Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover

Viola Smith

 

My Mum used to cradle me so tight in her arms I thought my bones would break.

“My beautiful precious girl, you’re going to be a star” she’d coo at me, beaming in my innocent face.

You want to fast forward just ten years from then, when I was so heavily dependent on drugs that I would sneak out the house at unsociable hours and wait for boys on the corners of grimy streets in Nottingham.

I would slather so much cheap mascara on my eyelashes that I stole from Mum’s fancy draw that it would cake them in horrible clumps.

The men didn’t care.

I think I got in with the wrong crowd. My boyfriend at the time told me drugs weren’t that bad, that you just had to be sensible with them, that “they showed you the true aspects of yourself and opened up your mind”. I suppose they did do that, but it wasn’t fancy.

Mum and Dad argued a lot, like couples do and I suppose they were roped up in their own issues, so they didn’t notice me sneaking out for long hours at a time.

We never had much money and when my boyfriend left me, I had no sources to get the substances that ironically helped me stand up straight and face the day yet simultaneously stooped me over when I was without them.

It’s still a bit of a blur because it got really bad and I think my brain turned mushy in the end when I’d end up so coked up that I’d sleep in the bush outside the flat, nearly dying of cold just so that Mum wouldn’t find out.

Obviously secrets like that come with a ticking time bomb as the direness of the situation increases and it always tries to seep out.

One night I’d turned to cheap beer in desperation instead and having not eaten anything all day the addicted, nasty, vulnerable monster had me yelling down the street at someone I usually picked up from. Dad heard the whole conversation from the window and raided my bedroom, finding bags with remnants of powdered cocaine, and a dodgy needle I used for a heroin injection one time. Busted.

Within a week I was kicked out. Dad and Mum argued about it the whole time – a new debate for them I suppose. Mum cried so much that week that I thought she’d speak in tears and never be able to converse with me again. She never has, so I guess that would make sense. She was quite a weak woman, and gave in to my Dad, which I suppose I am weak too.

 

But I don’t think I would ever harm a human being. But I don’t remember. I’ve been living on the streets since I was fifteen and now I’m twenty-eight. My life is generally a hazy daze of survival and attempting to block everything out.

I met Henry Levis when I was seventeen. I had been in and out of homeless shelters for the two previous years, kicked out when they’d found me trying to get substances off other people. I swear I was always reasonable when I asked though. I would never be violent.

I met Henry as I was plodding past the council in Lincoln. He emerged from the building, a sleeping bag draped over his shoulder, a matted beard and knotty hair, a sparkling smile and piercing eyes protruding out of his face.

Our story began in that moment. We spent the night chatting under the bridge nearby and I was happy to find a friend. I’d never really had one.

At first we were friends and then he would slip his hand into my sleeping bag and touch me. I let him. I didn’t care but when it became frequent I didn’t enjoy it. I didn’t make him stop because I needed him and he knew that, from the help he got from the council he gave some of the money to me in order to fund my habits, and consequently he became my new dependency. He was forty when I met him, and I was seventeen.

I have to say he frightened me and when he stumbled over his past, how his wife accused him of domestic violence, I was scared. I think he’s hit me before because I’ve woke up with blood on my face and on the cold slab of the concrete floor by my sleeping bag. He tells me I’ve been ‘fighting again’. But I’m not violent. I would never be violent. It’s not in my nature.

 

My eyes flicker open in response to the light of dawn, for a moment I stare absently at my sideways view of the water drifting silently down the canal. A sharp pain shoots through the side of my head and I groan in discomfort, wincing as I sit up and put my palm against it. It feels tender and bruised. I frown, my head swimming with confusion. What happened last night? I glance around, ready to shake Henry awake and demand answers like I normally do, but he’s not here. Neither is Jake. Odd.

