Two Women

by Martina Cole

  Roselle smiled at her.

  ‘It is an acquired taste, I must admit, and sometimes I wish I never acquired it to be honest. But it’s a living and it keeps me all right. I wonder at times, though, what it must be like to be a married woman and sleep with one man all the time.’

  Susan shook her head.

  ‘This is certainly preferable.’

  Roselle offered her a cigarette and Susan took it gratefully. She decided she liked this woman and wondered what on earth a nice streetwise girl like her was doing with the piece of shit Susan had married.

  Roselle opened a drawer and took out a hundred pounds. She counted it off a roll and Susan watched enviously.

  ‘Take this as a sub from his wages. I’ll tell him about it, don’t worry.’

  Susan took it and shoved it into her pocket with the other ten quid.

  ‘He’ll break my neck because I came here but I had to. I’m practically on me uppers.’

  She rubbed one hand across her belly.

  ‘This poor baby’s taken some punishment tonight too.’

  Roselle felt a sudden urge to cry. In Susan Dalston she saw her own mother. Saw the bruised face at breakfast, the constant struggle to keep her kids fed and clothed at the expense of herself. Never a thing for her. Old before her time she had died at fifty, embracing death, happy to go. To be released from the daily grind of just existing.

  Barry treated his wife the way he did because he could. Because she let him. Because she was too weak to fight him and take control of her own life. Roselle knew all about the Barrys of this world and what they were capable of, and it occurred to her then that she was practically sleeping with her father. He had been like Barry: a violent bully who saw weaker people as fair game, even his own wife and children.

  ‘Do you feel well enough to go home?’ she asked softly. Susan’s face was a white mask of pain. Taking a fur coat from a cupboard, Roselle smiled at her.

  ‘Come on, I’ll give you a lift. That way I can be sure you get home okay. Otherwise I’ll be worried about you all night.’

  Susan shook her head vehemently.

  ‘Oh, no, Barry would go mad . . .’

  Roselle interrupted her.

  ‘Fuck Barry, love. He works here for me and Ivan. He’ll do as he’s told.’

  Susan was terrified and it showed.

  ‘There’s a toilet in there. Go and wash your face and tidy yourself up, I have a call to make then I’ll take you home. And I will brook no arguments, okay?’

  Susan did as she was told. She always did as she was told by anyone in authority.

  She had a long painful wee that made her feel as if her belly was trying to escape through her vagina. She felt a heavy pressing sensation on her pelvis, almost like labour pains, and hoped she was not in line for another miss.

  She relaxed on the cold toilet seat for a few moments, forehead heavy with sweat, sickness in the pit of her stomach now. It seemed to spiral up through her body. Fear was setting in.

  Barry would be livid over all this and now she wished she had stayed home and left it all to sort itself out.

  Susan washed her hands in the basin and splashed cold water on her face. She saw herself in the little mirror above the wash basin. Her eyes had black circles under them, and her jaw was bruising already. She smelled. Her coat had the shaggy dog smell of old material wet with rain. Her hands were rough. Her bitten nails and stubby fingers looked obscene to her as she wiped them with the pink towel that hung on a nail by the basin.

  No wonder Barry didn’t want to come home any more; he would rather spend time with the woman in the office. Susan wanted Barry to be with the woman in the office, though she guessed Roselle was too shrewd ever to take him on permanently.

  But Susan needed his money, she had to look out for the kids. Stepping back into the office, she smiled tremulously. Roselle looked stunning in the fur coat, with her make up perfect and her hair styled immaculately. Susan envied her self-assurance and confidence.

  ‘Come on then, let’s get going.’

  Downstairs Barry was like a man demented. Susan saw him looking at her with what could only be described as hatred.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  Roselle shrugged.

  ‘I’m taking your pregnant wife home.’

  Barry shook his head.

  ‘Oh, no, you’re not.’

  The words had a finality about them that Susan recognised.

  ‘I’ll get a cab, love. Thanks for the offer.’

