The Take

by Martina Cole

  ‘Well, you can’t blame her, it was on their anniversary.’

  She dismissed him and once more he felt the anger rising inside him. He swallowed it down and said, with as much kindness as he could muster, ‘I think he is firing blanks. Jackie was telling me Maggie stopped the pill eighteen months ago and there’s still no sign of a baby.’

  Patricia looked at him in absolute amazement. ‘Who are you now, fucking Marge Proops? Who gives a fuck!’

  But he knew this would be relayed back to Ozzy, and that was exactly what he wanted. In future, he was going to become the stable one, the one who sorted things, even if it meant being nice to that pair of wankers otherwise known as the Blacks of Glasgow.

  Jimmy would soon find out. No one mugged him off, and he didn’t care who they were.

  ‘Please, Mags, tell me what is wrong with you, mate.’

  Maggie shrugged. ‘I am just tired, that’s all.’

  She walked past her husband and looked out of her office door. She watched the goings on in the salon as if they were of paramount importance. She had no interest really, the salons pretty much ran themselves, but if it took her eyes away from Jimmy’s then that was OK as far as she was concerned.

  She could not look him in the eye any more.

  If he touched her she wanted to cry, and if he didn’t she wanted to cry.

  Jimmy observed her warily. She had not been the same since he had gone to Scotland. He had explained over and over again that he had not really had any option. The Blacks spent their time dreaming of taking out Freddie, and so he was the natural choice as go-between. Thanks to him, Jimmy, the Blacks and the poor little chemist from Amsterdam, who now resided in Ilford with a young girl called LaToya and a bad crack habit, they were all quids in.

  But she had not recovered, and no matter how much he tried to talk to her, or tried to love her, she was different. It was as if she was in another dimension, and it was starting to frighten him. He didn’t know what to do about it.

  ‘I am all right, Jimmy, for fuck’s sake leave me alone, will you!’

  He sighed heavily. ‘You sure you are all right?’

  She didn’t answer him and he didn’t know how to break the crashing silence between them.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Glenford Prentiss smiled his gap-toothed smile and Jimmy returned it. They had become good friends over the years, and they were close, as close as they would ever be to anyone, considering their line of work.

  ‘Come on, Jimmy, you need to talk to someone, man. You looking stressed, you looking like a man with a problem he can’t resolve by himself.’

  Glenford knew he might be overstepping the mark but he was worried about Jimmy. He looked terrible. This man had gone down in drug folklore. He had flooded the market with ecstasy. From the raves all over the country to the blues on the Railton Road, he had made it accessible to everyone. The price was low, the product was good, and the money was rolling in. Jimmy should be over the moon, and yet here he was with a face like a wet night in Montego Bay.

  Jimmy was stoned. This was not a usual occurrence for him and he felt the dragging heaviness of the skunk. He had never really been into skunk, it was a heavy, potent puff. He was more a Lebanese gold kind of man. He liked to mellow out, chill out, and finally go off to sleep.

  Skunk, however, was a different thing altogether. It could make you hallucinate if you smoked enough, it was a chemically controlled puff, and he usually avoided it. But everything was a massive fuck-up at the moment, and as he was spending the evening with Glenford he decided to have a blow and maybe sort his head out.

  It was a mistake.

  ‘Come on, man, a few Red Stripes and you will become loquacious, the words will be tripping off your tongue.’

  He was laughing. Glenford had done a serious lump as a young man, and he had spent his time with a dictionary and his right hand. That was his favourite story, and even though Jimmy had laughed like everyone else he knew there was more than a grain of truth in it. When Glenford was in the mood he could talk for England. He used words that were so alien to the people listening but were said with such aplomb, and in such circumstances, that they were almost like listening to music.

  He was a wordsmith, and he had once confided to Jimmy, while very stoned, that his hero was, of all people, Les Dawson. The man, he assured Jimmy, had been the most exciting wordsmith of them all. He said that this man had been underrated, and was in his opinion the last great humorist and talker other than Spike Milligan.

