The Take

by Martina Cole

  ‘He was my son. Admit it. Go on, admit that to me now.’

  He was being hurtful now. He wanted her to finally admit that it was his child, to say it to him and Maggie’s contempt for him was wiping away his sympathy.

  ‘Will you go away.’

  Her voice had regained some of its strength, and was much louder than she had meant it to be.

  ‘Maggie, say it.’

  She interrupted him then. ‘Oh, fuck off, Freddie. You raped me, and now, even on the day of my child’s burial, you have to try and make my life miserable. Will you leave me alone now he’s dead? Can I breathe easy now because the thing you held over my head for all those years has been buried, and you have no power any more. Is this your last attempt at breaking me?’

  He was shaking his head at her now.

  ‘Go away, Freddie, before I scream for my husband and tell him what you did to me.’

  Kimberley heard a scuffling noise, and she quickly walked behind the summerhouse. After a few seconds she poked her head around the corner, and saw Maggie stumbling over the lawn as she tried to make her way back to the house. Her father was still in the summerhouse, and when he finally emerged about fifteen minutes later she was amazed to see that he was crying.

  Jackie was listening to her mother and father talking about when they had been young. This was always the way when they were at funerals or weddings. Any family gathering ended up with her parents telling them all tales of times long past and the things that had happened to long-dead relatives.

  She lapped it up. It was so comfortable in Maggie’s lovely front room with its deep soft sofas and cream-coloured walls. The girls were ensconced on the largest of the three sofas with her, and she was actually enjoying the evening so much she had forgotten they were all there for a funeral.

  Lena was telling the girls about her own grandmother now, how she smoked a pipe and never missed Mass, how her grandfather had battered her nearly every day, and how she had followed him only weeks after his death.

  ‘Silly cow, how could she love someone who gave her a clump on a daily basis? When he finally popped off she should have had a bleeding party!’ Rox’s voice was annoyed, and they all smiled at her.

  Freddie, who was now sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace, laughed out loud.

  Jimmy was sitting opposite him and he stared at him for long moments as Freddie laughed, that irritating, sarcastic laugh he had.

  Seeing Jimmy looking at him, Freddie said in a friendly way, ‘By the way, don’t worry, Jimmy, I will sort out the takes tomorrow.’

  Jimmy knew this was meant to be his chance to take the olive branch, to try to resolve their differences.

  He had to be joking.

  This was the day of his baby boy’s funeral and he was only letting Freddie and his kin inside his home because of Maggie, because Maggie was finding some kind of peace having the girls around. She was sitting with her mother now, holding her hand tightly, and he knew she was looking for comfort and that, like himself, she would not find it.

  ‘Don’t bother, it’s already sorted.’

  Joe heard the exchange and saw the look on Jimmy’s face. His sudden angry countenance seemed almost demonic.

  He was looking at Freddie with such contempt Joe expected his burly son-in-law to take umbrage, to leap up from the floor and confront Jimmy.

  Instead he sat there and took it. But Joe guessed that soon these two men were going to collide, and he knew who his money would be on as the victor.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  ‘I want him out, Oz, and I want him out sooner rather than later.’

  Ozzy nodded, forgetting that Jimmy couldn’t see him since they were on the phone. As always, Ozzy liked his young protégé’s straight talking and he was pleased that Freddie was being aimed out at last. Personally, he would have seen the back of him years ago.

  Since the boy had died he had felt a marked change in Jimmy. He was harder, and he was also easier to nark. This was to be expected, he supposed.

  When the news had been broadcast to the wing that poor Jimmy Jackson had lost his son in tragic circumstances, Ozzy had seen the reaction of the men who had children, especially the ones with young families. He had understood Jimmy’s grief much better then. Never having had a child himself, he could only imagine what it felt like to lose one.

  Jimmy, like many a man before him, was focusing on his work to get through this terrible time. Everything in life was geared around it. It was working in Jimmy’s favour, anyway, helped him escape all this grief. Ozzy had watched men in prison dissolve after an event like that.

