Poor Cow Read online

  Poor Cow

  SHE WALKED down Fulham Broadway past a shop hung about with cheap underwear, the week-old baby clutched in her arms, his face brick red against his new white bonnet.

  She hurried along hoping she wouldn’t meet anyone as Tom hadn't come to the hospital with her clothes and she still wore her maternity dress hitched up with her coat belt.

  Her slum-white legs were bare and her feet thin in the high suede shoes.

  She went into a cafe, sat down and laid the tiny baby on the scratched-green bench beside her. She thought of what Tom had said when he first saw him. 'Why ain't the bleeder got curly hair?’ The woman brought her a cup of tea. She had orangey-coloured hair, the crimson lipstick overlapping her lips. She walked with a slight limp in her open work sandals, with the black grease in the holes where the cream-coloured plastic rubbed against the bones of her feet. She carried a piece of bread in her water-swollen fingers, from the kitchen to the counter, and scraped a knife of marge across the top, then she took it back to the kitchen to put on a plate.

  Joy felt starving hungry. She hadn’t stopped feeling hungry since the child was born. The hot tea burnt her gullet, she felt it running down her throat.

  The woman swept under the table with a yard brush.

  Joy looked at her son. ‘What did I go and get landed with him for, I used to be a smart girl?’

  In the kitchen the wireless played:

  I shan't be leavin' any more.

  Outside in the street a young woman passed pushing a pram, a fag hanging from her lip. 'Now I look like that.' She ate the dark-brown cottage pie, mixing the mash in with her fork, a great relieving warmth filled her stomach and the sweet tea lifted her spirits. Above her head an ad with a lot of golden girls in bathing suits read COME ALIVE. YOU'RE IN THE PEPSI GENERATION!

  'Fuck that,' she said as the snow fluttered thoughtlessly against the window pane. She put a penny in the Fortune Teller DON'T REGRET. TRY AGAIN.

  Going up the road she met an old man with a dog and as the dog strained after her, the old man smiled and said 'In the spring a young man's fancy ...'

  Joy hurried painfully up the stone steps to her oneroom flat. The whiff of sour lino hit her in the face as she opened the front door; it was odd slices of green-pitted lino she had sometimes seen saved by dustmen and tied to the back of their lorry.

  Mrs Bevan hung over the banisters. 'A man broke in and done our meter last night. The police says "I pity you white women in this house with all these coloureds down the street." They could tell he was coloured from the fingerprints.'

  She went into her room where the embroidered flowers on the lace curtains twisted hopefully up the sunless window.

  In the Money

  JOY WOKE UP one morning, the baby still latched to her breast. It was her twenty-second birthday. She put the kettle on to make some tea and looked in her purse. One and fourpence.

  'I'm so skint I haven't even a pair of drawers to wear.'

  She heard someone flying up the stairs and the door was flung open. She stood, barefoot, in her black nylon petticoat with the shredded bottom, her blonde-bleached hair sticking out from her head, Hottentot fashion. It was Tom.

  'Happy birthday, sweetheart, we're in the money.' He emptied a BOAC bag onto the bed and wads of dirty bank notes tumbled out. The baby screamed. The kettle whistled. Joy jumped up and down. 'How much - how much - who've you done?'

  ·

  I've always been a daydreamer, me Joy - Joysy as my Auntie calls me. Daydreamed about - oh, loads of things - just to have something, to be something. I don't want to be down and out all the time I want - I don't know what I do fucking want but I dream about driving a car, that I'm in this big car driving around. When you've got a car you kind of feel something. It's a marvellous thing. I feel independent, lets put it that way. I feel like, well, it's mine. And I feel like pulling up at a bus stop and saying - 'Do you want a lift?' Potty really, but I do. Oh and I daydream about the sort of house I'd like to live in. I know what sort of house I'd like. A house in the country. One of these old-fashioned houses. You know these old cottages, you remember the ever-so old cottages, with little tiny windows, and I'll tell you what, they've got a long pathway and you know the trellis what goes over like that, that's the sort of house that I want. Ever so plain, I don't want nothing fancy, but just nice, like a proper little home. I'd have fitted wardrobes and I'd have all pale colours, I'd have blue and pink 'cause I like them. And I'd have a white dressing-table, very very long, fit it in the windows. And I'd have just an ordinary bed and a white-painted headboard. Oh yeah. Flash curtains I'd have. Coloured curtains I suppose, no, plain curtains. Oh, and a fitted carpet. Must be a pale colour, pale blue or something like that. Nice white bedspread. Look lovely. What would I do all day? Well first thing I'd get up in a morning to get little Jonny to school then I'd do all my work and what would I do then? Let me think. Do me work and my washing and bleeding ironing. Then make meself up, and go out in me car. Shopping, go round my mates, then I'd come back and cook the dinner. I just like to feel that if I wanted something I could go out and buy it. Terrible when you ain't got fuck all, you ain't got nothing.