  This had caused Jimmy to laugh himself nearly unconscious, but then when he had watched the tapes with Glenford he had been inclined to agree. Les Dawson was humorous, and he was also imaginative. Like Glenford, Jimmy had realised the man’s total command of the English language. Without the puff though, Jimmy wasn’t so sure.

  Glenford was also a Monty Python aficionado. He could repeat any sketch, any line from any film and he also knew every anecdote about the Python team that was in the public domain.

  Now Jimmy wanted his friend to start on about Les Dawson, or his new idols Bill Hicks and Eddie Murphy.

  Anything was preferable to thinking about his own situation.

  ‘Maggie ain’t right, and she ain’t been right for a while.’

  Lena was voicing the opinion of everyone around her, but unlike everyone, she was saying it out loud.

  Jackie shrugged as always when faced with any kind of problem that did not involve her or her life. Consequently, she was exasperated as she cried out, ‘She’s all right. Fuck me, Mum, she’s coining it in, so she can’t be that fucking in a state, can she?’

  Lena regretted speaking now. She knew Jackie was so jealous of her little sister that anything said about her was derided, or just plain dismissed. But Lena was worried, very worried. Her youngest had gone from a happy, caring woman to a nervous wreck seemingly overnight.

  It was as if all the joy had been milked from her, along with her happiness and her natural energy, and all that was left was a husk, a living, breathing husk that was like a pale imitation of the girl she had been.

  She went through the motions, she smiled, she worked and she did everything she had always done. But somehow, it was like she had been replaced by a clone.

  The girl was not right, and Lena was terrified that something very sinister was going on. So she tried once more in case her elder daughter might have noticed something.

  ‘Has she said anything to you, Jackie?’

  Jackie sighed, then said sarcastically, ‘Like what exactly, Mum? How you are getting on her fucking tits because you are never off her fucking doorstep? Do you think that maybe you might have overstayed your welcome there?’

  Lena closed her eyes and suppressed her anger, as well as the urge to smack her eldest daughter right across her fat, bloated face. Instead she goaded her with words, because she knew that words hurt this daughter more than a baseball bat across her thick skull.

  ‘You are a bitter pill, ain’t you, Jackie? You jealous fucking mare. She ain’t crossed this door for weeks and you don’t even care, do you?’ Lena got up and, putting on her coat, she left without another word. But she felt Jackie’s anger and she knew it was misplaced.

  Jackie knew that she should have swallowed the criticism, and that her mother had an actual point. They were family after all. Instead, she was just glad that her mother had gone and left her in peace.

  Since Freddie had become so enamoured of her Maggie, she had been grateful for her sister’s absence from her life. Jackie still went there at weekends, and ate her food and drank her drink, but the fact that Maggie didn’t come to her house any more didn’t really bother her. She had only come to spy anyway, spy and give her lectures dressed up as the ramblings of a worried sister.

  Jackie closed her eyes and stopped herself from yelling out loud that her husband was lusting after Maggie, and she was frightened that maybe Maggie might be lusting after him back.

  All she heard these days was how he had pop
ped in to see Jimmy, and how Maggie had made him coffee or a sandwich, and how well she looked, how lovely she was. How nice she kept the house. Each compliment was said in a nice conversational way. No one listening would realise that he was on a love job, and each compliment stabbed her like a hot knife because she knew that he wanted Maggie.

  In Jackie’s mind, most of the women in their world wanted a Freddie, so it stood to reason that Maggie with her safe life and her boring husband would want him too. In her darker, more honest and sober moments she brushed these feelings away, knowing they were stupid and completely unfounded. She loved Maggie, and she knew that Maggie was probably the only person who genuinely loved her, the only person she could really trust.

