The Business

by Martina Cole

  Mary knelt down in the front pew and blessed herself slowly. Closing her eyes she prayed silently for the repose of her husband’s soul, and for forgiveness for her trespasses, which were legion.

  Mary knew that she should reach out to touch Imelda in a gesture of support if for no other reason than the sake of appearances, but she still couldn’t bring herself to touch her. Instead, she reached out to her sons, and she grabbed hold of their hands so tightly they were forced to move closer to her for comfort’s sake.

  Then Mary felt herself breaking down, felt the dam of tears that she had been so careful to keep locked inside herself finally erupt. And she cried like she had never cried before and, with the release of all her pent-up emotions, she felt a tiny sliver of relief. She felt like there was a great weight pressing down on her, crushing her, and she also knew that it was never going to go away.

  Imelda listened to the Mass, she liked Mass, she always had. She had never seen it as a chore like a lot of friends had, she had always gone to Mass and seen it as a form of escape. Especially at junior school, when they had celebrated Mass every Wednesday at the local church. She liked the calmness of it, liked the continuity of it, the fact that it had been going for two thousand years.

  Imelda believed in God because she felt that there had to be something else, something after all this, and also because anyone who was still being worshipped and adored after all that time had to have something going for them. How many people alive today would still be talked about in two thousand years from now?

  She sighed heavily, the child was moving sluggishly and her body felt weary.

  Imelda looked at the coffin that contained her father’s remains and realised that she felt nothing. No remorse, no regrets, nothing. But then, she never really felt anything for long in her life, apart from anger and jealousy. She had felt an occasional twinge of other emotions, but nothing that constituted real, lasting feeling on her part.

  She had learnt as a child to mimic the people around her, mimic their reactions to certain situations, and she had found that as long as the situation was about her personally, she could conjure up the necessary emotions, even convince herself that she could really feel them. But she couldn’t, not really, she just kidded herself, because if she acted them out, then other people believed in them. It was odd, she had loved her dad, but only because she knew she was supposed to love him. She had manipulated him, had convinced herself of her affection for him. But in all honesty, it was another act, like most of her life was an act. Even in the church, watching her father’s funeral, seeing the crowds of people who had turned out to pay their respects, she felt nothing.

  She glanced at Jason’s mum, and felt the anger rising inside her. Now, anger she could understand, she was an angry girl. She always had been, anger was the nearest she had ever really got to a spontaneous human emotion.

  In fact, it was her capacity for anger that had made her feel like she fitted in, but even her anger could be manufactured if the need arose. She was capable of great anger, and great resentment, but then she knew that they were one and the same thing.

  Resentment was a by-product of anger, anger bred resentment and vice versa. The spawn of those two destructive emotions was the most destructive emotion of them all, jealousy.

  Imelda Dooley was only really happy when she was feeling anger, hatred or jealousy.

  She could hear her mother crying now, could hear the real pain and sorrow in her sobs, knew that she was venting her heartache and Imelda wondered why the sounds didn’t have any effect on her.

  She knew she made a tragic figure, knew that her swollen belly and angelic face made most of the men, and a big majority of the women present here today, feel the urge to protect her. Her father’s funeral was going to go down in East End folklore and she wanted her part in the myth to be about softness and about her youth. She had not bargained for Jason’s fucking mother turning up, she knew that much.

  She also knew that in the real world, her mother would have wiped the floor with Mrs fucking Parks. But she hadn’t, and so she decided that she would treat the woman kindly too, then people would say how generous she was, how kind she was. And then she would drop into the conversation that they had all lost people close to them, and a child needed all the love it could get. She liked that, liked that expression.

  Plus she could shove the child on the woman at her whim, which would be a real blow to her mother who thought that the child’s birth would be the end of her life as she knew it. Just because she had fucked up, didn’t mean that she had to pay for it.

  She would give this child away without a second’s thought, but she knew she would never get away with it. Even a child of a so-called rape, in their community, was still a child. A life. Well, if her mother wanted it then she was welcome to it.

  She had felt the rage growing by the day, she had embraced it for the first time ever, she had enjoyed it. Welcomed it. She was never going to live a lie again, not inwardly anyway. She knew she would still have to pretend to the outside world. But she was suddenly caught up in her own world, the world she had inhabited since she had been a small child. A world where no one else mattered, a world where she could relax and not worry about people’s reactions to her beliefs or to her feelings.

  Now her father was gone, she didn’t have to pretend to herself any more. She was a woman in her own right and she was going to have a child. In their world that gave her a certain kudos, a cachet; she would go overnight from being a miss to a mother; she would have a title.

  She wanted to smile, but she didn’t. Her father’s main boss was going up to give the eulogy. She noticed that Jackie Martin was not asked, even though he and her father were supposed to be best friends, had been partners.

  Michael Hannon stood up at the altar and looked out at the sea of faces. He was a nice man, he was also a man who did not suffer fools gladly. He had made his mark many years before, and he had also made a point of keeping a low profile. It was why he was still on the scene when most of his contemporaries were in the nick. He had always believed in delegating, and he had delegated anything and everything he could.

