Two Women

by Martina Cole

  In the garden Sonia was allowing Barry to take right liberties, as the more liberal of the East End women referred to being titted up in public.

  He could smell her, all of her, the heat was so strong. It was a mixture of sweat, perfume, deodorant, and underlying it all was the smell of her sex.

  He knew he could have her on the wooden bench if he pushed it and the thought turned him on.

  Joey returned with the tray of drinks.

  ‘Have I got a bit of a tan, girls, with all this sun we’ve had? Do I look a little bit like a macaroon, eh?’

  Barry saw the two girls look at Joey without laughing.

  ‘What’s the matter? Don’t tell me two young girls like you are prejudiced against our Caribbean brethren? I mean, how would we run the buses and trains without them, eh?’

  Abigail lit a cigarette and puffed on it hard.

  ‘Or the Health Service, come to that.’

  Barry realised she was defending black people and tried not to laugh.

  Joey was warming to his theme now.

  ‘Like a bit of black pudding do you, Abigail? Come to think of it, the barman told me you live with a lemonade from the market. Is it true what they say about black men then - hung like horses and can last all night?’

  Abigail nodded.

  ‘Yeah, it is, actually, and they have softer skin and nicer manners than white blokes. Especially white old blokes. Funny that, ain’t it?’

  She picked up her cigarettes and bag and stood up to leave. Joey grabbed her arm and she winced.

  ‘You ain’t going nowhere, lady. I have paid out a heavy portion of wedge on you and you’ll come through for me. If your soot turns up I’ll give him the hard word, OK?’

  Sonia was pissed, but not so pissed she didn’t realise they were both in trouble. Bad trouble. The two men were looking menacing now, scary. They had been found out and that frightened them.

  They knew the score. With men like Joey and Barry you had to play the game or you were expected to pay a forfeit.

  Joey forced Abigail back into her seat. Smiling nicely, he continued, ‘So, ladies, whose place are we going to after the next few drinks, eh?’

  Sonia smiled grimly.

  ‘Looks like it will have to be mine, don’t it?’

  Joey laughed again, displaying all his teeth and a fair amount of his gums as well. His nicotine-covered tongue was dancing in the gaping hole of his mouth.

  Sonia, drunk and feeling brave, looked at Abigail and trilled, ‘I don’t think much of yours girl.’

  She looked at her friend and answered sarcastically, ‘Really? Well, I have a feeling you’ll be seeing a bit of him and all, Sonia. These two looks like they do a double act.’

  Barry grinned. He was enjoying himself now. It was so much easier if you had them down on the floor with a metaphorical foot right on their windpipe. It added to the game, the excitement and the jollity.

  ‘We certainly are. What’s his is mine and what’s mine is his.’

  As soon as he said it his expression changed and the three other people round the table knew he had said something profound.

  But only Joey understood what he had really said.

  Raising his drink, he smiled at his son-in-law.

  ‘In more ways than one. Cheers.’

  Susan was pushing with all her might. Her hair was plastered to her head and her body felt as if it was being ripped in two.

  ‘Come on, love, one more good push then you can have a rest.’

  She nodded. Taking a deep breath she pushed again, harder this time, but she felt as if she had achieved nothing.

  The nurse smiled and listened to the baby’s heartbeat once more.

  ‘It’s coming along lovely but I think you might need a bit of help. Relax, and let me talk to the doctor.’

  Susan lay back gratefully, supporting her head on the pillows and trying to fan herself with an old copy of Woman’s Realm. She had never dreamed it would be like this, the constant pain and the dragging feeling in her back. She had only ever visualised the baby all dressed up nice and in a pram with everyone admiring it. Even Ivy’s stories of the terrible births she had witnessed over the years had seemed miles away from real life.

  Now, though, she believed them.

  Susan was praying again, not for the pain to stop but for the child to be all right. Not blind or deaf or twisted up. It was terrifying, the thought of what could be inside her.

  One part of her wanted this baby to emerge so much, but another part wanted it to stay where it was, safe from the world, safe from Barry and his disease.