  So we took a luxury flat out in Ruislip and furnished it out from the Shepherd's Bush Market. We went down there in the Jaguar and bought a load of stuff.

  Brought home a puppy, Rove I called it. The rotten poxy dog went and chewed up my new boots.

  At first I liked it out there. I told the hairdressers opposite that Tom and Dave – Dave was Tom's mate he came to live with us - had their own business well they did - thieving.

  I used to push the pram around Ruislip. Little Jonny in his posh clothes fast asleep in the bottom.

  Up the High Street past deck chairs, watering cans and cut-price jellies, past a notice announcing THE LILIAN FOSTER SCHOOL OF CREATIVE DANCE AND POISE. 'Special attention paid to Tone of Class and Deportment.' Past the war memorial and a wreath 'To dear old Stan and Nobby always remembered.'

  I'd read all the notices 'A Chrysanthemum Show will be Held. Bunkers for Sale Cash or deferred terms.' And in a small shop 'Page Boy Attire for hire'. Little kilts and sporrans and 'Mink stoles for hire'. Next door it said 'Inexpensive funerals', I made a note of that for when I passed on 'cause I'm bound to be skint.

  ·

  Joy walked on, over the common, where the leaves mingled with Smith's Crisps bags, iced lolly covers and sixpenny bus tickets.

  'Once I pass me test and get me own car I'll be out all day whistling at the men.'

  On the muddy grass a blue plastic comb and a sweet paper. She sat in the bus shelter and read the Daily Mirror. Next to her sat two smart women in white shoes.

  'We did it all in waterproof concrete then we had it waterproof-rendered.'

  'No I never speak to the man next door - I don't want to get involved.'

  On the red brick church opposite, it said - IDLENESS IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL.

  'When we just got married the world was our oyster and we chose Ruislip.'

  A policeman came up and Joy gave him a smile.

  'What you up to?' he said, looking in the pram.

  'Watching the people,' said Joy. The policeman said, 'You should pay more attention to nature and not to wicked human beings, what you want to know about human beings for, they're all wicked.'

  Across the way at the Civil Defence Office, Joy tried to join.

  'Well, there are a few sections. The Men Only we'll have to rule you out of that. Can you do First Aid? I could pick you up in one of our ambulances.'

  'Oh yeah,' she said, 'my old man would kill yer.'

  The sun shines on the pollarded trees and an old lady sits on a bench in a print dress, come down to see what's going on.

  Rosebay, willow-herb and lupins lean against the rabb
it hutch. The house where the fourteen-year old boy got into the bath with the two-bar electric fire on Christmas morning. And when his mother came to call 'Turkey's done,' she found him shocked to death; and on the mirror in her lipstick she read 'I hate Ruislip'.

  ''When I lived at Clacton the road had a station at each end, and all day long I'd sit at the window and watch the people pass - but here you can sit and you won't see no one only the cars comes home of a night.

  'All they do here is clean their places ... What's the point of worrying about a bit of dirt - you're well covered with it when yer dead and buried.

  'I miss the ice-cream man. Hokey Pokey they used to call it "Hokey Pokey penny a lump, the more you eat, the more you jump."

  'Poor old dear she's a right nutcase. That's all there is here; either they won’t speak to you at all or they're cranks.'

  'I come from Stanwell. I was a barmaid there. It's a raffish place really. There'd be parties down on the motor launches after closing time ... you never knew who you'd end up with ...'

