Faces

by Martina Cole

  Mary looked down at the wreck that had once been her mother and swallowed down her impatience. She just wished the woman would die and leave them all alone. Instead she was babbling away to herself, the ravaged body that had once held so much promise and vitality was now almost skeletal, the skin literally hanging from the bones. She looked so frail, even her hair looked defeated, and that long, thick hair had always been her crowning glory. It was thin now, broken at the roots and stripped of any discernible colour. Drink was a terrible thing when it got into people’s souls. Her mother had drunk herself into this caricature of a woman, and it had not been a pretty sight. She had been the cause of so much hurt in her life and now she was dying and, like everything else she did, she was making it as hard as she could for her children.

  Mary saw Michael outside the doorway and smiled sadly. He looked awful; she knew their mother’s death would hit him hard. Despite everything, he still loved her, and so did she in her own way. But now she wanted her gone so they could pick up the pieces and get on with their lives. She saw her reflection in the window, she looked good and she knew it. Knowing her mother had once looked just like her was unbelievable; seeing her now it was hard to believe she was even human. All her life she had been told by this woman that all she had going for her was her looks and she knew now that her mother had been right to caution her. She was older now, had seen what could happen to a girl without the nous to take care of herself. She was with Kenny because he gave her the lifestyle she craved, and in a funny way she was sorry her mother wouldn’t live to benefit from it any more.

  She left the room and went to her brother’s side. ‘You all right?’

  He nodded. ‘How’s Gordon?’

  She sighed. ‘You know him, Mike, he came in for a few minutes and then shot off. He can’t cope with it.’

  Michael wiped a trembling hand across his face. He was sweating again, the pressure was getting to him and, like his sister and brother, he wished his mother would give up the ghost and let them get on with their lives. It was so depressing watching her getting weaker and weaker by the day, all the while knowing that there was nothing anyone could do to help her or ease her suffering.

  ‘You go and get a coffee, I’ll sit with her, OK?’

  Mary watched him go into the room and, walking to the lift, took her cigarettes and lighter from her handbag. She was going to sit outside in the freezing cold and have a smoke. Anything was preferable to watching her brother’s suffering.

  Inside the room Michael looked at his mother and, sitting by her bedside, he held onto her hand. She opened her eyes and grinned at him, the rancid smell of her breath was overpowering in the room. She was lucid, her eyes had lost the child-like vacancy of the previous day. She was alert, her usual cold-eyed calculating self once more.

  ‘Mikey, Mikey, son, please get me a drink, will you? Just a drop to keep the cold out, eh?’ She was pleading with him, as she had so many times before. She was such a manipulator, such a force and, even in the throes of death, she could still exploit her considerable talent for using guilt to its full advantage. Lying on the pillows in almost a sitting position because of her chest problems, she looked old, and she looked defeated. It was only her eyes that had any kind of life in them now. And they were imploring him to let her have the only thing she had ever really wanted in her life.

  ‘I can’t do this on me own, I need a sip to get me through it. Please, mate, just one last drop and I’ll go with a happy heart.’

  She was pulling herself off the pillows in her earnestness, trying to sit up properly to emphasise her point. She had been begging him for days to give her a last bottle of the hard and now he did as she requested. Slipping a small bottle of Black & White whisky from his pocket he held it up so she could see what he was going to do for her. As he poured the rich yellow liquid into the plastic beaker she was crying, ‘You’re a good boy, Michael, a good son, I knew you wouldn’t let me down, not now, not at the end . . .’

  As he placed the plastic spout between her lips he heard someone coming into the room. It was their parish priest, Father Galvin, a huge bear of a man who had a legendary capacity for alcohol himself.

  ‘Ah, Jesus, are you giving her the Holy Water? It’s the act of a Christian, son, and it will send her on her way with a lighter heart.’

  He was going to give her the last rites, and Michael watched as he unpacked his small valise, smelled the herbs and the oils that would herald the end of his mother’s life, mixed with the heavy scent of whisky, and decided this was a fitting end to her suffering. Like the priest said, it was what she wanted now, all he could really do for her: a final act of kindness. Mary came back into the room and smiled as she saw him refilling the beaker with whisky. Her mother was sucking at the grey-tinged plastic spout like a new-born baby at the breast, the sound loud in the quietness of the room.

  Two hours later she dropped into a deep sleep and her children thought she would never wake up again.

  Then she opened her eyes and said sadly, ‘Don’t waste your lives like I did, and watch out for one another.’

  Then she was gone.

  Both Michael and Mary were unprepared for the torrent of grief her passing actually caused them when they finally realised that she really had passed away.

  The priest blessed her one last time and, pouring the last of the Scotch into a grimy glass tumbler, he said robustly, ‘The end of an era.’ Then, holding up the glass in a toast to her, he said sadly, ‘To a good woman who couldn’t slay her demons, no matter how hard she tried. She’s in the arms of her saviour tonight.’

