dddk 7 - easy on the eels, loadsa liquor

« Maybe that’s why I signed up - get away from lunatic women.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my mum to bits. Do anything for her. But it’s never enough is it.

Had our Trace round this morning. I’m trying to get my gear together, got the ironing board out, all me stuff in neat piles on the table. And in she bowls, chucking a load of stuffed placcy bags onto all my arranging. The kids trail in after her, snotty and smelling of piss. She parks them in front of the telly with a bottle of coke and a family bag of crisps. Mum puts the phone back on the little table at her elbow, picks up her notebook and it’s business as usual.

« Brown leather jacket, Debenhams, size twelve, for Carol. Got it? » As mum fires off a list of consumer desirables, Trace sorts through the bags, checking and okaying. « Put the kettle on Lee. » She don’t even look up from her tallying and ticking, but I know they’re about to start talking cash. Just like I know that if Trace don’t keep her mouth shut it’ll all kick off as per. So I slide out to the kitchen, keeping my head down as I go.

I take my time making the tea, but as I can’t hear the bombs dropping I reckon it’s safe to go back in. It must have been a good week, cos they’re sitting there like two creamy whiskered kit-e-kats. Mum’s handing over a little pile of cheque books and cards and Trace is studying a page, freshly torn from the order book. Been kiting and fencing for years they have, must be pretty good at it. They aint been banged up yet. I put the tray down on the coffee table in front of them.

« You wont believe what he’s gone and done, ungrateful bastard. » Trace looks up at me, her eyebrows arching into finely plucked question marks. « He’s only gone and lost his birthday present. There I am, left to fend for meself while he swans off to play soldiers, and he can’t even be bothered to look after one little reminder of his poor old mother. I don’t know where I went wrong. » And I can hear Trace tutting and giving it the « Oh Lee! » as I take the passage in three easy strides and slam the door behind me. She got out didn’t she.

So I’m stood there on the landing, a tit in a trance, wondering what the fuck to do next. First I think I should go back to the gardens, have another shoofty there. But I know it aint. I know the only place I haven’t looked, and I know if I don’t go now, I never will.

The weathers turned, fine drizzle soaks into my collar and seeps down the back of my neck. I can feel my skin rising into hard little bumps as I make my way into the shadows. I’m not scared, I can look after myself, I just don’t want to be there. There’s this smell, can’t work out what it is. I’m trying to remember exactly where the mattress was when I see this figure, swaying about, silhouetted against the grey light that’s pooling in from the other side of the arch. I can hear the crispy ticking of drums leaching out of headphones and curiosity pulls me further in.

I think it’s a girl, difficult to say from behind, her filthy combats are belted over a nearly nonexistent arse, but she’s got long hair and there’s something about the shape of her arms. She’s looking up, and I follow her movement as she leaps forward onto an old packing case, lifting her hand and waving at the wall. And then the penny drops as I follow her gaze. Flames. Six, seven foot high are licking up the curving brickwork. And as she shakes and sprays, and shakes and sprays they’re getting deeper, and rounder, and hotter, and higher. Red paint is trickling down from wrist to elbow as she wails out a couple of isolated tuneless words,

« Try… Night… Fire… »  She must have caught me moving out the corner of her eye, cos suddenly she’s jumped down and spun round to face me. She’s looking really pissed off, and I raise me hands in a sort of gesture of good intention, but she’s taking no risks. Chucking the can to the floor I watch her hand slide into a pocket and pull out a knife.

« What you want? » she spits. But I’m laughing, I can’t help it, it’s bloody mad, the flames behind, making her look even littler than she already is, awkwardly pulling the phones out of her ears, waving the knife, my knife, in my face. As she comes up closer I see her eyes; pinprick pupils, bloodshot, black ringed. Her jaws are grinding away, she’s speeding, faster than Michael Caine in The Italian Job I reckoned.

« Are you planning on stabbing me with the corkscrew? » I asked her. She looks down at the Swiss Champ thirty three tooler in her trembling mitt and starts to sman. The laugh catches in her throat, exploding, with a gluey cord of yellow snot as she throws herself, snuffling and snorting towards me. And suddenly I’m holding this, creature. Stroking her matted head and muttering inanities, « there, there, can’t be as bad as all that can it? »

What did I say about lunatic women?

Her name is Michelle, I said I’d call her Miche and she said call me Shell. She’s like this crazy little bird. All fragile and fluttery. Or maybe that was just the whiz - it certainly kept her mouth moving. Once she’d done bawling I couldn’t shut her up, but I didn’t mind; not being much of a one for words myself. It’s weird, thinking she was there an all, that night. Her hands are still scabby. And she’s standing by the charred frame as she tells me It took three of them to pull her back as she fought to get to the burning settee. And I says

« You’re a bloody hero. » And she rips into me,

« I wasn’t trying to save the silly cunt in it - I’d stashed my portfolio under the cushions. » Her DM slammed into the blackened wood and the crack echoed off the paint slicked walls, she threw her head back and shouted « I live in a chamber of fucking horrors. »

« ooh, steady on, » I says, « that’s a bit dramatic aint it? » But then she looks up at me, and the sadness that wells out twists my guts.

« I loved this place, » she says, « but it was always a step, to somewhere else. I aint going nowhere now. This is it. »

« Do you fancy some pie and mash? » I ask her, « Come on, my treat. »

We got a table by the window, she reckoned she weren’t hungry, but I got her a plate anyway, and she must have forgot, cos she wolfed it down like she hadn’t eaten in two weeks. Finally crossing her cutlery onto the empty dish, she looks straight into my eyes and says

« So what were you doing down there anyway? » I coughed a mouthful of tea back into the mug, mostly. I could feel my face beetrooting, so I concentrated on mopping up the stray droplets with my sleeve.

« I was in the next arch. »

«Oh. »  She starts fiddling with her pockets and pulls out the knife. She slides it across the table. I close my hand around it, then have second thoughts, I push it back towards her.

« You need it more than I do. » The old dear behind the counter shouts out that she’s shutting up. I go over and pay. It’s started raining again and we huddle in the doorway. « I gotta go. » I says, «  I’m sposed report to barracks at six, I haven’t even packed yet. » She snaps her head back like I slapped her. Looks of horror, amazement, amusement sweep across her face.

« You’re never a soldier. » she snorts.

« Nah, » I says, « I don’t think I am. »

I turn up my collar and step out into the high street. I wonder what me chances are of finding a shop that sells genuine Swiss army knives in Deptford. Lunatic women. »