Exile

Chapter 40

The instruction booklet wasn't helping at all and Maureen was having to guess at how the camera worked. She was in the damp toilet in Brixton tube station, sitting in a locked cubicle, trying to fit the film while she balanced the instructions on her knee. She'd had the brilliant idea of making a Polaroid of the Polaroid and giving Toner the new one so she could give the old one to the police to prove Leslie hadn't been lying. She fitted the box of film into the gaping mouth of the camera and shut the little door. The insides flipped over and the camera jerked noisily as it spewed out a plain sheet of black plastic.

She pocketed the instructions and stood up, propping the photo of Toner and the boy on the cistern. Standing close and looking through the viewfinder, she tried to frame the picture. The flash flooded the cubicle with white light and the camera whirred and clunk-clicked noisily, oozing the picture out of its mouth.

The first picture was useless: the detailing on the cistern was remarkable but Toner's face came out as a blur and the boy's arm and face were hidden behind a bald white rectangle of reflected flash.

She tried again, using the close-up button this time. Flash and whir and clunk-click and the camera spewed out another smeared gray photograph. Eight photographs later Maureen realized it was impossible – the details weren't coming out at all. She'd wasted a tenner on film and forty quid on a cumbersome camera. Gathering the blurry pictures together, she tucked them into her bag next to Kilty's forgotten shopping and tried to come up with another plan as she unlocked the door.

A black woman in a white coat was standing in the doorway of a small office, looking horrified. She jumped when Maureen came out of the cubicle with the camera in her hand. "Can't do that in here," said the woman disdainfully, shrinking from the camera.

"What?"

"You can't do that in there," repeated the woman, staring at the camera. She backed off into her cupboard office, slamming the door. Her shadow appeared behind the strips of reflective mirror on the window, watching.

Puzzled, Maureen washed her hands and face. She was drying them on paper towels when she realized that the woman thought she had been taking pornographic photos of herself. She ran away up the stairs to find an office supply shop, her face still damp.

It was busy in the market. She left the bustle of Electric Avenue and turned down the lane towards the Coach and Horses. She could see the front door, the small orange windows and the shimmy of the light reflected from the street. She stopped in a doorway, taking deep breaths, feeling in her bag for her stabbing comb, hoping Doyle hadn't lied and that Toner really only wanted the photo. She stood the comb up in her pocket with the teeth foremost and practiced drawing it. The weight of her bag was restricting her elbow so she lifted the strap over her head, hanging the bag diagonally to the left instead, patted her pocket and headed for the pub, telling herself to stay calm. She hurried on, strengthened by the presence of the comb and the promise of Elizabeth.

Across the road a drunk man stepped out of the pub and held on to the portico column before attempting a turn into the road. Maureen knew she could be seen from inside. She hoped Toner would be in there, that she wouldn't have to sit about, waiting for the barman to go and phone him, waiting and getting nervous and trying not to drink. She stood up tall and walked quickly across the road, pushed the door open and walked in. Toner was in the left-hand room, standing at the bar, the central event in a crowd of flies. The snide black barman was smiling behind him, his hand behind his head, smiling and scratching the nape of his neck. Elizabeth wasn't in the bar but Maureen couldn't leave now. Sweat trickled down the valley in her back. She walked straight over to Toner and stopped ten feet short. Toner looked up and saw her. "I've got something that belongs to you," she muttered.

He stepped towards her, raising his hand above his head, and brought it down hard on her face. Maureen's teeth sliced into her cheek, her left eye flashed blankets of white light and her mouth was suddenly filled with salty blood. A heavy hush descended in the pub as each man computed the difficult equation of why a small woman with blood dripping from her chin was nothing whatever to do with him. Toner slid his fat hand under Maureen's arm as he had before and lifted her, carrying her to the door of the ladies' toilet. The chat started again, a little higher, a little nervous, as Toner kicked open the door and threw Maureen face down into the piercing smell of piss-filled lemons. The strap snapped and her bag skidded across the floor, spinning as slowly and as gracefully as a curling stone, stopping an inch short of the far wall. Maureen lay rigid, blood falling out of her mouth onto the floor. Doyle had lied. She wasn't safe. She reached back in her mind, trying to remember why she had thought it would be safe to come here as Toner kicked open first one cubicle door and then the next. Elizabeth was sitting on the toilet in the second cubicle, her trousers gathered around her knees. She jumped to her feet when the door crashed open, startled awake and trembling.

