Faces

by Martina Cole

  Michael was sipping coffee and smoking a Turkish cigarette in the small office of the casino he owned with Danny Boy. He was still in shock at what had occurred the day before and he had almost convinced himself at one point that it had never happened. That he had dreamed it. But he knew it was true, and that knowledge plagued him. His sister was in bits, and her big day, the day she had been looking forward to with so much excitement had been ruined. Gordon was now sober and contrite, his sorrow so genuine it was heartbreaking to witness. Not that it had stopped him from giving him the hiding of his life though. That his own brother could have been the cause of such distress was what had made him depressed. Mary had looked beautiful, and Danny Boy, his best friend and partner, had been so looking forward to the big day, that when it had finally arrived they had all sighed with relief. That Danny Boy had not been able to take what Gordon had said about his new wife was a given. Danny Boy, he knew, was far too proud to have swallowed that kind of a show up. That he had left the reception was, to his way of thinking, probably a good thing, that he had not murdered Gordon was a result in itself. As he had tried to explain to Mary, Danny had only left the party so he didn’t do anything foolish, didn’t let that famous temper of his get the better of him.

  Not that Mary could see that yet, and he understood her hurt over his absence and her bewilderment that her little brother could have been the cause of it in the first place. She had sworn never to speak to him again. Ever. Well, Gordon would think twice before he let the drink get the better of him in future; he was now in absolute terror of Danny Boy coming back to take his retribution for the destruction of his wedding day. If Danny did decide to take umbrage he would have to wipe his mouth; at the end of the day Danny would be well within his rights. To talk about her like that, at her own wedding. Her wedding to a man who could kill without a second’s thought. Who could torture someone for hours on end and actually enjoy their screams of terror. What the fuck was the boy thinking of? It was an abortion, it was the most outrageous thing he had ever experienced in his life, and he still didn’t know what the upshot of it all was going to be.

  Mary Cadogan, as she was now known, awoke to see her husband of one day stripping off to get into the shower. When she opened her eyes and saw him standing there she felt her heart almost lift itself inside her chest. She pulled herself upright with difficulty, the drink from the night before giving her a raging thirst and a thumping headache. As she watched him walk naked towards the bathroom she was amazed that he had not spoken a word. It was as if they were all right, as if they had not had the drama of the day before. He called over his shoulder lightly, ‘Make us a cup of tea, love, and take that fucking dress off, will you? I thought I’d come home to Miss Havisham.’

  He was acting as if there was nothing out of the ordinary going on. She was disorientated, still half pissed, and she looked around the bedroom she had decorated with such happiness and saw her reflection in the mirror on the dressing table. She looked awful, her eyes were rimmed with black make-up and her tears had stained the skin on her face and neck; she looked old. As she observed herself she remembered the day’s events and swallowed down the tears once more. Her mouth was dry, and she could smell herself. As she stood up she felt herself sway and hoped that she might pass out and die so she didn’t have to face the rest of her life, but she didn’t. Instead, she pulled off her wedding dress. It was ruined, and she left it in a heap on the bedroom floor and dragged on the silk dressing gown she had bought with her new husband in mind. She started to take off her make-up, wiping her face gently, all the time her ears were straining to hear the sound of the shower being turned off. She was expecting a fight, and she knew that there was nothing she could do to avoid it. How on earth would Danny Boy ever find it in his heart to forgive them all for the travesty that was their big day. She sat on the end of the bed, the bed she had believed would be the place where they would lie together, love together, and talk together. Now it was messed up from where she had lain and cried her heart out. It was the shame that was now bearing down on her, the sheer disgrace that was overwhelming her.

  Danny Boy had asked her to make a cup of tea as if this was a normal day, as if everything was OK. She knew his reputation as someone with a short fuse, a quick temper, but she had never believed in a million years that it would be turned on her. So she sat there, and she waited for him to finish what he was doing, and decided to accept whatever punishment he decided to dole out.

  When he walked back into the bedroom, his body glistening with the water from his shower, she almost flinched. It was only now, seeing him naked, that she realised just what a big man he was. He was solid, all muscle and soft skin. She felt the tears come once more as she saw what she was going to have to give up. He stood before her, and she looked up into his handsome face. The face she had dreamed about for so long, and saw that he was smiling at her. The lazy, relaxed smile that fooled everyone into thinking he was one of the good guys.

  He was looking at her, his dark blue eyes devoid of anger, instead they were soft and caring and Mary couldn’t believe that he was not berating her for the destruction of their wedding day. ‘Are you all right, mare?’

  He sounded concerned, so kind and gentle that she wondered if she was dreaming.

  She shook her head sadly. ‘I am really sorry for what happened, Danny Boy, I am so very sorry. Gordon doesn’t know what he’s saying half the time . . . He drinks, he’s always on drugs . . .’

