by Keane Jessie
Charlie was fuming.
Terry, who was in charge of cleaning up after jobs, took their boiler suits and hoods plus the gear they were wearing underneath and stuffed everything into a bag. Later, he’d burn it. Beezer, who had been little Col’s adoring brother until little Col topped himself off by getting on the wrong side of that Rottweiler, refused to let Terry burn his designer jacket.
‘Come on,’ said Terry.
‘No way,’ said Beezer, who prided himself on his togs, the flashier the better. And he’d bought the jacket on a trip to honour Col’s memory. It had sentimental value, he said.
Terry shrugged. They divvied up the money and departed.
Ten days later, the Bill were round asking questions – everyone knew where the villains were on the manor, and Charlie had a reputation as a real heavy face now. They got hold of Beezer’s jacket and matched up fibres from that with some near the smashed office door.
Beezer got handed down two years and the rest of them got off with nothing.
Beezer’s sentence was unfortunate in one way.
But in another?
It was a cast-iron miracle.
14
With the loan she’d got from Charlie, Nula paid to have the operation on her nose done at a private clinic. It was two weeks of unbelievable pain, during which there was Mum forever at her bedside asking what had she done a thing like that to herself for? Nula was a pretty young girl with everything in front of her.
Yeah, including a monstrous conk, thought Nula, enduring her mother, patiently waiting for her to be gone. Hating herself for feeling like that, too: she knew how much her mother loved her, but she also knew that she wanted out from this suffocating little world that her sweet, placid, old-fashioned mum inhabited.
‘Our mum’s right,’ said Jimmy, eating the grapes he’d bought her as she lay in the nice private room in the swish hospital. ‘You must be off your head, our Nula, bothering about your fucking nose.’
So there was pain, and there was discomfort, and there was her mum fussing around and her brother who always had a go at her, he couldn’t resist it, and Dad who stayed away because he never could stand hospitals.
In between, there was the very nice plastic surgeon, and nurses who actually took trouble over you, not like in the NHS place she’d been in as a kid to have her tonsils out, where some of the nurses couldn’t be arsed to fetch you an extra blanket if you were cold, or even a pot to piss in when you were dying for the loo.
Then came the day when the gauze and tape was to be removed. She feared that when the big reveal was effected, her nose would be exactly as it always was. Huge. Lumpen. Yeah, shaped like a potato. Awful.
She held her breath as the nurse lifted the gauze free of her face. The air felt chilly, strange on the newly exposed skin. She’d already seen her reflection in the bathroom mirror, the big patch of gauze and above it two spectacular black eyes. Now, she would see everything.
The nurse was smiling. She was handing Nula a mirror. Nula lifted it nervously, and looked.
‘Oh my God!’ she burst out.
‘What do you think?’ asked the nurse.
Nula couldn’t speak.
There was bruising. There was blood, a little. But also . . .
She had a normal nose.
It was dainty. A little turned up. Extremely cute.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she said, in a state of shock.
‘Yes,’ said the nurse, smiling. ‘It is.’
15
Charlie Stone was surprised when Nula turned up to his gaff again.
‘You look different,’ he said, trying to place exactly what was changed about her.
Before, she’d worn plain clothes, cheap stuff that made her vanish into the background, and her unstyled hair had been pure mouse, thin and horrible. Today, she was in a short pale blue dress, her hair was styled in an urchin cut. Charlie thought she looked tasty, actually. Surprisingly so.
‘My nose,’ she said.
Charlie stared. That was it. But she was thinner too. Quite fanciable. ‘Ah. That was the loan, yeah?’
‘It was. Yes.’
‘You’re a week behind, incidentally,’ he said sourly. He was in a bad mood. Beezer getting banged up had shaken him. He still couldn’t believe it. What a cunting arse the bloke was, with his fancy designer gear. And look what it had cost him. It had been close for the rest of them as well. Too bloody close.
‘I’ve been in the hospital. Having my nose done. Then getting better.’
‘Have you. Well good for you. But lateness incurs extra interest.’
