by Martina Cole
‘I see.’
Mariah grinned. ‘No, you don’t, Tommy Lane, and I think you should be ashamed of yourself. You walk in here, like the big “I am”, offering me your half of Briony’s businesses when they’re hers really. Briony’s the one who built up the houses while you concentrated on chancier deals. I know about your bookies, I know everything about everyone. I’ve made a career out of it. If you want shot, as you so eloquently put it, of any connection with her, my advice is to let her buy you out.’
Her voice softened and she leant towards him. ‘Listen, Tommy mate, I don’t know what’s happened between you, but this ain’t like you. Trying to tuck her up! Whatever she’s done to you, remember the past. Remember when it was good and then decide on big things like the partnership. You might be having a nasty half hour today, but think, will you still feel like it a month from now, or a year?’
‘To tell you the truth, Mariah, I can’t face her. This ain’t nastiness. I thought you’d be the best bet for a partner. You’re alike, so bloody alike! But I can’t face her meself. I’m sorry, I don’t want to clap eyes on her now or ever. I don’t really want to do her down, I swear that. But I have to sever the ties.’
‘Do you need the money?’
Tommy shook his head.
‘No. I don’t need the money.’
‘Then write to her, tell her from now on you’re a sleeping partner. To bank your half of the profits. That way, you don’t cut all your ties - you might be sorry you did one day - and also you don’t have to see her until you feel you can handle it. And I’ll give you some more free advice. Don’t try and sell your half to anyone without consulting her first. That’s taking the piss and you know it. If she done it to you, there’d be murder done. Try and keep an element of friendship there, Tommy. Give her first offer, then if she refuses, be a sleeping partner. But don’t make things worse than they are. Trouble comes without you going out looking for it.’
Molly was shocked at the sight of Eileen. She had left the newlyweds for a week, restraining herself from going to the house, telling herself they would want a bit of time on their own. Finally, she had made the long awaited trip and now she sat in the little kitchen with Rosalee chewing on a slice of bread and wasn’t sure what the hell she had stumbled into.
Eileen was as quiet as a church mouse, her face pinched and drawn. She was preparing her dinner, and such was her lassitude, even peeling the carrots was a long-drawn-out operation. She had made a pot of tea and had not opened her mouth since. Molly had talked about all her own doings, until now there was an absolute quiet that hung in the air like a silent cloud.
‘Is everything all right, Eileen? You don’t look yourself, girl.’
Eileen looked at her, her face strained. Molly felt a sinking feeling at the sight. Please don’t let Eileen’s nerves get the better of her now, not when she’d been better for so long. Holy Mary, don’t let her be going off her head again, please.
‘I said, are you feeling all right, Eileen child?’
She nodded.
Molly sighed loudly, wondering what to say.
‘Is everything all right with you and Joshua?’
Eileen cut the carrots up, the scrape of the knife against the wooden chopping board the only sound in room.
‘For the love of Christ, Eileen, will you bloody well answer me?’
Molly’s loud voice made Eileen and Rosalee jump.
Eileen stared at her mother from fearful eyes. Molly noticed that in the week since the wedding her shoulders had acquired the old drooping look of before. Her face seemed to be on her collarbones instead of her neck.
‘What do you want me to say?’
Molly closed her eyes. At least she’d answered, she wasn’t entirely gone.
‘Tell me what’s wrong with you, girl? I’m worried about you. For a woman who’s been married a week, you look suspiciously like one who’s been married forty years, when the novelty’s well and truly worn off! Is it Joshua? Is Joshua not nice like ... You know. Is he doing something to upset you?’
Eileen shook her head, terrified, thinking of the taunts he constantly gave her, the way he asked her to tell him in detail what her seducer did to her, as if this spurred his own sexual appetite on. Telling her he would tell the world about her killing her father, and about Henry Dumas. How the police would dig her father up, and how she’d have to go to court...
‘Is it that fucker of a mother of his then? Has she been at you? Because if she has, you tell me and I’ll wipe the floor with her!’
Eileen shook her head.
