Two Women

by Martina Cole

  Barry nodded distractedly.

  ‘Already? Okay, what you like, I’ll pay. Do the place up if you want. But, Sue, promise you’ll help me out. Come to the clinic with me, will you?’

  She nodded sadly.

  As much as he annoyed her, made her full of hatred and anger at times, she could never really resist the pull of him when he was like this. The real Barry as she thought of him.

  ‘Don’t worry, Bal, we’ll sort it all out, mate. Now you’d better get to work or Roselle will be wondering where you’ve got to.’

  Roselle was worried. Barry was acting so strangely. He had developed a swollen testicle, a boil according to him, so he couldn’t have sex with her. But that had been over a week ago and she had sneaked a look at him in the bathroom mirror earlier on and he seemed to be in perfect working order to her. Then, when she had caressed him, he had almost pushed her from him.

  ‘Is there something going on, Barry? Something I should know about?’

  He looked down as he buttoned his shirt, so he didn’t have to look her in the face. He raised his voice, as if he was annoyed, couldn’t believe what she was asking him.

  ‘For crying out loud, Roselle, I’ve been feeling really rough. It happens. I’ll be okay in a day or two. Don’t start hassling me, please. Just let me get meself sorted out.’

  She stared at him.

  ‘What’s going on, Barry?’ Her voice brooked no arguments and finally he looked her in the face.

  ‘What do you mean?’ He was still trying to fend her off.

  ‘I’m telling you now, Barry, I need to know what the problem is. If you tell me, we can sort it out. If you don’t tell me and try and keep up this charade of everything being hunky-dory, then I’m afraid I’m going to cause you untold aggravation until I get to the bottom of it. So let’s talk now and see what we can do, eh?’

  Barry stared into her beautiful strained face. She was everything to him, he knew that. But he also knew she would never understand his need for other women. Susan did. Because she was so grateful to have him, she would swallow anything. But Roselle was a different kettle of fish.

  He also knew that she would haunt him until she knew the score. She wasn’t stupid. She could nag for England when the fancy took her and he could see the fancy taking her even as they spoke.

  He tried a different tack.

  ‘Let me go and see babes, little Rosie. I promised Susan I’d run them up the clinic. When I get back we can have a proper talk, okay?’

  She stared at him for a full twenty seconds before she answered.

  ‘I want you back here by twelve and my questions answered. Otherwise, Barry, you are out. Out of here and out of my life. Right?’

  He saw the sadness in her eyes and the determination and felt an overwhelming sensation of being trapped. He got his results today, he would know the score by then. He would have to play it by ear.

  He smiled, a big sunny smile he could have sworn he did not have inside him.

  ‘Let me go and see me babe and then we’ll go from there, all right?’

  Roselle nodded almost imperceptibly and Barry felt every muscle in his body relax. He had a few hours. If he wasn’t infected he could sort himself out. Although it would not have bothered him if he gave it to anyone else, he was terrified of giving it to Roselle and even more terrified she had already caught it.

  The thought brought him out in a sweat every time it entered his head. That the disease could already be moving through her veins, crawling through her body and waiting to give her the first attack, terrified him more than anything else.

  He also didn’t know if he could bring himself to touch her. Suppose she was infected and infected him with it again? It might make what he had even worse. Who knew? No one seemed to know very much about the illness.

  At the Whitechapel VD clinic they’d seemed as ignorant about it as he was. But Barry had spoken to Chopper, and Chopper had told Barry that he had definitely got it from Maggie.

  Like him, Chopper used women as and when the fancy took him.

  Like him, Chopper was now shitting hot bricks and throwing them out of the window. He still had to explain the full implications of the disease to his wife.

  Kissing Roselle briefly on the lips Barry left the flat, wondering if he was leaving it for the last time. Whether it would still be his home later on in the day. He used her car, just in case he never got the opportunity again. Because if he had the big H, as Chopper called it, he was well and truly fucked in more ways than one.

