Two Women

by Martina Cole

  Well, bollocks to that old bag as well.

  The swearing in her mind was getting worse and she knew she had to stop it, but it released the steam from her brain, released the anger in a small way.

  She was well aware of what she was but reading had shown her another world and Susan wanted a part of that other world so badly . . . but she knew it was just a pipe dream.

  ‘Penny for them?’

  She turned at the sound of the harsh Scottish accent and saw Barry Dalston. He was a new kid in town. His mother had recently arrived with him and his brothers back from Scotland. A gang there had murdered Barry’s father; it had been the talk of the neighbourhood for weeks.

  All the girls liked Barry because he was a hard man with the rep of a nutter. Susan liked him because he always smiled at her. Now he was actually speaking to her and it practically made her swoon with shock, embarrassment and gratitude.

  ‘I just tipped old Castleton bollocks, I was just thinking about that.’

  Barry grinned, impressed.

  ‘I’d have no trouble giving that one myself, but I’d have to tape up her gob first. All those long words would be very offputting.’

  Susan laughed at the picture he had conjured up. Him and Miss Castleton? People like her didn’t have sex, they made love. Susan wasn’t sure what the difference was between these two things, she just knew there was a difference.

  She knew it wasn’t what her father did to her. Sweaty grabbing of breasts, biting and whispers of: ‘There’s a good girl. Daddy’s girl knows what he wants,’ somehow didn’t fit in with Miss’s skirts and jumpers. Or her crappy sensible shoes.

  Susan turned her thoughts away from the teacher and she and Barry walked together in silence for a while.

  ‘Do you fancy a bag of chips?’ he asked.

  Susan nodded delightedly.

  ‘I’d love a bag of chips, I’m starving.’

  Barry grinned, a feral little grin that heightened his good looks. And Barry Dalston was good-looking, everyone knew that. He raised his eyebrows and said gently: ‘Have you any money?’

  Susan nodded. She always had money, thanks to her mother.

  He laughed.

  ‘Well, put it away, these are on me. And I think we might swing enough for maybe a nice saveloy too, eh?’

  Susan nodded; her cup was really running over tonight. As they made their way to the high street they chatted about their lives. Actually, she realised, Barry did most of the chatting but that suited her down to the ground. Every now and then his eyes would linger on her breasts and she would pull her coat tighter around herself as if warding him off. This made him laugh.

  ‘You’ll no hide them away, my little love. How old are you by the way?’

  Susan stared into his face.

  ‘Nearly fourteen.’ This wasn’t true, she had just hit her thirteenth birthday a few weeks before, but she knew it was a lie any woman would have told to keep the interest of the likes of Barry Dalston.

  ‘I’m eighteen . . . nineteen in the New Year. I always think it’s better if the man is older than the girl, don’t you?’

  Susan nodded. Her heart was banging like a ceilidh in her chest. He was talking as if they were a courting couple. Susan thanked God, Our Lady and every other saint she could think of for bringing her this boy.

  Barry for his part stared down into that plain face saved only by her nice teeth. She looked clean, she looked ripe, and she was really a child, he knew that deep inside. Yet she intrigued him, with her snooty ways and her book reading. He had heard from the other kids about her family set up and there lay the real reason for his interest. Her Uncle Jimmy and those big breasts were the beacons that drew him to her.

  She was in with the real villains, and that was what he was after. An in with the real gangsters.

  He smiled at her and Susan smiled back. He actually liked her in a funny sort of way. She looked at him with utter adoration and who could resist that?

  June was over the moon to see her daughter smiling and laughing on Christmas Eve. Though Debbie was always a happier girl, in her own way Susan had a quiet sense of humour and a good appreciation of a joke.

  Over the last few years this seemed to have deserted her and June had blamed it on the girl’s not having her mother around. Now she seemed to be full of it.

  June herself was not having the time of her life as she had first thought she would. Jimmy, her Scottish laddie, had turned lately, driving her hard, criticising her dress, her hair, everything. June was kicking thirty and had the distinct impression that he was trumping something younger, something different.

