Faces

by Martina Cole

  As Danny Boy walked across the bedroom towards her, she flinched visibly. She drew her head into her shoulders and put up her right hand before her face, as if it could ward him off, stop him hurting her. The action annoyed him, caused him to grit his teeth in anger. She was a drama queen, always trying to cause a fucking international incident. But he was not about to let her get away with that. Smiling down at his little daughter’s face, he looked at his wife once more, feeding off her fear. He was enjoying her trepidation, knowing that the uncertainty of his mood was all she thought about when she was with him and, more to the point, when she was without him. He sighed loudly with irritation. Settling himself down on the love seat inside the bay window of their bedroom, something he had always seen as an ironic addition to their boudoir, he lit a Portofino cigar and watched her silently as she fed the child, her lovely face tight with fear, her nerves so taut he knew he could have played a tune on them if the fancy took him or he had been musically minded.

  Danny observed his wife as he would the monkeys in the zoo. At this moment in time he loved her, really loved her again. As he had, years before, when he had made it his mission in life to take her from the man he felt was beneath her. Beneath him for that matter. But it was she who had been beneath him, she was a dog, and that was always in the forefront of his mind. He knew, without a doubt, that she would fuck anyone who could provide for her, and he also knew that that knowledge was no basis for a marriage of any kind. Especially to someone like him. He knew he was not the average Joe, but then that’s why they lived as they did, and he provided for them all so well so he could instil fear where none had been before. He had no respect for her, why would he? He knew, and she knew, that she could have been anyone. Anyone at all, she had just happened to belong to someone he had been determined to thwart.

  But, at this moment in time, she was all he had ever wanted, with her breasts heavy with milk and her skin luminescent, with not a mark on her after the birth. Still taut, soft, and still without a blemish. She was like a Valkyrie: she was a strong and wonderful mother and wife. He knew he could trust her and that was important to him. No matter what, he knew she would never turn on him. It wasn’t in her nature, she was loyal, and that was the most important thing as far as their relationship, what was left of it anyway, was concerned.

  She could still arouse him on the odd occasion. Even though, like most men, the same dinner every night had become a chore; fucking the same woman was an abomination as far as he was concerned. God liked to punish, he knew that from first-hand experience. The adultery commandment was a piss-take really, coming from a man whose only son had been banged up in nick, beaten mercilessly, and then crucified for the sins of the world. Danny Boy felt that adultery, like stealing, was only really there for the weak. For the people who had no fucking respect for themselves, who would sin with impunity anyway. God knew the fucking skulduggery that the average man was more than capable of, otherwise he wouldn’t have countenanced business deals, except lending money from church premises, of course. He was right to have the ache about that, but the majority of His commandments were not relevant in this day and age. But it didn’t mean they weren’t there for a good reason. They had been put in place for the ice creams of the world, not for the leaders of men. For people with a bit of nous.

  And, let’s face it, there was a get-out clause, providing he believed, which he did, and providing he was genuinely sorry for any sins he might commit along the way, which he was, he was safe as houses. Best religion in the world was Catholicism, as his old man would preach when drunk as a skunk: you could smoke, drink, gamble and fuck. Providing you were sorry you could commit murder, encourage mayhem, and covet what the fuck you liked. Well, he coveted his neighbours’ wives, he coveted a bit of strange on a regular basis, and he coveted it with as much gusto as he could manage.

  Women were built differently, thanks to God, they all felt different, and there were too many of them for any real man to ever really be faithful. Every few years a new crop was there for the taking, suddenly allowed in pubs and clubs they were young and new and they were so tempting to any man with a few quid and a good chat-up line. They were there for the use and for the enjoyment of the male of the species. Men were genetically geared-up to spread their seed. A quarter of the population were bringing up cuckoos in their nests. Children that they believed were theirs, when in fact they were no relation whatsoever. He knew better than anyone the complete and utter disloyalty that women were capable of. His own mother had proved that to him many years before: he wouldn’t trust any of them as far as he could throw them. None of them warranted it. They were fucking liars and schemers. He had sussed out that all you could really do to protect yourself was make sure your wife was too scared to go on the cock, was far too terrified of being found out, and therefore was not likely to try her hand at adulterous skulduggery of any description.

  He did try though, to keep himself faithful, as a good Catholic, and he was a good fucking Catholic; he loved his God with a vengeance. Like everything in his life, he didn’t treat it lightly, but it was hard at times. Especially when the wife of your choice was such a fucking cunt. Such a fucking let-down.

  He also knew, and he was sure of this, that God had a sneaking admiration for him. He knew that as well as he knew his own name: God watched over him, He understood him, and appreciated him. That meant a lot because his God was the only other male in his life he would ever allow to be above him. Who he felt was on a par with him.

  As Danny felt the sudden rush of excitement the sight of his little daughter generated inside his chest, he knew without a doubt that there was a God. Only a God could have created something so perfect, so wonderful. He could hear the sound of her lips as they sucked noisily on her mother’s breast and knew in his heart that she would be bottle-feeding the poor little mare by the time he came back from Spain.

  ‘I hope you ain’t fucking still drinking, mare.’