  ‘I’ll take you home, Susan.’

  He had his car keys ready.

  Roselle shook her head doubtfully.

  ‘I’ve already sorted it with Ivan.’

  Barry looked at her coldly.

  ‘Then you can fucking unsort it, can’t you?’

  He grabbed Susan’s arm and dragged her from the club, Roselle following. He ignored her and took Susan to his car, a nice black Mercedes she had never seen before. Shoving her unceremoniously inside, he drove off without a word to Roselle who watched the car as it disappeared around the corner.

  Barry and Susan drove in silence until they reached the East End. Then he stopped the car by the Roman Road, in the car park of a block of high-rise flats.

  He turned to her and looked her in the eye.

  ‘You’re a cunt, Susan, do you know that, eh? You signed your own death warrant tonight. Fucking showing me up like that! I can’t believe you done it. Can’t believe you were that stupid you thought you would get away with it.’

  His voice had the cold detachment she had learned to listen for; it was the warning of a really good hiding to come.

  ‘I didn’t want to go there, Bal. I had to, I had no choice.’

  She could hear the pleading in her own voice, the fear, and hated herself for it. But she had a baby to protect and Barry had beaten one out of her before.

  ‘I have to look after the kids, Bal. Unlike you I don’t have any choice over what I do or don’t do. I can’t swan around and forget about them for days on end because I have to cook for them, clean for them, take them to school. Every day.’

  She was willing herself to shut up, stop antagonising him, but the words spewed out of her like a torrent.

  ‘I have to listen to their tales of woe, make sure they’re smart, clean, cared for. I have to talk to them, make everything better for them when they’ve had a shit day.

  ‘I have little Barry down with earache because of his teeth and didn’t even have a few pence to buy Junior Disprin because you didn’t bother coming home to give me any. I’ve borrowed off everyone, your mother included, while I waited for you to deign to turn up and pay me me keep. So don’t talk to me about showing you up. I have credit in two shops and they won’t give me a penny sweet till I’ve paid off the back. Your reputation don’t gain us nothing these days, boy. You’re old hat, you and me father. Bannerman saw to that.

  ‘So short of moonlighting down Shepherd’s Market, what was I supposed to do? Wait for Father Christmas? All right, do your party piece, kick me in the head. I couldn’t give a flying fuck any more.’

  She looked into his handsome face then and felt the pull of him again. Saw what attracted the Roselles of the world to him. He was handsome and he was dangerous. Why had she never realised that when she was a girl? She could have avoided so much heartache.

  Barry stared at her for a full five minutes, feeling her nervousness. He could smell it coming off her in waves. But he wasn’t seeing Susan, the mother of his kids, the woman who was decent, true, and in her own way respectable.

  He was seeing her from Roselle’s point of view.

  Scruffy, defeated and smelly.

  He had never been so ashamed in all his life as he had been tonight.

  And it was all her fault.

  She had shown him up for what he really was and he would never forgive her for it. He punched her in the face then, a hard back hander that was shockingly loud in the confines of his lovely new car.


  A car he had bought to impress Roselle and the other hostesses. He had wanted to impress a bunch of whores at the expense of his own family.

  ‘You think you’ve fucked it up for me there, don’t you, eh?’

  He punched her again, harder this time. Enjoyed watching her try to cover her face and body as he rained blows on her, talking all the while in his quiet sing-song voice. Finally he opened her door and pushed her out on to the wet pavement. Her cumbersome body landed like a sack of potatoes on the wet ground.

  Jumping out of his seat, he ran around the car to her and started to kick her. Small kicks at first, gradually culminating in one heavy blow that moved her a foot across the pavement with its force.

  The lights of a car illuminated them as if they were on a stage. Two policemen jumped from their car and ran up to them.

  ‘Here you are, constable, have her. Have the ugly fucking bitch. You have her because I don’t want her any more.’

