Mary-Jane Riley - Gone in the Night

Where was he?

Her head began to swim. She leaned forward and grabbed the sides of the washbasin, trying to breathe deeply and evenly. Lack of food, lack of sleep, worry about her landlord putting up her rent – all of that. More deep breaths and her head felt better.

Two cups of coffee, one cigarette and another application of lipstick later and Cora emerged into the misty gloom of the early morning. It was a good time to see the people she wanted to talk to – before they moved on to start their begging in shop doorways, or to find breakfast at one of the hostels in the city. She hurried down the steps and out onto the pavement, striding along to the underpass, glad she’d brought her umbrella.

With its walls of graffiti and stench of urine, the underpass linking her end of town with the shopping area was a favourite spot for the dispossessed and the vulnerable. Often it was littered with cardboard, empty drinks cans and bottles, old bits of clothing used as bedding, sometimes used needles. Although there had been an attempt to make the bare concrete walls more cheerful by covering them with paintings of Picasso-like figures in lurid colours, Cora often thought someone could die down here and never be noticed. Today it was the rowdy crowd, drinking cheap cider and knock-off spirits, leaning, or in some cases sagging, against the wall.

‘Corrrrrra.’

‘Hey, Tiger, how are you?’ She smiled at the man who had pushed himself away from the wall and staggered towards her, ignoring the catcalls from the other men and women. ‘You’re up early.’

‘Keepin’ warm,’ he said, holding a can aloft. ‘Pissin’ freezin’. Coppers moved us on this mornin’. Honestly, no bleedin’ hearts in them.’

‘Can I get you a coffee?’ she said. ‘A bit of breakfast?’

‘Nah you’re all right. Bit of cash’d be nice.’

‘Tiger—’ She shook her head.

‘I know, I know, I’d piss it up against the wall.’ He cocked his head to one side. ‘Are you still lookin’ for Ricky-boy?’

‘Yes. Why, have you see him?’ Her heart leapt.

He shook his head. ‘Nah. We miss him though, don’t we?’ he shouted out to the others.

A general rumble of noise floated around the underpass. Tiger shrugged. ‘Sorry. Can’t help you. He’s a good mate, though. Find him soon, yeah?’

‘It’s okay,’ said Cora, ‘there are plenty of other places I can look.’ The familiar darkness settled around her head. She was never going to find him, but she had to keep looking.

And that was the depressing thing, she thought, as she tramped around the city in the drizzle that was getting harder and colder by the minute, there were plenty of other places to look, even in a city like Norwich which never used to have a homelessness problem. Now it seemed to be everywhere. People sleeping in shop doorways, in car parks, alleyways, even by the traffic lights outside the station.

And it was Martin, outside the railway station, bundled up in his sleeping bag, covered with old tinfoil, and lying on a bed of newspaper and used pizza boxes with his beloved dog, Ethel, who gave her the first bit of hope since Rick went missing.

‘Yeah,’ said Martin, sitting up and accepting a cigarette and a takeaway coffee from her with trembling fingers. ‘I saw Rick ’bout two weeks ago. Before I went to Yarmouth. Piss poor place that. Two weeks was enough.’ He hunched his shoulders against the wet.

Cora nodded. That was the last time she’d seen her brother, when she had tried to persuade him to spend at least one of the freezing nights in a homelessness shelter.

‘He had a smoke with me. Told me ’bout some men who’d come calling.’

‘What sort of men?’

Martin tugged the sleeping bag around his neck trying to stop the rain trickling down. He shivered. ‘You know, well-dressed, well-fed types. One of them wearing a suit, for fuck’s sake. Looked like Mormons. Wanted to know about him.’

Cora frowned. God-botherers? Do-gooders? Or the men they were expecting to see? ‘And what did he tell them?’

An early morning commuter tossed a few coins in the bowl that was always by Martin’s side. Ethel sniffed the bowl, but turned away when she saw there were no tasty biscuits in it for her.

Martin looked down, focused on the ground. ‘He said he told them he had nobody and he didn’t want no help from no one, unless they had a job to offer him.’

There it was. The guilt that squeezed her, that had made her search frantically for her brother whenever she could these past few days, that had interrupted what little sleep she had managed to grab for herself. The argument she’d had with Rick the day before he disappeared. When she’d told him she was done with helping him. It was time to call it off. She was frightened about what might happen.

It had started out as nothing really, as many arguments do. She had sought him out at his usual spot behind the solicitors off Unthank Road. Two of the lawyers looked after him occasionally, giving him food and coffee. Cora was forever grateful to them. That day she had gone to find him, determined to persuade him to have his hair cut – had offered to pay. There was a new Turkish barbers that had opened, she told him. They would do the lot. A wash, a cut, even a beard trim. Why would he want that, he’d said, he was perfectly happy with how he looked. It was necessary now , she knew that, he told her, shaking his head.

Cora had wanted to cry. Rick’s hair and beard were long and matted. Grimy. She hated that ratty beard. It symbolized how far they had fallen. He looked uncared for, unkempt. And she told him so.

‘I live on the streets, Cora. That’s what happens,’ he told her. ‘This is what I wanted. And now it’s perfect.’

She wanted to stamp her foot. ‘But you don’t have to. We can stop this. You can come home with me.’ She’d had enough.

‘No.’ He had that steely look in his eyes.

She knew she ought to stop, but she couldn’t. ‘Rick, I don’t want to do this anymore.’

‘Well, tough. Because I do.’

‘I can’t bear it. I can’t bear to see you on the streets with no one to care for you and no one to love you. I want you with me.’ She dashed away the tears that were trickling down her cheeks.

‘I thought you understood, Cora.’ His voice was hard. ‘This has to be done. This is my life now.’

‘I don’t know why you’re punishing yourself,’ she whispered.

‘Yes, you do.’

‘Please, Rick. Come home with me. Or at least let me find you a place in a shelter for a few nights.’

‘Stop it.’ He sighed. ‘Cora, this is exactly what you do. You come here offering to pay for me to have my hair cut, trim my beard, probably put pomade or whatever that stuff is on it, but it would make a nonsense of everything. It would make a nonsense of my life. Of our lives. Of what I need to do. I have a purpose. Leave it, Cora, leave me alone, let me get on with it, like we agreed.’

‘I want us to be together. I’m not strong enough without you,’ she whispered.

‘You are. You’re stronger than anyone. Now, leave it, Cora, for fuck’s sake.’

And she had seen that anger in his face, the anger that could spill over into something altogether more frightening, and she had turned and left. Almost running in her haste.

‘That’s right, Cora,’ he shouted after her. ‘Run away. Just like you always do.’

She stopped and turned. ‘You know what, Rick? You’re a loser. You think you’re making life easier for me? Well you’re not. You’re bloody not.’

And since then she hadn’t been able to find him. And how she bitterly regretted the words she had flung at him so carelessly, so thoughtlessly.

‘Rick didn’t tell you about a job, then?’ she asked Martin now.