  Mary shook her head slightly, her arms wrapped protectively around her daughter’s fragile body. Her husband’s words dripped ice and she knew he was capable of attacking her on a whim.

  ‘Don’t start that again, Danny Boy, please. Not tonight.’

  She was begging him, her voice heavy with her nervousness, with trepidation. He wondered at how she had the front to talk to him like that. That she could actually believe he gave a fuck what she thought, or might want in her life. He didn’t answer her, just sat there, biting on his bottom lip, his eyes full of laughter and mirth, as if she had said something hilarious.

  The cigar was glowing menacingly in the darkness of the room, and Mary felt the panic rising inside her. He was quite capable of putting the cigar out on her face, on her breasts or on her back. It would not be the first time he had done it, though he usually only hurt her where it wouldn’t show. He beat her on her arms and legs, her stomach and back. Places where she could hide the marks, and he knew that she would hide them. She could never admit that she allowed him to hurt her, it was like admitting defeat. She was also worried about how Michael would react; what he guessed, and what he knew, were two different things. As much as she loved Michael, she would never intentionally put him up against Danny Boy. No one could win the wars he started on a daily basis. Danny Boy was a lunatic, and a righteous lunatic at that. He did not see anything wrong with his actions, or his thoughts on how people should live, or react to their environments. There was one way of living, and it was his way.

  Danny sat back on the seat, his body was too big really for it: he was balanced on the edge as usual. The room was beautiful, all creams and golds, it screamed out money and expense. It should have made him happy, but it didn’t. In fact, he hated it. He hated that he needed to justify his wealth, that he had actually been much happier living at his mother’s house, letting her take care of him. She might have been a miserable old bag at times, and guilty of loyalty beyond the scope of most people he knew, but she certainly knew how to look after her elder son. She had t
aken good care of him, and he had lived in that little place and been happy. Until she had decided, out of the blue, to take the old man back. That’s when it had all gone pear-shaped. When he had finally understood the role he actually had in her life. Provider, shoulder to cry on, surrogate father for the kids she had produced for a man who used her like he would have used a Kleenex tissue.

  His brother’s addiction had been the direct result of their father’s fucking antics. Although he had seen it as nothing more than a weakness, the same weakness his father had suffered from: instead of drink and gambling though, it was the brown. Skagheads were weak, they were cowards. Everyone knew that. Smack was like the tranquillisers a lot of so-called women took to ease the pain of their boring fucking lives, mother’s little helpers. Narcotics were the new alcohol, and who could blame people? Those were the same individuals who watched Dallas and listened to Top of the Pops; as far as he was concerned, in many respects, heroin was the lesser of those two evils. But his brother’s drug use he had taken personally, had seen as an insult to him and everything he believed in. And as he also knew that the little fucker had not been near it since the capture, he saw his brother’s rehabilitation as a personal triumph. Danny felt that his brother’s immediate cessation of any kind of illegal medication proved that addicts could stop if they really wanted to. He had no respect for Jonjo now though. Anyone who could lose themselves like that, could lose control without any kind of responsibility for their own life, and pay for the fucking privilege, was a knob, a prick. A fucking no-neck, a useless wanker. Now, if Jonjo had maybe felt the urge to stimulate himself, snort a bit of coke, a bit of speed, even inject a few steroids, that he could have understood. But the brown, no fucking way. That was a piss-take, an affront to everything he had tried to avoid.

  Jonjo was a has-been before he had even begun his life, in Danny’s eyes anyway. He could never trust him now, how could he? Once a skaghead, always a skaghead. That was a given in their world. In fact, when he read the Sunday papers and saw all those rich kids, Blandford and the likes, throwing their lives away, lives that were fucking well worth the living given their circumstances, he felt the futility their parents must feel. The money they had, and all it did was enable their kids to embrace laziness, allowed them to become nothings. All that poke, hundreds of years of grafting to make a fortune, and for what? A generation who embraced socialism, who pretended money meant nothing to them, and who could only afford that attitude because the money would always be fucking there. Their ancestors must be turning in their graves at the utter fucking disgrace of it.

  Danny hated the world, hated what it had become, what it stood for now. Even the Falklands had been nothing more than a reason to make the electorate forget the high unemployment. At least, that was what he felt about it all. Like most robbers though, he loved Thatcher: she had inadvertently made it easy for people like him to launder their money. They could buy a property for cash, mortgage it, and then invest in businesses, no matter how fucking unstable they were. As long as they had somewhere in the title, they were all as safe as houses. They could be closed down in the morning and reopened in the afternoon, no one owned anything, all the plant needed was on lease-hire so no one cared about the plant involved; no one actually owned it. They just changed the name on the forms and laughed all the way to the bank. It was that simple.

  Thatcher allowed the man on the street the opportunities that had previously only been open to the upper classes. She had given the masses not only the opportunity to purchase their council houses but the chance, through that very act, to become middle class. She had created a whole new set of Tories because a mortgage had a funny way of stopping people from striking. Mortgage companies wouldn’t let you pay your arrears off at a pound a week like the councils did if you owed them rent, the mortgage companies didn’t give a flying fuck about you. Out on the pavement without a by your leave. They also had the added advantage that they owned more of your property than you did.