  'Oh they'd never stand for that sort of thing in Ruislip - too proper.'

  Down an empty street the milkman comes slowly, in his red cart: DRINK A SPRINGTIME PINTA.

  'Hey the chimney-sweep's bin in "Shangrila" all morning and she's only got one chimney.'

  ·

  After her walk she'd go back to the close-carpeted flat, take Jonny out of the pram and lay him down on the floor, and herself down beside him, like she'd seen in the advertisements. He'd kick and smile and she'd bury her face in his stomach and make him laugh. While he was awake, and she was busy around him cooking him up tiny meals, ironing his playsuits and brushing his sparse black hair, she was all right, but when he fell asleep she was overcome with desolation. On cold days she'd warm his cold feet under her jumper pressing them against her bare stomach. He'd laugh and push his face up against hers so all she could see were his round eyes distorted by the closeness, and they'd both laugh.

  Trouble

  SOMETIMES TOM and Dave stayed out at nights, then we'd be all alone, me and little Jonny. It was winter then and very black outside, just a few sparse lights. He'd wake up screaming hungry in the middle of the night and I'd lift him from his hot, wet bed into mine. Straight away he'd latch his mouth onto my breast and, lying like this, one against the other - he'd be all damp. I liked the smell of his wet body, I half asleep, him sucking, and the rest of the world blacked out. Sometimes I went right off and woke up to find him asleep, mouth still buttoned onto me nipple - artful little beggar. I'd be frightened to wake him, and terrified less I suffocated him. We was company to one another when Tom was out all night, up to God knows what. Never marry a thief.

  Sometimes little Jonny would go quite hysterical, scream and scream. I don't know if it was the wind or what and then I'd have to lie him, belly against mine, and rock him on my body till he'd go quiet, his wet mouth against my neck. I'd listen to his quiet breathing catching the faint smell of his breath. We got very close him and I that winter.

  But Tom wanted good times. He always said that we'd have a great big car, I'd have diamond rings and everything else and when you haven't got it that's everything you want. He didn't really want to be happy, or be married like we was. He always wanted more out of life than what he had.

  Well, sitting indoors I didn't know what was going on. I used to think, 'God somebody else might want him.’ I thought it was marvellous because he was so exciting but then I'd walk down the street and see people together with their kids and think, now if he had an ordinary job he'd respect me more. But when you've got plenty of money you can buy anybody, I don't care who it is. You can buy them and you lose your respect for women.

  But that flat, it was really beautiful. I'm not exaggerating, it really was a lovely flat. We'd spent all the money going in it, bought all new lino for it. We had everything. The bath felt like satin, yer arse just skated along it. I never knew one bath could be so different from another. Oh it weren't half lovely. And we were going to have a bar. We was planning how we was going to have it and then Dave came to live with us and Tom started to get nervy. He was getting on edge, and Ruislip was getting on me nerves. Sex is getting me down, it's making me repulsive about it -Tom's got so old-fashioned - he doesn't want to do this and he doesn't want to do that. When I want to feel sexy - I stand looking at myself in the mirror and hitch up one shoulder and stick out my breasts. He just wants to sit and watch TV when he's home.

  One night I'd had a bath and I was lying in bed waiting for Tom to come up and I was wanting it so much, and then I hear him coming up the stairs, and by the time he come through the door - I didn't want it no more - I didn't want him to touch me.

  Then one day, he'd just done a job - we had £900 in cash; it was just before Christmas. We was driving down the Bayswater Road in this ringed Mercedes and suddenly the law was after us, pulled us in and lifted the bonnet to see if the motor was ringed, and Tom just drove on - knocked two coppers flying and drove on - with the bonnet up. He couldn't see a thing. He turned up a one-way street, smashed into the wall, and we all jumped out. He dragged me and little Jonny out and pushed us in a cab.

  Well the next day about five o'clock in the morning, the police come. Me and Tom was in bed and before we knew where we was they come to take him away. They done him for forty-two charges.

