Chapter
3
Meet
Me At St Pancras
Between
that first encounter at Debbie’s and my planned meeting with Sandra, life
plodded along as normal. I continued
going to work, unwillingly, resentfully, and then it was back to Josie and the
medievalists, with all the disillusionment and jealousy that entailed. Not a happy existence, but perhaps not
untenable, with a tweak here, bit more therapy there, some good fortune
elsewhere. But my mind was filled with
thoughts of Sandra, and a second attempt at crack’s giddying summit.
Then,
on an icy January night, there I was at the appointed place, waiting for Sandra
on the concourse of St Pancras station.
I wasn’t exactly sure where I was meant to stand, so I wandered around,
trying to make myself obvious – she was far more likely to spot me than I her. The rush-hour thinned out, and a man in a
fluorescent jacket asked if I was ok - I told him I was waiting for a
friend. A woman with a Burger King bag
wanted to know if I was looking for some company – I think she might have been
in the same line of business as Sandra – I said I was fine, and she wandered
off. Various foggy figures came into
view, and I was hopeful that one of them would be Sandra, but no gruff tones
greeted me as they neared. The fun you
can have with partial sight is endless.
So much is known, yet unknown.
Most people make a judgment of someone from twenty, thirty yards away, a
woman, youngish, with luggage, a man, silver-haired, with briefcase. But when an approaching figure is little more
than a blurred figment, it’s hard to know what to prepare for, a threat, a
friendly greeting, or just a fleeting encounter with a passing stranger. Things as well can seem what they’re
not. Every so often you can find
yourself reaching down to stroke a cat that turns out to be a discarded jumper,
or a bin-bag, an embarrassment that’s heightened if you take the trouble to say
‘hello’ as you earnestly stoop to greet it.
Yes, the fun you can have with partial sight is endless - so endless
it’s without beginning. But in such
situations, I’d developed a knack of not worrying what people might be
thinking. If I couldn’t see them, it was
as if I, too, couldn’t be seen, at least not in a suspicious way. I must have lingered there an hour, with a
handful of well-wishers enquiring as to my welfare, doing their bit for the
marginalised. A blind man’s cane seems
to be seen as a declaration of no intent at all, the opposite of a threat. I find even ruffians go soft when they’re
dealing with me. After all, what harm is
a hapless-looking bloke with a white stick going to do - steal your glasses?
For
a while, I wandered up and down outside the precincts of the station, but the
world felt semi-populated, post-trauma, like a scene from Day Of The Triffids,
except in this world the blind man was the exception rather than the norm. Cold and resentful by now, I went back to the
payphones and called Debbie. ‘There’s
obviously been some kind of mix-up,’ I gauchely surmised, as I thrust twenty
pence into the slot. But,
unsurprisingly, when Debbie answered the phone, she informed me that Sandra was
there, and had been for the past few days.
How green was I? Fresh as a
still-screaming lettuce as torn from a Birdseye topsoil. Like she was likely to honour, even recall
our flimsily made arrangement. Her
shrunken life didn’t reach St Pancras, or anywhere more than a couple of miles
either side of Westbourne Park. Why
would it? Everything she needed and
wanted, thought she needed and wanted, was there, all within a stone’s throw of
the dreaded Droop Street. I could hear
the gravelly tones of Sandra in the background, and Debbie handed her the
phone. After a vague apology for not
showing, she told me to get in a cab and come over, which I did with a consoled
alacrity, going outside and sticking my arm out until a vacant black taxi came
chugging to my rescue. I leaned into the
window, trying to give the impression of a youngish executive on his way to
clinch a deal in a wine-bar, but I can’t imagine it was very convincing,
especially when I said my final destination was Droop Street, just off the
Harrow Road. But at least I was on my
way now - that soaring pinnacle was again in my sights. Twenty minutes later, I was scampering up the
concrete rat-run that led to Debbie’s door, which Sandra opened like a soul in
Hades, almost before my knuckles had touched the wood. Then I was back in that yellowy twilight I’d
found so appealing a few nights before.
Debbie
called the dealer on her still-extant landline, one of them went to collect,
came back in what seemed like ages, but was actually only twenty minutes, and
we fell upon the crack like vultures.