"Get!" barked Toner.

Her jeans slid to the floor, baring her bony legs and her wet and tattered fanny.

"Get!"

Automatically, Elizabeth bent down to pull up her trousers, banging her head hard off the cubicle wall. She pulled her trousers up over her bare bum and ran to get out, banging into walls and the door in her hurry to get away, running into the pub with her fly undone and her pubes on display. Maureen watched Elizabeth leave and groaned into the stinking floor.

He wrapped his fat hands around Maureen's throat and pulled her onto her feet, choking the breath from her. She remembered. She reached for the comb in her mind but her hand was frozen. She was so afraid she couldn't move. She couldn't move. He pushed her over the sinks, pressing the back of her head into the wall, and squeezed her throat hard, baring his teeth as if he was going to bite her face. She couldn't move. The pressure was building in her eyes and her tongue began to swell.

"Give it to me!" he roared, flecking spit.

Maureen reached into her coat pocket, sliding her hand past the stabbing comb, and handed him the Polaroid. He looked at it, smiling as if remembering a happy holiday, and hid it in his coat. Maureen's hand returned to her pocket, settling on the comb, her fingertips running across the ferocious teeth. If she stabbed him she'd have to kill him. One more squeeze of her neck and he'd kill her.

"You should have given it to me in the first fucking place"-he banged the back of her head off the wall-"shouldn't you?"

"I meant-"

"Shut it!"

Toner retracted his fingers and the pressure from his palm relented, leaving Maureen to find her footing, scrabbling on the slippery tiles. He seemed very pleased.

"Cross me again and you'll fucking know about it," he said, smiling to himself. He straightened his coat and flattened his hair, checked in the shattered mirror to make sure he looked flash before he walked out of the ladies' toilet.

Maureen threw up. Blood and milk splattered her coat skirt. She hung over the lumpy pink puddle, breathing heavily, trying to negotiate the sharp, hot pain in her throat and eyes and the throb at the back of her head.

She turned on the tap to wash out her mouth and looked at herself in a broken shard of mirror on the wall. Her chin was smeared with burgundy blood, her pale blue eyes were pink and cracked. A livid red bruise around her throat tapered away to finger marks at the side. Blood was soaking into the shoulder of her coat. She'd crapped it. She had a fucking weapon in her pocket and she'd crapped it.

She wanted to stay in the toilet, wanted to wait until Toner had left, but she knew that might be never and the longer she stayed in there the more frightened she'd be. She washed out her mouth, poking at the cut in her cheek with her tongue. The long, deep gash was bleeding heavily. She wiped the vomit from her coat and pulled up her collar to cover the marks on her neck, picked up her bag and slowly tied a knot in the strap. She spat out a last mouthful of blood into the basin and kept her head high as she walked out into the pub.

Toner was back at the bar. He looked up at her as she came out, leering as if she'd sucked him off. He said something to the flies and they looked over at her and laughed. She walked unsteadily across the room, every eye watching her. She walked through the little doorway and into the empty leisure drinking room and stopped at the bar, telling herself that she would have a whiskey, just to show him she wasn't scared. But it was a Winnie lie. She needed a whiskey to get straight again and she couldn't hold out until she got somewhere else. She stuck her tongue into the cut, feeling along the edges of the rip, trying to guess how long it was. The barman came around to her. "What can I get you?" He smirked nervously.

"Large whiskey," she said, keeping her eyes down, scratching the gash in her cheek against her razor teeth as she spoke. The barman leaned over and emptied the optic twice, dropping the glass in front of her. Maureen only had a twenty and some change. She picked out the right money with tremorous fingers, certain he wouldn't come back with the change if she gave him the big note, knowing she couldn't come round the bar looking for him.

"You're not staying here," he muttered, as she counted it out into his hand, "because I don't want trouble in here."