  Susan made them both a cup of tea and placed Barry’s on the table in front of him. She had sent all the kids to Doreen’s so they could go to the clinic in peace. She had not retrieved them afterwards because of Barry’s utter shock and disgust with himself.

  He was positive.

  The funny thing was, she still felt sorry for him. Because she knew him so well, she understood he never thought about anything until it was too late.

  Well, it was too late now.

  Roselle wouldn’t touch him with a barge pole, and who could blame her?

  ‘I’ll kill Maggie Brittan. As God is my witness, I’ll swing for that slut.’

  He was angry, but Susan realised there was no conviction in his voice. He knew that what he had was never going away. Even killing Maggie couldn’t make it go away. She’d given him the disease but he knew deep inside himself that he was the real cause. He had brought this on himself.

  That was what he was finding so hard to accept.

  ‘You’ll have to tell her, Bal. She has a right to know.’

  He pushed the tea away from him with a violent shove, sending it all over the table and the floor.

  ‘How can I, Susan? You know what she’s like. She won’t swallow this, she’ll go fucking mental.’

  Susan picked up the mug from the floor and automatically started to clear up the tea stains with a cloth.

  ‘Mental? She’ll go ape shit. But she still has a right to know, Bal. This is too serious to brush under the carpet. Much too serious to forget about and hope it will go away. You heard what that man at the clinic said. Your first attack can be mild or severely damaging. It could kill her. You have to tell her.’

  She was rinsing the cloth under the tap when Barry’s fist hit her across the side of the head.

  ‘Don’t fucking tell me what I have to do, Susan. I’ll deal with this in my own way.’

  Her ears were ringing from the blow. She put her hand on the sink to steady herself.

  ‘What you picking on me for, Bal? What have I done?’

  There were tears in her voice.

  ‘I’m your wife, mate. I’ve stood by you through everything and you do this to me? You hit me when all I’m trying to do is help?’

  He stared at her, but she knew of old that he wasn’t seeing her. He was thinking how he could get himself out of trouble as usual.

  ‘Unlike when it happened with me, Bal, a few injections and a course of antibiotics won’t be enough. She needs to get herself tested soon. As fast as possible.’

  He was nodding.

  ‘I could always say I got it from you, Sue.’

  She widened her eyes and opened her mouth but no words would emerge from it.

  He grabbed her arms and cried, ‘It’s the only thing I can say, ain’t it, you silly bitch? She can’t moan at me for giving you one, can she? You’re me fucking wife.’

  Susan shook her head in despair.

  ‘You bastard. You’d let her think I had it so she’d swallow it a bit better? And who am I supposed to have contracted it from, Bal? The phantom herpes giver of East London? Who are you going to blame?’

  He was biting his bottom lip. Wendy did it when she was worried about something. Any second now he would chew at the side of his thumbnail.

  She knew him so well.

  ‘I’m sorry, Bal, but there’s no way Roselle will swallow that one. She knows me better than you do. She knows I wouldn’t put it about. I wish we could say the same
about you, mate.’

  He was staring at her now, eyes fixed on hers.

  ‘It’s the only thing I can say. I can’t come back here, Sue. I can’t.’ His voice was a whine. ‘I’m used to better these days. I couldn’t hack living here again. I’d lose me job then where would you be, eh? No more money coming in for you to spend on three-piece suites and the kids.’

  Susan knew he was trying to talk her into taking the blame, make it easier for him with Roselle. Make her into the dirty individual who’d caused this epidemic of disease.

  She shook her head sadly.

  ‘I’m sorry, Bal, but there’s no way I will carry the can for this lot. No way.’

  She saw his fist clench and flinched instinctively, but he didn’t raise it. Instead he stormed from the little house and slammed the door behind him.

  Roselle’s face was so white she looked terminally ill.

  ‘Susan has given you what, Bal?’

  He dropped his eyes to the carpet and answered her softly.