  Barry left them standing over the unconscious body of his wife, confident that as usual the police would not get involved in domestic disputes. Susan would tell them what they needed to hear and he would be safe as the proverbial houses.

  Jumping into his car he reversed out of the car park like a maniac and drove back to the West End and Roselle. The woman he would have to placate if he wanted to keep on the right side of her.

  The two policemen looked down at the crumpled heap on the ground and sighed.

  ‘Weren’t that Barry Dalston?’

  The older man nodded.

  ‘It certainly was. Let’s get her to the hospital, let them deal with her. I ain’t in the mood for a domestic tonight.’

  Susan lost her baby in the back of the police car, which upset PC Hutchinson no end.

  ‘All that blood and gore . . . will these women never learn? The number of times we’ve been called to their house is unbelievable. But she’ll have him back, she always does.’

  It never occurred to him that Susan didn’t have any choice in the matter.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Susan was laughing, her voice loud and drunken as she called out. Smoke from the pub’s regulars was heavy and it was noisy in there, too noisy really for anyone to hear what they were talking about. Though it didn’t stop drunken conversations going on all over the place.

  June screamed as a stripper came on to the small makeshift stage. He was gorgeous with short blond hair and rippling muscles.

  ‘Gis a flash, son!’

  Her voice as usual was louder than everyone else’s.

  ‘I’ve seen bigger things crawling out of apples.’

  Ivy was in her element. This was where she loved to be these days. Finally, after years of being too good for rowdy local pubs, she had embraced her nights out with a fervour that shocked everyone. Not least her son Joey who could not believe the change in her.

  Susan was Ivy’s blue-eyed girl these days. She saw her younger self in her granddaughter. In Susan’s struggle to keep body and soul together. Even Joey was sorry for his daughter at times. Since the last ding-dong with Barry she had been left with a permanent limp. He had shattered her anklebone, but no one had realised until after the loss of the baby. Even Joey had been shocked by that and with the encouragement of June and his mother he had taken Barry aside and kicked seven colours of shit out of him. Barry had taken the hiding without a word, as if he’d expected it. Knew he had finally gone too far.

  But deep inside Joey knew he had really hammered him because he had got himself a nice little earner. Joey had asked him time and again to put a word in with Ivan for him, but knew he wouldn’t. Barry saw himself as being above Joey these days and that rankled. Rankled badly.

  So there was an underlying animosity between them now that had not been there before and Joey was looking out for his daughter a lot more these days because of it. It was the only way he could get back at Barry and he was enjoying it.

  Plus the kids were a treat. Susan, whatever her faults, was a brilliant mother and everyone praised her efforts to raise the kids in the difficult circumstances she lived under. Tonight, though, she was in her element. She was drunk and loudly enjoying herself. Joey laughed as she stumbled trying to get out of her chair.

  The male stripper was gyrating before his audience, shaking his body in the women’s faces, daring one of them to remove his jockstrap with her teeth.

  ‘Come over here and I’ll take me teeth out for you, son.’

  Ivy made everyone crack up with laughter again.

  ‘Shut up, Mother, stop frightening the boy.’

  His music ended and the small stage was dark once more. Susan finally managed to get out of her seat and walked unsteadily towards the ladies’. Doreen followed her.

  ‘That little Barry’s a case, ain’t he? Do you know what he said to me today, Sue? He asked me why the world had clouds. I said so the sky looked pretty for us all when we wanted something nice to look at. Do you know what he said then? He said, “Why don’t God make the sky pretty all the time, like my mum?”

  Susan burst out laughing.

  ‘He’s only three, bless him, he ain’t seen me properly yet.’

  Doreen sat on the toilet, the door wide open, in full view of the packed bar if another woman came in. But she didn’t care about that, none of them did. It would just be a bit of added excitement, a bit of a laugh.

  ‘He’s a good kid. How’s things with His Lordship?’

  Susan sighed. ‘Same as usual. He’ll never change all the time he’s got a hole in his arse.’

  Doreen shrugged. She hadn’t really been expecting anything different.