  Maggie, he understood, was not coping with it at all, and he also guessed that Jimmy couldn’t even scratch the surface of her grief. How could he? Women were a different species and as they were the ones who grew the children inside them anyway, he assumed they felt the loss far more than the fathers. Though the newspapers and the TV news told him, some women had no feelings for their offspring, and he knew Maggie had not taken to the child at first.

  Ozzy sighed inwardly. He was distressed for Jimmy, felt for him, but Ozzy could still see the personal opportunity that his grief was affording him. He was going to overhaul the businesses and he was starting off by getting rid of the dead wood.

  ‘You do it, Jimmy, you have a good old clear out, son. It’s long overdue anyway.’

  ‘All right, son?’ Freddie slowed the car down to the annoyance of the drivers behind him, and he waved at his son through the open window.

  Little Freddie smiled and waved back, and his father tooted the horn of his car as he drove past him and the two friends he was walking to school with.

  Freddie smiled. He was all right, there was nothing wrong with that boy. He was highly strung like his old man, that was all. It was temper, and he also had a temper, as those who crossed him found out to their detriment. Well, his boy had inherited it from him, so he couldn’t be all bad.

  His sorrow and shock had completely gone and Jimmy was the new focus of his attention. Jimmy was the bad bastard, and Jimmy had better watch out.

  Freddie was weaving in and out of the early-morning traffic and he was cursing and gesturing to all the other, less-capable drivers who had the audacity to be on the road. He was driving to Jimmy’s suite of new offices in a purpose-built block in Barking. Jimmy was working from there exclusively now, and they really looked the part.

  Freddie was disgusted about them, seeing the use of them as a front as a mug’s game, and he told anyone who would listen to him that Jimmy was heading for a fall. Filth raided premises as it was - their homes, their safe houses. Why put yourself in the frame by advertising your existence?

  But Jimmy was running legitimate businesses from there, and the other stuff was only ever discussed in the place. Nothing tangible could ever link any of the employees to anything that was not above board and taxable. Jimmy was moving with the times while Freddie was still stuck in a time warp.

  Freddie was fuming because he had not heard from Jimmy for a week, and then he’d got a message telling him to come to his office. Well, he was on his way, and he was going to sort it out once and for all. This showdown had been a long time coming. He was more than ready for it, and he was prepared to go to any lengths to see that it happened.

  ‘Maggie’s bad, Mum. I am really worried about her.’

  Rox was sitting on her mother’s bed and trying to get her to drink some tea and eat a piece of toast. The girls took it in turns now to force Jackie to get out of bed and to eat. They were worried about her and her escalating drinking problem.

  ‘She’ll be all right, now will you piss off, Rox, and let me sleep!’

  Rox sighed. ‘Imagine it was one of us, Mum, who had died. How would you feel?’

  ‘At this moment, Rox, I would be over the moon. Now will you sod off and leave me be.’

  Kimberley, who was on the landing, listened to her mother and wondered at a woman who had no real feeling for her sister’s grief.
>
  Rox tried again. ‘Will you sit up, Mum, please, and eat this toast we’ve made you?’

  Jackie was getting really annoyed now. This was becoming a regular thing and at first she had loved it. The attention and the knowledge her girls were looking out for her had been lovely. Now it was getting a bit over the fucking top. They were here every day like a gaggle of bloody witches, and all she wanted to do was have a kip.

  Kimberley walked into the bedroom and, pushing Rox out of the way, she grabbed the quilt and dragged it off her half-naked mother.

  Jackie went ballistic. She sat up in the bed and screamed in anger, ‘What the fuck is it with you lot? Why can’t you just leave me alone!’

  Rox was trying not to laugh, but then she looked at her mother properly and saw the way she had bloated out again over the last few months and any thought of laughing vanished.

  Jackie’s legs were a mass of bruises and scratches, because her kidneys were gradually breaking down and causing an itchy rash. Rox and her sisters knew this because they had looked it up on the internet. They knew what was happening to Jackie and they wanted to try to help her help herself, before it was too late. Their mother was a textbook case for a female alcoholic and they wanted to stop her from drinking herself to death.

