The Take

by Martina Cole

  He was actually wary of anything happening, because he knew Freddie spent his life on the edge. Looking for trouble was his forte, it was what Freddie did for kicks. Freddie would love an excuse to widen his circle of hatred.

  ‘But that is just what I want, Glenford. I don’t want him to get over it, I want him to know how I feel. I am going to finish him once and for all, I am going to wipe his fucking name off my pension plan, he is history. He is out of everything he ever wanted, everything he has always felt he was entitled to. Freddie is over and the sooner he realises that the better off he will be. I have carried that cunt from day one, and now he can start earning for himself, earn a fucking living like all of us.’

  Glenford snorted in derision and annoyance. ‘This goes deeper than that, Jimmy, this is far too personal. What the fuck has he done, fucked your wife?’

  Jimmy didn’t answer, and Glenford wondered what the upshot of this day was going to be. Life was a series of unavoidable events - until now he had not understood what his father meant by that. But he had known what the score was all his life.

  His father was a handsome Jamaican called Wendell Prentiss, who had travelled over to Britain in the fifties with nothing but a Rasta hat and a sense of humour. He had a posse of outside children, from a gaggle of different white women, but his legal wife had unfortunately only ever produced one son, Glenford. Wendell had always argued with him, saying that you had only one life, and it was up to you, what you did with it.

  Of course, Wendell would say, in his thick Jamaican accent and with a grin, there would always be the unexpected, you needed to allow for them kind of thing, mentally and monetarily, that would cost you dearly. Deaths, births, and more often than not, a serious prison sentence for the majority of Jamaican boys, because the British police don’t like us one bit as a race, there too many of us now. Always remember, son, he had said with all the dignity he could muster, while drinking white rum and banging his dominos on the kitchen table, those things cost money, time, and the serious use of brain power. But other than that, he would say on a laugh, your life was your own, to waste or make the best of.

  Jebb Avenue in Brixton, Wendell would say, his deep voice making his words as dramatic as possible, could be the marketplace you visit for a sheepskin coat in the darkest days of winter, or where you could end up queuing to visit your friends or family. Funky Brixton, as the prison there was called, was the place where white boys had eventually become the niggers.

  Glenford had laughed with his father when he had philosophised about those things, yet he knew he had actually been stating facts.

  Wendell had died ten years ago, still believing he was a prince, a walking flag of Ethiopia, and still smoking the weed that had actually prevented him from fulfilling his dreams. He had always been too stoned to do anything constructive.

  ‘Life is what you make it,’ he would say on a daily basis, loudly and seriously. ‘You have a blank piece of paper, Glenford, and what you eventually write on it is of your own doing. Good or bad, you have to decide for yourself.’

  Glenford had adhered to his father’s teachings all his life, and they had kept him in good stead. His father had taught him that sometimes you had to hurt people, be cruel to be kind, but Jimmy Jackson, he was a different kettle of fish. He had always tried to make other people’s lives easier, and the responsibility had weighed on him from day one.

  Glenford had few real friends. Like his father before him, he was fussy about who called him by that name, to him friends were people you trusted as much as your family. In this case more than your family. Jimmy was a real friend. Freddie, on the other hand, was just treated like one. It was a subtle difference, but there all the same.

  But to Jimmy, Freddie Jackson, was family, and in their world family, no matter how big a cunt they were, got a wage. That went without saying, but they were supposed to be grateful. They were supposed to understand their fucking good luck that someone close to them had the nous to earn a crust, a crust they were willing to share out.

  Now Jimmy was threatening to remove that wage, was going to drop Freddie like a stone. It was Jimmy’s call, and Freddie was one dangerous fuck, after all, but Glenford knew that in one way Freddie had a point and was within his rights to believe he was owed a job.

  He also knew, by the way Jimmy was talking, that Freddie had irrevocably fucked up any relationship they had ever enjoyed, and Jimmy, whatever Freddie might think, was the better man in more ways than one.

  The Jacksons had fought before and nothing had come of it. They had been the talk of the town, especially after Stephanie’s death. Best-kept secret in London that was. But Jimmy had always accepted Freddie back into the fold. He still could, and Glenford hoped that would be the case.

  He hated Freddie, but he knew they were better off with him in front of them, acting as a friend, than away from them, out of their orbit, and, knowing Freddie, planning their demise.

  Glenford knew that Jimmy must have his reasons for what he was determined to do, but Freddie was going to go what was commonly referred to as ape shit.

  Roxanna felt sick and she wasn’t sure if it was the baby she was carrying, or her sister’s revelation. Even her father could not be capable of something like that, of raping Maggie. It couldn’t be true.

  Maggie was strong, she would have fought him surely, stopped him, and she would have screamed it from the rooftops.

  Wouldn’t she?

  But somehow Rox knew that Jackie would have made any kind of accusation impossible for Maggie, and she also felt certain that Maggie would have kept it quiet for their sakes as much as for her mother and Jimmy. Jimmy could never have been told something like that. Maggie was sensible enough to know that her Jimmy would be capable of murder if he had even suspected that something like that had occurred.

