Jessica turns the doorknob and half opens the door and looks in. ‘Jesus!’ she exclaims. Richard Runche KC lies on an iron cot on a filthy mattress, his eyes closed, knees drawn up to his chest. He is fully clothed but without his shoes, and his suit is clearly in tatters, his pale feet are sticking out of the ends of his dirty trousers. The buttons on his fly are missing or open. Jessica can’t see which, but the gap reveals a pathetic little purple acorn curled into its pubic nest. Runche’s greasy jacket is ripped, the lapels frayed at the edge, and his once white shirt, which sports no collar, is almost black.
They enter the tiny room, which smells of shit, stale sick and grog. Runche groans and sucks at his gums and every few moments shouts out, as though in fear. Whatever is going on inside his grog-soaked brain is obviously not doing him a lot of good.
Both women look about them, their fingers held to their noses. Jessica sees that the single window is shut tight so that the atmosphere is fetid and you could cut the air with an axe. Several blowflies buzz around, bumping against the uncovered dirty window-pane. It is light enough, though, and the rod and rings above the window testify that curtains once hung there. The barrister, groaning, now pulls a filthy pillow over his head against the intrusion of the sharp mid-morning light.
Against the wall to the side of the window stands a dresser made of several four-gallon paraffin tins resting on their sides with one end cut out and the edges hammered flat. Scraps of clothing, empty bottles and nondescript bits and pieces are stuffed into each of its apertures. Beside the bed stands a battered old chair with its cane seat broken inwards, as though a giant has farted and blown the plaited cane asunder. The remainder of the room is filled with law books lying higgledy-piggledy or piled in little heaps among the empty claret bottles and old newspapers.
‘Oh me Gawd!’ Mary exclaims, bringing her hands up to her face. ‘This the whitefella gunna bring me kids back?’
Jessica moves over to the window and after some effort she manages to push it open, though the hinges creak where they’ve rusted up. ‘It’ll be orright, Mary,’ she says, though she knows she’s trying to convince herself as much as she is her friend.
‘Nah, missus, that fella he got the DTs. He’s gorn, finish.’
Jessica turns on Mary. ‘Don’t you go Abo on me, ya hear, Mary Simpson, I ain’t yer flamin’ missus!’ she says furiously. ‘He’ll be orright, I’m tellin’ yer, I’ve seen hi
m before, same as this!’
‘I’m sorry, Jessie,’ Mary says looking down at Richard Runche KC. ‘It’s just I seen his kind before.’ She points to the pathetic shivering form on the bed. ‘This ain’t new stuff for black people.’
Jessica looks contrite. ‘I’m sorry, too, Mary, I didn’t mean to shout at yiz, it’s me nerves an’ all.’ She spreads her hands. ‘Bloody hell, what’re we gunna do?’
‘Go home,’ Mary says promptly, shrugging one shoulder. ‘Can’t help that bugger.’
‘Go home? What, and leave him like this?’
‘Ten minutes ago we didn’t know he were like this,’ Mary points out.
‘So? What’s that supposed to mean?’ Mary sighs. ‘We close the door and we think who we was ten minutes back. We’s Jessie and Mary, remember? And we ain’t done nothing wrong to nobody and we’s minding our own business trying to get back me kids.’ She pauses and takes a breath. ‘So we catch the train and go back home.’
‘And you never see your kids again! Is that it?’
‘Jessie, he’s fucked!’ Mary cries suddenly. ‘He ain’t gunna get me kids back. That poor bastard, he’s got snakes and spiders in his head, eh!’
Jessica’s jaw sets, the Bergman stubbornness comes upon her, settles down on a rock in her head like the grey heron that comes to the creek of a morning. She shakes her head slowly. ‘Nah, I’m not leavin’ him, Mary. You can go if yer like, you’ve got yer train ticket.’ Mary sighs again. ‘Jessie, it’s bloody hopeless, I seen this a hundred times. When they come out, their brain’s gorn, all they can do is dribble and shit their trousers!’ She points at the figure on the bed once more. ‘One day he like this and he drowns in his own vomit, that the most lucky day for everyone!’
‘Yeah, well, okay, but I’ve got to try.’ Jessica looks at Mary. ‘He’s me friend. Wasn’t for him I’d still be in the loony-bin!’
Mary shrugs. ‘You’re gunna be sorry, Jessica. Don’t say I didn’t told yer.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘Righto then, we got to get him awake and to make ’im throw up. You think that fat old woman will lend us a bucket or a big dish?’
‘I’ll go ask her,’ Jessica volunteers, pleased that Mary’s going to stay with her.
She returns with a bucket a few minutes later to find that Mary is seated on the side of the iron cot and has the still semi-conscious Runche held in a sitting position on the bed while she massages his neck and the back of his skull. ‘He’s got nits and I think he’s shit hisself,’ she announces calmly as Jessica enters. “Ere, Jessie, hold the bucket on his lap and watch out for your hands.’
Moments later the poor barrister gives a pronounced shudder and half opens his eyes, then he begins to gag and Mary grips him tightly by the back of the neck. His eyes open a little wider and begin to roll in his head and a moment later Mary pushes his face hard down over the bucket and Richard Runche KC empties his stomach into it.
Both women remain silent until finally the poor man seems to have emptied out. ‘Take the bucket, give us the bottle,’ Mary now says to Jessica. ‘What, the claret?’
‘Yeah, the bottle we brought him. Be better if it was brandy.’
Jessica takes the bucket and opens the door and places it outside the room. Then she takes from her basket the bottle of claret they’d purchased at Jimmy Jenkins’s suggestion. ‘Shit, we forgot the corkscrew,’ she cries.
Mary laughs and pulls the lawyer back into a sitting position, and her hand goes to the side pocket of his tattered suit jacket. ‘Abracadabra!’ she says, producing a corkscrew out of the pocket and handing it to Jessica. ‘Corkscrew’s the one thing they never lose, that and their flamin’ thirst,’ she says grinning.
At the sound of the cork being drawn from the claret bottle, Runche’s eyes pop open and his lips start to smack together. Jessica hands the bottle to Mary. ‘Should we, y’know, give him more grog?’ she asks, unsure.
‘Only way we’s gunna get him onto his feet,’ Mary says, in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘He’s all the time drunk anyway, can’t do without it no more — grog’s what keeps him gain’.’ She feeds a little claret into the lawyer’s mouth. He closes his eyes and swallows the ruby liquid greedily, then his tongue spreads against his top lip, begging for more, his eyes open again, though no more than a slit. Mary waves the bottle almost within range of his mouth, teasing him with it, and Runche tries to follow the moving claret bottle with his head, his lips now beating frantically together like those of a goldfish in a bowl. Suddenly she grips him behind his scrawny neck and begins to shake him, her thumb digging hard into the flesh under his jaw, her other hand holding the bottle up in front of him. ‘No more till yiz speaks to us,’ Mary commands.
Richard Runche KC winces. ‘Ouch!’ he groans. Mary releases her grip and Runche rubs his eyes like a small child waking and gazes about him. He looks directly at Jessica and she can see the confusion in his eyes. She sees also that he doesn’t know who she is. ‘It’s Jessica, Mr Runche, your friend. Remember me?’ Richard Runche’s eyes remain vacant, not comprehending.