Molly gritted her teeth. She’d get to the bottom of this if she had to throttle Eileen with her bare hands.
‘Is it the bed like, the nights, love? Is that it?’
Eileen put her hand to her mouth and nodded furiously and Molly sighed with relief.
‘Listen, Eileen, I remember me own mother telling me on me wedding day: “There’s some that like it and there’s some that don’t.” I was an in-between meself. I liked it at first but once you lot arrived, I soon went off it.’
Eileen didn’t answer and Molly spoke again, her voice gentle. ‘Look, Eileen, it’s a part of marriage we all have to put up with. It’s the only way you’ll get babies, and believe me, when you have a little one on your breast, you’ll see it was worth it. Do you understand me?’
Eileen looked away and nodded.
Molly watched her as she made the dinner, and crossed herself. She wouldn’t like the bed part, that stood to reason, she’d bad memories of it. But if she could get a child, then that would straighten her out. Once you had a few babies, you didn’t have time for worrying about your troubles, and Eileen had had far too long to dwell on hers. Joshua was a good man, he’d see her all right. Molly consoled herself with that thought.
It had been over a week, and still Briony hadn’t heard from Tommy. She had sent three messages, and he hadn’t answered one. He had not tried to get in touch about any of the businesses, or about their new ventures in the East End. It was as if he had never existed. A young fellow had picked up his clothes from the house and had refused down and out to tell Briony where he was taking them. That had hurt desperately. Now she was to go and look at Berwick Manor with Mariah, and pretend everything was still tickety boo.
She felt the sting of tears. Well, he had to get in touch soon, even if it was just for the businesses, if she could speak to him once, she’d be all right. She’d convince him of how sorry she was, how much she missed him, loved him ...
The door of her office swung open and Briony groaned as Bernie breezed into the office.
‘What do you want?’
Bernie laughed. ‘Oh, you’re pleased to see me then!’
Briony half smiled. ‘Sorry, that came out a bit vicious, didn’t it? I’ll start again. What can I do for you, Bernadette?’
‘Nothing really, I just thought I’d pop in and see you, that’s all. I’ve hardly seen you at the club and I thought, I know, I’ll go and see her. See how she is like.’
Briony was inordinately pleased that Bernie, selfish, sharp-tongued Bernie, who could start a fight with her own fingernails, should be thinking about her.
‘I’m all right, Bernie.’
‘No word from Tommy then?’
‘Nothing, not a whisper.’
‘He’ll be back.’ Bernie’s voice was strong.
Briony laughed. ‘I hope so, Bern, but I have a feeling that this time he won’t be coming back. Not now, not ever.’
‘Balls to him if he don’t, Bri, it’s his loss not yours. Sod him, that’s what I say. He was at the Ninety-Eight Club last night, Fenella told me. You know Fenella, the big girl with the huge buzumbas!’ Bernie held her hands out from her chest to emphasise what she said and Briony laughed.
‘Was he on his own?’
‘What do you think? ’Course he was. Pissed out of his head and all, according to her.’
‘No Kerry today?’ Briony wanted to change the subject. Tommy goin
g to the Ninety-Eight Club had upset her. He was going out then, even if he was getting drunk. She had waited in last night, as she had every night, for him to come round.
Bernie shook her head.
‘Our Kerry is sleeping, she had a heavy night last night.’ Her voice was heavy with sarcasm.
‘What’s that supposed to mean? She got a bloke then? It’s true, is it? Me and Mother wondered. Who is it?’
Bernie smiled craftily.
‘I’ve been sworn to secrecy about him, Bri, I can’t even tell you. I’ll give you a hint though. It’s the last person in the world you’d expect.’
Briony picked up an air of malice in Bernie’s voice and it troubled her.
‘Is he married, is that it?’ She was all concern.
Bernie shook her head. ‘I don’t know, do I?’
Briony stared at her for a long moment before she said, ‘What’s going on here, Bernie? You ain’t come here to be Miss Nice Sister, you’ve come here to cause a bit of hag. Now if you’ve got something to say, spit it out, or else shut up.’