  She was waiting for the bad news but until she got it would sit it out.

  As she walked through East Ham market, her usual Saturday jaunt with the girls, she saw an old friend, Bella Tambling. Bella was big, loud and brash but such a laugh you couldn’t resist her. Today she was wearing a wide blanket coat and a woolly hat. She looked fifty, talked like a navvy and had a laugh that could cut through dense undergrowth.

  ‘Hello, Junie me old mate, long time no see.’

  June smiled at the effusive greeting.

  ‘Come and have a cuppa in the pie and mash shop. Me feet are fucking strangling me and me mouth feels like the bottom of a budgie’s cage.’

  The two girls laughed as they followed their mother and Bella inside the steamy shop. Susan hated seeing the live eels in a bowl on the counter even though she ate them. Sitting down, she let Debbie get the order and listened to her mother and Bella catch up.

  ‘Got seven kids now, but I had two misses. That was His Lordship and his fucking great boots. But in a way it was for the best - they’re a crowd of little bastards. I gave them all money and dropped them off at Crisp Street this morning. Hopefully the lot of them will be run over by a fucking bus come tonight.’

  June laughed, knowing that her friend loved her kids really, it was just the East End way of going on. As she removed her long leather coat she saw two men looking at her in appreciation and this cheered her.

  June knew she had to sort out something with Jimmy and soon. He wasn’t even bothering to come home nights.

  As two steaming cups of tea were placed in front of them Bella began to talk and for a few seconds June didn’t realise she was talking about her Jimmy.

  Wiping her mouth with a tissue, June asked her politely to repeat what she had just said.

  Bella looked at her friend sadly.

  ‘You don’t know, do you, mate?’ She wiped her nose with a well-used hankie and began again. ‘It’s some posh sort he’s took up with - everyone’s talking about it. Though what’s posh about a nice motor and a few good suits, I am fucked if I know. She runs the Dynamo Club. Fuck me, June, I’m sorry, love. I assumed you knew. It’s common knowledge around these parts. It’s my big fucking trap again, ain’t it? I open me gob and stick me foot straight in it, boots and all. I take oath I wouldn’t have sprung it on you like that.’

  June smiled.

  ‘I had an inkling, Bell. Just tell me what you know - and I mean, just tell me. I don’t want the whole place hearing it.’

  ‘It’s Maureen Carter, her who lived over the back of us as kids.’

  June’s eyes widened.

  ‘But she’s older than me. Are you sure?’

  Bella blew out her lips loudly.

  ‘Of course I’m sure. And in fairness she do look good, Junie. She must be forty if she’s a minute but she’s like a man in a lot of ways. She earns good wedge and does what she wants. That’s most likely the attraction. Men like these new-fangled birds, don’t they? Even my eldest, Marie, was saying she wanted a career the other day. I slapped her fucking face for her and all, little whore. I says to her at first, “Good on yer, girl, get a life.” And you know what she says to me then, quick as a flash? “Well, I ain’t ending up like you, Mum, more kids than handbags and never driven a car.” “I have driven a car,” I tells her, “one your dad stole when we was kids. I crashed the fucker and your fa
ther banned me from even getting in a driving seat again unless it was me old bike.”

  Bella’s scream of laughter burst from her mouth and even June laughed, though inside she was shaking.

  The dirty stinking bastard! Maureen Carter . . .

  Maureen who was a force to be reckoned with in her own right.

  Maureen who knew everyone and lived by her own set of rules.

  Maureen who dropped the takings from the bookie’s round every Saturday as a favour to Jimmy.

  Maureen who came and drank coffee with June . . . who’d had absolutely no idea she was shagging her old man.

  Closing her eyes, June felt devastation wash over her. She was truly on her way out.

  Jimmy had had a dabble before and she’d cocked a blind eye to it, knowing it was the nature of men to pursue anything that breathed and looked remotely shaggable. But she also knew that Maureen was serious competition.

