by Martina Cole
Looking into her troubled face, Benjamin placed his hand gently on her arm. She smacked it away. She blamed him for all this. He had encouraged the boys to be villains. Even when they had been little more than babies he had started to corrupt them. If they had been beaten in a fight, he would give them a good hiding and send them back out to do the job properly.
‘None of my boys are Nancys,’ had been one of his favourite expressions, coupled with, ‘All my boys are hard.’ He had dragged them to dog tracks, pubs, bare knuckle fights. He had taught them how to pick a lock, steal a car, to shoplift . . . The list was endless.
What had he done? She asked herself. She felt an urge to fell him to the floor of the car, strike his face and hurt him as she was hurting inside. Her big manly husband - at this moment she hated him. She crossed her arms across her breasts and hugged herself. Her gaze lighted on her only daughter and her face softened. This one he could not touch. A beauty was her Maura. Sarah’s pride in her daughter knew no bounds. With her white-blonde hair and dark blue eyes, she was exquisite. Now Maura’s hair was hanging in long waves, unaccustomed to being out of plaits, her eyes sad and shining with unshed tears. Sarah knew that the child was bewildered by all that had happened. She leant across the car and grasped Maura’s hand, forcing herself to give her daughter a little wink. The cars stopped and everyone got out, standing around in little groups, talking in hushed voices.
Sarah’s seven remaining sons carried Anthony’s coffin to the graveside. The main mass and requiem mass had already been said in the RC Church in Notting Hill. Now all that was left was to bury her boy. The youngest, Benny, although only thirteen, walked with his brothers, carrying the coffin. Michael had placed Maura, dressed in white, at the front of the coffin. She led them slowly through the graveyard to the burial site.
Father McCormack was standing silently by the yawning hole. The sun was high in the sky and beating down on the mourners’ heads. In the yew trees nearby, birds sang and the hum of traffic and smell of exhaust fumes carried on the air. Outside the cemetery walls were carts carrying totters from Shepherd’s Bush. The rag and bone men were grim-faced and silent. Benjamin Ryan’s eldest brother was leading them. Their horses had the old-fashioned black plumes rising up from their harnesses. The carts had been washed down and polished for the day’s event. Paddy Ryan wiped a tear from his eye as he watched his brother’s son being lowered into the ground.
Bees were quietly going about their business, bumbling from flower to flower, the hot summer day bringing them out in force. The priest’s voice droned on. The police had once again handcuffed Leslie. Funeral or no funeral they were not taking any chances. Maura was holding Michael’s hand tightly, her face pale and troubled.
The policeman to whom Leslie was handcuffed was impressed by the turn-out. The Krays, Richardsons, and many more villains had come to pay their last respects. It showed the respect accorded to Michael Ryan.
Mickey stared stonily into the grave. Anthony’s oak coffin had a large brass crucifix on the lid. The INRI above Jesus’s head was glinting in the sunlight. In his mind’s eye Michael could see Anthony’s face inside it, staring upwards at darkness for the rest of eternity. He clenched his teeth together before he lost control and cried out. He prayed for the first time in years to the Holy Spirit to come and take his brother’s soul. To care for him and protect him. He prayed to the Immaculate Conception and Holy Saint Anthony, the patron saint of miracles. He prayed to every saint and martyr he could remember from his years of Catholic schooling. Somehow, today, there being a God was important.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a movement. He turned his head. Being so tall he was head and shoulders above most of the mourners. To the left of him, standing about ten yards from the small crowd around the graveside, was a man. Michael stiffened. Feeling the change in him, Maura looked up into his face. She noticed that he was staring across the graveyard. She followed his gaze, through a small gap in the mourners opposite her, and saw the object of Michael’s scrutiny.
The man was dark - not dark like her brothers but swarthy. His thick black curly hair seemed to grow around his head like a crown, leaving his forehead exposed where it had receded. He reminded her of the mad professor in her comics. The sun was behind him and she could see the glare that shone on his bald pate. Instinctively she knew that this was Stavros, the Greek man that her brothers had been constantly talking about since Anthony’s death. The man was smiling slightly.
