Two Women

by Martina Cole

  ‘How’s my best girl, eh?’

  Debbie snuggled into him, kissing him back. Susan watched. He winked at her and then walked into the kitchen. Looking at his mother, he sighed.

  ‘Hello, Mum. Come round to pour trouble on oily waters, have we?’

  Ivy kept her body still, her mouth firmly closed. Joey turned his gaze to June, taking in her battered face and hand. He blinked a few times as if unsure whether he was seeing right.

  ‘What happened to you then, June? Had a tear up with a bus, love? You look rough, girl.’

  No one said a word.

  This was par for the course with Joey. He could go either way and enjoyed making the women in his life wait to see what he was going to do. Was June going to get a kicking, or was he going to forgive and forget and make long-winded declarations of love? It was a good game, one he enjoyed.

  Ivy’s eyes were shining with expectation and excitement. This was more like it. This was exactly what she had waited for. Suddenly she was a young woman again and Joey was his father.

  What a man! Her husband’s namesake was just like him.

  Susan put on the kettle again, quietly this time. A loud noise could cause all sorts of trouble when her father was like this.

  He grinned at her.

  ‘Good girl, make the old man a cuppa. Calm him down after your mother had him nicked.’

  Still no one said a word.

  Joey looked at them all individually, drinking in the fear, the excitement and the tension. He sat at the kitchen table and lit a cigarette, taking a deep drag on it.

  ‘I reckon a cup of tea and an egg sandwich and I’ll be right as the mail.’

  The two girls let out a sigh of pleasure at the sound of his calm voice. Disaster had been averted, Dad was going to let it all go and they could relax. ‘Then, after my brekker, I’m going to go and shoot the coon. I nipped into Jonnie Braithwaite’s on the way home and got a nice little handgun. I’ll shoot his nuts off and be home for lunch.’

  Joey pulled an ex-Army revolver from the pocket of his bum freezer jacket. It was large, shiny and looked menacing.

  The girls’ eyes widened. Ivy’s face paled and June slumped in her seat.

  ‘Don’t be so bloody stupid, Joey. They’ll bang you up good and proper, then what will you do, eh?’

  Joey, who until this moment had not considered the possible consequences, stayed quiet.

  His little pig’s eyes gleamed.

  ‘I’ll worry about that afterwards. The soot is dead, mate.’

  Everyone in the kitchen kept quiet.

  ‘I put up with a lot from you, June, but fucking soots is one step too far. A big hairy-arsed wog now, is it? What’s wrong with everyone else then? Had your fill of white blokes, have you? Fancied a bit of black pudding?’

  He caressed the barrel of the gun then placed it under his wife’s chin. The metal was cold, icy cold. June closed her eyes.

  The tension in the kitchen was palpable.

  Joey was quite capable of shooting her then dissolving into tears of remorse. He would play the wronged man, the husband cuckolded by a flighty wife who had a penchant for black men.

  As usual he was living in his own fantasy world.

  Everyone in the room waited, breath held, eyes trained on the gun.

  Susan went to her father and put her arms around him gently.

  ‘Don’t shoot me mum, I’ve got me school play on Wednesday and I’m the Angel Gabriel.’

  Joey stared into his daughter’s face.

  But was she his daughter? Was either of the girls his?

  That was somewhere he definitely didn’t want to go.

  He looked at his golden child, his Deborah, the elder girl with whom he always felt a special affinity. Mostly because she had the same selfish streak as him, the same lazy way about her. Everyone loves seeing themselves in their children, and the more of their parents’ failings they have the more they are loved.

  It was human nature.

  Deborah was her father from head to foot. Pretty in a petulant way, she always made sure she got the lion’s share of everything that was going. She would hold out her hand and take all her life, never once giving anything back. Deborah, like her father, faced a very lonely existence as an adult.

  Even now, she was more worried about what would happen to her if her father shot her mother than the fact that June was in mortal danger from a man who didn’t understand that human life was for enjoying, for giving and for loving. Not for making everyone do exactly as he wanted.

