by Martina Cole
She pushed his arm from her shoulders and looked into his face.
‘I’ve always had my family, Dan, thank you very much.’
The atmosphere at the table turned chilly. Kate carried on eating her dinner.
‘She’s always like this, Dad, with the big cases.’ Lizzy’s voice was placating and Kate felt mean for what she had done.
‘I think she does a grand job. How’s the young girl who was attacked?’ asked Evelyn.
‘In a very bad way, Mum. She took an awful beating.’
‘I’ve seen Mandy Kelly about. She’s really pretty, with long blond hair. Her dad’s a right one, always in trouble with the police.’
‘No, he is not!’ Kate’s voice came out louder than she intended and she bit her lip.
‘He’s been under suspicion but he’s never actually been charged with anything. He’s never even had a parking ticket, young lady, so just you get your facts right!’ Her voice was jocular now and Lizzy relaxed.
‘Well, Joanie’s mum said he owns massage parlours and places like that.’
‘And massage parlours and places like that are perfectly legal, love.’
‘More’s the bloody pity.’ Evelyn’s voice was disgusted.
‘Well, that’s the law for you. He’s done nothing wrong!’
‘I think men who live off women like that should be shot.’ Dan’s voice was low and hard.
Kate felt an urge to laugh.
‘There’s other ways for men to live off women than by putting them on the game, you should know that, Dan.’ Kate sipped her wine so she wouldn’t have to look at his face.
Dan pushed his chair away from the table and went into the lounge. Kate saw Lizzy bite her lip, her face a mass of confusion. But Dan was back almost immediately with a packet of cigarettes. ‘Let’s open our presents, shall we?’
‘Oh yes, let’s. We’ve been waiting for you, Mum.’
Kate placed her knife and fork on her plate and followed everyone into the lounge.
Dan gave Lizzy a large package which she opened slowly, taking off the paper carefully. Everything in their house was saved. Kate knew it was annoying Dan, who would have ripped the paper off regardless, and allowed herself a tiny smile from her seat by the fire. She heard Lizzy’s intake of breath as she took out a sheepskin flying jacket. It was the latest fashion, and for some unknown reason this annoyed Kate even more. Trust Dan to know exactly what a sixteen-year-old girl would want for Christmas! Lizzy threw herself into her father’s arms and hugged him.
‘Oh, Dad, it’s great, just what I wanted! Wait till Joanie sees this!’
Evelyn passed over Kate’s present and once more the slow ritual of opening began. Kate sat back in the chair watching her daughter with glee. As Lizzy took out the tiny box Kate caught her daughter’s eye.
‘Is it what I think, Mum?’
‘Open it and see.’
Lizzy reverently opened the box and squealed with delight. She threw her arms around her mother.
‘Oh, thank you! Thank you! I thought they’d be too expensive!’ She held up the sovereign earrings for all to see.
‘Come on, love, now open mine.’
Evelyn pushed a package into her hands and Lizzy opened it excitedly.
‘Oh, Gran!’
Evelyn laughed as Lizzy brought out a pair of Reebok bumpers.
‘I knew you wanted them so I thought I’d get them.’
‘Oh, Mum!’ Kate knew they cost over eighty pounds and shook her head at her mother. ‘You shouldn’t have spent that much!’
‘You only live once and money’s for the spending, I’m thinking.’
‘Hear, hear.’ Dan’s voice was wistful. ‘Now then, you two, here’s your presents.’ He gave Kate and Evelyn small packages.
‘Oh, you shouldn’t have, Dan, I never got you anything.’
Kate opened her present to find a bottle of Joy, her favourite perfume. Evelyn had a bottle of Chanel No. 5.
‘Now isn’t that grand? I’ve never had a bottle of real French perfume before. Thanks, Dan.’
‘You’re welcome. All women should be cosseted at some time, Eve, that’s my motto.’
Kate felt an urge to ask him how many he had cosseted over the years, but bit it back and instead smiled at him.
