Angel 74 (kindness of strangers)

Angel wondered if she could go back. Sneak up the stairs, go into her room and lock the door, pull the sheets back over her head. She turned her head, the ambulance woman came down the stairs, Toyah was holding onto her arm, a blanket thrown over her back. Angel hunched her shoulders and kept walking with her head down. Her mind race ahead of her. A sob escaped from her lips as she hurried on, scanning the road and listening for police sirens.

Up ahead after dodging in and out of back streets the bright lights of garage and all-day store drew her eyes. Beside it was a phone box. She hurried towards it. A few kids were standing outside with skateboards, but she ignored them, pulling open the heavy door.

‘It’s no’ workin’ Mrs,’ a boy in a tracksuit and white baseball cap shouted.

She let go of the door and her voice wavered as she asked, ‘Do you know where one is that works?’

‘Nah, don’t think so Mrs!’ the tracksuited boy sniggered. He squinted sideways at a girl with purple hair and her laughter was like hiccups, and he slapped her on the back as she fell into him and they shared the joke.

A bald man with a florid big nose, wearing a nylon, dark coloured, and padded jacket stood holding a Daily Record and rolls in one hand and a walking stick in the other. ‘I’ve got a phone in the house,’ he pointed across the road with the rubber ferrule waving the end of  his stick across the road to a row of two-storey tenements with concrete balconies linking each block. ‘You’re welcome to use it.’

‘You sure?’ She tugged the strap of the holdall off her shoulder and it slid to the ground. ‘I could pay you,’ she said, reaching for the zip.

‘Don’t be daft,’ he cried in a cheery voice. ‘I’ve got more than enough money for my needs.’

‘You sure.’

‘Aye.’

He came towards her, surefooted despite the stick. He craned his neck to take a look at Adam and grinned. ‘The wee wan sleeping?’

Angel shoogled him. ‘Aye, thank God.’

‘He’s a wee cracker.’ He shifted the newspaper, pressing the plastic bag against his chest, holding both them, and the stick in one hand. ‘You want me to carry him?’

When he saw the flicker of fear in her face, he backtracked, ‘Or the bag?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s fine.’

He took her arm as she shouldered the bag and helped her across the road. When they were safely on the opposite pavement he left go and walked ahead of them, leading the way. A privet hedge divided the communal spaces in front of the houses. A plastic bubble of a toddler’s car stood red in the garden with its door open and the yellow seat, impervious to grass rot, weeds and wet with rain.  

He began to search his pockets for his keys on the last of the three steps on the first landing. Shifting stick and breakfast from one hand to the other, muttering to himself, ‘Whit have I done wae them?  Whit have I done?’

Angel put the bag down, she felt forgotten and alone. Outside she heard the wails of police sirens.

‘Here they ur?’ he trumpeted, holding them out to show her. ‘I knew they were there.’

He opened the door and shuffled inside. She pulled Adam closer, picked up the bag and followed him through to the living room. A flicker of telly gave little colour to the drab room. Curtains closed. His clothes piled up on the sunken settee, a squirrel’s nest where he could sit among them and newspapers, magazines and books. Lots  of books. Spilling off the table in front of the couch, flapping against a few empty tins and sweet aroma of spilled beer and the heavier odours of tobacco and damp.

‘Phones over there,’ he angled his head when he realised she couldn’t see it on the corner table between window and the arm of the couch and smiled, because George Orwell, Burmese Days was sitting on top of it, the light behind it wasn’t working and had a grubby dish- towel hanging over it.

‘I’ll leave you tae it,’ he said. ‘Get us something to eat and drink.’  

His walking stick was propped against the couch and he bustled through to the kitchen, closing the door softly behind him.

She put Adam down and picked her way through the detritus to the phone. It was cream coloured, old fashioned dial rather than push digits. A dusty faux leather book beside it for noting family and friend’s numbers.  She held the receiver to her ear and got the dial tone. She phoned Tony.

The phone rang and rang and she squeezed her lips together. Adam stirred and looked about him and began to cry. The bald man came in from the kitchen with a Bakelite tray with a pot of tea on it peeking out from a woollen tea cosy. Sugar bowl. Two thin china cups and saucers lime willow patterned and gold rimmed with a couple of ginger snaps.