‘What?’ Nula eyed him in disbelief.
‘It’s all part of the deal, as I explained to you when I made you the loan,’ he said. ‘Fifty per cent interest now, and if another single late payment occurs, that doubles to a hundred for six months.’
‘A hundred per cent?’
‘That’s correct.’ Charlie was staring at her face. She looked terrified, and he rather liked that. Made him feel powerful. Which, of course, he was. His mood lightened a bit.
‘You . . . you’re joking.’ Nula was stretched to the limit as it was. She couldn’t afford a single penny above what she was already paying. And he was talking about doubling her debt.
‘Does this face say joking?’ asked Charlie.
‘I can’t afford that,’ said Nula.
‘Well, you had better afford it, because that is the price and it’s non-negotiable,’ said Charlie, picking up his pen and nodding toward the door. ‘See yourself out.’
Terry and Jill were loitering out by the front door again, Jill all over big handsome Terry like a rash, as always. Nula barged past the pair of them, her mind in turmoil.
‘Oi! Manners!’ she heard Jill say as she shoved off down the path.
16
Nula’s life became one huge round of debt. Bing Crosby crooned ‘White Christmas’ all over the city as Christmas came and slowly went. She was working like stink to raise cash, taking all the overtime she could, but it still wasn’t enough. So she took another job in the evenings, working the bar down the Dog and Duck, and then when even that didn’t cut it she took another job on Sundays, polishing tables and cleaning out the disgusting bogs in the local working men’s club.
Finally she broke down in tears and told Jimmy. It was humiliating to have to confide anything to that smug bastard, but she couldn’t tell her friends because she was too ashamed of her own stupidity, wandering into this deal with her eyes shut, and she couldn’t tell her parents because she never told them anything, not ever, and she wasn’t about to start now.
‘Right,’ said Jimmy, puffing himself up while Nula sobbed at the kitchen table. ‘I’m going to have a word with that fucker.’
‘That won’t do any good,’ she gasped out.
‘Oh won’t it? We’ll see about that.’
And Jimmy belted off out of the kitchen and down the hall, slamming the front door behind him.
Jimmy didn’t come back for his tea. Mum was fretting as they waited and Nula was fretting even worse because she knew where Jimmy had gone and she didn’t dare say a word about it.
Mum set Jimmy’s dinner on a covered plate over a simmering pan of water to keep it warm. It sat there for over two hours, until it was turned to mush. Then Mum scraped the lot into the bin and started pacing around while Dad took to standing at the front door, gazing out into the night, letting in gusts of cold air. Nula sat at the table, fearful of where this was all going to end, nervous that Jimmy’s meddling was going to bring her secret out into the daylight.
Then there was the sound of a motor revving out in the street, a shout went up and there was heavy footfall by the front door. Presently, Dad staggered into the kitchen holding Jimmy up. He was bleeding from cuts to his face. His skin was grey and he was clutching his guts.
‘What happened?’ asked Mum, as she helped her husband ease their son into a chair. ‘Oh Gawd son, what they done to you?’
Through o
ne half-closed eye, Jimmy stared at his sister. His expression said it all. You daft cow, this is all your fault.
‘Charlie Stone beat me up,’ he mumbled.
‘Why? What for?’ asked Dad.
‘Just for the hell of it, I s’pose,’ said Jimmy, as Mum started mopping away the blood from his face.
Dad started swearing and saying that bastard needed taking down a peg, he thought he was king of the bloody manor now Gordie Howard and his crew had been chased out of it.
Nula said nothing. She was thinking that she’d better not let the laugh that was building up in her escape to the wild. Yes, for certain Charlie Stone was a bastard of the first order; but he’d beaten the shit out of Jimmy, who had spent the better part of her life making it a misery – bullying her, mocking her, generally being a complete pain in the arse.
Charlie Stone had delivered Nula’s revenge for her. All right, he was also caning her for a lot of cash and she was in the shit for sure, but . . . he’d beaten the crap out of Jimmy.
She could only admire anyone who did that.
