Rebuilding Coventry

  19 Boots to Change My Life

  ‘Into fifties stuff, are you?’ said the girl in the shoe shop.

  ‘Fifties what?’

  ‘Fifties, as in nineteen-fifties,’ she said, looking at my suit and coat. ‘You want some roach killers like these?’ she said, showing me a pair of spiky stilettos with pointed toes.

  ‘Winkle-pickers,’ I said. ‘We used to call them winkle-pickers in my day.’

  ‘When was your day?’ she asked.

  ‘Nineteen fifty-seven,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, so you’re not into fifties nostalgia, then?’

  ‘No, I’m the real thing. Could I see a pair of comfortable ankle boots, please? Something I can run in?’

  I love my boots. I keep looking at them and feeling the soft leather. I like the way the laces bind them tight around my feet and ankles. I could run ten miles, dance a ballet or climb a rock face in them.

  ‘I want to wear them now,’ I said to the girl. She took my fifty-pound note and my old plimsolls and gave me back thirty pounds, one penny and a carrier bag, which contained my disgraceful old shoes. The boots are so soft that they have already taken on the shape of my feet. I can see every one of my toes, and the slight bunion on each foot. I love my boots. I intend to buy them a tube of black polish. These boots are going to keep me out of prison, find me a job and change my life.

  20 Sidney Comes Up for a Breath

  ‘Ruth?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s Coventry!’

  ‘Oh hello, Coy, how are you?’

  ‘I’m very well, how are you?’

  ‘I’ve had a bad tummy, due to a dubious chicken, but I’m all right now. How’s Derek and the kids?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘I’m not at home, am I?’ ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘No, I’m in London. Hasn’t Sidney told you?’

  ‘Told me what?’

  ‘I’m in a bit of trouble.’ ‘Shoplifting?’

  ‘No. He didn’t tell you?’ ‘You’ve left Derek?’

  ‘I can’t believe he didn’t tell you.’ ‘You’ve got cancer; you’re in hospital.’ ‘No.’

  ‘You’ve run off with another man?’

  ‘No.’

  Ruth sighed. ‘Look, I’ll fetch Sidney. He’s in the pool with his snorkel gear, so I may have to wait for him to come up for a breath.’

  ‘I’m in a phone box, Ruth. Hurry.’

  I had put three pounds of my precious money into the slot before Sidney came to the phone.

  ‘Coy? Sorry, couldn’t find my fags.’

  ‘Hello, Sidney.’

  ‘Look, Coy, I told you to give me a week.’

  ‘I’m frightened. I was passing the phone box and I had all these fifty-pence pieces. I bought some boots and she gave me five pounds’ worth of silver.’

  ‘Look, stop crying; you know it upsets me.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell Ruth?’

  ‘Because I want to enjoy myself, Coy. I’m not spending the rest of my holiday sitting at the side of the pool watching Ruth break out in eczema. She’s already a bloody nervous wreck due to the Portuguese drivers. You should see the mad buggers; talk about “see the Algarve and die”.’

  ‘When will you be back in England, exactly?’

  ‘Sunday afternoon. Gatwick. Give me a bell at the shop on Monday, eh?’

  ‘I’ve got no more money to put in.’

  ‘Keep your pecker up, Coy.’

  ‘Yes and yours.’

  ‘Mine’s always up.’

  He laughed and put the phone down.

  I shouldn’t have made the phone call; it was a mad extravagance. My only excuse is that I love my brother and I wanted to hear his voice. Had Sidney murdered somebody and needed my help, I would have walked across Portugal and France and swum whichever sea separated us. I would give Sidney my last penny. I would lie and cheat and steal and fight to protect him from unhappiness. It is a great sadness to me that Sidney does not love me with the same intensity.