  Cads and fucking bounders, the lot of them. Well, those epithets were now fair game to anyone with a few quid and a warehouse somewhere. He had seen how the land was lying, knew that it was only a matter of time before the Common Market would hold them all to ransom. He knew that the time was close when Spain and its islands would finally come into their own. At the moment, they still wouldn’t extradite, but that wouldn’t last. Eventually they would have to, eventually they would want to. Even they would want shot of the very people they were now courting so desperately.

  Now Danny had the Spanish conquest in his bin, and he knew it was a fucking good scam, a lucrative and long-running scam. He knew this would take him into the future and beyond, he knew that as well as he knew the woman who had delivered his only legitimate child was not, and never could be, a natural blonde. He had made a good move getting in there so quick, tendering out the lesser jobs, making sure they were given to people he liked and felt he could trust. He had made a few enemies over the years; his kind of personality guaranteed that would happen, but he also knew the power that a good earn could create in a workforce. And he always guaranteed a good wedge and, on top of that, a damn good back-up if it all fell out of bed.

  Love him or loathe him, Danny knew that the men he employed appreciated that, knew that if they got a capture from Lily Law all they had to do was keep their heads down and their arses up. If they did that, their families would live better than they had ever lived before. Danny Boy and Michael were very good in that respect. People were queuing up to be a part of this family, and that was a good thing, a good advert for them. It meant they didn’t have to poach anyone, they just sat back and waited for people to come to them.

  Danny wondered once more at how he could have a wife of such beauty and she didn’t interest him at all. In fact, if she had not given birth at last to a fucking living child, a child that, luckily enough for her, looked like him, he would not even be here now. He would have been in Spain weeks ago. But this child fascinated him, she drew him to her like no one else before. She made him almost happy, almost contented. She made his heart soften for a few moments.

  ‘Do you remember when we were courting, mare? Remember how we used to laugh all the time?’

  Mary nodded sadly. Her thick hair was tied back from her face and her eyes suddenly looked with interest at the man who tortured her at every available opportunity. She was like a dog who, no matter how much it had been treated badly by its master, still came back for more. Her loyalty was the one thing that had never, ever, been in question.

  ‘I love you, girl, and you know that. I love this baby, but I have a lot on me mind, mare, and you need to understand that for the future. I am the main breadwinner, you know. I have to go out and earn for us.’

  Mary nodded again, knowing that this new-found affability could disappear at any moment. Knowing that this friendliness could turn to hatred in seconds. He was talking for his own benefit, not hers. As she looked down on the head of her new daughter she wished him dead, wished him away from her so she could feed the bloody child from a bottle like normal women. Instead, she kept a neutral expression on her face and waited for him to make the next move. She had learned many moons ago that fighting him was pointless, arguing with him was fruitless, and making eye contact with him when he was like this could be fatal.

  ‘Will you be all right while I’m away, you and the baby? You won’t get pissed and forget about her will you, mare? Leave her to her own devices. Expect her to make her own feeds, and change her own arse? Only, I still ain’t sure I can trust you on your own.’

  Danny watched as the tears rolled down her face at his words, knew that her biggest fear was this child’s demise. He knew that he had ruined any kind of bonding process between Mary and her child because she would be too worried about fucking up. Would be too worried about him and his return, to concentrate on anything else.

  ‘I’ll be all right, Danny Boy. How long will you be in Spain anyway?’

  He knew she wanted his
answer to be months, knew she was praying for him to stay away for as long as possible. But, instead of being wound up, as he would usually be, he felt a rush of affection for her. He knew he treated her badly at times, but he had the knack of forgetting about that when it suited him. Sometimes though, on rare occasions such as now, he felt the burden of this and guilt at his treatment of her. He knew that what he did to her was wrong, not just in his eyes, but in God’s. He cared about his immortal soul, he cared that he bullied her at times, but he couldn’t stop himself. She was her own worst enemy where he was concerned. She acted like she was better than everyone, and she wasn’t.

  ‘You don’t need to know how long I’ll be away, Mary. Who do you think you fucking are, questioning me, eh? The police? I’ll be back when I get back, and not before. Why are you questioning me about it? You got a fucking fancy man then?’

  Danny knew that what he was saying was rubbish but, as always, as soon as he said it out loud he felt it was probably a viable argument. Felt that he was more than likely in the right. She was beneath him, and that knowledge pleased him; without him she was nothing. Without him she would fucking starve. He walked over to her and knelt on the bed. The baby was asleep, her gorgeous little body happily snuggled into her mother’s for once. Danny kissed her little head, breathing in the aroma of his daughter, admiring her perfection. Then, as Mary pushed him gently away from her, he watched as she placed her carefully into her cot, the cot that had been delivered by Harrods with all the pomp and ceremony Mary felt befitted her and her offspring. Then Mary got back in their bed, her lovely face nervously awaiting his next move. Danny pulled off his clothes quickly, dropping them on to the floor. She watched him without a word, in complete silence. Danny knew he had a good body, knew that it was a powerful tool; that he looked good to most people, male and female. He also knew that his wife avoided him like the plague.