Tamara put the phone down and wiped her eyes on a piece of crumpled toilet paper. Honest. That Crackle! she thought. How was she supposed to get down town by half-past one? She didn’t have the bus fare and she’d rung her dad for a lift, but he weren’t at home and now she was trapped in the flat. She couldn’t go out. That guy sitting in the car outside had come to serve a warrant on her. He would get her if she left now. He would trick her by using long words. She couldn’t use long words herself. They wouldn’t stay in her head. If she tried to use them they got jumbled up on her tongue and came out wrong. She only ever used the little words she’d used as a child. She would have to wait until the man in the car had gone. Crackle had gone mad on the phone. She hated it when he shouted like that and called her a cunt. And he’d took Storme out without a coat. He never noticed the weather himself. He wore the same clothes all year. Leather jacket and jeans. He even wore them in that heatwave when there was a hosepipe ban.
He’d got a visiting order to see Bilko in prison. He’d be in Veronica’s café, “Until half-past one,” he’d said.
“And I ain’t takin’ Storme in the nick,” he’d shouted. “So get your arse down ere, cunt.”
They’d arranged that morning that he’d look after Storme while she went to the social to see about getting a loan for a new bed. The bed she shared with Crackle was so old the springs had come through the mattress. When the phone rang at twenty-five minutes to two, she’d dreaded answering it.
“What the fuck you doing there?” he’d said. “You should be here, cunt.”
Visiting Bilko was the highlight of Crackle’s life. He loved Bilko. At the end of each visit they clasped each other around the shoulders and said, “I love you, man.” She’d seen it, it made her sick. He loved Bilko more than he loved her. She knew this. He wrote to him every week and used a first-class stamp. She couldn’t read, but she’d looked at one of Crackle’s letters, when he was out at night doing his business. His handwriting was crap.
It wasn’t fair about the warrant. Why should she buy a telly licence? She never watched the BBC, 1 or 2. The BBC was for old people. It did her head in. She couldn’t have gone to the court on June the 18th at eleven o’clock. It was the first anniversary of her mum’s death. She had to go to the cemetery at ten o’clock, and meet her dad and put flowers on the grave. She couldn’t be in two places at once, could she? Crackle had read the letter from the court out loud to her.
“Fined five hundred pounds in your absence.” So when the second bailiffs’ letter came they’d had to move. It was a shame; she’d liked their old flat on the estate. It had central heating, not like this place, which had an icicle hanging from the bathroom window. It was disgusting how the council expected you to live. People on the estate took the piss out of the block their flat was in. ‘Scumbag Towers’ they called it. Though there was only three floors.
The flat was a right shit heap. She knew she ought to clean it up: do some washing and borrow the vacuum from her dad. Take the pots out of the slimy water in the sink, and take the rubbish downstairs. They’d have to do something about that mattress in Storme’s cot which was so wet with piss it made your eyes run. She might start on it in the morning. Trouble was, Crackle didn’t like her getting up early, and by the time they’d got dressed and ate something the day was gone. She was too tired to do anything at night. She kept Storme sitting in her pushchair most of the time, but she had to let her out some time, and then the little sod was all over the place, running about and touching things. She was a nightmare.
Tamara sidled up to the window and looked out. That warrant bloke was still there, waiting for her. Crackle would have to take Storme to the prison with him. She wouldn’t play up. Not after this morning. She’d had to hit her to stop her touching things. She had to learn not to touch things. Crackle had given her big licks as well, which he was entitled to do. It was his CD player she’d touched and it was only a week old. It wasn’t a toy. She had to learn. After she’d hit Storme hard on both hands, Crackle had said, “Don’t give her no breakfast either.” Then he’d put his face next to Storme’s and really shouted, “You touch the fucking knobs on my sounds again and I’ll chop your fucking fingers off.” Then he’d took her out of her pushchair and given her big licks round the side of her head. She had to learn right from wrong. If she didn’t she’d grow up bad, and Tamara and Crackle wanted the best for her.
♦
Crackle was explaining his dilemma to Christopher. He had this mate, Bilko. He was in Welford Road on remand, innocent of course. The police didn’t like him, that was all. His girlfriend, Tamara, should have been here to pick the kid up, but she’d let him down again. Thing was, he had a VO to visit Bilko.
