prefer something with its own wheels because then, if the worst happened, I could simply hitch it on to a car and move my whole home. If you want to move a Static you have to hoist it onto a flat-bed, and you can’t do it quickly.

  But when the Owner employed me, the Static was all he had. And I had to admit, smell or no, it beat dung out of a hostel.

  At the time, everything I owned could be stuffed in a carrier bag. After six months in the Static my possessions have expanded, but I’m still proud of the fact that in the event of a disaster I could be out of there, fully packed and ready for anything in ten minutes flat.

  In fact, I’ll tell you a secret – out of the things I carry at all times is a two-ounce tobacco tin, and in that tin is everything I need to make light, heat, food and take care of minor ailments. There are tallow-protected matches, a flat shaved candle, scalpel blades, wire, a flexible saw, waterproof plasters, needle and thread, aspirins, tea bags and chicken stock cubes. It is really amazing what you can get into a two-ounce tobacco tin if you are scientific.

  I got the idea out of an SAS Survival Handbook. It makes me feel better, and I’d recommend it to anyone who regularly wakes up in the middle of the night anxious about floods, fire, nuclear fallout or homelessness. Take a tip from me – be prepared for the worst and you’ll sleep better.

  Nighttime is the worst time. I like to be out and doing something rather than lying alone in the dark trying to sleep. That’s why being a night-watch-woman is such an ace job for me. I’m not supposed to go to sleep, and if I want company there’s always Ramses and Lineker, or a chat through the fence to some night-owl passerby.

  I finished my rounds and then went to the Static for a little nosh. Someone had taped an envelope to the door. I opened it and, by torchlight, read the message. It was today’s date, and the words – Tomorrow, 6 p.m., Mr Cheng.

  Mr Cheng doesn’t waste words. Mr Cheng doesn’t waste anything. He probably thinks I can’t read and he’s doing me a favour by writing short letters. He thinks anyone who isn’t Chinese is stupid, and compared to Mr Cheng perhaps they are. I could fold him up and put him in my knapsack. But I wouldn’t, because Mr Cheng doesn’t take too kindly to liberties.

  I put the note in my pocket and unlocked the door.

  I was well-pleased. Whatever Mr Cheng wanted me to do it meant extra ackers tomorrow. Extra ackers are always welcome. This job gives me the basic – a roof and food – but if I want a bit of a stash and to get my teeth fixed I need extra. That’s where the wrestling and Mr Cheng come in.

  I left the Static door open to clear the whiff of sea-mould. To tell the truth, I was a bit whiffy myself. Because of that argy-bargy with Bombshell’s boyfriend I hadn’t had a wash in Turnip Town.

  Harsh says a fighter should always be one hundred per cent strict about personal hygiene, so I pumped up the water and put two kettles full on the gas stove.

  There is a water heater, but it is electric powered and I don’t use electricity in the Static. If you use electricity you get electricity bills. The Static is hooked up to the mains and metered, but the one who reads the meter and decides what I should pay is Mr Gambon. And the first couple of months after I moved in were such a rip-off I decided not to use the sodding stuff. I’ve got torches and I’ve got gas. When I run out of gas I buy a new bottle, and when a battery runs down I buy another.

  I’m in control. Right?

  I had a wash, and I put on a clean tracksuit. Then I made a pot of tea and warmed up a couple of cans of stew. Harsh says I should eat green vegetables, but there were potatoes and carrot in the stew. They may not be green but they are veg, so I reckoned they’d do. He also says I shouldn’t eat white bread. But I don’t like brown, especially the stuff with all the grain left in. Sometimes it hurts your teeth when you bite on it.

  And sometimes I think Harsh is full of shit. Just about everything he tells me to do is hard work or tastes bad.

  I compromised and ate two slices of white and two of brown.

  While I ate I stared at my poster. The torch was propped so that the circle of light brought it up really nicely. ‘Eva Wylie’, it said, ‘The London Lassassin.’