Bernie sat down and grinned. ‘I ain’t saying nothing, Briony. If you think there’s something funny with our Kerry, you ask her yourself. You’ll find her at home in bed about now. She don’t get up ’til five these days. Like living with Dracula it is. Up all night and asleep all day. Even the cleaning woman asked if there was a coffin in her bedroom!’
Briony laughed and shook her head.
‘You’re a bleeding wind up, Bernie, do you know that?’
Bernadette smiled.
‘Now, how are you really, Briony? We’ve all been worried about you.’
Her voice was so sincere, Briony left the subject of Kerry and started to reassure her sister that she was fine, knowing it would all go back to her mother. But what had been said about Kerry stuck in the back of her mind.
Kerry was not lying in bed, she was sitting in her small kitchen with Evander eating toast and drinking strong black tea, full of sugar. Evander was wearing just his trousers and shirt, Kerry was in a silk dressing gown.
‘Tell me about Alabama, Evander, please? You never really tell me anything about America.’
Evander chewed on his toast slowly, deliberately annoying her. He knew that Kerry was impatient. Pulling his arms open, she sat on his lap.
‘Come on, Evander, don’t annoy me.’
He kissed her on the lips.
‘There’s nothing to tell, Kerry, really. Nothing that would interest you anyway.’
She took a bite of his toast. Licking the butter from her lips, she said: ‘I’m serious, I want to know about your life there.’
Her voice had lost its jocularity now and Evander hugged her to him.
‘Look, Kerry, let’s just say it’s very different from England.’
Kerry pulled herself up and looked at him sternly. ‘For crying out loud, I’m not a kid, Evander! Stop treating me like one. If I ever go there, I want to know what to expect.’
He placed the remains of the toast on his plate and carefully wiped his hands on a napkin. This was becoming a regular occurrence. Kerry had a mad idea that they could go to Paris and live there, eventually going to America. No matter how hard he tried to dampen her enthusiasm, she would brook no argument on the subject. Looking at her now, standing with her hands on her hips, he knew the time had come for the real truth. He had to tell her everything. And somehow he had to explain to her exactly why they could never really be together. Not as man and wife.
‘Sit down, Kerry. Sit down and keep your peace, woman. I’ll tell you what you want to know.’ His voice was low. Sitting herself in a chair opposite him, Kerry picked up her tea and waited, her face bright, as if lit from inside.
‘Go on then.’
Evander wiped his mouth with his napkin and began to talk in a low sing-song voice.
‘I was born in 1896 in a small place just outside Birmingham.’
‘We’ve got a Birmingham here!’
Evander nodded and held his hand up for quiet. Now he had decided to tell her his story, he wanted her to hear it all.
‘My father was a drifter, he was half-white. My mother, Liselle, lived on a small farm with her father. My three elder brothers were her father’s children.’
Kerry screwed up her eyes at this and Evander could practically hear her mind clicking as she worked out the relationships.
‘In Alabama, the blacks were treated worse than the animals. If a black man worked on a farm, then the horses and livestock would get priority over him for food, warmth and shelter. Most niggers slept in an outhouse. Some brought up whole families scratching in the dirt, working on a small place for food and maybe a few clothes. Children there worked from the time they could walk and feed the poultry. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. But it’s hotter’n hell for a nigger come summertime and colder than an icebox for a nigger come fall.
‘So, my mother picked up with a half-chat called Rusty Dorsey, a big, smooth-talking man. I can’t remember him too well, but I can remember his voice. Like brown molasses, sweet and thick and syrupy. My mother bred four children in three years to him. I was the first. My sisters came after. He worked around, had a trade kind of, good with wood. My mammy always said that he could make a piece of tree bend itself whichever which way he wanted it to. Well, he left. We woke up one mornin’ and he was long gone. Liselle, my mammy, broke her heart, and lived in hope of his coming back. Never did, of course, ‘cept he’d turn up when he was rock bottom and then drif’ off again after a while.
‘My granddaddy liked him. They were both hard-talking, hard-drinking men, ’cept my granddaddy had the religion as well. We all lived in one small shanty, but it was ours. There weren’t no bedrooms or toilets or nothing like that. You saw and heard everything about everyone. No privacy at all, but then children don’t need none.’