  ‘Fucking herpes, the whore. Apparently she kipped with some geezer from the pub.’

  He opened his arms as if he was trapped himself and unsure what else to tell her, which of course was true. Barry was playing it all by ear at the moment. Hoping against hope that Roselle swallowed everything and forgave him. Susan was her mate after all.

  Roselle, though, was still trying to take in what he had said to her. Herpes? He had caught herpes? Off Susan. His wife.

  She let the information seep into her brain for a full five minutes. The longest five minutes of Barry Dalston’s life.

  Then she started to laugh. It was a high-pitched wail of sound, nearer to tears. It had the underwater quality of laughter tinged with heartbreak and sadness.

  ‘You rotten bastard! You’d blame poor Susan for something like this? Blame her for something you’ve done. Where did it really come from, Bal - Marianne? Was it that little whore you picked it up from or was there another one tucked away somewhere?’

  That she had hit the nail so accurately on the head threw him. She knew him better than he’d thought. She wasn’t about to swallow his story of getting it from Susan. His wife had too much respect for herself to sleep around. Deep inside he knew that much and so did Roselle.

  She stood up, all righteous indignation and hurt pride.

  ‘I want you to get your stuff and leave, please. I will not talk about it any more. I want you out. And, Barry, don’t make me involve Ivan in all this. Because you give me any aggravation and I will involve him, I swear on my son’s life.’

  He watched as she pulled a jacket on, her face still set in that mask of incredulous shock.

  ‘I’ll be back in an hour and I’ll expect every trace of you out of this place by then.’

  He went to her, tried to pull her into his arms.

  ‘Please, Roselle, I’ll do anything . . .’

  She interrupted him then, a half-smile on her face that was full of hatred and disgust.

  ‘Don’t you think you’ve already done enough? If I do have this herpes I’ll hate you till the day I fucking die, you piece of shit!’

  With that she pulled away from him and walked out of the flat, picking up her car keys from the hall table as she left.

  ‘Shut them fucking kids up, Susan, I’m trying to sleep!’

  Barry’s voice was loud. Aggressive. He was angry inside and out. The kids’ noise was driving him to distraction. All he wanted was to lie in bed and be depressed in peace. The kids’ shouting and fighting, their laughing and screaming, were just about the last straw so far as he was concerned.

  Susan came into the room and bellowed at him.

  ‘I can’t make four kids be quiet, Bal, it’s a physical impossibility. Get up and sort yourself out. Come back into the world and be a man for once.’

  She stormed into the bathroom next and slapped Rosie and little Barry across their fat bums, making them howl.

  ‘Now keep it down, the pair of you, or I’ll get you out and put you both to bed.’

  The howling ceased immediately. They loved their bath. It was their favourite time of day. It also wore them out and got them settled for bed.

  It was five-thirty on a Monday night in Bethnal Green. Barry was depressed because he had no life any more. Even though Ivan had told him of another job in Soho at a lesser club, and still on good money, he had lost the heart for it and was deciding what to do with himself next.

  He was thinking of going back into the debts only this time doing it properly. Buying debts and then recalling the money himself. Making a bit over the top for his trouble.

  He was convinced if he could prove himself to Roselle everything would be fine. Yet she would have nothing whatsoever to do with him.

  He had learned through Susan that her test had come back negative, and that had disappointed him. If she’d had herpes too then it would have made them even, given them something to bond them together even closer.

  Barry was actually stupid enough to believe that.

  Wendy put on a record in her room. It was Paul Young singing ‘Wherever I Lay My Hat’. The lyrics were so poignant that he felt like crying. That was him before the herpes, before he had had his life ruined.

  Wendy, enjoying the music, turned it up louder, and then Barry jumped from the bed and raced across the landing to the room that housed three little girls and his son.

  ‘Turn that fucking crap off now, Wendy, just shut the fucking thing up!’

  Wendy did as she was told but her face said a different thing altogether.

