Faces

by Martina Cole

  The disgust in her son’s voice was not lost on Angelica Cadogan, and it was only her son’s new status as head of the family that stopped her from boxing his ears for him. Without him they would have sunk without trace, she was more than aware of that, but his hard work made her feel so guilty and useless that she actively disliked him at times. It was unnatural having to kowtow to such a young boy, a boy she had birthed and brought up, a young boy who was suddenly the scourge of the household. In the months since her husband’s disappearance, Danny had not only paid off all their debts and put them on to a decent footing, but he had also, somewhere along the line, become a bully. He now queried every aspect of her domain, from the cleanliness of her home and children, to her squandering of the money he now provided on a regular basis. He was so young, and his youth was why he couldn’t give to them all without expecting something in return. His new role as head of the household was all an act. And a frightening act at that, because he was portraying what he thought a father should be and, as he had never experienced a real one in his life, it was causing no end of problems. He was like a caricature of what a parent should be, and there was not a lot she could do because she needed the money he was providing for them all.

  In all honesty, she had never been so well off in her life. The fact that she had a good idea of what she would receive as her housekeeping each week had changed everything, but her son’s insistence on knowing what she had done with every penny was starting to wear thin. He made her feel inadequate, made her feel nervous around him. He made her private little purchases seem wrong, shameful. Who wouldn’t need a small nip now and then when they were as plagued by troubles as she was? Who wouldn’t need a stiff drink to face the lonely nights without a man to warm her, and that man her legal husband, the father of her children? She conveniently forgot that Big Dan was useless, had never once taken on the mantle of fatherhood except to beat the boys or her, depending on how drunk he was.

  Sighing, Danny forced a kind and gentle note into his voice before saying reasonably, and with as much truthfulness as he could manage, ‘If he was dead, Mum, we’d have heard by now. Think about it, Old Bill would have informed us, wouldn’t they? It ain’t like he wasn’t known to them, was it? Fuck me, Mum, he was always on the nick, they knew him better than we did. They certainly saw more of him than we did, anyway.’

  She didn’t answer him, the truth of his words penetrating even her pig-headedness. She sat down at the kitchen table and said sadly, plaintively, making her son feel even worse than he already did, ‘I worry about him, Danny. He’s still my husband, your father.’

  Her son stared at her for long moments and she knew he was disappointed because she wanted her husband back with her, even though he was the reason for their current predicament. If only Danny was wise enough to understand how marriage and commitment worked for her generation.

  Danny Cadogan smiled sadly. ‘Well, if he does come back, he’d better toe the line this time, Mother, because I won’t fucking stand for any more of his nonsense.’ Finally he vented his pent-up anger. ‘This is your last chance to put your kids first and, if you don’t, then I swear to God, I’ll walk out that door and leave you all to it. If, and that’s a big if, your old man does come back, he will have to come through me first and, believe me, I won’t be making it easy for him. He’s a liar and a ponce and an easy mark and I won’t forget what he’s caused, even if you choose to. To be truthful, if I knew where he was I’d serve him up to the Murrays meself, without a second’s thought, just to get them off our backs. People only do to you what you let them, that’s what you’ve drummed in my head all of my life. Well, watching you and him, I’d already learned that much at an early age.’

  Ange didn’t answer him, she didn’t know what to say.

  Louie Stein was pouring himself an early morning snifter, the large brandy he swallowed after his morning coffee, which he referred to as his eye-opener. His wife saw what he was doing and rolled her large brown eyes at the ceiling but she didn’t make any kind of comment. He could feel her annoyance though, and that just made him pour an even larger measure than usual, reasoning that if his actions were going to annoy her, then why not give her something to be annoyed about?

  She placed his usual breakfast on the table, a small poached egg and a slice of bread and butter. He then did what he always did, pushed it away and lit a cigarette. He loved his wife, she was a good woman, but he also understood that they were at a point in their marriage where the only excitement either of them felt was when they were at loggerheads. He understood that, welcomed it even. Their youthful silences had taken its toll on them both; a decent row, they had found, cleared the air for a while and gave them both a good laugh afterwards. After all these years all they had in common were their grievances, real and imagined.

  ‘Are you going to tell the lad?’

  He shrugged nonchalantly, flicking his ash onto the poached egg, something that was normally guaranteed to cause ructions. This morning though, Sylvia Stein ignored it, knowing her husband was trying to steer the conversation onto something else entirely. Well, she was not about to let that happen, she was genuinely interested in how he would react to what she had told him. She refilled his coffee cup, and then, for the first time ever, she refilled his brandy glass. Sitting back down she put her elbows on to the table, then she placed her head onto her hands and, raising her eyebrows comically, said loudly, ‘My God, Louie, would you put me out of my misery?’

  His laughter was genuine, and she knew he would sound her out, see what she thought he should do with the knowledge he now possessed. Knowledge she had imparted because her sister Irene heard everything and, unfortunately, repeated it all.

