Broken Stones

Veronica was never a bad seed. She was once a teenage beauty queen from St Lucia who dreamt of having children. It’s just the sun never shone after that beautiful day. She fell into bad luck, into the margins of the city of London.

Tonight. She’s an aged snake peeling off her red haywire wig and her rubber dress. There is no cleaning herself from the stink of men. Wiping herself can wait unto tomorrow, just before she hits her beat again. She knows nothing of the funeral, only has time for another kind of love.

She has been smoking crack for as long has she has been working. It’s a blow job for twenty, a fuck for fifty, something a little nastier without a condom for seventy. Some nights, she can earn three hundred pounds, enough for blistered fingers and bliss. Lately, inhaling through a straw stabbed into a plastic bottle topped with Regal cigarette ash on Bacofoil has become foreplay. Her only true orgasm comes from injecting herself into any vein that can be found. A frustrating route that can start at her toes, then to her arms and finally her breasts. Her flesh is a shattered map.

Veronica has underestimated this moment though. She needs a deep love and there isn’t enough to go around, been too greedy as usual. There were three rocks the size of peas and they’ve have been sucked down like lemonade on a hot day, leaving her shaking with fury. Its needle time now, nothing else matters. For this, she will work again. Use all her skills to deliver joy’s addiction.

In her shit stained bathroom, the tap drips. Crumpled in the corner is a red satin dress with sweat marks and a fake fur coat in which her Mother died. Both will do. She runs down the stairs, into her night.

Sharp rain slants, playing jazz on the brown, grieving streets. Veronica finds her usual pitch, under the railway bridge. She fingers the last, tiny rock in her deep pocket. It’s her last penny. She has forgotten her wig but will get by without somehow. She sings a nursery rhyme and sucks on her gold tooth.

“This little piggy went to market,
This little piggy stayed at home,
This little piggy had roast beef,
This little piggy had none.”

A lost, black, Nissan Bluebird sails along the street. It leans against the kerb in a wheeze. Veronica focuses her eyes on the bridge wall opposite, as if trying to decipher the orange Islamic graffiti. The passenger door of the Bluebird opens. Scraping shattered glass on the road. She shows some thigh on the passenger seat, there is the smell of flowers. The car swoons away into the quarter light.

“I’m Veronica. What’s happened to your face? What’s your name baby?”
“Bob. My name is Bob. I fell and it’s just a graze. Is Veronica your real name?”
“Yeah babe.”
“I thought girls like you changed their name to suit the customer.”
“Are you a copper or something?”
“No. I’m not a policeman”
“I’m Veronica baby. Always call me Veronica. What are you looking for?”
“I don’t know. Veronica. I have never done this kind of thing before.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll look after you. Let’s go to my place. It getting cold and I don’t want to do this in the back seat.”
“Can we go to my flat first? Got to get some money.”
“Where do you live?”
“Not far. Whitechapel.”
“You are not a freak are you Bobby? I don’t take any shit you know. I’ve got some bad friends who don’t like freaks.”
“I’m not a freak Veronica. I just need to get some money. Have you ever been to Barcelona?”
“I ain’t been anywhere. Why?”
“Just wondered.”

*

The nuts and bolts of Bob Friar’s thirty four year life loosened a week ago. On the day before a Princess died in the Paris night, five lottery balls gave him five thousand pounds. It could have been more, but there were many winners. The money was just enough. He could not leave his job as a manager of a shoe shop, but it was a new start of sorts.

On the Sunday morning, he flicked on the radio. It was background noise and news. Sighs and stuttering. Bob dressed is yesterdays clothes, opened his front door and went out walking. He headed north with his hands in his pockets, whistling through the streets. He returned at dusk with pre-packed sandwiches, a carton of milk. The radio was playing quiet piano music. A soft rage.

He banked the cheque at Monday lunchtime and withdrew two thousand pounds. By seven o clock that evening, six hundred pounds slipped into the deep pockets of a dirty finger nailed, lamb chopped side burned man in a donkey jacket.

“It’s a good motor this. A runner. Get you from A to B. Plenty of room in the back for the birds.”
“I haven’t got a girlfriend.”
“You a poof?”
“No.”
“I’ve got some puppies for sale as well. Dobermans, Plenty of room in the back for a dog.”
“No. Thank you.”

He had never been to a casino before, but he loved the film, The Sting. He knew how to play the games, saw a programme on the television. He put on a new suit that he bought for five hundred pounds from a tearful Italian man in a black armband. He felt lucky.

Bob walked out of the casino three thousand pounds richer. The manager, a large man with dandruff-flecked shoulders, shook him by the hand.

“It is a sad week, my friend. But, seeing win has cheered me up. You are always welcome at my establishment. Do you want us to call you a taxi?”
“No. I have my own car. It’s a Bluebird.”

It was gone midnight when Bob slinked through the arteries of the city. He stopped at a takeaway and had fish and chips. Next door was a travel agent with posters of sunny beaches in the windows. He went home, found his passport, and drove to Heathrow. He wasn’t tired.