  In the picture I was facing right with my head turned towards the camera. I was wearing black and making a bicep. It was a pretty good bicep, though I say it myself who shouldn’t.

  ‘Savage,’ I said to myself, ‘really savage.’

  It made me feel as if I was getting somewhere. It made me feel real.

  After a while, though, I looked down at the saucepan. I shouldn’t eat out of the pan, I know, but it’s only me, so I do. The remains of the stew had hardened at the bottom, and somehow it reminded me of those dead foxes on the road after they had been pounded and flayed by car after car after car.

  I wondered where the time had gone and I didn’t feel so good any more. Time is like that sometimes – it seems to leapfrog over itself. It leaves you feeling lost.

  Lineker was barking, so I shook myself and went out to see what was up.

  Lineker is beautiful. He’s all muscle. His hair is so short and shiny it looks like someone coloured him with a spray can. But his bark … it’s sort of falsetto and hysterical – like the voice of a small red-headed man.

  Ramses, on the other hand, is bow-legged and short-necked. He rarely barks, but when he does it’s like a bass guitar – quite musical really, but sinister.

  There were a couple of kids outside the fence poking sticks at Lineker. Lineker was going ape. But Ramses just stood in the shadows waiting.

  If you see two boys together you see two people up to no good. That’s a fact of life. I’d bet you a week’s wages three-quarters of the mischief in this world is done by males between the ages of eight and eighteen.

  So what? As long as they don’t do it on my patch I couldn’t care less.

  I said, ‘You’re out late.’ Nothing hasty, see. I could have run them off straight away, but I kept my relaxed mental attitude. They were people to talk to after all.

  The lad with the stick stepped back from the fence. His mate said, ‘We was just talking to your dog.’

  ‘You want to watch him,’ I said. ‘He’s a bit vicious.’

  ‘My brother’s got a Doberman,’ the lad with the stick told no one in particular. His mate was squinting at me with a funny look on his face.

  ‘You ain’t a man,’ he said suddenly. ‘You’re a bleedin’ tart.’

  ‘Never!’ his hoppo said.

  ‘Straight up.’

  ‘Godzilla!’ He threw his stick at the fence, and they sprinted off into the night. Lineker went after them barking furiously.

  ‘Fuck off, gob fart!’ I yelled.

  It was a pity really. Since the police moved the girls from Mandala Street it’s been a bit quiet on this corner. I’d be lucky if I spoke to another soul till the men came at seven-thirty and I opened up the yard.

  The fellers don’t talk to me much but they do respect me. They respect me for two reasons. One – I can handle the dogs. And two – there’s been no thieving from the yard since I’ve been in charge. None at all.

  And that’s all I ask from people. A little respect. Credit where it’s due.

  Chapter 4

  I woke up at about two in the afternoon. Sunlight squeezed through the orange curtains and made the Static look as if it was on fire.

  The giant crusher was pounding away and there was the usual sound of crashing and wrenching and men shouting at each other.

  It’s never too quiet to sleep in a wrecker’s yard.

  I got up quickly and rushed through my suppling routine.

  I was going to visit my mum, and I had to get there before three.

  If you want to talk to my mum while she’s sensible that’s the time to do it. She doesn’t get up before one, and she’s a complete rat-bag until she has her first drink. Then she has a couple of good hours and after that it’s downhill all the way till she goes to sleep at about four in the morning.

 
She’s had a hard life, so you shouldn’t blame her.

  When you say someone has had a hard life you picture someone old. Don’t you? Go on, admit it.

  But actually, my mum isn’t forty yet, and she’d look all right if she took care of herself. When she goes out in the evening all made up and dressed like a Christmas tree she looks pretty tasty – with the light behind her. You’d never know she was stoned out of her tiny mind and that within a couple of hours all the make-up would be smeared round her chin.

  She lives on the second floor of a high rise – which is just as well as the lift never works and coming home in the state she does, if she lived any higher she’d spend most nights on the stairs.