She looked from him to Michael and realised that her brother was going to go over to the man. He was pulling back his shoulders in his arrogant way. Holding Michael’s hand tightly, she pulled on it. He looked down at her. When they both looked back a split second later the man was gone, but his face was stamped on Maura’s memory. Then she felt the hot, scalding tears come into her eyes, spilling down her face and entering her mouth, their saltiness exploding on her tongue. From far off she heard shrieking. It was a few seconds before she realised that it was coming from her.
Michael picked her up in his arms and held her tightly to him, murmuring endearments into her hair and stroking her back until she was spent. After what seemed an age all that could be heard were little hiccups. Even the hardest of the men there was sobered by her outburst. Reggie Kray, always a lover of children, had tears in his eyes as he watched Michael comfort the girl. Like most Londoners from working-class backgrounds, family was important to them all. You looked after your own, no matter what.
A little while later, still holding Maura in his arms, Michael threw his handful of dirt on to the coffin. When the service was finished, he put her down gently by their mother and, picking up a shovel, filled in Anthony’s grave, helped by Geoffrey and Roy.
One of the rag and bone men’s wives, Lilly McNamara, had been asked to sing while this was being done. She was noted throughout Kensington and the surrounding areas as a fine singer. In the hush, broken only by the scraping of the shovels in the dirt and the soft thuds as it landed on the coffin, she sang ‘Amazing Grace’. To outsiders it would have looked incongruous: men in black zoot suits, all with fashionable elephant’s trunk hair styles, filling in a grave, surrounded by more men and women dressed in black. The women’s hats and bright make-up made them look like exotic birds. To the Ryans and their like, Anthony had been given a magnificent send-off.
Sarah stood dignified and erect as her sons buried their brother. She would not cry here; she would wait until after the wake, when she was alone. In the scorching heat she had felt as if she would pass out; now she wished she had. It would have saved her having to watch this grisly ritual, the burying of her son’s remains. She closed her eyes, her hand on her daughter’s soft and springy hair.
When the singing was over and Anthony buried, the mourners went to the family and paid their respects. Diana Dors, the secret object of the young policeman’s desire, hugged Michael long and hard. She was a firm favourite of everybody there, a kind, loving, generous woman who never in all her life judged anyone. Freddie Mills and his boyfriend Michael Holiday each clasped Michael to them. Freddie Mills had been Michael’s boyhood hero. It had been worship of him that had aroused Michael’s interest in boxing. Nowadays he met him socially, as an equal. A few days before Anthony’s death they had been together at the Lancaster Road Baths watching local semi-professional boxers.
It did not escape Sarah’s notice that Michael was treated as the head of the family and her husband relegated to second position. That was how it should be. After all, Michael was the main provider. He made sure that she had ample money. More than enough in fact. She did not feel overawed by the company at her son’s funeral. She had known Violet Kray for many years. The Richardson boys had been visitors to her house for a long time. Many of the mourners were young men who had grown up with her sons. Petty criminals most of them, but good boys all the same.
Roy’s wife looked depressed as usual. Sarah knew that it was not the funeral that had put the sad look on her daughter-in-law’s face,
but something quite different. Janine and Roy had problems, she was sure of that. Neither of them looked happy these days. Their daughter, Carla, nearly five now, looked as if she hadn’t been washed for days. Sarah made a mental note to go and see Janine. Even in her grief she could still look out for her remaining children.
Finally, they began to make their way back to the cars. Sarah noticed Roy trying to take Janine’s hand and being shrugged off. She frowned. As if there wasn’t enough unhappiness in the family, they had to bring their petty squabbles into the cemetery with them.
Benny was staring at the mound of dirt that covered his brother. Benjamin walked back to get him, his old face looking more haggard and careworn than usual. He had been drinking steadily since the early morning.
‘Come on, son.’ His voice was slurred but gentle.