  I’ve got twenty-five pounds and a penny in a pocket of the leopard-skin coat. I am usually very careful with money. I know exactly where every penny goes. Went. Derek opted to receive a wage packet every week rather than have his wages paid into the bank, like most of the shop floor workers. Every Friday night he and I would sit at the kitchen table and divide the money into little piles. Derek clicked on his calculator and instructed me what to put where. Then I would note down the figures in a red cash book. The total could never exceed eighty-one pounds, sixty-seven pence which was Derek’s net weekly earnings. If I say it myself, I was an excellent housekeeper. I was very clever with offal. Everything that came into the house that was usable was washed and recycled. It was a full-time occupation. I knew the prices in the supermarket by heart. I took note of seasonal fluctuations. I bought sheets and pillowcases in the January sales, mended my own shoes, knitted, sewed and crocheted our clothes. I made birthday and Christmas cards (including envelopes), bread, cakes and biscuits. We grew our own vegetables and flowers, cut our own hair. When we were ill we waited until we were better. There was no column in the red cash book for prescriptions. We were careful with light and heat. The central heating was never turned on before mid-October, and it was turned off religiously on Good Friday. Derek cycled to work with a box of sandwiches in his saddle bag. There was an egg-timer by the phone.

  We had no credit cards or charge accounts. Derek’s subscription to the Tortoise Society was only four pounds a year (including the biannual newsletter). I wore little make-up, used no hairspray. Our video was a present from my mother, who had given up trying to work out how to use it. Derek made most of our furniture; consequently there was hardly anything in the house that didn’t rock, tilt or stick.

  Our last holiday was a coach tour of Scotland five years ago. Both children were travel-sick, and when we were all bitten by midges there was no spare money with which to buy antihistamine cream. We had to cadge squirts from the pensioners who made up the rest of the coach party.

  In our house money was a god. But it was an angry, careful god. It wasn’t a question of worshipping money, but fearing it. Consequently we lived timid lives; only the financially secure can afford to be spontaneous.

  ‘If only the children would stop growing,’ Derek would say. Because, of course, it was the children who sapped our monetary strength. Without certain things they could not live. To Derek and me it was inconceivable that our children would not be happy. We had both been unhappy children, you see. That’s why we got married; to reproduce ourselves and have another stab at happiness.

  Instead of being sensible and finding a cheap hotel, I had my ears pierced in Regent Street. I was surprised at how much it hurt. The girl with the stud gun told me that it was strictly against the rules to remove the little gold studs she’d inserted. Also, I must rotate them every four hours and clean my lobes with white spirit, unless I wanted a ‘major infection of the ears’. She then lectured me on wild life preservation. I explained that the leopard-skin coat was a gift, but she told me that it was ‘the principle that counted’. She said this as if it were the first time it had been said. ‘I don’t know how you can bear to walk around with a dead animal on your back,’ she said, as she creaked about in her leather suit. While we waited for my ears to stop bleeding, I agreed that it was a callous thing to do, which pleased the girl. An expression of my mother’s escaped out of my mouth before I could stop it: ‘Needs must.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means I’ve got nothing else to keep me warm,’ I said. As soon as I got outside the shop I took the studs out and put the jade earrings in. Letitia was right, they look lovely with my orange hair. I am now down to fifteen pounds and one penny; and I’m going to be sensible and start looking for a hotel room.

  21 John Goes to Bradford

  John Dakin and Bradford Keynes faced each other over the easels in the art room of the Workers’ Educational Institute. They were surrounded by grey
and balding heads, as pensioners bent over their Titian copies.

  ‘I’ve come about my mum.’

  ‘Who is your mum?’

  ‘Lauren McSkye,’ lied John.

  Bradford’s heart tingled with a thousand electric shocks. He forgot to breathe. The blood fled from beneath his skin. He was knocked off balance. He was twenty-six.

  ‘Do you know where she is?’ asked John, wondering to himself if this scruff with paint on his long, ridiculous beard was drunk in the middle of the day.

  Bradford had fallen violently in love with Lauren McSkye within three minutes of their first meeting in January. Since then he only lived so that he might look at her and listen to her voice. In between their twice weekly innocent meetings he was bereft; during the night he painted feverishly: Lauren in her black outfit, Lauren naked, Lauren … Lauren … Lauren.

  ‘No, I don’t know where she is.’ Bradford’s voice wobbled out of control. ‘She’s missed two lessons. She wouldn’t ever give an address, so I didn’t know where to begin to look for her.’