  Maureen would be talking with him, having conversations about business and life. That was what nicked men away from their women, not sex.

  Sex was relative. Men fucked, wiped it, bought the old woman a bunch of flowers and gave her one to compensate. But if it was someone like Maureen and he was staying out nights then it was serious.

  Jimmy felt he was going up in the world and wanted a partner he could take with him, one he could respect. One who would give him a run for his money. And Maureen would do that as well; she could fight like a fucking man when the fancy took her. She already thought like one and talked like one.

  Only the other day she’d been saying how she had just bought herself another house and like a prat June, Jimmy’s live in girlfriend, had congratulated her.

  She must have been laughing up her sleeve.

  June swallowed down the last of her tea and stood up.

  ‘Thanks for telling me, Bell. I do appreciate it, mate.’

  Bella grasped her hand.

  ‘What you going to do, give her a dig? I hear he’s already moved clothes and that into her drum. I heard that from old Cathy Davies. She does Maureen’s cleaning so as you can imagine it will be all over the place by now. Always the last to know, eh, girl? I’m so glad my old man’s an ugly fucker - no one else would want him. His breath would put off a two-bob whore, let alone a normal person!’

  Once more Bella was laughing and June, watching the gaping mouth, with the missing teeth and the yellow-coated tongue, envied her friend at that moment.

  Bella’s life was her kids and that was it. Why couldn’t June herself have just been happy with that? Why did she always want more?

  Debbie and Susan had listened to it all in silence. As they left the warmth of the shop Susan placed her hand in her mother’s. June squeezed it tightly, holding back the tears of frustration and rage that were welling up in her eyes.

  Flagging down a cab, she kissed the girls and told them to get along home, she would give them their presents tomorrow. The cab pulled away and she watched them go with a heavy heart. This had to be sorted and as it was Christmas it had to be sorted delicately.

  As she stood on the pavement Bella came out, puffing and panting as she did up her coat and pulled on her hat.

  ‘If it’s any consolation, mate, I’ve always got a bed for you at my place if you need it.’

  The kindness was too much and now the tears started.

  ‘The rotten bastard, Bella! The rotten, filthy, stinking wanker.’

  Bella, laughing as usual, cried with her.

  Jimmy watched as June put his meal on the table. He sighed.

  ‘Not for me, hen. I grabbed a bite earlier. Listen, why don’t you go out tonight, eh? I’m tied up, really hard at it . . .’

  June looked at him and smiled.

  ‘You’re a lying bastard. You’re tied up all right but not with work - though trumping Maureen could be classed as manual labour, I suppose. What’s the matter then, cat got your tongue?’

  Jimmy had the grace to look ashamed.

  ‘Who told you?’

  June sighed.

  ‘You’re not denying it then?’

  ‘Even I cannae deny the truth.’

  ‘Why not? It never stopped you before.’

  ‘Come on, June, you know how it is. I never thought it would be serious. But it is - I love her.’

  June sat at the table and shook her head.

  ‘So where does that leave me, eh? You love her and you live with me. Or, more accurately, I live with you. I left my husband and children . . .’

  Jimmy flapped his hand at her.

  ‘With respect, Junie, you’d have left your husband for anyone. And as for those poor lassies . . . Christ, I think you’d have left them with Battersea Dogs’ Home if they’d have taken them, so let’s not go too over the top here.’

  ‘I loved my girls.’

  Jimmy took a deep breath before continuing.

  ‘Listen to yourself, June. You loved them. And you dinnae love them now, is that it? I thought you were the bee’s knees once and that’s the truth. But not any more, sweetheart. My tastes are running a little bit higher than you these days. Christ almighty, you barely clean the house, you cook this shite constantly and you’ve no conversation. Please, June, don’t make this harder than it already is by asking me what went wrong and all the rest of it. Let’s just say you and me are over, hen, and I’ll see you all right. I was going to tell you after Christmas anyway.’