Benny was staring intently at a large worm wriggling on the pile of damp earth. In his mind’s eye he saw it boring its way into the earth, down, down, until it reached his brother’s face. Covering his own face with his hands, he was overtaken by silent sobs that made his shoulders shake. He was as tall as his father, and as Benjamin took his namesake into his arms, he felt the strength of him.
Sarah was watching them. She realised for the first time how Benjamin must be feeling. After all, Anthony had been his son too. A feeling she had not known in over a decade slipped through her body. All animosity towards her husband dissolved and a spark of affection for him seemed to light up inside her, as it had in the old days. She couldn’t blame him entirely for what had happened. Children would go their own way in the end. In the environment they lived in it was inevitable that kids would turn to crime. All she could really blame him for was not working hard enough to get them out of it. She sighed heavily. How could he? He had never had the chance.
All this flashed through her head in an instant. She looked around the cemetery. The brilliant sunshine seemed to be mocking her. It was too nice a day to be burying a young life. It should have been cold and raining as befitted a funeral. She saw the flowers gently swaying in the light breeze, the lichen-covered gravestones that hid their contents from the world, and was overcome with sadness. The birds were still singing as she made her way slowly to the cars. Her body seemed to have shrunk since Anthony’s death, giving her the appearance of an old woman. She was only forty-four.
Back at the house everyone was drinking. Maura pushed her way through the adults and stationed herself in the front room next to the table piled high with food. Presently she was joined by Margaret Lacey. This had been arranged the day before. That morning Margaret had complained of a bad bout of sickness. Her mother, anxious to get to work, had given her the day off school. Now she was up and dressed and holding her new best friend’s hand. She could not even imagine what it must be like to have a brother who had been murdered. Her mum and dad had talked of nothing else for days. According to them it was a wonder something like this had not happened before. Margaret, though, wisely kept this bit of information to herself.
Mickey came up, and, taking the two girls by the hand, led them out of the house and into the back garden. He could not bear to be away from Maura today. She was so innocent and trusting. With his guilt over Anthony, he felt that at least she loved him and didn’t blame him for the death. No one would dare say that it was his fault outright, but he knew what was going on in everyone else’s mind.
He sat in an old deck chair and the two girls sat on the ground, each leaning against one of his legs. He was already half drunk. The sun was so hot it was impossible to open his eyes without being blinded. Eventually he dozed. Maura and Margaret sat by him for hours. The friendship of a lifetime was bonded that day. Maura and Margaret became a pair, the friendship only to end with the death of one of them.
That night in bed Maura had her first nightmare. It was of the man in the cemetery coming after her with her mother’s bread knife. She was to have the same dream intermittently for the rest of her life.
Chapter Six
Carla Ryan opened her eyes. The sun was streaming in at the windows of her room. She lay for a few moments watching the patterns it made on the ceiling. A cool breeze drifted over her thin little body. She rubbed her arm, where she had a large bruise above the elbow. Her mother had picked her up bodily the night before and dragged her into her room where she had then thrown her on to her bed. She had bumped her arm on the little bedside cabinet. The pain had made her lose her breath for a few seconds. Lifting up her pink nightdress her mother had then smacked her behind as hard as she could, afterwards putting her face next to Carla’s and telling her that she had had enough. Her mother’s breath had been sour as it always was when she had been drinking.
What exactly her mother had had enough of Carla was not sure. All she had done the night before was make herself a sugar sandwich. She had asked her mother for something to eat over and over again, until finally she had decided to get it herself. She supposed it was the sugar all over the table and floor that had made her mother cross.
She sat herself up in bed and swung her little legs over the side. She yawned and her long brown hair fell over her face as she stretched her arms out. She winced as her bad arm was stretched. This was going to be a sore one, she reflected. Like the one she’d had on her leg a few weeks previously. Slipping off the bed she crept across her room, opening the door as silently as possible.
She looked through the crack into the hallway. Opposite her bedroom was the kitchen. She waited a few seconds for any sounds that might tell her that her mother was in there but out of her range of sight. Nothing. She walked across the hall and into the kitchen. The sugar she had spilt everywhere the night before was sticking to her bare feet. She was hungry again. She was always hungry. Sneaking across the kitchen she made herself some bread and margarine.