Kerry nodded then, remembering the basements. The squalor, the tightly packed bodies in the beds.
‘When I was five, I went to work with my mother at a white lady’s house. She had a man servant called Tobias, a big nigger. More a field hand really, than a lady’s servant, but the woman, Miss Gloria Day ... she was older than him, she was really old, you know. But she weren’t ready to lie down, at least not in the ground anyways. Land’s sakes, I watched her a watchin’ him with that look!’
He laughed and Kerry smiled to hear him. Her eyes were boring into his face.
‘Yes, sir! She liked black meat did Gloria Day! And Tobias, well, he was good to her. Anyway, Tobias took a liking to me. He knew I loved to hear the piano. Miss Day would play and I’d listen, getting a whipping for not sweeping the porch or cleaning the floor, whatever I was supposed to be doing. Well, Miss Day called me in and said to me - she had a high voice, kind of sweet but bitter, you know? - she says, “Evander, you like my piana playing, boy?” And I says real cute, “Yes, mam.”
‘So she shows me the scales. Anyway, for some reason she decided to teach me to play. I’d spend hours with her, listening to her. I could listen to her all night and day. She was an interesting person, you see. My mammy said, “Evander, she gonna get fed up soon so don’t you be breaking your heart over it if she does.”
‘But God was good, and she began to teach me Chopin. Well, I picked it up real quick, and it pleased her. When I’d play, she’d laugh her head off. That went on for five years. The best five years of my life. By the time I was ten, I could play any damned thing she asked. Somehow, I think now, looking back, I was like the child she never had. She even tried to get me into a school, but the authorities wouldn’t even listen. But I’d already accepted that so when she told me, I wasn’t too disappointed.’
‘It sounds wonderful. You had a great childhood ...’
Evander laughed out loud.
‘No, Kerry. That part of it was good, sure, but I was a nigger, and niggers don’t have no childhood! You’re a man from the first time you hold you own pecker and pee! Anyway, one morning we goes there and Miss Day is si
tting on her porch, looking real bad. Her face was whiter than I ever seen it, and she was white you know. White skin, white hair, white clothes ...’
He swallowed hard and took a sip of his cold coffee.
“‘Look round the back, Lissy,” she tells my mammy. “Look what they done.”’
He looked down at the table for a few seconds.
‘Who are “they”, and what had they done?’ Kerry’s voice was serious now. She was frightened of what he was going to say, but had to know.
“‘They” were the white men. They’d come late at night. Around the back of her property was an orchard. I’d spent many hours picking the fruit in the summer. There was a large oak tree. It had stood ever since I could remember. I’d climbed it so many times, chasing the coons. Well, hanging by his feet on the oak tree was Tobias. Only I didn’t realise it was him at first. They’d burned him, burned him alive, but first they’d beaten him with sticks, kicked him with their boots. His face would have been unrecognisable anyways. They’d castrated him at some point, and pushed his pecker in between his teeth. That was the weird part, you see, because he was charred all over, his clothes were gone, everything, but that was still recognisable. You could see it hanging down.’
‘Dear God, I feel sick... Really sick!’
Evander smiled.
‘I got sick. I looked at that body and I brought up my grits like a hand was pushing up inside my stomach and forcing the food from me. My mammy was crying, she was crying hard, snot hanging from her nose and spittle hanging from her mouth. I ran back to my granddaddy and finally he came with Tobias’s father and they cut him down.’
‘What about the law, the police?’
‘Honey, that was the law. It’s still the law even now, all these years later. The law says a black man can’t look at a white woman. If a white woman thinks a nigger is looking at her in lust, then he can be hanged. Someone at sometime had guessed about him and Miss Day. They didn’t care that she wanted it, that she liked it, that she paid him! They wouldn’t touch her, her family had been there for years. She had the security of money. So they touched the next best thing - Tobias. Black and white don’t really mix, girl, and it ain’t no different in France. It’s no different anywhere. You’ve got to understand that sometime.’