‘Thanks, Dan, it’s lovely.’
‘Still your favourite, I hope?’
‘Yes, it’s still my favourite.’
Kate watched as Lizzy shoved a present into her father’s hands. Then she went to the kitchen and poured herself out a glass of wine.
She stared at the perfume in her hands and sighed.
Oh Dan, she thought, why did you have to do this?
It brought back too many memories and she wasn’t fit to cope with them today. She had too much on her mind. She didn’t need to be reminded of how lonely she was.
Not today.
George watched his mother demolish a dinner large enough for two men. He smiled to himself. She could certainly put her food away. Gone were the days when her figure was the most important thing in her life.
‘Pass me the salt, someone.’
Nancy held out her hand and Joseph thrust the salt cellar into it. She belched loudly, holding her hand to her chest as if forcing her wind out. Lily and Elaine both pursed their lips in disgust.
‘Better out than in, eh, Georgie boy?’
‘Yes, Mother.’ He smiled at her.
Nancy poked her finger at him, a nasty light in her eyes. ‘Don’t eat too much stuffing now, you know it gives you constipation.’
George blanched.
‘Really, Nancy! We don’t want to discuss George’s digestion at the dinner table!’ Elaine’s voice was high. She could never understand her mother-in-law’s preoccupation with George’s bowels.
Nancy swivelled her huge bulk in her seat to see Elaine better.
‘George is a martyr to constipation. When he was a child it plagued him. Why, the hospital showed me how to give him enemas. Before that I had to give him what was called in those days a “manual”. I had to push my fingers . . .’
‘Oh, for God’s sake! We’re eating!’ Lilian pushed her plate away from her roughly. ‘Can we just for once . . . for one year at least . . . give George’s bloody bowels a rest!’
Nancy sniffed loudly and turned back to her food. ‘You know your trouble, Lilian?’ She shovelled a large forkful of vegetables into her mouth. ‘You’re too namby-pamby for your own good. Eighty-one years I’ve lived because I’ve always watched my bowels. They are the most important part of the body. They get rid of all the bad . . .’
‘Please, Mother.’ Joseph’s voice was strained. ‘As Lily says, let’s leave talk of bowels till later on, shall we? Now then, George, how’s work going?’ Joseph beamed across the table at his brother.
‘Fine.’ Oh, yes, Joseph, my work’s going so well they’re going to kick me out soon. I can’t afford a nice Daimler Sovereign like you. But you know that, don’t you? That’s why you ask me the same question every time I see you. Why Lily goes on and on about your large detached house. Well, it was your large detached house that lumbered you with Mother, wasn’t it?
‘George? Lily’s talking to you.’ Elaine’s voice broke into his thoughts.
‘He was always the same, Elaine, even as a child. Always in a world of his own. Always a dreamer, was my Georgie. That’s why he never got on like the others. Look at Edith, out in America. Her Joss is a surgeon. Living the life of Riley them two. Off to the Bahamas every few months. It does a mother’s heart good to know that at least some of her children did well.’
Her voice was reproaching George with every word she spoke.
‘Edith always enjoyed travelling, Mother. Do you remember when she ran off to Brighton with the travelling salesman?’
Elaine felt the tension she had created and was actually enjoying it. Edith’s foray down to Brighton was never mentioned. Neither was the child she gave up for adoption a year afterwards.
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sp; Nancy pushed her plate away from her, her heavily powdered face looking more wrinkled than ever with the deepness of her frown.
‘Only you, Elaine, would bring up something to break my heart. Joseph, George, help me into the lounge. I want to be alone.’
‘I’m sure Elaine didn’t mean anything by it, Mother.’
‘Shut up, George, and help an old woman to a comfortable seat.’
George and Joseph both rushed to their mother’s side, helping her heave her bulk from the chair. She leant on their arms as she slowly trekked from the kitchen to the lounge. Elaine and Lilian watched the three leave the kitchen. As soon as the door shut behind them Lilian whispered: ‘The woman is like a waking nightmare.’