  Rox looked around the bedroom. It was filthy. The bedding was rotten, the carpet was a mass of cigarette burns and coffee stains, and the whole room stank of sweat and stale perfume. But the saddest thing of all was that it didn’t look half as dilapidated as the woman sitting up on the bed amidst all the squalor.

  Jackie had pulled the quilt back over her, but any thought of sleep was long gone, and her anger was being expressed as vindictive personal insults.

  She lit a cigarette and said loudly and sarcastically, ‘So what is this about, then?’

  She spoke in a high, sing-song voice, the utter contempt for her children’s do-gooding evident. ‘Rox is having a baby, so now she is a fucking fountain of wisdom. Well, you know fuck all, Rox, you never have.’

  ‘She knows more than you ever will, Mother.’

  Jackie smiled as she looked at Kimberley. ‘Oh, now me junkie daughter is giving me the benefit of her experience as well, is she? Well, shove it. Go and have a fix, Kim, at least you were smiling on the skag.’

  Rox walked to the door. She had heard enough.

  Kimberley said quietly, ‘Look at yourself, Mum, and your life. It stinks, you stink and you drink yourself stupid so you don’t have to accept that. But you do, you have to try and stop destroying yourself and everyone around you.’

  Jackie laughed nastily, and pushing her hair back off her face she hollered, ‘At least I have a life, what have you got, eh? No man, no nothing. Who’d fucking want you, Kim, with your miserable fucking boatrace? You tell me that.’

  ‘Listen to yourself, Mum, I don’t need a man to make me feel like a valid person . . .’

  Jackie was laughing again. ‘Kimberley, go and score, go and get pissed, jack up, snort, I don’t give a fuck. Just get out of my fucking face!’

  Rox and Kimberley looked at her, and the expression on their faces told Jackie all she needed to know about herself.

  Kim spoke up, the disgust evident in her voice. ‘You ain’t got a man, Mum, you ain’t even got Dad. You know what? He loathes you. He is out and about all the time . . .’

  Rox was trying to make her sister leave the room, trying to prevent the blow-up she knew was about to erupt. ‘Leave her, Kim, we’re wasting our time . . .’

  Jackie laughed again.

  ‘ “Leave her, Kim,” ’ she mimicked her daughter’s voice. ‘Go round Maggie’s, she loves all this shit. You get it from her, the lot of you . . . another fucking drama queen. That poor child, she wouldn’t give it the fucking time of day for years. Neglected him—’

  Kimberley laughed with utter contempt. ‘You, to talk about neglect! You’ve got some nerve, Mother. Little Freddie’s arse was always red raw because you couldn’t be bothered to change him, he never ate a decent meal unless we provided one, and you talk about neglect!’

  Jackie knew this was true, which just annoyed her more.

  ‘I was always there for him, and whatever I am or I ain’t, I’ve never not loved him! Maggie had it all, the house, the car, even the fucking dog! But no baby, and when she got one, finally got one, she didn’t even know what to do with it! She is only off her trolley now because she fucking well knows she had no time for that little boy. She’s feeling guilty, and so she should be after all those years of neglect.’

  Jackie was shouting now. ‘Even your father had more time for him than she did, and she couldn’t stand him even touching the child! I used to watch her when he played with the poor little sod, her face screwed up, like we was all nothing. She hated him near the boy, yet she didn’t fucking lay one finger on him herself unless she had to, did she? That poor child was neglected, and even my mother said it. My Freddie loved that boy and she wouldn’t even let the poor child have the benefit of him making a fuss of the poor little fucker, let alone anyone else!’

  ‘And just why do you think that might have been then, Mum, eh? You know so much, why do you think she hated him touching him, then?’

  Rox could hear the inflection in her sister’s voice and knew that something was going to be said that was going to cause trouble, big trouble, serious trouble.

  ‘Shut up, Kim. Come on, let’s go.’