  He had only come out today because Gerald Dooley had been his friend since they were children. They had made their first Holy Communion together, and he had the photograph to prove that. As boys, Gerald had always looked out for him, he had been a quiet child, unlike Gerry, who had enjoyed fighting for the sake of it. When they had grown up it had all changed; Michael had been a late bloomer and had suddenly grown up overnight. He had always had a quicker brain, and it was this acumen that had finally separated the two. But he had always made a point of using Gerald over anyone else. He had cared for him deeply, as only a true friend of long-standing could. They had cared about each other, though neither of them would ever have said that out loud of course.

  As Michael began to talk, regaling everyone with stories of their childhood and of the scrapes they had got into, Imelda watched him with interest. He was a good-looking man for his age, and Imelda decided that she might set her cap at him. He had a wife of long-standing, a faded blonde with a permanent scowl and a Rothmans cigarette dangling from her lips. He was known as a ladies’ man, with a few girls on the go at any given time, but Imelda decided that she would be the one to win him over; she would have her baby, and then she would go all out to get this man. He would take care of her; like her father, he would make sure she was happy. She felt that he would be prepared to go that extra mile to ensure she was properly taken care of.

  It never occurred to her that Michael might not feel the same way, that he might see her as his friend’s daughter and therefore not fair game. She only saw him as her salvation, as a way to make herself socially acceptable once more. With him beside her, she would be able to brush off the last few months and start again with a clean slate.

  As the Mass ended Imelda was so engrossed in her own little world, she actually forgot why she was there in the first place.

  Chapter Si
x

  The atmosphere in the house was getting worse by the day; it was as if a dark cloud of hate was hanging over everything that mattered.

  Mary Dooley could not bring herself even to touch her daughter, the daughter she had once adored. The daughter she had trusted to take care of herself, to look after herself. The daughter who had destroyed her whole family with her lies and deception.

  The boys rarely came home after their work these days, both preferring the company of anyone else in the world, providing they were not a part of this family. They were finally acting as independent people, since their father’s death they were finally coming out of their shells and coming into their own. It still rankled though, their girlfriends were not as quick to come and visit now Mary was widowed. She knew that they had only given her the time of day because her husband was employing his boys. Still, she had not been the nicest of women where her sons and their paramours were concerned, and she admitted that she was still a hard taskmaster in many respects.

  Until her husband’s death this house had seemed like her whole world, which it had been for a long time. Like many a woman before her, she had done what her own mother had done, had made her home into her own private haven. It was where she had some control over her children and, of course, her husband. While Gerald was alive, she had not needed anything or anyone outside of her little world. The news programmes on the TV showing wars and famines, the soap operas she watched with a frightening regularity, and the documentaries she would force herself to sit through because they were about worthy causes were about things that were happening in the real world: famine, disease and more bloody wars. In the end, though, it was always about war. Men loved war, and they all looked for one at some point in their lives. Even if it was only with a neighbour, or a workmate they felt was encroaching on their fucking private space. So, like many a woman before her, Mary had created her own little world. A world where she reigned supreme, and she understood the rules and the regulations. As did everyone around her. She would sit through the documentaries and the BBC News and the Panoramas, because she felt obliged to, felt that was enough to ensure her family’s protection. So she would watch them and then relay all her new-found knowledge to her family.

  She watched these programmes without any real care, because they didn’t really affect her, or her life. She would collect money for the church, try and help the poor unfortunates, as she thought of them. But she had no real feeling for them outside of her initial sorrow at their plight. Once the programme ended she would be hard-pushed to remember John Pilger’s name. She had a knack of wiping out the terrible images: children dying, covered in flies and dust and women with dead eyes, nursing babies even though they had no milk left in their sagging breasts. She had felt sorrow for them all, real sadness, and she prayed for them and raised money for their cause. But, deep down, none of it had ever really affected her personally. Because none of those terrible things could ever happen to her, or her family.

  She had always felt safe, safe in the little world she had created, and that she had been encouraged to create by her husband. Like her, he had seen the outside world as nothing to do with them personally. As somewhere that didn’t overly concern his family. She had existed in that world for many years; her husband, her family, and her religion. In that order. She had always believed that would be her whole life until one day she would finally lie herself down in preparation for the long sleep. And then, and only then, would she be removed from her home. The home she had never spent even one night away from, the home she had been obsessed with since her wedding day. If it wasn’t so bloody tragic, she would laugh at it all. Not just at herself, but at her ignorance and her selfishness, for believing that she had something special. For not understanding that there was so much more to life than just living it in such a blinkered and, now she was being honest with herself, such a tedious and fucking mediocre way.

  Now that she was venturing outside of her comfort zone on a regular basis, she was enjoying it. She liked the fact that she was finally living a life for herself, even though it caused her such a tremendous feeling of guilt.