  ‘Don’t you look down your nose at me, girl. I’m your father!’

  He was all self-righteous anger and red-faced temper.

  ‘You load of little bastards. Why I bother with any of you I don’t know.’

  This included little Rose who since her father had come back home had gone off him overnight. He looked around the room, at the pop star posters on the walls and the hi-fi on the dressing table.

  ‘Clear this fucking shit-hole up and all, you. Like your mother you are. A useless ponce!’

  Susan shouted from the bathroom, ‘Charming, I must say! But you’d know all about useless ponces, wouldn’t you, Bal?’

  She came out on to the landing and Barry, having had enough of everything, punched her until she dropped to the floor. The kids could all see him. Rosie screamed with fright, little Barry screamed too, and Alana hot footed it from the stairs back into the lounge. Wendy came out of her room and, feeling responsible for her mother’s plight, grabbed at her father’s hair and tried to pull him away.

  It was pandemonium.

  Barry slapped his eldest daughter in the mouth, splitting her lip.

  It was only when Doreen came in that he finally calmed himself enough to leave the house.

  She took Susan into the bedroom and laid her on the bed, her face a pulp. She got the little kids from the bath and with the help of Wendy dressed them and sent them to her house with Alana. She then sent Wendy for Kate, and told her to tell the older woman to bring the doctor on her way.

  Doreen bathed her friend’s face and sympathised with her.

  ‘You have to get rid of him, Sue. Somehow, girl, you have to get shot, love.’

  Susan didn’t answer her.

  She knew that herself.

  But how?

  How did you get rid of someone like Barry? Someone who wouldn’t leave, wouldn’t let anyone have any peace? Could see no wrong in what he did?

  He had ruined so many lives, hers included. The kids’, Roselle’s, his mother’s. Strangers’ lives even with his violence. She had heard about what he’d done to Maggie Brittan, that had been another nine-day wonder.

  Barry Dalston was a law unto himself and until he found alternative accommodation, as in another bird, she was in lumber and that was the strength of it. She just wished he would give the kids a break now and then. It was harder for them. After all, she was used to his outbursts.

  The doctor didn’t come but th
ey knew Barry had broken her cheekbone and her ribs and did what they could for her as usual. Life was back to its old pattern and Susan had to sit it out and wait for new developments.

  It was soul-destroying, but all she could do. Barry was in charge as he always had been.

  The police finally arrived after he had long gone. Looking at Susan, they sighed, drank the cup of tea that Doreen brought them, made a few jokes about how they were just getting used to not coming round here any more when Barry came back on the scene and buggered up their night shift.

  But they did not do anything. There was nothing they could do.

  Barry came home at twelve-thirty, drunk and stoned. He had been out with his father-in-law and they’d tied one on like the old days. Susan was still in bed and Wendy had fallen asleep on the settee, watching TV. As he came into the room he saw her lying there, her lovely face vulnerable, abundant hair framing her head.

  Her brand new breasts were straining against a too small nightie and dressing gown. Kneeling down by her, he looked into his daughter’s face. She was going to be a knockout. At almost fourteen she was already an eyeful. Many people had said as much to him.

  In his drunken state, he decided she was too lovely for the boys around here, too good for the shite she would eventually meet. He didn’t listen to all the crap about university or college and a good education. That was all just bollocks.

  What his daughter needed was a man, a real man who would show her what to do with her body. How to get what she wanted with it. That was what real women did in his book. They were sitting on a goldmine.

  The expression made him laugh and this woke Wendy up. He saw the fear on her face and the instinctive way she covered her breasts from his gaze, wrapping her arms over her chest like a dead person. Like she was in a coffin.

  He pulled them gently apart and sighed. Bending down he placed his cheek to her breasts and caressed her buttocks gently with his hand, holding her hands together over her head as he did so.

  Wendy tried to force herself up from her prone position and he forced her down with his body. She could smell beer and whisky, fags and chips.