  Even so, the wind on the second floor walkway was something awful. I knocked on her door and waited.

  When she came, she only opened the door a crack and peered out like a scared rabbit. She always looks scared when she opens the door, and, knowing the life she leads, I’m not surprised.

  Kids whizzed behind me on skateboards and she flinched.

  ‘I s’pose you’d better come in,’ she said, and turned away.

  As she passed the bedroom door she pulled it shut. That meant she had scored last night and he was still in there sleeping it off.

  Like I said, you mustn’t blame her – everybody’s got to pay the rent somehow.

  We went through to the kitchen.

  Now, you might think the kitchen would be the worst room in this tip my ma calls home. But it isn’t. It’s the best. And the reason for that is that she never uses it except for making the occasional cup of instant coffee. Eating comes second to drinking in Ma’s life. When she gets hungry she eats burgers.

  The first thing she said when we got there was, ‘If he comes in, you’re my sister, right?’

  I laughed, and she must have seen something in my face because she said, ‘Scrub that – you’re a neighbour.’

  I said, ‘Speaking of sisters …’

  ‘Don’t start all that again,’ she interrupted. ‘I’ve got the most awful head.’

  I filled the kettle without saying anything, and made two cups of instant. She got a bottle from the cupboard under the sink and dumped some in her cup.

  ‘Just to cool it down,’ she said. She can’t stop lying, Ma.

  I waited a minute or so, and then I said, ‘It’s important, Ma. Have you heard anything?’

  ‘It’s the only reason you come here,’ she said. ‘Pestering me about her. You don’t give a brass farthing about your poor old …’

  ‘Mum,’ I supplied for her. She can’t bring herself to use the word.

  ‘Don’t call me that,’ she snapped, looking over her shoulder at the door. She kicked it shut. Her feet were bare and dirty, and her big toes were strained over sideways from being squeezed into pointy shoes.

  ‘What should I call you?’ I asked. I was beginning to get a mood on.

  ‘I’ve got a name.’

  ‘I’ve got a sister!’

  ‘Why don’t you shut your face!’ she yelled. ‘She doesn’t want to know you. Look at you!’

  ‘How do you know?’ I yelled back. ‘We were close …’

  ‘Years ago.’

  ‘Not that many…’

  Just then, in spite of the screaming, we both heard the toilet flush.

  Ma got to her feet. She picked up her cup and the coffee I’d made for myself. She went off back to the bedroom.

  ‘See yourself out,’ she said as she left.

  I wanted to break something.

  But early training counts for a lot, and if there was one thing we learned as kids it was always to tiptoe around Ma’s men. If Ma had a man in the house we either got out fast or we pretended we weren’t there. Ma was never too choosy about who she brought home.

  That was her downfall, really.

  I went into the sitting-room. I was thinking that Ma should never’ve had kids.

  But she did. And one of them was me.

  The other one was Simone.

  The sitting-room was a pit. It was thick with days of old smoke. The beer cans and ashtrays spilled off the coffee table and onto the floor. Someone had broken a bottle against the telly and a half eaten burger was mashed into the rug. All in all it looked like one of those country roads I don’t go for.

  If Ma had ever had a boyfriend like Harsh, I was thinking, things would’ve been a lot cleaner. Then Harsh might have been …

  I stopped thinking about that.

  What I wanted was behind the telly under the pile of Ma’s old True Love magazines. She doesn’t read that garbage any more – even Ma wises up sometimes – but, whenever she moves, she always carts the old ones along with her. She calls them her books.

  Under Ma’s books was an old photo album. Our nan left it to Ma when she died. There was a picture in the album I wanted to see. It was the last one ever taken of Simone and me together.

  I turned the pages quickly. I didn’t want to look at the ones of Ma when she was young. They always made me feel sort of choked, because Simone, when she was ten, and Ma, when she was ten, looked quite alike. Too alike for comfort.

  I found the page. And there we were in our nan’s front room.

