Two Women

by Martina Cole

  Susan knew this was the only way he knew how to grieve. How he came to terms with it all.

  But it did not make her hate him any less.

  She still had not spoken to him. Even in the funeral parlour, where they had chosen the expensive coffin with the real gold cross on it, she had just nodded her head at his suggestion.

  Susan felt someone take her hand and knew it was Doreen. What would she have done without her friend? She was the only person Susan would speak to, and then only when they were alone. Then the words poured out of her in great torrents that made sense to no one but Susan and, she liked to think, Doreen.

  Because she seemed to feel it all with Susan, seemed to understand the enormity of what had occurred in a way that her mother and poor Ivy could not. The boy had been dead only three days when Ivy advised Susan to ‘pull herself together’, and told her that ‘these things happen’ and she should ‘get on with her life’.

  The funny thing was, she didn’t feel resentful of Ivy’s words. In fact, they had endeared the old woman to her. At least she and Kate acknowledged that something truly appalling had happened. Both had refused their sons sympathy or consolation. Both had taken Susan’s side, if that was the correct way of putting it. She wondered about that for a while, trying to blank out the service with thoughts.

  Debbie’s up-to-the-minute flares made her want to laugh. With her fat legs she looked like a sawn off dancer from Pan’s People. Susan felt the ghost of a smile on her lips and bit them hard, reminding herself that she was at her own child’s funeral.

  Susan studied her father. He at least was sombrely dressed. His suit pressed, his hair newly cut and his face neatly shaved. Joey saw her looking at him and smiled sadly. She realised she must still be smiling and put her hand over her mouth.

  What was wrong with her?

  How could she find humour in this terrible situation?

  What was the bloody joke anyway?

  That Jason had escaped it all, she realised. She was thinking that more and more as the days went on. He had escaped Barry and Joey and their making him a man because she knew that if he had lived they would have tainted him with their views.

  Barry had already talked of his becoming a boxer, a fucking hard little nut to crack. But Jason, her beloved child, had had the sense to escape, she saw that now. He had taken one look at them all and made his exit.

  This thought pleased her even in her grief.

  She had felt dirty in church, knowing she was still suffering from that filthy disease, one only filthy people got. Standing there, under the gaze of Our Lord, she had felt the poison rushing through her veins as it had done before and into her child’s body.

  Courtesy of Barry Dalston, wanker extraordinaire and father of the dead baby.

  She wanted to laugh again.

  Four of the people at her son’s funeral were undergoing treatment at the VD clinic. She wished now that Frances had come, that would have made five.

  The famous five.

  She wanted to laugh out loud thinking about it all.

  The coffin looked so small and lonely that Susan felt an urge to scream at the priest and tell him Jason wasn’t going down there in the dark all on his own. He needed his mother with him, in case he was frightened. He needed someone to take proper care of him, love him, and make sure he was not left to cry with no one to answer him.

  Why didn’t she go with him? Surely God could have taken her too, given her something to look forward to, eternity with Jason and no one else.

  Just loving him, caring for him, keeping him safe.

  Her father said they would have to watch the grave for a while because of the real gold cross he had told all and sundry was on his grandson’s coffin.

  ‘Some ponce will dig him up and chad it. You know what they’re like around here.’

  Even her mother had shut him up when he had come out with that gem. Yet Susan knew he meant to comfort her. It was Joey’s way of saying how well they had done for the child. They had spent money on him, given him what Ivy called ‘a good send off ’. But to where? Where the fuck had they sent him? All alone, without his mother.

  What kind of God did things like that?

  Her face relaxed.

  But this was the same God who had given her Barry Dalston, wasn’t it? And how she had prayed to get him, fool that she was.

  It was over now, she knew by the expressions of relief on everyone’s face. Barry came to her side and put his hand around her shoulders. He was crying. She could see all the neighbours watching them, Maud next door and all her cronies, gathering like rats around a dead body.

  ‘Fuck off, Barry.’

  Susan’s words were softly spoken but clearly audible because of their intensity. Then the real tears started, and all because of Barry’s smell. The smell she had loved so much once: Old Spice and fags mingled with Brylcreem and fish and chips.

  Once his nearness had been everything to her, made her feel safe, made her love and want him. Now she was crying for her child and for the lost youth she would never again remember with happiness. Barry had been the one thing she had had that was good after life with Joey and June. He had been a beacon to her for so long, something she had wanted to attain so much, and now she knew she had longed all the time for fool’s gold.

  But she let him hold her tight to him. Her son’s funeral was not the time or the place for hysterics, however much she was tempted to shame him. After all, the neighbours were watching and didn’t need to know her business.

  Disillusioned and sick at heart though she was, old habits died hard for Susan Dalston.

  She awoke in the night. The street-lamp outside the house bathed the bedroom in a warm soothing glow but all she felt was the furnace inside her breasts. Milk was still seeping out of them and it made her feel hot and sick.

  Barry was kneeling down by the bed and she realised then that it was he who had woken her, taken her from blessed dreams that made the pain disappear for a short while. Sleeping tablets were a wonderful invention.

  ‘Surely you ain’t after a bit of the other?’