  Being a weak man, Joey made a point of threatening, fighting and hating because he thought that made him look strong. He hated June and Susan at times because he knew they saw through him. Saw him as he really was: a loud-mouthed bully.

  And that was why they were all so worried.

  He would not shoot the black man. If anyone was getting shot it was going to be June because she was an easy target and today’s events would give him more creds with the neighbours, the people he thought were important.

  It never occurred to Joey that there was a big world beyond Roman Road market and that people outside the area cared little if he lived or died.

  He wanted to be a big fish in a little pond.

  People would be wary of him coming around their houses. He would get lots of drinks in the pub. Old whores and local slappers would give him the adoration he craved. But June, his June, would still look at him with those empty eyes and laugh at him behind his back. Because she knew him for what he really was: a coward, a storyteller, a liar.

  Deep down Joey was nothing. He knew it, and worst of all his wife did too. She was his Achilles heel because deep inside he loved her, really loved her, and he knew that once she had loved him. Adored him even. Until she had sussed him out.

  He cocked the trigger, the noise shocking in the quietness of the kitchen.

  June swallowed noisily, her voice dead as she said, ‘Do it, Joey! Fucking get it over with, I’ve had enough.’

  He stared into her ravaged face, saw the swellings and bruises that would have put a normal woman into the Old London for a week, and felt the sting of tears. He envisaged blowing her face away once and for all. Blasting off the top of her head. But the moment was gone.

  She was standing up now and making more bloody tea.

  ‘I’ll do your breakfast and then you can get bathed.’

  He stared at her, the gun still aimed at her, only now it was at chest level.

  June smiled sadly.

  ‘Get it over with, Joey. You’ll do it one day. Might as well be now while I don’t give a flying fuck.’

  Susan took the gun from him gently as Debbie cuddled into her granny’s arms. Ivy’s face was a white mask. Not because her son was going to murder his wife but at the thought of him going down. Joey was what gave her licence to be the vindictive old bitch she was. People allowed her access to their homes and lives because they were too frightened not to.

  Susan quietly took the gun to the bathroom and dropped it down the toilet bowl. She had seen a film once where a gun had been immersed in water so it didn’t work.

  She hoped that was true.

  As she slid it into the toilet the trigger went off. The gun was totally silent. She sighed heavily.

  It wasn’t even loaded.

  Her father had put them through all that for nothing.

  After putting the toilet lid down, she went back to the kitchen. Debbie was on her father’s lap now and her granny was pouring him a large Scotch. Hair of the dog, they called it.

  The kitchen was full of good-humoured camaraderie from the release of tension. Putting on her old coat and wellingtons, Susan slipped from the house. She was supposed to be the Angel Gabriel in the play this week and she had no real costume, nothing. Her teacher had made her some wings and she had promised to make herself an angel costume.

  What she really needed was a sheet . . .

  As she walked down the steps to the street she saw the lines of wash
ing hanging out even on a crisp winter’s morning. There before her was a lovely white sheet, pristine and shining.

  Susan smiled to herself.

  She sat it out all afternoon, watching the sheet, making sure no one took it in. As soon as it was dark she whipped it off the line and under her coat. One last glance to see whether anyone had clocked her and then she ran like the wind back to her house.

  Inside, everything was rosy. Her mother was on her father’s lap on the settee, her granny had gone and Debbie had the right hump because she had been chief tea maker and sandwich filler for the afternoon.

  ‘What’s that under your coat?’

  Her sister’s voice was loud. She tried to pull the sheet from Susan who pushed her away heavily.

  ‘Piss off, Debbie, it’s mine.’

  Debbie ran into the lounge, her petulant voice at full pitch.

  ‘Mum, Dad, our Sue’s stolen someone’s washing. It’s under her coat. I saw it and she won’t let me have it.’

  Joey looked at his daughters.

  ‘What you got, Sue?’

  His voice was bored-sounding.

  ‘I nicked a sheet, Dad, to make me angel costume for the school play. I told you, I’m the Angel Gabriel.’