  I know exactly when that picture was taken. It was Simone’s twelfth birthday – two days before they put a place of safety order on her and took her away. So it was two days before the last time I ever saw her.

  Usually, when we got sent away, they’d send us away together. Or when we got back or bunked off we’d meet up at Ma’s. Or, if we couldn’t find Ma, we’d go to Nan’s.

  But that time, they split us up. And about a year after that Nan died.

  Simone never came home again.

  I heard later she got fostered out, and she must have liked the people because she stayed. Or, more likely, they liked her and persuaded her to stay.

  It was hard not to like Simone, but I have to tell you, she was not a strong character. She could be persuaded. Especially if she didn’t have me along to remind her of where we belonged.

  I stared at her long-ago face. She was so pretty. Most people never knew we were sisters. I was taller than her even though I was a year younger. And I was never pretty.

  The most important thing was to remember her face. Sometimes I have nightmares that I’m walking down the street and there’s a beggar with her hand out. And I walk right by. I don’t recognise Simone until she calls out to me. ‘Eva,’ she says, ‘I’d’ve known you anywhere. But you’ve forgotten me.’

  Well, I haven’t forgotten. And one day I’ll find her. It’s got to happen because everyone says blood’s thicker than water. For the same reason, I know that Simone is looking for me. She has to be. And she won’t find me unless she finds Ma first, because a lot has happened to me since we last saw each other.

  A lot has happened to Ma too, but at least she stayed in the same borough. That’s what I’m counting on. And that’s why I see Ma every couple of months. Apart, that is, from the fact that blood is thicker than water even where Ma is concerned.

  Someone has to keep this family together.

  Chapter 5

  The noises coming from Ma’s bedroom sounded like someone having an asthma attack.

  I knew I was safe to nose around in the sitting-room for a while. I didn’t often get the chance. I closed the album on Simone’s face and I started going through the rest of the pile of books looking for letters.

  You see, with Ma, you never knew. She threw away unopened letters because she was afraid of bills and summonses.

  ‘It’s only trouble,’ she’d say. ‘It’s trouble come with a stamp on the envelope.’

  Sometimes, after she’s had a few too many she’ll just kick aside anything that comes through the door. She could have won half a million on the pools, or be up in court the next day for defrauding the Social Security. She’d never know.

  I went to my nan’s funeral with a social worker. They let me out for the occasion.

  Ma wasn’t there
. She said she was too emotional, but if you ask me, she was too horizontal.

  I went because I thought Simone would be there. And – you’ll think I’m a right cow – I was quite grateful to Nan for providing a time for me to get out of Youth Custody and see Simone.

  But Simone wasn’t there either.

  It was a big question to me, afterwards – why? Why hadn’t Simone come?

  Ma didn’t know. She got really pissed off with me asking all the time.

  Months later, when I finished my sentence and I was back at home, I found a letter. It was from Simone’s social worker, and it said that after a great deal of consultation with Simone’s new family it was felt it would not be in the best interests of the child to expose her to such a fraught occasion.

  In other words they’d stopped her.

  If Ma had told me that she’d have saved me months of worry and disappointment.

  But Ma hadn’t even opened the letter.

  See what I mean?

  ‘In the best interests of the child’ – now there’s a phrase. There was a joke that did the rounds when I was a kid. It went – What’s the difference between a pit-bull terrier and a social worker? Answer – the pit-bull terrier gives the child back.

  I had to stop myself thinking about the old days because I was getting a bit choked.

  But thinking about social workers gave me an idea.

  It was years since I last went to see Simone’s foster family. Maybe I could find their address and pay them a visit. They wouldn’t like it. They hadn’t last time, but that was when I was still a kid and hadn’t learned discipline and a relaxed mental attitude.

  The asthma sounds from Ma’s bedroom died away. In the silence that followed I got to my feet and went to the door.

  Then a loud voice said, ‘Where’s me fuckin’ wallet?’

  I should have left earlier.

  Ma said something I couldn’t hear.

  Then he said, ‘Give us it back, slag!’