She lifted her glass, swallowing a big mouthful of bloody whiskey, and felt the spiky liquid sate the wound, as gentle and comforting as a kick in the tits. She dropped her empty glass.

"You're a cunt," she said, her voice strangled and rough.

The barman lifted the glass and wiped the bar under it. "Get out," he said, and watched her until she did.

She wanted to forget Ann, she wanted to go and get Liam and leave here. A sharp breeze swirled along the pavement, carrying dust and city filth, making it difficult to see. She couldn't face the busy high street with people looking at her, smelling the vomit from her coat, seeing her broken neck. He had hit her in front of all of them, fifteen men in a room, and not one of them had flinched. They thought she deserved it. She wondered if Toner had killed Ann in front of them, if the audience of mute men had seen that too and done nothing. As much as she wanted to go home she knew she couldn't just let him get away with it. She needed to find Elizabeth. She stopped and looked up and down the lane, trying to imagine where a woman would run to with her madge hanging out. Elizabeth had had a fright, a big fright, and she was jumpy anyway. She'd be looking for comfort and calm. Maureen looked up Brixton Hill. Elizabeth'd be in Argyle Street; she'd be at Parkin's house.

Maureen walked up the hill, staying on the opposite side of the broad road, urging herself on. Parlain had no reason to come after her now: she'd given the Polaroid to Toner and there was nothing he could do about it, but she was scared anyway. She thought she'd stay scared for a long time.

She didn't want to go up the stairs or even wait outside. Her throat was aching and she sat on the low wall behind the Perspex bus stop, watching across the road, lighting a cigarette and swallowing blood, watching the street for signs of Elizabeth. The moment she had frozen in the toilets she knew she couldn't handle herself. Like Leslie, she couldn't fight everyone, and knowing that had made her deeply afraid. She remembered the sensation of her hand slipping past the comb to the photograph, the cold metal on her palm, and being too afraid to lift it and use it. She saw a shadow coming out of Tarn Parlain's block.

Elizabeth fell out of the door and sloped across the muddy grass to the road, her knees weak, her jumper pulled to the side, looking as if she'd been attacked. Maureen stood up and Elizabeth saw her. She darted across the road without checking the traffic and ran up to Maureen. "Will you help me?" Elizabeth looked desperate. She glanced back at the door. "My friend won't help me, will you help me?"

"What happened?" said Maureen.

"He pushed me out, my friend, he pushed me. Will you help me?"

"What's wrong?" But Maureen knew what was wrong. It was obvious from Elizabeth's quivering panic and her damp skin.

"Lend me some money?" said Elizabeth.

Maureen shook her head. Elizabeth pointed down the hill. "Buy me a drink?"

"Okay." Maureen's voice came out as a rasp. "Talk to me?"

Elizabeth was looking at Maureen's neck. She nodded. Maureen wanted to get the fuck away from here to somewhere relatively safe. She spotted a black cab coming over the hill and asked the driver to drop them at the Angel. She saw the driver watching them in the mirror, worried, knowing something was very wrong.

They pushed open the door and found the butch lady-man behind the bar, sipping from her blue mug, reading a newspaper. Elizabeth sloped off to a table as far from the bar as she could get but the barwoman recognized her. She looked from Elizabeth to Maureen and seemed disappointed. "What happened to your neck?" she said, putting her mug down.

Maureen blushed and lowered her head to hide her shame. "I got in a fight," she said.

The landlady came over to her, keeping her eyes on Elizabeth cowering in the far corner. "One drink," she said. "I'll give you one drink and then you have to go." Maureen turned to Elizabeth. "Vodka," said Elizabeth. She didn't specify how much or what she wanted in it. She just said vodka, spoken with an open ending, making it sound as if it could go on forever.

"Large," said Maureen. "And a large whiskey."

The woman gave them the drinks reluctantly. A trembling junkie and a battered Scot wouldn't exactly draw in the business lunch trade. As she walked across the empty room and sat the glasses of succor on the table, Maureen saw the lady-man watching her and she knew what she was thinking, that Maureen and Elizabeth were the same. And maybe she was right.

They huddled over the table, two frightened women hiding from the men, wasting the day getting out of it.