Christopher frowned. “VO?” he queried.
“Visiting order,” said Crackle, pleased to explain the jargon to the unshaven man with the hard dog.
Storme was picking at pieces of cold chip, and putting them into her small mouth.
“I can’t take her with me, can I?” Crackle said, indicating Storme.
“No, you can’t,” said Christopher, who couldn’t bear the thought of the baby going back out into the cold without a coat. He looked outside. The wind was whipping at the clothing of the passers by. The sky was the colour of lead. The clouds bulged with snow.
“Leave her here, with me,” he said.
Crackle got to his feet. “Yeah?”
Christopher put his hand on the pushchair.
“If Tamara don’t come, I’ll be back in an hour,” said Crackle, heading for the door. When he’d gone Christopher looked at the baby and stroked the dry hair back from her face.
“Hello, my chick,” he said. “You’re with me now. I’ll look after you.”
Christopher took off his anorak and wrapped it around Storme until only her eyes and the top of her hair could be seen. He sat her back in the pushchair and looked for the restraining straps, but there were none.
“There, that’s nice, isn’t it? Warm as a bug eh? You’re a good girl aren’t you?”
He called the dog and it got to its feet. He pulled the pushchair backwards out of the café. A young man about to come in held the door open for him, nodding when Christopher thanked him. Storme closed her eyes briefly against the east wind and Christopher exhaled sharply as the cold struck at him through his plaid workman’s shirt. They stopped at a traffic light and stood with other people, waiting to cross the road. Traffic thundered by. A woman carrying heavy shopping bags looked at the dog and moved away.
“We have to wait for the green man,” explained Christopher to Storme. “There he is.” They crossed the road in the middle of the small crowd and walked along the pavement away from the prison.
Christopher stopped outside the Canine Defence League charity shop, and looked at the sparse display in the windows. There was a boxed set of tarnished fish knives, a mug decorated with the heads of Princess Margaret and Anthony Armstrong-Jones, a bright yellow teddy bear with glass eyes, and a tower of large boxed jigsaws against which somebody had leant a hand-written notice, ‘Contents not checked’. A child’s all-in-one snow-suit was draped across a boxed salad spinner. Christopher opened the door and asked an old woman, who was on her knees beside a black plastic bag full of old curtains, if he could bring the dog inside. She looked at the dog and smiled.
“Of course you can come in,” she said to the dog. “We can’t leave you outside can we? Not today.”
She got to her feet by bracing one hand against the shop counter. Christopher saw that her rings were almost lost inside the flesh of her swollen fingers. Storme watched as she crooned over the dog and stroked its hard flanks. Christopher unwrapped Storme from his anorak and sat her on the counter and asked the woman to fetch the snowsuit and the teddy bear from the window. When he gave Storme the bear to hold she took it without any sign of pleasure.
“They get so much nowadays,” said the woman disapprovingly.
Christopher struggled with the zip on the snowsuit. He carried Storme to the full-length mirror and stood her in front of her reflection. She stared gravely back at herself.
“You look beautiful, chicken,” said Christopher. He looked at the woman for confirmation, but she had evidently reached the age where she felt she had earned the right to speak her mind.
“I don’t like this fashion for thin babies myself,” she said, “but it’s a good enough fit.”
When Christopher paid her he noticed that the till was almost empty.
In a shop called Shoes! Shoes! Shoes! he bought a tiny pair of red Wellington boots. When she’d tried on the boots, Storme’s socks had fallen off, and Christopher had been dismayed at the sight of her filthy feet and neglected toenails. He imagined her in his bath at home, pink and clean and splashing in the warm scented water. He would buy a bottle of that children’s shampoo he had seen advertised on the television, the one that didn’t sting their eyes. Storme walked carefully around the shop holding on to Christopher’s finger. “Boots,” said Christopher. “Red boots.”
She stiffened slightly when he picked her up to place her back in the pushchair. Christopher guessed that she had enjoyed the novelty of walking in her new boots, but he was running out of time. It was time to take her back to the café, where one or possibly both of her parents were waiting to take her home.