  Susan applied pink lipstick with a drunken hand, laughing to herself as she tried to get it within her lip line.

  ‘I am so pissed, Dor. I haven’t been this pissed in years.’

  Doreen wiped herself and pulled up her knickers and tights unsteadily.

  ‘Well, it won’t do you any harm to let your hair down now and again.’

  Susan staggered into the toilet after her and pulled down her pants, leaning against the wall for support. She felt the first wave of nausea and took deep breaths. She was drunker than she’d thought.

  ‘I am drunk as a skunk.’

  She washed her hands and she and Doreen made their way back to the table. Susan saw Barry then and her heart skipped a beat. She forced a smile to her face.

  ‘Hello, Bal, long time no see.’

  The sarcasm was wasted on him, she knew, but it afforded her a little pleasure. He was drinking a large Scotch and she worried that he might be staying. Her fears were soon allayed, though.

  ‘Where’s my passport, Sue? I can’t find it.’

  She smiled.

  ‘You’ve been home then?’

  He nodded.

  ‘I seen the kids, had a laugh with them and tossed them all a few quid, like.’

  He was practically apologising for not being there with them. This was a new one.

  ‘What do you need your passport for then?’

  He grinned sheepishly.

  ‘I’m going out to Spain to collect a debt for Ivan.’

  ‘That’s nice for you, Bal, make a change from Birmingham or Liverpool, eh? Bit of currant bun, a nice bird. Sounds great. Roselle is going too, I take it?’

  He nodded.

  Since the night she had turned up at his place of work, Susan’s life had changed in more ways than one. Roselle was now a friend to her. She made sure Barry kept his family commitments and Susan allowed his relationship with Roselle to blossom. Not that she could have done much about it anyway. If he decided he wanted an affair, he would have one. But at least Roselle made sure she got her wedge regularly and she was left in relative peace. Which suited Susan right down to the ground.

  She met up with Roselle about once a month and they had a bit of lunch together. Afterwards she always treated Susan to something: a hairdo, a dress or handbag. Little things, which made Susan enjoy herself more, made her feel better about herself. Rosell
e gave Susan a modicum of self-respect.

  Plus the two women got on famously, seeing things in each other they had only ever seen in themselves before. Their love of films and literature, for instance. Susan looked better than she had in years and this made her happier with herself. Coupled with Barry’s gradual defection to Roselle’s flat, all in all life was going well for her. These days he came home just once a week or so to see the kids and show his face for the benefit of the neighbours.

  ‘Your passport’s in the electric cupboard in the hall, I hid it among all the letters and that for safety.’

  He nodded, happy now he knew where it was. Getting to his feet, he looked down at her. ‘You look nice. I’ll get you a drink before I go, eh?’

  She nodded, amazed at the way they could talk to one another nowadays. He treated her with respect.

  ‘Mind you, Bal, I think I’ve had enough as it is.’

  He grinned and walked up to the bar, standing out because of his clothes and his looks. Susan studied him; he really was a good-looking man. She saw the other women looking at him, saw the way he eyed them all as he walked, grading them from one to ten.

  The thought made her smile. If Roselle could see him now, winking at the younger women, smiling at the older ones. Letting them all think they were in with a chance. She wondered if he played away from home with Roselle and put the thought from her mind.

  If he did he was a fool. Women like her didn’t grow on trees and if anyone should have been aware of that fact it was Barry. As she watched him a familiar voice hailed her loudly.

  ‘Hello, Susan love, how are you then?’

  It was Peter White, a boy from school.

  ‘Hello, Peter, how are you? You’re looking well.’

  He grinned at her, displaying white teeth in a tanned face. He was a merchant seaman nowadays. He’d got away from home at fifteen by coasting on small ships and now worked the big ones, the ACT boats and the Blue Star lines.

  Peter had merry blue eyes and sandy hair. He was thickset, a large man with the beginnings of a beer belly, but handsome in a rough kind of way.