Sandra and I ended up in the bedroom, leaving Debbie with a chunk of her
own in the living-room. I just wanted to
make sure I was close to the crack, and that, I thought, meant sticking with
Sandra. We smoked some more, sitting on
the bed, sporadically getting sexual, obediently returning to the pipe when the
high subsided. Then Sandra, her face a
dark mask of romance, said, ‘Let’s go to a hotel, just you and me…’ ‘Can we take something with us?’ I
asked. ‘Of course we can, darling.’ We returned to the living-room and she rang a
minicab. Debbie didn’t want us to go,
presumably because she only had a few crumbs of crack left. But minutes later, Sandra and I were in the
back of a cab, speeding in the general direction of Paddington. I passed her a clutch of notes, as she talked
openly about who she was going to score from, and what she and I might get up
to once we’d found a room for the night.
It all felt dangerously indiscreet, which of course it was. She told the driver to park on a side-street
she seemed to know, saying, ‘Look after the gentleman, I won’t be long.’ He grunted as she hauled herself onto the
pavement, pressed a buzzer at the bottom of a tower-block, and waited. Then, bellowing into the intercom, she was
granted access.
The
radio wasn’t loud enough to ease the silence that had fallen in the car, and it
felt excruciating. I cleared my throat,
in an endeavour to at least indicate I had human attributes. I, the gentleman, felt sure the guy knew well
the general gist of things. But because
I didn’t want to worry him, or get into trouble, I told him casually that my
friend and I had just moved into a flat, and were staying in a B’n’B while work
was being done on the place. I can’t
imagine he believed me, especially when Sandra reappeared and told him she and
I had just come down from Hertfordshire for a party at a friend’s. If this wasn’t enough, she went on to say
that we were going to spend much of tomorrow sightseeing on one of those
topless buses (in January), and then get the train back to Stevenage, where
apparently we lived, adding that she had an appointment at the mother-and-baby
clinic in the afternoon. Something about
this last detail didn’t sound as untrue as the rest. ‘Are you pregnant?’ I asked. ‘It’s my fourth, love,’ she said, a softer
side of her coming momentarily to the fore.
‘I’ve got a son and daughter up in Stevenage.’ ‘But this is your fourth?’ I asked. ‘My eldest daughter committed suicide last
year,’ she replied, accounting for the missing child. ‘She was only sixteen.’ ‘I’m sorry,’ was all I could think of to say,
and I hardly was. I was much more
concerned with getting some crack in my system, and I think she was too. Her face was stony, as if a true emotion
hadn’t been expressed on it for years, and if she tried now, it might crack
like granite. There was something in her
tone that seemed maudlin, assumed. It
was as if she was notching up a tally of sorrows, keeping me onside, guilty at
any wish I might have to leave her. But
of course I had no such wish - our lives were now, at least for the purposes of
tonight, entangled. Casualties were
accounted for very casually from hereon in.
So
there we were, fizzing through the glistening mizzle of W2, down this street,
up that one, vacancy-hunting, Sandra and I, an ill-conceived nativity in a
world not yet mythologised enough to be comforting. A rookie in a raven’s world, I was now
digging into those parts of me that had no interest in being responsible,
reasonable, or compassionate. Sheer
appetite and abandon held sway now. The
social me was in thrall to the antisocial.
The beast was still in a suit, but seams were tearing.
Like
a child before Christmas, I was paralysed with anticipation. Colours seemed more vivid, even the
traffic-lights had a peculiar liquidity to them, and the sense of relief when
they turned green was palpable - another little door opened on the Advent calendar. Shop-windows had a luminescence of their own,
almost as if my brain was experiencing a kind of pre-high, an overture to the
sensory symphony to come. I even had my
own personal Snow Queen in the guise of Sandra, the bringer of gifts, seductive
by proxy, heart, broken and cold in equal measure. And I, the crippled child, against all
safety-regulations, flew through the ice-black night beside her, as if in a
darkside Disney animation, all on a sleigh-ride to moral decay – rated PG. Then Sandra tugged on the reins, and Blitzen
came to a halt beside a row of cloned hotels.
He drove off, and we entered the first tawdry doorway that offered a
vacancy. A bell heralded our arrival,
and out popped the proprietor from a side-room.
Sandra did the introductions, but he was wary. Thirty quid seemed to soften him up, and he
handed me some keys. We climbed a musty
staircase, and then, door locked behind us, Sandra had a pipe. I had my go, and we got sexual in a vague and
fleeting way. One thing about crack is
that, though it might make you feel mentally sexual, the rest of the body
doesn’t really want to know. Whilst the
high is high, it’s like being at the top of a helter-skelter – the only viable
way is down. There I was, ready to let
go, to hurtle down that twisting tunnel back to ground, completely unaware
there were nails sticking up at intervals from the floor of the chute, then
splashdown in a pool of acid, where, undercarriage in shreds, I’d stagger to my
feet, thinking, ‘I paid for this? Can I
go again?’