17
It looked like Charlie had in fact gone easy on Jimmy, because save for a few spectacular bruises he was back at work in the car showroom within a week, and he didn’t mention Nula’s debt or Charlie Stone again.
But the debt remained, and she had to pay it. Stretched to the limit, too worried to sleep at night, Nula gathered together what cash she could and went to pay Charlie Stone back his stinking money. Well, some of it. Now she wished she hadn’t bothered with the nose job. All right, her vanity was appeased. An average slim young girl looked back at her from the mirror now, with no huge unsightly bastard of a nose marring her features.
But . . . oh God, the price she’d paid for it. Was still paying for it.
Terry let her in and her heart did its usual backflip at the sight of him. But – also as usual – he barely seemed to notice her. At least there was no Jill here today, thank God for small mercies. Terry ushered Nula along the hall, into what passed for Charlie Stone’s office.
And there was Charlie, squat and powerful, sitting behind his desk looking a question at her as she came in and closed the door behind her. And . . . her eyes fixed on his hands. Big blunt-fingered hands, loaded with gold rings. The knuckles of his right hand were scabbed, the skin there only newly healed.
‘You got some front, girl, sending your brother round here to mug me off,’ he said.
Nula drew in a breath, wrenched her eyes away from the evidence of Jimmy’s beating. ‘I didn’t send him,’ she said.
‘Well whether you did or whether you didn’t, that means the debt’s gone up, OK?’
‘You what?’
‘You heard.’
‘I’m struggling to pay it now.’
‘Struggling? You’re failing. The payment’s late. I trust you’ve come here today to settle up?’
‘I’ve come here today to pay a bit towards it.’ Nula looked in her handbag, extracted three fivers, and put them down on the desk. Then she looked him in the eye. ‘And to say I can’t pay the rest.’
Charlie sat back in his seat and eyed her beadily. She was a pretty little thing really. And she had backbone, fronting it out like this. Way back, he could remember her as podgy and plain, with her hair a mess and her nose dominating her whole face. Now, there was a big improvement. In fact – yeah – he fancied her.
‘You probably got the hump over me giving your brother a pasting,’ said Charlie.
‘No,’ said Nula. ‘I was glad you did.’
‘You what?’
Nula shrugged. ‘I don’t like my brother.’
‘Right.’ Charlie was eyeing her up. ‘So what if I was to say, come out to dinner with me one evening? Pay off your debt in kind, as it were?’
Nula returned his stare in surprise. She hadn’t expected that. No man had ever come on to her before. She was plain little Nula. Deep down she still felt like that, despite the evidence that looked back at her from her bedroom mirror these days. Outside, she was different. Inside, reality had yet to sink in. If it ever would, which sometimes she doubted.
Charlie had given Jimmy a thumping, and she liked that. Also . . . if she got close to Charlie, then she was getting close to Terry too, and it was Terry she was interested in. Maybe if Charlie noticed her, then somehow, by some miracle, Terry would too?
‘What would that involve?’ she asked bluntly.
Charlie frowned at her. ‘Having dinner. Talking. That sort of thing. You know. Normal boy-girl things.’
Nula thought of Terry, out there in the hall.
‘OK,’ she said.
18
Charlie took Nula out to dinner at the Ritz; it was posher than anything Nula had ever experienced in her entire life. Of course, her parents and Jimmy ganged up on her before she went out on their date.
‘Charlie Stone’s a villain,’ said Jimmy, face black with temper. He liked to control Nula. With Charlie sniffing around, he wouldn’t be able to do that any more. ‘You ought to be ashamed, our Nula, going out with the likes of him. One minute he’s chasing you for money, now he’s treating you to dinners? You want to go careful.’
‘What money?’ said Mum.
‘Nula got a loan off the bastard,’ said Jimmy, landing her right in it. Deliberately.
‘Our Nula!’ Mum’s eyes were wide with shock behind her glasses. ‘You didn’t.’
Nula didn’t answer.
‘He comes round here, I’m going to tell him to piss off,’ said Dad, disgusted.