  ‘I thought angels were supposed to be good-looking? What’s the matter, they run out of kids up the school?’

  She didn’t answer him.

  ‘Whose fucking sheet was it?’

  Susan shrugged.

  ‘I dunno, but no one saw me take it or nothing.’

  June sighed.

  ‘Leave her alone, she nicked it fair and square. It’s hers.’ She smiled at her daughter. ‘You go to your room and I’ll come in and make you a toga, like the Romans wore. That will be like an angel costume, mate.’

  Susan grinned.

  ‘Thanks, Mum.’ Lying on the bed, she lost herself in dreams of being an angel, albeit an ugly one.

  But, as Susan reasoned to herself, you couldn’t have everything.

  What she had at the moment was enough for her.

  Chapter Three

  Susan McNamara was laughing, really laughing, and her form teacher Miss Castleton was watching her, amazed at the change in the dour, quiet thirteen year old she was used to.

  It was Christmas and the class were watching cartoons. They had started with Snow White and were now finishing with Tom and Jerry. All the children were laughing but Susan’s face, for once open and displaying enjoyment, held the teacher’s attention. She looked radiant, or at least as radiant as someone like Susan could look.

  Although well dressed, the girl had a forlorn air about her all the time, as if she was constantly waiting for something. What she was waiting for was unclear, but it was as if she got dressed, brushed her hair, then went about the serious business of the day: waiting.

  For what? Karen Castleton asked herself over and over.

  Every time a door opened Susan turned a half-frightened, half-eager face expectantly towards it.

  Especially lately.

  In the last few weeks she had been quieter than usual, and Susan McNamara was already quiet to the point of silence. Only today had she been even remotely animated.

  Miss Castleton put that fact down to the Christmas holidays approaching and the change in routine. A solitary child, she usually kept to herself, lost in the library, in books and music. The librarian, a rather masculine-looking woman called Gloria Dangerfield, thought the girl was a frustrated academic, suffering from some kind of word blindness.

  Everyone else thought she liked the library because no one else in the school could be brought near it without threats or as a punishment. It was just another place for her to hide, to bide her time until she had to go home.

  Karen Castleton was middle-aged, pretty in a severe way and hampered by her privileged upbringing. St Jude’s Secondary School had been a shock to her. A big shock. Until then she had not been aware that children swore and cursed as part of their everyday language, that telling a child off could result in a big burly-armed woman threatening to rip your lungs out, or that spelling a simple word could be like climbing a mountain for the majority of her pupils.

  In short, Miss Castleton was herself being educated and it was doing her the world of good. Which she admitted to herself. Seeing this all first hand had been a boon. One day she would write about it all, she quite fancied herself as a novelist. But until then and the statutory two point five children, the house and the big fluffy dog, she decided to watch and learn about this strange East End environment where girls were simply told to bide their time till motherhood or marriage (whichever came first), and boys were taught they could work either in factories or warehouses.

  It was all so depressing.

  Miss Castleton looked at her class of thirteen year olds and instinctively knew that most of the girls were sexually experienced in some way. They plastered themselves with make up, they smoked and they drank if they could afford a bottle of cider, which most of them could by all accounts.

  As they packed their few belongings into well-worn carrier bags the teacher watched Susan McNamara take her Christmas cards from her desk. She herself had given out no cards, overlooking the cardboard box on her desk.

  She knew Susan’s home life was considered deprived even by East End standards. Her mother lived with a notorious villain and her father brought up his two daughters aided by his wizened mother and monetary help from the mother’s new amour.

  As the class emptied Miss Castleton saw Susan pretending to sort through her bag while wishing everyone Merry Christmas.

  When the classroom was empty she called to the girl, ‘Merry Christmas, Susan.’

  ‘Merry Christmas, Miss Castleton.’

  Her voice was low and husky.

  ‘Are you looking forward to it all? The celebrations and the jollity?’

  Susan McNamara looked at her as if she had just appeared in a puff of green smoke.