  The disease he had given to her, and through her his innocent child.

  She swallowed down the tears and fanned herself harder. Then she felt it, an almighty pain that tore through her like a hot sword, making her feel her body would be rent in two.

  The shriek she gave brought in two nurses and the doctor.

  ‘Christ, she’s crowned!’

  As Susan gave birth in Whitechapel Hospital at eleven-thirty-five p.m. on 22 August 1968 Barry was tucked up in bed with Sonia and Abigail. Joey was asleep on the sofa in the lounge after too much drink and overindulging in fish and chips.

  The earlier arguments were forgotten. The two girls had turned out to be a right laugh and a right handful. Especially Abigail, who seemed actually to enjoy it all which made a change. Most of the women they picked up did it just because they were asked to. It never even occurred to them that they might have the option of saying no now and again.

  Their attitude was that if a man bought them drinks and a meal he should be repaid in kind, whether they wanted to or not.

  Joey and Barry were blissfully unaware of what was going on while they romped, drank and ate to their heart’s content. Not once did it occur to either of them to let someone know where they were or what they were doing.

  While his wife was grunting and groaning so was Barry Dalston.

  As his wife lay bathed in sweat so did Barry.

  The only difference was, while she was thinking about him, wondering where he was, what he was doing and who the hell he was doing it with, she was the farthest thing from his mind.

  The child finally born, Susan lay back in relief. All she wanted now was to see it, touch it, hold it and make sure it was all right. For the first time that day, Barry was the farthest thing from her mind. The child took precedence.

  That in itself was a relief.

  Not to think about him was a wonderful thing, but she didn’t realise it at the time. It would not be until afterwards that Susan thought back over that day and clearly understood the truth about Barry and herself.

  The pain, the anger and the humiliation she suffered then would stay with her for many years, hidden away in her subconscious, waiting to erupt.

  For the moment, though, her only thought was for her child.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Ivy looked down at the baby and felt tears prick her eyes. He was beautiful, the image of Joey when he was born. The same impossibly long eyelashes, rosebud mouth and deep blue eyes. The sturdy little body fitted into her arms perfectly, as if he was meant to be there.

  Tears in her eyes, she looked pityingly at Susan. At that moment she hated men, all men, but particularly her son and her granddaughter’s husband.

  Putting the child gently back in the bassinette she took Susan into her arms for the first time since childhood and embraced her, pulling the distraught girl against her bosom in an attempt to ease the horror and pain of the situation.

  Susan was sobbing, her body heaving like a rogue wave as she cried out all the hurt inside her.

  ‘The bastard! The rotten bastard.’

  She could not talk properly; hiccoughing sobs made her words incomprehensible, only the tone made any real sense.

  Ivy stroked her back and murmured endearments, tried to comfort the girl she had always taken pleasure in baiting. She felt suffocated by guilt as she looked down at her great-grandson. Realising what she had
done, what she had allowed to be done.

  ‘There will be others, love. These things happen in life.’ The words were lame even in Ivy’s ears. How could anyone even attempt to make a disaster of this magnitude better? It was impossible. So they drew on every cliché, every old saying, every piece of crap they could get their tongues around.

  Susan, though, would not be soothed. She blamed her father for everything. Not Barry, her husband, who, in fact had had a choice in what he had done. She chose to see him as the victim of her father’s excesses. She knew Barry wanted to be like Joey. Have the respect her father commanded in the area where they lived and beyond. That his aim in life was to be a bona-fide breaker, a man people came to when they needed help of a violent nature.

  Barry copied Joey in everything, from his walk to his way of life, that way of life including taking any woman who looked ‘up for it’. Who would have thought that one of those one night stands could be the cause of her child’s death?

  Susan looked at her mother, sitting silently in the side ward with her head in her hands. The three women seemed at ease with one another for the first time ever. June looked up into her daughter’s strained face.

  ‘He was beautiful, Susan, a beautiful little boy. He would have been a real man.’