  It was too much for Mary and she broke down then and cried the tears she had held back for a lifetime. Whatever kind of a mother she had been, she was still the only mother they had, the only mother they had known, and now she was gone and none of them knew how to react to that because they had wished her dead for the best part of their lives. The nurses came in and, with their usual tact, they ignored the empty bottle of whisky, even though they must have been aware that it had hurried her passing, and busied themselves instead with laying her out, exclaiming all the while at the way the lines had suddenly been smoothed from her skin, and at how much her daughter looked like her.

  Louie was sitting with Lawrence Mangan, enjoying one of his large cigars. The heavy blue smoke wrapped itself around his head and he breathed in its pleasing aroma. These were real Cuban cigars, not for resale in this country, but a welcome addition to their black market trading.

  As they sipped their brandies Louie waited patiently for Lawrence to say what was so obviously on his mind. He knew it would concern young Danny and Michael, and he also knew it was a subject his friend had been returning to with annoying frequency over the last few months. Until now he had not made any kind of remark, detrimental or otherwise, he had just listened and let the man get it off his chest. But he had watched and listened to everyone around them and knew exactly what all this pissing and moaning was leading to. He was disappointed in this man, but not overly surprised. After all, you didn’t get where Mangan was without a few moments of skulduggery that you would rather keep quiet about but, by the same token, he was complaining about his best earners. Only now they were also earning for themselves outside his family, and he didn’t like it. But they were young bloods and they needed to make their own mark. It was the way of their world, what most of his contemporaries expected. As long as they got a drink they were happy enough, and they kept a good earner on their payroll.

  Lawrence, however, wasn’t like that. He had a kink in his nature that was the result of a deep and abiding jealousy of anyone who he felt was doing better than him. Jealous of anyone who might just be on the right side of a good idea, an earner that he saw as something he should be on the receiving end of. Envy was not a deadly sin for nothing; it caused more wars in their world than anything else.

  ‘Lairy little fucker didn’t even come at the appointed time, mugged me right off. I tell you, Louie, they either work for me or t
hey work for themselves. There ain’t no middle ground here.’

  Louie shrugged, as if young people were nothing more than that, young and restless, it was to be expected. The gesture annoyed Mangan and he threw back his drink quickly, his cigar was smaller and far less conspicuous than Louie’s and he dropped it into the ashtray with an angry sigh.

  ‘I had fucking Boris the pimp on the blower the other day asking me to give them a message! Me, take messages for my fucking staff? I mean, what am I, a cunt or what?’

  Louie sighed, his lovely cigar was being wasted because of all this tension and trouble, he liked to relax with it, give himself over to the sheer pleasure the fucking thing brought him. Now he placed it carefully in the ashtray before saying quietly, ‘What is wrong with taking a message for someone? In the grand scheme of things it’s hardly a fucking mission, is it? I take messages for people all the time, you included. It’s called being a mate, being a fucking normal person. We organise our whole lives through messages, coded or otherwise, we use them to set up deals or to make meets with other like-minded individuals in the hope that the Filth won’t cotton onto anything. So a message, my friend, is just that, a fucking message. Now get over it.’

  Never, in all his years, had Lawrence Mangan been spoken to like that by Louie. In fact, it was such a shock he was dumbstruck for a few moments as the enormity of what Louie had said sank in.

  It seemed his radar had been on the right course, the boys were planning something and even Louie had been forced to take sides. It seemed he was going to take theirs. Louie watched the different expressions on his friend’s face and sighed; he knew exactly what was going on in his mind and it grieved him. Lawrence had never learned the art of sharing, it was his biggest failing. And everyone knew he had outed people on the sly; you didn’t see your partners getting nicked without your collar being felt. But no one had ever been able to prove it, and so he had been given the benefit of the doubt on more than one occasion. Now though, he was being talked about as a grass, and not as a Face. Louie had the feeling this was the doing of Danny Boy Cadogan and he knew he was doing it to justify whatever little drama he had in mind for this man in the near future. Danny Boy was like a fucking police dog, he could sniff out skulduggery like they sniffed out cannabis, with a cheery demeanour and the least amount of aggro. But once he found it, all hell broke out.

  He could smell treachery, and he loathed it. Danny was still a young one, but he was also schooled in the old ways, the old codes and, as such, he would go far in their world. It was time for him to make his mark, why couldn’t this man let him, and be happy for him? It was a fucking disgrace the way he was sounding off and that kid was earning him a serious wedge on a regular basis.

  But he would try and save the day if he could, even though he knew it was a waste of time. Lawrence was well past his sell-by date, and everyone knew it but him. There’s no way Boris would have left a message, treated him like an errand boy, if that wasn’t the case. In fact there had been a few rumours lately about Lawrence’s attitude and his greediness. He never really let anyone else have an earn off him if he could help it.

  Lawrence was still looking at him with undisguised shock. ‘Louie, what the fuck you on about?’ He was genuinely grieved and it came across in his voice, which had somehow risen a few octaves.

  Michael was sitting in Danny’s mum’s, listening to Elvis Costello through the thin walls of the kitchen. He was singing about watching the detectives, and the neighbour obviously liked it because it had been turned up to full volume. The neighbour was obviously on a death wish of some sort, because there was no way Danny was going to swallow that racket when he finally turned up.