  Her voice was flat-sounding but loud in the stillness of the house.

  ‘I love you, Susan Dalston, I love you more than anything.’

  Barry’s voice was full of his own sorrow. Susan couldn’t have cared a toss. She didn’t answer.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Susan, really I am. I know it was all my fault but, you see, it was that fucking Joey. He took me out, got me pissed up. I woke up the next morning with him and two old sorts in this bed . . .’

  Barry was really crying now.

  Susan felt strangely detached from him.

  ‘They were here in my bed? Is that what you’re telling me?’

  She felt him nod, knew he was trying to make things better, trying to be honest.

  ‘They was brasses, old whores, didn’t mean a thing. Not like you and me, darlin’, that’s real. I love you. I don’t care a fucking toss about them.’

  Susan heard the humour in her own voice as she answered, ‘I’m glad to hear it. Now can I go back to sleep?’

  Barry pressed his head against her belly, the big rounded soft belly with its red stretch marks and loose skin.

  ‘Please, Sue, don’t leave me out. Stop pushing me out . . . I hurt as well.’

  She lay immobile, eyes open in the darkness, forcing down an urge to take his head between her knees and crush the life out of him.

  How she had loved to feel him down there once, how she had enjoyed the feel of his tongue inside her. She had almost let herself go then, let the good feelings wash over her once and for all. She was glad she had not succumbed. It would have been a betrayal of her dead child.

  Barry had nearly made her enjoy sex; once or twice he had nearly hit the right spot. But she had forced the feeling away, not wanting to know what it was that made people go mad, do things with total strangers to fulfil a primal urge.

  Fuck ’em and leave ’em. That was one of Barry’s favourit
e expressions. Well, he had fucked one and she had left him with more than he had bargained for. Susan Dalston had had her fill of sex and all it brought with it.

  ‘Let me sleep, Bal, please.’

  He grabbed her then, with hands that were clawing and desperate.

  ‘Susan . . . please, Susan. I love you, darlin’. Really love you. We can make a go of it. I’ll change, I promise you. I’ll make you proud of me again. I promise I won’t touch another woman as long as I live. On Jason’s grave, I swear it.’

  She was sitting up now, her face stern and unmoved.

  ‘Don’t you swear on that child’s grave, Barry Dalston. You’re trying to make a promise you can never keep. You’re like me father - fucking is all you know. Fucking in all its forms, sexual and emotional.

  ‘You both fucked me and you both fucked me up, the pair of you. You leave that little boy out of this. Don’t you taint him any more than you have already. You killed him. Face it, face that fact, and let me fucking sleep. I just want to sleep.’

  She lay back down and he lay against her, his head once more on the softness of her belly. He needed the clean smell of her to make him whole again.

  Susan, he realised, was a diamond really. She was clean in herself and in the home. She was loving, she was good. Susan was a good person and she scrubbed up well. He knew he could have done a lot worse, got a Frances or a Debbie who would have married him and like June been taking on all comers by their first anniversary. Because they needed to be wanted, needed to feel sexually desired. Because they didn’t have the brains to differentiate between love and fucking.

  They saw themselves as nothing more than sex objects, and that made for unhappy women because once real life set in they had to look further and further afield to get the buzz they craved. Strange men, who would use them for a while and tell them any old crap they wanted to hear.

  Unlike Susan, his Susan with her ugly face and cumbersome body who gave him so much more, because she gave it without any thought of a return. He didn’t have to buy her drinks or tell her a load of crap, she was just there. There, waiting for him, and him alone.

  For the first time in his life he realised just what loyalty meant.

  Barry Dalston, hard man, vicious thug and grieving father, grasped his young wife as if she was all that prevented him from drowning.

  Ten days later Susan was dressing to attend another funeral. This time it was her cousin Frances who was being buried. No one outside the family knew just why she had topped herself.

  Frances had taken herself out to Essex and hung herself from a tree in Belhus Park, Aveley. It was a place they had all gone as children to visit an old relative, long dead and forgotten.

  Susan was too preoccupied with the funeral and her own mixed emotions to notice a piece that appeared that day in the Daily Mirror. A prostitute from the Valbon club, Soho, had been beaten to death two days before, her body dumped in rubbish in Gerrard Street.

  But Barry read it, over and over. He was a great believer in paying back debts without money changing hands.

  Well, Frances had topped herself over the baby and all the pain she had caused. He had had to help the other woman die, but it had been worth it.

  He had paid her back for his son’s death. Got the perpetrator and punished them. It made him feel much better inside. Someone had to pay, and as usual it was not going to be him.

  After the funeral he grasped Susan’s hand and she looked briefly into his eyes.

  ‘You look almost happy, Barry.’

  He shook his head and his face resumed its mournful expression.

  ‘I’m happy because I have you back, darlin’, that’s all.’

  As he pulled her into his arms he smiled. The sad part was, he really believed what he said. Such was the mentality of Susan Dalston’s husband.

  But as they left the cemetery, Susan, still suffering from grief and shock, felt a glimmer of hope for the future. Their future.

  At least, she thought, he cares about me. That’s a start anyway.