  Kimberley must be wrong, must have got the wrong end of the stick. And if her dad had raped Maggie, did that mean Jimmy Junior had been his child, as Kim had insinuated? Was he her brother? One sexual act, and they had produced a child - it was too off the wall. She knew she had other half-brothers and sisters, she had heard the gossip over the years, but she had never felt the urge to see any of them. Why would she want to?

  Jimmy Junior could not have been her father’s child. It could not be true, it was an absolutely outrageous suggestion. Maggie wouldn’t have let that happen to her, she would not have let him near her, no way, it was not feasible.

  Not her aunt Maggie, the person who had been like a surrogate mother all their lives, who had always been there for them, and who was still their shelter when their lives got too stormy for them. When this excuse for a mother got pissed and caused fights at Christmas and New Year, they had gone to Maggie because she sorted things out.

  Had he raped her? Was her father really that bad, capable of such an act?

  The worst thing of all was, deep inside her, she knew it was true.

  Kimberley had spoken the truth, and even her mother, her dad’s biggest fan, his only alibi, and also the only person on the planet who actually really cared what happened to him, knew it. It was almost as if Jackie had been expecting to hear it, or something like it, at some point in her life. She had looked almost as if she was being told something she had always known, had looked almost smug because she had finally found out the truth, finally had an understanding of something that had been bugging her.

  But Rox just couldn’t let herself believe it, didn’t want to believe it. She just didn’t want to deal with it. Didn’t want to look at her aunt Maggie, who she loved, and know that her father had intruded so violently into her life.

  Jackie Jackson, however, had finally found the last piece of a puzzle she had been trying to solve for many years. When Freddie had made a fuss of Jimmy Junior she had known in her heart that something was off, that there was something underneath his smiling demeanour, and his grinning face. He had never taken much notice of his own children, and she had always felt a deep jealousy about his treatment of tha
t boy.

  ‘Jimmy Junior’, what a fucking pantomime that was. But then the two men looked so alike and the kids all had a look of one another. Her Rox was like a clone of Maggie. Jackie knew that Freddie had always had a penchant for her little sister, but what about Jimmy? What would Jimmy think about it all, especially now the boy was dead? She had to have had an affair, that was all it could be. Maggie had to have things, had always wanted what she had, Freddie included. But raped? Kimberley said it was a rape, that Maggie had said it to Freddie in no uncertain terms when he had tried to make her admit little Jimmy was his child at the funeral. And Jackie knew Freddie was capable of something like that. Was Maggie really raped?

  Freddie had a way with women, maybe she had come on to him. He could be so charming when the fancy took him. She remembered how he had gone on about her, Maggie this and Maggie that, nearly driving Jackie out of her mind with jealousy. And look at how pleased Freddie had been when she had been delivered of a son.

  Maggie had finally got pregnant, after all that time, and she had been thrilled for her. Pregnant Maggie was not supposed to have been a threat any more, she was supposed to have been out of bounds, and now Kimberley was saying that Maggie’s boy, that poor little boy, was her husband’s child.

  Well, he was dead and gone, thank God. That was all she needed now, a living reminder of Freddie’s infidelity, and in her own family this time.

  The bastard.

  But raped, not a chance, what crap. Freddie had women after him all the time, he didn’t have to force anyone. If this was a true story then Maggie had to have been gagging for it.

  She was crying rape in case it got back to Jimmy, and he would not listen to reason. Like everyone else, he thought that Maggie was a blinder, a good girl, well, she had shown her true colours now.

  She wasn’t the first tart Freddie had shagged and she wouldn’t be the last, and Jackie had seen off better women than Maggie. But she would play this hand close to her chest, for now. Until Jimmy found out about it, she would keep stumm.

  In her heart she didn’t want this out in the open. Maggie was too close to home, and far too lovely for Jackie Jackson to allow herself to ever be compared with her. She knew that the majority of people would not blame Freddie for straying with her younger, more beautiful sister.

  She could hear him brag that he had married the wrong sister, that he should have waited a few years until Maggie was old enough. He had said those words to her in this very room many times.

  Kimberley listened to her mother as she went on and on about Maggie always wanting what she had, Maggie always taking whatever she wanted, being the favourite child, and instead of anger, she felt a deep and abiding pity for the woman who had borne her.

  Jackie had already blamed poor Mags for what had happened, and her father was as always the innocent party. Maggie had lured him into her bed to get back at her. Jackie was actually believing her own lies now.

  Kimberley now knew that when she had opened her big mouth, she had started something that would haunt them all down the years.

  Her father was the innocent in all this, her mother had tried and already condemned poor Maggie, and the only thing her stupid revelation had achieved was more hurt and more unhappiness for her lovely aunt. As if she didn’t have enough to contend with.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Jimmy was nervous, not frightened, but he was nervous, because he knew Freddie was not going to accept his expulsion from the business with easy grace.

  Freddie had been given a message to come and see him, and he was psyched up and ready for him. Freddie was a wild card. He had seen some of the stunts he had pulled over the years on people he had seen as doing him down, or, as was more often the case, because he had no further use for them.