  As Michael looked around the neat and tidy room he couldn’t help but compare it to the filthy dump he had been brought up in. The sheets were rarely changed on the beds, and the kitchen was never cleared of clutter. They had grown up with the stench of unwashed bodies and continual dramas, their mother’s drink problem had affected them all, especially Mary and Gordon. Over the last few years he had seen to it that someone came in and cleaned, and his mother had been thrilled about that. Then, after she treated them like shit, he had been forced to replace them on a regular basis. Seeing Mrs Cadogan’s scrubbed table and shiny sink he felt the lump once more in his throat for what should have been. He had done his best, but it wasn’t the same as having someone around who knew how to be a proper parent.

  The whole house was in bed, except for Danny’s father, who was watching TV in the small lounge. He was once more drinking himself into oblivion and Michael wondered again at the dependence on alcohol in their immediate circle. It was like a cancer, eating away at the root of everything and everyone it touched.

  As he sipped his coffee, he heard Danny Boy’s footsteps on the cement stairwell and, lighting a cigarette, he waited for the balloon to go up. He wasn’t disappointed.

  Jamie Barker was a slightly built lad with a penchant for cannabis and a permanent grin, courtesy of a fight he had in Borstal when a knife had been slashed across his mouth. The resulting scar made him look either overfriendly or frightening, depending on the time of day or night. He was now living with his maternal aunt, Jackie Bendix, in the flat next to the Cadogans’. Alone, he had smoked himself senseless and, unfortunately for him, decided to turn up the radio for his own personal amusement.

  The hammering on the front door had spooked him and, leaping from his seat, he threw the grass he had purchased that evening out of the front-room window, believing the caller was probably Old Bill. As he opened the front door he took the full force of Danny Cadogan’s large fist in his face and, curling himself up into a ball, he took the kicking being delivered, with a quiet grace that actually impressed his assailant.

  Dragging the boy up by his long, straggly hair Danny bellowed, ‘You ever take a fucking liberty with my personal space again, I’ll fucking kill you stone dead.’

  Then, going into the flat, he removed the offending radio from its usual place on the windowsill in the kitchen and aimed it over the balcony onto the concrete pavement below. An elderly woman came out and, smiling happily at Danny Boy, said gratefully, ‘I wondered what time you’d be home, son, that noise was getting on my bleeding nerves.’

  Danny Boy grinned at her, all friendliness and respectful kindness.

  ‘You’re welcome, Mrs Dickson. What a fucking liberty, eh, assuming we want to listen to his fucking racket. Now, get yourself back inside, it’s cold out here.’

  Like all the women in the flats she loved him, there was none of the usual noise and squalor they had once been used to. Danny Boy Cadogan made sure of that, and for that reason alone, he was worshipped. Coupled with his respectfulness for older people and his insistence on living in a noise-free environment he was treated with almost reverence by most of the neighbours. Thanks to him they all lived in a crime-free capsule that made this block of flats a haven for everyone who lived there. Unlike the rest of the estate they didn’t have anyone urinating in the halls, no youngsters hanging around, no burglaries and no unexplained fires either. It was wonderful.

  As she closed her front door Danny looked at the young man groaning on the dirty floor and, aware that he was being watched from behind most of the net-curtained flats around and about, he lifted the boy up carefully and took him back inside the flat. Dropping him none too gently onto the couch, he surveyed the boy’s bleeding face and decided he’d live, so he left him there. But once more, he had caused a small commotion, and that would once more mean that he would be talked about with friendliness by his grateful neighbours, thus enriching the reputation he had already garnered for himself. When he went inside his own home he saw Michael sitting at the kitchen table and remembered his friend had just lost his mother. Going to him, he hugged him tightly and, as Michael started crying, he whispered over and over again, ‘I’m so sorry, mate.’

  Big Danny Cadogan listened to his son’s gentle voice and was as ever amazed at how mercurial this son’s tempe
rament could be. From a beating administered for what he saw as an infraction of his personal space, he was now the good friend, the decent bloke, and Big Dan knew, in his heart of hearts, that it was all an act. Everything his son did was an act of some sort. Unfortunately, most people in their world didn’t pick up on that fact until it was too late.

  Mary Miles was lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling as her boyfriend of two years pumped away at her body. It was the last thing she wanted at this moment in time, but Kenny’s clumsy attempt at comforting her had turned into a sexual act, as he had intended it to. Everything came down to a sexual act where Kenny Douglas was concerned and, even though he gave her all the things she needed these days to survive - money, prestige and a wardrobe of clothes envied by her peer group - she was still unhappy with her lot, and this grieved her. Her mother’s death had hit her hard, harder than she had expected. In fact, the knowledge that she wouldn’t be there any more was frightening. Even though the woman had been a nightmare for the best part of her life, Mary had finally, after all these years, begun to understand her mother, understand why she had taken her solace in drink. Mary had more than a few mates who were already cooking children, or were even on their second, and learning about how hard it was to exist without the cushion of money, or a decent bloke to see them through the week. Well, as she had promised her mother, that wasn’t going to be her and, even though this man might not set her heart on fire, he was good to her in his own way and she was grateful to be under his protection.