  The sun was high again, the day golden. Everywhere new life was burgeoning. Children were playing, flowers were blooming and people were going about their business.

  At least, Susan thought to herself as her husband gently helped her into the car, things can’t get any worse. As he started the engine Barry leaned over and kissed her on the lips. For the first time in ages Susan actually smiled back.

  He was forgiven.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Doreen watching them. Pulling away from the kerb he put one hand behind Susan’s head and stuck two fingers up.

  ‘Shall I put the radio on, girl, cheer us up a bit?’

  Susan nodded absently, her mind full of Frances and the funeral. She did not see Doreen, grimacing like a maniac and making wanker signs.

  But Barry did, and filed it away for future reference.

  BOOK TWO 1969

  ‘The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, And it makes free those who have loved it.’

  - George Santanyana 1863-1952

  ‘There is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked.’

  - Isaiah lvii, 21, BIBLE

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘Will you shut that fucking baby up!’ Barry’s voice was louder than the little girl’s. Susan was walking around the adjacent bedroom, patting the child’s back and trying to calm her.

  Wendy’s teeth were just coming through and she was not happy about it at all. In fact the child seemed to have come into a world she did not like and had made her feelings abundantly plain ever since.

  Wendy had cried since birth.

  The doctor said it was colic, Susan thought it was colic, Barry was convinced the child had been given to them by the Devil himself and was not pleased at all. To make matters worse, if Wendy did quieten, all she needed to see was Barry’s face looking into her cot and the Third World War started up again.

  Wendy Kathryn Dalston did not like her father. Susan did not think she was a bad judge.

  But Barry was becoming increasingly annoyed with his daughter’s nocturnal screaming fits and made a point of letting everyone know. Susan often wondered who was the loudest, Wendy or him. Either way their voices were all she heard.

  Unlike Barry, Wendy was Susan’s heart’s delight. She only had to look into those big blue eyes and she melted. She was convinced this child was destined to become a great beauty and adored her without reservation. In short, Wendy meant the world to her. Barry, guessing this, had felt from the moment the child was born a jealousy he knew he should suppress. But he could not help it.

  Wendy took up all of Susan’s time, her patience and her love.

  Getting out of the bed, he went into the next-door bedroom and practically dragged the child from Susan’s arms.

  ‘Put the spoiled little fucker back in her cot. Let her cry. For fuck’s sake, Sue, let’s get one night of fucking peace!’

  His screaming made Wendy even more upset and she began really to yell, feeling the tension in the room and the fear in her mother’s body.

  Susan held the child closer still, pressing her into her breasts.

  ‘She’s due a feed anyway, Bal. Give the kid a break. She’s four months old, she can’t tell the fucking time.’

  Susan was hanging on to the child for dear life and Barry was once more trying to drag her from her mother’s arms.

  ‘I’m warning you, Barry, you’ll hurt her if you keep this up and then you’ll know all about it, boy.’

  The words were out before Susan realised what she had said. They were instinctive, just a mother’s way of defending her baby. Barry looked at her for long moments and she felt the icy grip of fear around her heart.

  ‘Bal, listen to me - Barry, please . . .’

  The fist when it hit her was so unexpected she staggered back against the cot, nearly letting go of the baby and dropping her on to the floor.

  Susan felt her eyebrow split, felt the flow of blood and the onset of stinging tears. Bar
ry watched as if in slow motion. He knew as soon as he made contact with her that he had hit her hard, as he would have hit another man. He knew, from the split second he raised his arm, that what he was doing was wrong.

  Wendy fell quiet, deadly quiet, and both Susan and Barry looked down at her. Susan’s blood had dripped on to the baby’s face and both thought she had been injured.

  ‘You fucking bastard, Bal, what have you done?’

  It was the quietness that made Susan scared, the child’s unnatural quietness. Then Wendy smiled, a big beatific smile, and Susan felt the hand around her heart ease its grip.

  Barry looked down at his daughter, and there was no mistaking she was his. She looked so like him it was unnerving. He saw the smile, and the blood and mucus from her nose, and felt the relief only a guilty person can feel. He’d thought for a moment he had harmed her and that to Barry was the worst thing he could have done. Not so much because it was wrong but because in their world anyone who hurt a child was banished, abused, treated with public contempt. You could batter them black and blue once they were old enough to start school and became real people, but a baby . . . well, a baby was a thing of joy to everyone. Except, a lot of the time, to their parents.

  Barry was sick of people praising Susan and her gift for motherhood. Even Davey Davidson had remarked on what a diamond she was, telling him how his own wife was always talking about their lovely daughter and spotless house. Susan, it seemed, was born and bred for mothering, though how no one understood considering June and her track record. It seemed to be a knack she was born with.

  Even his mother loved Susan. Thought she was the bee’s knees, the dog’s bollocks. Looking at her now, plain-faced and with a fat belly in her old nightie, he felt nothing but revulsion. Her breasts were still full of milk, she was always leaking all over the place, the child was clamped there morning, noon and night. ‘Feeding on demand’ Susan called it; he called it ruining the fucking baby from the off, but would she listen to him?