  For the first time in years she felt alive, really alive, and she knew better than anyone that that alone was enough to unleash all her pent-up Catholic guilt. Now Catholic guilt was a different guilt altogether. It was a guilt that had been established in her as a small child, and that guilt had then grown over the years like a weed, strangling any kind of reason or good sense she might have developed. Catholic guilt was the most destructive sort of guilt because the person that it concerned had no real concept of it. They didn’t even realise that it existed. Catholic guilt was something that grew alongside the person, alongside their personality and, in many ways, it did them some good. They felt the need to help the less fortunate, and they felt the urge to make their children better than they were. The person concerned would feel a sense of peace at the knowledge they had helped their fellow man. But the downside was that Catholic guilt also caused heartbreak and hurt because it was passed on and given over to the next generation. Catholic guilt caused families to try to outdo each other. It caused mothers to turn a blind eye to their sons’ shenanigans, while they watched their daughters like a hawk. Only, Mary knew, she had not watched her daughter at all. She knew she had given her a free pass because she had not had the care, the want, or indeed the energy, to police her while, at the same time, she had not wanted her husband to know just how much freedom his daughter had been allowed. Mary had relied on her husband’s reputation, and on her family’s standing in their community, to keep her daughter safe from any predators. So her guilt was a hundredfold since her husband’s demise. Her world, her perfectly structured and perfectly perfect life was gone. It was over with, and it would never come back again. She had basically blown it. And, to add to all the other guilt she was feeling, she had the added guilt of the thrill she felt at her new-found freedom. At her widowhood. She wondered how many other women must have felt like her. Had felt this strange lightness come over them, as if they were suddenly being given another chance at life. A life that was not overshadowed and dictated by their husbands. Even though she had still loved and revered Gerry for the man he had been, the provider, the head of the household, her only love, and her only lover. She had been the force inside her house and he had respected her for that. But she also knew that was only while she was doing it as he wanted, as he expected.

  Mary knew that she should be mourning her husband, knew that she should still be in the depths of despair, but she wasn’t. At least, not about her husband anyway.

  Her daughter, though, was another story. She gravitated from wanting to kill her stone dead, with her bare hands, mind, to fantasising about her daughter’s demise at the hands of a complete stranger. The atmosphere around her was loaded with sheer malice, and not just from her. Imelda seemed to become more and more morose and aggressive as the days wore on. She never mentioned the baby, or its imminent arrival. She didn’t seem to be planning anything on the sly either. She wasn’t planning to run away with it, or even give it up for adoption. In fact, she refused to discuss the child at all, in any way, shape or form. Mary suspected she was still drinking, and still smoking. She knew better than anyone that Imelda was not a girl who found it easy to put others first and, in a way, she had admired her for that. But her own child, that she could not put her own flesh and blood before her own needs, her own wants. That was something her mother would never understand or forgive.

  It just proved to her how selfish this daughter of hers actually was. Proved to her just how her faith and her trust had been abused by her youngest child. A trust that had been the cause of her father’s death, the cause of her family’s destruction.

  On top of all that, Jackie Martin was still on the scene though, in fairness, he was quite happy for her to call the shots, for her to take over the main responsibility of the businesses. He was just glad that she was as astute as her husband when it came to work matters. He was also t
hrilled that she was quite prepared to let him take the credit for it all. He was good at his job, she would give him that much. As long as Jackie knew where he should be, who he should be with and, most importantly, that he was accompanied by the relevant amount of bone breakers, that is. Mary made sure that her sons were in on the earn. Even though they were still grieving for their father, and were about as much use as a fucking Tampax in a monastery, she had explained to them both in graphic detail what could happen to them all if they didn’t pull their weight. Jackie Martin was comfortable with the boys. He knew how to handle them, and they were more than happy to follow his lead. She had a few other employees from her husband’s books that she used for the more serious collections and, all in all, it seemed to be working out well for everyone involved.

  Michael Hannon was happy enough with how she was running things and, as far as Mary was concerned, that was good enough. After all, it was Hannon who was paying the wages, and she knew that even if he had tossed her work at first because he was sorry for her, he was now giving it to her because she got results.

  She had made a point of going after a few debts that she had heard were considered uncollectable. She had researched the people involved and, with a mixture of gentle persuasion combined with more than a few serious threats, she had managed to call them in. She realised that she had something her husband had never had; she took the debts personally. She went after them as if the money that was owed was all that stood between her and penury. She would not swallow, even if the person who owed was well connected. Unlike her husband, Mary didn’t understand the delicate balance of the criminal underworld. She explained to the people concerned that a debt was a debt, and that they should pay up if for no other reason than their pride. She told them that the debts they had incurred were well known, and no payment towards them made them look like flakes. Made them look like cheap hustlers. Ergo, they might have swerved the debt but, in doing so, they had only shown themselves to be untrustworthy and, as everyone in their world knew, trust was how they got from one day to the next. She had visited the people concerned personally and she had put her case forward with a quiet voice, but a steely determination, and she had collected the monies. In the meantime she had also garnered herself a rep of sorts.