  There was an obsessional tone to his voice. John put it down to Bradford being an artist; everybody knew they were loonies, always cutting their ears off or running away from respectable jobs to live on islands with a load of savages. ‘She left her work here,’ said Bradford, who was anxious to detain Lauren’s son for as long as possible. He needed more information about Lauren so that he could suck on it and chew it and digest it, when he got back to his dingy terraced house. Bradford held up a picture.

  John looked contemptuously at his mother’s daubing. ‘A kid could do better,’ he thought.

  Bradford looked at the same painting. ‘A true primitive,’ he thought, ‘true and fine and innocent.’

  Lauren McSkye/Coventry Dakin had painted, at Bradford’s request, ‘Heaven’. There was a river with a slow-running current, boats were being rowed both up and down stream. The banks of the river were stocked with fruit trees and oaks. Weeping willows languished in the water. Geraniums, daffodils, foxgloves and buttercups and daisies tumbled down the river banks. A woman who looked like Lauren lay back against a pile of jewelled cushions. She was reading a book. A box of Black Magic chocolates lay on the verdant grass. Bottles of wine and an Edam cheese could be seen in the raffia basket at her feet. The sun and the moon and the stars were out together in the sky. There was only one cloud to be seen. In the far distance were a town, a mountain, a sea, a lighthouse and a sign which said in tiny lettering: ‘At last, full employment, minimum wage £200 a week.’

  ‘Did you know your mother could paint?’ asked Bradford.

  ‘No,’ said John. He thought, ‘She can’t paint: it’s crap.’ ‘Is your mother not at home, then?’ said Bradford. ‘No, she’s gone off somewhere.’

  ‘I see. I didn’t realize your mother had children. Is she married?’

  ‘Yes, to my dad. Derek McSkye.’ ‘I see, and your name is …?’ ‘John McSkye. I’ve got a sister, Mary McSkye.’

  ‘Is your father an American?’ ‘No.’

  ‘Oh; your mother’s accent . . . where do you live?’

  ‘Not far from here.’

  ‘Exactly where?’

  Bradford had searched the telephone book in vain. There were no McSkyes.

  ‘I’ve gotta go to college now.’ John swung the strap of his canvas bag onto his shoulder. Bradford saw that the bag was clearly marked in indelible ink:

  THE PROPERTY OF JOHN DAKIN

  13, BADGER’S COPSE CLOSE

  GREY PATHS ESTATE

  The ink had smudged, but the address still made an indelible impression on Bradford Keynes. There was no need for him to write it down.

  22 Cardboard City

  Have you heard of Cardboard City? It’s where I live.

  It is within sight of Waterloo Station and a mere bottle’s throw from the River Thames. In other circumstances it would make an ideal pied à terre but, as it is, it lacks certain facilities such as: a roof, walls, windows, a floor, hot and cold water, a lavatory, a bath, electricity, gas, a front door. There are no houses in Cardboard City, only homes, which have been constructed on the DI Y principle from the detritus of other people’s lives. Cardboard is used, of course, and plastic sheeting, and anything else that will keep the cold out and the body heat in. The residents of Cardboard City are unusually well informed; they are great newspaper readers. The larger, quality newspapers are preferred, as they have superior insulating factors.

  Nobody asks questions in Cardboard City; information is either volunteered or not given at all. Sometimes stories told drunkenly late at night are retracted in the sober light of morning. The only thing the residents have in common is their poverty and their will to survive. Perhaps one more thing: the inability to manage money. This is why I’m here, after all. If I’d taken a cheap hotel room instead of eating three meals a day, then perhaps I could have found a job; but without an address nobody would employ me.

  Then, when my photograph appeared in the national papers, I had to hide. I spent my last money on a pair of Woolworth’s sun-glasses. I wear them day and night. Several people have helped me to cross busy road junctions, thinking that I am blind or partially-sighted. I’ve been sleeping here for three days. I’ve got a posh friend called Dodo. She’s exactly one month older than me. We protect each other. The other residents are sometimes inclined towards noisy — and violent —confrontations.

  Dodo is teaching me survival techniques. We are living off the thin of the land; but at least we’re engaged in living. Some time ago Dodo had a nervous breakdown. She used to think that she was the chief constable of Manchester; God told her she was, and she believed God and went to Manchester Police HQ and asked for a fitting for a chief constable’s uniform. Naturally she was thrown out, but she went back, twice a day for a fortnight, and eventually the police got fed up with her and put her away in a safe place.