  She was trying to justify her brother’s behaviour and she didn’t know why; he didn’t deserve her loyalty, he had never shown any towards her.

  Danny knelt down in front of her and said quietly, ‘He was only telling the truth, mare. Tell the truth and shame the Devil, remember. You were a fucking whore, and I have to live with that, don’t I?’

  He grinned then, his even teeth pristine and his breath all cool and minty from the toothpaste he used. He was still smiling, and his words finally broke her spirit. He stood up and said gently, ‘Now, make the fucking tea, will you, and don’t ever make me have to repeat myself again.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Mary was waiting for her husband to come home, but her nerves were so bad she was shaking like the proverbial leaf. She was sick inside, the cold sweat covering her body making her skin tighten, making her teeth chatter amongst themselves. She could feel the fear inside her, and knew that she had expected something like this since her first date, the danger that was Danny Boy was the attraction. The knowledge that he was an unknown quantity had attracted her, even though she had not admitted any of this to herself until now.

  She looked in the bathroom mirror and saw that she was immaculate, as always. Despite what had occurred at their wedding she still made a conscious effort to look her best, look as if nothing could, or would, faze her, a trick she had learned from her years with Kenny. People only knew what you told them, only saw what you wanted them to see. Her mother had hammered that into her head since she was a child, a child with huge breasts and the knowledge of a woman three times her age.

  You’re sitting on a goldmine, you play your cards right and you’ll never want for anything. Her mother’s words were still crystal clear, except for the fact that she had actually fallen for Danny Boy many years before. He had been her childhood crush, her first love. Now she wasn’t sure what he was, or even what she was any more. All she knew now was that she was in danger, grave danger. He had shown his hand, his true feelings for her, and that had badly frightened her. She knew her humiliation was complete because he had known she would have him back in a heartbeat.

  Her make-up was perfect, her skin was clear, and her thick, dark hair was salon fresh. Even at the worst time of her life, she was inordinately aware of how she looked, how her outward demeanour would guarantee her coming through this with at least a modicum of self-respect. She took a deep breath and willed herself to calm down. Danny Boy had never really appreciated her natural nervousness, in fact, it angered him, and yet his ange
r only served to make her nervousness even worse.

  She never knew whether he was going to come home to her; he was a law unto himself in that respect. But, if he did come home, she wanted to be ready for him as she had always been. She had spent the best part of the day making herself look beautiful for a man who she knew despised her, but who, she also knew, would never let her go. She was his now, and there was nothing she could do about that. It was too late. Danny Boy had destroyed her in a few short words, and her own brother had happily given him the ammunition he had taken great pleasure in firing right back at her. Gordon was unaware that he had been the conduit for the reason that her brand-new husband would use as an excuse for bad behaviour. Danny Boy was not a man to let things pass him by, not someone who would turn the other cheek. He was a man who looked at every opportunity and then worked out how best to turn it to his own advantage. In short, he was not unlike herself, they were both users, and they were both willing to use whatever means they could to further their own ends; unfortunately she had believed that they could have worked together on that in the future. Not use it against each other.

  Danny Boy had the knack of making her feel like absolute shit, and she was on the brink of believing him. She looked at herself once more in the mirror and wondered at how this had happened to her. She remembered Kenny and what she now saw as his easy-going ways, remembered Danny Boy when he had been so determined to get her. How he had made sure she had felt wanted, and how he had made Kenny seem lacking to her. All her confidence had now left her, had disappeared almost overnight, and she knew that was precisely what Danny had wanted to happen, had ordained. She knew that he had not slept with her before the marriage because he had known that would throw her off the scent. He had been determined to destroy his arch-enemy and that somehow included her. He had finally taken her, one week after the wedding fiasco; he had taken her roughly, viciously, and she had been unable to walk for days after. His use of her, which was no better than his use of a common prostitute, was the final nail in the coffin of their so-called love. He had not only hurt her physically but, more to the point, mentally. He had deliberately, and with serious amounts of malice, taken her like a dog would take a bitch in heat, without any kind of care, or love, or real want. It had been nothing more than an act of destruction, an act of hatred. The final betrayal of their love and the final nail in the coffin of their real lives. He had wanted to make a point, wanted to make her realise just how little he really thought of her, wanted her to feel like she was less than nothing.

  And it had worked. He had done his homework, and he knew she was too proud to admit her mistake out loud, and she was now far too frightened to do anything about her situation. Her fear of her husband was overwhelming. She knew without a second’s doubt just what he was capable of where she was concerned.

  She had finally accepted her fate, accepted his complete ownership of her. She had known then, as she knew now, that leaving him would never be an option; he would kill her first, and he was an old hand at that. She also knew that their marriage was, for some reason, very important to him. It was something that he cherished, something he saw as not only important but, even more frighteningly, as something decent and good. Even after everything he had done to her.