‘I heard that, Lily! I may be old but I’m not deaf!’
Nancy’s voice seemed to drill through the wooden kitchen door.
Elaine put her hand over her mouth to stifle a high laugh.
‘She has ears like an elephant, Elaine, you don’t know what it’s like.’
‘I can imagine, thank you very much, and before you ask the answer’s no. Both George and I work and she can’t be left on her own all day.’
Lily sighed.
It was worth a try, even if you already knew the answer.
In the lounge George and Joseph had set their mother on the settee, packing cushions all around her.
‘Joseph, you go back to your dinner. I want to speak to George in private.’
Joseph left the room as quickly as possible. He was nearly sixty years old. He had his own prosperous business. Yet his mother could reduce him to an eight year old in a few sentences. When Joseph left, Nancy patted a tiny expanse of seat beside her.
‘Sit with your mama, Georgie boy.’
He sat beside her warily.
Nancy looked into her son’s face for a few moments.
‘The years haven’t been kind to you, my boy, have they? No. You know this yourself.’
George could smell her perfume. It was lily of the valley. The scent brought back his childhood. The terraced house in Bow, the war, his father’s death, his mother’s endless stream of men friends. His ‘uncles’ as he had had to call them. George could not remember his father and knew that there was something not right about his death.
After the war his mother had packed up what was left of their home and moved them all to East Ham where she had made a niche for herself.
Nancy Markham had been a formidable person all her life. She ruled her children. When she said do something, you did it or took the consequences. Like Edith’s baby. She had wanted to keep the child. It had broken her heart when she had had to give him up. But, as always, Mother knew best.
Nancy was still talking, her voice low and caressing as she enumerated every failure in his life.
George knew that his mother did not like him, though she swore that she loved him. As he watched her ruby red lips opening and shutting he had a vision of himself getting up from the settee, going out to the hall and getting his Swiss army knife from beneath the floorboards in the hall cupboard. He could see the fear in his mother’s face as she realised that he was going to plunge it into her fat body. Over and over again. Slashing and ripping at her fat breasts and overhanging stomach . . .
‘George boy, you’re sweating! Are you feeling all right?’
He smiled at her. His secret smile. ‘Yes, Mother, I’m fine. Absolutely fine. Never felt better, in fact.’
For the first time ever, Nancy Markham felt as if her son had the upper hand. And like Elaine before her, she didn’t like it one bit.
Patrick Kelly sat at his daughter’s bedside in Grantley Hospital. The bruising on her face was beginning to fade, but still she lay in a deep coma. The doctors had opened a little window in her skull because her brain had swollen so much they had to relieve the pressure on it.
He held on to her hand. Christmas had no meaning for him now. The big dinner he had planned, and the present giving, were all far from his mind.
Earlier in the day he had attended Mass in the hospital chapel. It was the first time in over twenty years. He’d prayed to God to save his daughter. Make her be as she was before she was attacked. Even as he prayed he knew he was a hypocrite.
While he sat in the chapel, paid muscle was looking for the perpetrator of the horrific deed. He gritted his teeth.
If it took him the rest of his life and every penny of his considerable fortune, he would find the bastard. And when he did, when he confronted him, he would exact his payment, which was death. A long slow death.
Putting Mandy’s hand to his mouth, he kissed it softly.
Chapter Seven
Christmas 1948
George lay in bed staring up at the ceiling. He pulled the blankets over his shoulders and rubbed his frozen ears with his hands, breathing into his palms every so often to warm them. His whole body was numb with cold. The sash windows had iced up inside, reflecting weird murals on the walls with the breaking dawn. He poked his head out of the blankets once more as he heard a noise from his mother’s room. He let his breath out slowly, carefully, watching it spiral like cigarette smoke in the cold dimness. He strained his ears to listen. Nothing. Gradually he relaxed. Then he heard the dull thud of footsteps on the linoleum. He squeezed his eyes shut as hard as he could. Maybe it was Mother going to the toilet? Or Edith? But the footsteps stopped outside his door.