She was kneeling on a kitchen chair, her long hair trailing in the margarine, when she heard the steps. The heavy thudding steps that meant her mother was getting up. She froze. Her heart was fluttering in her chest. Her breathing came rapidly. Remembering the night before she threw her knife from her hand as if it was red hot, then tried to push the sticky mass of bread and margarine underneath the bread wrapper. In her haste she was clumsy and only succeeded in pushing the loaf of Dinkum bread and the sandwich off the table and on to the floor, already sticky from the sugar.
Tears of frustration stung her eyes. She felt her mother’s presence before she turned and faced her, her little grubby hands clenching and unclenching with nerves. Janine looked at her coldly. Her daughter’s face was exquisite even when she was terrified. Her eyes were a startling violet colour that made her look incredibly strong-minded. Coupled with her dark brown hair and high cheekbones, she looked like a miniature woman. Janine watched her daughter sweep her hair away from her face with a gesture that was more fitting to a sexy movie star than a four-year-old girl. Her long neck and strong pointed chin were shown to advantage by the gesture.
Janine chewed her lip, staring spitefully at her child. She knew that if she didn’t speak Carla would get more and more nervous, eventually breaking the heavy silence herself. She noticed the black bruise on her arm and a wicked light glowed in the back of her eyes. She would have to keep the child’s arms covered, because Roy would go crazy if he thought his little angel had been whipped. She gritted her teeth and, aping the child’s earlier movement, theatrically swept her own thick red hair off her face. She looked like a sleek, tawny cat about to pounce on its prey. Carla stared back at her, every nerve in her body tensed and waiting. As her mother swept back her hair in a parody of her own action she dropped her eyes. Everything she did annoyed her mother. How she sat, how she stood, how she ate, how she spoke. Every movement was ridiculed and parodied.
She wished her father was home but he was very rarely around much these days, and when he was her mother fought with him. Carla would curl up on his lap and hold her hands over her ears desperately trying to block out their arguing. She loved her father and missed him when he wa
s away. She thought of him as a big tree, with strong branches that enabled her to climb him, which she did when he was home. With Roy holding her by the arms she walked up his body until, reaching his shoulders, she flipped over and landed on her feet, screeching with laughter. She wished he was here now. Her mother daren’t touch her when her father was at home. The tension in the kitchen had reached its peak and, stuttering in fright, the child spoke.
‘Where’s me dad?’ As soon as she spoke the words she flinched inside. Why had she mentioned him? She closed her eyes tightly. Somewhere inside her was a weak hope that she had not spoken. She heard her mother’s slippers crunching across the sugar-strewn floor. She squeezed her eyes shut as tightly as possible. As she felt her hair being yanked, she screamed. The pain was searing through her scalp. Shaking her like a rag doll, Janine began to shout.
‘You want your dad, do you? You little slut! He’s out whoring as usual. Shacked up with some woman somewhere. He don’t care about you.’
Carla was trying to drag her mother’s fingers from her hair. Crying now, and frightened, she screamed back at her mother, ‘Please, Mum . . . Please . . . Let go of me hair . . . You’re hurting me!’
Sarah heard the screams from the entrance hall of the flats. Grabbing Maura’s hand she ran up the stairs and banged on the front door with her fists, demanding to be let in. Janine heard the banging and shouting and went cold with fright. She threw Carla from her and looked around her wild-eyed, like an animal seeking an escape route. The state of the kitchen registered inside her mind somewhere. Carla lay sobbing where she had landed, holding her poor injured head in both hands. Her granny’s banging on the door was like music to hear ears.
She watched her mother walk out of the kitchen as if in a trance and a few seconds later Carla was nestled in her granny’s arms. Little kisses were planted on her wet face, and murmured endearments and gentle strokes administered. Gradually the child calmed down. A handful of her hair was lying on the floor.