  Walter Murray was on the mend, he knew that because for the first time in months he had woken naturally and not because he was in pain. He studied his reflection in the mirror on his dressing table and admitted that he didn’t look much worse than he had before. Unlike Wilfred, he understood the economics of their shared situation and, like his mother, he knew that all that was left for them was damage limitation.

  The boy, Cadogan’s son, had only been protecting his own, and the fact that he was only a kid had tempered his anger, whilst that same fact had inflamed his brother. Wilfred wanted to annihilate him. He saw the boy and his demise as their only saving grace, couldn’t see that any kind of retaliation would only make their lives even harder than they already were.

  Their reputation had preceded them. All the time they had scrounged a living off no-hopers and the dispossessed, they had been tolerated. Now, thanks to that boy, and his fucking bum chum Louie Stein, they were suddenly public enemy number one. So, other than tracking down the father, and that would happen sooner rather than later, ponces always shat in their own nests eventually, they could only try and make amends. This was a concept his brother was having serious difficulty in taking on board.

  Walter stared at his reflection, marvelling at the livid red marks that would always be a reminder of that fateful morning, not only to him, but to anyone who happened to gaze upon them, and he swallowed down the urge to cry. They had been brought down by a fucking kid, a teenager who was being talked of as the new Face in town, who people discussed as a serious contender for future skulduggery. The boy’s stand had placed him in the path of greatness and, worse than that, had put him into the psyche of every Face in the Smoke.

  The boy had a fucking career before he could even shave, a serious rep was his reward for standing up for his family. The eyes of everyone would be on him; he was a lump, he had an attitude, and he was respectful to those in the know. Now Wilfred needed to understand that before this all got completely out of hand.

  Big Dan was not feeling such a big man these days. His decision to go on the trot had not worked out quite as he had envisaged. Even though he had known it was wrong to welsh, he had seen himself leaving all his woes behind, his wife and kids included. He had seen himself as a single man, going out into the world without the ties
and the problems of a married man. Saw a gorgeous flat for himself, a few quid in his bin, and a new lady to take care of him. But, like everything else in his life, nothing that he yearned for had come to pass. He couldn’t bring himself to stop the gambling, he couldn’t bring himself to settle in Liverpool, and he still couldn’t find it in his heart to walk past a public house without blessing himself.

  Now he was back in the Smoke, and his amour of several years’ duration was finding out, like many a mistress before her, that the fantasy of someone else’s husband was far better than the reality, when the said husband finally landed on their doorstep. And, to top it all off, it seemed that his son, the useless bastard, had taken on the Murrays and, through that one act of bravado, was now some kind of fucking local hero. It would be laughable. If he had a laugh in him, of course.

  Louie Stein watched Danny as he operated the crushing machine. His old friend and employee Cedric Campbell had trained the boy up and passed over the reins with a willingness that made him realise just how old the man had become. Really he was paying him a wage out of habit, and Cedric, he knew, turned up for work every day for that exact same reason. But what could he do? Age had a habit of creeping up on you. One day you were part of the in-crowd, the next thing you knew, the in-crowd were planted or in homes. It was brutal but it was a fact of life.

  Now he had word, on very good authority, that this boy’s father was skulking in a flat in Hoxton, waiting for the opportunity to launch himself once more into polite society. That time being, of course, when he would feel at his safest, and when his son had smoothed the way for him. The skulduggery and disloyalty of family would never cease to amaze him. How the people closest to you could tuck you up without a second’s thought, and with a smile that would make Orphan Annie look like a wide boy, had been proved to him over and over again.

  That Danny’s father was once more back on the scene, and it was only a matter of time before he made a personal appearance, was hard for Louie to understand. He didn’t know what to do for the best, tell the boy, forewarned and all that, or keep schtum and wait to see what happened. Maybe, just maybe, Big Dan Cadogan would go on the trot once more and a major calamity might be averted.

  He sighed and, winking at Cedric, he waved to Danny, indicating that he wanted him in the office. Danny shut down the crusher quickly and made his way over to the dilapidated shed that served as their sanctuary from Old Bill, errant totters and, more often than not, the outside world in general.

  Scrap metal was not a business that encouraged friendliness with rivals in the same game, or had any kind of glamour that might attract the opposite sex. Scrap was an earner, but only to people who knew how to offload it, respected it, and were willing to put in the time and the effort that would then warrant some kind of trust. A scrapyard had to be up and running for a good few years before it was designated a walking trust fund for the criminally minded. It had to be around long enough for people to see and accept it as an established business. A scrapyard owner needed the knack of being able to talk to all walks of society and, more importantly, Lily Law, without arousing suspicions from anyone they might be involved with. It was a fine line that needed to be drawn, and it was also a difficult position for someone who, for whatever reason, was not a people person.

  Scrap was serious bunce, scrap was a serious earner, and scrap was a cash business that left a lot of room for creative accounting and afforded the time and effort that was often needed to ensure a long and happy partnership with a variety of different businessmen. In short, scrap was a fucking earner, but that earning potential could only be fully utilised by someone with the brains and the acumen to know a good deal within a nanosecond, and who would offer a decent scotch a nanosecond after that. Young Danny was a natural, he looked at home in the yard, and could spot a good deal a mile away. And, most important of all, he wanted the wedge.