  He would take this personally because of the blood tie and also because he saw Jimmy as taking what he saw as his by rights. Jimmy was in effect banishing him from what had always been his world, and he was not wavering at all. In fact, he was going to relish telling him.

  Jimmy had given him opportunity after opportunity to redeem himself and Freddie, being Freddie, had thrown them all back in his face. Now he was going to find out that he was on the lowest rung of the ladder that denoted their particular food chain, and he was the one calling the shots, not Freddie.

  Jimmy had swallowed his knob over the years but that mad bastard he had reared was the final straw. He couldn’t tell Maggie what had happened, and he couldn’t ever let on to anyone else, but Freddie had known what was expected of him and he had not kept his end of the bargain, so he was out.

  Not just out of the business but out of his world completely. He did not want to clap eyes on him ever again. If that meant he had to remove him from the face of the earth, then so be it. Jimmy only wished that he had made a point of taking him out sooner.

  How Freddie coped with it was up to him, but anyone who employed him would not be able to deal with Jimmy or his workforce ever again, he would make that known everywhere.

  Freddie was going to be a pariah and no one except the two of them would know why, and Freddie would understand that he was not going to let him walk away from his problems any more.

  He should have done this when Freddie had done Lenny, but he had given him another pass. Well, he was all out of family loyalty now, so fuck him and fuck his poxy kid. Freddie Junior was his father’s son all right, another mad cunt had been unleashed on the world. Well, Freddie Jackson had better take the boy as far away from him and his family as he could, because if he ever saw him he would run him down without a second’s thought.

  It was only Maggie that was stopping him from blowing Freddie and that mad little bastard wide open. Maggie had enough to contend with without knowing what had really happened to her boy, and he would protect her as long as he had breath in his body.

  She must never, ever know.

  Freddie was finished in their world, and that would be punishment enough for him because he lived and breathed his reputation. Well, let him try and muscle in on Jimmy after he had delivered the bad news, and Freddie Jackson would find out exactly what he was dealing with.

  He couldn’t wait for that to happen. He was shaking with anticipation, and he was high with adrenaline. Freddie had the shock of his life coming to him, and Jimmy was getting impatient with the waiting game he had been forced to play because he had not wanted to hurt anyone’s feelings.

  Family loyalty was a load of old cods. Who in their right mind wanted to be related to those two-faced lying ponces anyway? He had carried them for years, lent them money, sorted out their problems. He was like the Bank of Jimmy.

  Well, not any more. Let them stew in their own juices and let them go to their so-called friends in the future.

  They were takers, professional takers and they had taken the thing he held most dear to him, and for that alone, he would never forgive, or, more importantly, forget.

  This was for his Jimmy, for his own peace of mind. Like Freddie Jackson before him he now held a grudge and that grudge would see him through the dark days ahead.

  Jackie was looking at her eldest child but she was not seeing her. She was seeing what she had ignored over the years. Even when she was a young girl Freddie had coveted her sister. He had watched her, and he had wanted her, thought about her, desired her.

  These thoughts were not registering on her face. As Kimberley looked at her mother she knew that she was in a state of shock.

  Roxanna was also shocked, in fact she’d been almost at fainting point since Jackie had insisted that Maggie must have seduced her father. ‘You can’t believe what you are saying, Mum. Like Maggie would want him anywhere near her.’ The inference being that no woman in her right mind would want her husband, this girl’s own father.

  Jackie’s head snapped towards this beautiful daughter who at this moment she could happily strangle. The truth was screaming inside her skull, but being the personality type she was, she could never admit out loud that Freddie want
ed her sister, even though she knew it was the truth. Freddie wanted anyone who came near him and was in the least bit shaggable.

  Jackie had laughed about it over the years, she had been forced to. It was how she had saved face. Especially when she had found out about him with her friends, with her neighbours, when she had seen young girls looking at her in the pub, and finding her lacking. She had endured knowing that they had intimate knowledge of her man, and that some of them had produced children for him.

  She had accepted so much because she could not in any way envisage her life without him somewhere in the background, no matter what he did or how he treated her. And in his own way he had stood by her. She was the only woman he had ever stood by, even though it was in a callous and often degrading way.

  Jackie was going to be Freddie Jackson’s wife until the day she died. It afforded her the only kudos she had ever experienced, and it also guaranteed her a level of protection that enabled her to drink and drug with impunity.

  Since the turnout with Terry Baker, her confidence, which had never been in abundance, was at rock bottom. Another humiliation was more than she would be able to endure. Freddie was everything to her, he made her a valid person. From the first moment she had been with him, she had felt like she was somebody, and she was, she was Freddie Jackson’s bird, his woman, eventually his wife.

  The money was only a small part of it all. She loved him with every fibre of her being, and if Maggie thought she was going to change that she would find out how wrong she could be.

  He had lived his life hunting out strange and she had accepted everything, but she could not in all conscience accept this.

  She knew this ought to be kept quiet, she actually wanted it kept quiet because the thought of anyone knowing made her feel almost suicidal. But she also knew she could not keep this to herself. A few drinks and it would be blurted out in temper, or worse, she would throw it at Freddie and he would turn it back at her, making a terrible situation even worse.