The flight counters were closed so Bob drank cups of coffee. He called the answering machine at work, replied to his own voice, telling it that he was feeling ill and would not be in today. At 5am, he booked himself on a flight that was leaving for Barcelona. In duty free, he bought himself new clothes, after shave, two hundred cigarettes, and a suitcase. He had never smoked a cigarette.

Bob liked Barcelona. The narrow streets and high tenements that hid the sun. He felt comfortable in the squares with their bright bars and barking dogs. The people were kind. They wanted to talk endlessly about the princess. Bob shrugged his shoulders while the Spanish bought him drinks and tapas.
He telephoned work again and told his assistant that he would not be returning until the following Monday. The assistant understood completely, said it was a very stressful and sad time. There was a sniffle.

On his third afternoon, there was an olive skinned woman in a red dress, leaning against a wall in an alleyway. She smiled at him and he smiled back.

“You go my place, be fun.”
“Yes.”

They had ferocious, unsafe sex. The room dirty and musty. Syringes on her bedside cabinet.

“I charge you half. Your princess dead, you must be very sad.”

Bob laughed in bewilderment.

“I no laugh. Why you laugh? I need money.”

Ashamed of himself, he threw down too many notes on her sheets. He fled into an alley, greeted by church bells, heat and skinny cats.

He flew home that night. It was Friday. In his flat, he counted the money, there was plenty. He switched the radio on, smoked his first cigarette. There was grief on every station. The announcers kept calling her The Peoples Princess. Who was she?

*

“Wait there Veronica. I’ll be five minutes. I’ll just get the money.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
“No. I won’t be long.”
“Have you got any fags?”
“There are some packets in the glove compartment. I won’t be long.”

Veronica’s eyes follow Bob. She is in trouble; she needs a hit of crack. She fingers the tiny rock in her pocket and cuts a third with her thumbnail. She pulls out a tiny pipe from her clutch bag and gets to work. It feels good, but it won’t last long. Veronica takes a packet of cigarettes from the glove compartment, lights one, and puts the remainder in her pocket.
Bob opens his front door, stares into the hallway mirror. What is he doing? What has bought him to this?

*

He rises early. There has been no sleep. The radio churns. He drinks another cup of coffee. The sky is liquid clear. He walks west.

Bob stands with the phalanx opposite the grey palace. There is wailing, crying. As the cortege passes, flowers are thrown. There is a Chelsea Pensioner, metallic with medals and an Asian family. All weeping. Bob is confused, fighting anger, on the verge of something terrible. He needs to step out into the road. To stop this. He can’t though. He is trapped. A teenage girl in badges has grabbed him by the collar and is shrieking.

“She was ours! She was ours! She was our princess.”

Bob wrestles himself away. Shards of youth and a remembered rebellion explode in his head. A lyric from a song. He sings.

“If you gave me a fresh carnation. I would only crush its tender petals. If you gave me a fresh carnation. I would only crush its tender petals.”

Again and again. Harsher to a shout.

“IF I GAVE YOU A FRESH CARNATION. I WOULD ONLY CRUSH ITS TENDER PETALS.”

A punch, not a hard one, a scuff. Bob spins around. It’s an orange haired punk. There is another punch that knocks him to the floor, then kicks. Voices seethe. A policeman pushes them away, heaves him up. Bob wipes some blood from his face, smiles gratefully.

“Thank you.”
“Fuck off.”

The policeman spits at him. Bob grabs a bunch of flowers tied to some railings and limps away.

His back hurts as he opens the door to his Bluebird. Into the badlands of Essex he drives, towards the sea of Southend. He buys packets of cigarettes from a kiosk and sits under the pier, with the rubbish, the broken stones, the seagulls.

He returns to London through the thoughtful traffic. At intervals, he fills up with petrol, eats dank sandwiches. The car is perfumed with the flowers. He drives in a daze. There is a black woman leaning against a wall. He opens the car door.

*
Veronica is floating when Bob returns from his flat. She has just enough crack for two more hits. She makes him drive fast. Stroking his thigh through the remainder of her high, but clawing as he parks outside her door.

“You took your time Bob.”
“Wanted to look good for you.”
“You look great.”
“You can do anything you want to me for a hundred quid, anything at all. But, I have to have this first.”
“I don’t really know what I want Veronica. I’m a bit nervous to tell you the truth. What are you doing with that bottle?”
“Want some? Want a little bit of this?”

Bob holds the bottle in one hand while Veronica loads it with the remainder of the stone, His other hand lifting her dress, probing.

“Ahhh.”
“Did you get it?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you like it?”
“Yeah. I want some more,”
“I ain’t got any left. How much money have you got on you?”
“About two thousand pounds. I want to kiss you.”
“You can do anything you want.”

*

Bob lies naked on the sofa, inhaling hungrily from the bottle. Veronica strokes his chest with one hand and plunges the needle into his arm with the other.

“I love you Bob. I love you.”

On the fractured glass coffee table is a rock of crack the size of a golf ball. Eyes close for the last time as the sun rises over this London.
Veronica carries on, oblivious. She’ll deal with him later. When the pining returns. When the market opens.

She was once a beauty queen.