  The public humiliation, the loss of face and, worst of all, the guarantee that no one would ever see her as anything more than his wife, the wife he had married even though it was now assumed she wasn’t worthy of him. He was a clever man, a vicious man, but he was also a man of means, a man who was looked on as someone to respect, admire. He was her husband, and that was the most terrifying thing. She was tied to him, and the tie was not something she could break, that would only happen if he decided it had run its course, if he wanted out of the marriage.

  Their actual life together would be, she knew, fraught with danger; he saw her as some kind of trophy, she saw him as some kind of maniac. He thought nothing of dragging her out of the bed by her hair at three in the morning, a favourite trick of Kenny’s, accusing her of all sorts. Accusing her of conducting affairs with his friends, even though he knew his so-called friends would never have had the guts to bed her, even if they had wanted to. She was aware that he knew his accusations had no basis in fact but, like everyone else around him, she didn’t try to argue with him about it. You didn’t argue with the Danny Boys of this world, you did whatever it took to keep the peace. You swallowed whatever he doled out and hoped against hope that things would get better. Even though you knew that they never would.

  Mary knew that Danny needed her to vent his spleen on, and needed her to be acquiescent, needed her to allow him his rage. She was already becoming immune to it, was already able to shut herself off and let him take out his enormous anger on her without even a groan of pain. She was pleased that this, at least, pleased him, that her complete subservience was enough to keep him relatively happy anyway.

  The home they shared was spotless, as he expected it to be; she was even afraid to sit on the furniture in case she made it look used, dented the cushions, or stained it somehow. The house was huge and, like a show home, it was perfect, but it had no soul. There was nothing real around her, not even a photograph, to make this place feel like a home. Danny Boy hadn’t even allowed her to see their wedding photos, much less let her display any of them. But she had gone behind his back on that at least; she had asked Michael to purchase a small album of their day on the quiet, she had wanted it for their children’s sakes. She knew that one day those photos would be important to the people they might have created. She wanted something to prove to them her validity in their world.

  She knew Danny was desperate for a child, a son. And she had a child inside her, his child, and she was excited about that, hoped that this baby would bring them together again, would cancel out the wedding fiasco. Deep inside she understood that her hopes would be dashed, but she still prayed that her pregnancy would stop his angry assaults upon her body for a while, and stop the viciousness of his words. He spoke to her with a calm hatred that was as disgusting as it was regular. She wondered just when this had suddenly begun to seem like perfectly normal behaviour, and when she had actively stopped trying to make him like her again. She wondered when she had started to actually believe that a child would stop the nightmare that was her marriage.

  She saw that she had gnawed off the lipstick she had applied so carefully throughout the day, and as she reapplied it, she held back the tears, the tears she knew were not only useless, but also guaranteed to wreck the perfection of her face. Danny Boy could arrive home at five in the morning, and she knew that he still expected her to be sitting there with full make-up on, waiting on him with a smile on her perfect face and the promise of complete submission from her body, and he always got exactly what he wanted. Even though she might have to wait for hours and hours, it was worth it to keep the peace. She waited and she waited for his arrival home, and she calmed her nerves with a few drinks as she sat alone and watched the clock, sometimes for days on end.

  She hated him now, with all her heart and soul.

  Danny Boy and Michael were arranging to pick up a few parcels of aspirin, which was how they referred to the anabolic steroids they were already distributing in large amounts throughout the south east. The parcels were innocuous; wrapped in plain brown paper they looked like a birthday present, but they actually contained more drugs than anyone would ever believe. Danny Boy had been spot on with this money-maker, the drugs were not only necessary to the people who acquired them, they were also semi-legal. No one could actually prove that the drugs, when seized, were not for personal consumption, which was why they were picking them up for themselves. No one cared enough about the body-building population to make sure they were safe. Danny Boy was aware of their dangers and, like anyone else involved in any kind of business, he knew all there was to know about his product. He knew that the drugs caused violent episodes, that the men taking them on a daily basis were kidding themselves because, without them, the
y couldn’t hope to achieve the body mass they so desperately desired. He knew that the drugs were bought and injected without any medical knowledge whatsoever, and that they were usually only half the strength of legitimate drugs anyway. He also knew that the people he supplied them to were flakes, wankers, who were not prepared to put in the hours that were needed to guarantee the body they desired, and that once they took the drugs in question they would come back time and time again for more because they were unable to function properly without them.

  It was a win-win situation. It was also a market that was growing by the hour. Danny had picked up this load for one reason only. To spread them out and about into his world, and to get the general consensus on their veracity. He had been assured that they were good, that they were worth their weight in gold. If this was proved to be true, Danny Boy was set to pick up the equivalent of a lorryload once a week. They would be dropped at the scrapyard, and Louie would get himself a good drink for turning a blind eye.