  ‘Are you?’

  The question coming back at her like that threw her and she struggled to answer. Then, smiling, she said honestly, ‘Not really, no.’

  This seemed to cheer the girl up. Sitting on the edge of her desk, Miss Castleton said to her, ‘I have to travel all the way down to St Ives where my parents retired a few years ago. They both paint, it’s a sort of painters’ paradise. Neither of them is very good, mind, but they enjoy it. For myself, I find the place boring and full of ancients. What will you do?’

  Susan thought about this for a second before answering. ‘I’ll go to me mum’s and me Uncle Jimmy’s on Christmas Eve for a few hours, then I’ll go home and have to start preparing everything for Christmas Day. I do all the veg and that now. Me granny says she’s too old to be chasing around after us two.’

  ‘And what will your day be like - Christmas Day?’

  ‘Well, I’ll go to midnight mass, and when I get back I’ll make sure everything is going how it should. You know, the turkey in the oven to cook all night, the parsnips steeped in brandy to give them a bit of a zing. Then I’ll get up Christmas morning, open me presents and read, I suppose. I’m hoping to get The Hobbit. Me mum promised me she’d track down a copy for me. I love that book. I borrow it all the time from the library. How about you?’

  ‘I’ll be waited on hand and foot actually. My parents miss me so much. I’ll let you into a small secret: they hate the thought of my working here. They saw me as one of the mistresses in Bunty instead. You know, all jolly hockey sticks and lashings of ginger beer!’

  Susan didn’t smile with her but nodded solemnly.

  ‘You can’t blame them, can you? This place is a bit of a shit hole. But then, you choose to be here, don’t you? None of us had a choice. I quite fancy living like the girls in Bunty. That would do for me all right.

  ‘Merry Christmas, Miss. Hope you have a good journey to your parents.’

  Karen Castleton realised she had just been dismissed and the knowledge unnerved her. She watched the dumpy little girl with the en
ormous breasts walk from the room. Mr Reynaldo, who had been watching the proceedings from the doorway, walked in and laughed.

  ‘You’ll never get close to any of them, love, they see us all as the enemy. I’ve been forcing my knowledge on these kids for ten years and it’s a waste of time. They know more about life than we ever will. They can’t help it, all human existence is around them from the word go. Anyone in authority is an enemy, whether it’s us, the police or a shopkeeper. It’s how they’re brought up. She was putting you in your place. You described the type of parents she’d cut off her own arms for and you mocked them. In her eyes you’re a spoiled mare, as they say in these parts. See, I’ve even picked up the lingo.’

  Karen’s dark hair and merry blue eyes had attracted him, as they had attracted most of the male teachers, but her reserved nature and failure to see a joke had eventually put them all off. He was enjoying her humiliation and she knew it.

  Karen felt defeated and more out of place than ever. He walked from the room without saying goodbye.

  She opened her desk and saw an envelope. Opening it, she found an expensive Christmas card, all glitter and robins. It was from Susan McNamara. Her rounded laborious handwriting stated: All the best for Christmas and 1966, Susan McNamara and family, xx.

  Looking at the card Karen felt an enormous lump constricting her throat. He was right, Mr Reynaldo, she had ridiculed something Susan McNamara would have given her eyeteeth to possess: a normal family.

  She had a feeling she would not be back in the New Year. Suddenly St Ives seemed a lovely place. Saving the world by working in an inner city environment had lost all its glamour. Closing the desk, she put the card in her bag and left the room. She would never come back here again.

  Patronising bitch! was all that kept going round in Susan’s head. She had really liked Miss Castleton, liked the way she kept herself to herself, the way she dressed. Had thought of her as an ally, a friend.

  Instead she was just like the others. Saw Susan as this deprived little girl with big knockers and no brain. Well, bollocks to her and all.

  Two and six, that card had cost. Half a bloody crown. The woman in the shop had checked the money carefully, as if she knew that people like Susan would only buy a card of that calibre once in a lifetime.