Their sleeping bags are here though. Jake’s one is neatly folded into a square, tucked into the corner of the bridge. Like usual. I lean over and move Henry’s one, discovering a long tear down the side of it, like someone has ripped it with great anguish. A smell of piss putrefies the morning air. I’d normally scrunch my nose up; however I’m used to the smell, but I realise it’s coming from Henry’s sleeping bag. Foggy recollections of last night now flood my head, but they come out erratically, like jumping puzzle pieces. A group of male students stood in front of us, jeering. I think one of them has hold of Henry’s sleeping bag and is sniggering at it. A commotion at the end of the bridge. I think I shouted at Henry and Jake who were getting shoved and pushed and shoved and pushed back. I’m not sure what I said.

I shuffle back and lean my sore head against the wall. I have a real bad feeling, but I can’t tell if it’s from the pangs of hunger in the pit of my stomach or from something that happened last night that I can’t make sense of.

My stomach somersaults and a cloud of nausea flushes over me as I realise what the bad feeling is.

I have an image of one of the students being shoved down by a determined strong hand into the threatening depths of the Brayford. I’m sure it was Henry. A flicker of his angry, psychotic frown crosses my mind and I shudder profusely.

 

 

Henry Levis

 

I had a daughter once. Her name was Kathleen. I could spend hours combing through her beautiful long blonde hair that got so knotty from playing outside with her friends.

“Daddy” she’d moan. “You’re supposed to do it gently, like Mummy does, then put a big pony on the top of my head!” Then she’d raise her little arms in the air and grin at me, gesturing to her head, her ragged old teddy’s ears, a white bunny rabbit’s, bouncing up and down as she did so.

Those small little moments stay deeply rooted in my mind, stagnant now though. As stagnant as the murky waters of the Brayford that shifts miserably down the canal in front of me that I watch every day from my equally miserable bed set-up. I sleep in the corner of the wall under the Brayford bridge, armed with a sleeping bag that has accumulated several marks and stains over the years.

I wouldn’t even be able to count the amount of people that walk past me every day, without a single glance in my direction. Some of them flinch when they see me out of the corner of their eye, as if they’re surprised I’m a real person and not just part of the wall. I feel like I am sometimes. I feel like a ghost of my former self. Like I could go about my day untouched, unnoticed, blending in to all the walls.

The only one that does notice me is Viola, and sometimes Jake but he always does his own thing really. He’s a very smart man but he doesn’t belong on the streets, it stands out more with him. He has little refined qualities that are quite endearing to me, like when he smooths down his long black hair away from his forehead. He’ll keep doing it until it’s flat and neat against his scalp, scraping his fingers incessantly through the greasy strands. Then he’ll zip his coat up to his chin and huddle into a tight ball, protecting himself from the world. I imagine him in a pristine office, stressing over a company policy. Not here.

 I don’t think he can deal with Viola like I can. She never admits that she gets into fights and that’s the worst part of it all.

She says the next day that she doesn’t remember and swears blind she would never fight, jabbing her finger at me in accusation, looking around at all the dried blood that surrounds her and wincing at some part of her face that’s had a blow. I am the only one that ever drags her away. If it wasn’t for me, she would definitely be dead.

I met her when she was seventeen and took her under my wing. She was very underweight and helpless, clutching at anyone who would simply look at her. I had already been on the streets for several years so I knew how to survive.

Slowly, I began to unravel my past to her. I confided my utmost thoughts to her one day. The rain drizzled perpetually all around us, the Brayford swirling around in chaos as the patters of rain touched its dingy surface. It was dull and there was barely anyone around. Just Viola and I with a couple of pigeons.

I told her how I met my ex-wife in a cocktail bar in London. I told her how her soft hair bounced down her back like a silent ballerina when she turned her head to see me approaching her when we saw each other for the first time. She had eyes like dark chocolate swirls, I looked in them and got lost, it was like looking into a luxury, velvety smooth chocolate box and I couldn’t resist. I was hooked right from the beginning. If only I knew what would happen.

 

I wander aimlessly through the backstreets of Lincoln, feeling like my feet will never stop, just wanting to get away. I sweat all over in panic, despite the intruding thick coldness of the Autumn morning.