‘Hallo,’ Tony said, in her ear. He sounded breathless as if he’d been rushing.

‘Hallo,’ she replied, cupping her hand over the receiver.

The old man glanced at her and put the edge of the tray down on the table and bent over sweeping six months of Russian novel reading material onto the worn carpet. His smile was equally melancholic. He pointed to the cups and tea and knelt down and puckered Adam’s forehead with a kiss and tickled his belly with his chin until her son giggled. Picking him up, he held him to his chest, patting his back and brought him over to Angel.

‘You still there?’ said Tony.

She cuddled Adam against her chest and let him play with her hair and watched the old man retreat back into the kitchen.

‘Aye,’ she said, choking on her sobs.

‘Whit is it?’

‘I ran away.’

‘Whit?’

‘I left the Mother and Baby Unit, took Adam and run away.’

‘Stop kidding on.’

‘I’m not.’

She could hear him breathing. Then his voice, tentative, ‘Where are you and whit you gonnae dae?’

Angel looked around, the room grey as a cave. ‘I don’t know.’

Her sobbing grew louder and Adam cried too and clung to her.  

He kept his voice steady. ‘You don’t know what you’re gonnae dae, or where you are?’

‘Both,’ she admitted.

‘Right.’

She heard the muffled sound of a hand going over the receiver and Tony’s muffled shouting on Bruno. ‘We’ll come and get you.’  

She swallowed her tears and tried to think logically, ‘You cannae.’

‘How no’?’

‘You’ve no’ got a car.’

‘True.’

‘And if they find out you’ve been helping me, you’ll get time. Prison time.’

‘Aye,’ he said, ‘I don’t gie a fuck about that. I only care about you. Hing on, I’m gonnae put Bruno on.’

She heard the clunk of the phone, changing hands.

Bruno sounded calm. ‘I heard what you said, sweetie. The best thing you can do is toddle back along to prison. Tell them you’d a bit of depression and went ga-ga and noo your back—’

‘Cannae, there’s a serious assault charge in the pipeline, which means they take Adam and put me back in the main wing.’

‘Fuck,’ Bruno swore - then silence.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry to involve you in all this.’

‘Shut up,’ Bruno said, ‘I’m thinking and we’re family—Maybe get my QC friend out of bed, or into bed, if you know whit I mean?’

‘No,’ she shook her head. ‘I’m not seeing him again, for any reason.’

‘Beggars can’t be choosers.’

‘Aye they can. That’s whit got me into this whole mess.’

She lowered Adam onto the couch and squeezed in beside him, he swatted a book cover to see what it would do.

‘We’re running out of options, sweetie. Whit do you want us to do?’  

‘Get Pizza Face to come and get me. He got me into this mess and now he can help me get out of it.’

‘Okay-Dokey, I’ll leave that one for Tony to deal with.’

She heard the clunk of the phone and Tony’s voice, ‘Alrighty? I’ll phone him, but we need to know where you are—an address. And we need to think about things more carefully, the police are going to come looking for you here and at Pizza Face’s house.’

She rolled Adam onto the floor, rang her finger along the sticky carpet to check there was nothing he could hurt himself with. ‘Gie me a minute,’ she said. ‘And I’ll get you the address.’

Leaving the phone dangling on the cord she dashed through to the kitchen. The old man was reading, sitting in a rickety chair a pair of specs perched on the end of his nose. A bare lightbulb was above his head and the sink beside him was full of dishes. A glass of whisky was on the worn linoleum at his feet. He licked his lips, seemed vaguely surprised to see her. ‘How you getting on?’

‘Fine, I was just wondering whit the address was?’

‘How? The address?’ He rubbed his chin. ‘This address?’

‘Aye.’

‘21 Summerhill Road, Flat 1/1—you want the postcode?’

‘That would be good.’

He shook his head and laughed. ‘Don’t know it. People just make them up to annoy yeh! Try to get you hooked up to some daft scheme.’