So for Nula the evening didn’t get off to a flying start. She got dressed up and wondered why she was bothering. Charlie was going to be seen off at the door, and not by big blustering Jimmy but by Dad. She cringed when she heard the doorbell go at five to seven and stood in her room upstairs waiting to hear raised voices.
She waited.
Nothing happened.
Cautiously she went down the stairs and into the hall. There was laughter coming from the kitchen, where the family always gathered in the evenings. She walked along the hall, pushed open the kitchen door.
There was her mother, sitting at the table blushing like a girl and smiling up at Charlie Stone. Jimmy was loitering over by the fireplace, not quite scowling but arms crossed over his middle in a defensive posture while Charlie held Mum and even Dad in thrall.
‘I wondered where Nula got her looks from, and now I know. You have a lovely daughter, Mrs Perkins, you should be very proud.’
Nula watched Charlie in fascination. She hadn’t known he could be like this: charming, smiling, exuding this magnetic bonhomie that even seemed to be sucking her po-faced father into its orbit. All she had seen so far was the threat, the big-noise gangster. Here was another side to his character, and it amazed her.
He turned his head, still smiling, as she came into the room. ‘Nula!’ he exclaimed, eyeing her up and down. ‘Don’t you look the business.’
For once, Nula was almost prepared to believe him. She’d chosen a dusky-blue dress for the evening, and it suited her skin and hair to perfection. She’d applied make-up and even she knew that she looked pretty good. It wasn’t that artless, natural looking good that Jill always seemed to manage without even trying – no, Nula had to work at it. But she’d pass for OK.
She thought that Charlie looked good too, wearing a suit, a crisp white shirt and a tobacco-brown tie that matched his eyes. He looked . . . expensive, that was the word. He wasn’t a working-class loser like her father and her brother. Charlie Stone looked like a man on the way up.
He came over to where Nula was standing in the open doorway and then he did the most amazing thing: he took her hand, brought it to his lips and kissed it.
‘Doll, you look a million dollars,’ said Charlie, his eyes never once leaving hers. ‘Come on. Let’s go.’
19
That night was the start of something big.
It surprised them both, but within a few months they were going steady, and it was pre
tty much agreed that soon Nula was going to stop being plain Nula Perkins and start being Mrs Charlie Stone.
So this was what the world was like, the world beyond the stifling borderline poverty she’d lived in for much of her life. Charlie introduced Nula to luxury and she lapped it up. He seemed to be known in all sorts of places, was greeted like an old friend in most of them. He took her to fabulously posh events, kitted her out at one of the swish Bond Street boutiques with a dress and matching hat, then took her to Ascot for the flat races on Thursday, which was Ladies Day. It turned out he actually owned a racehorse.
‘I keep it in training in a place near Newbury,’ he told her.
He wasn’t lying, either. The trainer came and shook his hand and said Cordon Off had a chance today. The horse came third, but still. They stayed for the Gold Cup and she saw the Queen. She couldn’t believe it.
Charlie took her to Henley for the Regatta, had the best tickets for Wimbledon, flew her out first class with him to see Graham Hill win the Monaco Grand Prix. This was such a different world from the plain, dull one she’d been born into. The job at Woolies was a thing of the past now, and she spent most of her time – scandalously – staying over at Charlie’s place or roaring around the country with him in his new Rolls-Royce, staying at five-star hotels. She barely ever went home and she didn’t give a single shit about that, either. And all the while – much to her surprise – Charlie was the perfect gentleman. It was separate rooms, every time.
This was bliss.
It was fabulous.
This was her life now, and she loved it.
20
Beezer was out of jail, released a month early for good behaviour. Charlie, Terry and the rest of the crew assembled down the Pig’s Head to welcome him back. He looked thinner, paler, less elegant than he used to; generally, he looked fucked. They bought him beer and toasted him.
‘Nah, nah, boys. Never mind all that. There’s something I got to tell you,’ he said, his voice hoarse from all the reefers he’d smoked inside.