  She knew she had treated Maggie like shit over the years. She had put everyone else above her little sister, she had borrowed money off her, and then she had run her down, often to people who she knew were doing the exact same thing to her. Justifying their own existences. Who, like her, could not comprehend a woman in their world who seemed to have it all sussed, who was happy with herself, and who was with a man who was not trying it on with any woman with a pulse or a social security book.

  Jackie trusted people who she knew in her heart had no real regard for her, were not really friends. They were disloyal, they were all without jobs, lives or any kind of structure to their days, but what they did have going for them was that they were like her.

  They were aimless, and full of their own self-importance. They relied on the men in their lives for their self-esteem, and they had no real concept of friendship or honour. Most of her so-called mates were only still friendly because they knew too much about one another and they were frightened to fall out in case the loose lips and two-faced talk suddenly became about them and their lives.

  Maggie had once said, in a rare moment of anger, ‘At least with my friends I ain’t afraid to be the first to leave.’

  That had hurt Jackie, because she knew that it was true. As soon as one of her cronies left her house she was pulled to pieces, run down shamelessly and spoken about as if she was a dire enemy. It was their way, and Jackie knew that she was saved from the worst of that treatment because her old man was a nut nut.

  So she was a big fish on their estate, and she revelled in the fact she was more or less safe from it all. She also joked about Freddie, ridiculed him, and that made her an important part of their infrastructure. Jackie was the pivot that their world needed to turn on, she was a friend by association with most of her estate. If Freddie ever dumped her she would be finished. She knew it and they all knew it, and if it did happen no one would be more thrilled than her ‘best mates’.

  Jackie was the main wife, and she told her friends how her sister Maggie was stuck up her own arse, and, because she had a few quid, acted like she was some kind of fucking celebrity. She also pointed out that her Freddie earned good wedge, but unlike her little sister she knew where she came from and did not feel the need to rub her good fortune in everyone’s faces. Or leave her roots.

  She felt awful at times because of what she said, but she still said it. Especially when her husband was in earshot, though never when her mother was in the vicinity. Lena would scalp her for it.

  Her girls held it against her and all. They loved Mags, they thought she was the dog’s knob, and this just made Jackie feel more angry and more resolute about putting her in her place. She was the one who should be looked up to, and Maggie had looked up to her once. And she still should, she was the elder sister, she should have her sister’s respect for that alone.

  Every now and again the total disloyalty she showed towards the woman who made sure she had money, who made sure she was OK, who made sure her hair was done and her clothes were half decent, overwhelmed her.

  Maggie, she knew, had actually fought with people who had even remotely criticised her. Maggie never slagged her off, she just tried talking to her about her so-called drink problem, and about Little Freddie’s carrying on. Unlike everyone else she had always tried to defend her on the one hand, while helping her in a positive way on the other. And Maggie, as little as she was, could have a row, a real row, a punch up if it was called for. Jackie knew that she was a fighter because of her personality while Maggie only ever fought because of a principle or because it was a last resort. And when Maggie did have a row, she was like a fucking maniac. And Maggie had fronted up enough people over her through the years, that Jackie knew she should do the same for her.

  But Maggie was also the thorn in her side. Every time she looked at her she saw her own wasted life, saw her own youth that she had stupidly let pass her by with pregnancy and a penchant for self-destruction. More to the point, she now saw her only chance of happiness with her husband slipping away from her.

  Because if Freddie wanted her little sister she could not compete, and whether Maggie wanted him back did not really matter any more. He wanted her, and that was enough for Jackie.

  When she looked at Mags, she saw a young woman with a good job, a business head, a good marriage to a man who adored her and worst of all, someone her own children as well as her husband thought was far superior to her.

  Maggie was everything she wanted to be, and for that alone, she could never forgive her.

  ‘Let it go, Glenford. I am just tired, that’s all. The bloke we hired from Amsterdam is turning out gear like he is a fucking limited company. And we have sewn up the market, and, you know what, we stand to make a fucking fortune.’