Having
used prostitutes as respite from the ravages of the world of normal
relationships, I was now using prostitutes and crack. If I’d had a bit of a double-life before, it
was beginning to seem quite tenable compared with my current circumstances. At least when I’d been with a prostitute, I
wanted to get home as fast as possible, and knew with agonising clarity that I
wanted something better. But this wasn’t
to be the case with crack, for crack has no ending, no climax, no ‘well thanks
for that’.
After
a while, Sandra excused herself and went into the bathroom on the landing, pipe
in hand, crack in pocket. Some people
want to smoke in company, some on their own.
Others crawl around the floor looking for more, even when they’ve still
got some on the table in front of them.
Some get horny, start talking fast, twitching the curtains, doing the
housework. Sandra was a leave-me-aloner,
which didn’t suit me at all. I could
hear her coughing, spluttering and spitting, and was worried our antics might
be discovered. What if one of the other
‘legitimate’ guests (if there were any) complained to the man downstairs? The police could be called, we could be
arrested, thrown in a cell, maybe end up in jail. But none of that mattered. We had crack.
Nothing matters when you’ve got crack, apart from the prospect of not
having crack. I placed a piece on the
foil, and lit it. As I did so, I was
worried about the clamour from Sandra, afraid that a knock on the door would
mark an ugly end to things. But once I’d
sucked up that strangely tasteless smoke, who gave a shit? Utter euphoria swamped me. I stood there, acknowledging the blissful
force of this all-too-easily ingested vapour, and thought two things almost
simultaneously. The first was ‘where has
this been all my life?’ The second was
‘this is going to be trouble.’ For once,
I was right.
‘We
can meet tonight if you like,’ said Sandra, returning with a clatter from the
bathroom. She lay there on the bed, her
top unbuttoned just enough to expose the bulge of her belly. ‘Yeah, we can meet up at Debbie’s - you can
fuck me, suck me, anything you want me - no shit, I’ll wear a nice dress.’ My standards were so low that I probably
found that quite enticing, but had no interest in the future. My nascent wisdom was telling me that promises
made in this kind of setting were not likely to be kept. Moreover, I didn’t want to think about
afterwards, because that meant this current binge would end, a possibility I
didn’t want to entertain. Sandra gave me
a pipe, and, as she burned the crack, began talking about how she wanted to
quit, change her life – she didn’t want to lose another child, to suicide or
social services. Perhaps, like me, she
was seeking to compensate for things lost, or maybe things she never had but
felt she deserved. Either way, crack is
a great way to plug an emotional gap for a short time…ten minutes…ten
years. After that, well, you’re even
more on your own than you were to begin with, and your bank-account, if you
still have one, has fallen through the floorboards…if you still have a floor.
Then
Sandra decided she was hungry, and felt that I was just the person to go out
and find her some food, a kebab preferably.
I didn’t want to go, because I didn’t want to be parted from the drugs,
so I made out my sight wasn’t good enough for night-trekking. This wasn’t strictly true, but I thought it
just might staunch her raucousness. She
made out she was ravenous and, of course, was now eating for two. I knew she wanted the drugs to herself, but
her bluster, and the fact she’d now dragged the foetus into it, had me begging
a pipe for the road, creaking my way downstairs, past our host, now asleep in
his hovel, and out onto the slightly frightening main road a takeaway to
locate, madam’s appetite to sate. After
some time, passing garage, bus-stop, phone-box, the garage again, I came upon a
place of light, with men inside, and the warming orange glow of hot-food
cabinets defending the vendor. I went
in, all very gauche and decent of course.
‘Er, good evening,’ I said, not being able to see what was on offer, let
alone the menu high on the wall behind the counter, ‘do you do kebabs?’ They did, and the guy fixed me up a
couple. I forgot the way back to the
hotel. Wandering around Paddington at
four in the morning, lost, clutching two kebabs, is not my idea of fun. But eventually, almost by accident, I
stumbled on the right street, crept back in, made my way upstairs, and dinner,
or breakfast, was served. She chomped on
it like an urban fox that’s just found brunch in the rubble. I couldn’t eat when I was smoking – food felt
such a letdown compared with crack.
We
quibbled and quarrelled as the night drew on.