  Jackie leaped up on the bed, she wanted to hear this. ‘You keep out of it, Rox. Come on, then, what are you getting at, Kim? Fucking spit it out. He loved that little boy, he doted on him, and thanks to him at least the child had a few good memories to take with him—’

  ‘It was his child, you stupid bloody cow!’

  Jackie was stunned and wondered, briefly, if she was hearing things. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘He raped her. Dad raped Maggie!’

  Maggie was sick inside, and the pain she felt could not be relieved with the tablets her mother was forever trying to get her to take.

  ‘Please, Mum, leave me, go home, I just want to be on my own.’

  The strange thing was she was fine on her own, but no one believed her. Alone, she could gather her thoughts, pretend that things were OK, all right. She could relax, try to rest. She could forget what had happened.

  Forget how her son had been conceived, remember him as the little boy he was, the son she loved. She would let Freddie Jackson rape her every day if it would bring her son back to her. He was a child of rape, he had been brought on to this earth because of an action that was so heinous, so evil, and yet she had learned to love him. He had been the innocent party, he had been the catalyst for her life being destroyed, and then he had been the catalyst that had given her life meaning, and given her marriage the kick-start it had needed to survive. Jimmy had loved him and that had allowed her to love him as well.

  Now, her own company was preferable to anyone else’s. Her own company afforded her the luxury of pretending he was still alive, that her son was still near her. Alone, her life could be what she wanted it to be, instead of what it was.

  Alone was now a good thing.

  Lena was at the end of her tether. Nothing she did seemed to make any difference. Maggie was determined to be alone and she knew that she couldn’t get through to her, knew she was wasting her time.

  But the guilt she carried around with her was weighing her down, and she needed to make her daughter better, needed her to need her.

  If only they had looked in on him properly that night, checked him, protected him, he would still be alive.

  Lena would never know another happy day, so how could she expect her daughter to? Her Maggie was dying inside. It was not something that you could look at her and see, instead it was more subtle. Maggie’s eyes were sadder by the day, she looked at you and the bleakness was terrifying because somewhere inside you knew she was right. Her hurt and pain were right, the only option left to her daughter.

  Without it, she felt n
othing.

  ‘You sure about this, Jimmy?’ Glenford’s voice was sceptical. He knew the Jacksons fought between themselves, but this anger from Jimmy was out of the ordinary, and unusual.

  ‘As sure as I’ll ever be, Glen. He is out and that’s the end of it.’

  Glenford was nonplussed for a few moments. ‘There’ll be murders and you know it. You can’t row Freddie out, that would be outrageous! He will want to kill you, he will go mentalist.’

  Glenford said it all in thick Jamaican, but he meant every word.

  Jimmy grinned. ‘Let him bring it on, as much fucking hag as he likes. Like I give a fuck.’

  Glenford was surprised, but not that surprised. This had been a long time coming, he had just not expected it now, and not in such a voracious way. Freddie must have fucked up with honours this time, and caused untold aggravation to cause this upset. Freddie, in all honesty, must have been picking the pockets of the damned to get Jimmy this fucking aerated.

  Jimmy was the good guy, Jimmy always looked for the best in people, looked for the easiest way out of things, tried to keep the peace, tried to make it all better.

  Not any more by the looks of things.

  Glenford had to question, though, the logic of aiming him out now. Freddie collected quickly, without arguments. He gave people ten hours and they never failed to deliver, they always paid up on time. He did the job, he talked the talk and he earned for them. He might not be the greatest mind they had on the payroll but he knew how to frighten money out of the biggest wankers in recorded history.

  Freddie was a nutcase and people like Freddie were worth keeping around if for no other reason than that.

  ‘You can’t aim him out, Jimmy, think about it. He’ll never rest if you do that. He’ll go fucking mental. Who would employ him other than you? All he has is you.’ Glenford was trying, in his own way, to warn Jimmy about reckless actions. ‘Freddie Jackson is far more useful to you if he is in your good books. Use him as a heavy, let him have his moment, let him have his creds, but don’t put him out altogether. He’ll never live that down, he’ll never get over it.’