  Dodo liked the mental hospital. ‘You could be as mad as you liked,’ she said. ‘And it was warm and safe, and there were lovely grounds to stroll about in when the weather was fine.’

  The problems came when Dodo got slightly better — when God stopped talking to her. The doctors decided that Dodo was well enough to live in the community. She was sent to a halfway house, and made to live with five other half-mad people. One of the five was an arsonist who had a penchant for burning down hotels. He was not allowed matches or cigarette lighters or combustibles of any kind and he was given weekly support from his social worker but, ungratefully, some would say, he still managed to set fire to the halfway house. A neighbour who had signed a petition against having the hostel in the street woke the other residents and helped them to safety. As he did so, he composed a letter in his mind: it was to the local paper:

  ‘Dear Sir, Entirely as I predicted …’

  Instead of being sensible and reporting for a roll call, Dodo warmed her hands on the flames, and then rain away. The firemen searched the gutted wreck in the morning, looking for her burnt body.

  According to Dodo she comes from a well-known political family.

  She says that her brother is the former — now disgraced — Cabinet Minister, Nicholas Cutbush. I don’t believe a word of this. It’s just another variation on her wanting to be chief constable of Manchester.

  At night Dodo and I cling together like passionate spoons. We need the warmth and the warmth. Our present little house is made out of two fridge-freezer boxes and is well insulated with polystyrene blocks; the pavements are cruelly cold in London. During the day, when we are out begging, a fellow resident of Cardboard City, called James Spittlehouse, guards our cardboard shelter. In return for this kindness Dodo and I lay scraps of food at his feet. Mr Spittlehouse has an unpredictable temperament and a terrible criminal record. He has over a hundred convictions for stealing from church poor-boxes. ‘Well, I am poor,’ he says defiantly. ‘It cuts out the middleman, saves all them committee meetings. They don’t have to decide how to hand the money out, do they? ‘Cause I’ve alre
ady had it.’ He speaks longingly of the cosy cells and companionship of prison. He even misses slopping out. His proudest boast is that he is a virgin.

  ‘I’ve never been touched by man, woman or beast. The last person to touch my secret parts was my own mother, and even then a sponge intervened.’

  Mr Spittlehouse disapproves of fraternization between the sexes. He wears four pairs of underpants in case a passing woman should be tempted to interfere with him. Dodo and I have tried to reassure him on this point, but he won’t be told.

  The police turn a blind eye to Cardboard City; there are too many of us and there is nowhere else for us to go. We are an embarrassment. Commuters passing to and fro to the trains at Waterloo hate us. They hate us so much that they cannot look at us. If one of us falls in their path (and there are many drunks amongst us), the commuters step over the body and carry on walking. They hate us because we have time. We are rich with time, we are overflowing with it and they are short of it, always.

  Gerald Fox has been dead one week today.

  23 Homo Impecunious Working Class

  Professor Willoughby D’Eresby looked up from the report on Gerald Fox’s autopsy.

  Letitia said, ‘Well, come on, you old bleeder, cough it up. Spill the beans; what does it say?’

  ‘It says “Massive Cerebral Haemorrhage”.

  ‘Caused by an Action Mam?’ scoffed Letitia.

  ‘Yes. I note the doubt in your voice, wife.’

  ‘It’s sodding ridiculous. Who did the autopsy?’

  ‘Roger Skillet. Knew him at Oxford. He was a lazy sod then, and I doubt if thirty-odd years in the provinces have improved his deductive skills. Still, it was good of him to send me the papers.’

  Letitia had left her office in Tavistock Square at lunch-time the day before and tried to buy an Action Main doll. However the sales assistant informed her that Action Man was no longer manufactured, so Letitia rang around her non-pacifist friends who still had young children. Eventually she tracked Action Main down. He was now sitting amongst the debris and clutter on the kitchen table. His little beret was tipped at a jaunty angle over his serious pink face. His hands were crossed modestly over his asexual groin. Letitia had, in the name of forensic science, removed his tiny camouflage uniform and Tom Thumb army boots.