I tried to get sexual, pleasure-centres blazing away like a compromised
reactor-core, but she nudged me away with various vagaries and vows regarding
what was to come. Then, after more
smoking, and less conversation, she devoured the second kebab, as a dusty
yellow blur rose over the rooftops. She
belched up the chilli-gas as I sat there coming down, physically tense and
wracked with regret, wishing I were either high or dead, but not sinking into
quicksand somewhere in that grey hell in between. Maybe she took too big a pipe at some point,
but it wasn’t long before a mangled kebab-and-a-half was scattered over the divan
like a lamb Jackson Pollock. A little
later, the bin was ablaze, thanks to a discarded cigarette igniting various
tissues and kebab-wrappers. Then, at
roughly eight o’clock, there was a rustling in the hallway. A sense of dread passed through me, fearing
the cleaner might be about to come in.
We sat there, frozen on the bed, in fear that the normal world was about
to invade our privacy. A hoover howled
in the hall, hitting our door as it crashed around. Bin-bags were rustled, throats cleared, and
morning salutations exchanged, but somehow, our room wasn’t on the rota. The stress prompted Sandra to produce a wrap
of crack from her top, hitherto held back, no doubt for personal use in the
bathroom. She smoked it, even gracing me
with a toke, but then it was back to griping and groaning, and the smell of
sick, now wrapped in a sheet by the bin.
Shortly
after this, I looked at my watch and noticed it was half-past eight, and
suddenly thought, ‘I’ve got to go to work.’
When I made this announcement, however, Sandra was having none of
it. I was in a state of mental
exhaustion, and just wanted to get out, heart pounding in my chest, head in a
whirl of anxiety and remorse. Then
Sandra began pining, saying that if I was going then she’d have to go back to
Debbie’s, and would need twenty quid for a cab.
She threw in a reference to her being pregnant, and had me pinned a
second time.
So
I slid away into the chiding morning. By
now there were staff and guests around, and I felt ghoulish passing through them. Outside, the traffic was heaving. People were pounding in droves up and down
the pavements, and there I was in their midst, feeling like a phantom, doomed
to walk the streets of Paddington for the rest of time. But I had to complete the mission. I found a cashpoint and made my way back to
Sandra, gave her the note, and we said an unceremonious goodbye. Back through the rush-hour crowds, somehow I
found my way to the station, and the platform that would take me to Regent’s
Park.
This
may all sound pretty cold. It was
glacial. We were just each other’s
gateway, or getaway, to oblivion.
Everyone was happy, all short-term goals were met. And short-termism is what crack’s all
about. It doesn’t matter if you’re
knowingly spending your last twenty-quid.
Who cares? You certainly won’t
once you’ve had that first pipe. Well,
not for ten minutes or so. Who cares if
you should be buying food with it?
There’s bread in the fridge, it’ll just have to be toast again. You could spend it on going out with a
friend. Nah, they’ve probably got plans,
and anyway, who wants to turn up somewhere with just twenty quid? That’s crack money. A score ain’t gonna save ya.
And
the muffled witness to all this conjecture?
The baby curled in Sandra’s swollen belly, listening in on Primal FM,
the slows, the rushes of the heart, the rhythm of an irascible sea that can’t
decide what the tide is doing. A couple
of months later, Sandra, flat-stomached, during another distended encounter,
told me that she’d given birth a few weeks before. Not sure she even saw the child before it was
taken away. Said it was a girl. Didn’t name it. Jettisoned into the world, was she earmarked
from day one to fail, the word ‘addict’ etched into one of her
yet-to-be-activated genes? Is she now a
confused, lost, unmanageable tearaway, bouncing from care-home to care-home, as
if rehearsing for the role of the dissolute adult, following in her mother’s
footsteps without even knowing what her mother’s footsteps were? Or does she lead a stable and untroubled
life, mournful origins wiped out by the comfort of a loving environment, the
adopted ward of a Guardian-reader alliance, who, for reasons of infertility,
have decided to go the adoption route.
There she sits, diligently doing her homework, in an actual house, in a
pleasant, leafy part of town. Maybe
she’ll grow up to be a counsellor, having been drawn by an unfathomable desire
to help people with ‘issues’. Presumably,
by then, someone will have named her.
And, as ever, here is a song for you. It is old, but there are new ones on the way, I promise ya - just click on the title and you are safely transported to my youtube channel: I'm Too Tired To Kill You
See you soon I hope.
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