  ‘That was big of you, but there’s one thing I need to know. Why Maureen Carter? What’s she got that I haven’t?’

  Jimmy wiped a hand over his face, irritated. She had put him on the spot and he didn’t like it one bit. Annoyed, he retaliated.

  ‘A fucking brain, Junie, and she has nous, a mind of her own and doesn’t need constantly looking after. How’s that for starters or would you like me to carry on?’

  June felt as if she had been punched in the solar plexus.

  ‘No, I get the picture now, thank you.’

  Picking up his plate of steak and chips, she emptied it into the bin.

  ‘So when do I go? Or should I say, where do I go?’

  Jimmy was sorry to the heart but the feeling he had for Maureen was like a cancer, constantly eating away inside him.

  He wanted to be with her all the time, wanted to watch her, see what she was doing. He knew that men liked her, that she attracted them, especially well-to-do men with businesses and careers. He couldn’t quite believe she had chosen him. Now she had he intended to keep her just for himself.

  He admired, respected, loved her.

  Really loved her.

  Poor June couldn’t compete with that.

  ‘I’ll leave, sweetheart. You can stay here until we arrange something for you, okay?’

  June nodded sadly, unable to talk she was so upset.

  ‘I love you, Jimmy.’

  The words forced their way out of her mouth despite herself.

  ‘I know, Junie, and believe me I’m heart sorry, lassie. I really am.’

  ‘I could change, try and be different . . .’

  Jimmy shook his head at her.

  ‘You’re lovely as you are, Junie, and someone will love you for that, you’ll see.’

  She grinned sadly.

  ‘Like you did, you mean? What a thrilling thought.’

  He walked from the room. She heard the front door open and ran after him, calling his name. As he looked into her face she smiled and said, ‘Merry Christmas, Jimmy.’

  Without answering her he left the house. June collapsed on the doormat and cried until she was aching.

  The tragic thing was she was telling the truth. She did love him. Still.

  Debbie was out, her granny was out and her father was out. Susan savoured having the flat to herself.

  As her mother let herself in with her key her heart stopped in her breast.

  ‘Hello, Mum. What’s brought you here?’

  She knew already but she would never say so. It was up to her mother to sort it all out and then
tell Susan what she wanted her to know.

  ‘I thought I’d pop round and see me girls, and give them a cuddle.’

  Susan hugged her tight.

  If all Bella said was true then she might be able to go and live with her mother somewhere. That thought had been keeping her going ever since it had entered her head. To be away from her father was such a wonderful prospect that she felt as if she was having all her Christmases and birthdays together.

  As her mother sipped a Scotch Susan prepared the vegetables and they chatted about nothing in particular. An hour later Joey walked in.

  Seeing his Junie sitting at the kitchen table made him start. He looked around hastily in case she had brought Jimmy with her and it meant trouble.

  Slipping Susan a fiver, June asked her to go out and get her some cigarettes. Susan went with a heavy heart. She already knew what her mother was going to do and it grieved her. Grieved her and destroyed any hope she’d had of getting away from the man in the kitchen. June was going to try and re-enter her husband’s life and if she succeeded all Susan’s dreams would go out of the window.

  As she walked from the house she heard the peculiar note in her mother’s voice that meant she was after something. It wasn’t exactly a whine, more of a low gurgling sound that made her seem girlish, childish even.

  Shutting the front door Susan sighed once more.

  Life was never what you wanted, Susan McNamara already knew that much.

  Joey looked his wife over and smiled. She was all right, his June, he should have looked after her; she was a one off in many respects.

  No other woman seemed to want him these days; his drinking, his temper or his lack of money seemed to put the kibosh on everyone he spoke to. He accepted that his June must have cared about him to put up with all that. Fuelled by drink, it seemed a logical as well as a romantic assumption.

  Ever since he had first laid eyes on her, she had affected him like no other woman. He knew she was a whore and that bothered him but also excited him. In a strange way, it was half her attraction.