  He got four years, course he only had to do two years, two years out of that you see. We'd spent all our money and then all of a sudden he was gone, just like that. Police come, took him away. It was a terrible shock. Ruislip doesn't sound far to you but to me it was a long way away, because I've never been out of Fulham or Chelsea. Oh it was a lovely flat. But I hadn't even the heart to sell the furniture, I just walked out and went to live with my Auntie Emm.

  Auntie Emm's

  'I HAD a fight with this woman on the landing,' said Auntie Emm - 'she hit me with a broomstick and I hit her back. I'm sure she's stolen one of my plastic egg-cups - it's a red one that's missing and I know she likes red - she's a nutcase really - she was in Banstead for two years. I always seem to have nutcases in the room next door to me.'

  Joy was back in Fulham. She'd moved in with her Auntie Emm, who lived in one room, off National Assistance, and pills. Out of the window she read RUSSIANS ARE BEST and I LOVE MYSELF painted on the brick wall. Dog roses ran riot over the pigeon coop, and on the line a bellyful of colours flapped in the breeze.

  Auntie Emm wore mock-crock shoes and a peek-aboo black jumper without a bra. She rattled on while Joy sipped the gas-ring tea and held little Jonny on her lap.

  'When I was fifteen I ran away to Paddington. Those were the days. There's not much money in sex nowadays, too many people are doing it.'

  'Oh yeah,' said Joy, trying not to get down-hearted. A yellow plastic bucket stood in a tin basin on the floor and just above the bird cage with a cheeping, captive budgie.

  'He was half a woman and half a man, mothadite they call these people - mothadites.

  'He made me sweat and when I sweat I can't stop so I runs in the kitchen and I'm squirting that bod y mist all over me and he says, "What on earth are you doing?"

  'He's a very clean fellow - I do admire a clean fellow.'

  The sun shone in hot through the window onto the mauve candlewick bedspread. They were burning the grass on the graveyard. Men in blue dungarees leaned on rakes, dark against the sun; the spring had come.

  'I hope you haven't got no bugs here, Auntie Emmy.'

  ''Course I ain't got no bugs, what do you take me for - a bughouse?'

  'I'm fed up with buggy places.'

  Emm took her corset and stockings out from under the cushion on the armchair and pulled up her skirt. The veins were tangled on her shaky hands. 'I've been waiting all this time for me change of life so I can go on the town with no worries. I might even go farther afield to seaside places and speculate it. I had a fellow called Blacky, he was one of the finest fellows going - he was nicking lead and all that. One day he bought me a bra
celet from Woolworth's and I said "I don't want that, I don't like nothing like that dangling from my wrist - I like good stuff.'' You never know who you might team up with in one of them seaside places. I want someone with a good position that I can look up to and say, "Oh he's mine."

  Jonny had fallen asleep and Joy laid him on the bed wrapped in his pink blanket. 'I thought it was going to be a girl that's why I got a pink one. Do you know Auntie Emm, I'm beginning to wonder what I'm saving meself up for.

  'Remember that party for my twenty-first birthday? Tom had just done a job. Seventy pounds worth of whisky we had, and the food, an army couldn't have eaten their way through it - most of it went bad the next day - it was a hot night, remember?

  'I didn't love the baby when he was born. I hated him really for separating me from Tom. Then when he was nine weeks old we was in this poxy flat before we moved to Ruislip, he got chicken-pox with complications and the doctor said he would probably die. They took him to hospital and put him on the danger list - his whole body was raw with the spots, his little lips were just two scabs and he couldn't suck or swallow - he even had the spots inside his mouth and down his throat. He was getting weaker every day- it was only then when I thought he was going to die that I loved him. But when I came out of hospital in an old drape coat that had gone out of fashion - bolero maternity dress, beige shoes and no stockings - I thought "Fuck me. Whatever did I go and do this for, a five-minute wonder and it's all over".'

  Auntie Emm pulled her stockings up over her veiny legs. 'Five-minute wonder, but what a wonder. My mother had ten children in two rooms - my father was a drunkard - most men were then - and a lot of women too. There was nothing to do at home so they went to the pubs - there wasn't even any comfy chair just a kitchen table and sometimes one armchair. When there wasn't any money she went out and scrubbed doorsteps - if finally there wasn't any money they took your children away from you and put you in the workhouse.