He hunched himself lower down in the bed. The inadequate bedding barely covered him - one sheet, one blanket, and an old overcoat.
He closed his eyes and tried to feign unconsciousness, his mouth quivering with apprehension. He listened as the door creaked open slowly and someone came into the room. George’s nose quivered as he smelt the heavy mustiness of the man. It was a mixture of sweat and beer. He was terrified. The man moved towards the bed purposefully, treading only on the boards he knew would not creak.
‘Georgie? You awake?’
The child lay there unmoving. His heart was beating so loud and fast surely the man could hear it?
He closed his eyes even tighter, then felt the warm breath on his neck. George’s head was tucked beneath the blanket and overcoat, and he instinctively brought his knees up to his chest until he was in a foetal position.
A large warm hand entered the bed and George felt the roughness of the skin as it began slowly to caress his buttocks. Then the bed was sinking with the weight of the man, and against his will the child was rolling into his heavy stomach.
At least he was warm.
Then the blankets were pulled over both their heads and George was being dragged down, down, into the fantasy world that was his only escape from this life.
Later the man crept from the bed, and George could finally sleep the sleep of the exhausted. His eyelashes still glistening with the silent tears, he lay there in the warm space the man vacated.
He slept then.
Bert Higgins slipped back into bed with Nancy Markham and was just settling himself when she spoke.
‘How was Georgie tonight, Bert?’
He froze beside her.
‘Oh, I know all about your little visits to him in the middle of the night.’
Nancy was enjoying the fear she was creating. She finally had something over him and she liked that. She liked that very much.
She laughed derisively.
‘I can just imagine what your friends would say if they knew you liked little boys, Bert.’
He turned over in bed and grabbed her throat with an iron hand.
‘What you going to do about it, Nance?’
She laughed again, no trace of fear in her voice.
‘Who, me? I’m not going to do anything, Bert. You know me - each to his own. The only thing I want from you is more money.’
Bert let go of her and lit the candle by the bed. He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling.
‘You mean . . . you’re not going to stop me?’
His voice was incredulous.
‘Why should I? Providing w
e can come to a financial arrangement, I’m not bothered about it.’
Bert smiled in the candlelight.
‘You’d do anything for money, wouldn’t you?’
Nancy lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out. Then she turned to him full on.
‘That’s about the strength of it, yes.’
‘Fair enough then, Nance. How much?’
‘An extra fiver a week should do it.’
Bert considered this for a few minutes.
‘I can go to three quid.’
‘It’s five or the deal’s off.’
‘All right then. But what about us?’
Nancy stubbed out her cigarette, then blew out the candle.
‘Us? We carry on as usual. Good night.’
‘Good night, Nancy.’
She was asleep in minutes. Bert, though, lay awake for a while pondering the situation. Nancy Markham had sold her son to him for a measly five pounds a week.
George came home to find Bert slumped on the settee, snoring loudly. When Bert turned over on the settee to make himself more comfortable, George smiled to himself. A little smile that barely showed his teeth.
He could smell the alcohol fumes with every breath Bert took and guessed, rightly, that he had passed out at some point in the evening. That’s why his mother had left him there.
George walked closer and stared down at the man. He had spilt a glass of whisky over himself. The smell was strong and the glass still beside him. It was trapped between his body and the back of the settee.
George picked up the bottle of Black and White whisky and gently poured the last of it along the back of the settee. He was feeling acutely excited.
He placed the bottle back on the table and then picked up a box of matches. With shaking hands, he lit one. He stood watching the burning match in fascination until it got down to his fingertips. Then the burning sensation made him throw it from him. He watched, sucking his finger, as it ignited the whisky. In the semi-darkness he saw a tiny blue flame slowly lick its way along the back of the settee, gathering momentum as it went. A sticky burning smell emanated from it. George watched as Bert, still snoring heavily, began to breathe in the black smoke.