  Her words struck a chord inside her daughter somewhere. She wiped her face with her hand, snot and tears mingling.

  ‘It’s a good job he’s dead then, ain’t it? I don’t want to bring any more men into the world. I don’t want anyone to go through what I have been through at the hands of so-called men.’

  Her words were so raw, so obviously heartfelt, neither woman attempted to stop her. Both of them knew the girl was in a state of shock, not herself. Would need time to heal, physically and mentally.

  Doreen came in with four cups of tea.

  ‘They want to take the baby, Susan . . .’

  Her words were cut off as the girl bellowed like a market trader.

  ‘When his father has seen him - when Barry has seen what he has done! Then they can take him and clean him up and dress him in something nice for us all. Make us all feel fucking better. But not until then.’

  Doreen didn’t argue with her. Instead she moved the child to one side of the room in his bassinette and put a cup of hot sweet tea into Susan’s hands.

  ‘Drink that up, mate, it will make you feel better.’

  Susan laughed then, a deep rollicking sound that was so out of character it made the others frightened.

  ‘Have a cup of tea, Susan, then we’ll bury the baby in the back garden and all get some sleep.’

  She started to laugh again only this time she couldn’t stop.

  The tea was going everywhere - over Susan, the bedding, the floor. Ivy left the room and two minutes later Susan was being wrestled down in the bed by three nurses while they injected her with a relaxant.

  Susan felt her eyes growing heavier, her body limper, and tried her hardest to fight the effects of the drugs. But the drugs won. As she relaxed into a nightmare world of babies and coffins, the three other women breathed a sigh of relief.

  ‘That will ease her, sleep is a great healer.’

  Ivy’s words sounded hollow even in her own ears.

  Nothing was going to ease the suffering of Susan Dalston.

  Barry was annoyed, Joey fuming.

  The house was cold, there was no food to be seen and the milk was off. The aftermath of a night of drink and drugs had left them both with a stale taste in their mouths and an even staler smell in their underpants.

  It had not occurred to either of them to wash.

  Food was their priority at the moment and a cup of tea. They had been missing for two days and neither of them wondered where the pregnant girl was.

  Joey looked around the neat front room and said admiringly, ‘She keeps the drum nice, though, old Susan, I’ll give her that.’

  Barry raised one clenched fist.

  ‘And I’ll give the cunt that when I get me hands on her. Fucking real, ain’t it, Joey? Married a month and already she’s tripping off here, there and everywhere, without a fucking thought for me. I come home and there’s fuck all in the house. No milk even for a cup of Rosie Lee.’

  The back door opened.

  ‘Here she is, all sweetness and light, I bet. Wait till I get my fucking hands on her!’

  Barry stormed out of the sitting room, followed closely by a grinning Joey. He was looking forward to seeing Susan get a mouthful, seeing the perfect marriage come down to the level of everyone else’s. Especially his own.

  Barry was surprised to see his mother standing there.

  ‘Hello, son.’

  The words were brief but loaded with meaning and neither man knew what to say to Kate. Her eyes looked a bit red, Barry noticed, and she didn’t seem to want to look at him, glancing over his shoulder as if she couldn’t bear the sight of his face.

  ‘Hello, Mum. Bit early for you, ain’t it?’

  He kept his voice elaborately casual but his body language told her he knew what she was going to say before she said it.

  ‘Susan had the child last night - a boy.’

  Barry’s face lit up like a beacon.

  ‘A boy? What a touch. Susan gave it the large then?’

  Joey and he were ecstatic. Rushing into the sitting room, Joey came back with a half bottle of Scotch he kept in his coat for occasions like this.

  ‘Fuck the tea, get the glasses, let’s celebrate! A boy at last. I thought all they were capable of was split-arses.’

  He thought, as did Barry, that Kate’s sombre air was because they had gone on the missing list for a few days when Susan was heavily pregnant.

  ‘He died, Barry. The little child died, son.’

  Both Barry and Joey looked properly at her then and recognised the ravages of crying and loss of sleep.