  Now Louie had to decide whether to keep his trap shut, or steer the boy onto a course that was even more crooked than the man, and he used that term lightly, who had sired him. It was a melon scratcher all right, and Louie wasn’t sure what the best course of action might be.

  Angelica Cadogan was sitting at her kitchen table, the new table, provided by her son, who took great pains to remind her of that fact at every given opportunity. She wished her daughter was still at home, wasn’t at that school where all she seemed to be learning was rudeness, and a knack for annoying the life out of everyone she came into contact with. Angelica was fingering her rosary, she often asked for a small Intention during the course of the day, convinced that a minor request would not be ignored. She had never trusted the power of prayer enough to ask for her husband’s return or, before that, his fidelity. She knew that a miracle of those proportions would be about as likely as a win on the pools. But she was unsettled in herself, couldn’t seem to relax at all. It was a feeling like no other in her life to date. As if she was waiting for something, but she didn’t know what that something might be.

  The knock on the front door was almost welcome, it gave her something to do, and she launched herself out of the chair and into the tiny hallway within seconds. Opening the door she was struck dumb at the realisation of who was standing there. Wilfred Murray grinned at her, displaying his large, yellowing teeth, and an almost indecent amount of gum. The health service in this country was free, and that included dentists, and yet she had never seen so many sets of harrowing choppers in her life until she had got off the boat at Fishguard.

  Wilfred was inside the flat before she had time to wish him a good day, a feck off, or to even scratch her arse.

  Michael Miles came into the scrapyard at just after three twenty, early even for him. Louie Stein waved nonchalantly at the boy. Knowing he was a good friend of Danny’s he was now used to seeing him around the place. Michael was a nice lad, he had an analytical brain that would always earn him a living if he had the sense to turn his thoughts to such a thing. He was a natural robber, but a book robber rather than a bank robber, a difference that quickly became apparent to anyone who dealt with him. The boy could add up in his head faster than a calculator, and he liked the mathematics of everyday life, a bonus for anyone out to earn a wedge without the benefit of tax and insurance. Between them, he knew Danny and Michael would one day make a winning team. He hoped that, if and when that day arrived, the team they played for would be his. Danny, he knew, had the front needed to get on in their kind of business. Michael, on the other hand, had the acumen that should take him into an office but, because of his personality, would definitely bring him into the criminal fraternity at some point in his lifetime. He had the nous but not the staying power needed for the big wages. His idea of a pension fund would be an off-shore account and a flat that even his wife didn’t know about.

  These two young men were Louie’s lifeline to the real world; watching them grow up and helping them to mature was the only thing that stopped him eating one of the guns he rented out on a daily basis, or leaping into his own crusher. He was a natural depressive, and he knew that. But a man in his position needed a son to make his later years worthwhile. He was now looking at leaving his life’s work to one of his daughters’ husbands, while praying for a grandson in his spare time. To have a son and waste the opportunity was a crying shame, was criminal as far as he was concerned. He saw the serious look that passed over Danny’s face as Michael talked to him and decided that the matter of the boy’s father’s emergence once more into the world of the hoi polloi had been taken out of his hands. He was liking young Michael more every time he saw him.

  Wilfred was unsure what to do now he was confronted with only the mother of his prime antagonist. In fact, thanks to his own mother’s words of warning, this woman and her nervous coughing was making him feel, for the first time in years, that he might actually be in the wrong.

  His mother had pointed out that the attack with the axe was no more than she would have done herself for her own children. That a mother would protect her young because
, with good fathers being few and far between, the only person a child could really count on was the woman who had grown them, birthed them and nurtured them. Now, here he was, confronting someone who, at any other time, he would feel honour-bound to help carry her shopping home.

  Angelica was terrified but casting around for a weapon of some kind. This man was not getting near her children without going through her first. She cursed her husband and his gambling once more; his weakness for the cards would always be his downfall. It was almost like praying, she had cursed him so often she could now do it while thinking of something completely different. This revelation disturbed her almost as much as it pleased her.

  Wilfred, however, was nonplussed. Now he was here, he wasn’t so sure that he could settle the score this way without retribution being heaped on his own family.

  Angelica sensed his indecision and said softly, ‘Go home, son, my husband isn’t worth all this trouble.’

  Wilfred was still standing in front of her, and she knew he was debating what course of action he should take now. Thanks to her husband and son, his world had been blown apart, a nuclear bomb couldn’t have done more damage.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea, son?’

  ‘You sure me old man’s hit the pavement, Mike? Only I can’t see him coming back this way meself.’

  Mike nodded, his eyes flashing in annoyance. ‘Me mum told me, and you know her, Dan, she should work for MI5, nosy old bag she is. He’s been seen about Hoxton, at his bird’s drum. I think he will surface now because you’ve sorted out the aggravation. Let’s face it, there ain’t no way anyone will let the Murrays get away with their usual fucking bluster now, is there?’