  Glenford grinned, but he wasn’t happy. He knew all this, he didn’t need his friend to keep on repeating it.

  He skinned up again. This time he made a twist, the Jamaican joint. This was when the papers were wrapped around a piece of conical wood and then, once the papers were removed, filled with just grass or in this case skunk.

  Once lit, it went up like a bonfire and then it burned lazily, and a few tokes could lay out Mike Tyson.

  When it was offered to him Jimmy shook his head and said gently, ‘Oh no, mate, I have to get home soon.’

  He knew he was stoned out of his box, and there was no way he was driving anywhere. He would have to cab it and then pick his car up the next day.

  ‘How’s Maggie?’

  Glenford had the throaty, deep rasp of a stoned Rasta, and this made Jimmy laugh. Beenie Man came on the sound system, and he lay back and listened to him intently. ‘She’s all right.’

  Glenford shrugged and toked deeply once more. ‘She looks troubled, and so do you. If you want to tell me what is the problem, you know that I will keep it quiet and within these four walls.’

  Jimmy already knew that and he smiled his thanks but he didn’t say anything.

  Eventually, Glenford spoke again. ‘You are a damn fool, boy. When me and Clarice were waging war, I keep it to meself. She living now with a white boy with a proper job, and me kids talk like fucking bankers. And now there’s me with me little girl, and she lovely, but me Clarice, she the one, the only one me really interested in. But I fucked it big time, and I accepted that in the end. They go peculiar you know, it’s the life we live, the uncertainty, the whole concept of the criminal lifestyle. It wear the decent women down, they want serious security, and them want the arms they loving around them every night. Well, she got that now, she got what she wanted, but I know deep in here -’ he banged his fist against his chest - ‘she would rather my arms than the blue-eyed fucker she got now. But you see, with decent women, they do what’s best for them in the end, or in her case what was best for the kids. My kids, and I respect that, and him a good man, she whiter than him, she a natural blonde, collar and cuffs, if you know what me saying. But he love my kids and they got one of they own now, but I know one day, she will come back, when I am out of this life and retired.’

  He took another deep toke on his newly lit twist and then he laughed even as he said seriously, ‘You see, Jimmy boy, if me don’t believe that, me life not worth it, is it?’

  Jimmy looked at his friend and smiled, and t
hey both knew that this was the final piece of their friendship falling into place. Neither had ever really trusted anyone with their deepest feelings before, but now they were willing to do just that.

  ‘She ain’t right, Glenford. She has become like a different person. Her nerves are so bad, every knock at the door she jumps, it’s like she is waiting for something, but she won’t tell me what.’

  Glenford shook his head as if he understood perfectly. ‘That’s what me trying to tell you, it’s the life, boy. They get to an age and a state of mind, and they frightened of the consequences of our chosen professions.’

  Jimmy pondered his words for a while, then said sadly, ‘Nah, it ain’t that, Glenford. We are legal, mate, and if I get a capture it’s through a grass. This goes deeper. Something’s happened to her and I can’t get to the bottom of it. I don’t know what to do, and I try and make her talk to me and she goes into one.’

  Glenford was suddenly alert. Unlike Jimmy he had the knack of shaking off even the most severe of stoneds. Not an easy feat by anyone’s standard. ‘What could have happened to her?’

  Jimmy sighed. ‘I don’t know, but I’ll find out. It started when I went to Glasgow, and she ain’t been the same since.’

  Glenford was silent, but his mind was now working fifty to the dozen. He was a great believer in never saying anything to anyone until you had all the facts. He was annoyed now for getting so stoned, because something Jimmy just said had struck a chord with him. But he was gone and he knew this was too important to try and suss out now. So he got up from his chair unsteadily and did what he always did when he was rocking and he needed to remember something.

  He went to his kitchen and he wrote it down in his notebook.

  Then he got two more cans of Red Stripe, returned to the lounge and sat with his friend and buzzed happily.