Last night’s events burden me as hundreds of panic-stricken questions fill my mind. Is the boy definitely dead? Why didn’t I check? Why didn’t I fucking check on him?

I remember burning up with ferocious anger when the thick cunt pissed on my sleeping bag. That’s my home, did he not think I would retaliate? I’d punched him a few times to wipe that nasty grin off his face but then I backed away in concern because he lay unconscious on the floor. At that point Viola was brewed up for a fight, vicious drunk slurs that came out in ugly sounds escaped her mouth.

I told Viola to stop but she wouldn’t listen and then I gave up trying. She chased them up the path, still shouting madly as the unconscious one was now dragged up by his mates. Jake, having been watching the incident unravel nervously from the corner of the bridge, had intercepted, trying to handle Viola and pull her away. I remember kneeling to investigate how bad of a condition my sleeping bag was in and tears filled my eyes, realising the only thing I owned was ruined.

In that moment there was a splash and I heard someone being forcefully thrown into the Brayford.

I turned around and saw Jake holding back Viola, wide-eyed in fear, and the other two boys were nowhere to be seen.

 

 

Jake Inns

 

The world is a mysterious place. One minute you’re up, flying your kite into dense regions of wonder, and then the next you’re stuck on a cold concrete slab, a sign saying “spare any change” at your feet as you stare down into the wondrous depths of pigeon crap.

I huddle with Henry and Viola under the bridge, curling up into a ball as if protecting myself from the monstrous glare of the shiny new student flats that lay around me, jeering down at me as if they know my whole life. Cunts.

I tend to keep my past to myself because I don’t want to get too mad at the world. I lost my job, it’s as simple as that. Is it not scary to you that some of the most nasty, cunning people are suspended on a platform in high positions of power? Do you realise how rife that is? I shudder when I think about it. Head to toe, like an electric shock scraping its claw down my spine.

As much as I’ve tried to put faith into Henry and Viola I could never trust them. The world has been far too cruel for them to ever be able to drag themselves out of the dark well now. Viola’s sunken face is a sad metaphor for her sunken life, which is a constant whirlwind of drug and alcohol dependency from the gaping void of reality. She can be truly terrifying when she is angry and I really think she’s in some kind of different world, you can stare right at her, but her eyes stare right through you to a different place entirely.

Henry is unpredictable. He is like fire. Before you get too close and get scolded, he’s protective and charming, and seems like a god-send to have as a companion for this kind of lifestyle. Get too close and he’ll start talking about his ex-wife, his glass emotionless eyes will stare hypnotically ahead as he describes how he hit her because she didn’t listen, how her stupidity was what made him so violent and that she deserved it, and because of her he’s on the streets. There was no remorse when he spoke me through, in detail, of the time he grabbed his heavy metal shovel from their perfect shed and bashed it into her skull because she refused to change the television programme.

 

“Excuse me, Miss, I’d like to report a crime”.

I’ve found the first police officer who is in town and gone straight up to them, not hesitating at all as I must get the incident of last night off my chest and help now in any way I can.

The policewoman swivels around abruptly, her hands tucked authoratively into the sides of her police jacket. I notice she has that type of face which looks like her eyebrows are always furrowed together in frustration. She gives me an up and down judgy look as if to say, “why is a tramp talking to me?”

“What is it you would like to report?” She looks confused but not particularly surprised. I wonder what she’s doing here actually, just stood by the corner of Wilko. Has someone run out with a shoe rack? I clear my throat as my hands tremble, barely believing the words I now speak are true.

“A boy was thrown into the Brayford in the early hours of this morning. A fight broke out when he urinated on a homeless man’s sleeping bag. I witnessed the two people who threw the boy, who was barely conscious, into the water.”

The policewoman’s face now lit up in animation, a mix of both shock and concern, and I would go as far to say excitement. She swiftly repeated the statement into her two-way radio to alert her colleagues before interrogating me further.

A new police investigation had begun.