  ‘What do you mean, he died? What’s she done now, fell over or something . . .’

  Barry looked devastated. He had enjoyed waiting to see what he had made. The thought of another life existing thanks to him had given him a feeling of power.

  ‘Susan did nothing. The child died of gonorrhoea, a venereal disease given to her by you, Barry. You also gave it to Susan’s cousin at the wedding. No one is sure yet if it was Susan’s fright and shock at finding out or the disease that killed the child, but he’s dead. A beautiful strong boy is dead and you are to blame. By Christ, I could take my fist now and batter your brains out on this kitchen floor - a floor I saw your poor wife wash only two days ago, on her hands and knees, with that big swollen belly hanging down in front of her.’

  Kate began to cry then, real tears of shame and loss.

  ‘You are a dirty, filthy animal, and I’ll have no more to do with you, boy. No more at all. And if that girl has any sense neither will she.’

  She walked out of the back door, a small hunched figure who seemed to have aged overnight.

  Joey and Barry stared at one another in shock.

  ‘Mum! Come back, Mum - listen to me.’

  Barry was down the garden now and pulling at Kate’s arm.

  ‘Don’t touch me! Don’t you ever touch me again. She won’t let them take the child until you have seen him. Be a man for once, a real man, take your responsibilities seriously and get to that hospital. Try and repair the damage you’ve done to that young girl and her poor baby. Put her at peace if you can.’

  She walked away and left him standing in the little garden that Susan swept so meticulously every day. She left him crying.

  Joey stood watching in the kitchen, his face blank and his conscience pricking him. He took a tumbler of whisky out to Barry who was still standing shell-shocked in the garden.

  ‘Drink that up, mate, get over the shock. Then you’d better get up the hospital - get it over with.’

  Susan looked at the little coffin. It was white with a beautiful gold cross on it and the child’s name on a brass plaque. It had cost Barry a small fortune and had gone some wa
y to assuaging his guilt.

  Susan looked at the name on it again and felt an urge to scream.

  JASON BARRY DALSTON.

  She had not wanted Barry’s name on there, but his grief, so real that it was almost painful to witness, had made her relent. If ever a man was sorry, that man was Barry Dalston. It made Susan sad, but also happy to see it. She wanted him to hurt like her, hurt as much as she did. Wanted him to feel the emptiness she felt in her arms and body. All that time she had lived with the child inside her, feeling him kick, move and swim.

  She missed the lump. Missed the feeling of hope it had given her, the feeling of being in on a really exciting secret that only women experience. It had made her feel, for the first time ever, like a whole person.

  Now she was burying Jason, giving him to God and the Virgin Mary. She hoped someone would take good care of him for her up there in Heaven.

  She looked around the graveyard. Her mother, Ivy and Kate all stood by her side. Debbie stood apart from everyone, her pretty childish face awash with tears. But Susan knew that was all an act with Debs. She was too selfish ever to understand another’s suffering. In fact, to hear her, you would think she had lost the child and not Susan. All today was to Debbie was an excuse to be part of a drama, a big exciting drama that made her the centre of attention with friends and their families. Made people listen to her for once, instead of wishing she would piss off and leave them in peace.

  Susan knew the score, she had always known the score. That was part of the trouble.

  Looking at her brand new husband she felt the first stirrings of sympathy for him. This bothered her, bothered her a lot. He was genuinely devastated by the tragedy but Susan knew, as Barry didn’t because he was too thick, that he was feeling more guilt than sorrow. Barry was like her father, and Debbie, and her mother and Ivy. They only felt things for the way they affected them personally, not understanding the full implications. They felt sorry for her because she had had the baby, given birth to it. But their real sympathy was for themselves.

  Barry’s biggest sadness was that he was out shagging while ‘his’ boy was dying. He referred to his boy constantly, saying how good-looking he’d been, how he would have become a ‘real man’. He’d have broken some hearts had he been allowed to grow up. Even the dead child’s penis was brought into the equation. It was big, apparently, and he would not have had any worries in that department.